Boom.

In a blast of dirt and debris, a beautiful monstrosity came to a stop. When the dust settled, Evélyne could see the cavern's hypnotic lights reflecting off its immaculate scales.

She could sense a vast, billowing Life and Spirit energy coming from the creature as it made no real efforts to tame it. Clouds of steam rose slowly from its hidden pores, obscuring its form.

A few moments later, the clouds faded away and she locked eyes with the creature in front of her, their gazes subconsciously bursting with Spirit energy. After a tense silence, Evélyne suddenly spoke. More precisely, she sent a thought directly into Lucas' mind.

|What are you?|

Even though her language was completely foreign to Lucas, he still understood her perfectly. His claws impaled the floor deeper at that.

"Why should I answer your questions?"

Evélyne's eyes widened slightly in shock. She expected a mental transmission from a Domain lord but it seemed this one was intelligent enough to have its own language? This piqued her curiosity, causing her to look at the creature in a new light. She quickly regained her composure as she said,

|Well I guess it matters little. I came to this domain to defeat its domain lord but it seems you came to defeat me in turn?|

Evélyne asked casually as she eased into a basic fighting stance. She lowered her core slightly, planting her feet shoulder-width apart for balance. Her torso remained poised, upright yet ready to shift. She held her arms slightly away from her body, elbows loose, with both palms open. Her form prepared to react at a moment's notice.

Her gaze was still locked with Lucas'. Lucas didn't reply as he let out a deep resonating growl. His form taut as he prepared to burst into motion. His tails tensed like scorpion stingers, he had already made his choice.

Boom!

Suddenly, Lucas streaked forward with one powerful lunge. Jaws wide open as he prepared to finish this with a quick chomp.

Evélyne's form flickered crimson in his perception as she smoothly dodged to the side while countering with a simple knife hand chop to his neck. Her arm was coated in an ephemeral energy. Lucas felt a hair raising danger from that attack so he pierced out with his tails, forcing her to exchange injury for injury.

As if she could read his mind, Evélyne evaded all his attacks with micro dodges. Each one measured to the millimeter as her hand pressed on, not losing a shred of momentum.

'The fuck?'

Panicked, all Lucas could do was Harden his neck and reinforce it as much as possible in such a short time frame as he directed himself away from the chop.

Thanks to his last minute preparations, the strike only scored a shallow wound but the energy within the attack went on a rampage within Lucas and almost immobilized him due to pain. When you factored in his previous injury, he was staying conscious due to sheer will.

Evélyne didn't care about any of this as she pressed forward, going for the kill. With a manic snarl, Lucas stopped trying to heal the injury and shot at her as well. Exploiting his longer range, Lucas' tails whipped out from four different angles.

Clinkclinkclinkclinkclinkclinkclinkclink.

Evélyne's arms became blurry after images as she parried every strike from Lucas with ease, almost cleaving his tails off in the process. This only brought Lucas over the edge of madness and he became completely berserk. His white iris broke out of their restraints as Lucas flashed forward noiselessly, his blurry white figure unrestrained by friction or drag forces.

This burst of acceleration caused Evélyne's eyes to harden as complex weaves of Spirit energy oscillated over her form and she vanished.

BANG!

That singular impact contained more than a dozen exchanges from both parties with Lucas firmly at the losing end but he pressed on.

The white and crimson flickering figures kept trading blows like there was no tomorrow, neither backing down. As the fight went on, the more surprised Evélyne became. She could see Lucas getting faster and stronger. More importantly, his energy seemed to be adjusting to her's in small ways. No matter how she attacked him, he just did his best to keep his vitals safe while launching a counter attack.

Worse still, for each move she made, Lucas seemed to have an almost perfect recollection of her move set and would be able to predict them in advance.

/Your intuition and adaptability are remarkable. But your technique is rather sloppy, monster./

A smile unknowingly crawled up Evélyne's face as she fought as seriously as she could without using her Skills, advanced techniques, or weapon. Blood had already splattered everywhere around them from these few seconds of combat.

As the fight pressed on, Lucas could feel his body begin to weaken from all the fluids he had lost. The pain from using [Adaptive Resonance] was getting worse by the millisecond as well. The cloud of steam he usually emitted had colored an ominous dark red.

Pushing his body even harder to adapt, Lucas' form began shrinking as they fought. His stature became denser yet more agile, resisting Evélyne's strikes better while his burst speed somehow kept improving even with his injuries.

Bangbangbang!—Boom!

After a particularly brutal exchange, a huge crater erupted from the center of their clash as Lucas was kicked tens of meters away. Back in the crater, Evélyne stood serenely as she seemed to be genuinely enjoying herself.

"Crash!"

Coughing up clouds of blood, Lucas staggered to his feet. His frontal left leg now a stomp and his four tails bloody messes.

'I'm fine Crash, I'm just warming up.'

Crash could tell Lucas had already given it his all. He was panting like a dog, almost every fibre in his body had some form of damage, and his Spirit and Life energies were tapping out. To top it off, none of his injuries were healing as usual.

"Crash!"

'I said I'm fine! We aren't fusing again!'

Lucas angrily lashed out as he bared his teeth. His taut form oozed blood as he prepared for his final charge. He knew if he fused with Crash once more, that was it. He would be alone once more.

/Your courage is admirable, monster. As a show of respect, I shall use one of my Skills./

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Evélyne cut off his thoughts as she spoke indifferently. She drew her bone white sword, its surface rapidly becoming a deep crimson. She took an offensive stance for the first time. Her form coated in copious amounts of Life energy. It transformed her hair to a vibrant crimson as she stepped forward and spoke softly,

/This Skill is called [Lifeblood circulations]. Here I come./

With that, she vanished from her position and reappeared in front of Lucas. Her blade cleaved down mercilessly, completely imperceptible to the human eye. Lucas felt the world freeze around him simply due to the power and speed of this one strike. Even in the face of imminent death, only one question rose in Lucas' mind.

'Am I that weak?'

SLASH!

The strike directly cleaved him in half, releasing an ultra thin blade energy that bisected whatever else laid fifty meters behind Lucas. Lucas' corpse dropped to the floor as two lifeless halves in a pool of his own warm blood as Evélyne stepped back. She casually put her sword back on her waist and waited.

Her gaze narrowed as she felt the watching presence suddenly unleash a burst of power and appeared above Lucas. She calmly dashed ten meters back with a hand on her sword's hilt as she looked up.

Up in the air, Pike had appeared. Its ethereal form and music having no effect on Evélyne's mind. She just patiently watched its branches wrap around Lucas, feeding him with its power.

"Ahh, so this is the second phase I have read about? Fascinating…"

Within the cocoon, Lucas was undergoing a profound transformation. The domain core wasn't healing him per se, it just gave him an ungodly amount of Spirit energy to use as he saw fit.

Lucas' mind was still in the haze of battle and didn't understand or care if he was given this energy. He just wanted to grow stronger.

'Why did I lose? I wasn't fast enough, I wasn't strong enough, but most importantly, I wasn't skilled enough.'

"Crash."

Lucas didn't seem to hear Crash as he fell deeper into his own thoughts and body. His form reverted back to a humanoid shape. With his scales forming dense, flexible armor. His tails retracting comfortably to boast his skeletal structure to carry all the extra weight he was placing on it.

"Crash…"

Runes were now formed by his scale gaps. Each one took their usual spots on his fists, feet, and torso. As Spirit energy roared through him, he felt himself almost break apart. Forced to stop the flow, he questioned himself.

Why wasn't it working? What was he missing? If he couldn't do this, could he survive another strike like that?

As his thoughts raced, he suddenly heard Crash say something vague yet ominous.

"Crash."

His heart clenched as he asked,

"What do you mean goodbye?"

"Be free."

"No! Stop!!!"

With those final words, Crash vanished from Lucas' perception. He felt a wave of anguish that settled over him, a sudden wave of negative emotion crushing his every thought.

Why!why!why!why!why!why!why!why!why!why!

His Mind began working twice as fast but he didn't care, he was stuck in an agonizing loop within his own existence. He knew he had lost something irreplaceable once more, and there was no getting it back.

Ahhhhhhhh!

With a savage roar like a wounded beast, Lucas' energy detonated the cocoon. The beetle core he had been holding on to detonated as well, releasing a devastating blastwave. The energy forcing Evélyne to take two steps back, her expression laser focused on the weaves of Spirit energy above.

Lucas' flesh and scales imploded into him, sucking all the Spirit energy in the cocoon in the process. In an instant, he became a radiant white skeleton. Suddenly, his skeleton rapidly expanded. In a few short moments, he was over three meters tall. Spikes of bones erupted out of his back, forming four jagged, blade-like appendages.

In a burst of power, multiple Runes criss crossed his skeleton haphazardly. Most of them warped in strange ways and were barely functional.

With his skeleton set, his flesh exploded out of him in frantic growths. These growths surged violently, snapping bones with wet crack. Myriad fractures sprawled across his skeleton with each sickening break. Every tendon and every fiber of muscle spawned from warped Life energy, shaping him into a haunting abomination.

/!!!!!!!!/

With a soundless shriek, these rapid growth came to a malformed stop. Lucas had completely depleted his Spirit energy supply as he crashed from the sky like an unholy meteor.

Bang.

He landed on both feet like a monolith, creating a massive crater due to his sheer weight. The domain core vanished as its work was done, Leaving behind the hideous humanoid formerly known as Lucas Maverick.

Streaks of blood ran down his eyes like miniature streams. Oddly, the blood didn't drop to the ground but rather interlinked his Runes. This caused Lucas to glow with a light sanguine hue. His form emitting a ghastly pressure and murderous intent.

Evélyne's eyes sparkled in delight as she watched this transformation. Placing her sword back on her hip, she shifted to a more defensive stance as she said,

/That's quite the transform—/

BOOM!

The novice domain lord suddenly vanished with a thunderous boom. He reappeared in front of Evélyne performing a simple punch. The very air was compressed by the sheer might of this single fist.

Due to the overwhelming pressure trying to crush Evélyne to paste, she was forced to take the attack head on with the palm of her hand, sending her skidding back.

Lucas didn't let up as his fists and blades shot out rapidly, drowning Evélyne in scores of white afterimages. Each strike was a super sonic haymaker, aiming to eradicate her very existence. But despite this, she was never on the back foot. Her smile grew into a radiant grin as she parried, blocked, and countered almost everything he threw at her with flawless palm strikes, kicks, knees, and elbows.

As the exchange went on, Lucas moved faster and faster. Each attack was more fluid than the last as he coordinated his Attributes to the max—

Bang!

With a clever faint, Evélyne landed a devastating gut punch, smashing Lucas away. As he sailed through the air, she didn't give chase as she calmly said.

/You're much stronger now, but your technique and energy control have deteriorated to an abysmal level. At this rate, I won't need to draw my sword./

Lucas didn't respond as he skidded to a stop. His figure suddenly jolted intensely as his Spirit energy went out of control, leaving his body bursting at its seams.

His radiant white eyes burned with unmatched fury as he shot forward once more, even faster than before.

Evélyne frowned as her hair glowed crimson. Her form flickered with a bright red, forming a perfect copy of herself. Both rushed at Lucas simultaneously glowing crimson, hands on their sword hilts.

'I should end this here. Torturing beasts is not a habit I should develop.'

Lucas didn't bother with either of them as he smashed the ground with all his might. The ground pound generated a devastating tremor wave which flexed the ground like a whip.

BOOM!

The tremor dispelled the clone but Evélyne still managed to close the distance and slashed out with her crimson sword. Lucas blocked with a punch but was shoved backwards, his fist cracked.

Evélyne pressed forward relentlessly, her strikes coming out blindingly quick. In an instant, she struck out a hundred times. Each slash and thrust capitalising on Lucas' improper technique and sloppy movements.

Roar!!!

BOOM!

Smashing the ground once more, he finally gave himself some room to catch his breath. On an instinctive level, Lucas knew he was still out matched. But this realization just stoked his Spirit and anger further!

HUMMM!!!!

Lucas began vibrating, a powerful low hum pulsed throughout the cavern. His form resonated with the air as he emitted a cloud of blood, his current body unable to bear the strain.

Spreading all his Spirit energy throughout his entire being, he became a white haze. His bladed limbs all shifted and fused into his right arm turning it into a gauntlet of pain and fury. He rushed forward, his velocity greater than ever.

As he charged forward to perform his final attack, Evélyne's stance suddenly changed, she widened her feet and gripped her sword with both hands for a power slash. With a deep exhale, her eyes suddenly surged with a flash of Life energy.

Within her perception, everything was almost frozen. Lucas shot towards her at a glacial pace. She sighed internally as she said.

/If you survive this, I will let you live. Essence of perfection: Layered [Exsanguination]./

Her figure exploded with legions of red afterimages, each one performing a slash at Lucas. Streaks of crimson energy cleaving through Lucas as she struck out thousands of times in an instant. Each attack cleaved at Lucas right arm.

AGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Lucas bore the full brunt of this abuse and forged forward with a powerful roar. His momentum didn't slow for an instant under the hail of strikes.

Slashslashslashslashslashslashslashslash!—BOOOOMMMM!

Her last attack struck down like demonic lightning against the final fist, the shock wave of the clash reverberated throughout the entire cavern.

When the dust settled, Lucas was left standing still in his punching pose. The overbearing pressure he emitted all but gone. His right arm completely vaporized as well that side of his body. His eyes were completely black as he had fallen unconscious.

Evélyne stood opposite to him, her gaze still filled with wonder as she stared at the unconscious mimic. Her armor was pristine and spotless while a small cut had appeared on her left brow. In an instant, the cut healed and she placed her sword on her waist once more. She looked at Lucas for a long moment before murmuring,

"Still alive huh? I wonder what you are."

A flash of crimson light produced a black sphere in her hand. She pointed it towards Lucas and it absorbed him through a white beam of light. She then left the cavern with silent steps, her mind analyzing the one sided battle.

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