The battlefield was chaos incarnate.

  Light clashed against lightning. Frost tore through shadows. Reality itself twisted as magic warped the very fabric of space.

  Caelum and Yeba stood suspended in the air, two radiant figures locked in a battle of sheer speed and destruction. Below, Vienna and Frid weaved through a storm of illusions and elemental devastation, their clash an intricate dance of deception and absolute control.

  Yet, for all their power, Yeba and Vienna knew the truth—they were being pushed back.

  Their opponents weren’t just fighting—they were dissecting them.

  Above the battlefield—

  Yeba’s form blurred, a streak of crackling violet light. His body flickered between countless afterimages, each one discharging bolts of thunder that carved through the air like celestial spears.

  But no matter how fast he moved—

  Caelum was faster.

  A pulse of pure light erupted from his body, warping the space around him. His figure shimmered, appearing a breath away from Yeba before a blade of condensed light sliced downward.

  Yeba twisted—barely. The edge of the attack scraped his shoulder, a searing heat cutting through his reinforced defenses like a knife through paper.

  The pain barely registered.

  Instead, Yeba retaliated.

  "Thunder God's Dominion!"

  The sky cracked apart.

  A torrential surge of violet lightning exploded outward, consuming everything in its wake. The raw energy twisted, converging into a massive storm vortex that swallowed Caelum in an instant.

  A direct hit.

  Yeba’s eyes flashed. He had the advantage—!

  Then—

  Light erupted from within the storm.

  Not dispersed. Not broken.

  It simply bent.

  Yeba’s pupils contracted. Caelum hadn’t resisted his attack—he had manipulated the light itself, redirecting how it traveled.

  And in that instant—

  A beam of concentrated destruction pierced through the storm.

  It was like a spear forged from the very essence of light itself—infinitely fast, infinitely sharp.

  Yeba barely had time to react. His body blurred, but—

  Too slow.

  The beam struck him dead center.

  A deafening shockwave followed as his body was launched across the battlefield, crashing through the ground in a violent explosion of shattered stone and lightning.

  Below—

  Vienna exhaled as the illusion around her collapsed.

  She had shattered it once before—only for Frid to drag her back into another.

  The air was thick with shadows, dozens of distorted figures of Frid emerging from the darkness, each holding a blade of abyssal black. They smiled, speaking in perfect unison—

  "How many times will you break free before you realize it’s pointless?"

  Vienna remained silent.

  Instead, she simply raised a single hand.

  The temperature plummeted.

  A surge of frost erupted from her palm, forming into countless frozen lances that tore through the shadowy figures.

  They shattered like glass.

  And yet—

  The real Frid was already behind her.

  His hand stretched toward her back, his fingers crackling with an energy that seemed to devour the light around it.

  Vienna’s heart froze.

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  Not from fear.

  From calculation.

  She had predicted this.

  Without turning—

  She clenched her fist.

  A pillar of frozen entropy burst from the ground, consuming both her and Frid in an instant. The sheer cold froze the space itself, sealing even the concept of movement.

  For a breath—everything stood still.

  Then—

  A crack.

  Frid’s laughter echoed as the ice splintered.

  "Beautiful.”

  The frozen prison shattered.

  Frid emerged, unharmed.

  Vienna’s expression finally darkened.

  She had no time to react before he lunged, shadows converging around his body like a swirling abyss.

  Then—

  A bolt of lightning crashed between them.

  Across the battlefield—

  Yeba coughed as he emerged from the debris, his body crackling with residual electricity. His entire torso ached from Caelum’s previous attack, but there was no time to hesitate.

  In the distance, Caelum descended like a falling star, light trailing behind him like the tail of a comet.

  Yeba’s fists clenched.

  He had tested Caelum’s speed. He had tested his power.

  Now, there was only one thing left to do.

  Go all out.

  Lightning erupted from his body. But this time—it did not lash out in chaotic arcs.

  Instead, it focused.

  "Lightning Emperor’s Manifestation—"

  A single step.

  The ground beneath Yeba disintegrated.

  The next instant—he was gone.

  Caelum’s eyes barely widened before Yeba appeared directly in front of him.

  A punch—coated in lightning condensed to a microscopic level—slammed into his gut.

  The explosion was instantaneous.

  A deafening shockwave tore through the battlefield, a massive pillar of violet lightning surging skyward as Caelum’s body was launched into the heavens.

  But Yeba wasn’t done.

  His figure blurred—

  And then he was above Caelum, his hands raised high.

  "Celestial Thunder—"

  A massive sphere of pure electricity formed in his grip, the energy compressed to a terrifying density.

  Caelum’s body slowed in mid-air, light distorting around him as he fought to regain control.

  But it was too late.

  "FALL!"

  Yeba slammed the sphere down.

  The moment it connected—

  The heavens shattered.

  Below—

  Frid and Vienna both staggered as the sky above them split apart, a cataclysmic explosion of light and thunder tearing through the atmosphere.

  Vienna paled.

  Frid only grinned.

  Then—

  Caelum emerged from the destruction.

  Burned, injured—but not defeated.

  Yeba landed across from him.

  For a brief moment, there was silence.

  Then, Caelum exhaled.

  The wounds on his body began to mend.

  Light flickered across his form, the very air around him warping in response to his will.

  Yeba tensed.

  Caelum smiled.

  "Shall we continue?"

  And in the next instant—

  The battle resumed.

  --

  Eo drifted in the air, an observer amidst the battlefield’s chaos.

  From his vantage point, he saw how light clashed with lightning, how the fabric of space rippled under their attacks. His gaze followed every motion—every instantaneous shift, every microscopic distortion, every interaction between energy and matter.

  Fascinating.

  Eo had spent countless hours analyzing magic, biology, and energy flow, but this battle was unlike anything he had encountered. The precision of their movements, the way magic seamlessly merged with their actions—this was mastery beyond mere instinct.

  He focused on Caelum and Yeba.

  The two were no longer just throwing spells. They were calculating.

  Yeba, despite his seemingly reckless approach, was adjusting his lightning’s frequency mid-strike, shifting from high-energy discharges to compressed, silent bursts of force that bent the air around them.

  Caelum, in response, was no longer just using raw light. He was bending its properties, altering the index of refraction to distort perceptions, creating moments of imperceptible acceleration.

  Eo’s interest deepened.

  Could he do the same?

  He reached out—not physically, but through the fundamental principles he had come to understand.

  Light and electricity were both part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

  But what if—

  Instead of manipulating them as separate entities—

  He fused them?

  A subtle shift occurred.

  Eo absorbed a fragment of the surrounding energy, allowing his body to mimic the principles at play. He didn’t interfere with the battle, merely observed and experimented in real-time.

  His core pulsed.

  Lightning surged through his form. But instead of behaving like traditional energy, it folded inward, condensing into a state where it no longer acted as mere electricity—

  But something more.

  The effect was immediate.

  Eo’s perception expanded.

  He was no longer just “seeing” the battlefield. He was feeling the fluctuations in space caused by each spell, tracing the precise moment when energy converted from one form to another.

  Ah.

  So that’s how they did it.

  Below, Vienna and Frid’s battle reached a turning point.

  The frozen ground cracked as Vienna unleashed a pulse of absolute zero, forcing Frid into a momentary retreat.

  But the darkness never truly left.

  Even when his figure vanished, Eo could still detect him—not by sight, but by the subtle distortions in thermal energy.

  Frid wasn’t teleporting.

  He was folding himself between layers of space, existing in multiple points simultaneously.

  Another intriguing method.

  Eo ran a quick internal simulation.

  If he applied mist manipulation in conjunction with his newly adjusted electromagnetic pulse, he could theoretically—

  Ah.

  Yes. That could work.

  A shockwave thundered through the sky as Caelum descended once more, his light-crowned form radiating an intensity that threatened to consume all shadows.

  Yeba, undeterred, countered with raw force.

  "Heavenly Raze—!"

  "Luminance Collapse—!"

  The collision of their ultimate techniques rippled across the battlefield.

  Even Eo felt it—a force that twisted the very fabric of localized reality.

  But instead of being repelled—

  Eo absorbed a fragment of the impact.

  Not the physical force.

  Not the magic itself.

  But the underlying principle of their clash.

  The way energy converged and dispersed, the way motion carried through waves, not just particles.

  He stored the data within his core.

  Not to replicate it—

  But to evolve beyond it.

  Because if this was what mortals could achieve with knowledge and experience—

  Then what was stopping him from surpassing them?

  His form flickered.

  The battle raged on.

  And Eo—silent, unshaken—continued to observe, analyze, and evolve.