At some point, the fight stopped feeling like a fight and started feeling like a loop.
Punch, dodge, counter, regenerate, repeat.
Black would swing. Veneri would slip past it with Time Divinity. I'd step in to redirect his balance. Sapphire would crack against his ribs. My kicks would slam into his knees. His regeneration would heal him. He'd laugh, stand back up and swing again.
We were all exhausted mentally but none of us were willing to be the first to stop. Pride, rage, stubbornness, call it whatever you wanted, but the three of us were locked in a stalemate that neither side could break.
And the frustrating part is that Veneri still wasn't going all out.
His movements were efficient and brutally effective, but he never activated his Plenituse Techniques. The micro-optimizations were there but the actual Plenituse release was still sealed.
He was holding back Not because he couldn't use it. He didn't know if it would kill him. Ely was the one who was supposed to take that risk, not him.
Another exchange of blows forced us apart, causing all three of us skidding backward across the shattered terrain. Black slowly rolled his shoulders. His grin returned despite the faint flickers still clinging to his body from Veneri's soul strikes.
"You two are persistent but this is getting boring."
A massive Divine Presence descended over the battlefield. All three of us froze instinctively. Ely was floating high above us, suspended in the sky. Her eyes were closed. She was evolving to the Fifth Enlightenment. Even Black stopped smiling.
"No. I'm not letting a Verdarite reach Fifth Enlightenment in front of me."
He crouched and then launched himself upward. He leaped toward Ely with terrifying speed. He didn't make it halfway through. A thin, almost invisible blue line flashed across his torso. For a split second, nothing happened.
Then his body split cleanly in half at the waist.
Both halves of him tumbled back to the ground, crashing into the battlefield and carving a shallow depression where he landed. Blood sprayed before his regeneration kicked in. His body began to reassemble.
Veneri lowered his hand slowly with sapphire energy fading from his fingers.
"Yeah… my Plenituse Techniques really can kill you if I use them. Good thing I didn't activate them fully during the fight. Viridescence has gotten smoother."
Black's torso snapped back into place a few seconds later. His face was twisted in fury now with veins bulging along his temples.
"If I get close to her," he growled, pointing his axe toward Ely, "I'm going all out. I don't care what it costs."
Before we could respond, the ground began to tremble. From the horizon, a horde of stone giants began charging toward us, their. Clearly, Black decided to stop playing fair.
Veneri clicked his tongue in annoyance and raised his hand toward the sky. Multiple layers of Protection Divinity barriers formed around Ely, stacking over one another. A massive Protection Mystic Circle spun beneath her, glowing with Runes that reinforced every barrier tenfold.
Black sneered.
"You think that'll stop me? I'm not losing to a Verdarite."
He jumped again, this time aiming not for Ely directly but to break through the layers of giants and distractions we were about to be buried under. He didn't get far.
My sapphire chains (thanks for Arletta for showing me how to use them) shot from the ground and wrapped around his limbs mid-air. They yanked him downward with brutal force, slamming him into the earth so hard the impact formed a fresh crater beneath him.
"Stay down for a second, will you?"
Veneri didn't waste the opening. Sapphire materialized in massive quantities around Black's body, forming a crystalline prison that sealed him inside. The giants were still coming.
"Handle them, Darling. I'll reinforce the sapphire."
He nodded once, stepping forward. He drew his fist back as he activated Viridescence again but this time, he aimed it at the incoming horde.
He punched the air.
Sapphire energy emerged from his fist, tearing across the Overwrite in a straight line. The front ranks of stone giants didn't even have time to react before they were obliterated. The wave continued for kilometers, carving a massive scar across the land and annihilating everything in its path.
I stared at the destruction, whistling softly.
"Yeah, that's overkill."
Behind us, the sapphire prison cracked even after I reinforced it.
Black roared and burst free. He forced his way out through raw strength and regeneration-fueled persistence. His eyes were wild now, completely overriding any sense of strategy. Veneri sighed, clearly tired of the cycle, and flicked his hand again.
Viridescence lashed out in a narrow beam this time, slamming into Black's chest and launching him across the battlefield like a ragdoll. His body skidded and bounced over the terrain, disappearing into the distance as he was sent flying for kilometers.
"Stay there for a while please."
He immediately turned back to Ely, raising both hands. Vines erupted from the ground around her, wrapping her in a protective cocoon that existed over the existing barriers. The Protection Mystic Circle beneath her spun faster as it reinforced the structure.
Her Divine Presence grew. It was pressing down on everything. The air shimmered with raw Nature Energy. Leaves and petals began manifesting from nothing and drifting downward in slow, surreal spirals.
Massive glowing text appeared high above us, stretching across the heavens like a divine decree carved into reality itself.
[OVERTIME: 20 MINUTES]
"You've got to be kidding me."
Only two people I knew were insane enough to implement something like that into a divine battlefield.
Hansel and Gretel.
Our time had run out which meant the system governing this entire confrontation should have ended the battle already. Instead, they had forced an extension. They gave us twenty extra minutes to resolve everything.
I rubbed my face with one hand, laughing in disbelief.
"Of course they did. Of course they gave us overtime."
Veneri stared up at the message for a moment, then let out a tired sigh.
"Twenty minutes. That's all Ely has to finish evolving and for us to keep Black away."
In the distance, a furious roar echoed as Black began charging back toward us again. His body had already regenerated and his rage was burning hotter than ever.
I cracked my knuckles with chains coiling lazily around my wrists.
"Then we'd better make those twenty minutes count."