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*****
Deep within his core, Surtur seethed at Fenye's blatant disregard for his authority. Yet, forcing his colossal frame to remain steadily seated upon his stone throne, he demanded in a low rumble, "What is your true purpose here?"
This marked their third official encounter, and Surtur was thoroughly incapable of deciphering the boy's actual motives.
If the intruder's goal was to execute him, the flow of the previous two battles made absolutely no logical sense. But if execution wasn't the objective, he couldn't fathom a single reason why Fenye would persistently come here to provoke him.
"A spar! Just a friendly, amicable spar!"
Hearing Surtur's inquiry, Fenye offered an immediate response. Although the mechanical visor of his armor completely obscured his facial expressions, he was confident that Surtur could detect the absolute sincerity laced within his tone.
Thud!
Surtur slammed the Twilight Sword into the bedrock. He could indeed detect the underlying emotion, except his ancient mind translated it entirely as mockery.
"I will make you pay a devastating price for this, Fenye Halsey!"
For the first time, Surtur refrained from using derogatory titles like insect or whelp. After all, having suffered two consecutive defeats, continuing to refer to his opponent as an insignificant bug would only make his own martial prowess look incredibly pathetic.
"Bring it on!"
Fenye thumped his armored chest confidently. Having spent the past few days meticulously dissecting Surtur's baseline combat loops, his tactical confidence for this third round was at an all-time high.
---
However, Fenye had overlooked a critical variable: Surtur wasn't the only active combatant on the field this time.
Although the fire dragon was aggressively hideous to look at, its functional baseline strength was far from negligible. Under a seamless tag-team orchestration between the beast and Surtur, an overly confident Fenye quickly found himself thoroughly suppressed across every major exchange.
At several points during the chaotic melee, Fenye contemplated summoning his Blue-Eyes White Dragon to even the odds. However, he viewed this high-intensity pressure as an exceptional crucible to forge his baseline skills, forcing himself to endure the onslaught through raw, personal attributes.
The skirmish dragged on significantly longer than their second encounter. Before long, Surtur's freshly constructed subterranean palace was systematically reduced to a smoking pile of rubble once more, and the violent conflict eventually breached the cavern ceiling, spilling out onto the barren surface of Muspelheim.
At this stage, Surtur couldn't care less about exposing his coordinates to the cosmos; his singular, hyper-focused objective was to subdue Fenye and subject him to a lifetime of agonizing torment.
Pitted against a brutal two-on-one workflow, Fenye spent nearly the entire duration of the battle absorbing heavy punishment or executing desperate evasive maneuvers. He could only muster a handful of scattered counterattacks, allowing Surtur to thoroughly vent his accumulated frustrations.
Without a doubt, this match constituted the most grueling and punishing military conflict Fenye had endured since his debut—even if a massive portion of the difficulty curve was entirely self-inflicted.
Nevertheless, as the battle reached its zenith, Fenye felt he had sufficiently maximized the training value of the crucible. The multiple near-death experiences had granted him a profoundly deep understanding of his structural flaws.
If he prolonged this restrictive workflow any further, he would likely be forced to initiate a tactical retreat, which would completely forfeit his experience payout.
Wrestling with internal conflict for a brief moment, Fenye ultimately couldn't withstand the premium temptation of those forty-five experience points. Hardening his resolve, he decided to bring out his ace.
Executing a rapid series of mid-air flips to evade a crushing strike, Fenye swiftly manifested his card deck.
The primary reason he had remained thoroughly pinned down throughout this engagement was the presence of the fire dragon. While his structural research on Surtur was absolute, he possessed zero data on the beast's baseline behaviors. Consequently, he had been forced to allocate a massive portion of his mental processing power just to track the dragon's vectors and localized abilities.
"Come forth, Blue-Eyes White Dragon!"
The card burst into a brilliant, blinding radiance. Right before Surtur's vigilant gaze and before the giant could coordinate a disruptive strike, the light expanded exponentially, reshaping itself into the colossal form of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon.
Materializing into the volatile atmosphere, the majestic dragon instantly sensed the intense combat aura and let out a deafening, resonant roar that echoed across the volcanic plains.
Beholding the immense, pristine form of the dragon, Surtur stood frozen in sheer astonishment. He couldn't comprehend how a second colossal reptilian entity had suddenly materialized onto the battlefield out of thin air.
Hearing the Blue-Eyes White Dragon's booming challenge, Surtur's fire dragon instinctively bared its fangs to fire back a counter-roar. However, the moment the Blue-Eyes pivoted its gaze downward to lock eyes with the beast, the fire dragon's aggression instantly dissolved into a pathetic whimper, its massive frame trembling uncontrollably.
The low-tier dragon was experiencing a profound, genetic suppression stemming directly from the absolute hierarchy of bloodlines.
Fenye watched the interaction between the two creatures with a look of mild surprise. Although he didn't fully grasp the exact biological mechanics at play, it was transparently clear that the native fire dragon was utterly terrified of the Blue-Eyes.
"What manner of creature is this?!" Surtur demanded at the top of his lungs, his grip tightening around the Twilight Sword. Witnessing his vanguard beast reduce itself to a trembling mess, a sudden wave of shock and instinctual dread toward this unknown dragon surged within his chest.
Hovering smoothly alongside his companion, Fenye gently patted the dragon's sleek, silver-white scales and fired back, "You're allowed to rally your lackeys, but I'm not permitted to summon a partner?"
Surtur found himself entirely at a loss for words. Victory had been well within his grasp, yet he had never anticipated that Fenye was harboring such a devastating trump card. Even so, he refused to abandon the field.
"Attack!"
Surtur barked a command, forcing the fire dragon to resume its offensive. In his heart, he desperately prayed that this majestic dragon was merely an aesthetic illusion that would crumble under actual kinetic pressure.
Unfortunately, Surtur's expectations were destined to be thoroughly shattered.
When the Blue-Eyes White Dragon operated at unbridled capacity, even Fenye himself chose to give her a wide berth. Setting aside her razor-sharp talons and crushing jaw, a point-blank execution of her signature breath weapon was an attack Fenye wouldn't dare absorb head-on.
Observing the native dragon hesitantly but obediently force its trembling frame forward to launch a desperate assault, Fenye let out a contemptuous chuckle. "You've been snapping at my heels for an hour now. It's high time you learned your place. Blue-Eyes, use Burst Stream of Destruction!"
Receiving the direct mandate, the Blue-Eyes White Dragon unhinged her jaws, a blinding vortex of concentrated white energy rapidly coalescing within her throat. Under Surtur's horrified gaze, she unleashed the apocalyptic torrent straight at the incoming target.
BOOM!
The brilliant beam of cosmic energy traversed the distance instantly, striking the fire dragon dead-center. Following a brief, agonizing shriek and a catastrophic kinetic explosion, the scorched creature plummeted out of the sky, crashing heavily onto the volcanic bedrock below, its vitals completely unreadable.
Witnessing the fire dragon be systematically decommissioned in a singular exchange, Surtur's heart skipped a beat. When Fenye casually redirected his gaze back toward his position, the Lord of Muspelheim involuntarily executed a subtle backstep, his martial instinct screaming at him to retreat.
"I yield!"
Recalling that Fenye had framed this entire excursion as a mere spar, and factoring in how the second encounter had concluded, Surtur executed a flash of pragmatic judgment, blurting out his concession so rapidly that it left Fenye completely stunned in mid-air.
"I yield!"
Fearing the boy hadn't registered the verbal queue, Surtur reiterated his statement at a higher volume. Although he held the titles of Sovereign of Muspelheim, Herald of Ragnarok, and the ultimate Fire Giant, he was currently operating at his absolute nadir. Offering a swift concession under these parameters carried zero structural shame.
Comforting his bruised ego with that logic, Surtur prepared to chart an immediate evacuation vector. A two-on-one workflow had failed to secure the intruder; attempting a one-on-two engagement against a pristine dragon was a statistical impossibility.
"..."
Fenye stared down at Surtur with a complex expression blending immense surprise and profound awkwardness. He was thoroughly speechless; he had never envisioned that the harbinger of Asgard's doom would fold so thoroughly, going so far as to repeat the concession twice.
With the opponent technically surrendering, proceeding to beat him into submission felt remarkably ungentlemanly.
Glancing at his system interface to confirm that the premium experience points had already been successfully credited upon the verbal concession, Fenye let out a quiet sigh. Landing smoothly onto the broad spine of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon, he looked down at the giant, who was actively scanning the perimeter for an escape route, and said:
"Very well. Thank you for the session today. I'll be back again. See you next time!"
Finishing his statement, Fenye guided the Blue-Eyes White Dragon into a swift ascent, departing the battlefield instantly and leaving Surtur standing entirely alone amidst the smoldering ruins, his face a mask of absolute bewilderment.
"What on earth does he actually want?"
Mulling over the parting words Fenye had left behind, Surtur found himself completely lost in a labyrinth of confusion. He spent a considerable amount of time analyzing the boy's behavior, but no logical conclusion materialized.
After all, even if he were to rack his ancient brain for a millennium, he could never fathom that Fenye possessed a cosmic system interface that rewarded him with experience points and high-tier ability draws every single time he systematically defeated a powerful foe.
(End of Chapter)