While Rey and Lucia were locked in a brutal fight against Luhas's physical body out on the arena sand, Lynx remained trapped deep inside his mind, stuck with the persona of Luhas.
They stood on a compressed, pitch-black field of floating stone. Shattered ancient pillars and floating monoliths hovered suspended in the endless dark, locked in frozen time. Far above them in the empty void, swirling black clouds condensed into the shape of two massive, glowing eyes staring down at the endless darkness.
"Why would I regret telling you? This is my domain," Luhas spoke, his voice layered and hollow. "To the outside world, less than a single tick of a clock will pass. But in here, your mind will experience ten thousand deaths before your body can even blink."
Luhas raised his hand, his eyes flashing with absolute dominance.
"Most fighters attempt to adapt," Luhas continued, stepping forward across the floating stones at impossible speed. "They look for a pattern, for the perfect moment to counter, so try if you can. In a realm where time is compressed to infinity, there is no pattern. You will shatter, just like the rest!"
Luhas swung a high-speed punch straight toward Lynx's face. Lynx stayed completely still.
CRACK!
Lynx reacted instantly, catching Luhas's fist with his bare grip. The raw force smashed into Lynx's hand, a violent crack echoing through the dark space as the metacarpophalangeal joint of his thumb fractured completely. Pain shot up his arm, but his expression never shifted.
"There is no perfect moment."
Lynx instantly drove a heavy uppercut straight into Luhas's jaw, the impact snapping Luhas's head back. Without giving him a second to recover, Lynx followed through with a hard kick to his stomach, forcing Luhas to leap backward.
Luhas wiped his chin, a sinister smile creeping across his face. "Or is it that you fear death?"
"Coming out of the one who needs to be healed every time," Lynx let out a small laugh, his voice steady.
{The possibilities of me winning against him like this is low. I need to think of something...} Lynx thought, as blood dripped from his thumb.
Luhas's body blurred. Suddenly, the pitch-black void filled with dozens of exact copies. Luhas multiplied into countless clones, lining every floating stone pillar in the realm.
"In this mind realm, I can possess any power I will!" all the clones spoke together, their voices overlapping.
The swarm of clones lunged at once.
Hit after hit slammed into Lynx from every angle. Heavy punches, crushing kicks, and raw energy blasts rained down on him.
Lynx raised his arms to guard, but he couldn't block all of them. In such an unfair, twisted condition, his physical defenses meant nothing.
Flesh tore, his skin was peeling off under the constant assault, and burning agony ripped through every nerve in his mind.
"It's okay to give up," all of the clones said at once, mocking him. "Your existence is meaningless."
Lynx stopped fighting back. His arms dropped to his sides, letting the attacks rain down until he stood bleeding on the floating stone.
"Maybe you're right," Lynx muttered quietly. "My existence is meaningless..."
The clones backed away, circling him on the surrounding rocks, chuckling. "The leader finally understands."
Lynx lifted his bloodied face, staring straight through the clones into the darkness. "Meaningless, just like anyone's existence. We give it meaning. A worldview is an illusion created by people blindly following others' footsteps."
Lynx raised one of his hands back into a combat guard, his bloodshot eyes burning with an unyielding glare. "The true view is always hidden within risk. I don't follow those who live blindly in delusions while walking in the footsteps of others."
The real Luhas stepped out from the clone group, his smirk vanishing. "Quite the speech you gave... I'm impressed but you won't win—"
Lynx cut Luhas off before he could even finish the sentence.
"Winning isn't everything, it's about what it gives you. Sometimes two losses are greater than hundreds of wins," Lynx continued, a sharp smirk breaking through his bloodied lips. "I defeated that skill stealer guy, guessing that's someone you know?"
Luhas's eyes widened in sudden shock. Then, in a fraction of a second, his expression narrowed into pure, uncontrollable rage.
He crossed the gap instantly, appearing right in front of Lynx. Luhas buried a brutal punch deep into Lynx's chest, the impact so severe it appeared as his muscles could break instantly. Lynx gasped out air, his lungs collapsing as he fell hard onto his knees.
Luhas grabbed Lynx by the hair, violently pulling his head back so their eyes locked.
"What did you do to him?" Luhas roared, his breath hot against Lynx's face. "I SAID WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?!"
Lynx let out a breathless, mocking laugh. Seeing him smile, Luhas was momentarily speechless.
"I sAid I dEfeAteD hiM! maYbe he coUldn't hAndLe A LOSS!—"
Before Lynx could finish teasing him, Luhas snapped completely. He began to punch Lynx on the face repeatedly. Heavy, ruthless strikes rained down like hammer blows. Blood splattered across the floating stone, and Lynx's vision went dark as his own blood blinded him.
Lynx's body gave up, collapsing into a limp heap, yet Luhas didn't stop pounding him into the ground.
"Your team wouldn't be able to defeat my original self," Luhas growled, panting heavily as he towered over Lynx. "And you will never escape this place once the real Luhas hears about this!"
Weakly, Lynx's blood-soaked hand reached up and gripped tightly onto Luhas's hood.
"Ah... I'm not relying on them... they are relying on me," Lynx muttered. {So... it's his persona...}
With the last bit of strength in his shoulder, Lynx threw a punch straight into Luhas's jaw. The punch was weak, barely shaking Luhas's head.
Luhas shoved him off in disgust. As Lynx collapsed flat onto his back on the cold stone, Luhas let out a dark, booming laugh.
Luhas summoned a glowing phantom dagger in his right palm. He crouched down over Lynx's broken form and stabbed Lynx's stomach rapidly, driving the blade in and out, yet Lynx remained quiet. Not because he didn't feel pain, but because he lived a life with no one to express anything to. All he could do was endure and accept.
"Remember this? This is what you made Sun of Team Five feel!"
Blood pooled underneath Lynx's back, soaking into the dark stone floor. Yet inside Lynx's mind, a quiet clarity took over the pain.
{From everything I've experienced up to this point, people wait for a perfect moment, opportunity, and place. But those don't exist. You create them now,} Lynx thought, a faint smile creeping back onto his face. {Whether it's adapting or countering, it should always be done in the very first instance.}
Luhas stopped stabbing, staring down at the bloody mess beneath him. "Why are you smiling, you masochist!" Luhas shouted, standing up and kicking Lynx's face violently.
From right behind Luhas, a calm voice spoke into his ear.
"I got you!"
Luhas's eyes went wide. He spun around and thrust his phantom dagger straight into the Lynx standing behind him, but as the blade pierced flesh, the figure dissolved into smoke.
Suddenly, another Lynx stepped out of the shadow. Then another. Then five more. Lynx kept multiplying across every floating stone in the dark void.
"What's happening?!" Luhas yelled, looking around in utter confusion.
Luhas turned back to the stabbed body lying on the floor. The bloody wounds on its stomach were closing instantly, the torn flesh knitting itself back together without leaving a scar.
Lynx stood up from the ground, his eyes glowing intensely in the dark space.
"Now we both can control what happens in this domain."
Lynx had completely copied Luhas's Mind Domain.
The void exploded into chaotic war.
No longer bound by physical limits, two godlike wills clashed in the dark space. Shattered pillars broke into millions of floating fragments, reassembling into endless rain of stone blades. Waves of conceptual black fire collided with blasts of compressed time energy.
Lynx created armies of himself to overwhelm Luhas's clones, while Luhas summoned massive spectral blades that sliced through the dark sky.
They fought endlessly, without taking a single break. Every second was filled with hundreds of lethal exchanges, cutting, burning, erasing, and recreating their own mental avatars over and over again.
The limits of their battle were bound only by their own imagination and their own unyielding will.
Out in the real world, less than a single tick of a clock passed. But inside the compressed mind realm, their duel stretched on for decades. Even the eye-like clouds disappeared from the sky.
Decades of continuous, uninterrupted combat wore down the space. Eventually, the sheer strain began to shatter Luhas's mental capability. The years of brutal fighting were breaking his own mind from the inside out.
Panting, his mental form cracking like glass, Luhas pointed his hand toward Lynx in absolute desperation.
"I can't take this anymore!" Luhas screamed, unleashing conceptual erasure. "I will erase you now!"
A lightless beam of absolute non-existence engulfed Lynx's entire body. Lynx's body began to shed bright, shining light, slowly turning into nothing.
Yet, as his body dissolved into the void, Lynx didn't panic. He raised his eyes, smiling menacingly as he stared straight at Luhas while turning to dust.
"Fool."