The void was an absolute and crushing weight of nothingness that pressed against my skin as we stabilized our positions. The dimensions we had fought in were gone, reduced to a memory of shattered glass and dissolved laws, leaving only the infinite darkness of the far reaches. I drifted in the center of the silent vacuum, the cold and perfect ocean of my fifty percent power surging through my limbs with a rhythmic, pulsing heat. There was no air to carry the sound of my breath, no floor to anchor my weight, and no light except for the distant, jagged cracks I had torn into the fabric of the multiverse. I focused on the silhouette of the God Breaker, my senses expanding into the dark to track the fluctuations of his mana. The stalemate remained a physical presence between us, a heavy tension that defined the very nature of this empty universe.
As we were back on the void, Sagha suddenly disappeared. He did not move with a dash or a blur; he simply ceased to exist in the coordinates he had occupied. My perception, honed by the intensity of our clash, searched for the ripple of a spatial shift or the surge of a movement technique, but the space where he had stood was instantly and perfectly empty. The void felt even more hollow in that microsecond of his absence. Before I could process the shift, the reality behind me buckled. I felt the displacement of the dark energy, a cold pressure that erupted from the nothingness at my back.
Sagha kicked me from behind. The strike was a sudden, violent eruption of kinetic force that connected squarely with the center of my spine. It felt like the concentrated mass of a collapsing world had been hammered into a single point of pressure. The impact vibrated through my bones, shaking my internal organs and rattling my conceptual core. The energy of his strike bypassed my passive defense, the force ignoring the vacuum to launch me forward. I had no time to brace, no time to anchor myself against the void.
I flew. My body became a streak of iridescent velocity, cutting a path through the absolute blackness. The sensation of displacement was jarring, the distance we had already traveled feeling like it was being covered again in a single second of forced momentum. I spun through the dark, the 100 trillion universes around us becoming a blur of deep indigo and distant white light. The force of the kick continued to carry me, a brutal reminder of the parity we shared at this level of power. I could feel the microscopic fractures in my structure attempting to knit themselves back together even as I was hurtled through the vacuum.
As I flew, I regained my focus. I did not fight the spinning motion; I incorporated it into my next move. I twisted my torso mid-flight, my eyes locking onto the distant point where Sagha had reappeared to watch my descent. I raised my hands, my palms glowing with a deep, crushing gravity. I blasted him with a barrage of black hole beams. From my fingers, dozens of needle-thin streaks of absolute negation erupted, carving jagged trails through the void. These were not mere lasers; they were concentrated singularities that bent the stray light of the universe into warped, circular halos as they passed. The beams screamed through the silence, their event horizons eating the vacuum and distorting the space between us. I fired them in a wide, intersecting pattern, creating a net of gravitational pressure that converged on his position.
Suddenly he stopped to block them. Sagha halted his pursuit, planting his feet on the invisible fabric of the dark. He raised his arms, crossing them in front of his chest as his own indigo-black aura flared into a dense, protective shield. The first of the black hole beams struck his guard, and the void itself seemed to groan. The collision created a series of micro-implosions, silent detonations of light and shadow that sent ripples of gravitational static outward for light-years. Sagha remained stationary, his focus entirely consumed by the task of holding back the crushing weight of the singularities. The beams ground against his forearms, their gravitational hunger fighting the density of his aura in a struggle of pure output. He was anchored to the spot, forced to endure the bombardment while the space around him warped and cracked under the strain.
I saw the opening I had created. I ignited my aura in a violent burst, canceling my flight momentum and reversing it into a forward charge. I dashed forward, becoming a spear of golden-grey energy that crossed the gap in a timeframe that made light seem stationary. The distance vanished instantly. I was a ghost of velocity, arriving in his personal space before the final pulses of my black hole beams had even faded from his guard.
I moved to punch him in his stomach as he was distracted. Sagha's arms were still elevated, his focus divided between the lingering pressure of my barrage and the sudden proximity of my dash. He saw the movement, but the momentum of the gravity beams held him in a state of defensive stagnation for that crucial microsecond. I dropped my center of gravity, slipping beneath his raised elbows with the fluidity of a predatory animal. I drove my fist forward with the full weight of my fifty percent momentum, aiming for the center of his midsection.
The impact was a clean, visceral thud that resonated through the void. My knuckles buried themselves into his torso, the energy of the strike exploding outward from the point of contact. I felt the displacement of his essence, the physical and conceptual resistance of his body meeting the absolute force of my punch. A circular shockwave of golden-grey light erupted from his back, rippling across the dark universe and illuminating the distant fissures with a sudden, violent brilliance.
He took the hit. Sagha's body folded around my fist, his torso buckling under the pressure of the strike. I could see the strain in his posture, the impact forcing a silent, metallic gasp of mana from his form. For a heartbeat, we were frozen in the nothingness—my arm extended, his body bent, and the shockwave of the punch expanding into the infinite dark. He did not fly back; the density of his own power and the residue of the gravitational beams held him in place even as his internal structure was pulverized by the force of my knuckles.
He regenerated. The trauma did not linger for more than a fraction of a second. I watched as the dark, viscous essence of his being surged back to the point of impact, reweaving the crushed muscle and shattered mana-paths in a flash of indigo static. The wound simply ceased to exist, overwritten by his resolve and the monstrous efficiency of his power. He stood upright, his presence reset to its peak, and his eyes locked onto mine with a cold and focused intensity that matched my own.
We both exchanged hits. The distance between us was deleted as we entered a phone-booth brawl in the heart of the absolute vacuum. There were no more long-range blasts or spatial tricks; there was only the raw, mechanical application of violence at fifty percent output. I threw a lead hook that caught him on the jaw, the impact vibrating through my own shoulder. He did not flinch; he countered with a straight right that grazed my cheek, the friction of his aura tearing a glowing line across my skin. I slipped his next jab, my head moving inches to the side as his fist whistled past, and I drove a heavy elbow into his ribs.
The sound of our combat was a series of dull, heavy thuds that resonated through our bones. We moved in a blur of synchronized motion, two engines of destruction operating at the same frequency. For every punch I landed, Sagha found the opening for a counter-strike. I threw a flurry of short, choppy hooks into his core, my fists moving like pistons of golden-grey light. He blocked three, absorbed two, and used the opening to drive a knee into my chest. The force sent me upward, but I grabbed his shoulders, pulling myself back down and delivering a headbutt that cracked against his forehead with a flash of white sparks.
We moved through the vacuum as if we were anchored to the center of existence, our struggle carving a path through the darkness. The void was our canvas, and we were painting it with the gold and indigo of our clashing wills. I felt the heat of my power screaming through my veins, my mana working overtime to repair the micro-fractures in my structure and the tears in my aura. Sagha was in the same state. His dark shroud was frayed, his breath was a heavy hiss, and the indigo light of his regeneration was a constant, flickering presence as he healed from the barrage I was inflicting.
We were locked in a stalemate that had no end. I threw an uppercut that caught his chin, snapping his head back and sending a spray of dark mana into the dark. He did not slow down. He used the momentum of the snap to spin into a back-kick that caught me in the ribs, the force sending me skidding through the void for a hundred yards. I stopped my slide by digging my heels into the vacuum and launched myself back at him before he could follow up. We met again, our auras clashing with the sound of grinding metal. I unleashed a series of rapid-fire jabs, a machine-gun rhythm of impacts that landed on his shoulders and guard. Sagha drifted with the punches, absorbing the momentum and waiting for the split-second gap in my rhythm. When it came, he exploded forward, a straight right hand carrying the concentrated mass of his entire essence. I moved my head at the last possible microsecond, the fist grazing my ear and sending a shockwave through the side of my face.
I countered with a shovel hook to his liver, a strike meant to shut down his physical form. He gritted his teeth, the impact echoing through the void, and grabbed my arm. He pulled me into a clinch, his knee meeting my stomach in a repetitive, punishing cadence. I responded by digging my thumbs into the pressure points of his shoulders and driving my own knees into his thighs. We were two mirrors of destruction, reflecting the same power back and forth in a cycle that defied the concept of exhaustion. Every strike was delivered with the weight of the universe behind it. Every hit was a cataclysm. We moved through the darkness as if we were the only things that existed, our fists the only clock that remained in a world without time.
The exchange continued with a brutal, mathematical precision. I threw a cross that he parried, and he immediately transitioned into a high kick that I caught on my forearm. The impact sent a jolt of electricity through my nerves, but I pushed through it, using my free hand to drive a palm strike into his chest. He absorbed the pressure and countered with a spinning elbow that caught me in the temple. I felt the void tilt for a second, my vision swimming, but my regeneration surged to meet the trauma, clearing my head in the time it took to draw a single breath. Sagha was already there, his next strike descending with the weight of an anvil. I raised my guard, the collision of our power creating a shockwave that flattened the stray energy around us.
We were perfectly matched. For every tactical shift I made, he had an answer. For every increase in my intensity, he rose to meet it. We were fighting in a state of absolute parity, where the concept of winning or losing had been replaced by the reality of the struggle itself. My knuckles hit his guard; his elbow hit my shoulder. I slipped; he countered. I struck; he took it. The rhythm was a symphony of violence, a continuous loop of impact and recovery that showed no signs of breaking. The 100 trillion universes were silent witnesses to the roar of our combat, the distant fissures glowing with the reflected light of our fifty percent output.
I felt the familiar, cold heat of my mana circulating through my core, a constant and unyielding fire that fueled every movement. I stepped into Sagha's space again, our auras grinding against each other with the sound of a thousand storms. I unleashed a combination of hooks and uppercuts, my hands a blur of golden-grey energy. Sagha met me head-on, his own fists weaving through my guard to land heavy, punishing blows on my ribs and shoulders. We were standing toe-to-toe in the center of the nothingness, refusing to give an inch, refusing to acknowledge the possibility of defeat.
The void around us was a graveyard of our energy, filled with the sparks of our clashing clashing wills and the residue of our broken techniques. I landed a heavy right hand to his ribs, hearing the dull crack of mana-reinforced bone. Sagha did not make a sound. He simply stepped forward into the strike, his own fist connecting with my jaw with a force that sent a jolt of electricity down my spine. We both fell back for a fraction of a second, drifting apart in the cold dark, only to launch ourselves back at each other with renewed ferocity. Our eyes remained locked, two points of light in the infinite dark, reflecting the same resolve and the same monstrous competence.
The regeneration finished its work on both of us simultaneously as we drifted. My vision cleared, the dull ache in my head subsiding as my mana re-stabilized my conceptual core. Across from me, Sagha's chest stopped heaving as his own power repaired the damage I had done to his lungs and ribs. We were whole again. We were reset. We were ready for the next microsecond of the exchange. I raised my hands back into a high guard, the golden-grey aura flaring into a sharp, jagged crown of energy. Sagha lowered his center, his hands shifting into a fluid, defensive stance that signaled he was prepared for whatever I would do next. The stalemate was total, the progress was zero, and the violence was the only truth left in the universe. We stood in the heart of the void, exactly where we were meant to be, and prepared to strike again. The silence returned for a heartbeat, a heavy and suffocating weight that was instantly shattered by the sound of our next collision as we continued to exchange hits in the infinite dark.