Inside the shifting, stygian expanse of Arix Calder's midnight smoke, the battlefield was a realm of pure sensory distortion. Phantom silhouettes flickered through the dark, mimicking the sounds of heavy boots scraping against steel.
Yet, Zoom moved through the fog with terrifying precision.
Zarek Mayron stood completely still, his posture relaxed but his mind hyper-focused. His unique Evolith—the absolute prediction field—was active. But it carried a fatal restriction that only he and Arix knew: basically when his evoliths is activated,it creates a circle within 10metre radius and he can predict any attack within the 10metre radius but if he moves outside 5 metre radius inside the 10metre radius he's evoliths will be disabled and can't be activated for another 2 minutes.
*BOOM!*
The air fractured as Zoom initiated a blind-spot blitz. He materialized directly behind Zarek, unleashing a savage, left-handed ridge hand strike aimed at the Captain's cervical spine.
Zarek saw the trajectory line flashing in his mind's eye a fraction of a second before impact. Without shifting his feet or leaving his anchor, Zarek tilted his upper body forward at a precise forty-five-degree angle. The strike grazed the back of his collar, the sheer wind pressure tearing the fabric.
"Missed," Zarek muttered.
Using Zoom's forward momentum against him, Zarek drove his elbow backward, targeting the fracture he had previously created in the Elite's chest plating. Zoom, however, possessed an unsettling trait. Neither Zarek nor Arix knew that Zoom's Evolith was a chronological power boost. Every five minutes that passed in active combat, Zoom's physical ability—speed, agility, and strength —doubled exponentially. The massive drawback ; after exactly 45 minutes, he would lose all his combat abilities entirely.
Right at that moment, the first five-minute threshold crossed.
Zoom's kinetic gauntlets flared with a blinding purple current. His reaction speed spiked violently. He twisted his torso mid-air, intercepting Zarek's backward elbow strike with both palms, absorbing the impact with an audible *CRACK* that shook the smoke grid.
"I am adapting, Captain!" Zoom laughed, his voice vibrating with newfound speed.
Before Zarek could reset his stance, Zoom executed a flurry of twenty consecutive jabs in the span of a single heartbeat.
Zarek's prediction matrix painted twenty red trajectory lines in his mind, but his physical muscles were reaching their absolute capacity to match Zoom's accelerated state. Zarek deflected six jabs with the flat of his gauntlets, parried four with his forearms, and leaned back to avoid ten more, but the concussive air pressure from the deflected strikes began to bruise his skin through his armor.
"Cap! He's accelerating!" Arix shouted from the perimeter.
Arix immediately slammed his hands together, forcing the smoke to thicken around Zoom's visor. He projected a massive, false illusion of Zarek driving a plasma blade straight through Zoom's throat from the right flank.
Zoom reacted instantly to the phantom, spinning to deliver a devastating spinning heel kick to the right. But the kick struck nothing but empty mist.
"An illusion!" Zoom snarled, realizing the deceit.
"Not all of it," Zarek's voice echoed right beside him.
Taking advantage of Zoom's temporary misdirection, Zarek stepped strictly within his five-meter limit, locking his heels onto the deck plates. He ducked under Zoom's extended leg and delivered a brutal, double-palm strike directly into the Elite's exposed ribs. The shockwave exploded outward, sending Zoom skipping backward across the floorboards like a stone over water.
Zoom slid exactly six meters away, coughing up a spray of blood. He looked back at Zarek, his eyes narrowing as he analyzed the exchange. "You haven't moved more than a few paces since this fight began, Captain. You're guarding that specific spot. Why , perhaps?"
Zarek kept his expression entirely blank, keeping his feet planted firmly within his invisible boundary. "Come find out."
Meanwhile
Tyson stood completely relaxed. His arms hung loosely at his sides,
. Facing him were three of Malkor's high-ranking Elites, their weapons drawn, their heavy, oppressive energies causing the loose gravel around them to vibrate.
"Arrogant human," the first Elite sneered,
. "To face three Elites without even drawing a weapon is a death sentence."
"Less talking, more swinging," Tyson said, offering a lazy, mocking wave of his fingers. "I'm getting bored just looking at your ugly faces."
With a collective roar of fury, the three Elites moved simultaneously. The first lunged forward, executing a horizontal sweep with his halberd meant to bisect Tyson at the waist. The second Elite leaped high into the air, bringing down a massive, gravity-enhanced warhammer straight toward Tyson's skull. The third moved into the blind spot, driving a rapid thrust with a twin-pronged plasma spear aimed at his shoulder.
Elias watched from the ridge, his breath catching in his throat. He opened his mouth to shout a warning, but Zane simply extended an arm, blocking Elias from moving. "Don't blink, Elias," Zane repeated, his voice colder than ice.
As the halberd swept toward his waist, Tyson didn't jump or back away. He waited until the blade was an inch from his uniform, then subtly shifted his hips back exactly two centimeters. The plasma edge shaved the outer dust off his belt but made zero contact with his body.
Simultaneously, the massive warhammer descended from above. Tyson casually tilted his head to the left, allowing the massive head of the hammer to crash into the dirt right next to his ear. The impact shattered the rock, sending debris flying, but Tyson's face remained entirely unblemished.
Before the third Elite's plasma spear could pierce his shoulder, Tyson caught the shaft of the warhammer that had just missed him. Using the hammer's handle as a pivot point, he swung his entire body around like a gymnast on a high bar, executing a fluid, horizontal kick that struck the third Elite squarely in the temple.
*CRACK!*
The Elite's helmet shattered under the raw physical leverage of the kick, sending him flying across the valley where he crashed into the stone walls, completely unconscious.
Tyson landed lightly back on his feet, his hands still in his pockets. The remaining two Elites gasped in sheer disbelief, scrambling backward to reset their stances.
"Monster..." the halberd-wielder stammered, his arms trembling. "... how did he move like that?"
"My turn," Tyson smiled.
He closed the distance in a fraction of a second—not through teleportation or speed-enhancement, but through flawless footwork that exploited the Elites' blind spots. He appeared directly between them. With two swift, precise strikes using the palms of his hands, he struck their primary nerve clusters located beneath their collarbones.
The two Elites instantly dropped their weapons, their limbs going completely paralyzed as their neural networks short-circuited. They collapsed into the dirt, groaning in agony, completely neutralized.
Elias blinked, his jaw dropping as he looked at the three defeated commanders. "Really... the fight didn't even last long," Elias said, turning to look at his older brother in absolute disbelief.
"Yeah, you're right, it ended so quickly," Zane replied, his arms still crossed, his expression entirely unsurprised by the display of absolute martial supremacy.
The brief moment of triumph was violently shattered.
The sky above the valley turned an ominous, bruised shade of purple as the cloud cover tore open. A massive, crushing gravitational pressure suddenly descended upon the crater, forcing Elias to drop to his knees as the breath was sucked completely from his lungs. Even Zane had to shift his stance.
*BOOM!*
The earth fractured violently as four figures materialized in the center of the clearing, dropping from the upper atmosphere like meteors.
In the center stood Malkor himself,But he wasn't alone. Flanking him were his three primary Generals—the elite generals known throughout the galaxy as the **Children of Malkor**. Their power scaling was completely entirely separate from the standard Elites; their very presence caused the air around them to feel heavy.
Tyson's lazy demeanor instantly vanished. A massive, brilliant **golden aura** exploded from his body, expanding outward in a perfect sphere that pushed back against Malkor's crushing gravitational pressure, his eyes sparkled with an absolute, manic excitement.
"Ok, Zane," Tyson said, a massive, unyielding smile spreading across his face as his golden aura flared brighter. "I'm taking all of them. No one should interfere. This is exactly the kind of workout I've been waiting for!"
Zane's blue energy began to spike in response, his cold eyes locking onto the center General. "No, you can't"
Elias looked between his two older brothers, completely flabbergasted by the conversation happening right in front of the ultimate tyrant of the universe. *"Seriously, they're arguing at a time like this?!"* Elias said in his mind, his hands gripping his knees as he fought to stand up under the residual pressure.
Tyson shrugged, his golden aura fluctuating playfully. "Come on, Zane, don't be a spoilsport. Tell you what, let's play rock, paper, scissors for it. Winner gets all three Generals, loser stay still and watch".
Zane's jaw tightened, his expression growing incredibly dark. "That's childish. We are in the middle of a terminal war zone."
"Fine, fine, you're no fun," Tyson laughed, reaching into his tactical vest pocket and pulling out a slightly crumpled, standard deck of playing cards. He began to shuffle them with one hand using his golden aura to hold the cards in mid-air. "Ok, let's play cards. High card gets the center General. Deal?"
*"The heck?! Now they're playing cards?!"* Elias thought to himself, his mind completely reeling as he watched Tyson casually flip a card onto a flat rock while the three most dangerous Generals in the galaxy stood fifty feet away.
Across the clearing, the three Children of Malkor stopped their advance. Their faces were twisted in absolute, furious disbelief. They were revered as gods of destruction across hundreds of star systems, yet these two human brothers were treating their arrival like a casual night at a local tavern.
*"These guys look really pissed right now,"* Elias thought, looking at the Generals' veins bulging against their visors as their dark energy began to boil over in sheer, unadulterated rage.
The cards fell onto the stone as the suprem
e commanders of the enemy army prepared to unleash hell.