Dust erupted violently around him.
Blood trickled from his lips, a bitter trail marking the fall.
He slammed into the ground, chest rattling with the impact.
Silence stretched across the arena, broken only by his ragged, uneven breathing.
Jurgen's chest heaved as he forced himself upright. Eyes narrowed, scanning.
Blackwood loomed above him, relentless, merciless.
And Jiro… still nowhere to be seen.
Jurgen gripped his chest, gasping for air as he struggled to rise. His gaze flicked between blurred shapes, searching desperately.
"What's the matter? Giving up?" Blackwood taunted, voice low and sharp, slicing through the tension.
Jurgen's eyes darted frantically, scanning for Jiro.
A stillness settled over the arena, thick and suffocating.
Then he appeared.
No step, no sound. Only the faint glimmer of red eyes peering from behind Bubbles.
Already moving. Already striking.
The rest of his body seemed to dissolve into shadow, swallowed by darkness itself, as if the void had taken shape.
Every breath froze. Every gaze locked on those burning eyes.
A presence that didn't belong—but was here, undeniable.
The air thickened, oppressive and heavy, threatening to crush the chest with its weight.
"Hey! Fatty! Behind you! Move!" Jurgen shouted, flailing toward Bubbles, desperate to protect him.
But before Bubbles could react—
"I'm your opponent… aren't I?"
Blackwood appeared.
No warning. No sound. Nothing.
Just him. His fist raised high, half his face swallowed by shadow, the crimson gleam of his eyes cutting through the darkness like a blade.
Jurgen's heart thudded, each beat loud in his ears. Instinct screamed: dodge. Counter. Survive.
He tilted his neck just enough. The strike grazed past his ear with a violent CRACK!, splintering the concrete behind him.
Without hesitation, he twisted midair, planting a hand firmly on the ground. Momentum carried him backward, landing in a crouch, eyes locked on Blackwood.
"Heh… give me a break, will ya!" Jurgen muttered, voice low but laced with defiance, readying himself for the next onslaught. Blood trickling down his temple from where the attack grazed pass.
Jurgen's gaze slipped past Blackwood, restless and searching, as though the man before him had already ceased to matter. Far behind, obscured by the shifting tension of the moment, he strained to locate Bubbles.
A sharp voice cut through the air, edged with irritation.
"You seem to underestimate me. Do you even realize the situation you're in?"
The warning fell into silence.
"That fatso… survived that punch?" The words came low, almost absentminded, as though spoken to himself rather than in response.
Something in Blackwood snapped.
The veins along his temples rose starkly beneath the skin, pulsing with a barely restrained fury. His jaw tightened, breath growing heavier, each exhale carrying the weight of mounting rage.
High above the arena, the two emperors observed in measured silence.
Nemesio's attention remained unwavering, his gaze anchored to Jurgen as though dissecting each motion before it fully formed. Nothing escaped him, not the slightest shift in stance, nor the subtle tension coiled beneath restraint.
Beside him, Leonidas' focus strayed.
It settled upon the trembling figure below.
There was something about the boy, something indistinct, yet insistent. Not quite visible, not yet defined… but present all the same. An intuition pressed at the edges of perception, difficult to name, impossible to ignore.
"Nemey… am I mistaken? That one, over there…" The words carried a rare trace of uncertainty.
A quiet hum of acknowledgment followed.
Nemesio did not look away.
What will you do, Jurgen?
Below, the clash unfolded with growing imbalance.
Jiro's composure fractured with each passing second. Every strike he delivered cut through empty space, never quite reaching its mark. It was as though the very air surrounding Bubbles had thickened, an unseen barrier that absorbed intent and denied contact.
Bubbles stood at the center of it, trembling.
Fear gripped him completely, locking his muscles in place, his breath shallow and uneven. Yet beneath that fear, something else stirred, something older, quieter, and far more dangerous.
He could feel it.
Not as control, nor as understanding… but as a presence.
A pulse beneath the skin. A whisper threading through his veins.
It answered only to danger.
Each time harm drew near, it awakened—instinctive, protective, beyond conscious command. And now, as Jiro surged forward once more, that hidden force rippled to life again, subtle yet undeniable.
"Dammit! What are you using?" Frustration sharpened every movement as he pressed forward without restraint.
Above, Leonidas' expression hardened, certainty replacing doubt.
"Nemesio… that one has awakened a Primal Seed."
At last, Nemesio's gaze shifted.
It fell upon the boy, and for the briefest moment, something like intrigue flickered beneath his composure.
"Amazing… truly remarkable." A faint smile touched his lips. "This year's stars have no intention of easing into their roles."
BOOM!
The detonation rolled across the arena in violent succession, each explosion folding into the next until the very air seemed to fracture under the strain.
Above, Nemesio's attention snapped back to Jurgen without hesitation.
Below, chaos reigned.
The concrete arena roared beneath the onslaught as Blackwood tore through it with unrestrained ferocity. Each strike carved into the ground with brutal force, leaving fractures and craters in its wake. There was no rhythm, no restraint—only raw, destructive intent.
Jurgen yielded ground again and again, his movements sharp but increasingly strained, each retreat measured in inches as he narrowly evaded the relentless barrage.
"Tch… so you lost your head completely?" The taunt slipped out, edged with tension he could no longer fully conceal.
The assault ceased.
Blackwood stilled.
Slowly, his head lifted, a heavy breath spilling from parted lips as though dragged from deep within. His frame wavered for a moment before steadying, though the stillness that followed felt far more dangerous than the chaos before it.
His chest rose and fell in uneven rhythm.
Then,
Something shifted.
His hair lifted, no longer resting but rising, stirred by an unseen force, lashing around his face like strands caught in a gathering storm. The air itself seemed to recoil as a violent presence erupted outward.
It was not merely energy.
It was pressure.
A beast-like aura surged from him in unstable waves, thick and suffocating, distorting the space around his body. His Reira flared with an intensity that bordered on excess, each pulse radiating outward like a shockwave, cracking through the already shattered arena floor.
The ground trembled in response, unable to withstand the sheer weight of it.
This was no longer restraint.
Blackwood had crossed into something else entirely.
A half-formed transformation, incomplete yet overwhelming, where raw power bled freely from every motion, every breath threatening to collapse everything within reach.