What unfolded next was a feast to every battle enthusiast.
Varian was surrounded by nine divine rankers: four space, three gravity and two time.
While they decided to attack together, they couldn't do it seamlessly. Nor could they combine their powers into one. Still, their co-ordination allowed them to form an offense that would even trouble the top three contenders for the throne.
Varian, who overwhelmed his opponents until now, couldn't do it anymore.
Instead of being on the offensive, he had to go into a defense.
Creating a sub-space was the wisest choice of every space awakener on the scene and he did the same.
By separating the space around him into sub-space different from the outside, he was able to resist the time erosion, allowing him to decrease the distortion of the time flow.
The gravity changes which would've exploded his body into pieces were also resisted strongly by being in a separate space that rejected external gravity.
While the sub-space already struggled to resist these two waves of attacks, it nearly shattered as space attacks struck it violently.
With every wave of space attacks, the sub-space nearly collapsed before it was propped up by Varian in haste.
This happened again and again and again. The audience who were significantly weaker only thought he was faring poorly against nine opponents.
But the opponents themselves didn't think so. He had an abundance of aura, a very precise control over his power and most of all, a very battle oriented mindset that continuously adapted to the situation.
Yet, it's precisely for these reasons that they, particularly the space awakeners doubted what they were feeling. 'It's weird. His sub-space is only as good as a high, no, a mid rank 1.'
'Is he toying with us? Exposing his weakness to lure a trap?'
'The sub-space almost collapsed so many times. I thought we got him and yet, it comes back up, covering up the flaw he just exposed. Then, we poke the next flaw and it disappears. What the hell is he trying to do? Provoke us even in this situation? Is he really that strong?'
The three space awakeners wildly hypothesized Varian's actions.
What they couldn't have imagined was that Varian didn't deliberately show flaws. He did his best and his best sub-space was still very flawed in front of a peak rank 1.
The flaws disappearing were not him stopping to pretend, it's simply him learning and growing stronger.
Of course, they didn't think this. First, there's no way a mid rank 1 could exert the strength of a peak rank 1. Path Fusion was something so absurd that they would never even think in that direction.
Second, even if they were somehow convinced Varian's rank was forcibly raised by Eshala's mysterious methods, they would never believe someone could improve so quickly.
The pace of progress was just insane. What they had to take decades and sometimes centuries was being done here in seconds!
This was a breathtaking pace, a pace that far surpassed anything that even geniuses could aspire for. It's something so beyond possibility that none of the three even entertained a thought that perhaps this mysterious blade was growing real time by learning from their attacks.
Five minutes after the match started, the shaky sub-space that collapsed every other moment reached a scary degree of stability.
No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't bring it to the brink of collapse like they did just a few minutes ago.
It didn't matter that they tried new tricks individually and as a team.
The sub-space was just getting better and better. 'Status'
[Dragon: 51/100
Titan: 51/100 Phoenix: 51/100 Order: 51/100 Chaos: 51/100 Space: 40/100 (+13)
Time: 40/100 (+13)]
The improvement had been tremendous! But the growth wasn't just due to the battle which really helped him study peak divine rankers. A significant factor was the sliver shards that he began to tap into.
It's somewhat like beginner's gains where an untrained person would experience a quick burst of growth upon training in a gym. Varian who never used the sliver shards went through a similar process and his paths went through a growth spurt.
It was incredible, bringing his space-time paths much closer to the rest. But that miraculous growth vanished soon after, leaving him back in the state where he had to fight hard for any significant growth.
Varian didn't mind. Normal state was a misnomer in a lot of ways. It's through that normal state that he achieved his ridiculous progress.
"What is happening?" "Break it!"
"My time flow is also not working against him well! Is he revealing his true strength only now?"
The nine warriors were confused, scared and reluctant. Gritting their teeth, they kept pouring their power hoping to make him fall one way or another.
They had nothing to gain with victory and everything to lose due to defeat.
So, they fought and fought, creating more and more complex mechanisms for an integrated attack.
In doing so, they forced Varian to remain in the defense.
But they eventually ran out of new ideas and their divine aura reserves began to be strained.
And that's when he struck.
Varian's sub-space expanded without warning and with incredible momentum.
Instead of taking on them all at once, the spherical domain consumed the nearest gravity rankers into it. "No!" "Blackholes, create a blackhole defe—mff!"
Isolated from the rest, the gravity awakeners stood no chance and were knocked out cold. Then the sub-space expanded. Slowly, this time. But as it inched closer and closer, the space and time awakeners worked desperately to resist.
Like ants pushing against an elephant, they felt helpless as it encroached their boundaries.
As a last resort, they decided to jump in together.
When they did, Varian was outside the sub-space. And they were right in.
"How foolish!"
The faces of the six paled as they realized what had just transpired.
Varian snapped his fingers and the formations he carefully prepared so far activated simultaneously, giving them no chance to resist.
When the audience could notice the situation clearly, all nine members had fallen.
[Shards: 209]
Varian turned his gaze to the other arena. His brows knit into a frown.
Out of the twenty-two he left them with, only four members were present.
Before he could propose anything to get a chance with those eliminated princes, Samael Astreas voice rang loud.
"Let the final duels begin."