BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The clash in the arena grew fiercer by the second. When Damien was forced to stop playing defensively, the crowd absolutely fell in love with the scene they were lucky enough to witness.
Damien and the Dragon Lord were no longer stationary, nor were the bounds of their territories so easy to distinguish. Black flames littered the ground, but rising out of those flames like snakes whose only goal was to devour them was none other than Damien's metallic web.
He fragmented it and spread it further, scattering concepts throughout the arena. With this separation, the flames were no longer able to easily melt the metal. More importantly, Damien could attack the flames as well.
He focused more on the Dragon Lord's energy than the man himself, but that was when the Dragon Lord proved why he was titled as such.
In the end, he was not a man, but a dragon. He could not use the majority of his bloodline abilities without mana, but there was still one thing left inviolable.
Whether he'd been informed that Damien had a powerful dragon aura beforehand or decided to save that move for later, he didn't release his bloodline suppression.
He charged at Damien with black flames surrounding his fists and punched out.
Damien didn't try to meet the punches head-on from the beginning. He crossed his arms and blocked to test their might, allowing his body to fly back and crash into the arena wall.
'It's the same strategy.'
Instead of letting his flames do all the work, the Dragon Lord was equipping them as gauntlets and taking them to the prey. There wasn't much of a difference between that and normal fighting. If Damien wanted to do the same, he just had to grab one of the many metal spikes on the ground and use it as a sword.
But that wasn't his end goal.
'He's taking the base concept of the domain and replicating it in a mobile form. Rather than that, I want to take everything my domain has to offer and manifest it in a weaponized form.'
Say Damien used the same strategy. In that case, the most he could do was create blades of confinement or fatal strike. He couldn't create a blade to confine, attack, and detect weaknesses all at the same time. Still, watching the Dragon Lord maneuver his energy was definitely helpful.
The public sentiment wasn't entirely wrong. Though Damien wasn't weak enough to be called a real underdog, he was indeed a newcomer. He didn't have the millions of years of practical combat experience that his opponents possessed. He had been using raw power to overcome them this entire time.
This was a match with the world at stake, but it was still an extremely useful learning experience for Damien.
'I can take his punches.'
There was no need to run. Maybe the Dragon Lord could swallow the Nonexistence used in Damien's territory, but he was confident that the man couldn't touch the version of the concept that existed in his soul.
In that split second when Damien was in the wall, the Dragon Lord approached as if his plan was always to turn him into a meat pancake. He slammed his fist out again, but Damien responded only by doing the same.
The spectators went wild as a huge collision took place just below them. The entire arena wall shattered into pieces, revealing the many facilities that existed under the stands. However, Damien and the Dragon Lord weren't there anymore.
They had moved to the other side of the arena already.
Within that single explosion were two impacts. The first canceled the Dragon Lord's momentum and crushed the wall, while the second threw the Dragon Lord just as he'd thrown Damien.
Damien chased him as he flew, using his raw fists to combat the Area Lord's energy.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
He wanted to feel how those fists and that energy coalesced. As they struck against his bare skin, he directly felt the interaction between them and how they changed when they came in contact with an object. 'This is good.'
The Dragon Lord was showing him everything he shouldn't do. He didn't have to do nearly as much experimentation and hypothesizing when so many paths were closed off just because of the way the Dragon Lord used his mana.
Damien paid close attention to it. He noticed that the Dragon Lord hadn't taken any damage so far, which was a good thing, but it wasn't going to stay that way.
Regardless of skill level, this match was rigged against him. No matter what, he was going to win. If he took too long and made it seem like he couldn't complete the job, then someone else would take it into their own hands to make the Area Lord explode.
Damien needed to both do damage and keep his enemy from taking too much damage.
'It's complicated, but it's not impossible.'
All he needed was a weapon.
Damien threw a powerful punch and pushed the Dragon Lord away from him.
'Minimize and compress. That holds true. The energy will not run rampant regardless of what happens, but to contain a myriad of concepts, I just need a myriad of faces.'
A weapon with infinite faces, something that could hold every individual concept and empower them to create the same effect as the entire territory…
Didn't Damien already have the perfect weapon?
He couldn't access the original because it was in reality, but he could make a copy using the powers of this realm.
As the crowd watched on, Damien pushed his arm out as if he was grabbing something. His hand wrapped around an invisible sword handle, and suddenly, the sunlight started refracting and creating caustics on the ground around him.
"Something" had been formed.
And that "something" was none other than Mirage, a translucent sword made of an almost glass-like material. That sword had all of the characteristics necessary for containing the power of Nonexistence.
'It's been beside me for almost my entire life. I'm glad I was able to find another purpose for it at this stage.'
The metal spikes and web fragments scattered around the arena rose into the air and turned into shining lights that coalesced inside Mirage.
The translucent sword became one of light for a brief moment, and by the time it faded and returned to its original appearance, it had truly become a weapon of Nonexistence.
Damien looked down at the sword with a grin.
'...everything becomes possible.'
He shot forward and raised it into the air. He smiled even wider when he thought about what he was about to do.
It was a true moment of reminiscence, a meeting between past and present.
'Void Sword Art First Step: Bladeless'
A huge gust of wind filled the arena. Nobody could understand what was happening. Space couldn't be collapsed or torn in this realm where space did not exist and was only perceived. However, somehow, through some esoteric means, Damien created something that looked awfully similar to a tear in space.
And as it enveloped the area where the Dragon Lord was standing…
…the first drop of blood was drawn in this battle.