The walls of water that had been parted from the strike fell back with a roar.

Azel appeared behind Anastasia's back with his chest heaving as he took deep breaths. His hands trembled slightly as residual electricity crawled across his skin like angry insects.

That was too close… If he had stayed in there for even an extra moment then he would have been completely destroyed.

He looked up.

The red sky stretched endlessly above them, bleeding crimson light across the ocean's surface. It wasn't just over Elun'varis anymore.

The entire world seemed painted in blood.

'Did Merek do this?' Azel thought, watching the sky pulse with unnatural light. 'Or is something else happening?'

"I really didn't think this would kill someone like him…" Anastasia murmured beside him.

The water parted violently.

Merek floated upward from the ocean floor, dripping wet.

His robes clung to his frame and steam was rising from his shoulders. The sealing runes Anastasia had placed on him were shattered, glowing fragments of broken magic dissolving into the air like dying embers.

He looked completely unharmed but Anastasia's eyes narrowed, it would seem that way to an unexperienced mage but to someone like her… She could see something very different.

'He burned through half his circuits just to survive that.'

She could see it now… the way his body worked.

Every vein, every muscle fiber, every drop of blood had been converted into magical circuits over centuries of self-modification.

His entire being was a living spell matrix, capable of casting magic from any part of his body without the delay normal mages suffered and it made him like a machine.

'Brilliant… and utterly foolish.'

It was his greatest strength… Instant casting and pure magical dominance but it was also his greatest weakness.

Destroy a major circuit, and the entire system collapsed. At least mana circles took time to be destroyed, turning your entire body into a circuit was just plain dumb.

She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them with purpose.

Her vision shifted, overlaying reality with streams of glowing blue light that traced every magical pathway through Merek's body. His circuits pulsed like luminescent veins, interconnected and complex.

'There,' she thought, identifying the critical junctions. 'Those nodes. If I can overload even one...'

"Yo."

Azel raised his hand casually like he was greeting an old friend.

Merek's eyes snapped to him, still crackling with residual destruction energy.

"What do you want, filthy half—"

"Are you the one causing this red sky?" Azel interrupted, pointing upward.

Merek followed his gaze.

The sky was wrong. Not just cloudy or dark, but red... the deep crimson of old blood, stretching across the horizon like a wound in reality itself.

'What in the nine hells...?' Merek's thoughts stumbled. 'Why is Hell bleeding through into the mortal realm?'

Hell and the human world were never meant to overlap. They existed on separate planes, divided by barriers older than civilization itself.

For that sky to appear here...

Something was very, very wrong.

"How would I know?" Merek snapped, raising both hands. Destruction energy coalesced around his palms like liquid shadow. "I don't care about your apocalypse. I can research it after I'm done killing you and massacring the rest of the bloody Elven race."

The destruction manifested faster this time.

Azel's eyes widened.

He grabbed Anastasia and shoved her to the right as the beam erupted outward.

The already-destroyed forest... stopped existing on a conceptual level.

Trees, soil, rocks, the very memory of what had been there... gone.

Erased in a three-hundred-meter radius that left only smooth glass where the heat had fused sand and stone into something unnatural.

Merek kept firing.

He swept the beam sideways, tracking Azel as he dove under it.

The destruction beam carved through the air, hit the ocean, and the water didn't just part... it evaporated leaving steam erupting in massive plumes.

Azel shot forward through the mist.

"Should I turn you into a shadow?" Gwendolyn's voice echoed in his soul. She'd stayed inside him for most of this fight. Merek's attacks could hurt her, and with their souls linked, damage to her meant damage to him.

She was his weakness in a way.

"Don't worry about it," Azel muttered.

He moved right as another beam screamed past his ear, then coated his arm in divinity, specifically Light.

The destruction beam curved toward him like a heat-seeking missile.

Azel raised his divinity-wrapped forearm.

The beam hit and split cleanly in two.

Both halves shot past him into the ocean, detonating on impact and sending geysers of boiling water skyward.

Merek's eyes narrowed as Azel crushed the residual destruction magic still clinging to his arm, dissipating it like smoke.

'Superior magical energy means nothing if I can't land a single hit.' Merek's jaw tightened. He descended slowly toward the water's surface, his boots touching down without disturbing the tension.

Azel mirrored him, landing lightly across from the old mage.

They stood on opposite sides of a circular arena made entirely of ocean.

"What do you plan to do?" Azel asked, rolling his shoulders.

Merek dropped into a fighting stance.

Azel blinked, then looked up at Anastasia floating above them as if he couldn't believe it.

She shrugged.

"No seriously…" Azel straightened. "I don't have any beef with you."

He floated upward off the water's surface, gesturing for Anastasia to take his place.

She descended gracefully, touching down on the ocean without disturbing a single ripple.

"The one you should be fighting is Anastasia," Azel continued. "So don't worry, I'll be the referee for your match."

He cleared his throat.

His battle-worn cloak and torn clothing shimmered, replaced by an immaculate black tuxedo complete with a bow tie and round spectacles.

He swept his hair back dramatically.

'This is meant to be a serious fight, but there's no rule saying we can't have fun with it.'

He clapped his hands together once, the sound echoing across the water.

An Archmage using hand-to-hand combat was something he genuinely wanted to see.

Anastasia was probably Archmage-level herself, which meant this would be a spectacle worth watching.

"Now then!" Azel's voice rang out with exaggerated formality. "I expect a clean match between our competitors!"

He raised both hands like a referee.

"Remove anything giving you excess weight! This fight must be swift and decisive!"

Anastasia glanced down at her ceremonial cape. She usually wore it during official Elf King duties, but the damn thing weighed more than it had any right to.

She unhooked the clasp and the cape dropped.

SPLASH.

It hit the water like an anchor, sinking immediately and sending up a massive spray.

'It was that heavy...?' Azel blinked in surprise.

He turned to Merek, who was already shrugging off his archmage robes. The fabric hit the water with an equally massive splash, revealing a surprisingly muscular frame beneath.

The old man cracked his neck once.

Then he raised one hand and casually destroyed his own beard with a focused burst of destruction magic.

The white hair simply… stopped existing.

Azel sweatdropped. "You know what? Sure. Why not."

"Good… good!" He cleared his throat, adjusting his referee glasses. "Now fight!"

The instant he said it, both combatants exploded forward.

BOOM.

Their elbows collided mid-air with enough force to part the ocean below them. Water split in perfect halves, revealing the sandy bottom thirty meters down.

Merek pulled back first, his footwork was elegant despite his age.

Anastasia spun into a roundhouse kick.

He parried, redirecting her momentum. She tilted sideways, off-balance for just a moment and then his fist came in, wreathed in destruction magic.

But Anastasia planted her foot on his foot, coating her sole in life divinity. The divine energy flared gold-green, and she used it like a springboard.

CRACK.

Her heel connected with his jaw.

Merek staggered backward, spitting blood into the water.

He tried to activate his eye beams, the same technique that had nearly killed Azel earlier but nothing happened.

Worse than nothing.

His eyes popped, blood vessels rupturing all at once. Crimson tears streamed down his face, staining the water below with red.

"What did you do to me?" Merek's voice was cold.

He couldn't see.

The mana circuits in his face, the ones responsible for his sensory abilities, had been damaged. Without them, he was functionally blind.

Anastasia smiled, though there was no joy in it.

"Your mana circuits. I finally figured out your weakness."

Under normal circumstances, Merek's regeneration was monstrous.

Her father had once blown him in half, and he'd survived. But that was because his circuits had been intact, flooding his body with healing magic.

Now? The damaged circuits couldn't heal themselves… They needed to rebuild from scratch.

She estimated three minutes before his sight returned.

More than enough time to kill him.

Merek unleashed destruction in a radial burst, a desperate move meant to consume everything within range.

The wave of annihilation expanded outward, reaching for both Anastasia and Azel but they were both coated in divinity.

The destruction magic fizzled against it, dissipating harmlessly.

Anastasia shot forward through the dying energy and landed a clean kick to his face.

Merek's head snapped to the side, and she used his face as a platform, leaping off it mid-strike.

While airborne, she twisted her body like a spinning top, building centrifugal force.

Her leg whipped around in a devastating arc.

WHAM.

It connected with his temple, sending him spinning across the water's surface. He barely caught himself, but his face was covered in shallow cuts, blood mixing with seawater.

'Overloading his circuits with mana is the key,' Anastasia thought, analyzing him even as she moved. 'His entire body is essentially one massive magical circuit. His blood, his veins, every cell… all converted into conduits for mana.'

Everything he needed was already flowing through him… but he was a liability as well.

She dashed forward again, closing the distance before he could recover.

Merek was frustrated in a way he hadn't been in centuries. Every mage possessed automatic mana and aura sensory, neural pathways that let them perceive magical energy and aura without conscious thought.

Though it was the way one honed it, that was when it could assist them in battle… but those pathways originated in the brain, and Anastasia had damaged the circuit there.

He was fighting blind but he wasn't helpless.

'If the circuit is damaged… I'll just replicate it elsewhere.'

It was an insane solution, something only someone who'd turned their entire body into magical circuits could accomplish.

He rerouted his sensory functions through the circuits in his chest and limbs, creating a distributed network.

His mana sense flickered back online and he felt Anastasia rushing toward him, her position clear as daylight.

He tilted backward, dodging her first punch by millimeters. Her follow-up strikes came in a flurry, but he parried each one with the precision of a master.

She charged a kick, putting her full weight behind it.

He blocked with both arms, but the force made his hands shake.

Before she could pull back, he grabbed her leg.

The life divinity coating her skin burned against his palm, searing his flesh. He didn't care.

Pain was temporary but victory wasn't.

He began charging destruction magic in his free hand, preparing to burn through her divinity entirely.

He'd seen it used enough times to understand the truth: this divinity wasn't truly theirs. It was borrowed, drawn from external sources.

Which meant it had limits and existed in a finite volume but his destruction was his own.

He could overpower it through sheer output.

The destruction energy built in his palm… Something shot toward him from the right.

He'd reactivated his mana sensory, not his aura sensory which was critical oversight.

And Azel slammed his fist into Merek's face with every ounce of aura he possessed.

BOOM.

Merek was launched sideways like a cannonball, spinning through the air.

The water below parted from the shockwave, revealing sandy ocean floor for a brief moment before the sea rushed back in.

Azel landed on the water's surface, grinning.

"A clean fight doesn't mean we won't jump you."

Anastasia floated beside him, catching her breath. "That was supposed to be my moment."

"You looked like you needed help."

"I had it under control."

"Sure you did."

Merek righted himself in the air, blood streaming from his nose. His expression was murderous, but underneath the rage… there was something else.

Respect, maybe. Or at least acknowledgment that these two were stronger than he'd anticipated.

He wiped the blood from his face and settled into a fighting stance once more.

"Die, you bloody elves!" He shouted out as he charged toward them.

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