The Warden crashed into him like a avalanche, and suddenly they were grappling at close range. Claws raked across Alex's torso, opening wounds that his uniform couldn't prevent. Teeth snapped inches from his throat. The creature's weight pressed down on him, and even with his enhanced strength, he was losing the contest.

But Alex didn't need to win a grappling match.

He pressed both palms against the Warden's chest, directly over the gaping wound, and poured fire into the cavity. Not external flames that could be resisted or endured, but internal burning that ignited the creature from the inside out.

The Warden's roar became a shriek as its organs caught fire. It thrashed, trying to pull away, but Alex held on with desperate strength. The flames spread through the creature's chest cavity, following blood vessels and essence channels, turning the Warden's own body into fuel.

**[Time Remaining: 29 seconds]**

The creature managed to throw Alex off, sending him tumbling across the arena floor. But the damage was done. The Warden staggered, smoke pouring from its mouth and nose, the hole in its chest now glowing with internal fire.

It reached for its fallen axe with trembling hands. The weapon was its last resort, the technique it had used to eliminate every serious challenger for three centuries.

The axe began to sing.

Not metaphorically the weapon was producing sound at frequencies that made stone crack and air itself seem to vibrate. The malevolent energy that had infected Alex's wounds was now manifesting as visible corruption around the blade, reality distorting wherever the weapon pointed.

When the Warden swung, the attack wasn't just physical it was spatial. The axe carved through dimensions, creating a strike that existed across multiple planes simultaneously. There was no dodging, no phasing, no defensive technique that could counter an attack that hit from angles that shouldn't exist.

**[Time Remaining: 23 seconds]**

Alex's response was immediate and absolute. If he couldn't dodge the attack, he'd overwhelm it with pure power.

He poured everything into one technique—not constructs or weapons, but pure thermal manipulation on a scale he'd never attempted. Every one of his twenty million essence points channeled into a single purpose: heat.

The temperature around Alex spiked to levels that made the arena floor beneath his feet liquefy. Air ignited spontaneously, creating a corona of flame that burned white-hot. The heat was so intense it became visible as distortion in space itself, a sphere of thermal energy that radiated power like a miniature sun.

The Warden's dimensional strike met Alex's thermal field, and reality screamed.

The collision wasn't explosive it was erosive. The axe's spatial distortion tried to carve through multiple planes, but the heat was so intense it was destabilizing the dimensional effect itself. Where the attack should have struck from impossible angles, instead it encountered temperatures that made spatial manipulation fail.

The Warden pushed forward, forcing the strike through sheer power and centuries of technique. But it was dying, its strength fading with every heartbeat, and Alex's astronomical essence reserves could sustain the heat indefinitely.

**[Time Remaining: 15 seconds]**

The stalemate lasted three eternal seconds as both combatants poured everything into overwhelming the other. The arena floor cracked beneath their feet, the walls showed stress fractures, and even the Shadeborn spectators were retreating from the front rows as residual energy made the air itself dangerous.

Then the Warden's strength finally failed.

The dimensional strike collapsed as the creature's essence gave out. The axe fell from hands that could no longer grip. The massive guardian dropped to one knee, then the other, black ichor pooling beneath it.

Alex didn't wait. He shaped the thermal energy into one final attack a spear of compressed heat so intense it was barely visible, just a distortion in space that radiated power.

The spear punched through the Warden's skull between the eyes.

The creature's remaining eye went wide for a moment, then glazed over. It slumped forward, massive weight shaking the arena floor one final time.

**[Time Remaining: 8 seconds]**

**[Enemy Defeated: Arena Warden (SS-Class)]**

**[Quest Complete: DEFEAT THE ARENA WARDEN]**

**[Rewards:]**

**[- Instant Level Up]**

**[- +20 Stat Points]**

**[- +1 Ability Slot]**

**[EXP GAINED: +1,247 EXP]**

Alex felt the level advancement trying to activate, felt the quest rewards attempting to integrate, but Emergency Overdrive was ending and the backlash was coming.

**[Emergency Overdrive: TERMINATED]**

**[Essence Access: RESTRICTED TO ADEPT-RANK PARAMETERS]**

**[BACKLASH INITIATING]**

The pain was instantaneous and absolute.

His essence channels scoured by sixty seconds of forcing Master-rank power through Adept-rank pathways simply shattered.

Alex collapsed beside the fallen Warden, his body convulsing as the backlash overwhelmed every system. Blood erupted from his mouth, his nose, his ears, his eyes—every orifice weeping crimson as his cardiovascular system failed under the stress. His heart beat once, twice, then stopped entirely, the muscle simply giving up after being pushed beyond all biological limits.

**[HP: 8/120]**

**[CRITICAL STATUS: COMPLETE SYSTEM FAILURE]**

**[Estimated Time Until Death: 47 seconds]**

The Grand Arena was absolutely silent. Not the awed silence from before, but the profound quiet that came when thousands of beings simultaneously held their breath.

The Arena Warden guardian for three centuries, victor of countless battles, wielder of dimensional techniques that had eliminated every serious challenger lay dead.

And beside it, the human who had achieved the impossible was dying.

Alex's consciousness was fragmenting, darkness creeping in from every direction. He could feel his system trying to process the level advancement, trying to integrate the quest rewards, but his body was too damaged to receive them. The notifications flickered at the edge of his vision.

**[Estimated Time Until Death: 25 seconds]**

'I won,' he thought with perfect clarity despite the encroaching death. 'I actually won. Defeated an SS-Class guardian. Completed the impossible quest.'

His Enhanced Recovery skill was trying to activate, but there was nothing to recover.his heart had stopped, his brain was being starved of oxygen. Within seconds, the damage would become irreversible even with supernatural healing.

The last thing Alex saw before unconsciousness claimed him was the Master rising from its throne, the entity's incomprehensible form descending toward the arena floor.

Then darkness swallowed everything.

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