Anthony had the jitters. He was standing in an open field that spanned for kilometers alongside Ivan. The Beast King of Russia really was a mammoth of a man, towering over him like an adult did a child. He wore something that loosely resembled a wrestling outfit… if underwear and a cape could be called an outfit. His body was a muscled work of art. Anthony thought he was fairly muscular, but this man made him feel inadequate.
“Comrades of Mother Russia, friends from foreign lands, welcome to the most anticipated battle of the century! Anthony versus our very own King! I hope you’re all prepared because I have a feeling this match is going to blow us all away!” the announcer shouted. It was that annoying Viktor again.
“Let us have good match,” Ivan suddenly spoke. His voice rolled from his diaphragm like thunder.
“Yeah…”
Anthony gripped Ivan’s hand and immediately regretted it when the man squeezed. He could actually feel the bones in his hand crunching under the grip. What made it worse was that he didn’t think Ivan was doing it on purpose. At least, that was how it appeared to him. The man’s face was a blank slate.
It took everything Anthony had not to shake his hand out. He did not want to let this man, or those watching, know how much that handshake hurt.
Can I really defeat someone like this…?
“Are you ready folks?!” Viktor shouted. “It is time to start this match! Ready? Aaaaaaaaaaannnnnd FIGHT!”
It began the moment the word “fight” left Viktor’s mouth. Ivan moved. Despite his bulky frame, he was shockingly fast. It almost felt like the man had teleported toward Anthony. He was using Foresight, and he had barely even been able to track the man’s movements.
“Wave Strike,” the man said, actually announcing his technique--not that it mattered. Anthony didn’t even have time to move out of the way.
The relaxed, almost casual punch struck out like a whip. It was so deceptive. The man didn’t even harden his hand into a fist. The strike did not smash into him so much as send a ripple through Anthony’s body. He was lucky he had managed to get his arms up in time to block, because the second he felt the ripple pass through him, his forearms snapped like twigs. The force continued to travel through his chest and it felt like something was detonating inside of him.
Blood gushed from his nose and mouth. His sleeves were blown apart and a crack appeared behind him as the kinetic force continued to travel on.
Anthony wanted to fall to his knees right there. What the fuck? What. The. Fuck was that? That man’s attack had been so deceptive, so relaxed and casual, but look at what it had done to him? His insides already felt like a wreck.
Despite the pain he felt, Anthony was not going to give up.
“All Mighty Push!”
A sucking force appeared around Anthony’s hand as he created a repulsing force and slammed it into Ivan. The man had not even moved a muscle, allowing Anthony to attack him, and that pissed Anthony off more than anything. He pumped all the mana he dared into this technique and got the satisfaction of watching Ivan be blasted off his feet.
The man flipped end over end before striking the ground hard enough to leave trenches, but he managed to right his tumble, landing on his feet, which dug more furrows into the ground as he slid to a stop. Then he stood. Ivan was pretty far away now. However, the large dent mark in his chest was easily visible.
Ivan looked down at his injury with a raised eyebrow.
***
“I CANNOT BELIEVE IT!” Viktor was screaming his head off. “IVAN HAS BEEN INJURED! WHAT AN UPSET!!!”
Anthony’s women were sitting in the stands. Svetlanna and Elizabeth were beside them. While Secilia was on her feet and shouting like she was watching a football and screaming at the ref for a bad play, the others were mostly silent.
All around them, people were going mad over this supposed upset. People were standing up like Secilia and yelling in Russian. Brianna had no idea what they were saying, but she tried to block them out, focusing instead on the screen, which showed Anthony and Ivan standing some distance apart and glaring at each other.
“Anthony is quite strong. That was a good strike,” Svetlanna said with a thoughtful hum. She seemed impressed.
“It’s a good sign that he was able to injure Ivan in his first attack. Most people who fight him cannot even do that much,” Elizabeth added. She smiled slightly. “I knew Anthony was strong, but seeing him actually injure Ivan is something else entirely.”
“Excuse me, but why did Ivan take that attack?” asked Brianna. “I feel like he could have dodged that…”
“Ivan always takes his opponent’s first strike,” Svetlanna said. “It’s a sign of respect, but it’s also meant to determine whether his opponent is worth using his full-force against. Ivan’s skin is so naturally tough that most techniques can’t even penetrate it. If you can’t even injure him when he’s not using mana, then he won’t use it at all during the bout.”
Secilia heard them and turned to the woman. “So because Anthony injured him…”
“Ivan is going to use his mana from the get go,” Svetlanna finished, smiling casually. “I suggest you sit down, dear. I don’t want you getting blown away.”
“Wha---AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”
Secilia’s scream was lost to the wind as Ivan moved. The ground beneath his exploded with the force of his feet, and the earth seemed to split as he ran across it toward Anthony. A powerful wind suddenly slammed into all of them. At first, Brianna thought it was a hurricane, but no, it was simply the displaced air as Ivan ran. It looked like he was going to try and bulldoze over Anthony.
Brianna didn’t know when she had clasped her hands, but her knuckles turned white as she gripped them tightly. Her heart was hammering. She’d heard that Ivan had killed most of his opponents, and it now felt like there was a very real chance of Anthony dying if he wasn’t careful.
A hand covered hers. She looked over to see Trinity smiling at her.
“Have faith in Anthony,” she said.
Brianna pursed her lips. “I do have faith in him. That doesn’t mean I can’t worry.”
“I guess that’s true. Perhaps I was worrying for nothing.” Trinity gave her a motherly look, then turned back to the battle.
Brianna frowned at her a second longer before also turning back to the fight.
***
Anthony saw Ivan coming and knew better than to let this man hit him. He thought quickly and made a decision, tearing open space and stepping through to appear behind the man. His plan was to use another of his repulsion attacks to send his opponent flying. That was his mistake.
Ivan’s foot flashed low. It was so fast that Anthony almost missed it, but then stone sprayed and Anthony found his body being snapped horizontally. His left shin snapped. The pain further threw him off balance. Suddenly, the Beast King had him in his grip, and he was dragged down hard enough to make the battlefield shudder.
Everything hurt so much that Anthony could scarcely breath, but he knew that he couldn’t just lie there. Ivan’s heel was coming down.
“Heel Drop.”
“Black Hole.”
This time, Anthony thrust his hand out, a black hole erupting from his palm. The gaping hole in space sucked everything nearby within it, including the Beast King’s heel. Anthony rolled across the ground and scrambled away as Ivan briefly fought against the black hole. That ended when, with a grunt, the man simply overpowered the attack. Anthony almost gawked as Ivan simply cut through the fucking black hole with his foot.
This man is a monster!
Anthony raised his hands and clasped them together. Space warped and his mana surged. Tiny pebbles lifted from the ground only to be crushed by the sudden shifting gravitational forces. Erupting from Anthony’s conjoined hands were two massive hands at least ten times larger that were like a mirror of his real ones. With a grunt, Anthony brought them down.
“Spatial Smash!”
Ivan had turned and began rushing toward him again when Anthony’s spatial axe-handle smash. He could not dodge this attack. It was too big and moving too fast, so Ivan braced his legs and raised his hands in a crossguard above his head, accepting the attack, which slammed into him with the fury of a god.
The ground erupted under Ivan’s feet, a spiderweb of cracks racing out from the point of impact like black lightning. Space completely warped around Ivan. His body wavered, elongating, shrinking, and tearing as space itself was utterly decimated. Blood spurted out of his body in various places. Yet his face still remained impassive even as blood began running over one eye.
What happened next would forever remain etched into Anthony’s mind.
Ivan somehow managed to grab Anthony’s spatial hands with one of his. His arm shook, tears appearing all over it and blood pouring down the limb, but it held steady as he reared his other hand back…
And punched.
The entire world felt like it was standing still as the punch rang out. A wave like rippling space erupted from the beyond the hands before they swelled and popped like a balloon. There was a lot of distorted space in Anthony’s attack. When the hands popped, all that power erupted and tore through the land. Anthony was entirely unprepared for the explosion of power and was swept clean off his feet.
Everything spun. He felt like he was going to vomit, but his throat had closed up, so instead, bile just remained stuck in his throat.
Anthony’s mana surged as he manipulated the space around him to halt his momentum. That turned out to be a mistake. Ivan was there, right there, and his heel was dropping fast.
“Heel…”
Anthony knew he couldn’t avoid it, and not for lack of trying. He shifted space aside to get out of the way, but the heel landed firmly on his clavicle. The only thing Anthony could do was raise his other arm and launch his own attack at the same moment. Time felt like it was slowing as the sensation of his clavicle bone caving into his ribcage ripped through him.
“Drop.”
“Spatial Blade.”
Anthony dropped. It was less like he was sent crashing to the ground and more like he teleported directly into the ground. His entire world went black for a moment as the earth ruptured like a gate of hell was opening up on earth. He found himself swallowed by a massive, cavernous crater.