The battle between Anthony and Ivan was so powerful that the people in the stands, which was far enough away that they needed to watch the fight on a holographic monitor, felt the destructive forces unleashed. Winds slammed into the stands. It was fortunate for them that a barrier had been erected to prevent the viewers from getting struck by the worst of it. Even then, the stands rattled as if they were going to fall apart.
“This is unbelievable!” Viktor was still shouting into his mic. “I’ve never seen Ivan fighting so hard against someone before! It’s clear that he’s going all out against Anthony!”
Secilia felt like her heart was going to leap in her throat. She had been screaming and cheering with everyone else, though she was screaming for Anthony to beat Ivan to a pulp. However, she was now silent. Anthony had just been struck hard and slammed into the ground.
“Is Anthony okay? Dammit! I can’t see anything thanks to all that dust!” she snapped, though she was talking to herself.
“None of us can see anything. Now kindly shut up,” Brianna muttered.
“You shut up!”
“Ivan has never used this much strength before, has he?” Elizabeth asked Svetlanna.
Svetlanna shook her head. “He has not--not in an official bout like this anyway. He’s going all out too. Ivan isn’t holding back at all.”
“That just shows how much of a threat Anthony is,” Trinity said. As the oldest one among them, she had been able to calmly observe the battle even though it was her bondmate who was getting beaten around.
“The dust is clearing,” Marianne said.
Everyone snapped their attention back to the holographic screen. It had indeed cleared up, and what they saw left the entire crowd speechless.
Anthony was lying in a crater. It was hard to tell whether he was conscious or not, but he was moving. The crater was extremely big. It looked like the earth had been struck by a meteor.
Ivan was standing, but his entire left arm was missing. Blood dripped down his body like a thick river, drenching his entire side in crimson, though even as they watched, the bleeding soon stopped.
Svetlanna sucked in a breath. “Well… that’s quite the injury. Ivan has never lost a limb before. I can’t even imagine what sort of power you’d need to remove one of my husband’s arms.”
“Anthony must have used a spatial blade,” Marianne said quietly.
“He would have needed to pump a lot of mana into that attack,” Svetlanna said. “Even a spatial blade would not be able to harm my husband to this extent unless it was extremely powerful.”
Sasha crossed her arms. She looked proud, almost like she was the one fighting her father.
“I knew my eyes didn’t deceive. This man is extremely strong.”
“That attack wasn’t just powerful,” Trinity said. “What Anthony did was create a spatial blade, and then compress it to a fine point, before laying another spatial blade atop the first. He did this several times. That compression created a blade that is so sharp it can cut through something at the molecular level. It doesn’t matter how durable your husband’s skin is. It could be as hard as diamonds. Nothing can withstand a technique like that.”
***
Anthony’s vision was blurry, and his head felt like it had been split open. Pain flooded every nerve and made it hard to focus on anything. It was only through sheer force of will that he retained his consciousness.
I have to… get up…
With a groan, Anthony began climbing to his feet. His clavicle bone was shattered and several shards felt like they were embedded into his muscles, but even as he moved, he felt them healing. As a supernatural creature, he was fortunately blessed with powerful regeneration. That was honestly the only reason he had been able to keep pace with Ivan thus far.
Speaking of…
Ivan stood at the lip of the crater, looking down at Anthony, his arm missing. Small spurts of blood continued to jettison out. However, most of the wound had clotted by now.
“You’re strong,” Ivan said.
“Thanks…” Anthony grunted as he crawled out of the crater. Every muscle in his body was aching. He ignored it. His wounds were healing. He’d be fine.
Ivan observed him with steady eyes that saw far more than he thought they should. This man was looking at the areas where he had struck.
“That’s quite the ability,” he observed.
“Bet you wish you had regeneration,” Anthony said.
Ivan glanced at his arm. The bleeding had stopped, but it was not growing back.
“It would be nice,” he confessed.
“Wanna call it quits?” asked Anthony. “We can stop here.”
Ivan snorted. “Absolutely not. I have no intention of stopping this fight now.”
That caused Anthony to frown. This fight might not have lasted long, but they had already rearranged the terrain and done such incredible damage to each other that it would take months to fix. Ivan’s arm was going to require a mage that specialized in healing magic to regrow. ANd he still wanted to continue?
“Why? I think I’ve already proven that I am more than capable of standing beside your daughter. Shouldn’t that be enough?” asked Anthony.
“Why?” Ivan intoned, only to begin chuckling. The chuckle soon turned into full-blown laughter. “Because this is fun! You don’t realize how long it has been since I’ve actually enjoyed a fight! Our battle isn’t about my daughter anymore! I just want to keep fighting! This is great! It’s the best!”
Well… fuck…
Ivan was so stoic most of the time that Anthony didn’t consider it, but apparently, Ivan was a battle maniac--an extremely bad one. He looked like a loon right now. His laughter was a full belly laugh that echoed far and wide across the battlefield and caused the loose gravel underneath them to shake. It was so joyous that Anthony could not help but cringe.
Ivan stopped laughing, but he was still grinning as he looked at Anthony.
Then he vanished, leaving only cracks along the ground.
“SHIT!”
Anthony stepped through a tear in space and appeared somewhere else seconds before he saw what looked like a meteor descending from the sky. It was not. It was a person. Ivan had leapt into the air and was now descending to the ground, flames licking at his body as he flew in fast enough to break the sound barrier.
He struck the ground just as Anthony vanished, and a wave of dirt and rocks erupted in 360 degrees around him. Anthony had not teleported that far and was nearly swept away like a child struck by ocean waves. He swung his hand upward, releasing a spatial blade that cut through the wall.
Ivan was on him the moment his attack finished.
Anthony remembered Sasha’s words about her father and kept his eyes open to everything. A twitch of the hips preceded his left foot moving forward. A jerk of the shoulder let him know an attack was coming. The man’s fist flashed out like a whip, and Anthony dodged, though there was so much displaced air that the attack made him stumble back.
“Spatial Blade!”
Anthony swung his arms from his poor positioning, creating a blade that was launched at Ivan’s remaining arm. The attack hit and bit into it. However, it didn’t penetrate far before dissipating.
“That’s it! Let’s keep going! Let’s have ourselves a brawl!”
This man is insane!
Ivan punched at Anthony even though he couldn’t reach. Alarm bells were ringing, and Anthony once more stepped into a spatial tear. The area he’d been standing on was devastated. Ivan had created a massive trench that extended beyond his sight. If that had hit him, he might have actually died.
Anthony continued to pay careful attention and made sure not to focus on just one place. Every part of Ivan’s body was like a weapon. He didn’t just use his fists and feet. His elbows, knees, and hips. His hip checks were particularly bad. Anthony only let them hit him once, and once was enough.
“Brosok cherez bedro.”
The Beast King drove his hip underneath Anthony’s center of gravity and used the resulting momentum to launch Anthony over his body. It felt like he had been caught by a crane. His feet left the ground and his stomach dropped into them as he was liberally swung around and slammed into the earth.
Anthony was seeing stars, but he couldn’t stay still, so he moved even as his body screamed at him to stop. His hip had shattered, his ribs were fractured, and blood was welling up inside of his lungs. But he kept moving. He avoided Ivan’s stomp, which shattered the earth on impact and left a perfectly formed crater.
As Ivan stomped toward him, Anthony subtly injected his mana into the ground, seeking out life. He found it. He called upon it. As Ivan’s left foot lifted from the ground, vines erupted from the soil and tangled him up. So shocked was he that his body pitched forward as the vines yanked him down--right into Anthony’s waiting attack.
The moment Anthony saw his attack work, he created a powerful repulsive force that hovered over the palm of his hand. He knew this wouldn’t be enough, so he attacked rotation. One wasn’t enough. He rotated it in several directions at once, then continued adding more and more rotations until the technique looked like a spinning ball that captured the essence of a starry night sky.
“All Mighty Push!”
Anthony slammed the repulsive field home. Ivan screamed as the attack struck his chest and tore into him. Blood and flesh ripped from his chest and revealed his bones, but the man stood his ground, snarling and laughing as he tried to push forward despite the attack ripping his body to shreds.
“You’re fucking crazy!!!” Anthony screamed.
“Crazy?! No! I am just enjoying the pain!”
“Fucker!!! GET! BACK!!!!”
Anthony screamed as he pumped more mana into the technique and caused it to implode. The world stood still as all of the mana suddenly paused, then a sucking force ripped them forward a mere split second before it erupted in an explosion of power that launched the two of them away from each other.
The world spun as Anthony flipped head over ass. He would not be able to right himself normally, so he used space to once more bring his momentum to a halt.
Ivan was not so fortunate. The man had been launched far from him, and Anthony had the pleasure of watching him strike a mountain. Almost as soon as the mountain was struck, a wave of dirt and a cloud of dust filled the area before the entire mountain collapsed. It was like someone had kicked a mound of sand. The whole thing tumbled.
Anthony breathed heavily as he watched, his body slowly stitching itself back together.
Nothing happened for nearly a full minute. However, after a minute had passed, the sound of helicopters echoed from overhead, and he looked up to see them passing by, heading toward the mountain. HE didn’t know what to do, so he did nothing as paramedics and people in military uniforms exited the helicopters and began shifting through what was left of the mountain.
***
Everyone waited on baited breath after seeing the mountain collapse. Brianna, Secilia, Marianne, Sasha, and even Trinity were on the edge of their seats. Heck, even Svetlana was leaning forward.
The holographic screen zoomed onto the officials and paramedics that were removing the rubble. There were a few mages using earth magic to move everything. They soon found Ivan. He had seen better days. Injuries covered every inch of him. He looked like a massive, purple contusion, and blood was leaking from numerous wounds alongside his nose, ears, and mouth. Several of the paramedics got in close and checked him over. One of them looked at the helicopter and gestured, which caused them to lower a stretcher.
“I just received some news!” Viktor shouted into his mic. “Ivan is fine, but he is unconscious! You know what that means, right?! For the first time in history, our king has lost! Victory goes to Anthony Amasius!!”
The words echoed across the stands, and no one responded at first, too shocked to even realize the implications.
“HELL FUCKING YEAH!”
The first one to say anything was Secilia, who leapt to her feet and shouted. She raised her hands in a cheer, then grabbed the nearest person, Marianne, and hauled the girl to her feet so they could dance around.
Brianna joined her in cheering, and then Trinity, Sasha, and everyone else joined in as well. It was like an avalanche. Before long, everyone was shouting at the top of their lungs.
“I can’t believe he won!” Sasha was screaming. “He actually did it!”
“Hmph,” Trinity huffed and crossed her arms. “I knew he would win.”
Brianna smiled at her. “I know you told me to have confidence in him, but your legs were shaking the whole battle.”
Trinity turned away. “Even I get a little nervous, okay?”
Brianna looked back at the holographic screen. Anthony seemed to have realized he won, because he looked up at the satellite camera feed, smiled, and flashed them a thumbs up. She smiled and placed a hand to her chest. He had done. He had actually done it. And with that, their little family would grow stronger.