“What are you doing?” Voidrin’s features crinkled up.

  “Oh, sorry, one sec,” Aaron raised his index finger. “Just preparing myself.”

  Voidrin’s brow twitched as he watched Aaron consume copious amounts of food, but then it softened, and an amused smile took its place. He no doubt felt little threat from the underleveled human, and he seemed to find the spectacle at least a little amusing.

  “Alright, all done,” Aaron wiped his mouth and burped.

  “Hah, impressive,” Voidrin chuckled. “But it’ll take more than growing a few inches to beat me,” he added, looking up as Aaron had grown so much that he now looked down on the huge cyclops.

  Staring off against the cyclops, Aaron already knew what he needed to do: figure out how to counter that mist.

  Okay, if I can hit him, I can win… maybe.

  The challenge ahead of him was monstrous, but it was also a big part of why he had accepted the challenge in the first place. This wasn’t just about challenging himself against someone strong. He wanted to see if he could figure this guy out. To see if he could break him down and beat this Skill that had completely neutered a man who, by all appearances, looked as if he belonged in this place.

  “Okay, show me whatcha got, human. Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you.”

  “What would be the fun in that?” Aaron replied. “Besides, I’m going to figure out how to counter that Skill of yours. And when I do, I will hit you.”

  Voidrin shot a toothy grin at the challenge, but he didn’t move. Aaron wasn’t too surprised by this. The guy had waited for that Cairon dude to attack as well. He was clearly confident in his defense.

  As he moved into position, Aaron tested the cyclops with feinting attacks, checking the threads of fate and trying to get a read on how he would respond.

  Most of the time, the guy was kind of indifferent, easily dodging or even letting his attacks land when Aaron followed through. He had his trump card, after all, and could take a hit.

  Blowing up into mist didn’t seem to bother the cyclops at all.

  Aaron needed to push the pace if he wanted to test his theories, and he launched a measured combo, starting from a distance using [ Spectral Fist ], and increasingly speeding up the ferocity of his barrage as he closed the distance.

  At the same time, he created a mana barrier. It was an energy-intensive thing to do, but he wanted to learn as much as possible about the Voidrin’s Skill. Besides, with his adipose reserves filled, he could afford to live a little.

  There was a problem, though. As Aaron moved forward and his mana barrier enveloped both of them, he didn’t sense anything particularly unusual.

  Seconds later, he landed another hit on Voidrin, who, as expected, puffed away in a cloud of mist and reappeared behind him. Aaron had seen all of this through the threads of fate and was already dodging.

  But dodging a single attack wasn’t his goal, and he hadn’t made any useful reads from his barrier, besides a small spike of mana. But that was to be expected. Voidrin was clearly using some kind of mana-based Skill, and so it would obviously use some energy. But Aaron needed a lot more than that to figure out how to fight back.

  He was also fairly certain that Voidrin was still taking it easy. Then again, he had looked similar against Cairon. Aaron was focused on fighting his own fight, though, and wouldn’t let it get to him. If this guy wanted to play around, then he would make him regret it in time.

  But of course, Aaron already had a plan. But he had to be careful. He didn’t want to show any cards until he was ready to use them properly.

  The next part of his plan was to get a better look at this Skill. Fate Bender allowed him to see the next move, but he couldn’t make the same reads against a figment of the future. He couldn’t use mana and Skills to decipher it; he needed to do that himself.

  Lining up a series of attacks, he pressed on against the cyclops, but when he reached him, he didn’t strike out. Instead, he used [ Oozagh’s Breath ] combined with flames and [ Gorgon’s Time Dilation ].

  The goal was simply to see what he did when the entire area around them was engulfed in flames and one of his fists was crashing towards his body, whilst time was slowed. If there was a secret to what Voidrin was doing, he was bound to see it at that moment.

  As expected, his punch landed, and mist exploded in slow motion, but surprisingly, the mist seemed to break apart and become part of the atmosphere. Something was wrong. It was like there was more of it. Hidden in a gaseous form that he couldn’t see with either his eyes or his mana detection. This wasn’t some cheap trick. Whatever the Skill truly was, it was bigger than it appeared.

  Then the fire swept over, and mist seemed to shimmer all around him in response. At first, he thought the mist was reforming, as Voidrin reappeared after the flames had dissipated. But was it? Or was it forming? Had it always been there, and he just couldn’t see it?

  Aaron honed in on his mana sense, trying to figure out why his senses betrayed him, but it was fruitless. Whatever Voidrin was doing, it was not easy to detect,

  But his little combo had awoken something within Voidrin. The cyclops’ pace quickened, and he seemed to take on a much more serious stance. Something about what Aaron was doing had told the alien to take the fight more seriously, and not to treat Aaron like a normal level 28.

  Voidrin had basically just been on the defense, not really trying to attack back, but after Aaron’s probing combination, his cutlass began to strike back. The sword flew through the air around him, shooting back and forth as it tried to hit the evasive human.

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  Aaron, though, had impeccable dodging. He hadn’t spent so much time training against Yendal for nothing, and it would take more than regular attacks to cut him down, even from somebody as strong as Voidrin.

  “Not bad,” Voidrin complimented. “The fact that you can even avoid my attacks is impressive for somebody at your level.”

  If he was still talking shit, it was obvious the cylcops still wasn’t taking him completely seriously, and Aaron wanted to quip back, but didn’t. Focusing on the fight was more important.

  He still had one ace up his sleeve, and he wanted to draw the overconfident cyclops into it.

  C’mon, show me more of what you got!

  There was a remaining problem. He hadn’t actually seen many Skills on display yet, and that was a bad thing if he wanted to beat this guy. He couldn’t gameplan for somebody who he couldn’t predict what hidden attacks they might have.

  Maybe I should provoke him a little. See if I can’t get him to use something else.

  “Come on, you're telling me you seriously can’t hit a level 28?” Aaron mocked as he dodged another flying sword.

  “Haha, I like you! Sorry to tell you, though, bud, but I ain’t even trying.”

  “You sure? Because I think I see a sweat bead.”

  “Haha! Oh, so you wanna see me try? Fine, but you’re not going to enjoy this!” Voidrin said, and steam flooded out from all around, filling the entire arena.

  The steam was suffocating. Burning and hot, and worst of all, Aaron couldn’t track the elusive cyclops anymore. Like not at all. This was worrying for a split second. But then he realized something else. He could, however, get a read on him.

  With so much mana in the air, Voidrin couldn’t hide his secrets as well as he had earlier. He could see them, hiding amongst the steamy mist. There were hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.

  He had been right. The mist didn’t reform at all. In truth, he had hundreds of copies, clones. And when they were hit, they were destroyed. However, there was a secondary component to it, Aaron realized.

  It seemed that when left dormant, the clones could let their gaseous forms intertwine with the atmosphere and become invisible to the naked eye.

  Some of the clones had considerably more mana infused into them than others. They were decoys. Clones are filled with a petty amount of mana and are disposable. The ones that were designed to land strikes were considerably denser, and while they could still be expendable and could no doubt be exchanged to land a damaging attack, he had to be a little more conservative with them.

  None of this would matter much, though, not in the steam. His clones could blend into it, and it was nearly impossible to see anything. Not to mention the heat. Not only that, but the clones seemed to even be permeable with the steam in the air, able to change their shape and avoid strikes as Aaron attempted to attack with a barrage of his own against several clones.

  This was a supreme synergy of two Skills; once caught in the steamy mist, it would be near impossible for most to fight back against Voidrin’s clones.

  But what if there was no mist?

  Aaron activated [ Equal and Opposite ], pouring his adipose reserves into the Skill, and leaning into the understanding he had gathered on Voidrin’s Skill, and punched into the mist.

  In seconds, the steam cleared.

  “Wha?!”

  Finally, the smirk was wiped off the cyclops’ face as he watched his steam dissipate, but Aaron didn’t wait a second, and he shot forward with his own attack.

  His targets were clear, and he attacked the closest of the dense clones.

  They were imperceptible to the naked eye, gas formations that hadn’t yet taken shape. But the mana used to hold them together could be targeted, and now that he had sensed said mana, they couldn’t hide from him. And Aaron struck thin air, destroying one of the artificial hearts constructed of mana, killing the clone.

  Voidrin didn’t seem to want to play anymore. Somehow, the much weaker human had figured out how to attack his clones, and if he was allowed to go on a rampage, Aaron might just take out all of the strongest ones, nullifying the Skill.

  “Impressive!” Voidrin shouted as he attacked all at once.

  It was now beyond obvious that he had been holding back this entire time. He was playing with his food before, with both Aaron and Cairon. Those were single clones thrown at his enemies to frustrate them and make openings. But he was more than capable of attacking with everything all at once.

  Aaron fell back on time dilation and fate-bending to see the numerous attacks coming at him from all around.

  This wasn’t some weak orc or other minion summoned by the trials, either. It was one thing to make dodging look easy against Voidrin’s single flying sword when the alien wasn’t really trying, but dodging hundreds of clones and swords all at once?

  That was difficult on a completely different level.

  The attack was absolutely relentless, and within a second, several strikes had already opened wounds all over Aaron’s body.

  He couldn't dodge all of these attacks. It simply wasn’t possible. And so, in the back of his mind, he made a contingency.

  Aaron just had to hold on long enough for his aether bomb to be formed. A condensed sum of energy that he could release with a timer of sorts.

  But there was one problem. He had at least partially figured out Voidrin’s clones, but he still didn’t know where the real cyclops was, or how he was hiding. Or even if he was hiding.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t hold out any longer, hoping to figure out the answer to that secret. Within seconds, he would be dead, and he needed to fight accordingly.

  That wasn’t to say he had given up. The battle was perfectly planned, and Aaron had a pretty good read on the Skill being used against him. Not to mention his sense of mana and his fate reading allowed him to ignore more of the decoys and focus his counters entirely against the real clones.

  He wouldn’t win this exchange, but maybe he could at least weaken Voidrin. After all, he could tell these clones were energy expensive to replace, and the alien couldn’t just endlessly summon more.

  If he played his cards right, he might just be able to turn this fight into a battle of attrition, and that was a battle Aaron was willing to bet on.

  He bit down. Pushing himself further and further. His body was a mangled mess, but he refused to let himself die so easily, trying to take down as many clones as he could.

  But then it came. Unceremoniously, Voidrin’s real sword flung through the air, lobbing Aaron’s head off, and his headless body fell to the ground.

  “Not gonna lie. That was impressive,” Voidrin cracked his knuckles. “You actually made me use a lot more energy than the hairy guy. You can’t beat me, of course. But you put on one hell of a show for your level.”

  He had figured that the level 28 was at least a little bit special, given that he was in the Shadow Trials, but even so, Voidrin couldn’t help but admit he had underestimated the man. “Special” didn’t even begin to cover it. If the battle had kept going, there was a real chance Voidrin would have lost.

  A good lesson for me, thought Voidrin, satisfied.

  But a second later, his brow furrowed. Why hadn’t Aaron's body left the arena?

  Before he could even properly finish the thought, he sensed an implosion of energy around what he thought was the dead body. The severed head was drawn back to the neck like a magnet, and before Voidrin could blink, the wound was gone. The human stood up, bending his head around to stretch the newly healed neck muscles, then bounced on his toes and raised his fists in a fighting stance.

  “Alright, round two, let’s do this!”

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