'It's all to belittle and diminish me,' Fulgardt thought as he adopted his stance. 'Going for a poetic ending, are you, brat?'

He glanced at the amalgam of Phantasmic Retainers within which he'd stowed his soul. Skullius had stolen it from Aigas' surface and brought it here, no doubt to scare him. It had worked, for a little while.

He glanced at everyone within the hall. They were looking at him and Skullius expectantly. Of course, they were. Skullius' presence must have forced them to dismiss him entirely, and they couldn't even sense the full abundance of it.

'I didn't take away all his advantages. He still has that outrageous volume of Null Life Essence, and it appears he can control it better than he did his previous reserves. Plenty has changed about him,' thought the Immoral, 'but he can still be bested.'

Appraising Skullius, the Immoral formed many conclusions, not the least significant of which was…

Skullius had long emptied the Amras reserves in his Default Body, which meant he couldn't use Andori!

Fulgardt flashed forward, emboldened by the notion. Sharp bursts of sound followed long after he'd reached Skullius, feinted a jab, and swung a kick meant to blast into Skullius' side. His attempt was unsuccessful. Not only did Skullius block the blow with his hand, but, moving faster than Fulgardt imagined, he (Skullius) struck Fulgardt twice in the chin. His fist felt like uneven steel to the Immoral. The blows made him stagger, but he retained his sense, retaliating immediately.

Fulgardt's hand was laced with light. He grabbed Skullius' robe with it and pulled hard while flinging his knee into his chest repeatedly. The Immoral frowned when Skullius did nothing to avoid it, but his expression loosened, becoming realization soon after. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

…!

'Nothing.'

Skullius had cocked back one of his arms. The prospect of the attack soon to come filled Fulgardt with dread. He could feel the condensed, controlled Null Life Essence livid within it, but…

BANG!

Despite the Void Clot stalwartly guarding him, the Immoral's chest was bashed in, and he was sent flying off through the double doors to the hall.

…But then the Immoral was also behind Skullius, perfectly fine and driven. He swept his legs across the ground to knock Skullius down, and when the Hybrid retreated quickly, he (Fulgardt) advanced, his hands blurring as he made thousands of grasping motions for Skullius' robes, all of which missed by a hair. The Hybrid Warmoth was fast – faster than Fulgardt thought he'd be.

'He's messing with me,' he thought, when Skullius swatted away his grabby hands, lunged, chopped his neck, kicked him in the shin, and blasted him in the head with an overhead punch that tore through his Void Clot and then his skull.

Another him was striking from Skullius' right side almost simultaneously, however.

'He's moving just fast enough to respond to my strikes.'

Twenty Fulgardts had 'died' by the time a chime for three seconds passed. To the denizens of the hall, the whole exchange was a blur caked inside a tornado of shockwaves and light distortions that ripped through the hall and the experts as though they were paper. Of course, the hall and the people were restored almost immediately after, only to get ripped up again.

'What was it that I said?' Fulgardt thought when another one of his doubles was slain. 'What weakness did I reveal and when?' He reached for Skullius' robe, finally managing to grab it after failing nearly sixty thousand times. At the same time, he headbutted Skullius in the chest. It did nothing.

Instead of allowing Skullius' next blow to blow him apart, he avoided it. Indeed, using combinations of Limitless Paradox, Delight's Pursuit, Exorbitance, and Master Cataract allowed Fulgardt to create a practically limitless number of doubles, ensuring that killing him would be a tall order, even for the current Skullius, but it also allowed Fulgardt to inflate his endurance. It would be an even taller task to exhaust him.

…But the same was true for Skullius, even though Fulgardt didn't understand why. Thus…

Dashing back, creating distance between himself and the Hybrid, Fulgardt riled up his Voided Death Essence.

'Majestic Territory Expulsion, Demesne of Maximum Fatality!'

Would this too fail to kill the current Skullius? Fulgardt didn't believe it.

How could a technique that created a rapid, overwhelming sequence to obliterate the target's body, then soul, then Broader Existence fail to kill a mere Divine?

The Territory's shell blossomed to engulf the entire hall, with Skullius at the epicenter. Fulgardt had gotten even faster at casting it and mobilizing its ability, and he was only going to continue refining it. An innumerable number of dark hands flooded from the Immoral, flooding in Skullius' direction.

…Yet he remained still.

Fulgardt's eyes bulged in focus. Skullius had to have a solution to this, he speculated. What would it be?

The answer exceeded Fulgardt's imagination for that moment, after all, he did not even see it in action when it was applied.

He only recalled a flash of light that cascaded infinitely within his field of vision, right where Skullius had stood within the Territory. It lasted as long as Fulgardt could bear keeping Demesne of Fatality up – a scant amount of time, to be sure. When the Territory began peeling away… Skullius was standing right where Fulgardt remembered him to have been standing, pristine and healthy.

The Immoral frowned at this, trying to wrap his mind around it. An inkling told him that what Skullius had just done wasn't something unfathomable. It wasn't something he hadn't seen before. In fact, Fulgardt himself played around with something like that earlier, courtesy of Void!

"You're losing your edge. Where's your tact, Fulgardt?"

The words came after a fist crushed the Immoral's Bare Guise and forced him into the delicate flooring of the hall.

When Fulgardt reemerged a distance from Skullius, the Hybrid turned sharply to him and continued speaking as though Fulgardt's respawning was a normal aspect of combat.

"Groping for my robe in order to taste my Ju`wtte again. Do you figure that's your only way to survive this?"

Fulgardt wasn't listening, however. He was still gaping in awe at what Skullius had just done.

'Litte! He used Litte, didn't he?!'