Blood Online: Evolving Endlessly-Chapter 196: The Last Round (5)

The sound coming from Nibo’s platform had been audible across the entire arena since the fight began—deep, resonant impacts that carried through stone and made adjacent platforms vibrate with sympathetic frequency. Not the sharp crack of breaking barriers or the hiss of elemental techniques. Something more fundamental. The sound of mass meeting mass with nothing between them but momentum and the structural integrity of whatever was unlucky enough to be in the way.

Nibo’s opponent was his mirror in every way that mattered.

Size—identical, both standing head and shoulders above what normal physiology should support. Build—pure muscle and bone density that made movement look like it should be impossible but somehow achieved fluid grace anyway. Weapon—a massive double-bladed axe that was Nibo’s single-blade taken to logical extreme, edges that caught light wrong suggesting they’d been forged from something that wasn’t quite metal.

But where Nibo’s eyes carried the dark intelligence of someone who thought more than his appearance suggested, his opponent’s eyes were flat red, empty of everything except purpose. This wasn’t a warrior. It was a war machine given approximate shape, built for one function and refined until nothing else remained.

They’d been fighting for three minutes.

The platform looked like a quarry after controlled demolition.

Cracks spiderwebbed across every surface. Sections of stone had been pulverized into gravel from impacts that exceeded the material’s compression threshold. The barriers flickered constantly, absorbing shock that would have shattered normal containment, the system straining to keep the violence from spilling into adjacent spaces.

Nibo’s axe met his opponent’s in another exchange that made the air itself recoil.

The collision produced a shockwave visible as a pressure ring expanding outward from the impact point. Both fighters held their ground, neither giving an inch, muscles corded with strain that should have been unsustainable. Nibo’s dark eyes met those flat red ones across the locked weapons and he grinned—that wide, dangerous expression that meant he was genuinely enjoying himself.

"Finally," he rumbled, his voice carrying satisfaction that had nothing to do with winning and everything to do with being challenged. "Something that can actually take a hit."

The opponent didn’t respond. Didn’t acknowledge the words. It simply pushed harder, channeling more force through the locked axes, testing Nibo’s strength against its own.

Nibo pushed back.

The platform cracked beneath both their feet, stone fragmenting from the pressure of two immovable objects refusing to move. The sound was continuous now—not individual impacts but sustained compression, reality protesting the forces being applied to it.

’This thing is strong,’ Nibo’s mind registered with the clinical assessment of someone who’d spent years learning exactly how much force he could generate and what that force could accomplish. ’As strong as me. Maybe stronger. Can’t win through raw power alone.’

The thought would have worried most fighters.

Nibo found it exhilarating.

He released the lock suddenly, letting his opponent’s push carry it forward into overextension, and brought his axe around in a horizontal slash aimed at the exposed torso. The opponent recovered faster than physics should allow, its own axe coming down in a vertical block that caught Nibo’s strike with perfect timing.

Another shockwave. More cracks in the platform.

They separated and immediately closed again, axes moving in patterns too fast for weapons that size to achieve. Overhead strikes met rising blocks. Horizontal slashes deflected off hasty guards. Spinning attacks that used momentum to multiply force clashing against counterattacks that used the same physics.

Every exchange was catastrophic. Every collision produced sounds that made fighters on distant platforms flinch. The barriers around Nibo’s space were in constant state of energy absorption, flaring so bright they were difficult to look at directly.

Nibo took a strike across his shoulder—couldn’t fully block, could only minimize it—and felt the axe blade bite through his armor and into the muscle beneath. Not deep, his enhanced durability resisting penetration that would have cleaved normal flesh, but deep enough that blood sprayed in an arc.

{HP: 91/100}

He ignored the pain and the notification both, countering in the same motion, his axe driving toward his opponent’s knee in a strike designed to shatter the joint and eliminate mobility.

The opponent’s second axe blade—the weapon was double-edged, he had to remember that, had to track both edges simultaneously—came down to intercept, and the collision happened six inches above the intended target. Still close enough that the shock traveled up the opponent’s leg, close enough that Nibo saw it stumble slightly.

First sign of weakness. First indication that it could be damaged.

Nibo pressed forward immediately, not giving it time to recover, his axe moving in combinations that flowed from overhead to horizontal to upward thrust without pause between attacks. Each strike carried enough force to crack stone when it hit the platform after being blocked or dodged.

The opponent met him blow for blow, its double-bladed axe working in defensive patterns that suggested someone had programmed every possible attack angle and trained responses until they were automatic. It didn’t think—it reacted, perfect defense emerging without the delay that conscious decision required.

But perfect defense wasn’t perfect offense.

Nibo’s attacks were getting through. Not cleanly, not with the devastating impact he wanted, but grazing hits that added up. A slice across the ribs that barely penetrated armor but drew that strange not-quite-blood the creature carried. A pommel strike to the head that didn’t crack the skull but made it recoil. An axe blade that caught the opponent’s weapon-arm and carved a furrow through whatever served as muscle.

{Opponent HP: 87/100}

The notification appeared in Nibo’s vision—unusual, the system rarely tracked opponent health—and he understood what it meant. This wasn’t a fight where one hit would end things. This was attrition. Damage accumulated over sustained exchange until one fighter’s body failed before the other’s.

The opponent seemed to reach the same conclusion. Its fighting style shifted, became more aggressive, sacrificing perfect defense for offense that would end the fight faster. Both axes moved in coordinated assault now, creating zones where Nibo couldn’t exist without being hit, forcing him to choose which strike to block and which to accept.

He took a hit to his side, the axe blade carving through armor and deep into the muscle beneath. Felt ribs crack from the impact, felt blood pour from a wound that was serious without being immediately fatal.

But his counter landed clean—a overhead chop that the opponent tried to block but couldn’t completely stop. Nibo’s axe drove through its guard and into its shoulder, the blade sinking four inches deep before being stopped by bone that was denser than it should be.

He wrenched the axe free and blood—that not-quite-right blood—sprayed in patterns that painted the already ruined platform.

They were both wounded now. Both bleeding. Both moving with the slight stiffness that came from damaged tissue having to work harder than it wanted to.

The fight accelerated.

Not faster attacks—they were already moving at the upper limit of what their bodies could achieve. But more committed. Every strike thrown with killing intent, nothing held back, no technique reserved for later. Just pure violence between two beings who understood that victory meant being slightly more durable than the thing trying to kill you.

Nibo’s axe caught his opponent across the chest, shallow but wide, opening a line from shoulder to opposite hip.

{Opponent HP: 65/100}

The opponent’s counter drove into Nibo’s thigh, deep enough to make the leg threatening to buckle.

Another exchange. Nibo’s strike to the head that cracked something—bone or the armor-like skull, didn’t matter which.

Counter-strike that caught Nibo’s weapon arm, didn’t break it but made gripping the axe suddenly require conscious effort to overcome the pain.

The math was clear. They were wearing each other down at nearly identical rates. Whoever made the first major mistake, whoever’s body failed first, whoever couldn’t push through accumulating damage—that fighter would lose.

Nibo adjusted his grip despite the pain in his arm and activated the divine gift he’d been saving.

His already massive frame seemed to swell, muscles expanding past normal limitation, bones reinforcing themselves, every system in his body being pushed beyond baseline into something that approached genuinely superhuman. The platform cracked beneath his feet from increased weight, from density that exceeded what his normal mass should carry.

The strength increase was exponential.

His next strike came faster than before, hit harder than before, carried momentum that made previous attacks look tentative by comparison.

The opponent tried to block.

The block failed.

Nibo’s axe drove through the defensive position, through the opponent’s own weapon that tried to intercept, and caught the creature clean across the torso. Not a grazing hit this time. Deep penetration, the axe blade sinking into whatever served as the opponent’s chest cavity until it hit the spine and stopped.

{Opponent HP: 34/100}

The opponent staggered backward, axe still partially embedded in its torso, that not-quite-blood pouring from the wound in quantities that suggested major damage to internal structures.

But it didn’t fall.

Its flat red eyes tracked Nibo with the same empty purpose they’d shown from the beginning, and it adjusted its stance to compensate for the wound, to fight around the damage, to continue despite injury that would have ended most fighters.

It pulled Nibo’s axe free from its own body—just reached down with one hand and yanked the blade out, more blood spraying—and tossed the weapon aside. Its own double-bladed axe came up in two-handed grip, and despite the catastrophic chest wound, despite the blood loss, despite everything, it moved forward to continue the fight.

’This thing doesn’t know how to quit,’ Nibo thought, and the observation carried respect rather than concern. ’Doesn’t feel pain or fear or doubt. Just keeps coming until it’s dead or I am.’

But unfortunately he could work with that.