Within the arena, Eugene and Kash were isolated. The walls were made of a patchwork of enchanted hibiscus flowers melded with Hibiscan energy reinforced steel. The only thing besides the fighters and the walls were microphones, cameras, and a speaker, so Eugene and Kash could hear the announcer.
“In one minute, Kash vs. Grzegorz will begin! Place your bets now. Kash is 83% favored to win, even with his loss condition being Eugene getting a single strike on him!”
Eugene smirked. They were underestimating him. What fools.
Kashimo noticed.
“Feeling cocky, Grzegorz? How advanced of a cultivator are you, really.”
Eugene chose not to reply, instead devoting all of his focus on sensing the emanations from Kash. The Kambili-rank cultivator had begun to transmute his Hibiscan energy into boiling water. If Eugene concentrated, he could just barely hear its sizzling.
This was the technique that made Kash so powerful, and was the thing that had revitalized the Boiling Water Sect. The typical technique of those in the sect was to transmute their energy into boiling water. It was easy to control and formed a strong defensive barrier around the user. It was offensively powerful too, but only at close range, and it was easy to avoid.
Transmuting Hibiscan essence into lightning was the polar opposite of boiling water. Lightning transmutation was difficult to handle and inexperienced practitioners would often kill themselves with it. It couldn’t defend against much of anything, but was stunningly powerful, especially at long range, when used offensively.
“Thirty seconds until the fight begins! The greatest Hibiscan prodigy versus one of the strongest cultivators of the modern age!” declared the announcer.
Those transmutations complimented each other perfectly, and Kash’s genius was finding a way to combine them into an ultra-powerful technique. By arcing lightning through water, he simultaneously increased its power and made it easier to control.
But cultivators had tried that before and largely failed. That was because the real challenge with combining lightning transmutation with water transmutation was that it actually required a far more difficult transmutation. Cultivators when turning their Hibiscan essence into water automatically made it as pure as distilled water. Water only conducted electricity if it had impurities, namely certain suspended particles.
“Grzegorz ascended from the Blue Realm to the Purple Realm in a day, but will he be able to defeat the God of Lightning? Fifteen seconds remaining!” the announcer shouted.
Kash had figured out how to very precisely transmute minute amounts of the water into those particles until he had just the right mixture. It took some time to properly set up, roughly a minute. Even after the difficult setup, it took extreme effort and focus to maintain the right mixture. Any imbalance and the lightning would either dissipate or go wild and out of control.
“Three!” The announcer yelled.
Kash’s boiling lightning was the peak of Hibiscan transmutation, and while others in the Boiling Water Sect were capable of it as well, none were as skilled as him.
“Two!”
Eugene smelled ozone and heard the crackling of electricity. Kash was arcing lightning through the boiling water now.
“One!”
Eugene took a fighting stance, readying his Hibiscan energy but not transmuting it into anything just yet. He wanted to keep the element of surprise.
“Begin!”
Eugene darted forward, eager to fight. Kash jumped back while firing thin bolts of lightning. They were deliberately weak attacks, designed to probe Eugene’s defenses against electricity rather than do serious harm.
Eugene merely dodged all of them rather than bothering blocking the bolts, his reflexes quicker than Kash had probably expected them to be. He continued the chase, Kash seemingly not wanting to fight hand to hand. If Eugene’s plan was to get close and then pull out whatever trump card he had, as seemed apparent based on Eugene’s mad dashing towards Kash, then it made sense Kash would avoid melee combat.
Kash suddenly stopped darting away, instead choosing to build up lightning for a massive attack. Kash had been playing around earlier. Eugene wouldn’t be able to get away with merely dodging this one.
It was time to use his secret weapon. Eugene prepared his Hibiscan energy for transmutation. He wouldn’t complete the transmutation until the lightning had already been fired, to avoid giving his plan away. But, he had no guarantee his defense would work. For the first time since fighting the Oil Avatar, Eugene felt real fear!
Kash finished his preparation and released a barrage of full-strength bolts, shooting discharge after discharge at Eugene. There was no dodging these strikes. In an instant, Eugene converted all of his Hibiscan energy into olive oil and formed a shield around him.
In order to transmute Hibiscan essence, some Hibiscan energy had to be expended. For stronger transmutations, such as converting Hibiscan energy into electricity, 60% would be turned into Hibiscan lightning and 40% would be spent to power the transformation. A skilled cultivator like Kash could bring it up to an 80% efficiency rate.
But olive oil was pitifully weak! It defended against nearly nothing and had zero offensive relevance. Thus, there was a 98% base rate of conversion. Eugene, as a skilled transmuter, could bring that efficiency rate to 99%. Olive oil transmutation had been discovered many centuries ago by experimenters but had been dismissed as useless.
Eugene was proficient in transmuting his Hibiscan energy into crude oil, which of course was very different from olive oil, but certain basic similarities between the two existed. Eugene could have transmuted his Hibiscan essence into crude oil, but it would have been much less efficient while still accomplishing the same goal, that being blocking electricity.
Olive oil didn’t conduct electricity at all, and so was the perfect defense against lightning attacks. Eugene wouldn’t get electrocuted, but the lightning would simply destroy the olive oil. But because the efficiency rate was so high, Eugene was wasting hardly any Hibiscan energy, while Kash was expending a lot.
The lightning burned away much of the olive oil, creating a smoky haze around Eugene. He darted out of the smoke, not wanting to be caught off guard.
“What was that defense,” asked Kash, “some kind of oil?”
Eugene nodded.
“Olive oil, specifically.”
“Wonderful! Many cultivators have devised ways to defend against my lightning, but none were as creative as you. I had a feeling the Dawn and Dusk Sect’s sudden prodigy would disappoint, but I was mistaken.”
“Shall you allow me to fight you hand-to-hand now?” requested Eugene.
“Let us! I want to see what you’ll do.”
Eugene flung himself forwards, coating his fists in a thick layer of olive oil. Kash darted forwards to meet him. They traded a flurry of blows, smoking rising from their fists. Their brief moments of contact weren’t long enough for Eugene to put more than trace amounts of olive oil into Kash’s transmutation.
Eugene tried landing a solid hit on Kash, but Kash instead grabbed him by the wrists and flipped him over, shocking his body with a surge of electricity.
“And Kash flips over Eugene!” screeched the announcer.
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But this actually played into Eugene’s favor, because their sustained contact had allowed him to contaminate Kash’s careful balance of transmutation with an injection of olive oil. Kash’s lightning output would be halved until he removed the adulterant, but he couldn’t do that if Eugene kept up the pressure on him
“Astonishing,” said Kash.
He blocked one of Eugene’s punches before jumping back. His Hibiscan energy suddenly surged.
“Time to stop holding back.”
Eugene didn’t dare attack him now that Kash had doubled his Hibiscan energy, letting his full power loose. Kash arced his lightning in a circular pattern. The electricity steadily merged and coalesced into a greater, spherical form. Kash extracted some lightning from his body until he formed an orb of pure lightning spinning in the palm of his hand about the size of a basketball.
The ball he had formed was only at half-strength because of the olive oil contamination, yet it still had enough power to end the fight if it hit Eugene!
Eugene drew back his right fist, imbuing it with 80% of his Hibiscan energy. He near-instantaneously transmuted it into olive oil, before meeting Kash’s electricity-charged melee attack. But he opened his mouth to speak just before he struck.
“Dimension Expulsion: Vantablack.” he said, in one-hundredth of a second, using Hibiscan energy to forcibly manipulate his muscles to spit out the words faster.
Because of some unknown Hibiscan law, activating the dimension required saying its command words. In a fight between two cultivators, expulsing a dimension first could be the difference between winning and losing. Thus, fast-speaking Hibiscan techniques were essential.
Vantablack Dimensions allowed for the manipulation of speed and strength, but only up to a point. For example, Eugene could imbue himself with 10% more speed. However, beyond that, he would have to make trade-offs. An example would be giving himself 20% more speed but weakening his attack power by 10%, or increasing everyone else in the domain’s attack power by 10%.
The Dimension he just expulsed was similar. It made Eugene’s attacks 400% stronger, and made Kash’s attacks 390% faster in exchange. However, this unexpected opening of a Dimension strongly favored Eugene in this scenario. Their attacks were a tenth of a second away from hitting each other anyways, so Kash’s speed “advantage” didn’t matter.
Such a tactic of opening a Vantablack Dimension in the instant before striking someone to enhance your attack was called a...
“Grzegorz tried a Vantablack Flash!” yelled the announcer.
Kash used the same technique Eugene did of using Hibiscan energy to move the mouth faster.
“Dimension Expulsion: Vantablack.” he said in one hundredth of a second, before their fists met.
He didn’t bother to imbue it with any special properties because two Vantablack Dimensions within each other would instantly break apart. The force of the dimensions breaking threw both of them back, but neither was knocked down.
“But his Dimension breaks apart after Kash opens one too!” the announcer howled.
Eugene redirected the coalesced energy from his fists to the rest of his body.
Eugene had cleverly saved himself from Kash’s ultimate ball lightning attack, but at the cost of weakening his Hibiscan energy reserves. The more extreme the effects of a Vantablack Dimension were, the more Hibiscan energy it cost to open one. Kash had given his Dimension zero effects, and wasted almost no Hibiscan energy. While it may not have been a win for Eugene, it certainly wasn’t a loss. Better to lose some Hibiscan energy than be turned into an immobile, smoldering near-corpse by Kash.
And Kash had been weakened by Eugene’s sneak vegetable oil attack. He was continuously losing some Hibiscan energy right now, as he had been purifying the water the second they were both thrown back. Furthermore, Kash hadn’t lost the lightning used to make the ball attack, merely reabsorbed it back into the water. But to form the ball in the first place took energy to organize it in a spherical vortex pattern, which Kash had wasted. Their brief melee encounter was a slight win for Eugene.
Eugene and Kash slowed their momentum from the Vantablack Dimension’s destruction and righted themselves. They walked towards each other.
“Interesting,” said Kash, “To be honest, I didn’t expect such clever tactics from you. You’ve impressed me.”
“What Hibiscan prodigy would I be if I couldn’t hold myself in a fight?”
“True, true,” replied Kash, “though I think you’re all out of tricks.”
Eugene didn’t respond, instead evaluating what had happened so far. He was down to 70% of the Hibiscan energy he had at the start of the fight. His estimate was that Kash had quadruple or quintuple his energy.
Kash charged at him again. Eugene’s fists met his, but now Kash had purified the olive oil from his system and wasn’t letting anything like that happen again. Kash started landing more and more of his hits, and kept them brief enough that Eugene couldn’t force any olive oil onto him. But Kash was overextending himself, and during a moment of particular vulnerability for him, Eugene threw his right fist at his stomach.
But Kash’s movement was a feint. He had been secretly coalescing a small ball of lightning, and slammed it into Eugene’s arm before Eugene’s punch could land.
Eugene was thrown back a thousand feet before tumbling to a stop. His right arm was mangled, bone poking out, though a small upside was that Kash had inadvertently cauterized the wound. Not resting for a moment, Kash threw several bolts of lightning that Eugene was only barely able to block, creating a cloud of smoke around him from the burnt olive oil. Kash fully subsumed himself into his lightning and arced to Eugene’s position, landing and then instantly hitting him with more ball lightning.
Eugene, not even able to stand, couldn’t dodge out of the way, and had to expend most of his olive oil defending against the attack. Eugene could have expulsed a Vantablack Dimension, but that would more annoy Kash than anything else. If Eugene kept pulling that trick, Kash would likely open his real Dimension Expulsion, which would cause Eugene to instantly lose. The only thing preventing him from doing that was a sense of respect for Eugene.
Eugene’s Hibiscan energy reserves had drained to just 45%, while Kash was in top fighting shape. Kash zoomed in for another lightning ball attack. Eugene let it hit, not wanting to waste any more Hibiscan energy on defending.
His body convulsed with electricity, the attack shocking his internal organs into malfunction and scarring the front of his body. He spit blood.
“Is that it? Will you concede?” Kash asked.
“Your loss condition technically hasn’t gone into effect yet,” stated Kash, “because you are still technically capable of fighting.”
Seeing that Eugene didn’t seem like responding, he continued.
“So, I ask you: do you concede. I don’t want to hit you with my balls until you’re fully incapacitated and out of Hibiscan energy, but I will if I have to.”
Eugene opened his mouth to reply. Kash was eager to hear his victory declared.
“Dimension Expulsion: Zero-Electron Olive Oil Coating.”
Eugene and Kash were instantly encased in what looked like the inside of an olive. They were both subsumed in a full olive oil coating. It took 20% of Eugene’s Hibiscan energy just to create it.
Eugene could just barely hear the faint noises of the announcer going wild while describing what had just happened.
Kash’s electricity instantly died, and he didn’t bother starting to purify his boiling water, instead opening his mouth.
“Dimen-”
Eugene interrupted him, and using 5% of his Hibiscan energy, forced his tongue to say the words in a thousandth of a second, barely beating Kash to the punch.
“Dimension Expulsion: Last Oily Rays of the Setting Sun.”
Kash was stunned, completely caught off guard. “Grzegorz” had not one, but two different fully realized dimensions! Eugene was now down to none of his Hibiscan energy.
Eugene had expulsed the classic Dusk Dimension powered by dusk energy. It was nearly night. The sinking light of the dusk sun winked out, and Eugene grasped its final ray with his scorched left hand. A thirty second timer appeared.
Eugene coughed.
“The restriction placed upon you is that you can’t open a dimension for thirty seconds, and I’m required to tell you that.” Eugene spoke in a dry, cracked voice.
Eugene had severely weakened the power of his own dimension in exchange for not allowing Kash to open his for a limited period of time. There was only one ray of light, as opposed to the dozens that were normally in the Dusk Dimension. And Eugene had to physically use it himself instead of directing them to attack merely with his mind.
Kash had to last for thirty seconds, and then he would win. All he had to do was stop Eugene from using the ray, which must be his final ultimate attack! Kash darted over to Eugene, intending to cripple his ability to use the ray. He closed in instantly, expanding his sphere of boiling water twenty feet around him, enveloping Eugene and boiling his entire body, rendering him unable to move. His boiling water was still corrupted by olive oil because he hadn’t had any time to purify it.
But Eugene didn’t need to throw the ray, because the instant Kash’s boiling water and olive oil reached it, it struck, piercing his body. The ray in fact traveled fastest within the medium of olive oil, in an inverse of how electricity worked. Eugene got one hit on him. Kash had lost.
Eugene collapsed the dimension.
Both his arms were a mangled mess of bone and scorched flesh. Most of his internal organs had failed. He was incapable of moving. If he didn’t receive immediate medical attention, he would die. He was in a similar state to how he was after the Oil Avatar was finished with him.
Kash may have lost, but so did Eugene. He was completely unable to continue fighting. If it were a real fight, Kash would have won. But the terms of the Bondage Vouch meant that it was technically a draw.
The God of Lightning walked over to him, burnt by the ray but largely unharmed.
“You were magnificent, Grzegorz. I shall never forget our fight for as long as I live.”
Cultivators dashed into the arena, picking up Eugene’s near-lifeless body and taking him to the medical wards. Kash leisurely walked out, a bit sore from the fight.
Eugene let himself slip into unconsciousness.