Turning away for even a moment would have left the audience clueless, as the Miscreant was thrown into a headlong assault against the now-defending Seraph. Although they kept tying out hits, that only meant that every consecutive strike only added to either party's power.
They made it to ten chained ties before either of them made any new moves.
"I guess I ought to be careful if your combo's at ten!" Lyric broke away from the clash, expressing a new animosity. She jumped straight up, using one hand to cast a stormy grey cloud over the arena, and the other to throw her staff like a javelin straight into the ground.
Electricity soon surged across the battlefield as sparks and static burst from the earth. That cloud loosed a downpour of heavy rainfall that snuffed out any bit of fire he tried to conjure up.
"Call yourselves blessed, folks. What you're seeing now is Lyric's Seventh Sea, a spell that uses all three of her combined elements to alter the terrain in such a way that puts her at a total advantage in terms of elements. She's already built up a combo of her own, meaning she's got speed and power boosts from both the battlefield and her Affinity. This'll be something, alright." Ryder announced.
Lyric landed hard but was gone before he could get an eye on where she'd fallen. It was an understatement to say that she'd gotten faster, but he grinned at the idea of a foe of higher caliber than his own.
With cracks of lightning, she appeared in multiple places all at once. Repeated strikes from all angles forced him into a series of blocks that each dug him deeper into place. He quickly became aware of just how dire this situation was.
With each subsequent attack, she only got faster and stronger... and with him being unable to do so much as even return a hit, the power gap was only widening.
She appeared too quickly for him to react, with a sweeping kick knocking him into the air. Without solid ground for fortitude, Kyoya scrambled to find his footing—a reaction far too late. An onrush of thunderous punches and kicks ensued, bolts and sparks flying away from the Miscreant turned training dummy.
"I told you once already..." She followed the end of that chain with a twirling kick while riding her staff. The movement saw her landing and readying an upward swing as though she were about to drive a home run. "NOTHING'S GONNA STOP ME FROM TAKIN' THIS, SO DON'T YOU DARE SLOW DOWN!"
She swung with cutthroat ferocity; a thundercrack straight through his torso testified to yet another crippling hit from the Seraph. The breath left his lungs right in suit.
If the impact from the staff didn't leave a serious mark, his flying into the dirt made up for it. The intense flare of shocking sores across his upper body quickly reinforced the theory.
"A MONSTROUS HIT FROM LYRIC, BUT KYOYA'S STILL NOT DOWN! IS HE A GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT, OR JUST OUTRIGHT TOUGH!?" Rory clung to the edge of his seat, backed by his partners in business.
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Alexandria followed. "There's no doubt that he's resilient, but as it stands, Lyric is only boosting her speed and Magic levels by the second. If he doesn't do something soon, this battle's conclusion might be reached sooner than expected."
Kyoya wasn't even given time to fully stand before she was back in his face. While he weaved out of her incoming flurry, the boy gritted his teeth at the inability to find an opening.
Given his options, even that was asking more than a lot.
"Gotta make something outta nothing, here..."
Kyoya took on a purely defensive stance, holding up his forearms—a clear invitation for her continued assault. There was a certain uniformity in her strikes, giving him a minuscule window to offer some form of resistance that wasn't just holding up a block.
Now, every time she threw out an attack, he was able to return with a swing of his own; with each consecutive counter, it became more and more possible to escape her onslaught.
His margin of error was less than a half second, but as one counter led to the next, that margin widened. Repeated advances offered even more of a hint as to what would happen before she'd appear again and clobber him for even the slightest mistake... Even still, it didn't seem that she had any intent to slow down.
Yet, after gaining enough strength to start knocking her attacks away, he struck a balance.
The Miscreant embraced a rhythm in his returns, and once she made too wild of a swing to disengage, he took hold of the polearm. His grasp on the weapon was soon imbued with raging embers, clashing in a brilliant plight against the storm.
"NOW FOR SOME PAYBACK!"
With the opportunity gained, he wrestled for control of the staff. After jabbing it forward to throw off her grip, he tore it back toward him. Kyoya took her attempts to break away head-on, absorbing several hits worth of power and channeling that energy into his right arm. "CROSS COUNTER!"
Just as she was finally in his range, he threw that arm out and caught her with a brutal clothesline that practically put her in the ground.
"WHAT A LARIAT FROM THE UNDERDOG! I HAVEN'T SEEN A BLOW THAT ROUGH SINCE THE WINDY SEASON!"
"No kidding; you could dry a week's worth of laundry on a clothesline like that." Rory's roar was tailed by a snark from Ryder, as was the way.
A savage burst of flame followed that hit. It burned away some of Seventh Sea—just enough to impair her movement to a more manageable level.
"And then Double Down!" Acting on the window gained from her delayed recovery, he chased with a kick that launched her upward. With no means of the opponent getting ahold of her weapon, he was able to act further with a two-handed overhead smash.
Then, as if that swing in tides wasn't but a scratch, she was out of reach before he could gain any more ground. Still, Lyric rose to her feet—with only slightly less stability than before.
"Right, okay, that stung..."
The both of them were exerted to brutal lengths; Kyoya stood hunched with an arm clutched around his chest, letting off labored breaths in a staredown with the Seraph. She held herself up with her staff, its pointed end jabbed into the ground for support.
Her demeanor visibly shifted from the usual arrogant gloat to that of a real defending champion.
Now, bringing this title bout home was secondary to surviving whatever else she had up her sleeve.