10:35 A.M.

The prone body sat up.

Now that it had stopped moving, I could get a better view of the humanoid form that had just come flying through a thick stone wall. The body belonged to Kojiro, the Fourth Dark Apostle.

Kojiro was wearing a white shirt, jeans, and a leather biker’s jacket. The air around him was filled with dust from the destroyed stone wall, and much of this dust had settled on his outfit. He climbed to his feet, evidently unharmed by his unexpected trip through a sturdy wall. There was a scowl on his face, and his eyes were locked on some target on the opposite side of the hole in the wall. Beyond the hole in the wall was the Great Hall where Poldra and I had been heading for the past few minutes.

Kojiro took a few steps back toward the Great Hall before he saw us. He turned toward Poldra and me after a second and said, “Hey Eleven, Thirteen.”

“We have names, Four,” Poldra responded.

“Well, I don’t remember ‘em,” Kojiro said as he climbed back through the hole he had just flown through.

“What was that? Poldra asked me.

“I don’t know.”

Two Dark Apostles and ten sorcerers entered the Great Hall. Dozens of people stood at the outer edge of the Great Hall, and the room’s center was occupied by two men engaged in a lethal dance of blurred fists and frantic footwork. To the outside of the Great Hall stood Svenheim, Dendrite, and the Third Apostle. He didn’t stand out like the other three in his cadre of the first four Apostles. I could see that he was a black man with short dreadlocks, and he was a bit smaller than Dendrite who stood to his left. He introduced himself as Darren, but his username was ArakiForgot.

Svenheim stood slightly closer to the fight than everyone else. He stood with his arms crossed, and his eyes were locked on the fight in front of him.

I knew that those three were standing there, but my eyes were fixed on the fight. Each punch was thrown with titanic force, and the two fighters adjusted their stances with mind-boggling speed. It was only because of my enhanced vision that I could even keep up with their movement. Through the blur of motion, I could barely tell that Talwar was wearing a tucked-in grey T-shirt and jeans.

Kojiro threw a meteoric punch at Talwar’s head, but the strike was intercepted by a raised forearm. Two more of Kojiro’s punches fired forward an instant later, but each strike was stopped by Talwar’s guard. Quick as a flash, Kojiro threw a hook at Talwar’s body. The hook connected, and Talwar was lifted off his feet. The Second Dark Apostle flew a few feet through the air, but he seemed mostly unharmed by the attack.

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Talwar rushed forward, completely unperturbed by the heavy strikes he had just endured, and started throwing punches at Kojiro. Rather than take up a stance, Kojiro moved his head out of the way of the strikes. With speed that reminded me of Muhammad Ali in the boxing ring, Kojiro weaved his head out of the way of Talwar’s attacks. Talwar threw four hard punches at Kojiro’s head in the space of two seconds, and Kojiro dodged all four. Then, Talwar drew his hand back and threw a final punch at Kojiro’s head. A sharp crack rang out as Talwar’s hand rocketed forward. Kojiro jumped backward out of Talwar’s reach in order to dodge the attack, but the attack still landed a glancing blow on Kojiro’s cheek.

I looked around to find the source of the loud “crack” that I heard. For a moment, I was certain that someone had fired a gun. It sounded exactly like a high-velocity bullet flying through the air. I looked at Poldra, Svenheim, Dendrite, and Araki. While I did so, I could tell that the other Dark Apostles were doing the same.

“Pause,” Svenheim shouted as Talwar took a step toward Kojiro.

Talwar stopped in his tracks and turned toward Svenheim. He said, “Come on ref, I had him on the ropes.”

“You wish,” Kojiro laughed as he turned toward Svenheim. “You just got a lucky shot.” A small cut had appeared on Kojiro’s face where Talwar had hit him. As I looked, the wound closed, leaving nothing but a small line of fresh blood.

“What was that sound? Did one of you use a gun? We said there would be no weapons in this fight,” Svenheim said in a voice like a disappointed parent.

Both Kojiro and Talwar shook their heads. They looked at each other to check the other for weapons, but both of them were completely unarmed.

“I don’t see any guns, Sven,” Kojiro said.

“The sound came from my hand when I threw a punch,” Talwar said. “I wanted to increase the velocity of my punch in order to catch Kojiro off guard, so I put a lot of Battle Aura into my back and arm. Just before the punch hit Kojiro, the sound came out of my fist.”

“Wait,” Talwar said thoughtfully. He took up a boxer’s stance with his left hand forward. His whole body tensed for an instant before he threw a hard jab. The punch looked very similar to the one that hit Kojiro, and Talwar’s fist seemed to move instantaneously. One moment his arm was in a guard position, the next it was at full extension.

Another loud “crack” filled the air at the same instant that Talwar threw the punch.

“There it is again,” Svenheim said. “What is that?”

“The sound barrier,” Talwar smirked.

I was stunned. To think that a man’s punch could break the sound barrier was insane, yet I had just seen strong evidence that Talwar’s hand had done just that. I took a moment to remember the speed of sound: 768 miles per hour. A fastball thrown by a professional pitcher would be lucky to pass 100 miles per hour. A race car's top speed was about 200 miles per hour.

I had heard once that the hardest human punch was about 50 miles per hour. A punch that breaks the sound barrier would have to be sixteen times faster. Our bodies were about four times stronger than they were previously, indicating that Battle Aura would have to multiply our power by at least a factor of four.