Luke frowned at his opponent.

So this is the Son of Ares. And likely the guy Cybele was telling me about.

The goddess had warned him about an Aresson. That he was powerful and that Luke needed to watch out for him. She had also mentioned Theseus in the same breath, and while Luke knew the son of Poseidon would be a brutal fight, he also felt that with the right tools, he could beat Theseus. Granted, Luke was confident for the same reason Cybele hadn’t been too concerned about the Son of Poseidon being an obstacle; he lacked determination.

Moros was different.

That much was apparent from a single glance. While all the other contestants were wearing glimmering armor and wielding perfectly polished weapons, Moros’s equipment looked like he had peeled it off a corpse. Everything from his two axes to his ruby armor was covered in dents and scratches and caked with an ugly brown and all too familiar residue– dried blood.

More than the axes and the armor, it was the marks on Moros’s body that gave Luke pause.

Scars littered his skin, starting at his fingers and running up the length of his arms, to the sides of his neck, and even to his face. Thin and glossy stripes where blades had nicked his flesh, circular marks from where spears had poked him through, and patches of rough and oddly textured skin from what Luke could only assume were burns. There wasn’t an inch of skin, both visible and spared of the scars.

Obviously, gods are all different people with different attitudes. Aeolus was a cannibal eating the souls of the dead. Zeus seems pretty reasonable, all things considered. Poseidon kind of comes across as an idiot. What kind of person must Ares be to force his kid to live like this? Or is Moros just anti-healing?

If he drank one fast enough, a mortal-tier healing potion would have fixed most of these scars. As a child of a god, he should have had access to such low-level resources. Even the Society had healing potions for sale. For him not to–

Luke’s frown deepened.

“What, do you not like what you see?” Moros teased.

Luke stayed silent.

Moros’s grin grew wider. “You’re one of those serious and boring types, right?”

Luke raised his sword in response. Shaking his head, Moros stepped to the left and slowly began to circle Luke. His smile didn’t slip for even a moment. Despite his arrogant attitude, Luke could tell that Moros was taking their fight seriously.

I don’t know what he can do, but he shouldn’t know about me either. I’m sure he was one of the people who got a scroll after climbing the pyramid, so I need to watch out for fire. He’s a Spartan, so chances are he can do the same thing that super cautious guy in the forest did, so I'll watch out if his muscles start bulging. What else, though?

With his technique active, Luke could see every step the son of Ares took before he even took it. For a moment, Luke debated using Foresight of the End to end the battle. If he timed it right, Luke could catch Moros by surprise, and this would be over without risking anything. However, doing that would leave him drained of mana, and if that happened, he was as good as eliminated.

So, Luke just watched and waited for Moros to make a move. The moment Moros committed to an attack would be when Luke used his technique to bring the fight to an end. But the moment never seemed to come.

Luke resisted the urge to make his annoyance known. Just what the hell is it with Spartans taking their sweet time with everything?

Their strange stalemate went on for a minute. Then, for two. With every second that ticked by, the situation began to feel increasingly absurd. Around them, the other contestants were bitterly attacking each other, and the two of them were stuck playing a weird game of chicken.

I at least have the excuse of having a technique that works better when I counter. What are you doing?! Luke glared at him spitefully.

Muttering, “fuck this,” under his breath, Moros was the first to break. He tossed an ax at Luke’s face.

Luke grinned in relief even as he dodged at the last possible moment. Lifting his arm, he funneled a healthy amount of mana through the spell mark and doused his opponent in flame. He didn’t expect the gout of fire to harm him, for they all should have had some protection against heat. But that protection came at the cost of mana, and the less of it Moros had, the better for him. Luke realized a second too late that he’d made a terrible mistake.

Moros didn’t try to get out of the way. He didn’t try to activate a talisman. He didn’t even retaliate. He did the opposite.

His ruby armor fell from his frame, exposing his torso to the air. Luke caught a brief glimpse of Moros’s mutilated and scarred body before it was drowned in a fire of his own making.

What is he–

Luke’s world erupted in searing, all-consuming, and sudden pain.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Luke thought, panic threatening to overtake his mind. He didn’t know what was happening. Moros was the one doused in fire, so why was he the one burning?

Desperately wanting the pain to stop, Luke focused on the bond between him and Maximus and doubled his constitution. The relief was immediate but far from enough to stem the pain. Taking to the air, Luke instinctively put space between him and his opponent. He needed to figure out what had happened.

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The taste of blood in his mouth and warm wetness within the confines of his armor revealed a ghastly truth. Moros hadn’t just inflicted Luke with pain but had injured him too.

How?

Everything suddenly clicked, from the scars littering Moros’s body to their awkward and too-long stalemate. Moros had wanted Luke to attack.

Is it some kind of voodoo technique? Whatever I do to him gets done to me. But–

Luke carefully looked over Moros. His flames had burned the bald teen, but not as severely as they had burned him.

So, he only takes a fraction of the damage, while his technique magnifies it and reflects it to me. This is bad. Really fucking bad.

How was he even supposed to beat an opponent like that? Anything Luke did that could eliminate Moros would also stop him. Luke didn't see a way, even with a constitution twice as strong as it had any right to be. Not to mention, Hephaestus would remove them both from the competition if they got too injured. Fighting him seemed to be nothing but a lose-lose proposition.

There's gotta be something, though. Moros waited for me to attack, so that’s one limit. If I don’t hurt him, he can’t hurt me. Unless I get caught by his ax, but that won’t happen while I still have mana to fuel my Foresight.

So, a non-lethal takedown? Luke frowned in annoyance. He didn’t have a good method to restrain him. Moros would unravel mundane ropes with an application of mana, which didn’t even include the inherent difficulty of tying up an unwilling Warrior.

I could go with a thousand shallow cuts and hope he succumbs to blood loss before me, but if I’m right and he can do the muscle-enhancing thing that the other Spartan dude could do, I might not outlast him. Even if that does work, I still have other opponents I need to contend with after.

Unless I don’t need to! Why should I get wrapped up in a fight this miserable when that isn’t the real objective?

Luke smiled at his opponent and lowered his sword. “How about we–”

“Hahahahaha.” Moros burst out into laughter. “What, don’t want to fight me anymore?”

“You’ve made yourself hard to defeat. Call me a hypocrite if you want, but I'd rather not have done to me what I’ll need to do to you to win. So, what do you say?”

“Only the brave and the fools enjoy fighting me, and I can’t fault a man for being either. But– “ Moros suddenly yanked the arm holding his remaining ax back. “Just because my opponent is a coward doesn’t mean I should let him run, right?”

Why can things never be easy? And who are you calling a coward, you masochist, fuck you too! And– “Was that supposed to do something–” Hearing a sharp whistling noise behind him, Luke barely dodged an ax to the back. Only to dodge again, as Moros threw his second ax the moment he caught the first one, entering the two in another stalemate.

Great, his axes attract each other? Nice. That’s just what I needed.

Luke sighed in annoyance. He couldn’t attack Moros without hurting himself. The best he could do was disqualify them both. Moros, while skilled and relatively fast, was utterly unable to hit Luke. Whatever techniques or artifacts the son of Ares possessed, none of them could fool Luke’s technique. Moros didn’t have the time to figure out Luke’s weaknesses, but he wasn’t willing to talk things out either. Luke couldn’t help but fear it was going to be another stalemate.

Come on. Think. Think. Think.

Luke desperately tried to formulate a plan, fully aware of sand slowly emptying from the top of the hourglass, but nothing came to mind.

–Until it did. Fire was a destructive force, and that’s all Luke had ever used it for. To burn and destroy. It was all he needed it for, truthfully. Granted, he hadn’t had too long to experiment with the spell, and things like fireballs and jets of flame came intuitively.

That didn’t mean it was all it could be used for.

Luke funneled mana through one of his copied spell marks with a vindictive smile. Then, through his outstretched palm, he shot out dozens of tendrils of flame. The fire snaked forward and wrapped around Moros until Luke had trapped him in a flame prison. One big enough not to burn the superhuman teen caught inside.

The drain on Luke’s mana was heavy. Sustaining continued fire consumed much more energy than a single fireball ever could, and Luke would need to draw on the reserves of his sword to keep up, but he had a solution.

“You know,” Luke grinned, “arrogant jackasses like you are all too eager to jump to conclusions. Just because someone speaks with reason doesn’t mean they lack the strength to make you kneel.”

Within the fiery cage, Moros scoffed and continued to throw his axes.

“Kneel? You must be dreaming. Is this your plan? To sweat me to death?” he said, an arrogant grin plastered all over his face.

You keep on thinking that, bud, Luke thought, suppressing a grimace as he felt his skin sear and his lungs burn with hot air. Moros hadn’t stopped reflecting damage. It felt uncomfortably like being back in boiling water, but after enough time, pain became just another sensation. And as long as the pain was all it was, Luke would endure.

Moros would endure, too.

Until he realizes that there’s no more oxygen.

Sure enough, as the seconds bled to minutes, Moros’s breath became shallower and shallower, and he quickly realized that he had fallen into a trap. Not that it would do him any good. Luke ensured that even obscured by fire, he could see Moros well enough not to negate his technique. As such, no matter which direction Moros tried to escape from, the oxygen-consuming barrier of fire followed, guided by the vision of the future Luke could see.

The battle was won; Luke would be the victor, even if Moros hadn’t given up. But, as the seconds stretched on, Luke came to another conclusion.

This is not fun.

It didn’t happen often, but fighting others was always more palatable when there was a quick and decisive end. Watching Moros desperately scramble from one end of his fiery prison to the other, knowing that he was suffocating while the flames heated the air around him, left a bad taste in Luke’s mouth. As if he was playing with a helpless and trapped animal.

He’s still keeping up the technique reflecting damage to me, so you know what, fair play. Let's see how much longer his mana lasts.

A minute later, Moros fell to his knees. Ten seconds after that, he dismissed whatever technique reflected damage to Luke. Three seconds later, he was gone from the platform in a burst of orange and red light.

Luke sighed in relief. He had been worried that he had underestimated the warrior’s constitution. Cultivators were hardier than reason dictated and could hold their breath for quite some time without adverse effects. That didn’t mean that they could get away without air, though. Underneath the augmentation of mana, warriors were still beings of flesh and blood, and Moros had made one too many mistakes.

Maybe if he stood still instead of panicking. Depriving someone of oxygen isn’t a bad way to take someone down, though. Luke thought as he turned towards Arya and Spiros and their respective opponents. Both were holding their own, but that would change soon enough.

It was time to bring this tournament to a close and see what was waiting for him once it was all over.