With every step Narvel took forward, the statue's figure seemed to diminish. From towering at over eighteen feet, it steadily shrank—ten feet, then seven. Its size condensed and its form became denser, sharpening its presence.
Narvel slowed his pace, his pulse quickening the smaller the statue became. A strange tension began to build, curling under his skin.
'This one is really different,' He frowned.
But the change didn't make him stop. It only forced his steps into deliberate and more cautious strides. The wildness that had urged him to throw himself recklessly into the previous battles simmered down, tempered by the unfamiliar pressure radiating from the now more compact opponent.
With every foot closed between them, the statue began to mirror his height. Its frame now stood roughly his size, maybe a few inches taller, but no longer overwhelmingly larger. Its presence, however, had only grown heavier.
When Narvel stood just a breath away, nearly within reach, he halted. The statue's gaze never left him, those carved eyes following every subtle movement of his body with unnerving accuracy. And in that still moment, something passed between them—an acknowledgment. Not admiration. Not curiosity.
But an approval. Or perhaps, something more dangerous: agreement.
Narvel wasn't sure if it was real or imagined, but for the briefest instant, he thought he saw a smirk tug at the corners of the statue's mouth. The carved stone lips curved subtly, disturbingly human.
He didn't have time to dwell on it.
His instincts exploded in alarm, sharp and demanding.
Move!!
He obeyed without hesitation, stepping backward just as a red blur ripped through the air where his head had been. The pressure that accompanied it roared across his face, dragging cuts through his skin with its force alone. The pain was sharp and immediate.
He leaped further back, but the ground itself felt wrong. Not unsteady but deceptive. As though his movement had triggered a response, a snare he hadn't seen.
His gut twisted.
Reacting without thought, Narvel activated his [True Double] attribute. He directed all of its energy into his strength. In an instant, something surged through him—power, raw and overwhelming, coursing through his muscles and bones.
His body transformed under the weight of it. Muscles expanded violently. The sleeves of his shirt tore at the seams, and his trousers ripped along the thighs as his strength stats spiked to 81.
Heat roared through his bloodstream and his skin flushed red. Pain pulsed behind his joints as though his bones threatened to split from the inside. His limbs trembled not from fear, but from the pressure of barely-contained energy.
Then, without warning, a gauntlet appeared from the edge of his vision.
Boom!
The shockwave arrived before the blow, invisible blades of air ripping across his body and opening shallow cuts. The impact came a split-second later, crashing into his crossed arms, his hands had just barely risen in time to block the blow, and even then, his wrists buckled.
Pain screamed through his forearms as the bones shifted unnaturally.
He stumbled backward, his feet dragging seven deep grooves into the stone floor with each forced step. Each retreat sent echoes through the chamber, a harsh rhythm of impact and resistance.
Narvel couldn't believe that even with his strength being this high he was still weaker when compared to the statue. He was shocked that he was still forced into a defensive strait.
The moment he reached the seventh step, the statue was already on him again.
Four fists filled his vision. 'An illusion? No.' He thought in that split moment.
All of them looked solid and real.
He started to shift backward again, hoping to create some distance, but something in his gut warned against it. Another trap, he felt it. His instincts were no longer screaming, they had aligned.
[Deep Thoughts] activated. Clarity and focus calmed his mind.
The pressure from the gauntlets was enough to reignite what he'd been chasing: that perfect storm of instinct and thought, weaving together, where time seemed to stretch and meaning-filled every twitch of his muscle. He welcomed it with a grin he didn't realize he wore.
In that sharpened state, Narvel parsed the movement.
The fists weren't illusions indeed. They were real.
The statue wasn't just fast—it was skillful.
This was a technique.
Narvel just realized that he had just stepped into the ring with a master of some kind.
No matter how he looked at it, Narvel knew he wasn't fast enough to dodge those blows completely, nor was he strong enough to block them without consequence. A small part of him urged him to take the hits, endure, and then find a chance to counter—but that would be reckless without knowing this statue's capabilities.
He didn't know its strength. He didn't know its weaknesses.
Suffering serious injuries now would be a mistake.
This time, Narvel didn't give in to that reckless urge. He summoned Ebonveil in an instant, the weapon forming with a hiss of energy in his grasp as he slashed upward to meet the incoming fists.
But the statue, sensing danger, changed its rhythm without hesitation. Its clenched fists relaxed into open palms, deflecting the scythe's edge with calculated slaps and smooth pushes, guiding the deadly blade away with fluid movements.
The sound of metal scraping stone echoed through the chamber as their exchange ended in a momentary retreat. Both of them took a step back, instinctively widening the distance between them.
Narvel's grip on Ebonveil tightened. His breathing slowed.
Bringing the weapon out had been the right call. For the first time since entering the chamber, a statue had managed to block—not just avoid, but parry Ebonveil.
None of the others had been able to manage that.
He glanced at the weapon. No nicks. No dulling. The scythe hummed in his palm with restrained energy, excited once again.
At this moment, he didn't even consider going back to using his fists. [Deep Thoughts] was still active, flowing through his mind like a second awareness, deepening his focus and making each thought sharper, each decision more deliberate.
That immersive combat state was intensifying and Ebonveil was the reason for this.
He was beginning to understand something beneath the surface of the fight. Even with Ebonveil drawn, this opponent wouldn't fall easily. Unlike the others, this statue couldn't just be subdued with force or aggression, at least the type he was capable of—it demanded something more. Control, skills, and techniques.
Ebonveil's appearance seemed to make Narvel feel as if he was dancing at the edge of death. Its presence alone had stirred the air between him and the statue. The pressure that the statue emitted grew heavier.
For the first time, it regarded Narvel as a true threat.
Then, the faint red glow that pulsed around the statue's body shifted. It flowed inward, folding into itself at the core of its chest before spreading outward again, thin rivers of light diverging and streaming toward each of its limbs.
Its arms glowed faintly now, the red light curling around the edges of its joints, flickering through its fingers like heat waves rising from molten stone.
The air between them thickened and every breath that Narvel took was weighed down by the charged tension. The atmosphere itself seemed to brace for the inevitable clash as they shared a presence of danger pressing against both combatants.
A second passed. Then another.
By the third, both moved at once.
Their speeds were nearly identical, but the statue held the edge. Its body blurred, vanishing before Narvel's eyes as if it had melted into the folds of the dim chamber light.
Narvel's gaze shot left, then right—searching. His instincts flared before his eyes caught anything, and without turning, he drove the butt of Ebonveil backward, aiming straight for the space behind him.
A harsh clang rang out.
The statue's palm had deflected the hilt away with uncanny precision.
Using the force from that deflection, Narvel spun, dragging his body into a sharp twist until he faced the statue again, immediately following it with a slash.
But the statue compressed its form in a single fluid motion, folding its legs together, and torso shifting sideways — barely dodging the blade's arc. It responded with a quick strike toward Ebonveil's side, trying to knock the weapon from Narvel's grasp.
Narvel let go or at least made it appear so.
The blade curved mid-air, swerving away from the incoming punch, then halted, floating in place for a split second before reversing course and snapping back into his waiting palm. His telekinesis flared through the space, briefly disturbing the air around him.
The effort sent a jolt of strain through his mind. Ebonveil was no featherweight.
Before he could catch his breath, he sent the weapon in an overhead arc, crashing downward toward the statue. It missed again, carving a clean cut through the empty air as the statue glided aside.
One attacked, and the other avoided.
When the roles reversed, it was the same. Blades and fists met nothing but air or caught on sharp blocks and glancing parries. Neither could land a decisive blow, their movements blurring together in a dance of near misses and endurance that dragged on for minutes.
Yet despite the stalemate, blood began to dot Narvel's skin.
He hadn't been struck directly, but the wind pressure from almost every missed strike tore at him with invisible blades. Shallow cuts crisscrossed his limbs and cheeks, and the fatigue was beginning to catch up with him.
He was tiring fast.
His muscles burned with the weight of each motion and his stamina was draining faster than it could recover. He knew he couldn't sustain this pace for long. A plan began to form, he had to retreat.
With every step, he used the momentum of his attacks to shift himself back, inching toward the passageway he had entered from. He had a feeling the statue wouldn't pursue him beyond this chamber.
But just as he began to believe in that possibility, the air changed.
The temperature climbed sharply.
A wave of heat pressed down on the space around him. The stone gauntlets adorning the statue's fists began to shimmer, gaining a molten red hue that pulsed with energy. The transformation gave them a hard, glowing shell and a hint of superficial armor forged from the heat.
Then the statue punched forward.
In that instant, more than a dozen ghostly images of fists materialized, each one as real as the other. They came down like falling stars, rushing toward Narvel with terrifying speed and synchronized movement.
He felt it in his chest, the sensation of death.
Without hesitation, he activated his unnamed skill. From the shadows around him, tendrils of darkness erupted. They spun outward in a fan-shaped defense, their movement sharp and rapid, screaming through the heated air as they intercepted the incoming barrage.
Tendrils met fists.
The collision roared through the chamber, each clash ringing out like bullets ricocheting against steel plates.