Kael released.

The dark arrow screamed toward the woman, lightning crackling along its shaft like a serpent made of electricity. Beside him, Yenna thrust her sword forward—three ice spears materializing from thin air and launching in a tight formation.

The woman raised one hand.

WHOOOM.

A wall of wind erupted from her palm—at the attacks themselves. The ice spears shattered into powder. Kael’s arrow veered off course, lightning dissipating into harmless sparks. The other arrows met the same fate, deflected, scattered, destroyed before they could reach within five meters.

Wind control.

Cassian moved first. The three-section staff blurred as he launched forward, chains whistling through the air. He closed the distance in a heartbeat, bringing the staff down in a devastating overhead strike.

The woman’s whip snapped up.

CLANG!

Rapier and staff collided. The impact sent shockwaves rippling through the fog. Cassian pushed—muscle and mana and time-fueled speed driving the staff down with crushing force.

The woman held.

Kael was already behind her. Both short blades drawn, shadow-steel gleaming, aimed at the base of her skull.

Her wind screamed as she sensed him using the wind around her.

WHAM!

A burst of air erupted from her back. Kael was lifted off his feet and thrown backward, blades spinning from his grip. He twisted mid-air and landed in a crouch, boots skidding across cracked asphalt.

Yenna’s ice blast hit the woman’s side a moment later. Frozen mist erupted, spreading across her arm, her shoulder, creeping toward her neck—

WHOOOM!

Another wind burst. Yenna went flying sideways, ice sword torn from her grip, tumbling through a collapsed doorway.

The woman stood in the center of the destruction. Not even breathing hard.

Her head turned towards Kael thinking Kael was the weakest. Foundation Establishment Rank 5. The others were Rank 7 and Rank 8.

She moved as the wind wrapped around her legs, propelling her forward at terrifying speed. The distance between them—fifteen meters—vanished in a heartbeat. Her rapier-whip was already extending, tip aimed directly at Kael’s heart.

Kael didn’t dodge.

He dropped his hands to his sides.

And gravity came crashing down.

Twenty times the normal gravity.

It crashed down like a hammer made of physics itself. The air compressed as the ground beneath Kael’s feet cracked. The woman—mid-lunge, committed to her attack feeling the weight hit her like a truck.

Her knees buckled.

WHAM!

She hit the ground, rapier clattering from her grip. The wind around her stuttered, disrupted by the sheer gravitational pressure compressing everything in a twenty-meter radius.

Her head snapped up. Those glowing green eyes blazed with fury through the white mask.

"You little—"

"Focus on your own fight."

Bruno’s voice echoed from somewhere deeper in the city.

Three hundred meters away, Bruno was having the time of his life.

The water manipulation Rank 5 had recovered from the initial air punch and came back swinging with massive fists of compressed water, each one the size of a small car, crashed toward Bruno with enough force to level buildings.

Bruno punched through them.

His fist met the water fist, and the water fist lost. Spectacularly. The compressed water exploded outward in a spray that drenched three city blocks, and Bruno kept walking forward like nothing had happened.

"Is that all?" Bruno’s voice was a low growl. "I’ve seen children hit harder."

The water cultivator—panic evident in his body language—threw up a barrier. A bubble of swirling water wrapped around his body, dense enough to distort light, strong enough to stop most physical attacks.

Bruno’s fist hit it.

The bubble held for exactly half a second before bursting as the cultivator inside went flying backward through two walls.

Bruno turned.

The steel reinforcement Rank 5 was already moving—trying to sneak and flank while Bruno was occupied. His entire body was coated in metallic sheen, skin transformed into living steel, veins of iron visible beneath the surface.

He threw a punch at Bruno’s kidney.

Bruno sidestepped.

The steel fist hit empty air. Momentum carried the Rank 5 forward with his balance lost for just a moment.

Bruno’s fist found his stomach.

BOOM.

The steel didn’t help. Bruno’s strength wasn’t just physical. His Super Strength ability meant his punches hit harder than physics should allow, bypassing conventional defenses like they were suggestions.

The Rank 5 doubled over as his mouth opened, a wet cough escaping his lips. Blood sprayed between his steel-coated teeth.

Bruno’s hand closed around his neck.

Squeeze. Squeeze.

CRUNCH.

The steel reinforcement shattered. Bruno’s fingers crushed through metal and flesh and bone like they were paper. The Rank 5’s body went limp.

Bruno dropped the corpse and turned.

The water cultivator seeing everything. His partner—dead ran as his survival instincts were screaming.

He ran.

Bruno sighed as he gave chase.

The water cultivator was fast. He sprinted through the abandoned streets, weaving between collapsed buildings, firing desperate water blasts behind him to slow his pursuer.

None of them worked.

Bruno closed the gap with mechanical efficiency.

The water cultivator realized running wasn’t going to save him.

So he changed tactics.

"PERFECT CUBE!"

A cube of water materialized around Bruno—six walls of compressed liquid, each one several feet thick, sealing him inside with no gaps, no air, no escape. The water pressed against him from every direction, heavy, suffocating and relentless.

Outside the cube, the water cultivator fell to his knees, panting, grinning.

"I won!" he shouted. "I fucking won!"

Inside the cube, Bruno couldn’t breathe.

His lungs burned. His vision darkened. The water pressed against his eyes, his nose, his mouth, trying to force its way into every opening.

He raised both hands.

And clapped.

CLAP!

The sound shouldn’t have been possible underwater. But it was. Because Bruno’s clap wasn’t just a clap—it was a shockwave given physical form. The air between his palms compressed to a single point and then exploded outward with the force of a bomb.

The Perfect Cube shattered.

Water sprayed in every direction. The shockwave cracked the street beneath Bruno’s feet and blew out every window within fifty meters. The water cultivator’s triumphant grin vanished, replaced by an expression of pure, unfiltered terror.

Bruno lowered his hands.

They were burnt. The skin was red, raw, blistered—the price of generating that much force in such a small space. He flexed his fingers.

The water cultivator ran.

Again.

Bruno watched him go for a moment.

Then he took a deep breath filling his lungs letting the air settle in his chest, mixing with mana, combining with the enhancement still flowing through his body from Grey’s halo.

He exhaled.

And punched forward.

"AIR STRIKE."

The punch didn’t release anything visible. Just pure, concentrated, directional force that left his fist and traveled in a straight line at speeds the eye couldn’t track.

It hit the water cultivator in the back.

The man’s eyes widened.

His upper torso simply... ceased to exist. One moment he was running. The next, everything from the waist up was gone—vaporized, scattered, erased by force that didn’t care about flesh or bone or steel or water.

His legs kept moving for two more steps.

Then they stopped.

What remained dropped to the ground.

Silence fell over the ruined street.

Bruno looked at his burnt hands.

"Should have just run faster," he muttered.

He turned and walked back toward the main battle, leaving the legs where they lay.