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 in 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, a new animosity about her. She jumped straight up, using one hand to cast a stormy grey cloud over the arena, and the other to throw her staff as if a javelin straight into the ground. While electricity surged across the battlefield as sparks and static burst from the earth, the 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 adaptability. 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 even get an eye on where she'd fallen. It was definitely an understatement to say that she'd gotten faster, but he was no stranger to foes in a higher caliber than his own.

With cracks of lightning, she appeared in multiple places all at once, repetitive strikes from all angles forcing him into a series of blocks like never before. Though, he quickly became aware of just how dire this situation was.

With each following attack, she only got faster, 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, a sweeping kick knocking him into the air. Without solid ground to bolster his fortitude, he was at a total loss, and she knew it. An onrush of thunderous fury 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, landing and readying an upward swing as though she were about to drive a home-run. "NOTHING'LL STOP ME FROM TAKIN' THIS, SO DON'T YOU DARE SLOW DOWN!"

She swung with cutthroat ferocity, a thundercrack straight through his torso testifying to yet another crippling hit from the Seraph. If the impact from the staff didn't leave a serious mark, his flying into the dirt definitely did, that theory backed by the intense flare of pulsing sores all over his upper body.

"A MONSTROUS HIT FROM LYRIC, BUT KYOYA'S STILL NOT DOWN! IS HE A GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT, OR JUST OUTRIGHT TOUGH!?" Rory was on the edge of his seat, backed by his partners in business.

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 hardly had time to stand before she was back in his face, despite having just enough of a read on her movements to dodge the first few of her incoming attacks. He knew well enough that unlike him, she couldn't actually lose the chain she'd built up without using the Magic herself, so there wasn't anything he could do to even out the fight beyond performing some sort of miracle.

Given his options, that was asking more than a lot.

Though, that read would at least give him something to work with, and building on it wasn't something he planned to ignore.

There was a certain uniformity in her strikes, giving him a miniscule 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 strike of his own, and 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 lead to the next, that margin widened, giving even more of a tell as to what would happen before she'd appear again and clobber him for even the slightest mistake. It didn't seem that she had any intent to slow down.

But, after gaining enough strength to start knocking her attacks away, he saw his chance.

He found a rhythm in his returns, and once she made a swing she couldn't recover quickly enough to disappear out of, he baited her action and took hold of the polearm, imbuing his grasp with raging embers.

"NOW FOR SOME PAYBACK!" With the opportunity gained, he wrestled for control of the staff, and 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 the hit. It burned away some of Seventh Sea, just enough to impair her movement to a more manageable level.

"Chased by Double Down!" Acting on the additional opportunity gained from her missed recovery, he chased with a kick that launched her upward, and with no means of getting ahold of her weapon, he was able to act further with a two-handed overhead smash.

There was a brief window to continue, but yet again, she was out of reach before he could get any meaningful follow-up.

However, it was clear as day that his attacks were doing some amount of damage, as Lyric rose to her feet with slightly less stability than before.

"Right, okay, that stung..."

It wasn't any exaggeration to say he wasn't in the best of shape either, but it was leagues better than he'd hoped, already. 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.