The next day, my allotment of wishes for the four months was up. I’d gotten my thirty one days, and Camden had the next seventy eight covered by the contract he’d paid off with our armor. So, after our training for the day, he wished for another seven sections of foundation, and Benny and I got back to work making more bricks as E-ranked carried them over from the pile to stack them up in their wall shape.

Once that was finished for the day, we decided to take some time off and go check in on Abel and Mel. Camden mentioned a small tournament they’d been taking part in. Abel was up to about eight thousand stats total including his godslaying rollover, and he’d been cleaning up for renown, letting Mel take more of the wishes than not, so she wasn’t far behind at seventy five hundred.

When we got into town, it wasn’t hard to find the tourney, we just followed the crowd, ending up in a large warehouse (larger on the inside) where we had to pay a small toll to get in. It was later in the day, so we’d only bothered coming for the final match, but that was all we really needed to see anyway.

Once we found the place, we took a seat, waiting for the fights to start, and I triggered Stealth through my bond with Callie to keep our conversation private. “So, been a while since I’ve seen Abel fight, this should be pretty fun right?”

“Hell yeah.” Said Benny excitedly. “And not only that, I haven’t seen his new armor in action yet. His or Mel’s. Can you imagine if it lets him use his Ragam easier, or his spatial lubrication? Not to mention his stronger soul. After so much time training on their own I bet they’re both monsters now. Even more than before.”

Before I could respond, the lights went out, and the crowd went silent. From the darkness, a deep, resonant voice boomed. “Ladies and gentlemen!” It echoed through the warehouse. “Tonight’s battle is one we’ve all been waiting for. For weeks now, a mysterious newcomer has been dominating the local tournament brackets. Low stakes, high stakes, he sweeps them all. In the right corner, weighing in at one hundred eighty five pounds of pure muscle… I’m having a little trouble here folks, what is his name?”

As one, nearly the entire crowd roared. “APOLLYON!” I felt the tension ratchet up, and I had to grin at the skill this guy was showing. He really knew how to whip up a crowd.

There was a blinding spotlight suddenly cutting the air, illuminating the form of my mentor one on side of a huge empty ring. I was impressed by the show he was putting on, the new armor making a hell of an impression as the bright light silhouetted him against the darkness.

Abel’s armor was more…esoteric, than I’d expected. His normal silver half mask was present, but above it he wore a dark tri corn hat. His outfit was a crisp silver vest over a rough leather shirt, and over that a huge leather coat with a mantle over the shoulder, covered in pockets and fasteners. His pants were leather too, worn over heavy leather boots, and the whole outfit looked dangerous and mysterious.

I cheered with everyone else, but it wasn’t long before the announcer started hyping the opponent. “Now our next contender needs no introduction. He’s the undefeated champion of the Saltzberg fight scene, the city’s favored son, the living shadow, the dark of knight. Ladies and gentlemen give it up for CHASM!”

The light came on again, this time aimed at the other side, and revealing a slight looking man wearing a pair of beat up looking leathers and a large hooded cloak. The inside of the cloak showed no face, not even a slight reflection of eyes. It reminded me of the cloak Nat was wearing when we met, just a sea of unpierceable darkness.

Another few clicks and more lights came on, about six of them, just enough to show the whole ring without illuminating the stands at all, giving the illusion that there was nothing beyond the two finalists.

I could see my mentor’s amused smile perfectly as he took in his enemy, and in the stillness of the warehouse, my advanced Perception made hearing them child’s play. “So. I like the look. Most kids are afraid of the space under their bed, but apparently you were the only child brave enough to ask the question ‘what if I asked it for fashion tips?’ ”

The opponent didn’t respond. Abel waited for a minute before rolling his eyes. “I hate when they don’t take the bait. Fine, edgelord, we’ll do this the boring way.”

Abel blurred forward, the sand kicking up around him as he wove in a serpentine pattern towards his opponent. Cicada stacking step left afterimages behind him as he approached and then started to circle the enemy. He threw out a few testing jabs, all easily avoided or deflected, but didn’t commit overly much, just feeling Chasm out.

Suddenly, one of the testing blows became a full haymaker, aimed right at the hooded man’s head. There was a subtle shift in the dark of the hood, and when Abel’s fist punched through…it kept going. It was like he’d fallen into a hole, and his eyes went wide as Chasm’s hands, wafting black smoke, scythed up, fingers hooked into claws, right for Abel’s throat.

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When they hit, they tore apart one of the after images, and Abel grinned viciously. With a snap like a rubber band recoiling the next closest afterimage was pulled backward, slamming into each image and building power and solidity as the strength of each image stacked on top.

At the end of the chain Abel rode the momentum, spinning up and whipping his leg around to smash into the side of Chasm’s head.

The other fighter tried to dodge, but I saw him get stuck, and my eyes widened as I realized that Abel hadn’t just used those afterimages to create a distraction. Each of them had warped the space they occupied. Not in the usual way, but into a sort of spatial quagmire that held Chasm like a mosquito trapped in amber.

We were all on the edge of our seats as Abel’s kick, with enough power to smash an average E-ranker’s defenses, plowed directly into the side of Chasm’s fucking HEAD. I was half expecting it to kill the guy, and I watched in horrified fascination, waiting for someone to call the match.

But they didn’t, and for good reason, his leg hit the cloak and it wrapped around him like a bat hitting a piece of hanging laundry. There was a flare of dark smoke, and patches of the spatial quagmire vanished.

I wasn’t sure to be more shocked at Abel or at the opponent. Escaping that was nuts, but what Abel had done… it was insane. His spatial lubrication ability was a method of altering the viscosity of space, and he’d clearly taken that to the opposite extreme. It was a feat of absurd control and precision.

Inverting your ability might not seem like something that impressive, but it was the equivalent of Cark using his fine power to freeze things by sucking the heat out of them. It was possible, but it was fucking HARD.

On top of that, Abel’s power was a spatial ability, and they were notoriously difficult to control and figure out. Even his current skillset was a truly staggering level of technique for someone at our level. To do THIS? Well, I wasn’t sure who the hell Chasm was, but I was impressed he was still standing.

Abel, to my shock, didn’t pursue him, he stepped back, foot landing on a trail of lubricated space I hadn’t even seen as the distance between his current location and the spot he was retreating to just…dissolved.

“Void.” He said in annoyance. “I hate void abilities. I assume you’re some kind of duellist variation?”

The darkness coalesced, revealing a smiling guy probably the same age as me, with long dark hair and pale skin. “You took my hood off.” He said reproachfully. “That wasn’t nice. Chasm was a useful fiction for keeping my day to day free of distraction.” He cracked his neck. “I can’t say I’m not impressed though. Most don’t manage to push me this far.”

Abel laughed. “Kid, I’m going to push you a hell of a lot further than that.” And then he VANISHED.

I’d seen my mentor move before, REALLY move. He was fast. But this was next level. He’d used his ability to lubricate the ground across the ring, creating a sort of winding path of slipstreams only he seemed to see and magnifying his already terrifying Might score with ability based propulsion.

He appeared periodically around the ring, fists flying, and I saw his old standby, massive fist manifestations, crash down around Chasm, whose eyes had gone wide.

But that wasn’t all. The large scale strikes seemed to be herding the other fighter into a pattern, and Abel’s physical body was appearing in the gaps, throwing more condensed close range punches, often at the same time as the larger ones, mixing afterimages with his insane speed and both ranged and close up combat.

When the fist manifestations hit, they exploded, creating still zones with that cloying, sticky spatial energy to slow down Chasm, and the void user was having to expel bursts of dark energy to eat through them. Abel’s smaller images were hitting him after a burst, taking advantage of an apparent cooldown.

To his credit though, Chasm was no amateur. In the short range fight, he was doing better than expected. Shifting his body slightly to take the surprise blows in the least unpleasant places he could to prevent them from wearing him down, giving as good as he got, shattering images left and right.

In the end, as it so often was, the soul was what made the difference. Abel was two full ranks ahead of where a normal person would be. His powerful soul made the constant barrage of complicated techniques and tricks tenable for him, while Chasm was forced to overwork his with huge bursts of void energy at F-rank. Eventually, he couldn’t hold on and slipped up, one punch missing by a hair.

Abel punished him for it, the local fighter having overextended himself and leaving his jaw open for a brutal uppercut.

The entire warehouse was quiet as a mouse as the man toppled over into the sand, slamming down on the ground and not moving. Abel watched cautiously, fists still raised in a guard, but finally, there was a bellow of triumph and every person in the place, Benny and I included, came to our feet and screamed in victory at the brilliant fight.

“Yup.” said a voice behind us. “That was definitely a good one.” We turned to see Mel sitting behind us, winking at us with one orange eye. “Glad you boys could make it. Sorry you missed my fight earlier though. What did you think?” Her voice was amused, and I rolled my eyes at the obvious jump scare.

I shrugged nonchalantly. “It wasn’t bad.” I said in a faux casual tone. Benny rolled his eyes. “Ignore him, he just wanted to mess with Abel after all the harsh training. That was amazing. I take it you won yours too?” He seemed so pumped he could barely sit still, and I smiled at the enthusiasm from my best friend.

“I did.” She said with a laugh. “And I don’t mind the lacking praise. He doesn’t need a bigger head anyway. Good for you. Not that it would work, but thanks for trying.” We laughed and started talking about what they had been up to, hearing more about the tournaments and the training they’d done for them.