Aaron limbered up and fed himself in the privacy of a private dining hall instance after saying his goodbyes. He hoped he’d get another chance to talk to everyone before leaving, but couldn’t hang around any longer. He needed to properly prepare for the duel. Besides, he was fairly certain they were all coming to watch anyway.

  He considered barring some of those he didn’t know quite so well, especially if Johan was spying on him, but decided not to. He was unsure of the cult leader, but wasn’t ready to give him any reason to suspect him of distrusting him. After all, as long as the death god didn’t learn too much about him, he doubted it would matter all that much.

  Besides, he had a feeling Johan’s deceptive methods were of a more diplomatic nature, and didn’t expect the guy to come looking for a fight.

  Fattening up, he consumed a serving of Ichor Braised Bison Meat Pie and used its buff, activating True Girth, which allowed him to store far more energy. But dense adipose tissue wasn’t going to slow Aaron’s eating; it just meant that he could fit more in, and he continued to balloon up for the fight.

  He had to be perfect. To make all of the right decisions if he wanted a chance of beating Mo’han, and he went to remove his new ring. The last thing he needed was something draining his energy, but when he went to, the damn thing wouldn’t come off.

  He could feel its little teeth digging into him, and even a little blood poured out when he pulled too hard. Nothing was working. The teeth were well and truly entrenched.

  “Ahhh, you little bugger. Get off my bloody finger! Dammit, you made me do this!”

  With a quick karate chop, he severed his finger, and then poured energy into the stub to grow it back, but his brow twitched in irritation as his newly formed finger still had the ring. He then looked at the severed finger on the ground, which was quickly disintegrating thanks to some kind of trial magic, and sure enough, there was no ring on it.

  “Seriously? Alright then, try this!”

  Another karate chop severed his arm down to his elbow. But whatever magic bound the ring to him, it had limitations. He could see the ring on his finger on the ground as the flesh melted away.

  Once his severed arm had disintegrated, he leaned forward and retrieved the ring, throwing it in the scabbard for safekeeping as he regrew his arm.

  “Damn, you were a stubborn bastard,” he muttered as the ring disappeared in his spatial storage.

  His arm that had regrown was skinny now, and he plumped it back up, eating various items off the dining hall table until he was ready.

  “That should just about do it,” he said, stretching his arm.

  But before leaving, he turned to the end of the table and rang the service bell.

  A moment later, Douglas arrived.

  “Oh, it’s you. What do you want?”

  “Nothing much,” Aaron said, stretching his massive form. He puffed up massively when eating, but it wasn’t just fat. At his level, in E-grade, his body had turned into a sea of rippling muscle, and some of that still came through on his oversized physique, which he showed off.

  “Well, I guess I shall see myself out in that case,” Douglas snorted and turned for the exit.

  “Wait.”

  “Oh?” Douglas turned back to him, a thin brow raised on his gaunt face.

  “Pretty impressive, huh? Three full trials.”

  “Oh, I should have known you would call me in here to gloat. Fine. Yes, it’s impressive. Happy now?”

  “Not really,” Aaron slumped. “I thought I’d get a little more out of you. After all, it’s only the big guy that managed to knock out so many trials and me.”

  “It pains me to say this, but you’re right. Three trials put you in our hall of fame,” Douglas sighed. “You’ll get scored quite highly for that effort. Though I doubt you’ll rank too high. Not in the top thousand, at least.”

  “Wait, there’s a ranking system?”

  “Yes. The gods, in particular, like to show off their trial ranking. It’s one of the few things you can achieve at the start of your ascension that will stick with you for, well, ever.”

  “Huh. That’s kinda cool. If only I’d managed to knock out another.”

  “You’re good, I’ll give you that. But don’t shove your head too far up your own behind. Defeating three trials is an amazing achievement. Try to stay at least a little grounded. You’ll live longer. Now, if that was all, I had best be going. I’ve an endless list of tasks I need to get through before this thing wraps up.”

  “Alright, bye,” Aaron waved.

  In the end, he had gotten Douglas to reluctantly admit he was good. He could leave the trials with a smile thanks to that. But screw him for saying he wasn’t grounded. He thought he was plenty grounded. Nothing more humbling than dying thousands of times, and Aaron knew that better than anybody.

  With his warm-up completed, he decided it was time to make his way over to the training grounds, where he found Mo’han and the others waiting for him.

  He smiled and waved at the small crowd that had formed, and walked up to the arena.

  “Good luck, Aaron,” Talia patted his back as he passed.

  He got cheers and wishes of luck from most people, but not Clementine. The rabbit girl simply watched with a smug grin, arms crossed. It had crossed him as peculiar ever since she had put down a bet on him to win. Could she see something the others couldn’t? He wondered.

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  Something tells me I definitely have to keep an eye on that one.

  By eye, he didn’t mean he distrusted Clem. Just that he felt she was destined for more than it seemed.

  “A-ran, there you are!” Mo’han boomed, all six arms extended, and took him in for a bear hug, but even the asura’s huge arms couldn’t reach around Aaron when he had fully filled out. “I’ll miss you, friend! But now we must fight. Let us prove ourselves in the heat of battle! For the sake of our ancestors!”

  “Yeah, you too, big fella. Gonna be a little dull without you around. But I’m sure we’ll catch up soon enough.”

  “That we will, A-ran! I’ll build a portal myself once the barriers are down and come visit your world! I’m dying to learn more about humans! You are fascinating creatures!”

  “Sounds great. I’d like to see the asura world too, at some point.”

  “Then it is a plan! We shall visit each other’s worlds once the time allows!”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  The two clasped hands and nodded appreciatively at each other, and then separated, strolling to two corners of the arena.

  “When you’re ready, A-ran!”

  “Maybe someone else should call the start of this thing? It’d only be fair that way.”

  They both looked across to the arena edge, and Voidrin quickly took the opportunity to push himself into the limelight.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” He hollared, stepping up to the arena’s edge. “The event you’ve all been waiting for. Man against mountain. Although that seems a little off now that the man is of such monstrous proportions. Hehe. Maybe it should be mound versus mountain? But I digress! We have here perhaps the two strongest warriors in our sector. The only two to complete three full trials! An impressive achievement indeed. But how do such impressive warriors match up against one another? Well, you’re in luck! Now, with the final hours of the Shadow Trials ticking down, we shall answer that very question!” He said, staring out and pausing for dramatic effect, and then suddenly turning toward the arena.

  “FIGHT!” He shouted at the top of his lungs and threw his hands up into the air.

  As the fight finally began, Aaron had already buffed himself and was using [ Soul Vortex ], which he had discovered in the Trial of Travels could not just improve his inspection ability, but also sense the smallest fluctuations of energy. He could read attacks and defenses with it up, and when working in concert with his fate-bending, it provided a four-dimensional defensive screen that was impossible to deceive.

  But Mo’han wasn’t in a rush. He stood there and summoned an aura of rushing blue energy that covered him. [ Soul Vortex ] told him that the aura both helped his energy regeneration, but also empowered his attacks by empowering everything the asura sent through the aura.

  Okay, so he’s got some buffs.

  Aaron's brow bent. It was time to get some proper reads, and he shot forward, peppering Mo’han with [ Spectral Bullet Punch ]. As expected, the lightning-fast bullet-like attacks did little damage to the powerful asura. If they were to do any real damage, he would first need to bring his defenses down, but it would force him to act.

  The Skill wasn’t particularly strong, but it had grown strong enough that his enemy couldn’t simply ignore it, like he would’ve been able to do against the unevolved version.

  As Mo’han dashed from side to side, trying to create his own openings, Aaron was carefully reading fate and exploring the possible attacks the asura had planned for him.

  This was what he had wanted from the start, and the more he got Mo’han to react, the more he could see and figure out. Since his fate-bending only allowed him to see a few seconds into the future, he needed to push his opponents to a point where they were close to acting and ready to do something.

  But even as he got reads on the impressive asura, he wasn’t ready to attack just yet, avoiding the threads of fate that led him into melee with Mo’han.

  The longer he could stall out and get reads on Mo’han, the better. But it seemed the asura had caught on, as all the threads of fate began to converge on a single attack.

  It was going to be devastating, and he wasn’t ready for that just yet. So, he tried to use Fate Bender. He tried to shift fate, to pull it, but Mo’han was just so damn powerful, and even with all of his mental effort, he was only able to shift fate an inch or two. That wasn’t going to help. Not against the powerful and overwhelming Skills at Mo’han’s disposal.

  He had no choice. He was going to have to meet the attack head-on.

  Mo’han flew forward, his fists, all six of them, glowed brightly like meteors charging toward him, and Aaron knew that this was a different Mo’han. The asura he had fought the first time had let him off easy, but this time, he meant to go all out.

  Luckily, so did Aaron.

  Activating [ Gorgon’s Time Dilation ], he met the asura in the middle of the arena, and in a sudden and surprising twist, he pulled in absurd amounts of energy from his adipose tissue, almost instantly shrinking down, and using time dilation to perfectly thread the narrow gaps between the six fists soaring toward him. Like a contortionist, he bent around Mo’han’s fists to land his own counter.

  He was drawing on a stupid amount of energy and funneling it all into a single attack, but he had no choice. If he had remained at his ogre size, Mo’han would have landed his attack, and there was no doubt that he would have come out the worse of the two.

  But this way, he threaded the needle of Mo’han’s furious attack and landed a [ Soul Shattering Strike ] against the asura’s chest, sending all of his energy into it. But that wasn’t all. On top of the disabling attack, he threw his combo chain.

  The attack was something else. First, the soul attack pummeled through the asura’s defenses, first breaking down his energy barriers, then knocking his energy organs offline. And then, with nothing to stop it, his fully powered haymaker sailed through his opponent’s layers of defenses and landed with a heavy, reverberating blast. But, of course, that wasn’t it. The combination was finished with a burst fire of spectral punches that sent the two of them careening away from one another.

  The attack was absolutely devastating, and would have killed most then and there. The asura flew through the air, a stream of purple blood cascading out of his mouth, but in a terrifying instant, his eyes rolled back and locked onto Aaron’s.

  Oh fuck!

  The asura’s meteor-like fists seemed to defy gravity as he was still hurtling backward and exploded outward. Luckily for Aaron, Skill blasted off some distance away. His eyes widened as a fiery shockwave traveled out from where they exploded, covering the distance between them in an instant.

  The blast hit Aaron like a train, smacking him back and sending him flying into the far wall of the arena like a human cannonball.

  Aaron had grown so much stronger, and he was tough enough now to tank a hit from most within the E-grade, but this attack was on another level.

  Gasping as he broke bones back into shape, he pulled himself out of the hole he had created and fell to his knees as life poured back into his veins.

  It was his first death, but it wouldn’t be his last.

  With bloodshot eyes, he looked up at the asura across from him.

  Huh, that’s good news.

  The exchange of attacks hadn’t been without reward. Mo’han stood opposite him, sweating and heaving.

  He didn’t like that, did he?

  Pushing himself back up onto his feet, Aaron’s lips curled into a toothy grin. They were just getting started, and he couldn’t have asked for a better dance partner.

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