Chapter 209: One Punch
The dragon form ability had not left his baseline physique untouched, the muscle density and frame carrying the permanent modifications of an ability that had been active and developing for long enough to change the underlying structure. His hair was long and green, which was unusual in a way that registered immediately, and his expression, settling from the disrupted comfort of a moment ago, carried the elevated self-regard of someone whose recent experience had confirmed their view of themselves at regular intervals.
Behind him in the domain interior, three women, visible in various states of having been engaged in something when the gate opened.
Adam looked at Neil with the particular quality of assessment that began with physical comparison and did not find what it was looking for and arrived at a conclusion that was missing significant information.
Neil opened his mouth.
"Neil Yates."
Randy’s voice came from three metres behind him, and Neil turned to find the warden of Settlement Number 2 standing there with his arms folded and the expression that appeared on his face when a situation was developing in exactly the direction he found most personally beneficial.
He had apparently been nearby. Or had been informed. With Randy the distinction was not always clear.
"Were you going to do this without telling me?" Randy said, with the tone of someone who already had their answer and was enjoying the confirmation.
"I was going to challenge him and inform you afterward." Neil said.
"Those two things are the same from where I am standing." Randy said, unfolding his arms and walking forward. He looked at Adam with the shift in expression he used when addressing someone under his jurisdiction in an official capacity, the ease dropping to something with more authority underneath it. "Adam."
Adam had straightened when Randy appeared and his expression had put on its thin layer of respect over the arrogance, not replacing it but covering it adequately for the purpose.
"Warden Randy." He said, with the required nod.
Randy gestured at Neil with the easy movement of someone making introductions at a social event.
"This lord is challenging you." He said. "Domain stake. Core for core." He looked at Neil. "Am I characterising this correctly."
"Yes." Neil said.
Randy looked back at Adam with the particular expression of someone who was already thinking several steps ahead.
"I am going to set up a proper venue." He said. "I need to recover some of what I spent last week. Be ready in a few hours."
Adam looked at Neil with the reassessed attention of someone retrieving and evaluating the information they had filed under rumours, and his expression moved through several stages of processing before arriving at something that was still fundamentally dismissive but was doing more work to maintain itself than it had been a moment ago.
He had heard things. Neil could tell from the quality of the look that the rumours from the recent event had reached him, though clearly in a form that had not fully resolved into a picture he was taking seriously.
"The core." Adam said, slowly. He appeared to be thinking about something other than the core. "Not particularly interesting to me as a prize." He let a moment sit. "How about this. If I win, I choose two people from your domain." He said it with the casual confidence of someone who has already decided the outcome and is arranging the aftermath. He had apparently heard about the people in Neil’s domain and formed specific opinions about them.
Something in Neil’s jaw tightened in the way it tightened when he had been annoyed by something he was not surprised to be annoyed by.
"No." He said, flatly. "Core for core. That is the only condition I am offering."
Adam looked at him for a moment, the calculation happening behind his expression with the visibility of someone whose inner processing was not fully concealed.
He was apparently concluding that the condition of the prize did not matter significantly because he intended to resolve the question of prizes by ending Neil in the fight and taking everything at once, which would make the specific agreed terms academic.
"Fine." Adam said. "Core for core."
Randy clapped his hands together once with the energy of someone initiating a process he had been managing in his mind since the moment he arrived.
"Excellent." He said. "I will have the venue ready. Midday. Both of you, the open area near the eastern market district." He was already moving as he said this, pulling out his communication device and beginning a series of contacts that suggested the event arrangements were more elaborate than the timeline implied.
The open area near the eastern market district was large enough for the kind of fight that involved transformation abilities and the spatial implications they carried, and when midday arrived the crowd surrounding it was considerably larger than the short preparation time should have produced.
Randy had apparently made very efficient use of his few hours.
He was standing at the edge of the arranged space with the settlement figures he had called in, talking with the animated quality of someone who had multiple financial interests active simultaneously and was enjoying the management of all of them.
Adam arrived with an entrance that communicated he had thought about it, walking to his position with the deliberate stride of someone who was aware of being watched and had opinions about how being watched should feel for the observer. He wore his baseline physical presence like armour even before the ability activated, and he looked at the assembled crowd with an expression that was performing for them and found the performance comfortable.
He looked across at Neil and smiled, which was the smile of someone who believed they already knew the conclusion and was entertaining themselves in the interim.
Neil stood at his position and looked at Adam without expression and without performance.
The crowd distributed into its natural factions, a portion aligned with Adam based on his track record and his presence and his Diamond class rank, and a portion aligned with Neil based on whatever they had absorbed from the recent event and the particular quality of something they could not fully articulate when they looked at him.
Randy’s signal-person gave the start.
Adam did not escalate gradually.
The scales came up immediately across his skin, dense and overlapping, the dragon form asserting itself in the first two seconds with the confident speed of someone who had used this ability enough times that the transformation was reflexive rather than considered. His frame expanded, his face shifted into the broad reptilian structure of the form, his tail extended behind him and his claws came forward with a dark and viscous coating that was the poison he had prepared before arriving.
He had treasures active, Neil could feel the supporting energy signatures layered through the transformation, defence enhancements and essence circulation boosters and something for survival in the event the opening exchange did not close things, and he came across the space between them with the full committed energy of someone going for an immediate finish.
The claw came forward on a trajectory and at an angle that were both visible to Neil from the moment Adam’s shoulder committed to the direction of the strike, and the killing intent behind it was clean and unambiguous.
Neil threw his fist forward.
Not a technique or an ability or any of the various tools available to him. A punch, with the full weight of a Mythic class body carrying peak third Origin energy, completely converted and saturated, thrown at the precise point and moment that the incoming trajectory opened.
The impact was singular.
Adam’s large body, scales and all, hit the ground and the transformation dissolved in the way transformations dissolved when the person maintaining them was no longer in a position to maintain them, scales receding, dragon form releasing, the body on the ground ordinary and still.
The crowd was quiet.
Randy, at the edge of the space, made the sound of someone who had hoped for a longer entertainment and was processing the absence of it, a sound between a click of his tongue and an exhaled breath.
"That is." He said, and did not finish the sentence.
The crowd noise that came after the silence carried the specific quality of people recalibrating what they had seen, the conversation that happened when something had concluded before the framework for watching it had fully assembled.
"One punch." Someone said nearby.
"He did not even draw anything." Someone else replied.
Neil turned and walked in the direction of Adam’s domain.
The gate was unlocked when he arrived and he walked through without stopping, across the courtyard and into the main building, following the core’s energy signature through the interior. The domain’s three residents had apparently been watching through the barrier and had not come out, which was a reasonable decision given the circumstances.
He found the core room at the back of the main building, the door closed but not secured with anything meaningful, and he pushed it open and walked in.
The core sat in its housing in the centre of the small room, second Order Diamond class, the energy of it solid and dense and well maintained, exactly consistent with what Nemo had described and exactly what he needed.
He took it.
The weight of it in his hand was the weight of the final piece in a sequence that had been running for some time, and he held it for a moment with the uncomplicated satisfaction of completion before putting it in his coat.
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Thanks for reading... adios
