Chapter 359: The Price Of Pain
"It seems, Hitachi--"
"Hehehehe."
Davy’s words was abruptly cut off, and the entire audience was completely stunned into a suffocating silence. They stared down at Nirvana, who was supposed to be critically injured, as she slowly, unnaturally stood up from the cratered ground, her broken joints snapping back into place with sickening pops.
"You made me do this Hitachi."
Viscous, pitch-black energy started aggressively emanating from her core, spreading all over her skin like a living, breathing oil slick. The sheer density of the energy violently warped the light around her. Then, a scene of absolute horror unfolded: the smooth space above her two eyebrows violently split open, flesh parting to reveal not one, but two glowing mythic eyes.
"....?!!"
Seeing the two extra eyes, absolutely everyone in the coliseum, including the usually unflappable Mirabella, was profoundly shocked. The laws of the inheritance explicitly dictated that a host could only bear one such eye.
"This?! Two mythic eyes?!!" Master Teacher Nadia stood up in sheer disbelief, her stoic, aristocratic face suddenly filled with raw, unadulterated shock.
"Two mythic eyes?! Is that even possible?!" Princess Carolina asked in deep horror, her fan dropping to the floor as she also aggressively got to her feet, staring at the monster her cousin had become.
"Sister, is this safe?" George asked, turning a pale face to Nadia, sensing the aura leaking from the arena.
"It’s not!! Nirvana was born with these terrifying powers, but due to her weak physical physique, we had to actively place three forbidden seals on her, violently sealing all her great powers... I didn’t know she will aggressively open the third seal." She muttered, her hands trembling, and continued with a heavy, fearful breath:
"In this completely unsealed form, she will organically be as strong as a Lv500 Master teacher... The main critical issue is." She violently swallowed the lump in her throat: "Nirvana can completely lose her mind and lose control! I absolutely can’t let that happen!" She yelled, her maternal panic finally shattering her cold exterior.
"Aunty loves her daughter more than absolutely anything in the world." Scott said with a small, realizing smile, finally seeing the truth behind the Master Teacher’s cruelty.
"Of course! She is my one and only daughter!! Yes, I have been incredibly harsh in the past, but I only did that so she can at least artificially grow stronger! Once the chaotic Third World fully merged with ours, I won’t functionally be able to protect her always." She said, her voice cracking as she stared desperately at the arena, regretting pushing her daughter to the brink of suicide.
_
"Oh! The competition continues!!" Davy yelled, violently moving backward through the air to put as much distance as possible between himself and the monstrous energy signature.
Down in the ruins of the stage, Hitachi narrowed his piercing eyes at the dense, black energy sticking to Nirvana like a swarm of living parasites.
’Something is fundamentally strange with this energy.’ He thought, his instincts flaring as his celestial eyes spun violently to analyze the threat, until the two spinning irises turned completely, terrifyingly gray.
"I won’t hold anything back then."
"Come on!! Hitachi!! Show me exactly what you are capable of!!" Nirvana yelled with a distorted, overlapping voice, and shot forward with a sonic boom, her legendary red bangle magically appearing in her hand.
While moving at breakneck speed, she violently grabbed the heavy circular weapon, and channeled her energy to snap it into two perfectly equal halves, forging two lethal, curved semicircle blades.
"Celestial eyes, Eyes of the Lord." Hitachi muttered softly, activating the Azul clan’s supreme ocular art, and shot forward to meet her charge.
"You can’t possibly win me Hitachi!!!"
BOOOOM!
The two titans collided together at the absolute center of the ring, moving with so much sheer speed that they entirely bypassed the tracking eyes of everyone present. Their rapid series of lethal attacks and parries was so huge, it violently destroyed the reinforced stone ground below their feet, the concussive shockwaves even creating deep, splintering cracks on the protective barrier high above.
"You arrogant bastard!! How dare you actively copy my fighting styles and flawlessly use them against me!!!" Nirvana yelled in absolute frustration, violently slashing both curved weapons with insane speed. Her two glowing mythic eyes were moving in absolute overdrive, instantly pinpointing all of Hitachi’s micro-movements, and using her immense processing power against him.
"Seems we are exactly the same! But your newly awakened eyes! You can’t fully use them!" Hitachi muttered, reading her sloppy neural feedback, and violently dropped his heavy sword down on her crossed blades:
BOOOOM!!
The force was catastrophic. The two flew violently backward in opposite directions, smashing heavily on the ruined ground and kicking up massive clouds of dust.
"Hahaha!! You arrogantly said I can’t use my eyes!! Are you absolutely sure about that?!!" Nirvana laughed maniacally, rising to her feet as her twin mythic eyes glowed with toxic, radioactive light.
"Mythic eye! Poisonous needles!"
BOOOOM!
The ambient energy instantly calcified. Millions of hyper-dense, glowing green needles violently appeared in the air behind Nirvana, hovering in a massive, deadly formation, all aiming right at Hitachi.
"Celestial eyes, eyes of the Lord, Copy." Hitachi calmly stated, his gray eyes reflecting her spell perfectly.
BOOOOM!!
The laws of magic mirrored themselves. Nirvana’s exact, catastrophic ability perfectly appeared in the air behind Hitachi, millions of glowing green needles all simultaneously aimed directly at her.
’I can’t flawlessly copy physical skills like Mirabella does, but I can perfectly copy any magic ability and use it exactly once.’ He thought.
"You... How fucking dare you!!!"
Nirvana screamed in pure, unadulterated rage, aggressively sending all her toxic needles towards Hitachi, who in turn, flawlessly sent all his copied projectiles forward to intercept.
BOOOOM!
The millions of magical attacks violently smashed into one another mid-air, causing a chain reaction of explosions that resulted in a rising, obscuring cloud of thick dust and choking green smoke. Without even waiting for a millisecond for it to settle, the two bloodthirsty combatants shot forward, fearlessly entering the blinding smoke.
BOOOOM!
Their physical attacks collided in the dark, sending massive, invisible waves of intense, destructive energy towards in all directions, which violently smashed into the already weakened barrier, creating even more jagged, terrifying cracks on it.
"Caught you!!"
Nirvana’s voice echoed through the smoke as she violently forced Hitachi backward. She shot towards his exposed form.
"Penance stare." Hitachi muttered under his breath, activating the most dangerous, forbidden art of his lineage, as his gray celestial eyes violently turned fully, absorbingly black like a void.
BAM!!!
Nirvana ruthlessly plunged both her curved weapons right deeply into his glenohumeral joint, the sheer momentum carrying them as they fell violently from the sky, smashing right into the hard ground below.
BOOM!
"Hahahaha!!" Nirvana laughed out loud, relishing the feeling of her blades buried in the prodigy’s flesh. But the very next moment, her triumphant smile completely vanished.
"Ahh!!"
She violently let go of her weapons, stumbling back and holding her own shoulders with a deep, agonizing frown, feeling the exact sensation of cold steel tearing through her own muscles and bone.
"Fuck off me!"
Ignoring the blades embedded in him, Hitachi utilized the opening and gave her a devastating, energy-infused slapped with his left hand, sending her violently flying backward to the ground.
"...?!"
The millions in the audience were completely stunned into silence, most of them visibly sweating from the intense, suffocating pressure of the battle. For the very first time in recorded tournament history, they saw the untouchable Hitachi actually bleed.
Hitachi calmly stood up, his face an absolute mask of stone. He reached up, firmly grabbed the hilts of the two weapons deeply buried in his body, and violently pulled them out, a geyser of blood following the steel, but he felt no pain.
"AHHH!"
Nirvana screamed in absolute, visceral pain from his action, her own phantom shoulders violently tearing as if the blades were being pulled from her own body.
"Penance stare! It fundamentally reflects absolutely all the physical pain you dealt to me right back to yourself. As long you physically have those exact arms, you simply can’t escape from the neural feedback... So actively Injuring me, is biologically akin to injuring yourself." Hitachi coldly explained. He casually tossed her bloody weapons aside, bent down, and picked up his own fallen sword.
"Surrender!" He yelled authoritatively, pointing the tip of his sword directly at her trembling form.
"I will absolutely never surrender!!" Nirvana forced herself to stand up, her pride completely overriding her sanity. She stretched both her hands wide, and with a single, desperate telekinetic thought, her two curved weapons flew towards her with insane, cutting speed. Before anyone could process her intent, the blades violently swung and cut both her own arms off, completely severing the shoulders which were hurting her from the rest of her body.
".....?!!!"
"What the fuck!!"
The sickening thud of her severed limbs hitting the stone floor echoed through the speakers. Her sheer, unadulterated brutality and willingness to mutilate herself stunned absolutely everyone in the global audience into pure, horrified silence.
