Chapter 573 - Day MMCXXXVIII, Part II

The spheres started raining from the sky and slamming into the ground with an impact that quickly accumulated into a small earthquake which we could easily feel even in our waiting room. As everything was shaking the alien, screaming on top of his lungs made the spheres fly up, and blast straight down.

Edward was dodging to the best of his ability moving really fast, but that was clearly all he could do at the moment. He had to wait for his enemy to get tired or make some kind of mistake.

The rain and the earthquake continued for several minutes, forcing some of the people in the waiting room with the worse balance to grab onto something. The situation was similar with Zor'xal's entourage who was in quite deep trouble, contrary to the emperor himself, who wasn't feeling the tremors at all in his flying chair.

It looked like it was not going to end, so Edward was pushed to change his tactic. He stopped avoiding the spheres, and timed the moments when they were being picked up to be thrown again, then kicked and punched a few directing them at the alien who avoided by flying away but only got more furious.

One slammed into the barrier surrounding Ashal Kal Anur, but he didn't even blink.

The alien seeing that he won't have a free way of shooting at the American any longer also changed his approach. He picked all of the balls, but first made them fly low to the ground, away from Hill, then he made them attack from different angles like a swarm of annoying flies.

Edward tried his best to punch and kick, but he had full hands with just getting away from the projectiles constantly trying to get him. He added a bit of earth magic to create walls of stone here and there, but those could block the spheres just for a moment, before being destroyed, while more of them were coming at him from other angles.

He noticed that this way won't work, so he slapped himself on the chest, and a pulse of energy hit him. the electrical discharges hit the ground all around the man as his eyes changed in a similar manner to Tai's.

He then rushed avoiding the few closest projectiles, quickly breaching the barrier of sound, and with a loud explosion-like sound he appeared in front of the alien to punch with his fist surrounded by electricity.

He managed to hit him, basically slapping him of the air, and sending him straight to the ground, but he was faster than that and got there quicker to immediately kick the creature straight back towards the sky. He was about to jump again, to continue his assault, but an explosion of dark energy, emanating from the alien stopped him.

The creature's skin turned black completely, and only the hair remained white. There was a crackling black discharge jumping all around the human-like body. The elegant clothes, now messed up, and torn open were looking like a rag. The alien was furious, and panting heavily from the anger. He let out another battle cry that shook the arena, and even more, spheres appeared surrounding him.

Those, alongside the ones picked from the ground quickly, created a tornado around the alien and were being released with twice the speed at Edward, who remained calm.

He dodged a few, before attempting to close the distance, but the alien didn't let him, he was in too much rage and stopped every move the human tried by sending multiple spheres to destroy him.

Fortunately for Hill, the tricks in his sleeves were enough to dodge and avoid most of the attacks, only getting hit a few times, and even then not directly.

He changed his tactic again and created some more distance between himself and the alien, zooming through the arena at full speed. He summoned the familiar storm, and the bright day turned darker, with the sound of thunder mixing with the sound made by impacts of the balls crashing with the ground.

I noticed his skin turning darker and darker, until it became almost black, with the slight hint of red, shining from the sweat showcased by occasional lightning jumping from cloud to cloud.

He gained even more speed, again crossed the barrier of sound creating a loud explosion, and suddenly appeared before the alien with his fingers braided together above the head. He brought them down mauling the creature of the sky, and followed, using one of the balls to jump down and catch up, to punch again.

The creature slammed into the ground sending a wave of sand into the air, but Edward almost immediately got to the small crate created in the collision and just started swinging. The punches created tremors we could feel in the waiting room.

He kept going on even when the ball crashed into him several times, as he was somehow held to the ground through the electricity constantly flowing through his body, and escaping out in the form of lightning bolts dancing all around him.

He didn't stop even when the spheres crashed on the ground and kept going until what was left couldn't be even called a corpse.

He straightened up slowly, panting heavily from all the exhaustion, and then turned to Zor'xal. For the first time, I saw fear on the frog-like face of the emperor.

This little gesture brought a slight smile to Ashal Kal Anur's face, which quickly vanished. He rose his right hand announcing Hill's victory.

The fight ended, but since the arena still was more or less intact, the event could continue.

The AI appeared over the holoprojection.

- Participant Edward Hill won his duel. Please wait for the next opponent.

Adam looked at me, he was smiling.. This was a huge step forward for us, but we still had ten of them to take down and the American didn't look like he could keep up with this tempo for too much longer.