The four entered the dome together, their feet barely making sound as they stepped onto the black soil.
The earth cracked beneath them—ancient, scorched, as if a thousand wars had burned it until nothing but ash remained.
Above, the single blood moon hung torn and incomplete, casting crimson shadows that seemed to bleed across the wasteland.
Zain, Izan, Asha, and Bheem stood before Aryan's throne.
The Crown Rank Instructor remained motionless, one leg draped casually over the armrest, watching them with the patience of something that had already decided their fate.
They came expecting to fight as a team from the start.
But seeing Aryan—seeing how utterly still he was, how utterly patient—they felt the first wave of doubt settle in their chests like cold water.
They exchanged glances.
Years of training together meant they didn't need words.
Test him individually first.
Understand his patterns.
Then combine forces.
Zain stepped forward, bowing with genuine respect. "By Allah's grace, I challenge the Crown Rank. May the Almighty guide my strikes."
Mist erupted around him—swirling, dense, impossible to penetrate.
He moved through it with practiced grace, his body disappearing and reappearing like a phantom.
The mist-weaving was beautiful.
Artful.
Years of cultivation crystallized into moving shadow and fog.
Aryan didn't move.
Then he threw a single palm strike.
The sound was like glass shattering.
The mist didn't just break—it shattered completely, every molecule of carefully cultivated vapor dispersing into nothingness.
Zain flew backward, gasping, his body sliding across the black soil before crashing into a burnt tree.
The impact knocked the wind from his lungs.
He lay there for three seconds, unable to breathe.
Then, slowly, he pushed himself up on trembling arms.
Blood dripped from his mouth—just a little, but enough to taste metal.
He shook his head, still gasping. "Alhamdulillah... I understand now." He retreated, defeated.
Izan stepped forward, lightning already crackling between his fingers.
His blessing from Allah manifested as dual-element control—sand and lightning intertwined, swirling around him like a desert storm made physical. "Ya Allah! Grant me strength! Ya Rabb, guide my strikes!" he called out, his voice carrying absolute faith and absolute passion.
Lightning and sand whipped around him in a coordinated storm—beautiful, explosive, genuinely dangerous.
The black soil beneath him turned to glass from the heat.
He was aggressive.
Unpredictable.
Every movement carried the weight of divine invocation.
Aryan stood from his throne.
He walked forward.
Not running.
Not even moving quickly.
Just... walking.
Like he had all the time in the world.
When Izan launched his attack—lightning and sand converging simultaneously—Aryan simply walked through it.
The lightning parted around him like water around stone.
The sand couldn't find purchase on his body.
His palm strike was casual.
Economical.
Absolute.
It connected with Izan's center mass, and the boy exploded backward like he'd been hit by a meteor.
Izan crashed into the ground twenty meters away, skidding another ten before stopping.
His ribs felt cracked.
His lungs felt full of blood.
He gasped, each breath a small explosion of pain. "Ya... Ya Allah..." he whispered, voice breaking. "What... what kind of power is this?" He lay there, not moving, not trying to stand.
Asha stepped forward, smaller than the boys but infinitely more vicious.
She activated her Flame Lotus technique, calling upon Agni's blessing. "Agni Deva! Lord of Fire! Grant me your flames!" she shouted, her voice like a prayer and a battle cry simultaneously.
Sacred fire exploded around her—not just heat, but divine fire, fire that burned with purpose beyond mere destruction.
Her gauntlets glowed like captured sunlight, each gauntlet-blade wreathed in flames that shifted between gold and orange.
The temperature in the dome rose fifty degrees in a heartbeat.
She was beautiful and terrible.
She charged forward.
Aryan extended his hand casually, and his palm met her flames.
The sacred fire simply... stopped.
Not extinguished.
Just stopped, like it had hit an invisible wall.
His other palm came up and pressed into her center mass.
Asha felt like a wave hitting stone.
The impact threw her backward—she crashed through a burnt tree, the ancient wood exploding into powder around her.
She landed hard, gasping, blood on her lips and burnt wood coating her hair.
Her gauntlets were cracked.
Her fire was stuttering.
But her eyes still blazed with defiant heat.
She didn't stand.
Didn't try to continue.
She understood.
The three looked at each other.
Then they looked at Bheem.
Bheem nodded slowly, gravely. He stood.
Zain and Izan attacked together, having recovered enough to move.
Zain created walls of mist thick enough to obscure reality itself, while Izan launched dual-element storms—lightning and sand converging. "Ya Allah!" Izan screamed as he struck. "Alhamdulillah!" Zain responded, mist walls intensifying.
They moved with practiced coordination, years of training together creating a rhythm that was almost musical.
For the first ten seconds, they felt like they were actually landing hits.
Aryan moved through their formation with surgical precision.
His hand caught Izan's lightning mid-strike and crushed it into dispersing energy, the electromagnetic field collapsing like a punctured balloon.
Both boys were launched backward simultaneously, crashing into burnt trees thirty meters apart. They hit hard enough that dust exploded around them.
They were bleeding.
They were hurt.
But they got up.
Then Asha joined.
Flame and mist collided.
Fire and lightning mixed.
For a moment—just a moment—they pushed Aryan back.
One single step backward.
The crowd watching through mirrors gasped.
Aryan smiled beneath his mask.
His counterattack was elegant devastation, Strike against Asha—she launched.
Counter against Izan—he flew airborne.
Palm press against Zain—he crashed into black soil.
All three down.
All three gasping.
Aryan spoke with calmness in his voice.
"You're learning. The cooperation is elegant. Continue."
Bheem closed his eyes.
He began to chant in Sanskrit—an ancient invocation, a prayer that was also a threat:
"ॐ मारुतिनन्दनाय लंघनशक्तिं कुरु कुरु।"
The words hung in the air like a vow made to the universe itself.
[Om Maruti-Nandanāya Langhana-Shaktim Kuru-Kuru.]
{O Maruti's son, grant me the power to leap beyond limits.}
His golden gauntlets began to glow.
Not just gold.
Saffron and gold—the colors of Hanuman ji himself, the God of Strength, the Monkey Warrior, the divine embodiment of loyalty and infinite power.
His chakra exploded outward with force that made the black soil beneath him crack in intricate patterns, fissures spiderwebbing outward like a living thing's veins.
The four others felt it—a pressure, a weight, a divine presence manifesting through human flesh.
From the Observer section,
Roshni stopped sharpening her weapons.
"What is he—"
Sita's eyes widened with calculation.
She closed her eyes, fingers moving rapidly as she traced mathematical symbols in the air, her lotus sigil glowing as she ran the calculations through her enhanced mind. "Oh," she whispered. "Oh no."
Zhang Xuan leaned forward. "What? What is it?"
Sita, eyes still closed, spoke with absolute precision, "Hanuman ji's strength in scriptural tradition is equal to the strength of one thousand ancient elephants. If we assume one ancient elephant equals approximately ten thousand modern elephants—"
Bhaskar: "Why are we doing math right now?"
Sita, ignoring him, continuing, "One modern elephant can lift approximately eight thousand kilograms. One ancient elephant would therefore weigh eighty million kilograms. Hanuman ji's lowest equivalent strength would be eighty billion kilograms—eighty million tons."
She opened her eyes, looking directly at the dome. "A peak human has a strength equivalence of approximately five hundred kilograms. A peak human is therefore zero point zero zero zero zero zero zero six-two-five percent as strong as Hanuman ji's baseline."
Roshni: "And Bheem is using—"
Sita: "Approximately zero point zero zero zero zero zero six-two-five percent of Hanuman ji's blessing. Which means Bheem is currently channeling a strength equivalent to one hundred sixty individuals with the same capability as the Crown Rank Instructor in one single body."
Silence.
Zhang Xuan: "That's... that's insane."
Sita: "That's why his body is trembling. He can only hold that for one minute. If he holds it longer, the strain will literally tear him apart from the inside."
Bhaskar: "So he has sixty seconds to either win or die."
Sita: "Yes."
Bheem's body transformed.
His muscles swelled unnaturally.
Veins bulged across his forehead and arms, dark lines pulsing with saffron light.
His skin seemed to glow from within, divine power straining against human containment.
The golden gauntlets now gleamed with power that made the black soil itself seem to tremble.
His voice, when he spoke, was layered—his own voice plus something deeper, something ancient and infinite.
"ॐ हनुमते वीर्यप्रदाता नमः।"
[Om Hanumate Veerya-Pradaataa Namah.]
{I bow to Hanuman, the giver of limitless strength.}
The four coordinated perfectly for one final attempt.
Zain created walls of mist so thick they blotted out the blood moon itself, turning the dome into a twilight realm of shadow and vapor.
Izan launched dual-element storms—lightning arcing like divine punishment, sand whipping like a thousand scythes.
Asha moved through gaps, her sacred Agni fire burning so hot it turned the black soil to glass.
But Bheem charged through all of it.
His golden gauntlets blazed with divine strength.
Each step left cracks in the earth.
Each movement displaced air hard enough to make the burnt trees lean away like terrified sentries.
He swung at Aryan.
For the first time in this trial, Aryan didn't see the blow coming.
The gauntlet came like a meteor strike.
Aryan barely dodged.
The gauntlet passed one centimeter from his face, close enough that he felt the heat of divine power singing his hair.
But the shockwave from the impact didn't care about distance.
It slammed into him anyway, throwing him sideways, his body sliding across the black soil, feet carving grooves.
He crashed into a burnt tree, the impact cracking several ribs audibly.
He gasped, blood on his lips.
Aryan pushed himself up, ribs screaming, lungs burning.
His breath caught in his throat.
In a single fluid motion, he thrust his hand into the shadowy folds of his cloak—a garment that seemed to exist partially outside normal space, a pocket dimension woven into the fabric itself.
The darkness rippled like disturbed water as his fingers plunged through the threshold.
When his hand emerged, it was wrapped in Void Gauntlets.
The gauntlets were impossibilities made manifest—crafted from solidified shadow and starless night, they seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.
Intricate runes of pure energy traced across the knuckles and wrists, glowing with an eerie violet luminescence that pulsed like the heartbeat of something ancient and terrible.
Each knuckle was reinforced with spikes of compressed void-matter, sharp enough to tear through dimensions.
The gauntlets fit perfectly, as though they had been waiting for this exact moment, this exact crisis.
Aryan flexed his fingers, and the air around his hands warped slightly—reality bending to the presence of something that did not belong in the normal world.
The temperature dropped ten degrees instantly.
Shadows deepened around him.
Even the faint crimson light from the blood moon seemed to recoil from the raw power emanating from the gauntlets.
The Void Gauntlets sang with barely contained power.
Bheem attacked relentlessly. Punch after punch. Gauntlet strike after gauntlet strike. Each one carrying the weight of one thousand ancient elephants, filtered through a nine-year-old's body.
Aryan dodged.
Blocked.
Countered.
But he was losing ground.
Bheem's punch came like a thunderbolt.
Aryan moved left, desperately diving away.
Bheem's gauntlet struck the burnt tree behind him—the tree exploded into splinters, ancient wood atomizing into dust, the shockwave alone shaking the dome.
Aryan tried a counter-palm strike with his Void Gauntlets.
He was fast.
But Bheem was faster.
The boy rolled right, and Bheem's counter-strike hit the black soil beneath them—the ground cracked into a fissure three meters deep, the fracture spreading like lightning across the wasteland.
Aryan jumped desperately upward.
Bheem's punch came upward—the shockwave alone lifted Aryan ten meters into the air, cloak billowing like broken wings.
He collided with the dome's ceiling, the impact driving the air from his lungs.
He fell.
From the balcony, Principal Devendra leaned forward, his expression unreadable.
He was watching carefully now, no longer certain of what he was seeing.
Aryan landed and immediately launched a counter-strike.
His Void Gauntlet palm strike was fast—faster than Bheem's punch, powered by Chakra 2 Stage 1 strength.
But when it connected with Bheem's gauntlet, he was the one thrown backward.
The Void Gauntlet's runes flared violet, but the impact shattered through them anyway. Aryan's entire arm went numb from the collision.
He skidded across the black soil, his feet carving grooves through the earth, his body finally coming to a stop thirty meters away.
Blood dripped from his mouth.
From his nose.
From a gash on his cheek.
He'd been hit hard.
Real hard.
His ribs felt broken.
His shoulder felt dislocated.
His entire right arm was useless.
Roshni stopped what she was doing. "Is he... losing?"
Sita watched, her lotus sigil glowing dimly as she continued calculations. "Yes. Bheem's strength advantage is too great. Crown Rank Instructor has only forty-five seconds to survive if this continues. If he keeps taking direct hits at this rate—"
"He dies," Bhaskar finished.
Sita nodded. "He dies."
Aryan stood on trembling legs, breathing hard. His voice was steady when he spoke to the system, though it took immense effort. "How long can he maintain this?" he gasped.
[System: "One minute total. Sixty seconds. The human body can't withstand divine power channeling for longer than that. After sixty seconds, Bheem's blessing collapses completely and his body begins to shut down."]
"Then I need to survive for sixty seconds," Aryan said.
[System: "Good luck. He's faster, stronger, and more vicious than anything you've faced in this tournament. And you've got fifty-two seconds remaining."]
Aryan began to move.
Not attacking.
Dodging.
For the first three seconds, time became a blur of motion and pain.
Bheem attacked.
Aryan dodged.
But it was close.
Too close.
Each strike came within centimetres.
A punch aimed at his head—Aryan ducked, but the gauntlet still caught his shoulder, tearing cloth and flesh.
Blood dripped down his arm in thin rivulets, warm and metallic.
A spinning kick—Aryan rolled sideways, but the shockwave caught him anyway, throwing him backward five meters, his body skidding across black soil.
Bheem was faster.
Bheem was stronger.
Bheem was better in this moment.
Every breath Aryan took tasted of sweat and blood and impending death.
His heart hammered like a war drum.
His lungs burned like forge coals.
At the ten-second mark, something clicked deep within his neural pathways.
[System: Passive Skill - Acceleration skill (First Phase)]
Aryan's movements suddenly became 40% faster.
What had been impossible dodges suddenly became possible.
His body moved like it had been oiled—smooth, anticipatory, alive with borrowed time.
Bheem threw a punch.
Aryan was already three meters away, the air displacement ruffling his cloak but touching nothing.
He landed and immediately rolled to his right.
Bheem charged forward, gauntlets blazing saffron.
Aryan slid between his arms, barely brushing past, feeling the heat of divine power singe his hair and burn his skin.
Zhang Xuan sat back. "His speed just changed."
Roshni's eyes narrowed. "his speed, it is increasing quite fast like magic."
Sita: "But not fast enough. At +40%, he's only achieved parity with Bheem's raw speed. The divine blessing gives Bheem access to a faster reaction time due to the blessing itself. Instructor is still behind."
Bhaskar: "So he's just buying time?"
Sita: "Yes. Sixty seconds of buying time until the blessing breaks Bheem's body from the inside."
The fighting became more balanced.
Not equal, but survivable.
Sweat poured down Aryan's face, mixing with blood, stinging his eyes.
Every muscle screamed for rest, but he couldn't stop.
Three seconds without movement, and the Acceleration stacks would reset.
Twenty seconds elapsed.
Thirty seconds.
Forty seconds.
His world narrowed to fist trajectories, soil displacement, Bheem's labored breathing.
A kick aimed at his head—he ducked, but Bheem's follow-up punch came immediately.
Aryan sidestepped, but the gauntlet still clipped his arm, leaving a deep gash.
A hammer-fist strike—Aryan blocked with both Void Gauntlets, but the impact drove him backward ten meters, his feet carving grooves.
His arms went numb.
A spinning kick—Aryan vaulted over it, landing on Bheem's shoulders for a split second before jumping away.
The moment he landed, Bheem's next punch came—Aryan was already gone.
A gauntlet strike aimed at his solar plexus—Aryan twisted, but it caught his ribs.
He felt something crack deeper inside.
Pain exploded through his chest.
He coughed blood.
His left lung felt like it had filled with liquid.
Bheem threw his gauntlets in a wide, sweeping motion.
Aryan ran backward, but Bheem followed, closing distance.
The gauntlet came so close it burned his cheek, leaving a line of seared skin.
A straight punch—Aryan sidestepped and used Bheem's own momentum against him, pushing the boy past.
Bheem crashed into a burnt tree but recovered instantly, spinning around for another attack.
A kick aimed at his legs—Aryan jumped, but the shockwave threw him upward another five meters.
He landed hard, crashing into the dome's ceiling again.
Roshni: "How much longer?"
Sita: "Forty-five seconds have passed. Fifteen seconds remaining until Bheem's blessing collapses."
Zhang Xuan: "And can Instructor survive fifteen more seconds of this?"
Sita hesitated.
That hesitation was answer enough.
Aryan gasped.
His lungs burned like forge coals.
His muscles screamed with lactic fire.
His mind felt like it was being stretched thin across infinite moments.
Sweat poured in sheets, blurring his vision.
Blood from a dozen shallow cuts painted him red.
His right arm was useless.
His ribs were cracked, maybe broken.
His left shoulder was partially dislocated.
But he was surviving.
One punch.
Two meters.
Dodge left, Void Gauntlet parrying the follow-up.
One kick.
Three meters.
Dodge right, rolling under the arc.
One spinning attack.
Four meters.
Slide backward, gauntlet absorbing the shockwave.
A gauntlet strike aimed at his heart—Aryan blocked with both Void Gauntlets, but the impact drove him backward twenty meters, cracking his ribs further.
He gasped, tasting blood, barely staying on his feet.
A kick—Aryan jumped, but Bheem followed upward.
They clashed mid-air—gauntlet against gauntlet.
The impact sent them both flying in opposite directions.
Aryan crashed into burnt trees.
Bheem crashed into the ground.
The impact crater extended five meters in all directions.
Bheem got up, and even through his divine blessing, Aryan could see the strain.
The boy's body was trembling.
Sweat mixed with blood.
His movements were becoming slightly slower.
The blessing was eating him alive from the inside.
Fifty seconds.
Fifty-five seconds.
Fifty-eight seconds.
Aryan was gasping.
His lungs burned.
His muscles screamed.
His mind felt stretched to breaking.
Sweat poured in sheets.
Blood dripped from everywhere.
But he kept moving.
Just kept moving.
Fifty-nine seconds.
Bheem threw his most powerful attack yet—a double gauntlet strike, both hands moving simultaneously, combining the strength of two hundred ancient elephants in a single blow.
The air itself screamed as it was sundered.
Aryan barely dodged.
His Void Gauntlets caught the edge of the strike—runes exploding in violet fury—but the shockwave threw him backward anyway.
He slid across the black soil, leaving a groove thirty meters long, cloak shredded, body tumbling like a ragdoll.
His entire body felt like it was on fire.
Ribs cracked audibly.
Vision swam.
For a moment, he blacked out.
He came to mid-slide, tasting blood, unable to move.
Sixty seconds.
Bheem's saffron glow began to flicker.
The divine power channeling was destroying his body from the inside.
His muscles were torn at the cellular level.
His bones cracked and splintered from the strain.
His chakra reserves hit absolute zero.
He could only hold it for sixty seconds before the blessing collapsed completely.
But in that instant—that single, final instant—something happened.
Aryan, seeing the flicker of fading power, seeing that this was his only chance, saw an opening.
All his pain.
All his frustration from sixty seconds of dodging.
All his barely-contained rage at being outmatched.
It boiled over.
He didn't think. He didn't calculate.
He CHARGED.
His speed was still at +40% bonus from Acceleration.
His power was at full Chakra 2 Stage 1 capacity, channeled through the Void Gauntlets.
He threw everything—every ounce of strength, every reserve of chakra, every bit of desperation—into a single punch directed at Bheem's center mass.
It was a killing blow.
Not intentionally cruel.
Just... an absolutely devastating strike designed to end this fight permanently.
The violet runes on the Void Gauntlets blazed like dying stars.
The punch traveled three meters in 0.3 seconds. It was aimed directly at Bheem's heart.
In that exact moment, at the exact instant the punch was about to connect—
Bheem's blessing reached its absolute limit.
The divine power didn't fade.
It collapsed.
Hanuman ji's blessing, the channeling of 160 times Bheem's normal strength, snapped like an overextended rubber band.
And in that collapse, there was a release of divine energy—one final, desperate surge of power that Bheem didn't consciously summon but that his body automatically activated as a reflex against incoming death. It was his body's last scream. His final defiance.
The punch and the energy surge collided.
For one microsecond, two forces met in absolute equilibrium.
Aryan's rage plus Chakra 2 Stage 1 power plus Void Gauntlet strength against Bheem's collapsing divine blessing's final reflex surge.
The explosion threw both of them backward simultaneously.
Aryan flew twenty meters, crashing into burnt trees, the impact cracking his ribs further. His Void Gauntlets flared violet one last time before fading.
Bheem flew ten meters in the opposite direction, his body completely drained, his consciousness flickering at the edge of oblivion. His gauntlets—the divine golden gauntlets—shattered into fragments, saffron dust dispersing into the air like a god's dying breath.
Silence.
Absolute, complete, terrifying silence.
Neither of them moved.
Neither of them could move.
Aryan lay on his back, staring at the blood moon above, gasping for breath like a fish out of water.
His entire body felt like it had been put through a grinder.
His ribs screamed.
His arm was useless.
His vision was starting to darken at the edges.
He felt like he might die.
He might actually die.
But slowly, he pushed himself up.
Every movement was agony.
His ribs hurt.
His arms felt useless.
His legs trembled.
But he stood.
He approached Bheem's prone form.
The boy was barely breathing, his body completely drained, his consciousness flickering at the edge of nothingness.
Aryan extended his hand.
He pulled Bheem up gently, supporting the boy's weight.
"You came together. You fought as one. You refused to break even when you should have. And when you touched divine power, you nearly killed me," Aryan said, this in a whispered voice steady despite the blood dripping from his mouth, so that only Bheem can listen to him.
He paused.
"That is more than enough."
"Which... which god do you follow, Crown Rank?"
Izan voice is broken.
His faith is shattered.
Beside him, Zain crawls forward, bleeding, gasping the same question in his eyes.
Silence.
Aryan is quiet for a long, terrible moment.
Then he speaks, his voice carrying the weight of someone who's lived across three different worlds:
"I follow Hindu gods."
The words hit like a physical blow.
Izan's Face Crumbles, "But... but you wield power beyond comprehension. Surely Allah—"
Aryan Interrupts, Voice Absolute.
"Listen carefully. What you call divine blessing, I call nature. What you call Allah's will, I call the flow of existence itself."
He pauses, looking down at them—broken, bleeding, destroyed—with eyes that have seen civilizations rise and fall across multiple worlds.
"Hindu philosophy—the philosophy of your companion Asha—understands something Islam and most religions miss. Hinduism is not about worshipping one absolute entity. It's about recognizing the divine in everything. In nature. In rivers. In mountains. In fire, wind, earth, water. In the very fabric of existence itself."
He gestures around the wasteland.
"I see power not as a gift from one god, but as an expression of nature itself. The void, the lightning, the fire, the strength—these are not Allah's tools. These are nature's breath. And I have learned to listen to nature across three different worlds, not just one."
Zain staggers forward, barely conscious.
"But if Allah is everything... if Allah is supreme... how can you be so powerful without following Him?"
Aryan looks at him with eyes that are simultaneously cold and infinitely old.
"Because power doesn't come from faith. It comes from understanding. From observation. From learning to move with nature instead of praying for nature to move for you."
He turns to Asha, still gasping on the ground, her sacred fire extinguished.
"The philosophy your god represents—Agni, the fire—it teaches that fire burns not because someone commands it, but because that is its nature. Your people understand this. Your gods are expressions of nature, not rulers above it. That is why your power is closer to harmony with existence than belief in a single, distant god."
He returns his gaze to Izan and Zain.
"I will teach you what I've learned across my whole life, that the strongest power comes not from prayer, but from becoming one with the forces around you. That nature—all of nature—is your true teacher."
Izan and Zain are silent.
Inside them, something breaks. Not their spirit—but their certainty.
For the first time in their lives, they doubt.
They question.
They've met someone who achieved godlike power without following their god.
[System: "Host, you've just committed religious deconstruction via martial superiority. Theological assessment: you're essentially saying 'my philosophy is stronger because I'm stronger.' That's effective propaganda, actually."]
Aryan: "It's not propaganda. It's demonstration. They needed to understand the limitations of absolute faith."
[System: "You're six years old and deconstructing world religions through combat. This is simultaneously genius and deeply unhinged."]
Aryan raised his hands.
Four tokens materialized in the air—identical to Deepali's, glowing with crimson and gold threads. They descended gently and rested on the four bodies.
From the Observer seats, Zhang Xuan breathed out slowly. "He survived. I still can't believe it."
Roshni: "He didn't survive. He got lucky. If Bheem's blessing lasted two more seconds—"
Sita: "The punch would have killed him. And then momentum would have crushed him anyway. He was at 0.01% survival probability."
Bhaskar: "So what just happened?"
Sita: "Divine timing. Bheem's body reached its absolute limit at the exact moment Crown rank instructor's killing strike was about to connect. If the blessing had held for one more second... Instructor would be dead."
On the VIP Balcony, Principal Devendra stood slowly, making notes. Around him, elders whispered in shock. "He survived a blessing of Hanuman ji?" one asked. "More than survived," another replied. "He matched it."
But Devendra was writing something different. His pen moved across the paper with precision: "The Crown Rank Instructor, Aditya Raj, deliberately allowed the four to activate their blessings and abilities. He could have destroyed them immediately with his Void Gauntlets, but instead chose to let them test themselves fully. A teaching method. A way to make them understand their own limits while still allowing them to pass. He is showing them what true cultivation means—not just victory, but survival. Not just power, but understanding. This child is a teacher in the truest sense. He defeats to enlighten. He wins to inspire."
Devendra didn't realize what had actually happened.
He didn't see how close Aryan came to death.
He didn't understand that for sixty seconds, a six-year-old was barely surviving against a nine-year-old channeling divine strength.
He saw only the outcome, four passed, Aryan stood, victory was achieved.
What he didn't see was the desperation, the luck, the razor's edge between triumph and obliteration.
The dome expelled all four gently. They materialized in the arena, gasping, broken, barely conscious.
Medical teams rushed to them.
Healers surrounded them.
But their eyes were distant.
Processing.
Devastated in ways that transcended physical pain.
Izan looked at his hands.
His lightning didn't dance.
It was just... energy.
Useless energy that couldn't overcome a man behind the mask.
Zain whispered something in Arabic—a prayer, but now it sounded like a question.
A crisis of faith.
Asha smiled despite her pain.
She understood.
Her god was always nature.
She'd just learned that someone else spoke nature's language better.
Bheem woke up slowly.
His gauntlets were destroyed.
Completely shattered.
His sect's most prized weapons, reduced to fragments.
He looked at the Crown Rank Student token resting on his chest.
Then he laughed—a hollow, processing-shock kind of laugh.
Not because he'd almost killed the Crown Rank Instructor.
But because he'd still lost.
Inside the dome, Aryan lays on black soil ground, breathing hard, trying to process what had just happened.
[System: "You almost died. If that blessing had lasted two more seconds—"]
"I know," Aryan interrupted, his voice hoarse.
[System: "You didn't win this exchange. You both lost it. You just... lost less."]
Aryan lay back against the ground, staring at the blood moon.
In the darkness behind his eyelids, he could still feel the weight of Bheem's divine punches.
Could still taste his own blood.
Could still feel the moment when Pure Luck, stupid, impossible luck—saved him from a killing blow by exactly one second.
He was still alive.
And that was enough.
The Announcer's voice rang out across the arena: "Four challengers entered. Four Crown Rank Students emerged. Four whose power was tested. Four who channeled divine blessings. Four who survived. The trials continue. The next batch awaits. The Crown Rank Instructor is ready."
In the dome, Aryan closed his eyes.
The blood moon watched.
The wasteland waited.
And somewhere in the void, something stirred—something that noticed a six-year-old child had just barely survived a fight he should have lost.