The first round of friendly battles had finally come to an end.
The candidates had tested each other's powers, discovered their limits, and witnessed abilities that would make even cosmic civilizations tremble.
Yet none of them was satisfied.
One battle was never enough to understand a rival who stood at the peak of an entire generation.
The ancient judge, seeing their desire to continue evolving, did not stop them.
The arena transformed once more.
This time, the matches were no longer arranged by personal choice.
A new system was established.
A system that would force every candidate to face opponents with completely different abilities.
Second Round of Battles
The pairings appeared in the sky:
William vs Mark
Merito vs Kashmir
Sarah vs Vladimir
Daniel vs Maria
Tiago vs Javier
The atmosphere became heavier.
The battles began simultaneously in separated arenas.
William vs MarkThe battle between perception and speed
Unlike their first encounter inside Andrew's simulation years ago, William was no longer a man overwhelmed by Mark's speed.
He had studied him.
He had observed every movement, every habit, every moment where light shifted before an attack arrived.
The moment the battle began, Mark disappeared.
Thousands of beams of light crossed the arena from every direction.
To an ordinary observer, William appeared completely surrounded.
But William did not move.
His eyes closed.
He no longer relied on sight.
He saw the countless threads connecting reality itself.
Every attack.
Every movement.
Every interaction.
The instant Mark's attacks approached, William severed the relationship between himself and the incoming light.
The attacks passed through him as if he did not exist.
But Mark had expected this.
The battle immediately transformed into a war of adaptation.
He stopped relying on direct attacks.
Instead, he manipulated the battlefield itself, filling it with endless reflections and layers of light.
A maze where the real attack could hide among millions of possibilities.
For the first time, William was forced to move.
He broke the connections between the reflections and their sources, collapsing entire regions of false light.
Then, using the mysterious energy he had discovered during the construction of the platforms, he launched attacks that crossed the battlefield instantly.
Mark avoided most of them.
The few that touched him were enough to make him understand that a single mistake would end the battle.
After a long exchange, Mark's greatest weakness became clear.
He depended on the presence of light.
William exploited this.
He slowly removed every possibility for light to return to Mark's perception.
The arena became a prison of darkness.
For a being whose senses were connected to light itself, this was fatal.
Mark attempted to escape the darkness by creating his own light, but William had already understood the mechanism.
He severed the connection between the generated light and Mark's perception.
Unable to accurately sense his opponent anymore, Mark was struck by a decisive attack.
The judge announced the result:
Victory: William.
Merito vs Kashmir Nothingness against the world of shadows
The battlefield became a sea of darkness from the first moment.
Kashmir did not repeat his mistake against Javier.
He knew that allowing Merito time to think was dangerous.
Thousands of shadow soldiers attacked from every direction, each carrying techniques stolen from powerful beings across the universe.
However, Merito did not care about numbers.
His finger moved slowly.
The attacks disappeared.
Not destroyed.
The attacks has not blocked .
Simply removed from existence.
KASHMIR attempted to hide inside the shadows and attack from impossible angles.
At one moment, he even dragged Merito into his own Shadow World, where every shadow obeyed his command.
But Merito's response was terrifying.
He did not attempt to escape.
He simply began erasing the very connection between the Shadow World and reality.
For the first time, fear appeared in the eyes of KASHMIR
If he continued, his greatest weapon might disappear entirely.
Forced into direct combat, he tried everything he had.
Yet Merito's nullification was too absolute.
After exhausting his resources, Kashmir accepted defeat.
Victory: Merito.
Sarah vs VladimirDestruction against flames that burn reality
Vladimir's crimson flames filled the battlefield.
The fire that could burn space and time rushed toward Sarah like a cosmic disaster.
Yet the moment it entered her field, portions of the flames simply ceased to exist.
The power of destruction opposed the power of burning.
For a while, neither side could overcome the other.
Vladimir increased the intensity of his flames until even the fabric of reality began melting.
Sarah answered by compressing her destructive energy into a single point.
The collision erased an enormous section of the arena.
However, Sarah possessed the advantage.
Unlike Vladimir, whose power relied on a specific form of energy, her destructive force directly targeted the existence of the attacks themselves.
Eventually, Vladimir's flames could no longer maintain their superiority.
His energy ran low.
Sarah launched a final wave of destruction that broke through his defenses.
The battle ended.
Victory: Sarah.
The remaining two battles of the second round would reveal even more terrifying clashes between the strongest candidates of the tournament.