The dust in the clearing hadn't yet settled when the silence of the forest was broken by the sound of splintering wood. Deep within the treeline where Koma had been thrown, a dark crimson light began to pulse through the haze of debris.
Hykee stood his ground. The black lightning tears were still sizzling down his hand and onto the scorched earth. He didn't lower his guard. He knew better than to think a single strike, no matter how precise, would end a monster like Koma.
Suddenly, a sound emerged from the shadows that made the hair on the back of Hykee's neck stand up. It was a laugh. It started as a low, rumbling chuckle and escalated into a genuine, sharp burst of amusement.
Kana looked down from the stone ledge, her eyes wide with disbelief as she watched the silhouettes of broken trees shift. "He's laughing?" she asked, her voice trembling. "Hykee just hit him with enough force to shatter a mountain, and he's laughing?"
Kaola, hovering nearby, felt a surge of adrenaline. The fear she'd felt moments ago was replaced by a fierce, soaring pride. She clenched her fists, her wind wings beating with renewed vigor. "Of course he's laughing!" Kaola shouted, her excitement bubbling over. "Koma wouldn't lose to Hykee. It doesn't matter what kind of power up Hykee gets or what kind of eyes he opens. Koma is Koma. He's the ceiling that none of us can reach!"
Lokee, who had been watching the exchange with a cynical eye, let out a sharp, audible scoff. She didn't look at Kaola, but her disdain was heavy in the air. "You talk as if he's a god, Kaola," Lokee said, her voice dry and biting. "He's just a man who's forgotten what it feels like to struggle. Don't let your worship blind you to the fact that Hykee just drew blood. Even gods bleed if you hit them hard enough."
Koma emerged fully from the wreckage of the fallen oaks. His high collar was slightly torn and his hair was disheveled, but he was walking with a steady, rhythmic pace. He reached up and wiped the thin trail of blood from the corner of his mouth with his thumb. This was a blood act, and Koma knew exactly how to utilize the substance. He held the crimson liquid between his fingers and began to circulate his Yen. He focused on the blood, adding more of his own from a small cut on his palm to increase the mass. The small smear began to expand, thickening into several jagged, orb like projectiles that hovered around his hand. They grew larger and denser, swirling with a violent, concentrated energy that hummed like a hornet nest.
With a flick of his wrist, Koma sent the blood act projectiles screaming toward Hykee. The ground beneath them had been so thoroughly pulverized that there was no dirt left, only jagged bedrock and the shimmering heat of the void. Both brothers were now hovering over whatever ground remained in the devastated forest.
"How come you couldn't just do this when retrieving Kota?" Koma asked, his tone shifting from amusement to a cold, demanding edge. "Why didn't you go this hard during the retrieval, Hykee?"
Hykee raised his arms to shield his face, his empty hands crackling with desperate energy. The impact of the blood spheres slammed directly into his forearms and shoulders. The force rattled his bones and pushed him further back into the air. Before he could even formulate an answer, Koma used his phantom step. He vanished from the sight of the sisters above and reappeared in the blind spot of Hykee's vision.
Koma unleashed a flurry of punches, his fists moving with a speed that made them look like a dozen simultaneous strikes. Each blow landed with the sound of a cannon blast against Hykee's ribs and jaw. The final strike was a heavy palm to the center of Hykee's chest that sent the larger brother flying backward. Hykee was a blurred streak of black lightning as he crashed into the side of a mountain on the opposite side of the clearing. The impact caused a massive rockslide that buried him in stone.
The clearing went silent for a moment, the only sound being the crackle of fire in the brush. Then, the rubble began to shift. Hykee hauled himself out of the debris, his breath coming in ragged, bloody hitches. He slumped against a jagged rock, trying to recover his footing as the black lightning around him flickered weakly.
"I'd have had Kota if Kova didn't stop me!" Hykee responded, his voice a raw, frustrated growl that echoed off the mountain face. He spat a mouthful of black ichor onto the stones. "It seems like I was given power just to be held back by my siblings!"
Koma stopped in the middle of the cratered wasteland, his feet hovering inches above the jagged remains of the earth. He watched as Hykee struggled to stand, the eye on the back of his brother's hand still weeping those dark, electric tears.
"Excuses," Koma said, his voice cold and dismissive.
Koma phantom stepped directly in front of Hykee, intending to deliver a finishing blow while his brother was still recovering. But Hykee was anticipating this exact move. The moment Koma reappeared, Hykee didn't flinch. He didn't try to block. Instead, he threw a massive, desperate punch with his right hand, fueled by the last of his black lightning.
The strike caught Koma completely off guard. The elder brother had expected Hykee to be too broken to react, but the force of the punch connected squarely with Koma's jaw. The sound of the impact echoed like a thunderclap across the mountain range. Koma's head snapped back, and for the first time in the entire fight, his eyes widened in genuine shock. The momentum of the hit sent Koma skidding backward through the air, his own phantom step flickering as he struggled to regain his balance.
Koma let out a series of wet coughs, his hand moving to steady his jaw. He looked up, and a dark laugh escaped his lips. The look of surprise was gone, replaced by a terrifying clarity.
"I'm done playing with you, Hykee!" Koma yelled, his voice carrying the weight of a death sentence.
Hykee decided himself he was done playing as well. The eye on the back of his hand let out a piercing screech, and three dancing lightning strides erupted, circling around Hykee in a frantic orbit. They began growing intensely, spinning into a massive vortex of black electricity that hummed with enough Yen to shatter reality.
Hykee hovered above that crater, waiting for Koma to make a move. As soon as he moves, I'll send the lightning to eat him alive! Hykee thought to himself, his mind racing with the thrill of the hunt. Nothing he can do can stop my lightning! The power was intoxicating, a wild and jagged current that promised to reduce the eldest brother to ash.
Koma looked at Hykee with a bored annoyance. He wanted to erase him from existence, his fingers twitching with the urge to finally drop the weight of the void upon his brother.
"Let's end this now, Hykee!" Koma screamed. "Drawing this fight out does nothing but bore me! You've become an eyesore and I'm tired now! I've touched you already and you know what that means!"
Koma jumped high into the sky, his silhouette eclipsing the light of the forest fires. He raised his hand and pointed it directly towards his brother. The sky began folding inwards, the atmosphere warping and twisting toward a single point in Koma's palm. It was the sign that he was about to unleash something that would delete the entire forest in an instant.
Lokee called out to the cratered ground below. "Hykee! You need to get out of there!"
Koma responded instantly, his voice a roar that shook the very foundation of the mountains. "Be quiet, Lokee! It's too late! You all will die!"
Kana looked at Lokee, her face pale with terror. "Lokee, shouldn't we stop them? Won't you stop them?"
"How am I supposed to stop them?" Lokee responded, her voice tight with a rare sense of urgency. "The only person strong enough to stop them two is Kova and he isn't here right now! We need to fall back. Kaola, Kana, you need to get out of the radius or Koma's next attack will swallow you!"
Suddenly, something stopped Koma. A sharp coldness gripped his chest from the internal strain of his own power. He felt the threads of his Yen fraying, the massive amounts of energy he'd used to flicker and strike finally demanding a price. The world around him began to blur, the edges of his vision bleeding into a static grey.
He lowered his hand, and the sky reverted back to its original form as the folding pressure vanished. Koma began to fall, his body flickering in and out of space like a faulty lamp.
I couldn't fire my attack, Koma thought, his mind clouded by the sudden exhaustion. I must've expended too much Yen. He felt the hollowness in his core, a void that was not a weapon but a drain. He'd underestimated the cost of maintaining his phantom step while preparing a high yen attack. His mind raced as he tumbled, trying to grasp at a single spark of energy to stabilize his flight.
I'm the pinnacle of a human in the world, yet here I am expending too much yen like a weakling, Koma thought, bitterness stinging worse than the physical fatigue. My body couldn't sustain the yen output. A dark, resigned smile touched his lips as the darkness closed in. It's fine I guess. I'll just kill them another day.
The black lightning around Hykee continued to roar, but Koma could no longer sustain the battle. The sky was still, the pressure was gone, and the eldest brother continued his erratic descent toward the broken earth.