Chapter 81 (2)
They clashed again in the center of the cage, trading punches and kicks and knees and elbows in a flurry of motion that left both men breathing harder than before.
Elijah's Ki sense kept him in the fight, reading each attack as it came and feeding him the information he needed to block or dodge or counter, but Jack's raw speed and power meant that some attacks got through no matter how fast Elijah reacted.
A punch caught Elijah on the cheek, snapping his head to the side and filling his mouth with the taste of blood.
A kick landed on his thigh, making his leg buckle for a moment before he caught himself, elbow glanced off his shoulder, numbing his arm from wrist to elbow.
But Elijah was landing attacks too, punch to Jack's stomach that made him exhale sharply, knee to his thigh that made him stumble, hook to his ribs that made him grunt and step back.
The fight between them seemed equally matched, with both men landing blows and both men taking damage and neither man willing to give ground.
But there was a difference between them that Elijah could feel in his bones, a difference that had nothing to do with speed or power or skill.
Jack was never on the defensive, and he was never attacking and defending at the same time.
He attacked, and then he defended, and then he attacked again, each phase of the fight separate and distinct from the ones before and after.
He would throw a combination of punches, and then he would block Elijah's counters, and then he would throw another combination, and the rhythm of his movements was steady and predictable once you learned to see it.
Elijah was different, and he could feel the difference in his own body as he moved through the fight.
He attacked while he was defending, and he defended while he was attacking, and the two aspects of combat blended together into a single continuous flow that had no breaks and no pauses.
His Ki sense made this possible because it gave him information about Jack's attacks before they came, and that information allowed him to position his body to counter while he was still throwing a punch of his own.
Jack landed a solid hit on Elijah's ribs, and the pain flared through his side as he heard something crack.
He answered with a punch to Jack's face that split the skin above his eyebrow, and blood began to trickle down Jack's cheek in a thin red line.
Jack touched the blood with his fingers, looked at it, and then looked at Elijah with an expression that was somewhere between surprise and approval. "This is getting interesting," he said.
Elijah did not answer because his ribs were screaming and his breath was coming in short gasps and he needed every ounce of focus to stay on his feet.
His Ki sense was still sharp, still feeding him information, but his body was slowing down and the hits he was taking were adding up.
They circled each other again, both of them bleeding now, both of them breathing hard, both of them watching for the opening that would end the fight.
The Vice Leaders had leaned forward in their seats, their eyes fixed on the cage, their auras flickering with the intensity of the moment.
Jack attacked first, as he always did, his fists driving toward Elijah's face in a combination that had landed solidly several times already.
Elijah's Ki sense read the trajectory, and his body moved in response, and he slipped the first punch and blocked the second and ducked under the third.
Then he stepped inside Jack's guard and drove his palm into Jack's chest with everything he had.
The impact pushed Jack back a step, and his red eyes widened slightly because he had not expected Elijah to close the distance so aggressively.
He recovered quickly, bringing his hands up to protect his face, but Elijah was already there, already inside his reach, already throwing punches that Jack could not fully block.
A punch to the stomach made Jack exhale sharply, knee to the thigh made him stumble, elbow to the shoulder made his arm drop.
And then a punch to the jaw snapped his head to the side and sent him staggering toward the ropes.
The Vice Leaders were on their feet now, their voices rising in shouts that Elijah could not understand because his blood was pounding in his ears and his focus was narrowed to the man in front of him.
Jack caught himself on the ropes and pushed off, and his red eyes were different now, sharper and more intense and no longer patient.
"You're better than I thought," Jack said,
Elijah stood in the center of the cage with his chest heaving and his ribs screaming and his split lip dripping blood onto the canvas.
He had hurt Jack, had pushed him back, had made him bleed, but he knew that Jack had not been fighting at full strength because he could feel the Ki coiled in Jack's chest like a spring waiting to be released.
"You haven't used your enhancement," Elijah said.
Jack shook his head slowly. "Neither have you."
They looked at each other across the cage, and something passed between them that neither of them needed to put into words.
They had tested each other with raw physical combat, had measured each other's speed and strength and skill, and now.....
Elijah breathed in deeply, and he reached for the warmth in his chest, and he pulled.
The red aura exploded around him, bright and fierce and hungry, and his muscles tightened and his vision sharpened and his heart pounded in his ears.
One hundred percent of Zenith flooded through his body, pushing his stats to their limits and beyond, and the pain in his ribs faded to a distant ache that he could ignore.
At the same moment, Jack's aura erupted around him in a brilliant gold that was almost painful to look at, and the pressure in the cage doubled as his Ki enhancement pushed his already maxed-out stats even higher.
His red eyes blazed with the intensity of a man who had finally stopped holding back, and his body seemed to grow larger somehow, more solid, more dangerous.
The two auras pressed against each other in the space between them, red against gold, and the canvas beneath their feet rippled with the force of the collision.
The Vice Leaders had gone silent again, their faces pale in the glow of the auras, their hands gripping the edges of their seats.
Jack smiled, and there was nothing calm about it now. "Now," he said, "let's really fight."