Suddenly, Zephyrion’s golden eyes narrowed. The chaotic elemental storm around the vessel suddenly collapsed inward, compressing into a single point of terrifying density at the tip of Adrian’s finger.
SWOOOSSSSSSSSHHH!
The air itself seemed to fold.
Gray’s bored expression finally faded.
For the first time since the match began, his face turned serious.
Whatever technique Zephyrion was using erupted.
Fwoopp!
The space actually twisted.
A lattice of razor-thin spatial cuts, each one laced with the conceptual authority of shifting winds, bloomed outward in every direction at once.
It was not a simple area attack, but more like a domain-level locking art that attempted to freeze every possible escape vector within a thirty-meter radius and then collapse them simultaneously.
Even with his [Swap] unique skill, Gray realized the problem instantly.
Tracking Zephyrion’s true movement under this kind of conceptual interference would not be simple.
The god was no longer relying on raw speed alone; he was using authority to erase the intermediate steps between positions.
’Tsk...’
Swoosh!
Zephyrion appeared directly behind him in an instant, almost giving him no time to react.
A palm already glowing with compressed spatial wind drove toward the center of Gray’s back.
"[✧Swap✧]"
Gray exchanged positions with a distant fragment of broken pillar. The palm struck empty air and carved a clean spatial scar through the platform.
But the very next moment, Zephyrion was already in front of him, fist traveling toward his face.
The earlier thought was confirmed instantly, as under that technique, simple positional swaps were no longer enough to create real distance.
So instead...
"Nine Illusionary Dream Steps..."
"[✧ Dream Mist ✧]"
Gray’s body dissolved into a drifting, silver-white mist that scattered across the platform in multiple overlapping afterimages.
The conceptual locking lattice of Zephyrion’s technique instantly swept through the mist forms.
Several afterimages shredded apart under the spatial cuts, dissolving into nothing.
Gray felt the pressure immediately as each destroyed fragment fed him a sharp pulse of feedback through the technique’s connection.
The god-level art was not simply attacking space; it was hunting the residual traces of his presence inside the Dream Mist.
’Annoying.’
He condensed the remaining mist into three denser clusters and shifted between them in rapid succession, trying to keep the true core of his body moving faster than the lattice could fully map.
Zephyrion’s golden eyes tracked the movement with unsettling accuracy.
The former God of Shifting Winds had clearly recovered from the earlier humiliation.
The fear of Jasmine’s brief appearance was no longer clouding his reactions. What remained was his cold and relatively extensive combat experience.
A new wave of spatial wind blades formed, but they were much thinner, faster, and layered in overlapping frequencies.
They did not aim at the mist itself; instead, they aimed at the points where the mist had to reconverge if Gray wanted to take solid form again.
’He’s forcing the timing of my reformation.’
Gray delayed the convergence by a fraction of a second and swapped with a distant scrap of broken barrier the moment one cluster of mist began to solidify.
The spatial blades carved through empty air.
The platform shuddered under the repeated conceptual cuts. Fine cracks spread further across the reinforced stone.
Zephyrion did not pause.
The god raised both hands.
The four elemental affinities that had been chaotic earlier now moved with perfect hierarchical control, with wind as the primary authority, the other three subordinate and reinforcing.
A second unknown technique began to form above the platform: a spiraling cage of shifting air that contracted inward while simultaneously expanding its internal cutting surfaces.
It was designed to shrink the usable space and shred anything that tried to remain non-solid for too long.
Gray’s eyes narrowed.
’This is getting troublesome.’
He pushed the [Dream Mist] to its current limit, splitting into seven thinner streams that raced along the edges of the contracting cage.
Each stream carried only a fragment of his presence, making them harder to lock onto individually.
Zephyrion’s golden gaze flicked between them with inhuman precision.
Two of the streams were bisected almost immediately. The feedback hit Gray like a dull blade against the mind.
He reformed at the far edge of the platform, already moving.
The cage collapsed inward a heartbeat later, erasing the space he had just occupied. The residual wind pressure alone was enough to score deep grooves into the arena floor.
’He’s adapting faster than I expected. Using a weak vessel or not, the combat instincts are still damned real,’ Gray clicked his tongue silently.
He had been metering his output carefully, keeping every visible action within the range of an abnormal King-stage genius so the watching nobles would not reassess him as an immediate threat.
That restriction was finally starting to cost him.
Zephyrion’s techniques simply operated on a different layer of combat.
Pure physical superiority and the cooldown-free [Swap] were no longer enough to create clean openings without risk.
Crack!
Another spatial fold opened without warning.
Zephyrion appeared at Gray’s left flank, palm already extended.
The compressed wind at the center of the palm carried a conceptual edge meant to sever mobility itself.
Gray swapped again, this time with a mote of dust high above the platform. He dropped from the new position, aiming a downward strike at the god’s shoulder.
Zephyrion turned and met the strike with a forearm reinforced by layered earth and wind.
CLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGGGG!
The impact rang across the arena.
Gray felt the rebound travel up his arm, much stronger than it should have been from a vessel that was still only Late King-stage due to possession.
The divine authority packed into the body was compensating for the gap in realm through pure efficiency and technique.
’I really underestimated the density of the possession.’
The thought was calm, but the seriousness in Gray’s eyes deepened.
Zephyrion pressed the advantage.
A continuous chain of short-range spatial displacements followed, all of them appearing at different angles.
Fire-laced thrusts, water-compressed jabs, wind-cutting sweeps, earth-weighted hammers. The combinations were seamless.
Gray flowed between them with his swap ability and residual Dream Mist fragments, but the margin for error kept shrinking.
Every exchange forced him to spend more attention on reading the conceptual layer of the attacks rather than simply overpowering them.
A particularly sharp spatial cut grazed his side when the timing of a [Swap] was disrupted by a secondary wind lock.
The protective barrier of the tournament registered the contact with a bright flare. It wasn’t enough for elimination, but close to it.
The crowd noise was a distant roar.
Gray ignored it.
’He’s trying to stack residual locks. If too many of those spatial cuts land, the Dream Mist will start collapsing under the interference.’
He spread the mist again, wider this time, and used the scattered presence to mask a series of shorter swaps that kept him just outside the densest cutting zones.
Zephyrion’s golden eyes tracked the movement with growing frustration.
The god clearly disliked being forced into a prolonged tracking contest against an opponent who refused to stay solid.
The spiraling cage technique formed a second time, denser and faster than before.
Gray felt the space around him tighten.
The Dream Mist streams began to fray at the edges under the conceptual pressure. He condensed them early and [Swapped]ped out of the primary collapse zone, but Zephyrion had anticipated the direction.
A third god-level variation, an instantaneous wind spear that ignored intermediate distance, lanced toward the exact point Gray rematerialized.
There was no time for another clean [Swap].
Gray twisted, taking the spear against a hastily raised forearm.
The force drove him backward across the platform in a low slide, boots carving shallow trenches in the stone.
The tournament barrier flared even harder this time.
’Tsk.’
Zephyrion did not let the opening close.
The god closed the distance with another spatial fold and unleashed a point-blank burst of multi-layered wind blades aimed at every major joint.
Gray’s eyes sharpened.
He scattered into Dream Mist at the last possible instant, but two of the blades still clipped residual fragments hard enough to send clear warning signals through the technique.
The mist reformed slower than before.
Zephyrion’s presence was already there, golden eyes locked on the incomplete solidification.
A palm strike carrying the full compressed authority of the shifting winds drove toward Gray’s center mass.
For a fraction of a second, elimination felt close.
Gray’s right hand finally moved to his waist.
Shing!
The sealed rapier cleared the sheath in a single, clean draw. Black and faint silver light ran along the edge as the weapon came free.
The casual metering of power he had maintained until now changed.
Not fully released, still carefully constrained, but no longer limited to unarmed restraint and movement skills alone.
He had clearly underestimated how far Zephyrion could push a weak vessel when fully focused.
The incoming palm met the tip of the rapier.
Cling!
A sharp, clear ring cut through the elemental noise.
Gray’s voice was quiet, but it carried across the platform with absolute clarity.
"Soul Chasing Extremities... Third Move."
[Soul Reaving Pursuit]
Chapter 399: Inter-Academy Tournament (XLXI)
8 min read