My All Powerful System

Kevin was launched backward. His boots dragged across the granite, burning dark streaks into the stone. His chest vest was charred and dented. He looked down. Then he smiled faintly.

Drake charged. His battle hammer came swinging from the side. Kevin raised both arm guards, channeling a dense wall of fire to absorb the impact.

CLANG BOOM!

The force pushed him backward. Drake kept swinging. Again. CLANG! Again. BOOM! Kevin’s defense began to yield under the raw weight.

Drake roared with every strike. ”BLOCK THIS!” The hammer came down. Kevin crossed his arms above his head. BOOOOM! The stage cracked beneath him.

His knees bent. For the first time, the audience saw Kevin struggle against the pure physical mass.

Drake laughed. ”Got you!” He drove his knee into Kevin’s stomach. BOOM! Kevin’s body bent. Drake grabbed him around the waist.

”You’re not escaping this time!” The massive fighter lifted Kevin from the ground. His magma armor intensified. The hammer began glowing red behind him.

Kevin’s eyes narrowed. Drake raised the hammer. ”DIE!” He brought it down. But the hammer never reached Kevin.

Kevin unleashed a violent, omnidirectional explosion of Fire affinity directly from his chest and core. BOOOOOM! The sudden thermal shockwave blasted Drake’s grip open.

Kevin dropped out of his grasp. His body twisted in mid air. He landed smoothly behind Drake.

Kevin instantly gathered every drop of his remaining Fire affinity into his right arm. The flames condensed until his fist looked as bright as a miniature star.

Drake turned. Too late. Kevin drove his fist downward. BOOM! The explosive punch smashed directly into the back of Drake’s knee.

CRACK!

Drake’s knee armor exploded in a spray of sparks and shattered rock. His leg buckled. ”AAAGHH!” He dropped onto one knee. Blood immediately appeared around the shattered joint.

The audience roared.

Drake gritted his teeth. He tried to stand. Kevin didn’t allow it. He stepped forward and drove a fire coated knee into Drake’s ribs. BOOM! Drake’s body shifted sideways.

He coughed. Blood splashed onto the granite.

”GET UP, DRAKE!” The Beacon section screamed.

Drake’s hand tightened around his hammer. He spun. The weapon swept through the air in a desperate arc.

Kevin stepped backward. The hammer passed inches from his face. Drake followed with another swing. Kevin ducked. Another. Kevin leaned backward. Another. Kevin stepped sideways.

Drake’s breathing became heavier. His attacks were becoming slower. Kevin saw it. He waited for the next swing.

The hammer came. Kevin stepped inside. His left hand caught the handle. CLANK! His grip burned into the metal.

Drake’s eyes widened. ”Let go!”

Kevin’s right hand pulled back, flames swirling furiously into a point. Drake tried to pull the hammer away. Kevin held it firm.

BOOM!

The first explosive strike smashed into Drake’s chest. His molten armor cracked. BOOM! The second strike landed. More fragments exploded in blinding sparks.

Drake’s eyes widened. Kevin stepped closer. ”This is over.”

BOOM!

The third fire boosted strike slammed straight into Drake’s sternum. The remaining magma armor exploded completely.

The impact cracked several ribs beneath it. Drake’s lungs emptied instantly. His eyes rolled back. His feet left the ground. His massive body flew backward. Ten meters. Twenty. Thirty.

He crossed the boundary line and crashed into the sand pit outside the stage. THUD! His hammer slipped from his fingers. The crowd exploded.

The referee immediately raised his hand. He pointed toward Kevin. ”MATCH ONE VICTORY: KEVIN BANKS!”

The giant screen updated. [ MATCH 1 RESULT: KEVIN BANKS — HEATHER BLESSED ACADEMY — WINNER ]

The Heather section erupted. Kevin stood in the center of the stage, breathing heavily. The flames coating his hands slowly died down to faint embers.

He glanced toward the sand pit. Drake wasn’t moving. Kevin turned and walked away. The first battle was over. But the tournament was only getting uglier.

——-

The atmosphere in the arena shifted instantly, heavy with a suffocating tension that settled deep into the stone bleachers.

With Beacon’s first fighter already dragged off the floor in a bloody trail, their second representative stepped onto the platform.

His eyes were bloodshot, his knuckles white as he clenched his fists. The entire tournament life of Beacon Academy rested solely on his shoulders, and he knew it.

He took a low, grounded stance.

Energy surged through his veins as his Earth affinity spread across his body, pulling dense granite up from the stage floor.

Thick basalt plates formed over his shins, wrapped around his forearms, and locked over his chest like heavy plate armor.

A second later, his Lightning affinity sparked to life, weaving between the cracks of the stone casing in bright, jagged purple arcs that hummed with pure kinetic threat.

Across from him, Heather’s fighter held his ground. He didn’t waste movement on theatrics, but the air around him warped from the sheer heat of his Fire affinity, while a swirling Wind affinity whipped around his feet like a compressed cyclone.

The Void citizen referee raised a single hand, his face unreadable. ”BEGIN!”

The Beacon fighter exploded forward. Lightning detonated beneath his boots with a deafening CRACK, propelling him across half the stage in a fraction of a second.

His right fist, encased in three layers of basalt and glowing with violent electricity, whistled through the air straight for his opponent’s chest.

The Heather fighter didn’t try to block. Channeling the wind at his ankles, he launched himself upward, letting the massive punch swing through empty air inches beneath his boots.

”Got you!” the Beacon fighter roared, driving his left palm directly into the granite stage. ”LIGHTNING EARTH SPEARS!”

The platform beneath the airborne fighter shattered. Massive stone pillars surged upward like jagged teeth, their tips sharpened by compressed earth and laced with crackling purple electricity.

Mid air, the Heather fighter twisted his torso, using wind jets to push off empty space. One spear grazed his thigh, tearing through the fabric; another shredded his sleeve, a third forced him sideways, denying him any chance to land cleanly.

”Stay down!” The Beacon fighter slammed both hands together, pouring every drop of his lightning affinity directly into the bedrock.

A web of high voltage electricity spread across the stone floor in a blinding mesh.

The moment the Heather fighter’s boots touched the ground, electricity detonated beneath him.

He kicked off the stone instantly, taking a deep, ragged breath as gale-force wind currents whipped wildly around his upper body, feeding the intense flames on his palms until they roared with a harsh, golden hue.

Rotating his entire torso, he combined both affinities into a single, sweeping release.

A towering vortex of flame and compressed wind erupted from his hands, expanding rapidly until the entire central stage disappeared behind a wall of roaring white orange fire.

The temperature inside the arena spiked. Inside the heart of the inferno, the Beacon fighter brought up a massive basalt shield, shielding his face as the thermal wave blasted against his defense.

He poured his Earth affinity outward without restraint, continuously rebuilding the stone armor as the outer layers melted away into slag under the relentless heat.

For long, grueling minutes, the elemental struggle locked both fighters in a deadlock.

The Heather fighter was drenched in sweat, his breathing becoming labored, while the Beacon fighter bled from dozens of fine wind cutter lacerations across his exposed skin.

Suddenly, a rogue arc of purple lightning shot out from the dying flame vortex, catching the Heather fighter across the shoulder. CRACK! His uniform ripped open, blood spurting from the jagged burn.

He stumbled back, gritting his teeth. His eyes hardened as he pulled the remaining fire around his body into a single, terrifyingly dense point between his palms.

The surrounding air distorted violently from the extreme thermal concentration.

He thrust both hands forward, releasing a concentrated beam of white hot plasma, accelerated to supersonic speed by a compressed wind tunnel.

The beam struck the Beacon fighter’s basalt shield head on. For a split second, the stone held.

Then, microscopic fractures webbed across the surface before the entire barrier shattered into glowing embers.

The beam pierced through, blowing apart the remaining stone armor and blasting the Beacon fighter backward.

His limp body skipped twice across the granite before crashing onto the stone floor outside the boundary line, completely unconscious.

”MATCH OVER!” the referee called out, his voice echoing off the silent walls. Beacon was officially eliminated from the bracket.

A brief, tentative cheer rose from the Heather section, but it died almost as quickly as it started. Because no time for rest. This was the Last Phase.

From the opposite tunnel, a Void fighter stepped onto the stage with a slow, predatory walk.

He was a heavily built Year 4 vanguard with a shaved head, broad shoulders, and a cold, sadistic grin. On his right hand, the black obsidian cheat ring glinted dully under the stadium lights.

The Heather fighter was already gasping for air, his left shoulder bleeding freely and his stamina severely depleted. Yet, he wiped the blood from his cheek and forced his guard back up.

”BEGIN!”

The Heather fighter struck immediately, throwing his arm forward to launch a high speed blade of burning wind across the platform.

The Void fighter didn’t even attempt to dodge or raise a barrier. He primed his cheat ring, channeling his Earth and Fire affinities straight into the array.

The obsidian ring flashed with a dark, unnatural light. 4X output. His physical force exploded outward in an invisible shockwave. He drove a bare, unarmored fist straight into the incoming elemental blade.

BOOM! The fiery wind blade shattered into harmless sparks upon impact. The Void fighter didn’t yield a single inch of ground.

Before the Heather fighter could process the raw force behind the strike, the Void brute vanished from his line of sight. He reappeared directly inside his guard, his shadow looming over the exhausted student.

A 4X boosted punch smashed straight into the Heather fighter’s ribs. Bones cracked like dry branches under the weight of the blow, dropping him to his knees as a fountain of blood sprayed from his lips.

The Void fighter reached down, snagging the boy by his collar and lifting him off the stone. The battered Heather student weakly raised a hand toward the official’s desk. ”I... I forfeit!”

He turned his eyes desperately toward the Void referee standing at the edge of the stage.

The referee stood with his arms crossed, staring back with cold indifference, completely refusing to raise his hand to acknowledge the surrender.

The Void fighter’s smile broadened, his grip tightening as he grabbed the boy by his hair. ”Too late.”

He drove a 4X boosted knee straight up into the Heather fighter’s face. CRACK! The impact snapped his head back, knocking him completely unconscious before he even hit the ground.

Only after the limp body flopped onto the blood stained granite did the referee lazily raise his hand. ”Match over! Winner: JAX VOID BLESSED ACADEMY!”

A/N: Character art is finally up, here on NovelPhoenix, check it out and vote for your favorite. More characters, including Lynx, are on the way soon.