Now, two Vacuoan fighters rose from seats not far from Sun's. They had been sitting together which meant that they had to be teammates, right?
Right.
He was not entirely certain, but the assumption felt reasonable.
The Vacuoan pair entered from the western gate.
The first was a red haired man with sun darkened skin and sharp, angular features. His rune frame bore cool desert motifs, lightweight and segmented for mobility. A massive weapon rested across his back, something between a cannon and a polearm.
The second was a green haired man, broader of shoulder and carrying an oversized greatsword strapped diagonally across his back. His armor looked a bit heavier, though still more flexible than LUCID standard. There was a looseness to his stance as well, along with a predatory patience.
Opposite them, Menagerie stepped onto the arena floor.
Jaune leaned forward slightly.
The taller of the two was thin and long limbed. Beside him stood a shorter man with dark black hair.
That was one. Another meta rune user.
Earlier, Jaune had cataloged ten such signatures in the entire arena. Five were from Menagerie and this was one of them.
Curiosity flickered in his chest.
What kind of meta rune would this be?
The signal flared and the match began.
The red haired Vacuoan didn't hesitate or dally. He launched upward in a burst of force, leaving the arena floor in a violent shockwave.
His trajectory didn't reverse as he came to a halt in mid air. He was hovering.
Yet... he was not hovering through using his Will. This was different.
He was straight up flying. Suspended in midair as naturally as if gravity had forgotten him.
Yang couldn't help but ask Jaune softly, her eyes never leaving the fight.
"Is that... uh... Aura Echo or whatever?"
Jaune shook his head faintly.
"It isn't. I think that might be his Rune skill. And the technique to stand on the air isn't exactly called Aura Echo. While they both utilize Will in the same way, the technique is different. "
"Right, right. I got it."
Suddenly it escalated.
All around the red haired Vacuoon, the air rippled. From those ripples emerged cannon barrels.
At least a dozen of them.
They protruded from thin air in a circular formation around him, rotating slightly as if adjusting aim.
Then, all at once, they fired.
A storm of compressed energy shells screamed toward the Menagerie duo.
The tall man reacted by lifting both hands up, and in response, the arena floor answered.
Stone tore upward in jagged slabs. Earth and rock coalesced in front of the incoming barrage, forming a thick, layered barricade. The shells detonated against it in violent bursts, fracturing stone and spraying debris across the field.
The sound reverberated through the coliseum like rolling thunder.
The tall man's movements were controlled and powerful. Graceful, even. Each wave of his hands redirected debris, reinforced crumbling sections and shaped impact absorption angles.
Jaune registered that the man clearly had some type of Earth Rune of some sort.
Meanwhile, as the fight was occurring, the shorter dark haired man began to walk forward.
The green haired Vacuoan drew his greatsword and advanced to intercept him.
There were perhaps twenty meters between them. Then, an interesting phenomena happened. The distance between them unnaturally shrank.
Not visually at first as it was quite subtle, but when the shorter man took a step, the space between them folded.
Jaune's eyes widened slightly as he watched that gap start to compress unnaturally.
It couldn't be described as teleportation. Jaune, having once held a teleportation rune, himself could tell that this was the case.
There was no disappearance and reappearance. The very conceptual space itself seemed to bend, like fabric pulled inward.
The shorter man's hand extended forward and suddenly his fingers were at the green haired Vacuoan's throat.
Along with the rest of his body.
Yang leaned forward.
"What the hell was that?"
Jaune did not answer. He was too busy watching. The shorter man's expression was calm and he tightened his grip.
Then, with a sudden explosive strength, he lifted the green haired Vacuoan off the ground and choke slammed him downward.
But the green haired Vacuoan was not helpless. Mid descent into the chokeslam, his body had liquefied.
It dissolved into a glossy, slime like substance. The shorter man's grip slipped through it uselessly, causing his own palm to smash against the area floor.
The impact cracked the arena floor and the sound that bellowed out was as loud as a gunshot.
The amorphous mass that the Vacuoan had turned into rapidly coalesced behind the Menagerie fighter.
In one smooth motion, the green haired Vacuoan reformed fully and swung his greatsword in a brutal downward arc.
The blade howled through the air with devastating force. It was a killing strike.
And then it happened again. The strange phenomenon.
The space between them expanded and stretched.
The greatsword's trajectory elongated unnaturally, as if the target had suddenly been pushed several meters farther away despite not visibly moving.
The blade carved through empty air and sliced into the ground.
Missed.
Jaune felt a chill crawl up his spine.
It was clear as mud that the short man from Menagerie was using some type of spatial manipulation rune. This was clearly the man's meta rune. Yet, from what Jaune could tell, it was still somewhat weak in capability.
As if to prove Jaune wrong, the shorter man stared at the green haired Vacuoan for a single, measured second, then he clenched his fist in a pulling motion.
Across the arena, debris from the cannon barrage against rock guy still hovered and rolled across the field.
Fragments of stone. Jagged rock shards and broken slabs.
Several pieces shifted forwards drawn in, by unnatural distance.
The space between those fragments and the green haired Vacuoan seemed to compressed violently.
From his perspective, perhaps they did not move much at all. But to everyone watching, they appeared to blink closer and surround him almost instantly.
The green haired Vacuoan's eyes widened and immediately liquefied his body yet again.
But this time, the effect was not as good.
The space between his body and the debris warped and suddenly merged—folded inward.
For a fraction of a second, it looked as if reality itself had clenched. Then, the debris and his body occupied the same space.
His form destabilized violently and he exploded outward into slime.
A golden flare erupted from his chest.
The seal had activated.
His body froze mid dispersal. Then vanished. Silence gripped the arena for half a breath.
Jaune exhaled slowly.
He was not entirely sure what he had just witnessed. It was clear that this was some type of spatial manipulation meta rune.
But its capabilities weren't just raw destruction.
It appeared to have some sort of refined control over distance and space itself.
The shorter man hadn't moved so fast that the eye couldn't see him. He had shortened the space between himself and his opponent and also lengthened the space between himself and a lethal strike.
And just now, he had collapsed space between debris and target.
Jaune's senses prickled uneasily.
This ability bypassed conventional defense and appeared exceptionally powerful even for a meta rune.
It ignored positioning and seemed to even render terrain meaningless.
Yang stared at the arena. "Wow."
Jaune hummed. "That was one of the meta rune users from Menagerie."
"Really? Meta runes just aren't fair at all."
Jaune didn't say anything.
Above, the red haired Vacuoan in the sky snarled. His cannons rotated again, firing another barrage downward toward the two Menagerie fighters.
The tall earth user raised a new wall of stone. The shorter man looked up and shifted his stance.
Jaune's curiosity deepened. How would Jaune be able to fight that?
.
.
The red haired Vacuoan didn't falter after his teammate vanished. If anything, the flare of the triggered seal only sharpened his focus.
His cannons rotated in a widening halo around him, firing another synchronized barrage downward. Shells screamed toward the two Menagerie fighters in staggered waves, each round detonating with compressed concussive force.
On the ground, the tall, thin man from Menagerie stepped forward.
His hands moved in a smooth, circular motion.
The arena floor responded.
Stone bulged upward in multiple locations at once. It twisted, hollowed, and shaped itself into massive funnel like structures that angled toward the sky.
They resembled inverted horns carved from solid rock.
Then the tall man clenched both hands.
From the mouths of those stone funnels, colossal spears of compacted earth launched upward.
They tore through the air like railgun projectiles, each one thick as a tree trunk and spinning for stability.
The red haired Vacuoan reacted by accelerating rapidly.
The air cracked as he shifted directions mid flight, body twisting with impossible agility. He darted between the incoming spears at supersonic speed, cannons repositioning around him to intercept any that threatened to box him in.
Stone spears shattered in midair under concentrated fire.
Others grazed past him by inches.
The crowd roared at the sight.
Up above, the sky became a chaotic lattice of stone and energy shells.
On the ground, something subtle occurred.
The tall earth rune user and the shorter meta rune carrier shared a brief look.
No words, just understanding.
The shorter man then bent his knees and jumped while the tall man seemed to be creating some type of construct.
The motion was simple but result wasn't.
Distance shrank and space folded.
He did not arc upward in a natural parabola. One moment he was on the ground, the next he appeared directly within the red haired Vacuoan's projected flight path.
The flier's eyes widened slightly.
He cut momentum sharply, halting midair with precise control. More cannon barrels manifested around him in a dense cluster, all of them angling toward the shorter man.
The shorter man raised his fist.
The muscles in his arm bulged unnaturally, veins standing out as if reinforced by some internal pressure. His posture suggested a devastating punch aimed directly at the airborne Vacuoan's torso.
The Vacuoan made a snap decision. All cannons fired simultaneously, a storm of compressed rounds filled the space between them.
But then, the shorter man suddenly stopped and his raised fist relaxed.
The punch had been a feint.
The cannon shots reached him but... then they did not.
The projectiles warped.
Their trajectories elongated unnaturally, as if the space they had to cross had been stretched thin like pulled rubber.
In that distorted heartbeat, the shorter man stepped forward.
Onto one of the incoming shots.
His foot connected with compressed energy as if it were solid ground. He used the stretched projectile as a platform.
Then he launched himself forward.
The space snapped back.
He crossed the remaining distance in an instant.
The red haired Vacuoan tried to retreat, pushing backward in midair, cannons reorienting again for close range fire.
But the shorter man was already within five meters.
His hand clenched.
Down below, the tall earth rune user completed his construct. it was a massive dome of compacted stone had which had formed on the arena floor.
It looked defensive at first glance. A protective structure rising from layered earth. Except its interior surface shimmered faintly with sharpened edges.
The shorter man's fist tightened fully.
And suddenly, the distance between the red haired Vacuoan and the dome shrank.
From the Vacuoan's perspective, perhaps nothing seemed to move at all but from the audience's perspective, he blinked and one moment he was suspended in open air, the next, inside the dome.
The structure sealed instantly.
A thunderous boom shook the arena as the dome collapsed inwards.
In spikes.
The inner surface inverted, transforming into a forest of jagged spears and crushing force that converged toward the center.
The cannons around the Vacuoan flickered out as the stone engulfed him.
A golden flare erupted within the dome.
Bright and sharp.
The seal had triggered.
The collapsing stone froze for a fraction of a second before the entire structure dissolved into harmless fragments that evaporated into light.
The red haired Vacuoan's body had already vanished from the arena.
Silence held the coliseum for half a breath.
Then the system chimed.
"Menagerie victorious."
The declaration echoed clearly across the floating stadium.
Yang let out a low whistle. "That was impressive."
Jaune did not respond immediately. He was replaying the sequence in his mind. The feinted punch and the stretched projectiles.
Stepping on compressed energy by manipulating distance rather than solidity. Collapsing space to reposition an airborne opponent into a prepared kill zone.
The synergy between the two Menagerie fighters had been quite seamless. The tall man controlled terrain and constructed the execution chamber.
The shorter man controlled positioning. Together, they had erased the Vacuoan's greatest advantage.
Flight and maneuverability.
Jaune's weakness sense lingered on the shorter man as he landed lightly back on the arena floor.
Dangerous.
Meta runes were already rare. This one manipulated a fundamental layer of reality.
Yang nudged him. "So... How would you fight that?"
Jaune exhaled slowly.
"No clue. I can handle the earth constructs of the other guys, but space and distance shrinking? Not sure if my Runes can even affect that."
Jaune watched them carefully. The tournament had only just begun.
And already, the level of competition was escalating beyond expectation.
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AN: Advanced chapters are available on patreon