[High Olympian divinity detected.]
Aron finally pieced together why and how James had perished in the past timeline. It truly traced back to his own negligence. He had been absent precisely when James stood at his final brink, consumed by an Olympian entity. But in this renewed timeline, that tragedy would never unfold again.
"I won't allow it," Aron vowed silently, closing the distance with measured, relentless strides.
Hermez advanced in parallel, his form undergoing a gradual, painful metamorphosis. His body radiated increasing brilliance as bones shifted audibly and muscles compacted with sharp snaps.
James's once-bulky physique streamlined, his legs swelling with dense power while intricate armor coalesced across his half-exposed torso. His shoes tore away piece by piece with every forward step, twin delicate wings springing open from the outer edges of his ankles.
"Finally, a worthy opponent," Hermez proclaimed, beckoning with arrogant confidence. His velocity climbed sharply; the ice beneath his feet fractured in spiderweb patterns.
The figure who had merely been sprinting now blurred into near-nonexistence. For him, the surrounding world slowed dramatically: falling snowflakes hung suspended, faint air currents crawled, even Aron's deliberate attack ticked forward in slow motion. The incoming fist approached swiftly, yet still lagged behind his own blistering pace.
"Haa… I kinda expected more," he remarked casually, his fist poised to connect squarely with Aron's jaw. Bang! It made contact, as his left fist came towards Aron's face. But in the exact heartbeat before contact, Aron's trajectory altered subtly.
Though slower, his positioning proved impeccable. He clamped down on Hermez's incoming wrist, like he already knew it was coming, anchoring the god momentarily in place. Hermez twisted free an instant before Aron's follow-up elbow could smash into the armored plating.
Zapping himself backward to safety. "Oh, almost got me there. But how does it taste, taking a punch delivered at genuine speed?" he taunted, flickering to a new position instantaneously.
Aron spat a thick stream of blood, his frame still throbbing from the cumulative force of James's earlier overwhelming barrages. "Tastes like failure. So you're just going to run? Like you ran when you took my herald Peter?"
Hermez's eyes ignited with sudden intensity. "Interesting. You actually took that rigid bastard in as a herald," he observed. "So that's why you pursued me so doggedly. I had assumed you also sought the treasur—" His sentence fractured as Aron surged forward with unnatural acceleration, compelling Hermez to yield ground and evade hastily.
"You hijacked my herald's body, held another one captive. What did you imagine? That mere speed would preserve your life, delivery boy?"
The label "delivery boy" struck a nerve. He bit down hard on his lower lip. "I'm no one's messenger. I am Hermez!" he roared, glitching instantaneously into range and unleashing not one, not two, but thousands of blistering punches within a single fragmented second, hurling Aron violently backward.
"The fastest man alive," he added with smug finality.
[Health lowering]
Aron's eyes flared brilliant blue, the notification bar shifting ominously to red. Raw power surged within him, yet it remained useless without matching speed to deploy it. In his prime era, he had earned that very title after decisively defeating Hermez.
He rose, channeling divinity deliberately into his legs rather than fists this time.
[Charge: 3%]
"History only repeats itself. That title you treasure so dearly will soon belong to me.," he stated quietly, his movements now harmonized perfectly with accumulated experience.
Snow compacted sharply beneath his boots, and then he simply ceased to occupy that space.
No lingering blur. No visible flash. Utterly vanished.
The air he had occupied detonated outward like a concussive bomb. Before Hermez could even begin processing the anomaly—
BOOM!!
Aron's fist plunged deep into Hermez's ribcage.
The collision contorted Hermez's entire frame sideways as though struck by an unstoppable locomotive, the resultant shockwave excavating a broad trench through the snowfield. Hermez skipped and tumbled across the frozen terrain like a discarded stone across water, ripping furrows into ice and underlying earth.
For half a second, absolute stillness reigned.
Then Hermez coughed wetly. Blood sprayed from James's appropriated lips, forming a crimson mist that lingered in the frozen atmosphere.
He lifted his gaze.
Aron already stood directly before him.
Another devastating punch followed.
Hermez attempted to contort aside but reacted fractionally too late.
The strike crushed into his jaw with shattering intensity, catapulting him skyward like artillery fire. His body spun wildly through the air, utterly uncontrolled.
Aron advanced; the ground directly behind him erupted from the explosive force of his departure.
[Charge: 5%]
He materialized overhead in mid-flight, knee slamming downward into Hermez's exposed spine.
CRACK.
The sound reverberated like a rifle shot.
Hermez plummeted, no, he bored straight downward, impacting with sufficient violence to form a wide crater. Snow and soil exploded outward in a towering plume while seismic tremors propagated across the landscape.
Aron descended gracefully to the crater's rim, boots settling with flawless balance. His golden aura pulsed vibrantly, almost thrumming with restrained divinity.
His eyes burned, truly burned, with molten gold.
"You arrogant gods," he declared, his voice eerily composed. "You believe you can commit any atrocity without eventual reckoning. Naive and foolish to the end."
The debris shifted faintly.
Then disappeared entirely.
Hermez rematerialized ten meters away, neck vertebrae realigning with a nauseating crack, fractured ribs knitting together beneath flickering stolen divinity. Regeneration proceeded, yet it failed to conceal the accumulating damage.
He offered a smile.
This time it appeared noticeably thinner, strained at the edges.
"Foolish? Us? Just because you concealed that level of speed," he breathed, wiping fresh blood from his mouth. "You still think you are above us? You haven't even seen a sparkle of my true spend immortal. "
The miniature wings at his ankles flared brilliantly, shifting to glowing bronze and white hues. "Let me show you, what true speed is."
Reality around him began to bend and thin, stressed like glass on the verge of fracture.
Hermez vanished.
And materialized directly in Aron's face.
Their fists collided in flawless simultaneity.
DOOM.
The shockwave obliterated everything within a hundred-meter radius. Snow vaporized in an instant. Ice disintegrated into countless glittering shards. The sky overhead rippled violently, as though reality itself had been struck.
They pressed against one another, neither budging.
Golden strength locked against divine velocity.
Hermez's grin broadened, teeth stained crimson. "You hit harder as well. Such formidable power, yet I sense something… absent."
He twisted abruptly mid-clash, his arm seeming to dissolve into liquid motion, breaching Aron's defenses at an impossible angle.
Three hundred precise strikes connected within the span of a single blink.
Ribs. Solar plexus. Jaw.
Aron's head snapped sideways, saliva and blood arcing outward.
Hermez accelerated yet again.
Faster still.
Drawing deeper upon James's life force. Bronze-white streaks encircled Aron in dizzying loops, assaulting every conceivable blind spot with clinical accuracy: ribs, spine, kidneys, neck. Each strike probing, inflicting shallow but cumulative wounds.
Aron pivoted to track the assault.
Too slow once more.
A devastating kick crashed into his back, sending him skidding across the ice, boots gouging parallel trenches.
Hermez materialized overhead mid-air.
Heel descending like an executioner's blade.
Aron rolled aside at the last instant.
The impact rent the earth in a colossal fault line.
Aron surged upward, swinging, golden light trailing in a blazing arc from his fist.
Hermez slipped beneath the blow like flowing water.
Elbow to the spine, crack.
Knee to the ribs, thud.
Palm strike to the throat, choke.
Each technique executed with surgical economy. No excess motion. Pure, deliberate savagery.
"You genuinely surprised me," Hermez admitted calmly even as he continued the relentless barrage. "But speed is not something you can simply imitate."
Aron recognized the urgency. He must conclude this swiftly. James's body deteriorated at an alarming rate. Yet after their recent exchanges, inevitable defeat loomed. His borrowed form had already exceeded sustainable limits.
[Charge: 8%]
He intensified the flow of divinity, his foot igniting with radiant energy. Pure speed alone would not suffice. Unleashing his full arsenal risked James's destruction, but the risk had become unavoidable. Hermez smiled in anticipation as both figures vanished from their positions simultaneously.
Aron committed fully to the punch, targeting Hermez's jawline, but the god simply flexed his neck, absorbing the impact and regenerating instantaneously. "Strange… why withhold your remaining powers?" Hermez inquired, sensing untapped reserves beyond mere strength and velocity.
Another blow hammered into Aron's abdomen, forcing him backward. He remained silent as Hermez tightened his grip. "And with every strike, I feel the world itself urging me to dominate you more completely," he marveled, almost surprised by his own words.
Aron rose unsteadily, blood dripping steadily, his vision beginning to blur at the edges. "Shut. Up."
The command carried an undercurrent of raw hatred, something deeper lurking beneath. Hermez discerned it instantly. He channeled a subtle additional measure of power into his subsequent punch, propelling Aron backward once more.
"I was correct," Hermez muttered triumphantly, his eyes gleaming with malicious delight. "You… you are genuinely despised by the world now. This fortune, this overwhelming might, your true, despicable weakness. The once-mighty Golden Immortal has fallen critically low on karma."
The revelation struck with devastating force. Aron's earlier abandonment of James in the past timeline echoed cruelly in the accusation, now fighting desperately to preserve him while the cosmos itself withheld its favor. Yet as Hermez savored the moment, a fleeting shadow of genuine unease flickered across his features. The same karmic drain now pulled subtly at his own stolen vessel, siphoning vitality more rapidly than anticipated.
Aron seized the opening. Feigning greater vulnerability, he baited an overcommitted lunge, then unleashed a precise divinity pulse that turned Hermez's vaunted momentum inward in a karmic feedback reversal. The god staggered visibly, his eyes widening in authentic shock as his own speed momentarily betrayed him.
[Charge: 10%]
The threshold shattered. Aron's power ascended visibly, no longer merely borrowed, but irrevocably claimed.