MIGHT AS WELL BE OP

Chapter 930: Madness

The world shattered in hissing madness as they both drew their katanas at the same time, their figures blurring forward as they erased the distance between one another with flickering ease. With a deafening bang, their weapons collided like nukes tearing into each other midair, the impact sending violent shockwaves rippling outward. They didn’t pause for even a moment; in a blink, they vanished, their bodies leaving behind fading afterimages as they exchanged attack after attack in a rapid storm of motion.

Both men moved without hesitation, katana tearing into katana, steel meeting steel, blade meeting blade. Orange sparks detonated outward the more they met, bursting like miniature suns with every collision. Their bodies were interwoven and intertwining, moving as though they existed solely for the katana and only for the katana, as though the rest of the world had been erased from their perception.

The rocky terrain beneath them shattered as they moved, ravines yawning open because of their impossible speed. Their movements were blinding and beautiful, their feet barely touching the ground as they moved like tap dancers upon the edge of destruction, each step precise enough to defy the chaos erupting beneath them.

Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang.

The ceaseless exchange of attacks continued to erupt outward as they moved like titans who could shake the heavens with nothing but their blades. In the next instant, they both appeared atop one of the huge pillars of stone that stood across the rocky battlefield. The moment they appeared, their katanas struck like vipers, attacks exchanged without delay, without pause, without mercy, without hesitation, each strike calculated to kill.

With a thunderous boom, the pillar shattered into stones and boulders plummeting from above. Both Anthony and Lucian were already gone, their bodies reappearing on the next pillar before the debris could even fall. That pillar didn’t last a second either before it collapsed yet again. Gravity never managed to get a hold of them; to them, the air was no different from the solid earth below, merely another surface to tread upon.

Their katanas were like twin vipers lunging at one another with endless precision and grace, yet nobody seemed to be finding a weakness in the other at the moment. But they both knew that wasn’t truly the case. The battle had only just begun, and it could never end in a draw. One of them would eventually fall, no matter how perfect the exchange appeared.

In the next instant, their feet finally kissed the earth below as they descended, but the moment they touched down, they were gone again. The sound barrier shattered in their wake, the air screaming in protest, space itself tearing apart as they cleaved through it like a hot knife through butter, leaving distorted ripples behind them.

But for all their madness, for all their destruction, they never took their eyes off one another. It was as though they had both wanted this battle to happen from the very first moment they met, yet destiny had denied them the chance. Now that fate had finally relented, neither of them intended to waste it. They would relish it, embrace it, and see it through to its ultimate end, no matter the cost.

A silver light flashed across the rocky terrain, and with a resounding boom, a long sword line stretching for kilometres carved itself into the earth. The ground split open as though reality itself had been wounded, yet the next second it mended without hesitation, space knitting itself back together as if nothing had happened. Anthony and Lucian paid it no mind; at this moment, they only saw each other, and no one else existed in their world.

Their hair danced to the rhythm of their destruction as they moved without obstruction of any kind. Their basic katana techniques were flawless in every sense of the word, refined to such an extreme that it seemed as though they had touched a pinnacle no one within the Acarnis Galaxy had ever dared to reach, let alone comprehend.

With a sundering, clanging sound, their weapons collided once more, the air bursting backward like an overfilled balloon and slamming directly into both of them. The shockwave flattened what little remained of the terrain, yet neither man blinked nor flinched as they tanked the impact with their ridiculous physiques and hardened bodies.

At that moment, they both bore wide smiles, expressions filled with savage joy, as though they truly recognised and acknowledged the other’s katanamanship. There was no mockery in those smiles, only respect forged through violence and skill.

With matching smirks, they vanished again, various katana techniques filling the air in rapid succession. A thrust followed by a slash, a cut chained into a chop, a cleave answered by another cleave. For every attacking technique unleashed, a defensive one followed with equal speed and elegance: a parry, a block, a deflection, each executed at the very edge of perfection.

They transitioned between attack and defence as masters of both arts, their movements seamless and instinctive. They exchanged blows as though drowning in their shared love for the blade, intoxicated by the clash of steel. At that moment, the battlefield became their canvas, their katanas their brushes, their attacks the paint. They painted, drew, and carved their masterpiece directly upon the surface of reality itself, leaving scars that might never fully fade.

The air screamed for forgiveness, but they couldn’t care less. The rocky terrain was reduced to nothing more than fragmented ruins, pulverised beyond recognition. Space trembled around them, quivering under the strain of their existence, but none of that mattered. Only the other stood within their awareness, only the opponent before them held any meaning.

They traded strikes like poets exchanging verses, each cut a stanza of elegant yet brutal intent. Their movements flowed like rivers of silver, each parry and strike part of a relentless, fluid storm. With every swift cut and thrust, their blades wrote lines of poetry into the air, each verse edged with death. They met and parted like waves breaking upon a shore, every impact charged with the raw, unforgiving force of nature itself.

But they couldn’t stop. They didn’t dare to. The first to stop would bleed. The first to stop would be injured. The first to stop might lose a limb. And in their contest of love and madness, neither of them would be the first, yet one of them had to be.

With a booming collapse, the ground beneath them caved in, forming a massive sinkhole. Before gravity could finally act upon these two behemoths wearing human skins, they were gone once more, their speed too swift to even leave afterimages behind. They had already crossed to the other side of the battlefield, tearing it apart with nothing more than a flicker of their wrists, arms, and shoulders.

A huge mushroom cloud of pure brown dust and sand rose toward the sky from the armageddon they caused, swelling higher and higher as though to swallow the heavens themselves. Yet in the next moment, a series of silver flashes bloomed around it, and the mushroom cloud was sliced apart before it could even beg the heavens for mercy or curse the existence of these two monsters. The dust fell in silence, while at the heart of the devastation, Anthony and Lucian continued their dance of blades, unstoppable and unapproachable.