CHAPTER 263: A GRAK’S CHALLENGE (3)

~GONG!~

The deep, resonating sound echoed through the vast arena, a signal that cut through the roar of the holographic crowd.

Grok didn’t waste a second. He was a born performer, and this was his stage. Fueled by the adoration of the millions, he roared and charged.

He was a four-armed, reptilian freight train, his massive spiked maul held high, aiming to end this in a single, crowd-pleasing, executioner’s strike.

Adrian’s mind went into a state of cold, perfect focus. He stood his ground, not a trace of armor on his simple, grey uniform.

He might have defeated the Grak easily before, but he had this feeling that this wasn’t the same Grok. So he didn’t dare to underestimate the alien.

He saw the telegraphed, brutish charge and decided to show the crowd what true skill looked like.

He activated Phantom Flow, his mana circulating as he prepared for a simple, elegant sidestep, a move he had used a thousand times to make far faster opponents look like fools.

~WHOOSH!~

He moved. And he failed.

The moment he tried to execute the high-speed maneuver, he was hit by a force he hadn’t accounted for: gravity.

The G of the arena floor grabbed his body like a lead weight. His "elegant sidestep" became a heavy, sluggish, and desperate lurch. He was a fraction of a second too slow.

~BOOOOM!~

He wasn’t fast enough to clear the full blast radius. Grok’s maul slammed into the sand where he should have been, and the resulting shockwave caught Adrian square in the chest, a wave of pure kinetic force that felt like being hit by a wall.

OOF! AND THE ROOKIE IS ALREADY EATING SAND! the announcer’s voice boomed, inciting a wave of derisive laughter from the crowd.

Adrian was sent tumbling backward across the arena, sand stinging his face, his mind reeling in shock. ’The gravity... it’s heavy.’

He had no time to recalibrate. Grok was on him in an instant, a four-armed whirlwind of pure, victorious rage.

"Too slow, little man!" Grok’s taunt echoed in his mind.

Adrian was now completely on the back foot, his mind and body struggling to adapt to the oppressive weight.

He dodged a high swing from the maul, but his movement was clumsy. He was immediately met by a sledgehammer-like punch from one of Grok’s lower arms. He was forced to cross his own arms, his mana flaring to block the blow.

~BOOM!~

The impact was staggering. He was sent skidding back, his boots carving deep trenches in the sand. This was not a spar; this was a beating.

He tried to find his rhythm, to use his superior [Omnisense] to predict the blows, but his body couldn’t keep up with what his mind was seeing. He was trapped in a body that felt like it was moving through mud.

A low sweep of the maul forced him to jump, but the heavy gravity made his leap pathetic, and he barely cleared the attack.

He saw an opening. As Grok’s upper arms were over-committed, he ducked under a swing and, trusting his 7-Star Transcendent strength, channeled his mana into his fist for a Resonant Fist. He slammed it directly into the Grak’s thick, armored side.

It was a mistake.

It felt like punching a solid wall of granite. The vibrational pulse, which should have shattered bone, barely seemed to faze the Grak. His dense, stone-like hide and sheer muscle mass dissipated the force almost completely.

Grok looked down at his side, then at Adrian, and laughed. A deep, guttural, and utterly mocking sound.

"Tickle!" he sneered.

Then, he punished the opening. His lower two arms shot out, faster than Adrian could react, and delivered a brutal, two-fisted counter-punch that smashed through Adrian’s hasty block and connected squarely with his ribs.

~CRACK!~

Adrian heard his own bones break as he was sent flying, crashing hard into the sand twenty meters away. He lay there, his body aching, the crowd’s boos deafening. He coughed, spitting a drop of blood onto the white sand. He was truly being dominated.

Grok, bored now, believing his opponent was finished, played to the holographic millions. He raised his maul high with all four arms, channeling his full power for one final, show-stopping, arena-shaking execution strike.

"THIS IS THE END, ADRIAN!"

But Adrian wasn’t too bothered, he had everything under control. He had used the opening moments of the fight to account for factors he couldn’t control.

And the first thing he noticed was the gravity. It was heavy. His feet felt like lead, his movements sluggish. Far heavier than he had ever experienced.

It was an artificial environmental setting, designed to make the fight more brutal, a setting that the high-gravity Grak was perfectly at home in.

This slight, unexpected shift in physics was all it took. But now it was over.

He now had all the data he needed. Grok was a pure brawler. All power, zero finesse. He was predictable.

He always followed a heavy, four-armed smash with a faster, two-armed sweep. He learned that the Grak’s armored hide was incredibly dense, but his joints, especially his knees and the back of his shoulders, were visibly less protected.

He learned that the heavy gravity, while a hindrance, was also something his suit could compensate for. And finally, he learned that Grok, for all his bravado, was weak.

He was finished being a punching bag.

As the maul began its final descent, Adrian’s calm, quiet voice was heard by the entire stadium. "It’s over."

A shimmer of blue-black nanites, so sudden and unexpected it drew a collective gasp from the crowd, flowed over his body. The Power Suit, his true skin, materialized in a single, beautiful, and shocking instant.

Grok’s four eyes widened in surprise, but his attack was already in motion, over-committed and impossible to stop. The maul descended, a mountain of kinetic force.

~CLANG!~

The entire arena shuddered. The maul, which should have pulverized Adrian into a red paste, was stopped dead. It was caught in the single, open palm of Adrian’s gauntleted hand.