Mateo's greatspear screamed through the space where Leo's throat had been.

  Leo was already gone. The Eclipse pulled him three meters left, his feet carving furrows through scorched turf. His right hand swept outward as Mateo's body passed, and he reached out with his Scholar's Finger.

  Contact.

  Mateo rolled. Tucked his shoulder and threw himself sideways, greatspear sweeping a defensive arc. He came up three meters away, feet planted, grey eyes sharp.

  Mateo had felt the attack. He found a new smear on his divine sense. It was getting harder and harder to fight.

  They exchanged again. And again. Mateo lunging with feints and diagonal slashes, Leo drifting aside and reaching with open fingers.

  From the stands, the exchanges looked like strobing flashes of movement. Two figures blurring together and apart, the crack of displaced air arriving a half second after each engagement. The crowd gasped at every exchange, unable to tell who was winning.

  But on the field, both boys moved through comfortable silence.

  Leo read each thrust before Mateo's muscles fully committed. Mateo felt Leo's reaching hand and peeled away with meters to spare. They circled and striked and dodged, never truly meeting. Two shadows testing each other's shape. Probing for the opening that would end it.

  Mateo couldn't land a clean strike. Leo couldn't land a clean touch.

  After the fifth exchange, Mateo planted his greatspear and stared at Leo across ten meters of scorched turf.

  Both boys understood. Mundane martial arts alone would not decide this.

  Mateo vanished.

  Grey qi erupted from his body in a swirling cloud. It expanded, rolled across the field, blanketed the ground.

  Leo saw him dive. The divine child plunged into the earth, dissolving into serpentine form, grey coils tunneling through stone and soil. The trajectory curved beneath Leo's feet.

  Leo stepped aside.

  Mateo's serpent form erupted from the ground in a geyser of dirt and shattered stone. Fangs snapped on empty air, the massive body following in a column of grey scales.

  It lunged.

  Leo sidestepped the chomp. The serpent's lower jaw cratered the field beside him, close enough to spray dirt across his tattered jersey.

  He jumped.

  His feet found the serpent's head. He ran up the bridge of the nose, planted his right hand flat against the broad forehead, and dragged his palm across two meters of grey scale.

  The Scholar's Finger painted another forgery across Mateo's perception.

  Leo somersaulted off the skull. His right foot connected with the side of its head on the way down, a spinning kick that splashed another swath of pollution across the serpent's temple.

  He landed in a crouch.

  The serpent thrashed. Coils slammed against the ground. Grey qi billowed.

  Mateo broke free. Human again, fifteen meters away, one hand pressed against his temple. His grey eyes blinked rapidly. The phantom serpent around his shoulders hissed and writhed.

  The pollution was settling in.

  Mateo attacked widely to create some distance. His greatspear swept in wide arcs, each slash trailing crescents of grey flame. Walls of fire that forced Leo to retreat. Between the flame slashes, he jabbed. Quick probing thrusts that bought him space.

  Leo circled. He read the pattern and looked for an opening.

  Slash. Jab. Slash. Jab. Jab.

  There.

  The Eclipse pulled him forward. He slipped inside the greatspear's arc, past the tip, past the shaft, into the space where a three-meter weapon became a liability.

  Mateo threw himself backward.

  Too slow.

  Leo's right hand found Mateo's collar on the way past. A brush of fingers. Another forgery painted onto Mateo's divine sense.

  Mateo came out of the roll snarling. He launched a barrage of flame slashes that turned the air between them into a wall of grey fire.

  Leo retreated.

  Mateo stood at the far edge of the field. His breathing had changed. Faster. Shallower. His grey eyes flickered with something like static.

  He raised his right hand.

  Above him, the air split open. A cloud of grey qi condensed into a vortex five meters across. Something massive moved behind it.

  Then a true divine serpent burst through. This was Mateo's trump card. Something that he was saving for Leo.

  This was different from Mateo's personal transformation. Mateo had actually summoned the ancestral serpent behind his bloodline, allowing it to manifest the majesty of deity transformation in limited manner.

  The serpent was vast. It unfurled slowly, stretching into the mortal air, tasting it with a flick of its forked tongue. It flexed its domain. The will of the divine beast pressed down on the field.

  In the Harvard section, the grey-robed worshipers began their hymns again. Thousands of voices in harmonic unison, tuned to resonate with the serpent's presence. Students sitting nearby shifted in their seats. The hymns settled into their skulls, and the longer they listened the heavier their heads felt, itching to bow.

  Leo's concentration buckled. This was true deity manifestation, he couldn't rely on the counter formation to withstand it.

  But he had died over a hundred times beneath Monarch Scattered Straw's divine domain. He had stood alone in a field of bowing wheat while the weight of an immortal's will pressed him into the dirt.

  And this time, the wheat was not bowing.

  The Bulldog army surrounded him. One hundred fifty thousand humans standing upright, backs straight, fists raised.

  Leo anchored himself to their chant.

  MY CAUSE IS NOBLE.

  The divine domain pressed. Leo's spirit bent.

  MY POWER IS PURE.

  He grabbed the words. Held them. Used them as handholds on a cliff face.

  The true divine serpent struck.

  Leo dodged. The Eclipse ripped him sideways as the massive jaws crashed together where his torso had been. The serpent dissolved into grey mist, its single attack spent.

  Mateo was right behind it.

  He burst through the fog, greatspear sweeping in a wide horizontal arc. Grey flame trailed from the blade. He had used the manifestation as a screen.

  Leo was already behind him.

  His spinning kick connected with the small of Mateo's back. His right hand followed, palm flat against the shoulder blade. Two more layers of pollution.

  Mateo staggered. Spun his greatspear in a wild circle and jumped ten meters into the air.

  Leo let him go.

  Mateo gathered power in his greatspear as he fell. Grey fire condensed along the blade. The same diving slam Leo had faced last time they met.

  Leo sidestepped the impact zone.

  The greatspear hit the field. The explosion tore a crater three meters wide.

  Leo dodged again. His omnidirectional perspective had detected additional spiritual qi fluctuations in the ground.

  A forest of spears erupted from the earth.

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  Dozens of copies of Mateo's greatspear, formed from condensed grey qi, burst upward in a ring around the crater. Each one blazed with grey flame. Each one detonated a half second after materializing, overlapping into a chain reaction that consumed the area in a dome of fire and spiritual shrapnel.

  Leo was already airborne. The Eclipse pulled him clear.

  Mateo's serpent form burst from the ground to meet him.

  It erupted through the smoke, jaws gaping, aimed at Leo's descending body. Mateo had driven him into the air, then sent the serpent to catch him where he couldn't maneuver.

  Leo twisted. The serpent's fangs snapped shut a foot from his ribs.

  The serpent curved. Came back. Struck again.

  Leo fell through a gauntlet of snapping jaws. Each bite from a different angle, the serpent coiling and uncoiling in midair. He jerked left. Dropped right. Tucked his legs as fangs swept beneath him.

  His feet hit the ground.

  He came up swinging. His right fist caught the serpent's lower jaw on an uppercut. The Scholar's Finger fired on impact. A massive dose splashed across the connection between Mateo and his manifested blood.

  The serpent screamed.

  The sound rattled the barrier wards. Three hundred thousand people clapped their hands over their ears.

  Mateo ripped himself out of the serpent form. Both hands pressed against his temples. Grey qi leaked from his eyes.

  He threw waves of grey fire at Leo. Desperate. Unfocused. The crescents sprayed wide.

  Leo weaved through the gaps without breaking stride.

  By now, the portrait was nearly complete. The forgeries Leo had painted were precise reproductions of Mateo's own divine sense. And they were sticky. Each layer bonded to the ones beneath it, resisting Mateo's attempts to burn them clean.

  Mateo tried. He ignited his divine blood. Grey light blazed from his eyes, from his chest wound, from every divine vein across his armor.

  His vision cleared. For a moment.

  Then the layers underneath reasserted themselves. Too deep. Too precise. Too numerous.

  His face was haggard, dripping with grey perspiration. His hair was matted. His armored uniform was scorched and torn. The phantom serpent around his shoulders flickered between solid and transparent.

  He thrust his greatspear at Leo. Again. Again. Each strike slower than the last, the tip drifting further off-target.

  Leo was in bad shape too. The fight had been short. But the divine fire had scorched through his flyer jersey. The fabric hung in blackened strips, exposing the armor beneath. Burns traced patterns across his forearms.

  But he could still see. And Mateo was going blind.

  Mateo stopped. He spread his arms, and grey qi erupted from his body in a massive cloud, expanding fifty meters in all directions.

  Leo backed off and raised his right fist.

  The Yale section responded instantly.

  Leo chanted along with them. His spirit steadied.

  Just in time.

  Mateo raised his right hand. The portal opened above him. The true divine serpent manifested again, larger, fed by the cloud of divine power blanketing the field.

  The domain hit.

  Deity transformation power slammed through the arena. The barrier wards buckled. Even the cultivators in the stands felt the echo of divine will press against their spirits.

  The true divine serpent attacked over and over. Relentless. Jaws snapping from above and below, each bite carrying the full authority of the divine. Leo poured everything into evasion.

  The serpent snapped left and Leo rolled right. It dove from above and Leo threw himself flat. Its tail swept low and Leo jumped, clearing the coil by centimeters.

  He couldn't counterattack. Every shred of awareness was consumed by survival.

  That was the point.

  Rising from behind Leo, Mateo's personal serpent form materialized from the grey mist. In its jaws, a ball of grey qi gathered. Building toward another arena-sweeping detonation.

  A pincer. The divine serpent manifestation herding Leo forward. Mateo building power behind him.

  The Bulldog army saw the grey qi gathering. They knew what was coming.

  They locked arms.

  Row by row, one hundred fifty thousand cultivators braced. Tom's voice cracked through the ranks.

  Across the stadium, something shifted in the Harvard stands. The grey-robed worshipers still knelt. But around them, crimson-clad students looked at the kneeling figures. Looked at the Bulldogs standing arm in arm.

  And chose.

  Harvard voices joined the chant.

  Not all of them. Not even most. But enough. Pockets of crimson standing tall, chanting alongside their rivals. Students who had come to cheer for Mateo but refused to worship him.

  Both serpents struck.

  The true manifestation lunged from the front. Mateo's personal form fired from behind, the ball of grey qi leading the charge.

  Leo jumped.

  Straight up. The Eclipse launched him vertical, ripping him clear of the closing jaws. Below him, the two serpents crashed together. The ball of grey qi detonated.

  The field shattered.

  The explosion punched downward, cratering the earth, vaporizing the turf. A column of debris erupted upward. Grey fire raced across the field. The grass burned grey.

  The shockwave hit the stands.

  The Bulldogs held. Arms locked, chanting through gritted teeth. Some stumbled. None fell.

  The blast carried Leo higher. He tumbled through the debris. The stadium shrank below him.

  The dust began to clear.

  And from above, a camera drone captured a short clip that would circle the planet before the fight ended.

  Leo diving from the sky. Right hand outstretched, fingers spread. His tattered jersey streaming behind him. Below him, three hundred thousand people roared.

  Mateo, in his serpent form, rose to meet him. Grey scale and blazing divine power, jaws gaping, climbing from the smoke of his own devastation.

  The serpent struck.

  Its jaws snapped shut on the space where Leo should have been.

  Leo twisted. The Eclipse pulled him around the closing fangs. He passed the serpent's snout, felt the heat of its breath.

  He landed on the serpent's neck.

  And slid.

  He rode the serpent down the coiling body, his right hand dragging across the scales in a continuous stroke. The Scholar's Finger painted a ribbon of false divine patterns along the entire length of Mateo's form. A single unbroken line from neck to midsection to lower coils, painting meter after meter of grey scale.

  The serpent screamed.

  Its body convulsed. Coils thrashed, slamming against the ground, opening new craters. The head whipped left and right, jaws snapping at nothing. The divine sense guiding its strikes was drowning in false data.

  It slammed itself against the earth. Again. Again. Blind and furious.

  Leo hopped off at the base of the tail.

  The serpent reared up. Leo was already three meters left. It rolled. Leo stepped over the sweeping tail. It lunged blindly. Leo drifted right, letting the jaws pass, and pressed his palm against the serpent's cheek.

  Another layer.

  He appeared at the flank. Swept his hand across exposed scales. Vanished before the coils could close. Reappeared at the base of the neck. Painted another stroke.

  The serpent's screams grew higher.

  Mateo wrenched himself free.

  The serpent form dissolved. Mateo stood in the wreckage. His greatspear hung loose in his grip. His grey eyes were clouded, milky. Grey perspiration dripped from his jaw. His hair was plastered flat against his skull.

  He could barely see.

  The greatspear came up. He swung at Leo. A wide slash that Leo easily dodged. Mateo adjusted and thrust forward. Missed again. The tip punched into empty earth a body's width from where Leo stood.

  Leo stepped in. His hand reached for Mateo's face.

  Mateo caught it.

  His right hand snapped out, fingers closing around Leo's wrist. Grey qi blazed from his grip. His divine blood ignited in a last surge of power, burning through the pollution.

  His eyes blazed grey. Focused. Locked onto Leo from inches away.

  The clarity sputtered. The pollution surged back. Layers too deep to burn away, reasserting themselves like water filling a hole dug in wet sand.

  His eyes went cloudy again.

  Leo kicked him.

  His right foot connected with Mateo's hip. The Scholar's Finger fired through his boot, and a fresh coat splashed across Mateo's divine sense.

  Mateo's grip loosened. His legs buckled.

  He fell onto one knee.

  His left hand clutched the greatspear, driving the butt into the ground as a crutch. His right hand came up to his face. Fingers clawed at his eyes. Trying to see. Trying to find something real.

  Leo walked toward him.

  Moonrider blazed to life. The formations along the blade lit up in sequence. Mateo's Grey Out ability stopped working. His concentration had finally collapsed under the weight of the pollution. Mateo felt it too.

  His body jerked. The phantom serpent around his shoulders convulsed, flickering between solid grey and transparent mist. It uncoiled from his torso. Its eyeless head reared back, pulling away, trying to separate.

  Mateo let go of his greatspear.

  The weapon clattered against stone. Both hands went to the serpent. He grabbed the phantom coils and wrestled them, fingers digging into scales that shifted between material and immaterial. The divine blood in his veins fought against him. His grandfather's inheritance trying to break free of it's host.

  He collapsed.

  Flat on his back. The phantom serpent writhed across his chest. His hands locked around its neck. His teeth clenched. Grey veins bulged along his forearms.

  Leo stopped walking.

  He watched.

  Mateo on his back. The divine blood fighting to escape. A boy wrestling his own inheritance in the dirt and ash.

  Mateo screamed.

  Human. The desperate fury of a kid who refused to let go.

  He shoved the serpent back.

  His hands forced the coils down, compressed them, drove them inward. The phantom form resisted briefly before collapsing. Grey scales dissolved into mist that flowed back into Mateo's chest, back through the old wound. The last wisp vanished.

  Mateo lay still.

  His chest heaved. His arms fell to his sides. His clouded eyes stared upward and saw nothing.

  Leo unclipped Moonrider from his waist.

  The sword blazed in his hands. Full offensive power. The Forbidden T4 Formations activated in sequence. Obsidian light spilled across the ruined field.

  Leo gripped the hilt with both hands.

  Three hundred thousand people held their breath.

  Mateo's eyes, clouded and blind, somehow found Leo's face.

  He smiled.

  "Thank you," he whispered.

  Leo drove Moonrider down.

  The blade punched through chest armor. The enchantments registered the lethal strike. White light consumed Mateo's body.

  He vanished.

  Leo stood alone.

  He released his divine sense and looked around the field for the first time since the fight began.

  The craters stretching across the field. Grey fire still burning in patches. Scorch marks sweeping in wide arcs across exposed stone.

  Then the sound hit him. Hundreds of thousands of voices. A roar so vast it hurt his eardrums. The field shook beneath his feet.

  Leo grinned.

  The roar doubled.

  White light bloomed around his feet. The teleportation formation activated. His body dissolved into light, carried away from the field he had broken.

  The last thing he did was salute them all with a raised fist, and the whole stadium broke out in unison.