Lord of The Stars

Youssef and Noor rushed to check on Torres, with Youssef attempting to heal him with his ability, but Torres seemed unresponsive. He had lost consciousness and appeared unlikely to awaken for a long time. Noor couldn't imagine what had been inside Sairi's mind to cause such terror, but it was certainly something horrific. He remembered that some doors should never be opened, yet what happened made him fear Sairi even more than before.

The voice announced:

"The next match. Noor versus Li Kang. Advance to the arena."

Noor felt some tension as he looked at Li Kang, recalling his ability to emit burning rays. He began contemplating how to deal with such a power; if he didn't think of a quick solution, Li Kang would eliminate him in the blink of an eye.

They advanced to the ring and greeted each other. Noor examined the displayed weapons, considering what might be effective against Li Kang's power, but found few promising ideas. He spotted a tranquilizer gun among the various weapons, along with hand grenades – smoke bombs, explosives, and so forth. He took several flash grenades, smoke bombs, explosives, and the tranquilizer gun, then returned to his position, while Li Kang relied solely on his innate ability for this confrontation. The voice commanded them to begin.

Noor threw a smoke bomb at his feet, completely enveloping himself within the cloud, while Li Kang stood motionless, waiting to discover Noor's strategy. Suddenly, a grenade flew through the air from within the smoke toward Li Kang, who fired a red beam at it, causing it to explode mid-air with disturbing atmospheric vibrations. Another grenade followed, flying toward its target. Li Kang discharged beams from his eyes to detonate it, then was surprised by a grenade beneath his foot. With tension, he covered his eyes with his hands and exclaimed:

"Damn, when did he throw that?"

The grenade exploded, releasing a blinding flash that temporarily obscured vision.

Li Kang felt a terrible headache and weakened sight, firing beams everywhere without pause. Suddenly he felt a prick in his body and realized Noor had hit him with the tranquilizer.

When his vision returned seconds later, the smoke around Noor had dissipated, revealing him holding a large sheet. Li Kang was puzzled by this action as the tranquilizer began taking effect. Noor concealed himself with the sheet, then suddenly emerged from behind it, running to the right while aiming his gun at Li Kang, who fired his beams at him. The beams penetrated Noor's body, only to discover it was merely a light projection – an illusion like a mirage. Anxious, Li Kang looked back at the sheet to find an explosive grenade flying toward him. He fired beams from his hands to detonate it mid-air, then directed his beam toward the sheet, having realized Noor had deceived him to strike with this grenade and was now hiding behind it. The burning red beam cut through the air toward Noor hiding behind the sheet, but suddenly Noor lifted the sheet away, causing Li Kang's eyes to widen in astonishment. He saw that the sheet hadn't been covering Noor from the beginning, but rather a mirror Noor had created with his ability to manifest objects. His beam struck the strange mirror and reflected back at him, knocking him to the ground. He writhed in extreme pain but resisted and stood again, pushing through his suffering, only to find his body completely numbed. He collapsed to the ground, then discovered Noor standing behind him, aiming his gun and saying:

"Surrender now!"

Everyone watching the match was amazed by Noor's actions without fully understanding what had happened, but Keno, Sairi, and Ivanov comprehended the strategy, making them smile and praise Noor's intelligence.

Li Kang realized his body had been completely paralyzed, leaving him no choice but to surrender or die. With broken speech, he said:

"Fine. I surrender. But. what did you do? I don't understand anything!"

Noor crossed his arms, recalling everything he had done with a sense of satisfaction flowing through him:

"It's somewhat complicated but you deserve to know. First, I concealed myself in smoke and threw some grenades to distract you. While launching one explosive at you in the air, I quickly rolled another on the ground, which blinded you temporarily. That gave me enough time to inject you with the tranquilizer and create a small but extremely useful device—a grenade launcher. I won't explain its construction, but I loaded it with explosives to fire at you every five seconds at high speed."

"Then I created a mirror and sheet, which was quite simple and didn't take much time, as I've practiced making them hundreds of times before. By the time I finished, your sight had returned, and you saw the sheet in front of you. This aroused your suspicion, causing you to pause briefly to investigate. I sent a light projection to the right, while I moved to the left. During this, the device launched another grenade at you, thoroughly confusing you and preventing you from seeing my escape."

"Naturally, I didn't have much time before you would spot me, so I quickly slipped between the trees and hid behind them, holding a thin thread I had attached to the sheet. As I predicted, your next move was to direct your beam toward the sheet, believing I was naive enough to have such a simple plan of distracting you to hit you with explosives. I rapidly pulled the thread to reveal the mirror beneath the sheet. At that moment, I needed time to circle around you, placing my hopes on two things: first, that your beam had reflective properties, and second, that the tranquilizer would take effect quickly. As you can see, I proved that your beam indeed has reflective properties—the spell turned against the sorcerer, and your own beam struck you. This gave me time to move behind the trees until I was at your back, where I administered another tranquilizer dose and watched you collapse motionless before appearing behind you."

Li Kang laughed, feeling embarrassed by his naivety. He recognized the vast difference between himself and Noor in leveraging the surrounding environment to win. Despite the enormous power gap that should have favored Li Kang's victory, Noor triumphed by using his mind instead of his body.

Li Kang, reflecting on Noor's explanation, said:

"You deserve the victory, young man. Your quick thinking and intelligence are what brought you here."

"Thank you for your compliment, and I hope you make it out of here," Noor replied.

The voice announced Noor's victory, and the next battle began between Yassin and Nadir.

Yassin advanced with his robot-like, emotionless face, sky-blue skin, and silver hair flowing over his shoulders, gleaming under the sunlight. He entered the arena, followed by Nadir, confident of winning due to his strength, though knowing Yassin would not be an easy opponent—grasping him would be extremely difficult because of his ability to transform into a gaseous state.

Nadir gathered some weapons and equipment while Yassin merely observed him. After Nadir returned to his position, the voice announced the beginning of the match.

Nadir concealed himself in the air as if he had evaporated, his equipment disappearing with him, becoming invisible to onlookers. The spectators were amazed by what happened, but Ares explained his power to them, having accompanied him to the end, revealing that Nadir possessed the ability to completely vanish.