Bro, I'm not an Undead!

Fright joined the fray.

Skullius on the other hand, was smitten with disbelief.

The moment he saw the technique in action, how it worked clicked in his mind almost instantly because the principle it adopted was something he had been focusing on for the entire month and a half that was his rapid growth phase.

Replicating flesh and cells, bolstering them and acquiring the techniques within them...

This was someone\'s technique?!

But who could be more appalled and terrified than the man looking at a crooked replica of himself, juiced up with more than double his total amount of mana and applying a portion of his barrier techniques to itself while charging one of his favourite offensive moves right at him?!

The man\'s face was drained of colour and he couldn\'t even find the words to express his emotion.

What was this?

His eyes shook.

"You...My..." he said, his hands rising shakily.

His words crisply rang throughout from the platform because of how silent it had become, moreso because now, everyone was paying rapt attention to what was going to happen next more than anything else.

Kurtish turned from fright and shock to fury and madness.

He glanced at a specific position in the crowd and found his fiancé sinking into her seat from a mix of fear and embarrassment!

His heart and ego sank into a pit of darkness.

He gritted his teeth and faced Vali who relaxedly funnelled more mana into the clone she had created.

"You think you\'ll get away with this?! You think you\'ll walk out of here alive just because you can use a sliver of my power?!" he growled while bringing his hands together like the clone and creating a mess of barrier formations that looked like ribbons with incomprehensible symbols.

Vali shrugged.

"A sliver, you say?" she said, and gave the clone a command.

Despite its distracting nudity, the next movements and actions the short clone made, almost gave Kurtish a stroke.

The mess of barrier formations it had been creating, seeming as if they could explode at any moment, suddenly dimmed.

The strips that represented the barrier formations unfurled in numerous directions, creating a web-like network in the air with several central points where two or more of these strips met.

At these points, a surge of energy ruptured fiercely and created a miniature barrier.

One of the five types of barriers the clone had shrouded over its body were reconstructed at each of these central points. The web network extended far and quickly enveloped where Kurtish, who was flabbergasted by this application, stood.

What was this?

He had never seen anything like it!

The barriers forged at every intersection grew and grew until a multi-coloured, multi-texture dome of hundreds of barriers covered a large chunk of the platform!

They shone with different lights and expelled different effects, passive or active just waiting to be given a command by their user.

Their arrangement was mesmerising and at the same time, extraordinarily sturdy, to that even Kurtish could attest.

"What..? How are you... how are you doing this?" he murmured while his prepared volley of conflicting barrier formations lost its vigour.

"How, you say?" Vali replied to the shaking man. "Beats me. This thing is actually doing this all on its own."

...!

Vali\'s words created a massive stir.

The flesh clone she had created was actually using the techniques Kurtish knew but in a way he didn\'t know, and she had nothing to do with it!

That was incredible... for the onlookers.

For Kurtish, despite his want to call this a lie, he found that it may be true and more dangerous than he expected.

Why did this clone suddenly erect this type of complex barrier that was likely as strong as his most powerful barrier formation?

The answer was dreadful.

The clone knew what Kurtish\'s next move was going to be; exactly which type of conflicting barrier formations he would use for attack, how he would use it and at what moment!

The arrangement of the barriers might have seemed erratic to everyone else, but to Kurtish...

He looked up with a deathly pale face.

\'This... this witch...!\' he cursed.

At this point, it became abundantly clear to everyone that Vali hadn\'t simply intended to win this match. She wanted to exhibit her strength for unknown reasons.

Perhaps simply to impress the EverSword House?

Aurolio who was seated next to Skullius chuckled, discovering what the true reasons were in a flash.

"I see. What a cunning woman," he said with the shake of his head.

The Hybrid Luman turned to him.

"What?"

The pale man smirked and gave Skullius a short side glance.

"What do you think of her abilities?" he answered with a question far removed from what the Hybrid Luman wanted to hear.

 Skullius went with it.

"I didn\'t expect something like this. I\'m assuming that by after off a piece of Kurtish\'s flesh, she used some type of advanced healing factor to recreate his body and attain a portion of the techniques carved into Kurtish through it. That\'s what she is using, along with her large amounts of mana to even improve upon the barriers but... this technique is way too complex," he explained.

"Recreating an entire body from a single arm... That\'s something for Super and Supreme tier potions, right? Not to mention, she\'s replicating Class abilities... all this with one technique?"

The concept of skills being carved within the body and their activation being linked to mana channels within an individual\'s flesh that transported mana from the core...

Skullius had been hard at work with using his Aura to combine skills so when he saw Vali use her technique, he understood what she was doing immediately and frankly, a wild spark of inspiration lit up within him from seeing it.

For now, he could only douse it.

"Yeah. Crazy, isn\'t it? But I have to say, this is new. I haven\'t seen or heard of this ability before. It has its advantages, but she actually can\'t maintain it for long, especially if she takes on opponents with more complex abilities. Also, you noticed right? She didn\'t attempt to cut a large portion of his body to extract more abilities. It isn\'t sustainable even with her mana quantity. Creating clones is great and all but frankly, it pales in comparison to some of the weird shit she can do with her technique at base. I hoped she could show some of that instead," Aurolio said with a disappointed smile. "Well, we\'ll probably see it all in the Royale."

Skullius breathed out a sigh.

To think he hadn\'t considered this woman as much of a threat after his explosive increase in power.

The fact that he was unwilling to use his Insurgent Magnus abilities, the more flashy ones at least, in the Royale, was also going to make his battles difficult. More difficult than he had imagined.

He had to think of ways to counter Vali if he was unfortunate enough to meet her.

\'Actually, it is guaranteed at this point. It would be a miracle if she didn\'t hunt me down. Probably to make up for the whole time I dodged her for the past month,\' Skullius thought with another sigh.

It seemed even Gabel had turned his attention from jealously eyeing the Hybrid Luman as if he thought Aurolio was trying to steal him as a kill or something (he actually was), to watch Vali\'s match.

That said a lot.

Back on the platform, Kurtish\'s breathing increased rapidly.

He didn\'t know what to do.

Everything so far caused his ego to deflate. He couldn\'t even find the generic words to shout at Vali as death throes.

"Tell me," the Kinn Family Head\'s voice sounded, garnering his attention as he was sealed in the large dome.

"I\'ll give you a choice. Do you want to die by my hand or by your own?"

Kurtish shivered but failed to give an answer.

By Vali\'s hand?

Like that punch from earlier?

Or by his own hand, as in the clone?

The former was likely the quickest and the latter, would be slow. He should know.

But he couldn\'t decide.

It was over.

It was just as Vali had said.

One of them was going to die, and it wasn\'t going to be her.

Kurtish turned and stared at his wife-to-be one last time, his body trembling.

She looked away, dodging his gaze for several reasons.

One of them, was so that she didn\'t have to see the gruesome scene that followed.

...

Seconds later, a headless corpse could be seen on the platform, blood and a litany of creepy crawlies that grew in the skull sprawled messily everywhere.

Vali gave a cold smile to her opponent\'s dead body and then stretched out her hand to the clone.

The short version of Kurtish leapt up onto her arm and dissolved into her skin after turning into a sea of sand toned flesh, that melded perfectly into the gorgeous contender\'s proportions.

Vali shivered a little before taking in a relaxing breath.

Shen then glanced at Skullius who didn\'t flinch at her gaze which he had expected, before disappearing from the platform when a green light encircled her.