Obstinance

"So this is the Corridor I've heard so much about. It really is like another world," remarked Vali, staring up at the shifting, ever-present lights of the Frozen Abyss's sky.

"Before we begin, there's something I would like to ask you..." said Vahn, prompting Vali to turn and face him, a brief pause lingering between them before he asked, "What would you like to know?"

"If the only reason you're doing all of this is to become stronger and give meaning to your strength, there's no reason to oppose the peace between the Three Factions," argued Vahn, pointing out, "Because if the system we were discussing during the summit is implemented, you would have plenty of opportunities to wield and improve your strength..."

"In my defense, the attack on the summit was planned before I knew that was the direction the dialogue was headed," responded Vali, shrugging as he added, "More to the point, while competition is an excellent way for me and others to grow, regulations and restrictions inhibit growth. Real power is obtained from fighting for one's life and beliefs."

"You're wrong," contended Vahn, shaking his head and adopting a serious expression as he asserted, "Real power is obtained to protect the people and things we cherish. Power acquired for oneself might give a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when it's first obtained, but if you ever reach the point where nothing can oppose you, it will feel just as empty as the emotions that compelled you to seek it..."

"I'll worry about that once I'm without equal..." retorted Vali, raising his right hand to be level with Vahn's face, bluish-white energy gathering in his palm as he added, "Now, I believe you promised; what was it, to fight me until I was satisfied?"

"Alright, then..." responded Vahn, offering a curt nod and modeling a look of conviction as he appended, "Let's do this..."

Interpreting Vahn's words as the signal to kick things off, Vali unleashed the energy in his hand as a laser, obliterating the former's head and upper body before producing a colossal explosion several hundred meters in the distance.

"So was it a trap after all...?" asked Vali calmly, watching Vahn's headless body collapse to its knees and fall backward before dissolving into motes of gold, rainbow-hued light.

"I'm uncertain. He did not give the impression that he was deceiving us..." responded Albion, his voice emanating from the blue orbs adorning Vali's armor.

fwoosh

Interrupting the duo's exchange, a streak of white and gold impacted the armor plating between Vali's wings, rebounding off it without budging him. Looking back, he discovered Vahn breathing heavily but sporting a look of conviction near the entrance of what he had called the Starting Zone.

"Ah, so that's how it is..." hummed Vali, disregarding the Legendary Spear in favor of a spear of light that he promptly sent through Vahn's chest and into the Starting Zone's interior, producing a large explosion that erupted from the ruin's entrance rather than destroying it as he intended.

Emerging from the dissipating explosion, Vahn, having respawned anew, leaped through the air with his Legendary Spear inverted. In response, Vali made a finger gun with his right hand, shooting a thin laser directly through his forehead, causing him to go limp mid-flight and crash into the ground as the white-armored Dragon stepped aside.

"Then, how about this...?" asked Vali, extending his left hand to produce a small but highly concentrated blast that completely obliterated Vahn's body. There was a possibility that killing Vahn would trap him within the Corridor permanently, but if their leader's suspicions regarding the nature of his existence were correct, it wasn't too likely.

As Vahn charged at him a fourth time, marginally faster than he had been the previous three attempts, Vali materialized a sword of light, deflecting the former's spear attacks with very little effort as he asked, "Is this your plan? You intend to bore me into submission...?"

"Not...exactly...!" responded Vahn, flourishing his spear and attempting to sweep Vali's legs but hurting his hands instead, the reverberation causing him to drop his weapon. Immediately after, he found himself being blown back by the wind pressure of Vali's imperceptibly swift movements as the latter casually sliced off his arms and legs and sent him reeling across the frigid, icy terrain.

"So, you don't respawn unless you're killed? That's going to make this a very painful experience for you..." remarked Vali, appearing near Vahn's head after he came to a stop, panting heavily but not bleeding out due to the former's attacks cauterizing his wounds.

Catching Vali a little off guard, Vahn exhaled a pained chuckle, adopting a bloody smile, and retorted, "This is nothing...you could say...pain is an old friend of mine..."

Exhaling from his nose, Vali conceded, "Alright, you win. I see where this is going, and I have a prior engagement. My allies and I are scheduled to battle with the Northern Gods, and it's clear the only reason you brought me here to stall for time..."

"You're wrong..." responded Vahn, shaking his head, his limbs slowly but noticeably regrowing as he firmed his expression and asserted, "I brought you here to defeat you..."

"And how do you plan to accomplish that...?" asked Vali, materializing a spear of light above Vahn's chest and stabbing it into the ground through his stomach.

"You'll see...soon enough..." responded Vahn, grabbing the spear of light with both hands, causing Vali's eyes to widen behind his visor as the light appeared to crack despite not being a solid object.

"Vali, check your condition. Something abnormal is occurring..." advised Albion, prompting Vali to give himself a quick once over, during which he discovered a layer of frost spreading across his body, including his wings, formed from pure energy.

"I see..." muttered Vali, increasing the temperature of his spear of light to burn Vahn from the inside as he remarked, "This region must have special properties that weaken your enemies over time. And since you can revive repeatedly, your goal is to continuously weaken me until the playing field has equalized and you can turn things around..."

As he couldn't speak with a spear of light scorching his insides and causing his diaphragm to seize, Vahn's response to Vali was an intense, blood-stained grin that, as a result of him clenching his jaw, looked more like he was barring his teeth.

"Hmph...I admire your resolve..." asserted Vali, causing a small explosion to reverberate within Vahn's stomach, sending him into trauma-induced shock as he reminded, "But I'm the great-grandson of the original Lucifer and the successor of the Vanishing Dragon's power. Even if this place has the power to weaken me, I will eventually adapt and grow more powerful to overcome it..."

With Vahn succumbing to his injuries and disappearing, Vali turned his gaze to the Starting Zone, expecting the former to come running out a fifth time. Instead, Vahn came flying at him from a completely different direction, descending upon him like a kamikaze pilot attempting to take out a battleship.

Waving his left hand, Vali, using pure air pressure, ripped the flesh from Vahn's bones, averting his sneak attack before he could reach him. Even at his fastest, Vahn could only move a few tens of meters per second, so Vali, with his faster-than-light reaction speed and equally fast movement speed, just had to move to overwhelm him completely.

Undeterred, Vahn emerged from the Starting Zone, charging forward with a two-handed winged shield. Alongside his outfit, it was supposed to give him 100% Resistance against the Element of Light, but he quickly learned this only hindered its burning and purification properties. It did nothing to mitigate the force of the attack itself, causing him to be pulped by his own shield as Vali sent a beam crashing into it...

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'This is starting to become annoying...' thought Vali, fully covered in a layer of frost after approximately ten minutes of battling Vahn. From the latter's point of view, he had no discernible issues moving, but from Vali's perspective, it was like he was being inhibited by solid ice; his speed and reaction time were reduced to less than 1% of their usual values. However, as 1% of the speed of light was still 3,000,000m/s, with a reaction speed of approximately 0.3 microseconds, his reduced speed was still roughly a hundred thousand times Vahn's maximum.

AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Just as Vali was preparing to put the charging Vahn down for the forty-seventh time, they both stopped, their gazes drawn to the sky as a ripple spread across it, replacing the beautiful light with an expanse of darkness populated by a large, yellow-white moon that gradually tinted red.

"What now...?" asked Vali, directing the question at Vahn but staring in the distance, where a massive eruption, stemming from the ground, produced a plume of ice and snow hundreds of meters tall.

"Now you become prey..." responded Vahn, stressing the word as he fell to his hands and knees, mentally and physically exhausted from enduring Vali's onslaught.

"Prey...?" repeated Vali, snorting and smiling beneath his faceplate as he sent a blast of condensed light and Demonic Energy at the distant plume of ice and debris, producing a sizeable explosion as it impacted the giant silhouette forming within. The blast spread a bluish-white plume through the entity's chest, but instead of causing it to disperse, the ice and snow condensed around it, snuffing it out like a candle swallowed by a blizzard before a colossal wolf took shape.

"That's a big dog..." hummed Vali, taking to the sky in the blink of an eye and bombarding the colossal figure with several building-sized spears of light, impacting its head, back, and shoulders. Said spears were supposed to explode after impaling the wolf, but they were absorbed into its body as Vahn observed from afar, noting that the massive canine had a similar appearance to the wolf from his dream, only much smaller and formed of ice and snow instead of flesh and fur.

Seeing no reason to hold back, Vahn moved like a streak of light, cutting off the colossal wolf's head using a long, thin sword of bluish-white light. Several additional attacks separated the giant wolf into countless chunks, many of which reconstituted while others formed smaller versions of the wolf that launched themselves through the air and gradually got faster as they pursued him. Fortunately, while each wolf was only a C to A in Rank, their numbers were functionally endless. Vali could annihilate hundreds by simply sweeping his hand as they attempted to overwhelm him, but there were limits to his Demonic Power and stamina. Sooner or later, he would get fatigued, leaving him with only two choices: flee or succumb...

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Around nine hours after he had retreated from the Frozen Abyss, Vahn was relaxing in the glowing hot springs when Sis informed him that Vali had either retreated to or respawned at a Checkpoint. Considering Vali's power, the former was more likely, but after wrapping a towel around his waist, Vahn summoned the silver-haired, frost-covered half-Devil to the Checkpoint, bereft of his winged armor.

Looking around and taking stock of his surroundings, an annoyed frown marred Vali's face as he remarked, "I was wondering where you had disappeared. Have you been here the entire time I was fighting off those wolves?"

"Not the entire time," responded Vahn, producing a floating platform and placing a cup of hot chocolate atop it before pushing it toward Vali as he advised, "Drink that. It will help to alleviate the effects of the curse that's causing you to be covered in frost."

"Did you bring me here to teach me some kind of lesson...?" asked Vali, extending his right hand and drawing the cup toward him using a form of telekinesis. A quick scan confirmed it wasn't poisoned, so after a moment of deliberation, it downed it in several large gulps, causing a pleasant heat to suffuse his chest, relieving the chill that seemed to have penetrated as deep as his marrow.

Closing his eyes and sinking into the hot spring, Vahn casually responded, "I brought you here for the exact reasons I said I did, to fight until you are satisfied. As long as it's here, you can cut loose as much as you want. And if you manage to delve deeper, monsters and opponents far stronger than that wolf await. So just let me know when you're completely satisfied, and then we can return..."

BOOM

Feeling annoyed, Vali destroyed the nearby ryokan, forcing Vahn to open his eyes and meet his gaze as he ordered, "Let me out of here..." in a low, menacing tone. Unfortunately, this only cemented Vahn's resolve further, his expression and tone flat as he responded with a curt and defiant "No, I don't think I will..."

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