Chapter 233: One Punch

Another door of the same shape and size materialized before him, and they both walked into an identical battle arena. The only difference was that this one looked pristine and untouched, as though nothing had ever occurred there.

"It’s the same place..." Jacob muttered aloud as he took a step through the threshold, his head swiveling to take in the sights that lay before him. There was truly no difference from the arena he had just stepped out of a second ago.

"Yes, Jacob. This is a shifting dimension, so every battlefield is the same, but different. I’m sure you understand that." Uga replied and, in an instant, was seated once again, watching from the stands.

It left Jacob after answering the seemingly rhetorical question, but Jacob had already prepared for it. He stepped onto the stony slab and into the lights once more, the crowd murmuring and chattering lightly as he looked into it.

A shadow was cast directly behind him, its figure attached to him at his feet, but it somehow looked like another being. He knew instantly that something was wrong from the slight movements the shadow was making.

He said nothing. He did nothing.

He merely expunged his aura, and when he felt as though the shadow was about to detach itself from him as a result of that aura, he stepped on it.

Jacob’s void affinity allowed him complete control over the sub-affinity of darkness. As such, he had sensed the opponent’s powers long before he had even stepped onto the podium.

The Grand Regent had made it clear enough that it wasn’t going to announce any of the battles going forward, so Jacob knew that the battle had begun the moment he crossed the threshold.

And judging from his opponent’s power, they had been here before him. Jacob merely smiled at the shadow trying its best to wriggle away.

He bent down slowly and did the impossible. He wrapped his hand around the shadow’s neck and picked it up off the ground. The dark figure writhed in his grasp, writhing in pain as the hand grew tighter around its neck.

"What exactly was it that you thought would happen?" Jacob growled in a low tone. He had made it clear so many times that he hated people who fought from the shadows. "I hate cowards like you."

The man’s figure slowly started to materialize in his firm grip, revealing a middle-aged-looking man with a balding head and buck teeth. It was clear by now that the man had an affinity for shadow, and therefore darkness. But that seemed to be all. In fact, Jacob wondered how the man had managed to beat his first opponent.

"Leave me, you heathen! I knew there was something wrong with your entire demeanor! Demon!" the man hissed, his face nearly bright red as he struggled to pry Jacob’s hand off, but physically, he was rather abysmal.

"Demon?" Jacob wore a confused expression. "Do I look like a demon?"

There was no response from the man. Instead, he answered with grunts and more futile attempts to escape Jacob’s grasp. While Jacob had been looking at him and wondering whether to kill him or not, the man did something...

He placed both hands on Jacob’s forearm, his eyes turning pitch black, as though everything that resided within the darkness was trapped inside his body. A pool of darkness began to envelop Jacob’s hand, slithering upward from his fingers to his knuckles, then to his wrist.... It had almost reached his elbow when the young man laughed.

"You should’ve known by now that I’m immune to whatever your powers are." Jacob tightened his grip on the man’s neck, forcing him out of whatever state he was in.

He hurled him across the ground, sending him hurtling several meters away, uncontrollably slamming across the stony slab and crying out. He finally came to a halt after covering a considerable distance. His body was bloodied, and he noticed that he could no longer control his shadow affinity.

A trail of dark blood ran from his temple all the way to his chin and dripped onto his clothes. His breathing was ragged, and he was barely able to stand, as he had sprained one leg.

Jacob knew how he had managed to win his first battle. His power was .

This man was able to envelop his enemy in darkness and control them to do whatever he wanted, as long as his own will was stronger than theirs. It was clear that the person he had fought on the first floor had been weak-willed and weak-spirited, and therefore had lost to this whimpering, feeble individual.

"You haven’t won yet... you don’t know the extent of my p—!"

The man hadn’t even finished his statement when Jacob crossed the arena in the blink of an eye and landed a punch that resonated throughout the halls, striking him directly in the middle of the face.

He lost seven teeth in the process and suffered a fractured skull from the sheer force of the blow. It didn’t even send him flying. All the pressure was concentrated within his skull, violently shaking his brain. There was no fuss, there was no noise. The man fell to his knees with a broken face and blood spilling all over the floor.

He blacked out instantly. Jacob had already begun walking off the podium, somewhat annoyed at how easy it had been to win that battle.

Uga, as before, joined him at his side, but it could sense that the young man was somewhat annoyed after the battle.

Some of the constellations had already begun to take note of Jacob from the crowd—the young man who had not even incurred a single scratch in two battles, whose opponents had been so weak that neither of them had managed to even touch him.

But there were one hundred floors. They would wait to see his later battles before deciding what course of action to take next.

"You seem distraught. What’s wrong?" Uga asked Jacob with the same empty expression it had worn the entire time as it followed him toward what seemed to be the exit of the battle arena.

"Take me back to the lobby."

A door appeared before them, the same door that seemingly led everywhere in this bizarre building, and Jacob stepped through it without hesitation.