Chapter 585: The Grand Marshal’s Trial - 9

Galatea rolled her shoulders once, loosening the tension left over from her fight with Beru, and settled into a low, ready stance across from the massive, silent bulk of Doom, she looked sharper. Hungrier.

At the edge of the arena, Igris stood with his arms folded, watching quietly.

Galatea’s eyes flicked toward him for the briefest instant before returning to Doom, and something in her expression hardened.

"You made my teacher kneel," she said, her voice carrying clean and level across the arena floor. "The man who trained me. The reason I stand here as a Marshal at all." Her eyes ignited, twin points of gathering heat. "I intend to correct that. Consider this a matter of respect, if nothing else.. for him, and for what he taught me."

Doom did not answer, could not answer. He simply lowered his head a fraction, the bone ridges over his brow drawing tight, and the ground beneath his feet cracked under a shift of weight that promised he had understood her perfectly well without needing a single word to prove it.

Igris stood on the sidelines, his arms crossed, his eyes fixed on the battlefield. His voice was flat. "Galatea shouldn’t let her emotions cloud her judgment, Doom is relentless. Just fight the way you usually do, as if this is nothing but a regular duel. Control whatever you are feeling now, all you need is to feel is the fight itself and that’s it."

The fight began without ceremony.

Doom came first, exactly as he had against Igris with no warning, a boulder of shadow bone muscle hurtling forward with a punch meant to destroy her. Galatea didn’t dodge it. She met it head-on, catching his fist in both hands, feet skidding twin trenches into the stone as she absorbed the impact, muscles straining, the shockwave of the stopped blow cracking the arena floor in a spiderweb radius beneath her.

"Different approach than my teacher," she said through gritted teeth, shoving the fist aside and driving a punch of her own into his ribs hard enough to stagger him a full step. "Good. I was hoping you’d give me something worth remembering."

Doom answered with a backhand that she barely twisted clear of, close enough that the wind of it tore a lock of her shadow hair loose, and the exchange that followed was pure, uncompromising violence fist meeting fist, blow after relentless blow, neither of them bothering with the kind of testing, probing caution Igris had opened with. Galatea fought the way she always fought: directly, honestly, trusting her own strength to answer whatever was thrown at her.

It worked, for a while.

She caught a punch aimed at her head and turned it aside, answering with a knee that cracked audibly against his ribs; she ducked beneath a wide, sweeping strike and drove both fists up into his jaw hard enough to snap his head back. Each connection sent a visible shudder through Doom’s massive body, and for a handful of exchanges, it genuinely looked as though raw power alone might be enough.

Then, gradually, the fight began to change.

The punch that had staggered him the first time barely moved him the fifth. The knee to his ribs, which had cracked bone at first contact, met resistance now, something harder, denser, layered beneath that shadow hide of his that hadn’t been there minutes before. Doom was not merely absorbing her strikes anymore, he was learning from them, adjusting, hardening exactly where and exactly how much was needed to render her strongest weapons steadily less effective, fight by fight, blow by blow, exactly as he had against Igris.

Galatea felt it happening in real time, and her jaw tightened.

"So that’s how it works, No wonder you defeated Igris." she muttered, circling now, wary in a way she hadn’t allowed herself to be a minute ago. "Fine. Then I’ll simply have to hit harder and faster than you can adapt to."

She came at him again, and this time there was nothing measured about it a punch thrown with everything she had, shadow light flaring around her fist as she poured raw strength into the blow. It connected with his shoulder and the impact boomed, a shockwave rolling outward that cratered stone thirty feet in every direction, staggering Doom for the first time in several exchanges, driving him back a genuine step.

He recovered faster than she expected.

His counter came in low and brutal, catching her across the stomach before she’d finished resetting her stance, and the force of it lifted her clean off her feet, folding her around the blow, driving the breath from her in a single ragged gasp as she was hurled backward across the arena, tearing a long furrow through the shattered floor before she managed to arrest her momentum.

She came up coughing, one hand pressed briefly to her ribs, and remarkably grinning through the pain.

"There it is," she said, straightening, eyes blazing brighter now, heat building visibly at their edges. "I was starting to think you only had that one gear."

Doom’s answer was to simply keep coming, relentless, patient in the terrible, unbroken way that had already broken Igris before her, each strike arriving with a speed that didn’t make sense with his body, forcing her into a defense that grew more desperate with every passing exchange. She blocked what she could, redirected what she couldn’t afford to simply absorb, and took the rest on a body that was beginning, for the first time all day, to genuinely struggle to keep pace.

A punch clipped her shoulder and spun her half around. She answered with an elbow that connected solidly with his jaw, buying herself half a second of space, and used it to loose a full-force blast of heat vision directly into his chest at point-blank range.

The beam bored deep, tearing a smoking wound through his shadow bone and muscle, and Doom staggered back a genuine, visible step, a low, guttural sound rumbling out of him that might, in a lesser creature, have been called pain.

"That’s more like it," Galatea breathed, chest heaving. "You’re not the only one who can hurt."

But even as the words left her, the wound in his chest was already beginning to knit closed, and when he straightened again, the exposed muscle beneath had darkened, hardened, layered with something, he basically said that the same beam wouldn’t cut nearly so deep a second time.

Galatea’s grin faltered, just slightly.

"Right," she said, mostly to herself. "Nothing works twice.. Igris found that out too."

She surged forward again, and the fight became a blur of strikes and counterstrikes, each one different from the last on her part, refusing to let any single technique repeat long enough for Doom to fully solve it, heat vision one moment, a flurry of rapid punches the next, a sweeping kick after that, every angle, every method she could summon thrown at him in overlapping succession. It bought her ground, for a time. It didn’t buy her the fight.

Doom’s fists began landing more often than they missed.

A blow to her side cracked audibly, and she staggered, catching herself against a shattered pillar only to have to throw herself clear as his next strike reduced it to rubble where she’d been standing. Another caught her across the jaw, snapping her head sideways, she answered every hit she took with one of her own, refusing to simply retreat, refusing to let the exchange become one-sided but it was costing her more with every passing moment, she was fighting a stronger Doom than what Igris had fought.

She caught a punch meant for her skull on both forearms and felt her arms genuinely creak under the strain, her knees buckling slightly from the sheer force of absorbing it.

"You feel that?" Doom’s silence answered for him a low, rumbling breath, patient, unbothered, closing in again without hesitation. Galatea gritted her teeth, forcing herself upright, forcing her stance back into something solid. "Good. Means you’re still fighting me. I’d hate for this to end boring."

She drove forward one more time, gathering everything she had left into a single, desperate flurry of fists blazing with violet light, heat vision flickering at the edges of her vision as she poured every reserve of strength into an assault meant to finally, decisively break through whatever adaptation he’d built against her.

For a moment, it seemed to work. Strikes landed, one after another, driving him back, cracking new fractures across the armor his body had grown. Doom’s expression what little of it could be called an expression, showed genuine strain.

Then he caught her final punch in one massive hand, closed his fingers around it, and simply held.

Galatea’s eyes widened.

His other fist came around in a wide, brutal arc, and this time there was no clean dodge left in her but she twisted at the last possible instant, taking the blow across her shoulder instead of full in the chest, the impact still enough to send her tumbling across the ruined arena floor, gouging a long furrow through shattered stone before she managed to dig her heels in and wrench herself to a halt.

She stayed down on one knee for a moment, breathing hard.

Then, slowly, she pushed herself back up.

Her legs were unsteady beneath her. Her whole right side ached. But she stood, chin lifting, eyes still burning, still fixed on the massive, silent shape across the arena from her.

"Not yet," she said, mostly to herself. She rolled her injured shoulder once, testing it, refusing to let the wince show fully on her face. "You’ll have to do better than that, nightmare."

At the edge of the arena, Igris’s arms remained folded, but something in his stillness had sharpened, his gaze fixed on his former student with quiet, unspoken intensity.

Doom lowered his fist, unhurried, and simply began advancing on her again, entirely unbothered by how much of himself he had already spent breaking her guard down. Galatea planted her feet, gathered what remained of her strength, light kindling once more around her clenched fists, and did not retreat an inch.

"Come on, then," she breathed.

/-\

If you Like this story! Check out my other stories! Shadow Monarch: In One Piece / The Witcher: Heir of Fire!

&

If you wish to read more or simply support me than check out my p@t-reon / FrenzyAren"

You can Get Access to 7 More Chapters on all of my stories!