“Observe him! He’s deflecting every strike Sensei hurls at him… without so much as a tremor,” breathed one of the young women, her voice hushed in disbelief, eyes wide as the sun at noon.
“I thought nothing could surpass the shock of seeing Sensei restored to his youth…” another murmured, her throat tight with astonishment. “Yet this young man, Senior Zara’s companion, he eclipses even that revelation.”
“He’s concealed such power… all this time?” another added faintly, her words barely more than a breath. “You saw it?! Sensei himself nearly lost his footing.”
Gasps and whispers, awed and incredulous, rippled across the fringes of the field like wind stirring tall grass.
But suddenly...
A single step rang out.
A weighty, deliberate thud struck the earth, and the murmuring died at once.
Dadan moved forward, his every step measured, his presence unmistakable like thunder walking on two feet.
His gaze swept over them, cold and unyielding, honed like a master’s blade.
He turned, his eyes locking on the assembled students with a chill that pierced to the marrow.
Instantly, silence blanketed the field.
The female students, as if by instinct, lowered their heads.
The air itself seemed to still, thick with dread and the unspoken certainty that reproof was already upon them.
The very atmosphere had shifted, drawn taut by his mere presence.
“If this din persists…” Dadan’s voice rang out, deep and resonant, echoing like a distant drumroll before a storm, “…I shall not hesitate to discipline the lot of you.”
A collective tremor passed through the group like a breath of wind through trembling leaves.
“F-Forgive us, Senior!” one voice broke the silence, bowed and contrite, speaking for them all in unison.
Meanwhile, the male karateka merely shook their heads, exchanging glances that mingled disbelief with a touch of resignation.
“All that fuss over a single technique,” one murmured dryly, as if he could scarcely believe what he was hearing.
Another gave a weary sigh, “Instead of studying the duel, they’re treating it like a theatre performance.”
Yet for all their affected composure, the flicker in their eyes told a different story.
Beneath the cool veneer, awe had begun to stir.
What unfolded before them was no mere exhibition of martial prowess. It was a spectacle that defied reason itself.
Dadan exhaled through flared nostrils, a sound low and bristling, like a warhorse bridling at the scent of battle.
He turned his gaze once more to the arena, his expression carved in stone.
His eyes narrowed, scrutinising the combatants with a focus that pierced through dust and distortion.
There stood Eman, the tempest incarnate, his every movement laced with fury.
And across from him, the enigma Doctor Zein, rooted as though born of the earth itself, a monument unmoved even by the fury of a god.
Amid the mounting storm of battle, Eman’s figure still stood tall, resolute as ever yet behind the veneer of strength, a fissure had begun to show in his eyes.
There was a tremor in his hands. Barely perceptible to the casual onlooker, but unmistakably clear to the two who truly saw him.
Zara cried out, her voice trembling with alarm, “Sensei, please stop! You might...”
“I’ve not lost yet, Zara!” he snapped, the defiance in his tone ringing loud.
Yet beneath it, there clung a quiet strain, an unspoken fatigue that betrayed him.
Zara took a bold step forward, her chest tight with dread, “Sensei, you don’t understand! Zein’s strength isn’t something you can...”
“Enough!!”
The word tore through the air like a blade, sharp and unrelenting.
In an instant, silence fell, heavy and absolute as though the very air dared not move against his will.
And before a single soul could so much as blink, Eman lunged once again.
The strike was linear, uncompromising, yet something beneath it trembled.
It was no longer pure strength that propelled him forward, but fear, cloaked deftly in the garb of courage.
Dr Zein did not move in haste. He simply inclined his head with a quiet sigh, as if burdened by the sorrow of witnessing a noble man clinging to pride.
"How much longer must this charade endure, Master Eman?," he asked softly, pivoting just enough to avoid the blow.
With a subtle shift of his weight, he caught the punch with an open palm, tai sabaki at its most refined, seamless in motion and purpose.
"Until I sever every lying tongue!," Eman bellowed, his fury lashing out like a tempest denied.
And so the clash resumed in earnest.
Eman sprang forward, executing a mae tobi geri, a forward flying kick, his foot encased in a torrent of glowing blue aura.
The air itself cracked and recoiled.
But Zein, ever the master of margins, moved with measured grace.
A fractional pivot, a tilt of the hips, he diverted the attack with the arc of his forearm, clean and effortless, as if brushing aside a leaf in the wind.
No sooner had Eman’s foot grazed the ground than he twisted mid-air, launching an ushiro geri, a spinning back kick, its trajectory saturated with raw inner energy, slicing through the dojo like a blade through silk.
Zein met the assault with the bony ridge of his left elbow.
The impact pulsed outward, a wave of force that lifted the dust and cracked the tiles beneath their feet.
Yet Eman was relentless.
He followed with an uraken uchi, the flick of a backfist, then transitioned fluidly into a gyaku zuki, the classic reverse punch aimed directly at Zein’s chest.
But again, Zein intercepted, not with brutality, but with mastery.
He ensnared Eman’s wrist in a seamless joint-lock, the elegance of aikido laced into the decisive efficiency of karate.
Then, with the grace of someone who understood the fragility of pride, he let go.
Still Eman turned once more, this time unleashing a kaiten geri, a spiralling roundhouse kick cloaked in a blazing veil of inner energy.
The light it cast was almost blinding, a blade of pure will carving through the charged air.
The storm of the spirit had well and truly broken loose.
Zein raised a single hand and...
BOOM!
A radiant surge of crimson aura erupted from his palm, swallowing Eman’s strike in a single, crushing wave.
The air itself seemed to shudder. The sound of the impact echoed like thunder sealed within ancient stone, ricocheting through the beams and bones of the dojo.
The floor split open with a seismic groan, jagged lines tearing outward beneath their feet, as if the earth had been struck by the mallet of some wrathful deity.
Eman faltered, his heel sliding back half a step.
His breathing grew ragged. Eyes wide, he stared at Zein, not with fear, but with the confusion of a man standing at the edge of a truth he had never dared consider.
"You... you command inner energy as well? And your aura... red?!"
The words tumbled out, broken by disbelief, as if his voice no longer belonged to him.
Dr Zein regarded him in silence. No tension in his shoulders, no flourish in his posture, only stillness.
Then, without hurry, he offered a faint smile.
It held no arrogance, no mockery, yet it pierced nonetheless. Calm. Controlled. Devastating in its subtlety.
"And I have yet to unleash even one percent of my strength," he said, his voice even, tempered like cold iron.
"Arrogant bastard," Eman muttered, but the insult held no weight.
His stance wavered, not from fatigue, but from the surge of emotion that threatened to pull him off balance.
"Arrogance," Zein replied, "requires falsehood. I merely state fact."
There was no venom in his voice, no vulgarity. And that, more than any blow, struck deepest.
Eman’s fury broke free.
"Then take everything I’ve got!" he bellowed, hurling himself forward like a lance cast by the hand of a forgotten god.
His frame coiled like a spring, every fibre of muscle drawn taut.
Veins bulged along his arms as power surged to the surface.
His aura deepened, shifting to a dark, seething blue, wrapping around him like a furious gale.
The floor shattered beneath each step.
Footprints etched themselves into the dojo's stone as if scorched by divine fire, the very ground recoiling from the might he summoned.
Every ounce of technique. Every secret honed through generations.
Every breath of inner force whispered from teacher to pupil through the annals of time, now bound into a single, final strike.
It was not merely an attack. It was his legacy, unleashed.
Doctor Zein remained perfectly still. Not a muscle twitched.
His eyes, razor-sharp and analytical, betrayed an intellect in motion, but his countenance was as serene as the surface of a moonlit sea, deep and imperturbable.
"You dare underestimate me? I'll break you!" Eman bellowed, a furious cry tearing from his throat as he surged forward with a velocity that defied the limits of ordinary vision.
The very air trembled in his wake. The sheer force of his strike cleaved through the atmosphere, generating a shockwave that rippled through the walls of the dojo.
But just as the blow hovered a mere breath from Zein’s face
WHOOSH!!!
Zara moved.
A flash of motion, brilliant, instantaneous. Like lightning unfurling in the quiet of night.
And then, she was there. Between them.
THUD!!!
She raised but a single finger, and with that delicate gesture, halted the full fury of Eman’s ultimate technique.
No explosion. No scream. Only silence. A silence that roared louder than any detonation.
Then impact. Eman’s body was flung backwards, crashing to the earth with brutal, inelegant force.
He tumbled, limbs twisting in the dust, before slumping to a halt. Breathless. Disbelieving.
His eyes widened, staring, not at Zein, not at the world around him, but at the small finger that had, impossibly, undone him.
"Z-Zara… Y-You…!" he choked, his voice a ghost of its former defiance, trembling under the weight of realisation.
Zara stepped forward with unhurried grace, each footfall measured, unyielding.
Her gaze pierced him, sharp, clear, and utterly unwavering.
"Forgive me, sensei," she said, voice quiet but resolute. "But this was the only way to end the battle before it devoured us all."