Doyle vs Shadow!

[ Narrator POV ]

"I KNOW THAT EVERYONE IS READY FOR THIS MATCH TO BEGIN SO I WONT WASTE TO MUCH TIME. WITH INTRODUCTIONS OUT OF THE WAY, LET THE MATCH BEGIN!"

"Argh!!" screamed Shadow as a dark grayish, light blue, and purple glow outlined his body.

Immediately after the announcer said "begin" Shadow chanted buffs upon his body to increase his stats. As he chanted these buffs he kept his eyes directly on Doyle, he didn't want to be caught off guard by anything. Looking at Doyle he saw that his body was also glowing different colors.

'He's also casting buffs on himself.' thought shadow.

Shadow although excited, felt a little anxious. This was his very first fight that he himself did not believe he would win. If he did have a chance of winning it was very minimal at most. He watched his opponent closely, Doyle continued floating in the same spot, his white radiant glowing eyes staring right back at Shadow.

Shadow internally sighed, trying to release all of his uneasiness, then he took a step followed by another. He couldn't wait for Doyle to make a move first. If he did then he would probably already be caught in a trap by the mysterious player. Additionally, he had also seen that each match was timed with only 15 minutes, he wouldn't waste time just because of his weak confidence, it just wasn't in his nature.

Shadow unsheathed his pearly platinum-colored sword and used his skill [ Quick Step ]. He moved so fast that the audience believed that he was teleporting. With his immense speed, he approached Doyle who was still standing still watching him.

Upon contact, Shadow swung his sword vertically down towards Doyle. Suddenly Doyle finally made a move. Doyle spawned his katana from almost nowhere and blocked the attack right before Shadow's attack made contact.

However, Shadow was not done, with both weapons in opposition of each other, he pushed his sword down with more force than his initial attack.

The unexpected strength slightly startled Doyle, who also put his high strength to use, pushing back Shadow's sword.

"Aren't you a mage?!" said shadow with obvious shock in his voice. He hadn't ever encountered a magic attacker with such high physical strength. He didn't understand how it was possible to be a magic caster while also having high stats in physical attack. It was unhealthy for the build as a whole.

"Hehe!" Doyle laughed in response.

With Doyle laughing shadow made a swift movement with his sword. This caused Doyle's katana to lose its traction with shadow's sword. 'Huh? Wait- what?!' Doyle thought. He had never encountered someone who could so something like this without a skill or spell do it was highly unexpected.

With such a huge opening Shadow swung his sword with immense momentum. Doyle immediately jumped back to make more distance between them, which caused Shadow's attack to miss his attack by a few inches.

'Tch!' Shadow internally sucked his teeth. He had created such a great opening but he couldnt use it to his advantage.

'Well, it's not all my fault. That speed just now... So he has high physical strength and speed as well? What kind of build did he create to be able to have stats like this? It's not common with magic casters at all...'. Shadow's uneasiness has only increased with these few attacks.

Doyle however was also still a bit shocked behind the small maneuver shadow had made with his sword. 'This guy... Don't tell me....-'

Before he could even finish his thought, he was again approached by Shadow, this time shadow's sword was imbued with white electricity. Shadow imitated himself about to attack, which caused Doyle to slash his katana horizontally to block, however, right when Doyle swung his katana shadow jumped over it.

While mid-air shadow pulled back his arms with the sword and quickly stabbed his sword to the head of Doyle. This was again another surprise for Doyle as he retreated once again. However when he finally got at a safer distance he received a notification that surprised him even more.

[ You have lost -15 HP ]

He didn't understand. The attack definitely did not make contact with him, he dodged it. That's when he remembered the electricity that was on the sword.

'Did the electricity touch me? Looks like his sword is much more dangerous than I thought.' Doyle thought.

Shadow and Doyle exchanged multiple blows with their weapons. Sparks flew everywhere, however, two things were obvious to the audience as they watched. Firstly, Doyle had crazy strength and speed comparable to Shadow who was thought to be the strongest warrior-melee build. And lastly, it was that Shadow was much superior to Doyle in melee combat. Even though Doyle had the strength and much higher speed to keep up with Shadow his combat ability and reaction time during melee combat was dulled compared to shadow.

Shadow got in a fighting stance once more preparing to rush Doyle, however it was Doyle that rushed him instead. Shadow quickly changed his stance to one more defensive. He squatted a bit spreading his legs, then prepared to block the attack that Doyle was going to deliver. However, right before Doyle reached him he picked up on something. Watching Doyle closely, the inside of shadow's helmet where his eyes were located glowed, then without any hesitation he looked to his right where no one was visibly standing.

He swung his sword which blocked an stealth attack that Doyle had been plotting. Apparently the attack that Doyle was going to do when charging at him, was none other than a illusion. He hadn't expected this, however, he was happy he was prepared. He had previously in his grinds and farming sessions came across an item that lets him see through illusions.

Doyle on the other hand had been surprised once again by Shadow's game IQ and reaction speed. It was a reason he was 2nd rank on the leaderboards, and Doyle was now understanding why. He also had already figured out that Shadow was better then him at fighting with swords. He himself had no practice in wielding a sword in his past life nor now. Even though he used swords to fight occasionally, it still was not proper training. Doyle had finally gotten serious, as much as he didn't want to admit it he had been subconsciously underestimating Shadow solely because of the level gap that they had. He even wanted to just beat Shadow with only a sword not even attempting to use magic. However this was only partly the reason for him using such a dumb way of fighting throughout this match.

Now with his attack blocked, Doyle used this chance and touched Shadow's hand which gave debuffs with his withering touch ability. Shadow reflexively jumped away from Doyle, and return to his defensive stance. Doyle stood still again looking directly at Shadow. Seeing that Doyle returned to his regular non-defensive stance shadow got a little nervous. He didn't understand why Doyle dropped his guard and leave so many openings. However, Doyle moved his eyes up towards the top center of the arena where the timer was ticking down and smiled eternally.

'It should be about time now' he thought. As if on cue an alert rang off in both Doyle and Shadow's view.

[ Alert! 5 minutes left until the match is over! ]

Shadow looked at this then back at Doyle. He then decided that he would not attack first this time. He had the advantage right now, which meant that Doyle would have to play by his rules. He had done the most damage between the two when they were exchanging blows, and now that the time was running out it was in Doyle's favor to rush him since if he didn't get Shadow's HP lower than his or he would lose.

Looking at Doyle he realized that Doyle was getting ready to attack soon and out up his sword bent his legs and got ready for some sort of trick. Doyle's zoomed towards him, the crowd could not even see doyle anymore.

'Looks like he's gotten to irritated and lost his head. He's most likely to be going all out with this attack. Too bad... it was a nice fight, but ill end things here.' he thought confidently. Shadow had been in many fights, not only in the game but in real life as well. His father help train him in multiple martial arts. It was a the benefit from being wealthy that he could do any of it, the outside world was nothing like the clean environment he lived in. With his experience he felt that Doyle had just lost his patience due to the timer only having little time left.

Doyle reached him in seconds however Shadow had been waiting for this. He went all out using his strength into this attack, his feet dug into the arena itself and his sword grew immensely, this multiplied the physical attack power of his attack by almost 6x. Within only a second he sliced doyle with through the top of his head down to his feet. The ground behind Shadow broke with three lines ran through the arenas ground completely destroying it.

However, when he looked up Doyle was standing right there as if nothing happened.

'....huh? What?! How is he still standing?' he thought. Then it hit him, when he sliced through Doyle, there was absolutely no resistance. It felt like he had actually sliced through absolutely nothing. He tried his best to move however before he could move the gravity around him got enormously heavy. He was brought to his knees almost immediately due to his unbalanced stance from swinging his sword. He forced his head up to look at the slowly approaching Doyle.

"I shouldn't have took this long… I guess I'm still childish..." Doyle whispered. It sounded like he was scolding himself. As soon as Doyle approached Shadow he reached out his hand and the last fading words he remember hearing was the spell, "[ Void of Emptiness ]".

Shadow found himself in a pitch-black space with absolutely nothing in sight. It was like he was the only thing existing within this space of nothingness. His body was stuck in the same position, he felt that his avatar was frozen and stuck yet also not stuck and flexible. However, before he could even try to do anything he began losing large chunks of health.

[ You have lost -40 HP ]

[ You have lost -40 HP ]

Shadow began panicking. He didn't understand how a spell like this could even exist in the game. It was undeniably broken in every sense. He also felt very frustrated with the fact that he felt deep in his heart that Doyle had been toying with him. He had such a spell the whole time but chose to instead play and act like a warrior instead. Before long he was only staring at one notification that floated in his face.

[ You have died! ]

***

[Doyle's POV ]

I looked at my hands. Then at the place where Shadow was previously. I did not expect such a strong spell. [ Void of Emptiness ], "it is a spell that immediately teleport the enemy into a realm of emptiness, while stuck within the realm there is nothing the player can do. This spell is absolute." I read the description of the spell. I thought that this was part of lore that would only be usable in the new world however, the devs actually implemented a realm just for this spell. Well I can't say I am surprised honestly. The devs were known for there weird whims and implementing broken weapons and spells that were considered "cheats" by players. The screaming of the announcer rang in my ears as I looked up at the descending featureless humanoid.

"CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNER OF THE MUSPELHIEM WORLD TOURNAMENT!"

(A/N: Hay peeps. Not gonna lie, this chapter was rushed. I legit wrote this down all in one go just now. This is a late upload, because the beginning of this week has been hella busy for me. I legit just got home like a hour ago. I'm tired, sleepy, and sore. But I still chose rush this chapter out. Most likely I will end up rewriting it maybe when I'm not half-asleep. I won't be rushing anymore chapters like this because it just doesn't feel right. Anyway I'm tired so I'm gonna get sum sleeps. Gn and enjoy.)