Frost stepped forward like a fencer and thrust out. Lex redirected Frost's consecutive attacks with an open palm and the movements of a master. Three strikes later – at the exact moment Frost's foot positioning lost its leverage – Lex stepped forward to swing in with a devastating right-hand punch backed up with the power of the Void.
Frost's Void energy was being guzzled like diesel, and all of it was going straight to his head and his muscles. This was what his subconscious dictated was best. He sidestepped Lex's punch easily and buried his knee in the man's gut. Lex's body folded under the impact, and in the next moment he was sent flying by the follow-through. Frost brought his leg down, amazed by his own power.
Lex flipped and skidded to a stop at the end of the hallway. "Not bad!" He chimed. His face showed a rare expression of genuine intrigue.
[Checkpointer20: He's telling the truth about not wanting to hurt you.]
[Checkpointer20: Poking the hornet's nest isn't wise.]
Frost sensed a well of Void energy amassing in Lex's body and began to grow nervous. "Just who are you, exactly?" He asked, taking a few steps back.
"I read that you're a freshie," Lex replied. "That explains the lack of control." He started walking confidently towards Frost while rolling up both of his sleeves. "I'm nobody special. Just a Voidhunter who's been doing this a lot longer than you."
Frost blinked. It was only a moment. The natural processes of his body taking hold. In that millisecond, Lex had already cleared the distance between them. He was so close to Frost that his body was taking up the entire field of view. Frost snapped his arms up with muscle-straining speed to defend in vain. A mighty punch slammed into him and he felt the arm that took the brunt of it growing close to snapping under the pressure. He was driven downwards with spine breaking force into the floor. The air was forced out of his lungs.
It took everything he had to retain his consciousness as pain threatened to overtake all semblance of rational thought. He kicked his feet out and wrapped his legs around Lex's neck, leveraging the hold to flip himself over until he was on top of the man. Lex groaned as he was slammed into the floor, wiggling around as Frost tightened his hold to choke the air supply.
[Lex Aitsuko is activating an attribute: Contact swap.]
Their positions swapped again. Frost turned around just in time to take a punch to the side of his forehead that violently snapped his head to the side. Lex took the opening to grab him by the hair and lift him up. He felt his legs leave the ground and kicked around powerlessly. The next instant the world spun around quickly and then he was flying. The hallway disappeared as he slammed through a doorway. He threw me!?
His back hit a table. He reached out, grabbed the sides of it, and flipped up onto his feet. For a moment he was paralyzed by the sight around him. This was a lecture hall, and one that was full of about two hundred students. It was tiered, with curved rows of tables working their way around the professor who stood at a lectern at the very bottom. Frost recognized professor Graka standing there, his face pasted with the usual grimace he wore during a lecture. The lights were bright enough to overcome the grey hue of the distortion. Frost was like a deer in the headlights. For an instant, he supposed that this was where his university career would come to an end.
Upon closer inspection, the scenario was far more terrifying than that. In fact, these didn't seem to be people at all. They tracked him with their eyes like illusory paintings, but all of them held perfectly still without making a single peep. Frost felt Graka's eyes on him, but he was aware that Graka wasn't really there. The only sound that could be heard was that of Lex's shoes tapping as he entered the room through a cloud of dust.
Frost couldn't be bothered to look at him. He was too mesmerized by the surreal surroundings. "What the hell is this?" He asked.
"Objects of the distortion," Lex said. "They aren't needed, so they just become…"
"Statues," Frost finished, slightly horrified. "And when it's over?"
"Time doesn't pass in the bounds of a distortion. They'll blink and everything that happens here will happen in an instant." He paused. "It's terrifying, isn't it? To know that we're the only people in the entire universe that can escape its control? To know that it will fabricate justifications in reality for the damage we've caused?"
Terrifying was not the word Frost would've chosen. He felt powerful. It was too much power, in fact. "You mean to say I can go down there, wring that professor's neck, and nothing will happen?" He asked.
"When the distortion ends, he'd die of some natural cause. That's professor Graka, right? Tsch. He probably deserves it," Lex affirmed. "The Void is contained within and without everything. If regular people knew of it, it would be chaos… So it'll do everything it can to course correct our actions, no matter how steep. You can do whatever you want here."
Frost carefully considered the implications of this. A distortion could be created through violating a world's ruleset, but from there it basically gave him free reign to do what he wanted so long as he cleaned it up afterwards… To some, this knowledge represented a rule to never break. To Frost, it was a weapon. Everything was a weapon with a little bit of ingenuity.
"You have an evil look on your face, to put it lightly," Lex noted.
"An idea is brewing," Frost confirmed. The fight was just starting to get exciting, and he was blushing profusely. No. His idea would be his last resort. He had to try his hand at winning first.
"I won't do you the disservice of taking my leave before you've given in. If you still want to fight, I will oblige," Lex said. He summoned that strange book into his hand once more, and spoke like exactly the type of person you'd expect to pull out a book in the middle of a battle. "It's been entertaining," he added.
Of course, he was saying all of this to the one person that wouldn't give in, even when he was clearly defeated.
"I'm… Not done yet." Frost climbed to his feet and clenched his fists. He'd lost his knife when Lex had thrown him, but it didn't matter. These hands were the ones he'd used to overpower a wyvern on Dragonsfold. The man he was going against now was nothing compared to that, right?
Lex dashed forward and swung the flagpole like a bat. Frost crouched and then launched forward to take him at the waist. They struggled for a moment, wiggling around on the spot before Lex brought his knee up into Frost's gut. He held on despite the pain, but eventually let go after two consecutive knees when his internal organs let out what he could only interpret as a whine of pain.
Frost reeled backwards, wide open, and took a strike to the side of the head from the flagpole. He stumbled and caught himself on the table, which was unable to resist the power of the follow-up that sent him flying through it. Technique and mastery mattered very little when the opponent was simply faster. Everything he knew had gone out the window, and his battle prowess was subject to disassembly in real time.
The audience of students and even professor Graka watched his struggle wordlessly.
Frost kicked Lex in the knee and gripped the flagpole. They wrestled over it briefly, but Lex overpowered Frost and pushed his back into the desk. The flagpole came down on Frost's neck and was just barely held back from applying choking pressure. Frost spat in the man's face and drove his knee upwards into his gut. Lex weakened briefly, and Frost threw him off while claiming the flag for himself.
[Checkpointer20: Run!]
The only other door is on the other side of the auditorium. I'll never make it in time. The only way out is through. Frost charged into the weakened Lex and they both fell back through the doorway. Lex was quick to leverage the momentum, swinging Frost around and throwing him towards the broken window. Frost used the flagpole to catch himself on the metal beams that made the side of the window frame, hanging out from the sixth floor at a sixty-degree angle.
The flagpole, which seemed to be made of weak metal, buckled and then snapped. Frost was in freefall towards the fountain below, which lacked the water to break his fall. If it didn't kill him, he'd have enough broken bones to put him out for the foreseeable future. Even so, he didn't scream. Somehow a scenario like this wasn't surprising to him anymore. He took life in stride now, including the moments where he drew close to death and the moments of epic triumph.
Still, he had to admit that this would be a stupid way to die.
Lex dove onto the floor and slid on his stomach through a bed of glass shards to reach the edge. Frost found his movement halted, a firm hand around his wrist and holding him up just as he was about to give up. He looked up to see Lex's face, teeth gritted. If it wasn't checkmate before, Frost was now left with no choice.
"You give up?" Lex asked anyway.
"You gonna drop me if I say no?" Frost countered, looking down at the unappetizing fall beneath him.
"Just say you give up!" Lex pleaded.
"Drop me!" Frost demanded.
"Stop bluffing!"
Lex let go. Frost swung his opposite hand up and clutched Lex's wrist in return. Lex clearly struggled as the weight pulled him back into the floor. He groaned in frustration.
"You won't win in this position! Waterloo!" He yelled, letting a little bit of his other personality slip.
Tsch. "Alright! You can have the flag," Frost decided. "One condition."
Lex knew that Frost was in no position to make demands, but he looked intrigued nonetheless.
"I'm listening."