"Come on."
"Who goes first?"
"Together."
"Fine."
Yan Ting and Annihilation exchanged smiles.
Annihilation lightly raised his hand and tapped the ground with the staff in his grasp. A ring of grayish-white undead ripples spread from its base in all directions.
The space touched by the ripples froze, hardened, and transformed in that instant into a domain shrouded in gray mist.
The entire arena gradually lost its original brilliant gold beneath a layer of gloom.
The light turned dim and murky, while the air filled with the mingled stench of dry bones and rotten earth.
"Watch yourself."
Yan Ting moved first.
He thrust out his right hand. Arcs of lightning gathered between his fingers, condensing into a long thunderclap spear woven from blue and white, its shaft wrapped in dense lightning-rune inscriptions.
With a flick of his wrist, the spear flew from his hand, turning into a streak of lightning that shot straight at Annihilation's face.
The bolt was incomparably fast. Thunderclap power scorched thin black scars through the space along its path, their edges curling like skin seared by a branding iron.
Annihilation raised his staff and pointed its tip at the bolt.
A grayish-white column of air erupted from the skull's mouth atop the staff. The instant it collided with the lightning, no violent shockwave erupted.
Like a sponge, the grayish-white air column swallowed the bolt of lightning.
The lightning struggled and flickered within that column for three breaths before dimming, going out, and dissolving into nothingness.
Yan Ting's expression tightened slightly.
He pushed off with both feet, shooting forward like a bolt of lightning. His right hand clenched around a ball of electric light that constantly expanded and compressed as he drove straight for Annihilation's chest and abdomen.
His full-speed charge dragged a deep-blue trail of light