Reincarnated with a lucky draw system

Chapter 592: SET UP

"You are good," Mad One praised, a twisted, jagged snicker splitting his face.

As he spoke, the ruined plates of his combat suit began to groan and shift.

The metal flowed, stitching itself back together and erasing the jagged scars left by the previous exchange until the armor returned to its pristine state.

Mad One raised his hands, leveling his palms directly at Nightflame’s chest with predatory precision.

"Let’s see how well you deal with this!"

Violent pulses of anti-matter hissed through the vacuum.

Nightflame’s silhouette blurred as he maneuvered through the void, his body twisting in a lethal dance to dodge the incoming blasters.

While Nightflame was occupied with the barrage, Mad One saw his opening.

He surged forward, closing the gap in a flash of speed, his armored arms reaching out to crush his opponent.

But Nightflame was far from helpless.

As Mad One lunged, Nightflame threw his head back and roared.

It wasn’t just a sound; it was an ancient, primal wave of Dragon Fear.

Mad One’s momentum shattered.

He froze mid-air, his mind momentarily ensnared by the terrifying aura.

He managed to snarl, forcing his will to break the mental shackles, but that split-second hesitation was all the time Nightflame required.

Nightflame brought his hands together, lacing his fingers into a single, massive fist.

Flames and abyssal darkness coated his knuckles, swirling together in a chaotic vortex.

Boom!

Mad One was hurled backward like a ragdoll, his body skipping off the vacuum until he slammed into a nearby asteroid belt.

Boom!

The massive stones disintegrated upon impact, erupting into clouds of dust and jagged shrapnel.

Mad One scrambled to his feet amidst the debris, his sensors wildly scanning the rubble for his target.

"I’m right here," Nightflame’s voice drifted from directly behind him, cold and steady.

Before Mad One could even pivot, Nightflame’s hand clamped onto his helmet.

With a display of raw, overwhelming strength, he swung Mad One’s body like a flail, smashing him face-first into a towering asteroid.

He didn’t stop there.

He slammed him into another, and then another, the repetitive impact echoing through the silent belt.

Finally, Nightflame hoisted him up by the throat, holding him suspended against the backdrop of the stars.

"You really think you are capable enough to hurt me?" Nightflame asked, his eyes burning with a frigid, predatory light.

"Hahaha!

You really are impressive!" Mad One roared, his voice bubbling with a manic, obsessive excitement.

With a sudden burst of kinetic energy, Mad One hammered his fists against Nightflame’s wrists, breaking the hold and pushing himself clear.

But before he could stabilize, Nightflame’s shadows surged.

The darkness solidified into a gargantuan baseball bat.

With a brutal, sweeping swing, Nightflame connected.

The impact sent Mad One hurtling through space like a projectile, but he didn’t go far.

A massive net woven from pitch-black shadow materialized in his path, catching him and snapping taut.

The net acted like a trampoline, bouncing the dazed Mad One straight back toward Nightflame.

Nightflame was already waiting, his hand raised and his finger pointed directly at Mad One’s temple.

"Goodbye."

A ray of highly compressed, dark purple flame erupted from his fingertip.

Mad One watched the lethal light approach, but the grin on his face never wavered.

"Antimatter Shield!" he barked.

A translucent barrier hummed into existence.

As the purple flames touched the shield, they didn’t explode, they simply ceased to be, flickering out into nothingness.

"Antimatter Domain," Mad One called out, his grin stretching even wider as a dark, unstable field began to expand from his body, warping the space around him.

Nightflame frowned, feeling the sudden shift in the environment.

"Well?

Up for round two?" Mad One challenged.

He didn’t wait for an answer, flying toward Nightflame with the frantic energy of a zealot.

"Hide your perverted grin, you bastard," Nightflame muttered, his irritation bubbling over.

Stretching out his hand, he summoned a spear forged from pure Destruction.

The weapon hummed with the power to unmake worlds.

He hurled it with perfect aim, but the moment the spear crossed the threshold of the Antimatter Domain, it began to fray at the edges.

Before it could even reach Mad One, it dissolved into gray ash and vanished.

"Come now.

You don’t have to look down on antimattee too much," Mad one laughed, his voice echoing through the field.

Taking a sharp, lung-filling breath, Mad One rushed in close.

He threw a haymaker that forced Nightflame to bank hard to the left.

Smiling like a lunatic, Mad One swung his other arm in a wide arc, missing again as Nightflame ducked beneath the strike.

"Come on, come on!

You don’t have to keep dodging like a scared kitty!" Mad One taunted.

Suddenly, his chest plate slid open, releasing a searing beam of antimatter at point-blank range.

Nightflame tilted his head just enough to let the beam hiss past his ear.

"You don’t have to be so slow that you always miss," he countered dryly.

Nightflame cycled through his entire arsenal with desperate precision.

Time manipulation, spears of destruction, searing primordial flames, and suffocating darkness, he threw everything at his opponent.

Yet, the moment any of his powers touched the shimmering edge of the Antimatter Domain, they were instantly erased, converted into a silent, empty nothingness.

The battlefield had become a one-sided game of survival.

"I can’t keep up like this," Nightflame muttered under his breath, a cold sweat breaking out beneath his armor.

Every fiber of his being was focused on the grueling task of evasion.

He was being methodically cornered, his vast power rendered obsolete by a force he couldn’t even graze.

To him, the math of the battle was becoming grimly clear: this was a fight he was destined to lose.

"Antimatter... if only I had a better understanding of its structure," he hissed, narrowing his eyes.

Taking a steadying breath, he forced his mind to calm and activated his Mystic Eyes.

He attempted to peer into the fundamental threads of the universe, hoping to deconstruct the antimatter at a molecular level.

But the feedback was a jarring, static-filled mess.

The vision that usually provided God-like clarity was blurry and distorted, as if a thick veil had been draped over reality itself.

It was a sensation he had never experienced.

His eyes, the ultimate tools of comprehension, were failing him.

"What the hell is wrong with these eyes?!" Nightflame roared in frustration, twisting his body mid-air to narrowly avoid a localized antimatter explosion that would have vaporized his torso.

In a fit of annoyance, he deactivated the Mystic Eyes.

If the high-tier vision was being jammed, he would have to rely on something more primal.

He surged his mana into his pupils, manifesting his Dragon Eyes.

While they lacked the surgical complexity of his Mystic Eyes, they possessed a raw, instinctual clarity.

As he scanned the domain with his draconic sight, he got an idea on what antimatter might be.

The dragon eyes showed more than the mystic eyes offered, which pointed his first conclusion of the mystic eyes being faulty.

That’s impossible, Nightflame thought, his jaw tightening.

The mystic eyes could never be faulty, and Nightflame knew that.

"Which means there’s only one conclusion," he thought.

"Someone or something, was actively interfering with his sensory abilities."

"You’re doing a damn good job of jamming my ocular abilities," Nightflame called out, his voice echoing across the void toward Mad One.

"Blocking your eyes?

Why the hell would I waste energy on that?" Mad One roared back, looking genuinely offended.

A flicker of wounded pride crossed his manic face.

"Don’t make me laugh!

I can beat you into the dirt even when you’re at your absolute best!"

Nightflame went still, his mind racing.

If it isn’t him... then who?

The realization hit him like a physical blow, cooling his battle-fever instantly.

"It can only mean one thing.

This whole fight... it’s a setup!"

"A setup?" Mad One paused his assault, his brows furrowing in confusion.