Reincarnated with a lucky draw system

Chapter 600 600: FINAL STANDOFF

Chen Mo and Aaron stood locked in a heavy, suffocating silence.

Around them, the atmosphere of the Origin Expanse hummed with the latent energy of two apex beings pushed to their absolute limits.

Neither spoke.

The time for words had long since dissolved into the ether, replaced by a visceral, mutual loathing that pulsed between them like a physical heartbeat.

Their eyes met, conveying a raw hatred that transcended mere rivalry.

In that shared gaze, a grim understanding was reached.

They both knew the inevitable conclusion of this encounter.

Only one of them would leave this place alive.

Aaron slowly closed his eyes, drawing in a long, measured breath to steady his racing pulse.

As his lungs filled with the thin air, a rift tore through the fabric of reality beside him, shimmering with a dull light.

From the tear stepped Grey, the small, adorable companion whose presence belied a terrifying power.

With a quiet, wordless understanding, the creature's form began to liquefy and shift, radiating a metallic sheen.

In a flash of light, Grey transformed into a formidable sword.

The blade was a cold, slate grey, anchored by a hilt fashioned into the somber shape of a crucifix.

Aaron's fingers coiled firmly around the grip, and the air between the two combatants ignited with killing intent.

The battle began in a sudden, violent blur.

Aaron didn't simply move.

He fractured the timeline.

Utilizing a time-step, he launched an assault from a moment that had already passed, his blade flickering like a ghost from the recent history of the expanse.

Chen Mo's instincts were razor-sharp.

Reacting with fluid, practiced grace, he swung his own blade in a wide, defensive arc.

The steel collided with Aaron's temporal echo at the exact microsecond required, the clash of metal ringing out like a thunderclap as he successfully countered the attack from the past.

Refusing to yield the momentum, Aaron extended his free hand.

He unleashed a barrage of soul bombs, orbs of flickering, ethereal energy that screamed through the air toward his rival.

Chen Mo moved with the deftness of a shadow, twisting his body in mid-air to dodge the explosive projectiles as they whistled past him, detonating harmlessly in the distance.

"Ultimate Demon Technique: Tyrant's Descent," Chen Mo muttered, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that carried a heavy weight of authority.

He hoisted his right leg high and brought it down with cataclysmic force upon the floor of the origin expanse.

The impact was absolute.

Under the weight of his foot, the very foundations of space began to fracture and buckle.

A violent ripple of spatial shockwaves surged outward, a tide of raw destruction that leveled everything in its path as it roared toward Aaron.

Aaron, however, was not easily overcome.

Reaching out with his authority over the fundamental laws of the universe, he grasped the fabric of reality in front of him.

With a sharp tug, he wiped the space clean, creating a hungry, swirling void that acted as a bottomless maw, devouring the incoming shockwaves entirely.

Chen Mo had anticipated the defense.

Even as the void closed, he was already mid-swing, his blade held high in a vertical stance.

"Annihilation!" he barked.

A beam of pure, concentrated killing intent erupted from the sword.

This was no ordinary strike.

It carried the conceptual weight of certainty, a hit that was destined to land regardless of the distance.

Aaron realized the danger.

He was unable to dodge the attack due to its innate nature.

Thinking at the speed of light, he manifested a singular, reinforced dragon scale over his chest where the blow was likely to fall.

He didn't stop there.

He frantically layered his chest with Terra and a miniature black hole to swallow the force of the strike.

Yet, against the sheer power of Chen Mo's attack, these defenses were futile.

The strike tore through the black hole, shattered the Terra, and pierced the dragon scale, carving a deep, gash across Aaron's torso.

Aaron's body immediately attempted to repair itself.

But the authority imposed by Chen Mo's technique prevented any natural regeneration.

To bypass the restriction, Aaron utilized his chaos physique, knitting fresh flesh from an undamaged part of his body to manually cover the wound.

While he was fixing the injury, Aaron's mind remained lethally sharp, cooking up a counter-attack.

At the exact spot where Chen Mo was standing, thick, jagged bone spikes erupted from the ground without warning.

Chen Mo reacted deftly, leaping away to dodge the primary cluster of spikes.

However, he wasn't fast enough to escape completely unscathed.

One of the calcified spears caught him, tearing through the skin of his back.

Gritting his teeth against the searing flare of pain, Chen Mo bore the injury and steadied himself, his eyes never leaving his opponent.

Chen Mo reached deep within himself, calling upon the Phoenix Core to mend the jagged tear in his back.

A warm, crimson glow began to radiate from his chest as phoenix core hummed, seeking to knit his flesh back together.

Aaron, however, felt the shift instantly.

His own Nightflame bloodline throbbed with a predatory resonance, sensing the core's frequency.

He recognized this opening.

It was the same vulnerability that had led to the Flame Father's demise.

But Aaron was not interested in a slow death.

Unlike the previous encounter, he poured every ounce of his malicious intent into the strike, forcing a violent surge of energy into the connection.

He triggered a catastrophic overload, causing the Phoenix Core inside Chen Mo's chest to detonate with internal fury.

"Urgh!" Chen Mo groaned, his voice cracking as he collapsed to his knees.

The internal explosion sent shockwaves through his organs, causing tremendous damage that left his internal structure a ruin of charred tissue and cracked bone.

Seizing the advantage, Aaron executed a void step.

He vanished from his position and reappeared instantly in the air above Chen Mo, maintaining a calculated distance just outside of his opponent's arm's reach.

He raised Grey high above his head, the crucifix hilt catching the dim light of the expanse.

With a powerful downward swing, he unleashed an Equinox attack, a swirling, volatile helix of light and darkness merged into a single, devastating crescent of energy.

Chen Mo remained slumped on the floor, seemingly too weakened by the core's destruction to move.

Yet, just as the Equinox was about to erase him, his body blurred.

With a burst of desperate speed, he shifted away from the impact zone, the attack carving a deep trench into the ground where he had been a millisecond before.

Aaron paused mid-air, his descent slowing as a look of genuine amusement crossed his face.

"Oh?" he murmured, hovering effortlessly.

He watched as Chen Mo stood up, appearing not just functional, but perfectly fine.

The shattered Phoenix Core had not simply healed.

It had mutated under the pressure of the explosion.

The ethereal flames that once fueled it were gone, replaced by a thick, flowing essence of pure blood.

The mutation had completely nullified the damage Chen Mo had suffered, erasing his injuries as if they had never existed.

The two warriors locked eyes once more, their gazes clashing in a temporary stalemate of willpower.

Chen Mo tightened his grip on his sword, his knuckles whitening as he lunged forward for an immediate counter-strike.

Aaron's reflexes were instantaneous.

He threw his hands open, releasing a roaring torrent of tempestuous wind and elemental fury toward the approaching swordsman.

But Chen Mo's movement was uncontested.

His blade cut through the air with such unnatural velocity that his strike reached Aaron before the tempest could even manifest its full force.

The impact sent Aaron spiraling backward through the air.

As for the lingering tempest, Chen Mo crushed the remaining winds with a single, brutal counter-strike that dispersed the storm into nothingness.

Aaron landed on his feet, skidding slightly before coming to a halt.

He stood tall, seemingly unharmed by the direct hit.

The attack output was identical to Chen Mo's previous strikes.

Because of that, Aaron's Chaos Physique had already adapted.

His body had grown resilient enough to render that level of power nearly obsolete.

Chen Mo's eyes narrowed in surprise.

He didn't let the shock override his focus.

He had known from the very beginning that Aaron would be the greatest challenge of his life.

"Come. Show me more," Aaron said, a thin, dangerous smile spreading across his face.