Azorn swung his fist, unleashing a deadly blast of dark-red flames that surged toward Arad like a tidal wave. Arad, now looking like Shi, walked through the flames, splashing them all over the place.

The Tarrasque, even an incomplete one like Shi, had a carapace, skin that could reflect and refract magic.

It took Azorn a second to realise that his infernal flames weren’t doing anything, and he frowned. “Monster.” With a jump, his body rattled with black lightning as he flashed through the molten ground left in the wake of his fire.

In the blink of an eye, he reached Arad, swinging a devastating kick. Shi dodged the attack simply by moving her torso aside and grabbed Azorn by the leg, ripping it off under the oppressive pressure of her iron grip.

Azorn’s leg regenerated almost immediately, but not fast enough. Shi had already spun past him and clenched her fist, smacking him in the back so hard that the flames around them faded, killed by the shockwave.

Surprisingly, Azorn had managed to block her attack and deflect most of the power away by hardening the muscles of his back. But even with that, it still hurt a lot, making him wince as the shock traveled across his whole back and spine.

He turned and swung his fist at her, but she gracefully pushed the attack aside and smacked him in the face with a punch. Unlike how Arad mimicked Nina’s barbaric style, Shi’s style had some grace and flow to it.

Unlike Nina, Shi was old; she had lived longer and had more time to train and develop the style. So while Nina had more raw strength and physical durability, Shi herself was more of a refined fighter, as far as the barbarians’ idea of refined goes.

Shi lifted both of her arms into a high guard. To her, Azorn looked like a massive, wild lion that she needed to fight with her bare hands. A deadly opponent, but not something so out of the ordinary, a lion was far weaker than most monsters she had hunted in her life.

Azorn charged forward with a barrage of fists, followed by a storm of roaring fire, crackling lightning, and boiling acid, all merging together into an infernal hellstorm of death and destruction.

Shi, on the other hand, was thrilled. Arad’s body was durable, strong, fast, muscular, and far above her own body in everything. While most get disoriented if thrown into a new body, she wasn’t, because Arad had gone through the effort of morphing into a vessel that she could use.

Right now, she could take more hits, move better, and strike fast. All of Azorn’s magic slid off her oak skin like water, her arms moved with frightening speed, and she danced through the hellborn attacks with relative ease.

Was she Arad, or is she herself? Neither, it was both of them controlling the body at the same time. Shi wanted to throw a punch, but the consciousness of her soul was too slow to command Arad’s terrifying body, so he took control and moved his fist exactly as she wanted.

When Azorn unleashed an attack that Shi missed and didn’t see, Arad would’ve seen that attack coming, and he would move the body to dodge, all working seamlessly through one body, one mind, two souls.

Now that she has the power and assistance of Arad’s mind, she can achieve things she couldn’t even dream of as a mortal barbarian. With one fist up and two feet on the ground, she smiled. This was her peak.

[Elemental Expansion]

Azorn frowned. He knows that pulse of magic; she was about to use something massive, and he wasn’t going to allow her to do it. In the blink of an eye, he lunged forward at blinding speed, swinging a fist straight at her face.

He should’ve thought about that twice; he was facing a barbarian, not a wizard. Shi knew nothing about what an elemental expansion even is; she couldn’t even guess where to start casting one, so what she did wasn’t an elemental expansion, but Arad working in the back to snare Azorn.

Azorn got close; his fist moved closer to Shi’s beautiful face, but then, her fist came crashing down on his skull, sending him straight into the depths of the earth.

Since this was a space made by Tiamat, Shi couldn’t send Azorn to the planet’s core to cook him, but she could still force him into the stones. A tarrasque has the ability Earth Glide, which allows it to swim through the earth like a fish, and all without disturbing it. They become one with the dirt and stones, making it possible for them to fly at full speed through endless layers of solid stone.

What Arad wanted to do was simple: pull Azorn into the earth and grind him there. He wanted to force the fight to happen while swimming in solid stone, where Shi has the absolute advantage, and that plan seemed to work.

Azorn could use his harrowing strength to breathe the stone around himself and try to move, but he was nowhere close to Shi’s speed, making him a sitting duck for her barrage of attacks.

Was this a real expansion? No, it wasn’t, but would Arad absolutely call it that? Of course, he would. To Arad, an elemental expansion was just that, an expansion of one’s elemental power over the outer world, to impose an environmental advantage in a fight.

Shi’s element was earth, and she managed to get Azorn to face her in the depths of earth, engulfed by nothing but solid stone. The method didn’t matter; the result is everything.

The result this time was stellar, just what Arad wanted: to slow Azorn down and buy time for Sena to arrive and settle this misunderstanding peacefully.

After a few minutes, and along with a clash beneath the ground that turned the arena into a boiling pool of lava, Arad finally got a hold of Sena and had to stop the fight to bring her in. As smart as Betty was, she had spent a few precious minutes looking through her mountain of papers for whatever documents that Cerilla and Jasmine wanted, so she was a bit late.

Shi moved away from Azorn, and Arad took back control. His body shifted back to its normal state, turning back into the hulking man he was. With a single push from his leg, he burst out of the lava and unleashed a wave of cold magic, freezing the arena back into obsidian.

Azorn emerged seconds after, unscathed, but still exhausted from the long fight. He glared at Arad, “You’re back?”

“Not just me, she is back as well.” Arad pointed behind Azorn.

Azorn hesitated for a second and then decided to look back and see who Arad was talking about.

As he looked, he saw Sena’s smiling face turn into a blur as she swung a fist at his face. “AZORN!”