The moment had arrived. It was now or never.
The crowd was silent. No one in the Grand Coliseum could blink.
Everything was happening so fast, yet the battle between Mako and Catherine had pushed Mako's physical limits to the brink.
In other words, the pain he felt was driving him to his breaking point.
"My plan… was never to drag you, but…" Mako said, panting.
He tensed the muscles of his left arm, still gripped by the cruel spikes of the Chain of Roses whip, as best he could.
"I'm ending this!" Mako shouted, spinning around and breaking into a run.
Not only had he reached his limit, but Mako was dangerously close to a total collapse of his nervous system. How much longer could he endure the pain spreading through his body?
Yet, he ran.
Dragging Catherine across the sandy ground, Mako showed no mercy, sprinting at full speed.
"No way!" the announcer began to shout, breaking the stunned silence of the awestruck crowd. "Why isn't Catherine letting go of the whip?"
With her eyes irritated from the sand Mako had thrown earlier, Catherine clung tightly to the whip's handle.
Not only could she see nothing, she knew that letting go would leave her defenseless.
'How dare he?!' Catherine thought, outraged. 'I can't be humiliated like this…'
But Mako's plan wasn't a test of endurance.
The sprint along the edges of the battle arena was brief but lightning-fast. Mako covered several meters in seconds—nearly 100 meters in 7 seconds.
But that sprint had a purpose.
Mako stopped dead in his tracks.
Catherine never let go of the whip's handle. The sudden halt sent her flying forward, propelled by the speed and force of Mako's run.
Mako turned, his blue eyes blazing with adrenaline.
With the last scraps of energy left in his body, Mako bet everything on ending it with one blow.
'Now or never.' Mako, with the same left arm wrapped in the spiked chains, lunged at Catherine.
Mako clenched his fist. The pain of the spikes digging into his arm coursed through every fiber of his flesh, every organ.
For a moment, Mako faltered.
Catherine, who had no intention of going down without a fight, wasn't far behind.
As she realized she was airborne, Catherine prepared to counterattack.
And she succeeded.
Using her free hand, Catherine landed a cruel blow to Mako's neck. It wasn't a closed fist—her palm was open, her sharp nails slicing like daggers.
Everything seemed decided.
Until, like a meteor, in that split-second that would decide it all, Mako threw his left fist in a powerful hook to Catherine's face.
"He… He did it!" the announcer shouted, stunned, as the crowd went wild.
Mako let out a guttural scream from the depths of his throat. His eyes looked crazed, unfocused, as if staring at nothing.
His fist didn't just land—it was so forceful that the chain unwound from his left arm.
Like a spinning top, the chain whirled with the impact, then fell to the ground.
Catherine crashed to the ground, kicking up an explosion of sand with her body's impact.
"Against all odds, Mako Sol has won!" the announcer declared triumphantly.
It was a fraction of a second, a fleeting moment, but it would be etched in the spectators' minds forever.
Catherine's attack on Mako's neck, followed by that devastating blow.
"Well, that was…" the queen said, never taking her eyes off the fight for a second.
The queen couldn't find words for a battle not only brutal but one that had pushed its fighters to their absolute limits.
'I'd better inform my husband about this,' the queen thought. 'Now that Mako has won… Huh?'
As the queen reflected, she noticed something odd in the battle arena.
The celebration had started too soon.
While much of the crowd couldn't believe their eyes…
A young woman in the stands, looking more closely at what was happening, shouted, "Wait! Look!"
Mako, who had given everything until that moment, stood amid a slowly dissipating cloud of orange sand.
His left arm was riddled with wounds from the spiked chains, his right hand was now useless, and aside from the countless bruises on his body, the wound on his neck from Catherine's attack was the least of his worries.
But…
He wasn't moving.
Like a statue, head bowed, Mako stood unconscious. He had crossed the threshold of pain.
With his eyes rolled back, Mako looked more like a corpse from beyond the grave than anything else.
"Ha…" a malicious laugh began to echo.
It was Catherine, rising.
The leader of the Lunar House was badly injured too, but nothing compared to what she'd inflicted on Mako.
She held her jaw with one hand—it was dislocated, and she kept spitting blood.
"Ha… Ha, ha… Ha, ha, ha!" Catherine Moon laughed maniacally, seeing that, without a doubt, she had won.
Typically, a duel would be stopped if a fighter fell unconscious. Catherine knew this well.
That's why, as she rose, laughing, she wasted no time.
Grabbing the chain with her other hand, Catherine began raining blows on Mako with the Chain of Roses.
Strike after strike.
"And… to think…" Catherine spoke with difficulty, never stopping her barrage of lashes with the massive chain, which quickly began to destroy Mako's body.
'To think you're causing more trouble than your idiot parents,' Catherine finished in her mind, unable to speak with her dislocated jaw.
Mako had long stopped feeling pain. He was more corpse than person before Catherine's onslaught.
Even so, his world faded to black…
◇◆◇
Mako, as usual, returned to the past.
As if breathing for the first time, it felt less like going back in time and more like coming back to life.
Mako was at the opposite end of the arena, reliving the moments before the fight.
"Where's the weapon of the House of the Sun's heir?!" the mustachioed announcer asked, pointing at Mako.
Everything was repeating.
"O-Okay…" Mako said, his voice trembling. 'I've got another chance. This time…!'
But before he could catch his breath, the sharp pain returned.
"What's going on?!" the announcer exclaimed, rushing toward the orchestra to clear the battle arena.
The crowd didn't know how to react. Before the fight could even begin, Mako fell to his knees.
Mako, starting to sweat coldly again, felt that sharp pain coursing through every part of his body, despite having no wounds from the Chain of Roses.
Or so he thought.
Terrified, Mako looked at his right hand. A thick scar marked his palm.
"Of course… When I go back in time, I-I… still carry the scars of my wounds."
In that moment, at the start of the fight, Mako's robe was intact. No one could see it, but beneath it, his abdomen, back, arms, legs—every part of his body below his neck—was covered in massive scars.
Catherine, standing at the opposite end of the arena, smiled.