There was no dialogue. No warning. Just the sudden explosion of movement. The Dark Lord's Copy lunged first, blurring into a streak of red. He brought both Vira blades down in a vicious, cross-cutting strike aimed directly at Teal’s chest. Teal spun his staff, bracing the shaft with both hands. CRACK. The Vira blades collided with the hardened shaft of the magma staff. Sparks of raw data hissed against spitting droplets of lava. Teal grimaced, feeling the immense pressure of the Copy’s strength, but he used the momentum to sweep his leg out, forcing the clone to leap backward. As the Copy hovered mid-air for a fraction of a second, Teal slammed the magma block of his staff hard into the stone ground. A localized shockwave of molten rock erupted forward, tearing through the floor toward his opponent. The Copy twisted his body with impossible agility, using the flat of one Vira blade to deflect the worst of the heat, though the sheer force of the blast sent him skidding backward across the cavern. Realizing the staff was keeping him at a distance, the Dark Lord's Copy changed tactics. He moved with erratic, glitch-like teleports, appearing a few feet closer with every flicker. Teal knew the danger. If those blades bit into his flesh and stayed there, his body would dissolve into meaningless ones and zeros. He dropped his staff, the heavy block clattering against the stone, and in one fluid motion, reached behind his back. He drew Death’s Hand. The air grew noticeably colder. The Copy reaped forward, thrusting a Vira blade straight at Teal's throat, intending to pin him and let the corruption take hold. Teal didn't dodge away; instead, he parried the thrust with Death's Hand. The moment the weapons met, the dark aura of Teal's blade clashed violently against the red pixelation of the Vira blade. With a aggressive twist of his wrist, Teal slid his blade down the length of the Vira blade, aiming a counter-slice right at the Copy’s exposed arm. The Copy, sensing the absolute lethality of the incoming weapon, violently wrenched his arm back. The tip of Death’s Hand missed the Copy's arm by a mere millimeter, cutting through nothing but air. Taking advantage of Teal's overextension, the Copy drove his second Vira blade forward, burying the dark spike deep into Teal’s left shoulder. Teal gasped as a horrific, burning sensation flooded his system. Looking down, he saw the red pixelated code of the Vira virus beginning to aggressively rewrite his cyan form, turning his shoulder into blocky, hollow lines of digital text. The conversion process had begun. He had only seconds before he was entirely erased into pure code. But the Copy had made a fatal mistake: he left the blade embedded to let the corruption spread. Ignoring the agonizing digital erasure creeping up his neck, Teal locked eyes with the crimson clone. With his remaining strength, he swung Death's Hand in a short, brutal arc. The Copy tried to pull away, but he was too close. The edge of Teal’s legendary weapon grazed across the Copy's chest. It wasn't a deep wound—barely a superficial mark. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a flesh wound. But Death's Hand required only a scratch. The effect was instantaneous. The crimson light in the Copy's eyes vanished. A shockwave of absolute finality rippled through his red form, shattering his connection to the Vira blades. The blade in Teal's shoulder dissolved into nothingness, halting the code-corruption just as it reached Teal's jawline. The Dark Lord's Copy collapsed forward, turning to ash before he even hit the ground. Teal fell to one knee, breathing heavily. He gripped his partially digitized shoulder, staring at the empty space where his opponent had just stood, the golden crown on his head tilting slightly as he survived this brutal enemy.
