klaus alva

Once he got accustomed to the restraints, he decided to challenge himself. He removed his shirt and began performing his personal workout. Now, it wasn’t just his muscles being strained, but his mana reserves and control. Having spent numerous lifetimes pursuing the peak of physical fitness, he knew how to fight through strain and fatigue, and push his body to its limits and beyond, but this experience was a whole new dimension of challenging. The closest thing he could compare it to was performing weight training in high altitudes and crushing depths.

After Cain’s fight, the seventh match proceeded without a hitch, and as always, Seraph stepped into the ring for the final battle of the round. Though his earlier wins had been desperate and narrow, the prince’s arrival brought a chorus of cheers from the audience. One might expect this noisy support to bolster his confidence and turn him back to how he was, but he remained humble, or perhaps ‘fearful’ would be a better word. Every win would plague him with doubts, doubts that he was really strong enough to have defeated his opponents. All of his accomplishments were surely due to plain luck, or maybe his enemies had been paid off to let him win.

“Oh my God!” I gasped, hardly able to believe what she seemed to be saying. “Ray? Is that really you?” I stared at her face... and yes, now that I knew what to look for, behind the expertly applied makeup and incredibly skillful plastic surgery, I could see it was true.