"Subsequent battles," Jaeyun said. His arms were in worse shape than he had originally thought, rendering them unusable for the next fight. He was already facing an onslaught of attacks.

  "Another one of you? Great. Can't even let me rest, can you?"

  The wound on his abdomen froze shut, just as the next wave of attacks came at him. He met the first strike with a front kick, but before making contact, his leg transformed into water for the most part, only the part that connected with the attack was solid ice. The strike halted the assault, freezing it in place.

  Jaeyun weaved away from the skull on his left, evading its grab, but the one on his right managed to seize his arm and hold him in place. He quickly turned his body into water, slipping out of its grasp effortlessly. His body returned to normal as he stood face-to-face with Kronos.

  "Exerting myself, you say? As long as you don’t underestimate me, you can say and think whatever you want."

  "Slippery one arent you? And ill think whatever I want-"

  He's cut off. The blood on the blade Kronos held began to freeze, creeping all the way to the hilt and his hand, slowly spreading across the surface. Jaeyun shifted his weight onto his lead leg and leapt toward Kronos, aiming a front kick at his face. A trail of water followed his leap, and right after the kick, multiple strikes came from different angles, each one carried by the flowing water.

  A grin crept its way across the split soul's face, unable to help but enjoy the show Jaeyun put on in stopping his attack despite having been grabbed by one.

  A grin crept across the split soul's face, unable to help but enjoy the show Jaeyun put on, stopping his attack even after being grabbed by one of his opponents.

  Kronos immediately reacted, summoning a jagged bone in his other hand and smashing the ice off his hand and knife entirely. He then summoned the top half of a dragon skull right in front of the incoming kicks, using it to block as much of the assault as possible. He stood in place, waiting as his defense crumbled and cracked under the pressure, sending bits and pieces of bone shrapnel flying around him.

  Just as the final kick had broken through and destroyed; his only form of defending himself against the onslaught, he created a large bone underneath the floor and sprung up like a freshly planted sprout to catapult him high into the air. Looking down upon Jaeyun and summoning multiple bones around his hands, flinging them down at the martial artist.

  "Bones huh… it seems your ability is quite something, hard as can be, swift, and you can mold them to a certain extent. I figured your ability out for the most part, the only thing I'm trying to see is, to what extent can you mold and manipulate them."

  Watching Kronos ascend upwards and tossing a flurry of bones down at him he couldn't help but want to try the obvious which is to create spikes on the floor to impale him. But since that was too obvious and easily countered he had to change up his game.

  He created a bunch of ice spikes on the floor around him stretching over to the location where Kronos was bound to land and around it. However next to this he also conjured some water in the air above the both of them which formed into ice spikes serving as a volley of arrows from above. They rained down aimed at the both of them but before they would even get close to Kronos he still had to deal with the bones that were sent towards him.

  Several arms of water sprouted from his back something which felt familiar to him for some strange reason, beyond just the fact that he had learnt this technique once more from his teacher back in the mountains. This was a different feeling, like he had gained something which had been lost to him from the past.

  He snapped back to reality, refocusing on the task at hand,

  dealing with the impending bones. Four fully-formed arms sprouted from his back, each holding a blade of ice. The arms maneuvered the swords, angling the sides of the blades to deflect the incoming attacks away from him. This worked successfully for the most part, except for one arm that was too slow with its deflection, causing its blade to snap. As a result, Jaeyun was forced to take the brunt of the attack directly on his shoulder.

  "Annoying. You're really annoying," he muttered.

  His left arm was in an even worse state now, completely dislocated and compounded by a severe burn wound, making the situation look grim. As arrows rained down on both of them, he used his extra limbs to deflect the ones aimed at him.

  After the first volley, Jaeyun leapt toward Kronos, still mid-air, and unleashed a flurry of attacks from multiple angles, all converging on Kronos with the intent to incapacitate him.

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  "Looks like Taekwondo is my only option now," he joked.

  Here’s the corrected version:

  A genuine laugh escaped the pale boy's mouth as he looked up at the absurd number of ice arrows falling from the sky, aimed solely at ensuring his defeat. With a swift gesture upward, an immense number of bones erupted from the ground, flying upward to counter the onslaught.

  The bones clashed with the ice projectiles, splintering into shrapnel as they collided, scattering serrated fragments all across the floor, creating a bullet hell around Kronos as the two forces battled for dominance. A few ice shards slipped through the gaps, slicing into his pale skin and leaving streaks of red across his body and the ground. Gritting his teeth, he pulled out the pieces that had embedded themselves in his flesh.

  "What, you thought I was just gonna sit here and lose to ice, of all things?"

  He let one hand touch the floor, dragging it swiftly across the ground before pulling it upward. Immediately, a rumbling echoed from beneath the arena, cracks forming in the earth as enormous jagged stakes, made entirely of bone, erupted from below. The massive spikes tore through the ground, breaking apart the floor of the arena as they shot toward Jaeyun, aiming to impale him.

  "Why not? You're not underestimating me, are you?" Jaeyun said, leaning forward, his head tilting slightly.

  He felt the tremors beneath them from the massive bone spikes shooting up, and Kronos' movements had already given him a rough estimate of what was coming. Jaeyun leapt into the air just as the spikes erupted from the floor, watching them clash with the ice spikes he had formed earlier during Kronos' initial attack. Some of the bone spikes came uncomfortably close, forcing him to break them before they could strike him.

  When the attack seemed to reach its peak, Jaeyun had mostly escaped unscathed...or so he thought. One spike had managed to pierce his left arm slightly before he dodged, leaving a small hole where skin and flesh were missing. Blood trickled down his arm, but it was already numb from the burn, lack of circulation, and dislocation.

  "I imagine you don't want to lose to ice because of some specific person or reason. Was it scary? The encounter, I mean. What happened to you, little guy?" Jaeyun taunted, his voice casual as he propelled himself through the field of spikes using water to lift himself. "It has nothing to do with any previous encounters. And I do understand what you mean quite well really, the only problem is my body and more importantly I want to rip you apart more than I want to think. Specifically for calling me little."

  Jaeyun closed in on Kronos and delivered a strong roundhouse kick to his head with his left leg. As soon as his foot touched the ground, Jaeyun spun around and followed up with a spinning back kick aimed at Kronos' rib cage.

  After delivering the spinning back kick, Jaeyun lowered his torso and pushed his right shoulder into his center of gravity, which caused him to stagger backward and nearly lose his footing. He quickly recovered, stepping forward again and driving a knee into Kronos’ gut to finalize his attack.

  "You're not getting the full picture. The worst thing you can do against someone who uses ice is to lose blood. Let me show you what I mean."

  The air around them began to cool drastically, the temperature plummeting. Even Jaeyun started to sweat from the sheer effort it took to maintain such an intense cold, especially after the energy he'd already spent fighting Zero. The air dropped far below freezing, making it nearly impossible to blink without risking eyelids freezing shut. Every drop of exposed liquid in the arena blood, sweat, and tears, instantly froze solid.

  On Kronos' body, crystallized blood formed, sticking firmly to his skin. Each movement felt like it would tear more of his flesh, drawing more blood, which in turn froze, perpetuating a brutal cycle of pain and freezing until only bones would remain.

  "I planned to win, but it seems there’s some bad blood in the air between me and those who stayed here," Jaeyun said, standing still after his previous attack, observing his opponent and the people around him. He knew this wouldn’t just go unnoticed, unlike Zero's fire attack that had heated up the entire arena.

  "What's your name, little guy? You seem oddly familiar for some reason. Or, well... you remind me of something familiar...a vague talking skull of sorts. I must sound crazy."

  Kronos barely managed to raise his arms to block the attack, only to fail miserably as Jaeyun's roundhouse kick connected hard with his face, ringing his bell. Before he could recover, the spinning back kick crashed into his ribs, the impact sharp and devastating, causing something inside him to crack.

  Already teetering on the edge of giving up, Kronos was met with yet another powerful blow to his gut, the force driving deep into his organs and sending him skidding across the ground. He clutched his chest tightly, vomiting blood like a grotesque fountain, his breathing ragged as he struggled to regain his composure.

  Slowly, he brought himself to his feet, but was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer cold that blanketed the battlefield. It felt like he had been dropped into an arctic tundra, every inch of his body engulfed in freezing pain.

  His movements were sluggish, his senses dulled by the biting cold. But Kronos wasn't the only one feeling the effects...he noticed Jaeyun was strained from maintaining such an intense chill.

  "You're sweating. Haven't done that before, have you? This is tiring for you, isn’t it?"

  Despite the pain that shot through his body with every movement, a grin crept across Kronos' face. The cold seemed to crack and tear at his skin, but he paid it no mind. Instead, he summoned a storm of jagged bones above Jaeyun, broken fragments hovering in the air like a deadly hailstorm. The marrow within them trembled in place.

  "You were a great opponent."

  And as Kronos had just finished speaking, the storm of bones he had created above Jaeyun slowly started to fall one by one rapidly increasing in speed, as more fell more only appeared in the other's stead. Coming down to the earth in a white hellfire piercing and grazing people entirely unaffiliated with their specific fight due to the sheer area it covered.