He finishes the match (Citrinas POV)

Author's note: For those of you who have trouble imagining how the arena looks, I've attached a helpful picture to stimulate your imagination (Warning NSFL).

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/950/265/838.jpg

"I can't tell if your friend's stupid, brave, or a reanimated corpse." Daria said as Citrinas and Fenri were busy attacking the arena with magic and knives. Though the two of them were powerful in their own right, an invisible barrier of pure divine power denied them from entering even a millimeter into the arena. Unlike formulaic or instinctive magic which required concise calculations, the arena was protected by divine power that transcended logical explanation. They couldn't pass through it, but they could feel it's presence. The only thing they could do was sit back and watch Verdi get mangled.

Both his eye sockets were empty and most of his body was half corroded by the acid. Rather than let his body seal the wounds, he had froze them to stifle his regenerative powers. Both his legs were scraped to the shins from Evangeline's first blow. His right torso was completely gone, ripped out by his own hand and frozen over. An open half frozen cavity in his chest displayed his still beating heart, his remaining lung, and his intestines. This stood in stark contrast to the meat behemoth that stood before him devoid of the slightest injury. Even looking at the flesh colossus sent shivers down Citrinas' spine, her mother's childhood stories still fresh in her mind.

"Be good, eat your vegetables, and study hard or else the Collector will take you away and put you in her box of toys." It was the story her mother had always told her before bed. As a child she believed it to be mere superstition, something that was meant to scare her into eating her vegetables and reading. She still did as she was told, but she never believed her mother's warnings of the Collector. It was only when she joined Tomoko's party that she realized the stories weren't just tall tales to scare children.

"GODS, ANYONE, KILL ME!"

"LET ME OUT!"

"RUN BEFORE SHE GETS YOU TOO! RUN!"

"IT HUUUURTSSS!"

"I WANT TO GO HOME!"

"KILL ME AND I SWEAR TO YOU MY CLAN SHALL REPAY YOU!"

"Carry the 881... No, 818... No, what... No, no, spell's inefficient... Gotta redo he spell..." She felt her heart thump in her chest as the faces embedded to the arena's walls screamed for freedom and ****, still intent on breaking the divine barrier and getting Verdi out before he killed himself. She tried to focus and calculate another spell, but the memories kept flooding in. Memories she didn't have. Memories that didn't exist in reality. Mere delusions. None of those were memories. They were delusions that never happened.

The city of Melhian was known for its clean mountain water and mining community. It was targeted by the demon king's army with Evangeline serving as the vanguard. The hero of the hearth and the Company of Roses had been sent in to deal with Evangeline and the monsters stationed there. Tomoko's party was sent in to clear out the city and rescue survivors while the hero of the hearth served as a distraction. Deceit's intel said that there were no signs of monsters in the area, so they were expected to bring back survivors and parade them around to boost morale among the people. A simple job for a novice hero team.

She remembered how happy Elmeria was when she relayed Deceit's intel to the rest of the party. Of the bunch, she was the most excited to know their first mission together was a basic rescue mission with the strongest hero backing them up. And of the party, she was the most devastated at what happened. In all fairness, Deceit's spy gave them proper intel. It was true that the monsters had left to fight against the Hero of the Hearth and his mercenary company, leaving the city completely empty. The mission had no chance of them being injured. What they neglected to account for was Evangeline's presence. She scolded herself for her overactive imagination, the images vivid in her mind despite them being mere hallucinations. None of those events actually happened. Everyone else told her what actually happened. Any history book would have this story written, so it was the truth.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?!"

The hero of bonds and her party were never at Melhian.

"WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS!?"

Only the hero of the hearth was at Melhian.

"WHY WON'T YOU SAVE US!?"

The hero of the hearth and his company of mercenaries ruthlessly killed the denizens of the city after finding out Evangeline had come across them.

"You were supposed to save us..."

The 8 levels she gained that year were from fighting Skeleton Lord Wyann's forces.

The world spun as she botched yet another calculation, no longer able to chant as her lungs cried out for more air. She couldn't focus. She couldn't think. The voices surrounding her overlapped over one another, echoing in her skull as she fell to a knee hyperventilating. Her mouth felt dry, yet her clothes became drenched in sweat. She tried to wet her mouth, yet found no success as a lump formed in it. Her vision grew dark as she stood at the precipice of outright unconsciousness.

"Citrinas, are you okay?" Varrick asked, noticing the arch-imago gasping for air. His words fell on deaf ears as she began mumbling something under her breath. Upon seeing her, everyone in the party stopped to focus on her as she repeated something under her breath.

"I'm fine." She mumbled, forcing herself to take deep breaths as they heard Verdi's voice. At that moment, her vision cleared as she looked up, hoping to hear him slur out the words he needed to speak. It was only when she saw him that she knew she had raised her hopes for nothing. There was no trace of submission in him. He wasn't saying I surrender or any variant of it.

He was laughing.

She couldn't grasp why he refused to back down. It wasn't as though he was letting anyone down considering nobody expected him to win against the Collector, yet here he was fighting an opponent he couldn't hope to defeat. Most of his body was melted or torn apart, his jaw was ripped out, and he was barely standing. Both his eyes were gone as were half his organs. Any sane person would have gave up long ago. Suddenly, Fenri bolted to her feet and cupped her hands over her mouth.

"Verdi, you can do it! Ignore what I said earlier! Fuck her up!" She said, changing her tune for the second time as she crossed her arms and legs as though she were preparing to watch the show of a lifetime. Upon hearing Fenri's cheers, Verdi visibly perked up as he touched the water coating him and reshaped it. Rather than craft some weapon or attack Evangeline, Verdi sent out three separate tendrils of ice towards 3 nearby barrels. Citrinas had always found it odd how he managed to control 3 separate instances of instinctive magic when the strongest monsters could only manipulate one at a time, but that was a question for later.

"That thing isn't something you can beat! Tell your idiot friend to back down!" Daria ordered, appalled at Fenri's words.

"You were just with us telling him to quit! Why are you cheering for him again!?" Varrick asked, exasperated that Fenri yet again refused to go with the rest of the party.

"That was before he started laughing." Fenri countered indignantly, as though Verdi's laughter could win any battle.

"So he had a psychotic breakdown. So what?" Belsach asked, still recording the fight as Evangeline began laughing, the two competitors laughing as though someone told a particularly funny joke. The contrast between Verdi's choked gurgles, Evangeline's soft melodic voice, and the screaming faces encircling them was almost surreal.

"He had that same laugh when he beat me. He's got a plan." Fenri said as she frowned, watching Verdi focus while Evangeline merely stood there in silence. A second passed as neither side moved. "Why isn't Evangeline attacking?" She asked, more interested in making sense of the fight than contemplate the outcome.

"Common courtesy." Daria answered without hesitation, seemingly understanding Evangeline when nobody else did. "Your friend gave her a free hit at the start of the fight. She's returning the favor by letting him set up whatever it is he has planned." She said as the ice Verdi was manipulating began shifting. Despite being incapable of chanting aloud, Citrinas watched as he casted an advanced formulaic spell that spanned the entire arena, his computational ability far better than she expected.

"They say Evangeline will die if hell freezes over, and it looks like Verdi's trying to make that happen!" The harpy announcer shouted as Verdi spread out the water to encompass the entire arena, freezing a layer mere microns in thickness. Even with an alchemist's immense magic capacity, a spell of this caliber would burn up absurd amounts of power. The fact that the ice was cold enough to condense the ambient moisture only increased the magic expenditure. It was a stupid, outright suicidal spell that did nothing. The fog thickened until it engulfed Verdi's entire body, hiding him from sight as Citrinas' panic attack worsened as Evangeline began chuckling at Verdi's little trick.

"Ready or not, here I come." She said, playing along with the game of hide and seek as she began blindly swinging into the mist, her fists dispersing the cloud of fog for a brief second before it coalesced once more around her. Just when she seemed ready to give up their game of cat and mouse, a figure lunged out from the fog as a long lance of ice pierced Evangeline's left wing.

"And Verdi goes for an ambush from behind! We've got a brave one here folks!" The harpy announcer shouted as Verdi's ice spike continued onwards, cutting through the angel's bone wings and into her flesh. Just from a glance Citrinas could tell he was using formulaic magic to craft the lance, yet it confused her why he was stabbing it into Evangeline rather than fighting at a distance. The only thing fighting close to her did was fire the angel up. As the lance continued forward, it pierced her main body and exited her right shoulder before punching through her right forearm. Just as Evangeline tensed up to strike him, the ice lance reshaped itself.

"Yeah! Fuck her up!" Fenri shouted as the tip of the spear reshaped itself into a massive T shape on both ends. The second she tried to move her right arm, she tugged at her left wing and pulled at her own bone. A grotesque moan left her lips as Verdi leapt backwards into the fog once more as Evangeline landed face first into the ground, breaking most of the bones in her face as it slammed into the reinforced ice floor. Despite that, the ice spear rammed through her body remained in place. As powerful as she was, the positioning of the lance made it nigh impossible for her to remove it.

At first she tried extending her right arm to brute **** it out, only to find that doing so severed the nerves and tendons connecting her right arm to her spine, completely halting her from finishing her task and giving her body ample time to regenerate. She tried flapping her wings, only to find that the lance had targeted her joints. Between her hyper regenerative flesh, Verdi's formulaic ice magic, and her reinforced bone structure, tearing the spear out was impossible for her. As for using her other arm to remove it, the sheer bulk of her muscles made it impossible for her to reach past her chest.

"Are we seeing an upset folks!? Can the Ice Princess snatch victory from the jaws of defeat or will she be another toy in the Collector's box!?" The harpy announcer asked as Citrinas flinched, Evangeline's smile terrifying her to the core. The Collector wasn't in any real danger of losing. She was taking hits because it amused her. She was toying with him, and everyone in the arena knew it.

"Verdi you need to surrender! She's playing with you! You can't hurt her!" Citrinas shouted, **** to have Verdi accept reason as he continued to lurk in the fog, burning up precious magic power to maintain the spell. The second he ran out of magic, she'd be able to reshape him into one of her "lovers".

"Fuck. Champ's gonna lose, but he's proven he's probably got the strongest pain threshold in the world after Evangeline." Belsach commented, watching Evangeline stomp around the frozen arena, her breathing growing frantic as her arousal peaked. Searching for a target, taking stray blows here and there, the excitement of finding someone with the courage to oppose her, it was enough to bring her to the point of climax. Soon, Evangeline had a fog of her own cloaking her immense build, her breath fogging up as steam somehow vented from her wings.

"Yeah, ripping out organs isn't something a normal person can just do without flinching." Fenri agreed as Verdi leapt from fog and stabbed Evangeline in the torso, his lance covered with thorns and sawing through her flesh before he leapt backwards into the fog once more.

"Yeah. Plus, he's assaulting her without a lick of hesitation. Takes genuine grit to just take the pain without flinching." Belsach said as Fenri frowned.

"What do you mean?" She asked, ignorant of just why Evangeline was feared by all. From what Citrinas heard, Fenri's world was slightly safer than Ruyanei, so it was expected for her to not understand just how dangerous Evangeline was.

"She has the god of pain's blessing. Her Cumulative Suffering ability allows her to link her sense of pain with Verdi's. Furthermore, her magic and spirit power grow stronger the more pain she's feeling." Daria explained, the knowledge of Evangeline's power well documented. The god of pain fed on his worshipper's resilience, offering them greater power the greater the **** they endured. It was a twisted God who believed suffering was the only way someone could better themselves.

"Hold on, so if I'm beating the crap out if her, she'll just get stronger from it AND I'll feel it!?" Fenri blurted out, stunned at the god of pain's blessing. To fight someone with the god of pain's blessing required someone either have a strong will or masterful technique that could end a fight instantly.

"And if she's beating the crap out of you she's still going to get stronger since she'll feel your pain too." Belsach added as they watched Verdi land a lucky blow, jabbing a needle into Evangeline's left eye. The spikes tip reshaped into a spiked ball as he tugged backwards. A soft giggle was heard as Evangeline's eye was torn out, the ocular nerves extending outwards with it as they squirmed like erosarkic tendrils.

"Inventory." She said as the eyeball regressed to a mass of undifferentiated stem cells. Like moss, the flesh swarmed outwards, coating the ice and snaking towards Verdi's hand. Clicking his tongue, he froze the blood in his hand and discarded the skin on his right hand, skinning himself to the wrist as he gained some distance from the angel. Though she could have easily pursued him, Evangeline grabbed at her right hand and groaned, hearts in her eyes as panted like a dog in heat. Verdi, on the other hand, remained dead silent as he went back into hiding.

"Now that you mention it, it was weird she kept flinching whenever she hit Verdi." Fenri noted as they watched Evangeline stroke her hand, relishing the pain of being skinned alive.

"... Now that you mention it, that is weird." Belsach noted.

"What?" Daria asked.

"Whenever she hits Champ she has to pause and take a breather. Whenever Champ hits her, he isn't even fazed." Belsach answered, thinking back to the entire match. Every blow she landed on Verdi caused her to stumble and moan, while Verdi seemed to not even register the pain when he hit her. Something didn't add up. Evangeline's body was modified to feel pain several times more intensely than a normal person to maximize the suffering she inflicted and the power she'd gain from each blow. Just a slight cut would feel like dismemberment, yet Verdi was gouging out eyes, cutting off limbs, and even just staring at her chew her finger off without even reacting.

"So, what, the ability isn't working properly on him?" Fenri asked as Verdi leapt out from the fog. Rather than build distance, he went on the offensive as he rammed an ice spear into her left arm. Wasting no time, he reshaped the spear to hook onto the first lance he rammed into the angel before fusing them together, disabling both of her arms.

"And Verdi gets the Collector's other arm! She's down two limbs!" The harpy announcer shouted, still pretending that Verdi had a chance as Citrinas tried to make sense of what was happening. Evangeline's magic got stronger the longer the match went on, and there wasn't an ability or artifact that could cancel a divine ability of this caliber. So why wasn't Verdi flinching while Evangeline was?

"No. The ability's working fine." Citrinas said as Evangeline fell to a knee, groaning as she tried to break free of Verdi's ice, serving only to tear her flesh and have it regrow in the same breath. Meanwhile, Verdi himself was out of sight, still lurking in the fog rather than maintain the offensive. Despite Evangeline groaning from the pain, Verdi didn't let out so much as a squeak, still unaffected by her pain.

"And the Ice Princess has the Collector on her knees! Incredible folks! I'll say this! She might not be winning the tournament, but she's won our hearts!" The harpy announcer said as dread filled Citrinas' very soul, the arch-imago finally understanding why he wasn't reacting to Evangeline's injuries. It was also at that moment she began firing more magic at the arena, **** to break the barrier. Verdi was fighting against the single worst enemy in existence for him.

"So why doesn't Verdi get staggered whenever he hits her?" Fenri asked as they watched Evangeline bite down on her own tongue and begin chewing on it like gum. As she chewed, Citrinas sensed ungodly amounts of magic power accumulate in the area. It was a powerful spell, something that only a high tier 6 class could cast. Despite that, Evangeline was casting a spell of that caliber despite the city of Olskroya restricting her to a tier 4 class' strength. Everyone in the arena could innately sense it that at this very moment, Evangeline was the strongest living creature in the city.

"Because Verdi feels pain more vividly than even Evangeline. His pain tolerance is just higher than hers." Citrinas answered, her words incomprehensible to everyone. Just as Belsach was ready to state the madness behind Citrinas' words, Evangeline's mouth shot open. An unending tide of pink flesh spewed forth like vomit from her mouth, the fog of the arena dying down as the tide of flesh smothered the ice. Fingers, toes, eyes, and blonde hair sprouted forth like flowers as the arena was terraformed to Evangeline's needs, squirming and writhing in search of her next target. It was a spell that required massive amounts of magical power seen only in crafting classes, yet Evangeline's buffs had given her a magic capacity on par with Verdi's. The sole advantage he had was gone. Before long, the only place that wasn't devoured by Evangeline's flesh was an ice dome at the corner of the arena. Standing within it was Verdi, his body slumped against the corner of it as he tried to catch his breath.

"Hey! He surrenders! He surrenders!" Varrick shouted, **** to get the announcer's attention as Verdi pressed a hand against the ice, several flakes of frozen blood falling away as he fired one last spell while staring down Evangeline with his empty eye sockets. Instantly, spikes of ice shot out through the flesh, the fog returning once more as an audible bubbling could be heard emanating from within them. Looking closely, Citrinas could see that the spikes were hollow for some odd reason, the spike serving as glorified tubes to pump the frigid air upwards.

"Huh. Think he's trying to freeze her?" Fenri asked, still unafraid for her comrade despite his dwindling magic power. Even an alchemist would be out of magic power by now, and his final act was to attack Evangeline's spell instead of attacking her directly. Had Citrinas not known just how complex it was to cast a spell of this caliber, she'd have assumed this to be a panicked last stand.

"He's dead if he is. Evangeline has every elemental infusion. She physically can't be frozen." Citrinas answered while hugging herself, her mind summoning up reports throughout the millennia of the world's attempts at killing the Collector. She was not an opponent that could be defeated with magic.

4,734 wind mages casting a synchronized spell to create a vacuum in a 2 mile radius with golems aiding in slowing her down. Collector punched herself in the face so hard that her head flew into the lower stratosphere. She regenerated and promptly chased all 4,734 mages for her collection. The sudden surge of air into the vacuum caused an explosion so intense that dust filled the atmosphere and caused an ice age for several years. 2,881 earth mages came together, splitting the land itself and sending her 4 miles underground before trying to close it. Collector filled the fissure with biomass and escaped. All 2,881 earth mages committed suicide upon their failure. Earthquakes from shifting so much land destroyed several cities and caused a tsunami. The nation of Quolrin that had planned the attack was claimed for her collection.

"Found you!" Evangeline said playfully, spotting Verdi's figure within her field of flesh. At that moment, the ice pinning her arms in place shattered as Verdi lost focus, unable to maintain the spell from his diminishing magical power.

"He's out of magic! We need to get him to surrender so we can get him out!" Citrinas said in a panic as Evangeline sprinted forward the gurgling sound underneath her field of flesh intensifying with each passing second. Without Verdi's ice to slow her down and his pain nourishing her, she was able to build speed far beyond her previous ****. Just a graze would be enough to decimate him from the sheer ****.

Citrinas trembled as she saw the faces of nameless troopers appear on the wall, the dead men returning to torment them once more. The hallucinations grew worse as she saw faces from a memory that didn't exist appear on the arena's walls. A young boy asking when she would save them. A **** old man crying out to spare his family. A soldier who asked she end their suffering. She wanted to look away, to avert her eyes from the ensuing ****, yet she couldn't do it. She could only watch as the distance between the two of them shrunk by the second.

300 yards. Evangeline was getting faster.

250 yards. Citrinas continued shouting at Verdi, **** to have him signal his surrender.

200 yards. Verdi stared forward, his empty eye sockets leaving him blind to his impending doom. He is unable or unwilling to hear out Citrinas' demands he surrender.

150 yards. Evangeline's pupils begin dilating.

125 yards. Her movements slow to a crawl.

100 yards. Evangeline rips off a finger and tried to cast life magic to weaponize it while still running.

90 yards. The finger is unable to grow past a few inches as her movements grew even slower.

50 yards. Evangeline tries to leap upwards out of the still present fog. She can't muster the strength to do so.

35 yards. Evangeline's eyes droop as she continues running forward. The screams subside as Evangeline's lovers go silent.

20 yards. Evangeline stumbles, nearly falling as she strains her eyes to focus.

10 yards. Evangeline is reduced to crawling. She's gasping for air. One of Evangeline's lovers begins cheering for Verdi.

5 yards. She raises an arm to crush Verdi's ice dome. The arena goes wild as thousands of voices begin cheering for him.

5 yards. Evangeline passes out, her hand cracking the ice dome and shattering it, missing Verdi by mere inches.

5 yards.

Verdi wins.