In just two or three minutes, Sandro and Dosodo had fought dozens of rounds of offense and defense.
The audience could barely keep up with the way both sides used their various abilities, and they cheered, thoroughly enjoying the spectacle.
If you ignored the brutal nature of this competition and treated it as an ordinary match, then this one really was exciting.
In the first of the previous three matches, Lovska’s instant death had brought the human audience nothing but shock and fear.
The despair of Tasitado slumping to the ground at the end of the second match had also left the human audience feeling deeply frustrated.
Shi Jingyi had indeed displayed the strength of a top-tier powerhouse in the third match. But her performance had been so outstanding and flawless that it inevitably made the audience feel a great distance from her, and even seemed unreal.
By contrast, this match was highly entertaining: Sandro, who wielded dozens of abilities, was pitted against Dosodo, who could imitate him and wield just as many.
The two traded blows, unleashing attacks with all kinds of water, fire, lightning, and other elemental powers that shot back and forth through the space capsule, like a feast of magic.
Even the commentator was fired up.
“Dosodo dodges another ground attack, beautifully done! Sandro’s plan to hide a fireball behind a thrown object has been seen through, haha! That’s what happens when your opponent can simulate your thinking!”
Although the human audience all despised this commentator, it was right about that.
Dosodo had not only imitated some of Sandro’s appearance and abilities, it had even simulated Sandro’s thought processes.
That was also why Dosodo had been able to speak and taunt them before the match began.
Since Dosodo had simulated Sandro’s thinking, it knew many of his combat habits and strategies.
As a result, all the little tricks and clever combinations Sandro had developed using his many abilities were completely ineffective against Dosodo.
And an even bigger problem was about to emerge.
“The attack frequency is dropping. Is he running out of Mind Power?”
Guan Tong watched the battle. Although Sandro was still attacking continuously, the combinations of his abilities were becoming less complex, and he was relying on single abilities more and more often.
That could only mean Sandro was running low on Mind Power.
However...
Guan Tong looked at Dosodo. Its use of abilities had also slowed, which meant its Mind Power upper limit was no higher than Sandro’s.
If the simulation included their Mind Power upper limits, then the two would fight to a stalemate until the very end... Would they have to return to humanity’s most traditional way of fighting?
Hand-to-hand combat?
At that moment, Sandro suddenly stopped dodging and let one of Dosodo’s ice arrows pierce his calf. The arrow’s crystalline surface instantly turned red with blood.
The human audience gasped in alarm, but Melens, who knew him well, lit up.
“He’s trying to... break the deadlock!”
The scene in the arena confirmed Melens’s guess the next moment. Sandro raised both hands and made a pressing-down gesture toward Dosodo.
“Thirty times gravity!”
Boom!
Dosodo was crushed by the sudden field attack. Its body was slammed into the ground, its bones shattered and reduced to a pool of blood.
Sandro panted heavily, bracing his hands on his knees. To pull off that move, he had completely exhausted his Mind Power.
“Yes!”
Melens couldn’t help leaping to his feet and shouting.
The moment Sandro had been struck by the ice arrow, Melens had realized that he was using his injury to activate an ability.
It was the passive ability of a first-rate Ascendant, called [Pain-Induced Surge]. When its user suffered a severe injury, it explosively restored a large amount of Mind Power in an instant.
Melens knew Sandro didn’t want to wait until his Mind Power ran out and then fight to the death hand to hand. So he had deliberately taken the arrow to activate this ability.
The sudden restoration of a large amount of Mind Power gave him a chance to break the deadlock!
Sure enough, Sandro immediately gathered all the Mind Power he had explosively recovered and used one of the most energy-intensive abilities recorded in his [Imitation Notebook].
It was Adam’s field manipulation.
The ability was powerful, but it consumed far too much energy and placed enormous demands on the user’s mental processing power.
Sandro had always envied Adam’s ability, but even after recording it in his own [Imitation Notebook], he had never been able to master it completely.
Neither his Mind Power upper limit nor his mental processing ability could support an ability so complex.
It wasn’t until the Lury authorities developed Blueprint A1, an injection that could optimize and modify genes, and he received a major boost from the injection, that he became capable of using this ability in actual combat.
Later, with the Lury authorities’ help and after numerous specialized training sessions, he mastered how to create and release a thirty-times-gravity field. Using it now had indeed produced an excellent result.
Although Dosodo had copied Sandro’s abilities and thoughts, it hadn’t prepared for his split-second strategy of trading self-injury for victory, and so it had fallen into the trap.
“He won another match!”
“A knockoff can never beat the real thing! Die!”
“Sandro, you’re awesome!!!”
Before the commentator could make the official announcement, the human audience was already cheering excitedly.
In their eyes, this was just like the previous match. In that one, the Face-Seeking Owl had its head smashed by Shi Jingyi and was thrown into the magma, dead beyond any doubt.
This time, Dosodo’s bones and flesh had been crushed by a thirty-times-gravity field. Naturally, the outcome should be the same as last time.
Even Sandro thought he had won, and his expression relaxed.
But at that very moment, an unexpected change occurred.
The pool of flesh on the ground suddenly began to move, slowly.
A mass of pale green slime gradually welled up from within, giving off a nauseating stench.
The human audience’s cheers abruptly stopped. Everyone stared at the slime in shock and terror.
“What is that?!”
“It... Dosodo isn’t dead yet?”
“Can it come back to life? How is that possible!”
Guan Tong looked at the writhing green slime and furrowed his brow, wondering if this was the true form of an individual from the Tumen Star Civilization.
A species capable of imitating other races must have some basic form that exists before it imitates them.
Could this green slime be that basic form?
The commentator’s eerie voice rang out: “Don’t celebrate victory too early before the match is over... Life from the Tumen Star Civilization doesn’t die so easily...”
No one had time to pay attention to the commentator’s unmistakably gloating tone. Every eye remained fixed on the arena.
Melens, who had leaped up to celebrate moments earlier, was now so anxious that he threw himself against the edge of his Myriad Sense Net Bubble and shouted, “Sandro, move! Don’t let that slime reform! Finish it off!”
His voice couldn’t reach the arena, but Sandro knew that if Dosodo could take shape again, he would have no way to fight back with his Mind Power exhausted.
That was because [Pain-Induced Surge] was a passive ability with a cooldown. Once triggered, it could not be activated again for a short time.
Ignoring the pain in his calf, Sandro hurried over to the pool of green slime and raised his other, uninjured leg, stomping down hard in the hope of scattering and crushing the gathering slime.
The moment his foot came down, the slowly flowing green slime surged upward all at once, clinging to his foot and crawling up his leg!
“What?!”
Sandro hadn’t expected the slime to suddenly move so quickly. He hurriedly reached down to slap it away, but it crawled onto his arm instead, then quickly made its way over his shoulder, up his neck, and onto his face.
“Mmgh! Mm-mm!!!”
In less than a few seconds, the green slime had poured into Sandro’s nose, mouth, eyes, and ears. He fell to the ground in agony and rolled around before gradually going still.
The human audience fell completely silent, unable to believe the tables had turned so quickly.
Another half-minute passed. Sandro’s motionless body on the ground suddenly convulsed, then slowly got back to its feet.
He rolled his neck and flexed his wrists, then said with a smile, “Not bad. I’ll take this human body back to Tumen Star.”
“!!!”
The human audience stared at “Sandro” as he declared victory, all of them too stunned to speak.
The commentator loudly announced, “Congratulations to the competitor from the Tumen Star Civilization, Dosodo, on winning the match! You will receive a fine gift provided by the organizers.”