"I humbly admit it—you are truly worthy of being my opponent!" Hexos roared, thrusting all eight of his massive limbs forward in a continuous, high-speed barrage.

Dasatama’s right gauntlet moved with flawless fluidity, parrying and deflecting every incoming strike. The dense celestial aura coiling around his right arm amplified his physical parameters, expanding his gauntlet into an incandescent wall of kinetic force.

The concentrated energy behind Dasatama's right fist was staggering—a single, heavy counter-punch brushed aside four of Hexos's attacking arms simultaneously. Operating at peak warrior velocity, Dasatama matched the eight-armed barrage blow for blow without giving a single inch of ground.

Hexos felt a flicker of genuine shock. He had assumed that Dasatama’s legendary reputation was exaggerated—that his actual strength rested below his own baseline parameters. Yet, even after unsealing his absolute Demon Transformation, Hexos found himself merely fighting the God of War to a complete standstill. He had severely miscalculated from the start.

Recognizing that a pure contest of brute force might not yield a swift victory, Hexos shifted tactics. Leveraging his vast dark magic reserves, he unsealed an advanced shadow duplication array. He manifested multiple identical copies of his vessel—nine illusionary phantoms paired with a single real body.

It was an insidiously deceptive technique, one he had honed during sparring matches against his fellow Annihilation Demons. None of his peers had ever managed to discern his true body once his shadow array was deployed.

Engaging Dasatama at point-blank range, their fists collided in a blinding shockwave. In that split second of contact, Hexos detonated his dark core, splitting his silhouette into ten identical, eight-armed dreadnoughts. Nine were hollow phantoms imbued with synthetic life signatures, functioning as flawless mirages to confuse the opponent's perception.

FLASH!

The nine shadow duplicates encircled Dasatama in a tight perimeter.

Dasatama centered his focus, instantly dropping into a vigilant, 360-degree defense. He knew Hexos was probing for a momentary lapse in his form to land a lethal strike. He could not afford a single error.

"Your legend ends today, God of War!" Hexos’s booming voice reverberated across the basin. The sound echoed simultaneously from all ten duplicates, their massive jaws moving in perfect synchronization as they uttered the exact same words.

Surrounded by the ten identical juggernauts, Dasatama expanded his sensory domain. The dark magic signatures radiating from each duplicate felt unnervingly identical. Ordinarily, when a cultivator split their physical vessel, their core reserves were distributed proportionally, resulting in significantly weaker clones. Yet Dasatama picked up zero parameter variance among the ten figures.

How is this possible? Dasatama pondered, analyzing the atmospheric current. Did he truly duplicate his core ten times without diluting his parameters? Are they all real?

Giving him no time to process, two Hexos duplicates on opposing flanks surged forward simultaneously, executing a pincer attack. Dasatama extended both arms, deploying localized mana shields to absorb the incoming strikes.

CLANG!

Dasatama’s sharp combat instincts immediately registered a anomaly: while the strike on his right carried massive kinetic weight, the blow on his left felt hollow upon impact—an energetic mirage. I must uncover the structural secret behind this technique, Dasatama realized. If I cannot decipher his shadow array, victory is impossible!

Unsealing his internal parameters, Dasatama pivoted smoothly, pivoting toward the left Hexos duplicate that was attempting to disengage. Drawing his right fist back, he unleashed a concentrated kinetic strike directly at the phantom's chest.

BOOM!

The right-hand punch struck the left duplicate head-on. The heavy impact pulverized the construct's chest armor, the kinetic feedback tearing the massive body apart.

Yet an eerie phenomenon occurred. The shattered pieces of the left duplicate did not fall; instead, as Dasatama's energy dissipated, the dark fragments reassembled instantly, returning to the perimeter fully restored!

I see... among these ten duplicates, only one carries the physical core, while the rest are—

WOOOOOSH!

Before Dasatama could complete his deduction, a catastrophic blow struck his rear defense. Though he managed to deploy a reactive barrier behind his back, the heavy kinetic impact shattered his shield, launching the God of War downward toward the earth.

Plunging rapidly, Dasatama discharged a kinetic propulsion pulse from his palms inches before striking the soil, neutralizing his downward velocity to land smoothly on his feet. Above him, the ten Hexos duplicates offered zero breathing room, descending in a synchronized execution formation.

Dasatama’s eyes narrowed. He had already unraveled the primary mechanic behind Hexos's technique: all nine duplicates were hollow phantoms. They possessed dark magic signatures and physical presence, yet functioned merely as energetic shells. Hexos had achieved this by focusing his array on structural projection rather than core division.

Which means I need only eliminate the primary vessel.

Combining his spellcasting and warrior disciplines, Dasatama manifested a wide-area defensive array overhead. As the ten massive dreadnoughts plunged downward, their joint strikes detonated continuously against his glowing barrier.

Using his barrier to absorb the bombardment, Dasatama locked his sensory domain onto the ten attacking figures, analyzing their parameter outputs during their strikes. One second... two seconds... five seconds.

Through absolute concentration, Dasatama’s eyes locked onto a single duplicate positioned near the center. During the continuous assault, that specific vessel had discharged a micro-pulse of genuine, condensed dark magic to break his barrier.

Found you!

"You will never unravel the secret of my shadow array, Dasatama!" the ten duplicates bellowed in unison. "You are trapped in my domain!"

Ignoring the booming acoustics, Dasatama released his overhead barrier. As the ten duplicates raised their armaments to crush him, Dasatama unsealed his absolute velocity, surging skyward like an ascending golden star.

Hexos had initially assumed Dasatama was striking blindly, confident that his shadow array remained indecipherable. Yet as Dasatama closed the distance, the sheer precision and absolute parameter density locked onto his specific coordinates forced Hexos to confront a terrifying reality: the God of War had tracked his primary core!

How could a mortal grandmaster see through a shadow array that even my fellow Annihilation Demons failed to decode?!

BLAAAAM!

Dasatama’s right gauntlet, coiling with white-hot celestial aura, drove straight toward the central Hexos duplicate.

"You cannot run, and you cannot hide from this strike!" Dasatama bellowed, his fist slamming directly into Hexos’s crossed eight-armed guard.

The catastrophic kinetic feedback generated a localized gale that blew away the surrounding dark smoke, forcing the eight phantom duplicates to recoil from the shockwave. The sheer force of Dasatama’s strike shattered Hexos’s eight-arm guard, driving internal aura through his chest and out his back in a violent energy eruption!

It was a high-tier internal execution strike—a technique designed to detonate internal organs and destroy a target's core from within.

Dasatama paused, expecting the primary body to collapse. Yet, to his utter shock, the central target dissolved into thin air, scattering into harmless black mist!

Another duplicate?! Dasatama’s eyes widened in genuine disbelief. He had been completely certain of his sensory analysis. How had his domain failed?

Pivoting mid-air, Dasatama faced the remaining nine duplicates. The figures laughed in distorted unison. As Dasatama processed the anomaly, eight of the remaining duplicates dissolved into black smoke, leaving a single Hexos hovering smoothly at the center of the perimeter, a mocking smirk on his face.

"I told you, God of War—you will never decipher my shadow array! Even the 10 Annihilation Demons surrendered trying to solve its secret!"

Dasatama centered his breathing, keeping his emotions strictly in check. Having fought across five continents for decades, he welcomed this strategic puzzle. Every technique carried an inherent flaw, and he would discover Hexos's hidden mechanic through open combat.

"Every discipline possesses a structural vulnerability, Hexos," Dasatama replied calmly, adjusting his stance. "Do not let your arrogance blind you. You command a single physical frame surrounded by hollow phantoms—that much I know."

"Bwahaha! You are mathematically correct, Dasatama," Hexos conceded smoothly. "My primary frame is singular, while the rest are shadow constructs. Yet you will perish long before you manage to pinpoint my true location!"

With a sweep of his arms, Hexos re-deployed his array, manifesting ten identical duplicates around Dasatama once more.

"Dark cultists are all the same," Dasatama observed, his voice carrying unshakeable authority. "You cloak yourselves in arrogance, believing your taboo arts render you immortal. Yet you remain fragile, mortal entities who merely delude yourselves into playing gods!"

Unsealing his internal parameters, Dasatama charged forward as the ten Hexos duplicates converged on his position. Hexos circled patiently, waiting for Dasatama to reveal a momentary opening against one of the phantoms—at which point he would deliver a catastrophic, point-blank execution strike to end the God of War once and for all.