Last Chapter: [Kai looked at Blaze standing at the edge of the stage — hands still in his pockets, completely still, the celestial rings rotating slowly overhead casting their light across the luminite floor between them — and said nothing for a long moment]
Chapter 106, Episode 106
[It wasn't directed at anyone in particular]
[The sixty thousand people in the amphitheater didn't understand the comment]
[But the atmosphere understood it]
[Something was about to begin]
[The amphitheater had not fully emptied last night]
[A portion of the crowd had simply refused to leave, setting up near the outer rings with food and blankets, talking in low voices about the stranger from the Ice Knights who had walked down those stairs and said four sentences and somehow made the entire event feel like a prologue]
[Blaze. Ice Knights. Chaos Universe. Portal user]
[Nobody knew much beyond that. Which, as it turned out, made people more interested rather than less]
[Kai was already on the stage when Blaze arrived]
[Kai had simply walked out at dawn and stood in the center of the stage with a cup of something warm and waited, because he was the kind of ruler who understood that some conversations needed to happen before the audience arrived and some needed to happen in front of sixty thousand people]
[Blaze came through the main gate at the stage floor level]
[Still the same dark blue and silver. Still the same unhurried walk. He crossed the luminite floor and stopped ten meters from Kai]
[The early crowd — already a few thousand strong and growing — watched in silence]
Kai: You slept in my city last night
[Kai said]
Blaze: Good beds
[Blaze said]
[A pause]
Kai: You came a long way for an event you weren't invited to Not accusatory. Just noting
[Kai said]
[Blaze looked at him steadily]
Blaze: I came a long way for him.
[He nodded toward Duravaio, who had appeared at the stage entrance behind Kai, leaning against the archway with his arms folded and that permanent expression]
[Duravaio raised his eyebrows]
Duravaio: Me specifically.
Blaze: Your magic, Shapeshifting. Stealing. I wanted to see what happens when that runs into something it can't copy.
[The crowd reacted to that. Not loudly — more like a collective intake of breath, the sound of sixty thousand people recalibrating their expectations upward simultaneously]
[Duravaio pushed off the archway and walked forward slowly, stopping beside Kai. His form shifted once — took on Blaze's silhouette for exactly one second]
[Blaze watched it happen without blinking]
Duravaio: Interesting...
[Duravaio said quietly]
Blaze: Ready when you are..
[Blaze said]
[Kai looked between them. Then he looked out at the amphitheater]
[This time it was now loud with the sound of the morning crowd finding their seats and the overnight crowd waking up and the vendors starting their rounds and sixty thousand people collectively understanding that whatever yesterday had been, today was going to be different]
[He set down his cup]
Kai: Same rules as yesterday..
[Kai said to Blaze]
Blaze: You don't have to win.
[Blaze nodded once]
Blaze: But I'm going to
[He said]
[Duravaio laughed — a genuine one, short and bright]
Duravaio: I like him already.
[Kai stepped back to the edge of the stage]
[Neo and Luxas took their positions]
[The display spheres above the amphitheater activated, projecting the stage across all four angles]
[The containment sigils in the floor pulsed once, confirming active status]
[The crowd reached its full volume and then went quiet again, that particular hush that only happens when something real is about to occur]
[Blaze finally took his hands out of his pockets]
[He and Duravaio stood forty meters apart on the luminite stage]
[Kai raised his hand]
[The amphitheater held its breath as the match begins]
[Kai's hand came down]
[Duravaio moved first — and when Duravaio moved first it didn't look like movement so much as rearrangement]
[His form dissolving at one point on the stage and reconstituting at another, three meters to Blaze's left, his hand already swinging with a compressed force drawn from the World Magic humming through the stage floor itself]
[The strike hit air]
[Blaze was already somewhere else]
[Not dodged — gone, a small circular portal snapping open at his feet and closing behind him in the same instant, depositing him twelve meters back and to the right]
[The portal left no residue, no light, no sound. It opened and closed the way a eye blinks — completely, cleanly, as though it had never been]
[The crowd registered the movement on the display spheres half a second after it happened]
[Duravaio straightened]
[His head turned toward where Blaze had reappeared]
[Something shifted in his expression — not concern, but attention sharpening into a finer point]
Duravaio: Portal travel, Short range.
[He said]
Blaze: Among other things..
[Blaze said]
[He opened his hand and a portal spiraled into existence beside him — wider this time, about a meter across, its interior not dark but a deep, layered blue, like looking through still water at something lit from below]
[From inside it came a sword]
[Then another. Then four more, all different — different lengths, different weights, all of them real and solid and humming faintly with dimensional energy]
[They arranged themselves in the air around him without being held]
Vex of Portals — Armory Manifest.
[He sent three of them at Duravaio simultaneously, not thrown but launched, each one on a different vector, too spread to block simultaneously]
[Duravaio's form rippled]
[He became briefly translucent, the blades passing through him like light through glass, then solidified again on the other side]
Duravaio: World Magic — Phase Absorption
[Duravaio said, pulling the environmental magic of the stage into his form]
[He looked down at his own hand, studying it for a moment]
Duravaio: Your swords are made of dimensional matter. That's new.
[He closed his fist and the dimensional energy from the three blades — which had embedded themselves in the stage floor behind him — began pulling toward him, feeding into his World Magic reserves]
He was stealing the dimensional matter itself
[Blaze watched this with a level expression]
[Then he opened six portals at once, arranged in a ring around Duravaio, each one aimed inward]
[From each portal, a different element poured through simultaneously]
Elemental Garp — Hexagonal Convergence
[Fire from the first]
[Compressed stone from the second]
[Water under extreme pressure from the third]
[Electrical current from the fourth]
[Wind dense enough to cut from the fifth. And from the sixth — nothing]
[A column of pure vacuum that hit harder than any of the others because it simply removed the air from the space Duravaio was occupying]
[The combination detonated]
[The stage cracked in a twenty-meter radius]
[The shockwave hit the first ten rows of the audience and the containment sigils flared brilliant white, catching it and dispersing it upward instead]
[The display spheres shook on their mounts]
[When the smoke cleared Duravaio was standing in the center of the crater, his coat scorched, his form shifting rapidly as he processed and absorbed the elemental energies hitting him from six directions]
[His World Magic was working at full capacity — pulling matter and energy from the environment and converting it]
[He looked genuinely pleased]
Duravaio: Interesting, You hit me with everything at once so I'd have to spend my absorption capacity on multiple types simultaneously. Smart!
[He rolled one shoulder]
Blaze: Does it matter if you understand it, if it still works?
[Blaze said]
[He was already moving]
Spirit God Blaze Boots
[The speed was not something the naked eye caught cleanly]
[What the audience saw on the display spheres — slowed down by the recording crystals and played back at a fraction of the actual speed — leaving a trail of fractured air in its wake]
[What Duravaio felt was the impact before he processed the movement]
[The hit connected with his left side and the force of it — moving faster than light, striking with the full compressive weight of Blaze's body behind it]
[It sent Duravaio skipping across the stage like a stone across water, once, twice, three times, before the barrier at the far edge caught him]
[The amphitheater erupted]
[Duravaio hit the barrier and stayed against it for a moment, the World Magic in his form spiking as it processed the damage]
[Then he peeled himself off slowly and stood up]
[His coat was significantly more damaged now]
[He looked across the stage at Blaze, who had stopped moving and stood in the center of the crater, surrounded by his floating swords, watching]
Duravaio: You're faster than I expected..
[Duravaio said]
Blaze: You're tougher than I expected..
[Blaze said]
[A Beat]
Duravaio: We're going to destroy this stage..
[Duravaio said]
Blaze: Probably..
[Blaze agreed]
[Duravaio smiled and his form began to shift — not randomly this time, not the small unconscious flickers from before]
[This was deliberate. His World Magic pulled from the stage, the air, the light from the celestial rings overhead, and he began to build something]
[His silhouette changed. Expanded. The edges of him became less defined]
[He was taking the shape of Blaze]
[Not just the appearance — the posture, the energy signature, the dimensional residue left by the portals]
[His World Magic had been passively absorbing it since the moment Blaze stepped onto the stage, cataloguing and reconstructing]
Duravaio: World Magic — Identity Theft
[A portal opened beside Duravaio — smaller than Blaze's, rougher at the edges, but unmistakably the same fundamental structure]
[A sword emerged from it]
[The crowd went absolutely silent]
[Blaze looked at the portal. At the sword. At Duravaio wearing his own energy signature back at him]
Blaze: Hm, Okay, Let's see how far that goes
[Blaze said, He looked genuinely interested for the first time]
[His eyes shifted — something moving behind them, a decision being made about which door to open next]
[The portals around him multiplied. Four became eight became sixteen, arranged not randomly but in precise geometric formation, each one aimed at a specific point in the space Duravaio occupied]
Blaze: Vex of Portals — Infinite Chamber
[From each portal, a different version of force — not elemental this time, not physical]
[Fate pressure. Age displacement. Memory compression. Matter inversion. Each one pulled from a different dimension, each one a different type of wrong to be on the receiving end of]
[Duravaio felt them coming and his World Magic screamed]
[He moved]
[The stage didn't survive the next ten seconds intact]
[Duravaio absorbed the fate pressure]
[Absorbed the age displacement. Absorbed the memory compression]
[Then he stopped absorbing and his expression changed completely]
[The amusement was gone]
[What replaced it wasn't anger exactly]
[It was something quieter and considerably more dangerous — the expression of someone removing a filter they'd been wearing so long they'd almost forgotten it was there]
Duravaio: It's been polite..
[Duravaio said]
[His form stopped shifting]
[It expanded]
[The World Magic exploding out of him wasn't borrowed anymore — it was his, raw and fundamental, pulling from the universe itself rather than the immediate environment]
[The stage floor cracked outward from his feet in every direction]
[The air pressure dropped so suddenly that people in the front rows felt their ears pop]
[Neo stood up straighter at his pillar]
[Luxas went very still]
[Kai watched]
Duravaio: World Magic — Reality Consumption
[Duravaio didn't attack with a technique]
[He attacked with presence — his magic reaching outward and simply beginning to unmake the immediate environment, pulling matter and energy and structure into himself and converting it into pure destructive output]
[The luminite stage started coming apart]
[Not cracking. Dissolving. Chunks of it pulling toward Duravaio like debris toward a black hole, absorbed and weaponized instantly]
[He pointed at Blaze and released it all]
[A wave of consumed reality — compressed matter, stolen energy, absorbed dimensional force, all of it compacted and fired as a single concentrated beam of annihilation]
Duravaio: World Breaker — Absolute Consumption Cannon
[It hit Blaze's portal barrier dead center]
[The barrier held for one second]
[Then it shattered]
[The explosion threw Blaze across the stage and through the amphitheater's inner wall]
[Stone and luminite erupted outward]
[The audience in the nearest sections scrambled back as the containment sigils flared so bright they turned the entire amphitheater white]
[The infinite barrier Kai had constructed — reinforced across years, amplified with his own power to a density that should have been impenetrable by anything short of universal-level force — developed a crack]
[One crack]
[Everyone saw it]
[Kai's eyes moved to it]
[Blaze came back through the hole in the wall]
[Walking]
[His jacket was gone. His shirt was torn. There was blood at his temple. And the expression on his face had finally, completely changed]
Blaze: I wasn't going to use this today,
[he said]
[He rolled his neck]
Blaze: You broke my portals.
[The air around him shifted — temperature dropping, then spiking, then dropping again as his magic stopped pretending to be contained]
[Portals opened around him but differently now — not circular and clean but jagged, torn into reality at irregular angles, each one bleeding dimensional energy that had no color human eyes were built to process]
Super Niel Form.
[His silhouette blurred. The space around him became unreliable — light bending slightly, the floor under his feet existing and not existing in rapid alternation as the intangibility bled into the environment around him]
[He looked at Duravaio]
Blaze: Show me the rest..
[Blaze said]
[Duravaio obliged]
[What followed stopped being a fight in any technical sense]
[Duravaio pulled a continent's worth of matter from the surrounding world and compressed it into his fist]
Duravaio: World Magic — Planetary Crush.
[He swung]
[Blaze phased through it, copied the compression with Copy Manipulation, and fired it back through six simultaneous portals]
[Duravaio absorbed it, converted it, and released it as a wave that didn't damage matter but erased the space matter occupied]
[They were fighting in open air]
[The amphitheater walls began to fracture]
[The infinite barrier cracked in three more places. Then five. Then the cracks started connecting]
[In the crowd, people were being guided back by guild members]
[Children were being lifted and carried. The display spheres had gone dark — the recording crystals couldn't process what they were seeing fast enough to project it]
Neo: Dammit... Those two are going to far, I taught it was just a friendly match...
[He said in a panick]
[Neo had his hand raised, Universal Light forming a secondary barrier between the audience and the stage]
[Luxas was speaking incantations continuously under his breath, reinforcing the structural laws of the amphitheater moment by moment as Duravaio's World Magic kept trying to consume them]
[Blaze shifted into Legendary Niel Form]
[His stats didn't visibly increase. It wasn't that kind of transformation]
[What changed was the quality of the air around him — heavier, older]
[He erased Duravaio's next attack before it landed]
[Not blocked. Erased. Existence Erasure applied to the force itself, removing it from the sequence of events as though it had never been fired]
[Duravaio felt the erasure and his World Magic spiked in response]
[He pulled from the universe]
[Not the environment. Not the planet]
[The universe]
[A groan moved through the fabric of space that people three universes away would later report feeling as a sudden, sourceless unease]
Duravaio: World Magic — Universal Reclamation
[The power building in Duravaio's hands was the color of nothing]
[Blaze opened his portals to maximum]
[Legendary/Hyper Combination — beginning]
[Reality in the amphitheater started bending]
[The infinite barrier shattered completely]
[Every section, every amplification, every year of reinforcement — gone in under a second, the pieces of it dissolving before they hit the ground]
[The crowd screamed]
[Kai moved]
[Nobody saw him cross the stage. Not Neo. Not Luxas. Not the sixty thousand people watching]
[One moment he was at the edge]
[The next he was between them]
[Duravaio's Universal Reclamation was in his left hand]
[Blaze's Legendary/Hyper Combination was in his right]
[He caught both with his fists]
[The collision didn't make a sound]
[It made something that sound was a subset of — a fundamental compression that moved outward from Kai's position and passed through every wall, every floor, every person in the amphitheater, through the city of Astraheim, through the floating continent, through the celestial rings, and outward into the universe beyond]
[In the amphitheater, dust settled]
[Kai stood between Blaze and Duravaio, both their attacks contained in his closed fists]
[His coat undamaged, his expression calm and entirely unremarkable except for his eyes which were doing something that nobody in the amphitheater looked at directly for very long]
[Duravaio stared at his own hand]
[Blaze stared at Kai's fist]
[The silence was total]
[Then Neo sat back down slowly]
[Luxas stopped his incantations mid-word]
[Somewhere in the audience, a child said something to their parent in a small voice and the parent didn't answer because the parent was also just staring]
[Kai opened his hands. Both attacks dissolved harmlessly, absorbed into nothing]
[He looked at Duravaio]
[Duravaio had the expression of someone who had just reminded himself of something important and was not entirely comfortable with the reminder]
Kai: Too far..
[Kai said]
[Quiet. Even. Not angry]
[Duravaio looked at the destroyed stage]
[The shattered barrier. The cracked amphitheater walls. The sixty thousand people who had needed Neo and Luxas to protect them from a practice fight]
[He had the decency to look genuinely regretful]
Duravaio: Yeah, Too far.
[Kai looked at Blaze]
[Blaze had let his form recede. He stood normally again, blood still at his temple, watching Kai with an expression that had moved past surprise into something more careful and considered]
Blaze: You stopped both of us..
[Blaze said]
Kai: Yes..
Blaze: With your hands.
Kai: Yes.
[A pause]
Blaze: What are you
[Blaze said. Not disrespectfully. Just honestly]
[Kai looked at him for a moment]
Kai: The ruler of this universe..
[he said simply]
[He turned and looked at what remained of the amphitheater — the broken walls, the dissolved stage, the shattered barrier that had taken years to build]
[Then he looked back out at sixty thousand people who were very quietly processing what they had just watched their ruler do]
Kai: Well
[Kai said]
[He picked up his cup from where he'd set it at the edge of the stage. Somehow it was undamaged and still warm]
Kai: I'll need to rebuild that.
[Kai looked at the broken walls around them]
[The crowd was already moving]
[Quietly, quickly, the way people move when they've just watched something that reminded them how small they are]
[Guild members guided the civilians toward the exits]
[Parents held their children close. Nobody ran but nobody was slow either]
[Within ten minutes the amphitheater was empty]
[Just the broken stage. The cracked walls. The dust still settling from the shattered barrier]
[And six people standing in the middle of it.
Kai finished his drink]
[Set the cup down on a piece of broken luminite that used to be part of the floor]
[Neo and Luxas stood slightly behind him]
[Duravaio was off to the side, still looking at the damage with the expression of someone mentally calculating how much of it was their fault]
[The answer was most of it and he knew it]
[Blaze stood across from them, hands back in his pockets, form back to normal]
[If the fight had cost him anything he wasn't showing it]
[Kai looked at him]
Kai: You came from the Chaos Universe..
[he said]
Blaze: Yes.
Kai: Ice Knights.
Blaze: Yes.
[Kai nodded slowly. No rush to the question he was actually building toward]
Kai: How is Sagris?
[Something shifted in Blaze's expression]
[Small but there]
Blaze: You know him..
[Blaze said]
Kai: Since before your guild existed, Before most of what you'd call history existed.
[A pause]
Blaze: How is he?
[Blaze was quiet for a moment]
Blaze: Then — He's well. Running the universe the way he always does. Loud announcements. Big gestures. Everyone in the room thinking it was their idea.
[Kai smiled. Actually smiled, which was different from the controlled expressions he'd been wearing all morning]
Kai: That's him
[he said]
[Duravaio glanced at Kai with mild surprise]
[He'd worked under Kai for years and could count the genuine smiles on one hand]
Blaze: He's hosting promotions..Gave everyone three days off. That's why I'm here.
[Blaze said]
Kai: He gave you three days and you spent it traveling to another universe to fight my subordinate.
Blaze: I had questions about portal theory, Duravaio's magic seemed like the best way to test something.
[Duravaio looked up]
Duravaio: Did you get your answer?
[Blaze looked at him]
Blaze: Partially.
[Duravaio nodded slowly like he respected that]
[Kai looked at Blaze for a long moment]
[Reading him the way he read everything — not quickly, not impatiently, but completely]
Kai: Sagris trained you personally, It wasn't a question
[Kai said]
[Blaze didn't confirm it but he didn't deny it either. Which was confirmation enough]
[Luxas spoke for the first time since the fight]
Luxas: The combination form. The erasure application through portals. That's not something someone learns from a textbook.
Kai: No..
[Kai agreed. He kept his eyes on Blaze]
Kai: Tell me something. When Sagris sent you out into the world — and he did send you, whether he said so directly or not — what did he tell you to find?
[Blaze was quiet for a beat]
Blaze: He didn't tell me to find anything.
Kai: What did he tell you to come back with?
[A longer pause this time]
Blaze: Answers
[Blaze said]
Kai: To what?
[Blaze looked at the broken amphitheater around them]
[The shattered barrier. The dissolved stage. The place where Kai had stood between two universe-level attacks and held them in his hands like they were nothing]
[He looked back at Kai]
Blaze: To whether the people in the other universes are ready, For what's coming.
[Blaze said]
[The air between them stayed still.
Neo looked at Kai. Luxas looked at Kai. Even Duravaio had stopped examining the damage and was looking at Kai]
[Kai looked at Blaze for a long moment.
Then he picked up his cup again, remembered it was empty and set it back down]
Kai: And what are you going to tell him?
[Kai asked]
[Blaze glanced once more at the fist that had stopped both their attacks]
Blaze: The Truth..
[He said]
[Kai nodded slowly]
Kai: Good, That's what Sagris would want.
[he said]
[He turned and walked toward the broken edge of the stage, looking out at the empty amphitheater]
[The seats were scattered with dust. Parts of the upper tier had cracked clean off]
Kai: He'd built this place himself. Forty years ago.He always send his best.. Everytime he wants to say something, he doesn't want to say himself, instead he sends someone who can say it without words
[Kai said quietly]
[Blaze said nothing]
Kai: The Primordial Void..
[Kai said]
The name landed in the silence like a stone in still water]
[Nobody spoke for a moment]
Blaze: You felt it too..
[Blaze said]
Kai: Every ruler of every universe felt it. The ones who are honest about it are worried. The ones who aren't talking about it are more worried.
[Kai said]
[Luxas folded his arms]
Luxas: It moved through the outer layers three weeks ago. We've been tracking the residue since.
Blaze: So have we..
[Blaze said]
[Neo looked at Blaze]
Neo: And that kid, Physics boy, ahh Leo Sebastián is in the Afterlife right now..
[Blaze's eyes shifted to Neo]
Blaze: You know about Leo..
[Blaze said]
Neo: We know about the Hyper Soul..Word travels
[Neo said simply]
[Duravaio leaned against a broken pillar]
Duravaio: A Hyper Being hiding inside a guild. Living like a normal person. Eating regular food.. Honestly that's kind of impressive
[He shook his head]
Blaze: He's not hiding,He just doesn't lead with it.
[Blaze said]
Duravaio: There's a difference?
[Duravaio asked]
Blaze: Yes..
[Blaze said flatly]
[Duravaio raised both hands in a small surrender]
[Kai turned back around. His expression was calm but his eyes were doing that thing again — looking at something slightly further away than the room they were standing in]
Kai: The Void doesn't move without a reason, And it doesn't show up near a Hyper Soul without intent. When Leo comes back from the Afterlife he won't be the same person who went in.
[He looked at Blaze]
Blaze: I know..
[Blaze said]
Blaze: Is the Eastern World ready for that?, actually, They will follow him regardless, Ready or not
[Blaze thought about it. Actually thought about it instead of answering quickly]
[Kai looked at him for a moment. Then he nodded once like that was the right answer]
Kai: Tell Sagris I said it's been too long
And tell him I still haven't forgotten that he owes me a fight.
[Kai said]
[The corner of Blaze's mouth moved. Almost a smile]
Blaze: He said the same thing about you.
[Kai laughed. Short and genuine. The kind that surprised even him]
[Duravaio stared. He had genuinely never heard that sound before]
[Neo looked at Luxas]
[Luxas looked at Neo]
[Neither of them said anything but the exchange said plenty]
[Kai composed himself and looked at Blaze one last time]
Kai: You're welcome in this universe whenever you need to be here, That's not a formality.
[Kai said]
[Blaze nodded]
Blaze: Appreciated.
[He looked at Duravaio]
[Duravaio looked back]
Blaze: Next time..
[Blaze said]
Duravaio: Next time, And next time I won't wait that long to stop being polite.
[Duravaio agreed]
Blaze: Good, That's what I came to find out.
[He turned. Walked toward the exit of the broken amphitheater, hands back in his pockets, same unhurried pace as when he'd walked down those stairs the day before]
[At the archway he stopped without turning around]
Neo: My Lord
Kai: Yes??
Neo: When Void comes properly, Don't wait for an invitation
[A pause]
[He walked out]
[The five of them stood in the broken amphitheater and listened to his footsteps fade]
[Then Duravaio looked at the destroyed stage around them. The cracked walls. The missing barrier]
Duravaio: So, Are we going to talk about how he almost matched me or.
Kai: No..
[Kai said]
Duravaio: Okay.
Kai: Start cleaning this up.
[Duravaio looked at the scale of the destruction]
Duravaio: All of it?
Kai: You made most of it.
[Duravaio looked at Luxas for support.
Luxas walked away]
[Blaze's footsteps faded into the city]
[Kai stood in the broken amphitheater and looked around at the damage one more time]
[The missing stage. The cracked walls. The barrier that had taken him eleven years to build and reinforce]
[Gone in under two minutes]
Kai: Neo...
[he said]
Neo: Yes my Lord..
Kai: Start the repairs.
Neo: Of course
Kai: Luxas.
Luxas: Already calculating the structural restoration..
[Luxas said, pulling out a small notebook from his coat like he'd had it ready the whole time]
[Kai looked at Duravaio]
[Duravaio was already walking away]
Kai: Duravaio.
Duravaio: I know, I will fix what I broke..
[Duravaio said without turning around]
Kai: You'll fix all of it.
[A pause]
Duravaio: ...I'll fix all of it.
[Kai picked up his empty cup and walked off the stage]
Meanwhile the Scene switched to a new unknown village far away from the Astraheim and the corner of the cosmology
Three universes away from the noise of Astraheim, in a corner of the cosmology that most maps didn't bother labeling, there was a valley
[It was a quiet place normally. Green hills, a river running through the middle, a small village of about four hundred people who farmed and traded and lived simple lives completely unbothered by the wars and politics of the larger universe around them]
[But today was not the usual day for them]
[It was not quiet today]
[The village was burning]
[Not all of it. But enough. Three buildings on the eastern side were gone completely]
[The market stalls had been knocked flat]
[The stone wall around the village perimeter had been broken in four places, each gap wide enough to drive a cart through]
[The people of the village were huddled in the center square. About two hundred of them, pressed together, watched by things that were not people]
[Orcs stood at the edges of the square]
[Twelve of them, each one the size of a small house, wearing armor made from the bones of things bigger than themselves]
[Their leader, a massive creature named Gorrath, held a villager off the ground by the collar with one hand and looked bored doing it]
[Behind the orcs, three beasts crouched]
[They were built like wolves but the size of buildings, with fur that had hardened into something closer to iron over years of surviving things that should have killed them]
[Their eyes were red and they hadn't stopped growling since they arrived]
[And above everything, circling slowly on wings that blocked out the sun in sections, were two dragons]
[Old ones. The kind with scales that had stopped being scales and started being something closer to stone]
[One was black. One was the color of dried blood]
[The village had been sending out distress calls for two days]
[Nobody had come]
[A man walked down the hill toward the village]
[He was not large. Not particularly tall. He wore a plain Blue coat and had his hands in his pockets and walked down the hill at a pace that suggested he had nowhere urgent to be and had simply decided this was the direction he was going]
[At his side hung a sword in a plain scabbard. The handle was unremarkable]
[Nothing about it suggested that what was inside was a blade wrapped in blue flame that could cut through the concept of existing]
[His name was The Manipulator]
[He was also, depending on who you asked, the most dangerous mind that had ever existed in any universe, dimension, or plane of reality]
[Smarter than gods. Smarter than beings whose entire existence was built around knowing everything]
[He reached the bottom of the hill and stopped at the broken wall]
[He looked at the orcs. The beasts. The dragons]
[Then he looked at the huddled villagers]
[Then he looked back at the orcs]
[Gorrath dropped the villager he was holding and turned slowly. His yellow eyes settled on the man at the wall]
Gorrath: You lost?
[Gorrath said]
The Manipulator: Nope
[The Manipulator said]
[Gorrath looked him up and down. Looked at the plain coat]
[The unremarkable sword. The complete absence of any visible power or threat]
[He laughed. It was a big sound. The other orcs laughed too]
Gorrath: Human, You walked down here alone.
[Gorrath said]
The Manipulator: Yes.. is that a concern to you
Gorrath: To this village
The Manipulator: Yes..
Gorrath: Where we are
The Manipulator: I can see that.
Gorrath: You stupid or brave?
[The Manipulator thought about it for a moment]
The Manipulator: Neither really, I'm just here.
[The Manipulator said]
[One of the beasts stopped growling and tilted its enormous head]
[Something in its animal instinct was sending a message that its pride was overruling]
[It took one step forward and sniffed the air in The Manipulator's direction]
[Then it took one step back]
[The other two beasts noticed and their growling dropped in volume without them seeming to choose to do it]
[Gorrath didn't notice. Or chose not to]
Gorrath: Kill him..
[he said to the nearest orc]
[The orc raised a weapon. It was a club the size of a tree trunk wrapped in iron, the kind of thing that hit the ground and left craters]
Gorrath Clan — Iron Tremor Strike.
[He swung it down at The Manipulator with enough force to flatten a small building]
[The Manipulator didn't move]
[The club stopped]
[Not blocked. Not deflected. It stopped, hanging in the air six inches above The Manipulator's head, the orc still holding it, straining against nothing visible]
[The Manipulator looked up at it with mild curiosity]
The Manipulator: Heavy...
[He said]
[He stepped to the side and the club dropped, hitting the ground and sending a crack through the earth that ran fifteen meters in both directions]
[The orc stared at his own hands]
[Gorrath's eyes narrowed]
[The black dragon above circled lower]
[It opened its mouth and fire built up at the back of its throat — not normal fire, the kind that burned at temperatures that melted stone like water]
Ancient Dragon — Scorched Heaven Breath.
[It released]
[A column of white-hot flame dropped toward The Manipulator from above]
[He looked up at it]
[He raised one finger]
[The flame split down the middle. Both halves curved away from him like water splitting around a rock and hit the ground on either side, scorching two long black lines into the earth]
[He lowered his finger]
[The dragon stared down at him]
Gorrath: You, What are you??
[Gorrath said slowly. The laughter was completely gone now]
The Manipulator: I told you, I am just here
[The Manipulator said]
[He looked at the villagers huddled in the square]
[A few of them were staring at him with the same expression as the beasts — something in them recognizing something in him that didn't have a name yet]
[He looked back at Gorrath]
The Manipulator: I'm not here to fight you, I came to find people worth talking to.
[He glanced at the burning buildings]
Gorrath: What....
The Manipulator: But you've made a mess. So we'll deal with that first.
[Gorrath raised his own weapon now. It wasn't a club]
[It was a double headed axe that had been used to split mountains in two and the blade hummed with old brutal magic]
World Cleave.
Gorrath: I'll take your head..
[Gorrath said]
The Manipulator: You can try..
[The Manipulator said. Not as a threat. Just as a statement of available options]
[The bloodred dragon landed behind The Manipulator, cutting off the exit through the broken wall]
[The three beasts spread out to the sides. The twelve orcs raised their weapons]
[Everyone moved at once]
[The Manipulator put his hand in his pocket.
And sighed]
The Manipulator: Guess, I have to show them the real meaning of despair itself
[He said with a terrifying smirk]
To be continued...