[Last Chapter: And at the center of all of it, in the antechamber of the most dangerous place in existence, two people in black coats sat quietly and waited for their turn]
Chapter 112, Episode 112
[The conversation had reached its natural pause]
[The kind of pause that happens when three beings who are each, in their own way, the smartest thing in their immediate cosmological vicinity have said everything they needed to say and are now simply existing in the same space with the weight of what comes next]
[Voriath looked at The Manipulator]
[The Manipulator looked at Voriath]
[Siriusniyo's hand was on Sutur's End]
Siriusniyo: This is where we fight
[Siriusniyo said]
Voriath: This is where we begin..
[Voriath said]
[There was a difference and all three of them knew what it was]
[Voriath stood from his throne for the second time and the Infinite Glass sealed itself into his palm, the shards folding inward and going still]
[He looked at the two of them with something that was genuinely not hostility. Something older than hostility]
[The expression of someone who had been waiting two hundred years for a conversation that was finally worth having]
Voriath: Two hundred years ago, you pushed me to one knee.
[Voriath said with a smirk]
The Manipulator: We remember
[The Manipulator said]
Voriath: You'll need to do better than that this time..
[Voriath said]
The Manipulator: We know..
[The Manipulator said]
[Voriath's hand moved to the Chaos Nihilikinesis Sword at his side]
Voriath: Then let's find out if two hundred years was enough time.
[He said as the sword came out]
[The throne room felt the blade the way a room feels a dropped temperature — not as a sound or a sight but as a change in the quality of everything]
[The Manipulator reached for the One Wonder Sword]
[The blue flame engulfed the blade before it was fully drawn]
[Siriusniyo drew Sutur's End]
[The room temperature spiked four thousand degrees in a second and then stopped caring about temperature as a concept]
Voriath — Pride of Wrath — Active.
[The first wave came not as an attack but as a declaration]
[His presence expanding. The throne room pushed outward. Reality itself taking a step back from the man at the center of it]
The Manipulator — Probability Collapse.
[He collapsed every outcome where the first strike landed perfectly. Every version of the next three seconds where Voriath's Pride of Wrath hit both of them simultaneously was eliminated from the possible]
[Voriath felt it]
Voriath: You're faster at that than before and collapsing all laws and probabilities is meaningless in my existence
[he said]
The Manipulator: I've had practice
[The Manipulator said]
Siriusniyo — Causal Cinder
[He ignited the cause of Voriath's first movement]
[The chain of causality leading from Voriath's decision to swing to the actual swing turned to ash]
[Voriath's sword hand moved anyway]
[Because Voriath existed above causality when he chose to]
Chaos Nihilikinesis Sword — First Swing.
[The cut went through the room through the room itself. Through the concept of the room being a room]
[For one second the throne room ceased to have walls, ceiling, or floor and existed as a raw patch of existence held together by the memory of what it used to be]
[Both of them moved]
The Manipulator — Infinite Phantasm.
[He decided that Voriath's sword was made of glass. In the space of that decision, it became glass]
[For one second Voriath held a blade of pure transparent fragility]
[Voriath looked at it]
Voriath: Interesting, you rewrote my sword, a sword that can annihilate memories, timelines, laws, space and abstract existence and can shatter truths and infinite possibilities and unpredictable outcomes. But u turned my sword into glass for just a second
[he said]
[He swung it anyway]
Glass sword — Concept Erasure: Active.
[The blade didn't shatter. It accepted the property of glass and remained a sword because Voriath's will was the foundational property, not the material]
Voriath: You made it glass, But I am still the one holding it
[Voriath said, still mid-swing]
[The cut landed]
The Manipulator — Absolute Immunity Protocol.
[The cut hit his defense and stopped. Simply stopped being a cut in the space it occupied because The Manipulator's existence was an unchangeable constant that the universe refused to damage]
The Manipulator: How is he able to move such a fragile sword after turning his sword into glass, its still effective enough pushing me to go to defense mode.... dammit, he is the strongest for a reason
[Voriath pulled back]
[Siriusniyo was already inside his guard]
Sutur's End — Concept Cut — Mortality.
[The blade aimed not at Voriath's body but at the concept of him being killable. The same technique he'd used two hundred years ago]
[Voriath caught the blade with his bare hand]
[The concept of Sutur's End cutting through mortality met the concept of Voriath being immune to conceptual attacks and the two concepts ground against each other in the space between his fingers and the blade]
Siriusniyo: What... he is immune to conceptual attacks...
[Both of them felt it]
Voriath: Such a pretty cut, conceptual attacks don't affect me
[Voriath said with a smirk on his face]
[Neither gave]
Siriusniyo: Different from last time..
[Siriusniyo said through his teeth]
Voriath: Two hundred years, I spent two hundred years sealed. Every day of it thinking about this sword specifically.
[Voriath said. He was looking at the blade in his grip]
[He pushed]
[Siriusniyo flew backward through four layers of the throne room before the wall caught him]
[He hit it and came back immediately]
Primordial Hearth.
[His skin turned to cooling magma. His hair became white plasma]
[The temperature of the throne room spiked to a level that should have been impossible to survive and immediately stopped mattering because Siriusniyo at this level didn't fight with temperature. He fought with the concept of heat]
Fundamental Burn.
[He aimed the burn not at Voriath's body. At the concept of Voriath being here, now, in this moment, as a participant in this fight]
[Voriath looked at the burn reaching for his timeline]
The Law of Veto.
[He cancelled it]
The Manipulator: Not yet!!
[he said]
[The Manipulator had been silent for three seconds which in this context was an eternity]
[When he moved it was from inside Voriath's blind spot that shouldn't have existed]
Mercury Waltz.
[He occupied every point in space simultaneously. Including the points inside Voriath's guard. Including the point directly beside the Infinite Glass in Voriath's palm]
The Manipulator: Tell me, What happens if I touch that
[The Manipulator said, appearing at that specific point]
[Voriath's grip on the Infinite Glass tightened]
[For the first time in the conversation his expression changed]
[Not fear]
[Something more precise]
[Caution]
Voriath: Don't..
[Voriath said]
The Manipulator: I'm not going to, But you reacted. Which means there's something you want to protect. That's useful information
[He stepped back to a neutral distance]
[Voriath looked at him]
[Then he did something neither of them expected]
[He smiled]
[Genuinely. The smile of someone who has finally found the thing they were looking for]
Voriath: Two hundred years ago, you fought me with everything you had and almost moved me. Today you came with two hundred years of additional preparation and your still holding back
[He looked at both of them]
The Manipulator: Yes
[The Manipulator said]
Voriath: So am I??
[Voriath said]
[The room settled into a particular kind of tension. The tension of two forces that have acknowledged each other and are preparing for the real thing]
Siriusniyo: This is going to take time
[Siriusniyo said]
Voriath: Yes, That's the point.
[The fight began properly]
[And it was, in the specific way that the most important things are, exactly as large as it needed to be]
Meanwhile at the Invictus World's center Throne
-Dimensional Fracture Zone-
[Mercurius didn't ask]
[He reached into the dimensional fabric of the Invictus World, found a pocket dimension that existed in the space between two of the folded universes, and opened it]
[Then he looked at Isaac]
Issac: This way...
[he said]
[Isaac looked at the opening. Then at Leo standing at the throne room door. Then back at Mercurius]
Issac: He's separating us
[Isaac said to Leo]
Leo: I know
[Leo said]
Issac: You're fine with that
[Isaac said]
Leo: Xuantian is here, Mercurius is taking you somewhere else
[Leo said. He nodded toward the antechamber where Xuantian stood with his scythe]
Issac: Why
[Isaac said]
Mercurius: Because this way, neither of you can assist the other. And we get to find out what you actually are.
Mercurius said calmly]
[Isaac looked at him. Then at the pocket dimension]
Issac: Fine, "But I'm making it clear right now that I find being managed annoying.
Isaac said. He rolled his neck]
Mercurius: Noted...
[Mercurius said]
Issac: Leo..
[Isaac said]
Leo: Yeah
[Leo said]
Issac: Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone.
Leo: I never do stupid things..
[Leo said]
[Isaac stared at him]
Leo: I occasionally do unexpected things
[Leo said]
Issac: That's the same thing
[Isaac said]
[He stepped through the dimensional opening]
[Mercurius followed]
[It closed]
-In the Pocket Dimension- (Invictus World)
[The pocket dimension was about three miles across in every direction]
[No floor. No ceiling. Just space. Pure, empty, grey space that existed between the seams of two layered universes and had the particular quality of a place that had never been inhabited and wasn't sure what to do with guests]
]Isaac stood in the center of it]
]Mercurius stood across from him]
[They looked at each other]
Mercurius: You're the fire user
[Mercurius said]
Issac: I'm the fire user..
[Isaac confirmed]
Mercurius: Your source is Twilight, A fire that exists at the boundary between existence and non-existence.
[He said]
Issac: You did your research
[Isaac said]
Mercurius: I researched everything, one of my arsenal is that i can see all realities of creation so It's not research, it's just knowing.
Issac: Must be convenient
[Isaac said]
Mercurius: it has its uses, You're different from what the Valtrex report said.
[Mercurius said. He looked at Isaac with those eyes that were simultaneously reading everything about him — his power levels, his techniques, his Afterlife training, his fundamental signature]
Issac: Yeah, Those five had a bad day.
Mercurius: So did you, apparently, You came back from the Afterlife significantly more than you left.
Issac: Five weeks under Ereshkigal
[Isaac said]
Mercurius: I know, She trained you herself.
Issac: She trained us and then we fought her
[Isaac said]
[Something moved in Mercurius's expression]
Mercurius: And?
Issac: We moved her three steps
[Isaac said]
[Silence]
Mercurius: Three steps
[Mercurius said]
Issac: Three steps, Ereshkigal. Creator of twelve infinite multiverses. Governs death. The twelve Afterlife servants. Three steps.
[Mercurius was quiet for a moment]
Mercurius: That's unprecedented
[he said]
Issac: We know
[Isaac said]
Mercurius: And you're telling me this because you want me to know what I'm dealing with
[Mercurius said]
Issac: I'm telling you this because I think you're smart enough to appreciate context, And also because I'm going to show you anyway in about thirty seconds and I'd rather we start at the right level than waste time.
[Issac said with a cheeky smirk]
[Mercurius looked at him]
Mercurius: Thirty seconds
[he said]
Issac: Give or take
[Isaac said]
[He moved]
Knowledge Hellfire.
[His body powered up and the fire wasn't the orange-red of normal flame]
[It was the deep white-core that existed at the center of stars that had been burning since before the current universe had a name]
[A hundred million degrees. Conceptual fire that touched matter and soul and reality simultaneously]
[The pocket dimension registered the temperature and quietly began having concerns]
[Mercurius raised his hand]
Vector Manipulation — Redirect.
[He changed the direction of the heat. Not away from himself. In every direction except toward himself, which was functionally the same thing but structurally more elegant]
[Isaac felt the redirect and switched]
Inferno Cascade — Multi-Vector.
[Multiple streams of fire launched simultaneously, each one on a different vector, eliminating the possibility of a single redirect covering all of them]
[Mercurius redirected four and absorbed the fifth]
Power Absorption — Passive.
[He took the fifth stream's conceptual properties into himself. Filed them. Added them]
Mercurius: Interesting fire, Conceptual base. Afterlife-tempered. You use it as a medium for almost everything. Physical force, conceptual attack, reality interaction
[He closed his fist around the absorbed essence]
Issac: You absorbed it
[Isaac said]
Mercurius: Yes
[Mercurius said]
Issac: Good
[Isaac said]
Absolute Deity Souls — Partial Release.
[His fire shifted. The souls of every being he'd ever defeated in training, every soul he'd gathered and stored, rising around him and merging with the fire until the fire stopped being just fire and became something that had intent and direction and will behind it independent of Isaac's own movement]
[Mercurius's absorbed essence tried to integrate with his power reserves]
[It fought him]
[From inside]
[Mercurius went still]
Mercurius: The souls attached themselves to the absorption, They're displacing my integration.
[he said. He sounded less calm than before. Specifically 4% less calm, which on Mercurius's scale was significant]
Issac: They do that
[Isaac said]
Crimson Hell Punch — Engulfed — Fifty Percent.
[He crossed the distance]
[Speed wasn't something Isaac had focused on in the same way Leo had]
[The punch arrived]
[Mercurius raised his defense]
Reality Law — Absolute Physics Override.
[He rewrote the laws of the pocket dimension so that kinetic energy simply did not exist]
[The punch had no force because the concept of force had been written out of the local physical laws]
I[saac's fist hit the rewritten law and the impact was zero]
[He pulled back]
Issac: What.....You deleted physics
[he said]
Mercurius: Locally, Yes.
[He said]
[Isaac looked at the pocket dimension around them. At the grey space that was now running on a fundamentally different ruleset than normal reality]
Issac: Okay, Then I will fight with something that isn't physics
he said. He thought about it for exactly two seconds]
Soul Incineration — Phantasma-Burn.
[Fire that didn't interact with physical matter. Fire that burned the spiritual and conceptual essence. Fire that existed on the layer beneath physics entirely]
[It didn't need force to exist. It needed meaning]
[Mercurius felt it reach for him and his eyes changed]
[Not alarm. Recognition]
Mercurius: You're attacking the layer below the physical laws??
[he said]
Issac: Yes, That way I am simply ignoring the law of physics you wrote in this infinte dimension
[Isaac said]
Mercurius: Which means physics being deleted is irrelevant to you.
Issac: Welcome to the context I was talking about
[Isaac said]
[Mercurius moved for the first time since the fight started]
Causality Manipulation — Reverse.
[He reversed the causal chain that led to the Phantasma-Burn existing. The fire wasn't deleted. Its reason for existing was removed. Without a cause, the effect couldn't sustain itself]
[The fire flickered]
[Isaac burned past the flickering]
Conjunction Flames.
[Conceptual fire layered with fate manipulation and timeline erasure]
[Each flame burned not just the spiritual essence but the timeline connecting the opponent to their ability to resist]
[He fired three of them simultaneously]
[Mercurius caught the first with Causality Negation]
[Reversed the second with Fate Negation]
[The third hit]
[The pocket dimension went white]
[When it cleared, Mercurius was standing with his coat damaged on the left shoulder]
[The damage was small. But it was there]
[He looked at it]
[Isaac was already pulling more fire to the surface]
Issac: You're going to make me use forms, That's fair I will take it
[Isaac said. He didn't sound like that was a problem. He sounded like it was the natural progression of the situation]
[Mercurius looked at the damage on his shoulder]
Mercurius: Yes, I think we're going to be here for a while.
[He said. His voice was still even]
Issac: Good..
[Isaac said]
[The fire rose around him]
Pyrofiend Ascension — Beginning.
Meanwhile at the Antechamber at the Invictus World
-Leo vs Xuantian-
[The antechamber had cleared of everything except the two of them]
[Leo stood with the Shatter Nebula in his hand, blade glowing light blue]
[Xuantian stood with his scythe across his shoulders, both hands resting on it, the absolute ease of someone who had been holding that weapon for so long that setting it down felt stranger than carrying it]
[They looked at each other]
Xuantian: You know what this space is...
[Xuantian said]
Leo: An antechamber
[Leo said]
Xuantian: A space between spaces, Inside the Invictus World. Surrounded by infinite folded universes.Time behaves differently here. Space behaves differently. I built it.
Leo: You built this room?
[Leo said]
Xuantian: I build all the rooms I fight in when I can, It's a habit.
Leo: Good one
[Leo said]
Xuantian: I thought so
[Xuantian said]
[He swung the scythe off his shoulders and let it rest in his grip naturally. The blade caught the antechamber's particular light and held it strangely into the edge and releasing it transformed]
Xuantian: I read your file
[Xuantian said]
Leo: I know
[Leo said]
Xuantian: I mean I read it when you were twelve years old and first appeared in the Chaos Universe, Reincarnated. Satanael Core. Force Light Guild. Every fight since then. I've been watching you specifically since you were an anomaly in a registration system.
Leo: And what do you think
[Leo said]
Xuantian: I think you're not the same person in that file, Not by a significant distance.
[Xuantian said]
Leo: Five weeks in the Afterlife
[Leo said]
Xuantian: Under Ereshkigal , Yes. The report from Valtrex. One sword against five Hyper Beings and you were restricting yourself, Why did you restrict yourself.
[He said as he looked at Leo's sword]
Leo: I didn't want to destroy the city
[Leo said]
[Xuantian was quiet for a moment]
Xuantian: That's the same answer Voriath would give..
[he said]
Lel: Is it...
[Leo said]
Xuantian: He's never destroyed anything he didn't intend to destroy, Precision. Not restraint. He knows exactly what he wants to keep and exactly what he's willing to erase and you do the same thing.
[He looked at leo]
Leo: I'm not like Voriath
[Leo said]
Xuantian: No, You're not. But you understand what he understands. That power without purpose is just destruction. That the choice of what to leave standing matters more than the ability to take it all down. That's why he wants your core. Not to destroy you. To see what two Satanael-level consciousnesses understand together about what the world should be.
[He said as he hold his scythe steady]
Leo: I'm not giving it to him
[Leo said]
Xuantian: I know
[Xuantian said]
Leo: Then why are you telling me this
[Leo said]
Xuantian: Because, I want you to understand exactly what you're refusing before you refuse it. So that when this is over, whatever happens, it was a genuine choice.
[Leo looked at him]
Leo: I understood it before I came here..
[he said]
[Xuantian nodded once]
Xuantian: Then let's fight!
[he said]
[He moved]
Absolute Time Manipulation — Absolute State Hyper.
[The antechamber fractured]
[Every millisecond of the current moment split into hundreds of simultaneous versions of Xuantian occupying different positions simultaneously, all of them real, all of them interacting with the environment, all of them with the scythe already in motion from different angles]
[Leo's Cosmic Awareness read all of them in the first half-second]
[He moved to the one gap between all of them]
Satanael Genesis Flash Step.
[He deleted the distance to the center of Xuantian's formation and appeared inside it, the Shatter Nebula already swinging]
Shatter Nebula — Spatial Cut.
[The cut went through the space connecting Xuantian's multiple simultaneous selves which was severing the connection that let them coordinate]
[Three of the simultaneous Xuantians lost synchronization and dissolved]
[The remaining forms collapsed back into one]
[Xuantian stood reformed and looked at Leo with something that was genuinely surprised]
Xuantian: You found the connection..Intresting I must say Leo, your the strongest for a reason
[he said]
Leo: You can't move in multiple places at once without something linking them, I cut the link.
[Leo said]
Xuantian: The link is my time stream and you easily cut my time stream.
[Xuantian said in shock]
Leo: Just the coordination layer, You're fine
[Leo said]
[Xuantian looked at his hand. At the residual blue light from the Shatter Nebula's cut still fading]
Xuantian: That sword cuts time...
[he said]
Leo: Among other things, not only time
[Leo said]
Xuantian — Zero Hyper Void Form.
[His body became negative space. Every cell in him becoming a doorway to a dimension of pure pressure]
[The air around him compressed and the antechamber walls moved six inches further away from him involuntarily]
[He reached out and tried to compress the space Leo was occupying]
Spatial Compression — Target: Leo
[The space around Leo began folding inward]
[Leo raised his hand]
Grand Equation.
[He changed the local rules. Made it so compression moved outward from his position rather than inward]
[The spatial compression reversed]
[Xuantian felt the reversal and changed forms mid-technique]
Unsealed Hyper God.
[His body flickered between dimensions. 3D. 2D. 4D. Multiple planes simultaneously]
[The scythe in his hand existed in all of them and its cutting edge reached across every layer]
[He swung from the fourth dimension]
[The blade came from a direction that didn't have a name in three-dimensional space]
[Leo dodged to the third dimension's left]
[The cut passed through the space where he wasn't]
Xuantian: You dodged it, Most beings can't perceive a fourth-dimensional attack.
[Xuantian said]
Leo: I have Cosmic Awareness, I perceive across dimensions as a baseline.
[Leo smirked]
[Xuantian held the scythe steady]
Xuantian: Then this is going to be genuinely interesting.
Xuantian — Thread of Fate Entanglement.
[Invisible threads launched from his position and wrapped around the air between them]
[They didn't touch Leo physically. They connected Leo to every other person currently fighting in the cosmology]
[Every person the threads touched through the connection to Leo]
Xuantian: What happens to you happens to everyone connected to you.
[Xuantian said in smile]
[Leo went still]
[He could feel the threads. The connection to his guild members. To his subordinates in the Eastern World. To Isaac in the pocket dimension]
[He understood the threat immediately]
Leo: If I take a hit, they take it too.
Xuantian: Yes, So fight carefully because the cosmology is under you weight of the connection, a smile mistake ruins the entire cosmology
[Leo looked at the threads]
[Then he looked at Xuantian]
Leo: You're testing me..
[Leo said]
Xuantian: Yes..
[Xuantian said]
Leo: You want to see if I panic..
[Leo said]
Xuantian: I want to see how you think under pressure
[Xuantian said]
[Leo was quiet for a moment]
[Then]
Abyss Wrath.
[He reached into the fundamental threads of reality and rewrote the connection. Not cut it. Rewrote it and changed the nature of what the threads connected so that damage done to Leo now fed back not to the people connected to him but to the threads themselves]
[He made the threads self-targeting]
[Xuantian's Thread of Fate Entanglement hit itself]
[The technique dissolved]
[Xuantian stared at the empty space where his threads had been]
Xuantian: You rewrote the technique from inside its own structure..
[he said]
Leo: The threads had to touch my reality to connect to me, When they did, I changed what they were.
[Leo said]
Xuantian: The Law of Saint combined with Abyss Wrath.. Impossible!!
[Xuantian said quietly]
Leo: Restoration and rewriting.. Yes
[Leo said]
[Xuantian lowered his scythe slightly]
[In recalibration]
Xuantian: I need to change my approach
[he said]
Leo: I know, Interesting to say you need to change your strategy
[Leo said]
Xuantian: Most opponents tell me to try harder
[Xuantian said]
Leo: I'm not most opponents
[Leo said]
Xuantian: No, You're not.
[Xuantian said]
[He began again]
Absolute State Hyper — Phase Two.
[This time he didn't split into multiple selves. He froze the antechamber. Just the present moment]
[The specific millisecond they were standing in, extracted from the flow of time and held in place]
[A pocket of frozen now that Xuantian could move through freely while everything else stayed still]
[Leo moved inside the frozen millisecond]
[Xuantian stopped]
Xuantian: You're moving, In a frozen moment.
Leo: You froze the moment crossing the distance between them. You didn't freeze me.
Almighty Time.
[His absolute mastery over time let him exist outside the frozen moment Xuantian had created]
[He was in it but not of it. Standing in the gap between the frozen now and the next moment that hadn't started yet]
[He raised the Shatter Nebula]
Shatter Nebula — Galaxy Divide.
[The slash came down]
[Xuantian brought his scythe up to block]
[The two blades met]
[The force of the contact erased the frozen moment entirely]
[Reality snapped back into flow and the shockwave of two time-cutting, space-severing weapons meeting each other in the center of a room built between universes rippled outward in every direction]
[The antechamber walls cracked]
[Both of them skidded back from each other]
[Xuantian's scythe had a notch in it]
[He looked at it]
[Leo's blade was undamaged]
Xuantian: You notched my scythe
[Xuantian said]
Leo: Your scythe is built from space-time, The Shatter Nebula negates time and the edge of the blade is space. The edge of mine is negation which they shouldn't interact the way that just did.
Xuantian: No, They shouldn't
[Xuantian said. He was looking at the notch with an expression Leo couldn't entirely read]
[He straightened]
Xuantian: You're going to make me use my final form..
[Xuantian said]
Leo: Maybe..
[Leo said]
Xuantian: Not maybe, You notched my scythe at base-level Shatter Nebula and a single Galaxy Divide. You have forms I haven't seen yet and we both know this fight has a long way to go.
[Xuantian said as he looked at Leo steadily]
Leo: Yes..
[Leo said]
Xuantian: Are you ready for that
[Xuantian said]
[Leo looked at the notch in Xuantian's scythe. At the cracked antechamber walls]
[At the place where a frozen moment had just been erased by two weapons that weren't supposed to interact that way]
Leo: I've been ready since I left the Afterlife
[he said]
[The antechamber held its breath]
[The real fight began]
Meanwhile at the Terra Celestial World, The Invasion has started
[The Hyper Guardians came through rifts that opened above the Terra Celestial World with the particular violence of things that had been told what they were coming for and were not interested in being polite about it]
[There were twenty of them]
[They descended toward the crystalline buildings and silver gardens of the Celestial World with their authority and their power radiating outward, the light of their world bleeding cold into the warmth of this one]
[The God of Lunar stood at the highest point of her palace]
[She looked at them descending]
[Twenty Hyper Guardians. Created by Voriath. Granted insane power. Here for one thing]
[She looked at the Infinite Book sealed at her side]
[Then at her subordinates assembled behind her]
[Musaha. Daylight. Bellatrix. Celestie.
And Lunar, who had come from the small building at the other end of the garden with her daughter beside her]
[Luna Roseveltie stood in her guild colors with her hands loose at her sides]
[Beside her, Lunar looked at the twenty Guardians descending toward their world]
[She looked at her daughter]
Lunar: You don't have to stay
[Lunar said]
Luna: Yes I do
[Luna said]
Lunar: Luna—
Luna: Mom, came here to find you. I found you. I'm not going anywhere.
[Luna said. Her voice was steady]
[Lunar looked at her daughter for a moment]
[Then she looked at the Guardians]
[Her Azariel Plux ability was already active]
[The domain of nullification expanding outward from her position, weakening the magical energy of anything that entered her space]
Lunar: Stay near me
[Lunar said]
Luna: I'll stay where I need to be
[Luna said]
[The God of Lunar raised her voice]
God of Lunar: Musaha. Bellatrix. The outer boundary. Hold them back from the palace.
[She looked at Daylight]
Daylight: Yes my queen
God of Lunar: The civilians. Get them to the sanctuary vaults now. Stay with me. The inner palace, Whatever gets through the outer defense is coming for the Book directly. Don't let it reach this floor.
[She looked at Lunar and Luna]
[Luna looked at the twenty Guardians. Calculated. Distributed them across the defenders in her mind]
Luna: Which one comes for the Book?
[she said]
[The God of Lunar looked at the largest of the twenty]
[A Guardian named Varek whose authority in the Invictus World was second only to the ten Hyper Gods]
God of Lunar: That one..
[the God of Lunar said]
Luna: I'll handle the approach
[Luna said]
God of Lunar: Luna—
Luna: I'm faster
[Luna said simply]
[She was right and they both knew it]
[The God of Lunar looked at her]
God of Lunar: Be careful
[she said]
Luna: I'm always careful, I just look reckless.
[She moved]
Temporal Sovereignty — Maximum.
[Time accelerated around her. For her movement. She crossed the distance from the palace top to the outer boundary in a step that took three-tenths of a second and covered three hundred meters]
[She arrived between the descending guardians and the outer palace gate]
[Varek looked down at her]
[A young woman. Standing alone. Looking up at twenty beings that had been created by the son of the Hyper Gods]
Varek: You're not the God of Lunar
[Varek said]
Luna: No
[Luna said]
Varek: Then step aside
[he said]
Luna: No
[Luna said]
[Varek descended the remaining distance]
Hyper Guardian — Absolute Authority Field.
[The field expanded from him, a radius of pure command that forced all things within it to acknowledge his authority as greater than their own will to resist]
[Luna felt it hit her]
[It was heavy. Heavier than anything she'd encountered. The weight of Voriath's authority channeled through a being he'd personally empowered]
[She pushed back]
Omni-Aura Sovereignty.
[Her field projected outward and every force in her vicinity acknowledged her as their origin point]
[Including the Authority Field. Including the Absolute Command trying to override her will]
[The two fields met]
[Luna was pushed back one step]
[Varek was pushed back six inches]
[The other nineteen Guardians had engaged the outer defense]
[The sound of Musaha's Odin Pillar rewriting the past to undo the first wave of attacks crackled through the air]
[Bellatrix's Oblivion Azathpino firing with the clean, specific precision of someone who had been erasing existential threats for longer than most worlds had existed]
[Daylight moved through the Guardian force like water through cracks, intangible, immune to everything they threw at her, guiding civilians through the chaos with the particular efficiency of someone who had made themselves immune to magic specifically for days when magic was going to be the main problem]
[Varek looked at Luna]
Varek: Time magic, Significant. Afterlife-adjacent energy. You've been somewhere recently that changed you.
[He read her the way Xuantian had read Leo. Comprehensively. In under a second]
Luna: Terra Celestial World, I found my mother.
Varek: Touching, Move.
Hyper Guardian — Absolute Temporal Override.
[He reached into the fabric of time around Luna and tried to simply fast-forward her out of his way. Move her timeline forward until she was somewhere else]
Paradox Engine: Nullify.
[Luna's existence became a walking contradiction]
[The temporal override reached for her timeline and found that touching it automatically erased the event of the override from the stream of reality]
[The technique failed]
[Varek's eyes sharpened]
Varek: You negated a temporal override
[he said]
Luna: Yes
[Luna said]
Varek: How
[he said]
Luna: The same way you make a contradiction, You exist in two states at once. The version of me that was affected and the version of me that wasn't. The paradox protects the second version.
[She moved]
Chronos Shatterpoint.
[She found the pivot point of Varek's timeline. The exact moment his power had been decided]
[The foundational coordinate in his history where everything he was had been chosen]
[She struck it]
Hyper Guardian — Absolute Resistance.
[His timeline was hardened. Not invulnerable. But significantly more resistant than normal]
[The strike landed and instead of shattering his existence it cracked the surface layer of his fundamental history]
[Varek stumbled]
[One step]
[He looked at his own hand]
Varek: You cracked my origin point
[he said. Very quietly]
Luna: Yes
[Luna said]
Varek: That shouldn't be possible
[he said]
Luna: I know, But here we are.
[She raised her hands]
Kairōs Devourer.
[She consumed the time around Varek's ability to access his higher authority functions]
[Ate the moments in which his most powerful techniques could activate. Left him temporarily reduced to his base level while her own energy spiked from the consumed time]
Varek: She consumed time itself to drain my power..
[Varek felt his upper ability threshold drop]
[He looked at her with an expression that was, for the first time, something other than dismissal]
Varek: You're serious
[he said]
Luna: I came here to find my mother and I'm not leaving until this palace is safe. So yes. I'm serious.
[Luna said as she looked at him seriously]
[Varek raised his power to whatever the Kairōs Devourer had left available]
Varek: Then let's do this properly
[he said]
[The outer defense roared behind her]
[Musaha rewriting tactical outcomes before they happened]
[Bellatrix erasing Guardians from existence with the systematic efficiency of someone who had been doing this for a very long time]
[Celestie levitating entire formations and shifting their trajectories with Divine Seraphim authority]
[And inside the palace, the God of Lunar stood with the Infinite Book at her side and waited for the one that would get through]
[Because one would get through]
[They always did]
[The Scene switched to the Zealots Division Territory as the Null Collapse arrives]
[The Null Collapse arrived the way Mephisto preferred to arrive. Quietly]
[They were simply there, at the edge of the Zealots Division's territory, as though they had been there for a while and nobody had noticed]
[Mephisto looked at the Zealots Division's formation across the open terrain]
[Nighurath stood at the front. Leader]
[Paradox Magic running quietly, reading every possible approach of the Null Collapse simultaneously]
[Beside him: Dioscuri. Gao. Liangyo. Hias. Vanessa. Corvus. Isiss. Dahilia]
[Mephisto looked at each of them]
[Then looked back at his own group]
[Solstice Sisters. Caladrache. Blaise. Euros. Alberviaa. Viaa. Callista]
[Eight versus nine]
Mephisto: Nighurath
[Mephisto said, across the distance]
Nighurath: Mephisto
[Nighurath said. His Paradox Magic was already building]
[The air around him had the quality of a place where cause and effect were having second thoughts]
Mephisto: Two hundred years ago, we were at the same war. On opposite sides.
Nighurath: I remember
[Nighurath said]
Mephisto: You held a position for six hours under Voriath's presence alone, Six hours of Paradox Magic against the active weight of the King of the Multiverse.
[Mephisto said]
Nighurath: I remember that too
[Nighurath said]
Mephisto: What happened after six hours
[Mephisto said]
Nighurath: I stopped, But the position held.
[Nighurath said]
Mephisto: It held because Voriath moved elsewhere, Not because you stopped him.
Nighurath: The result was the same
[Nighurath said]
Mephisto: No, The result was that the position held. The meaning was different. You didn't stop him. You lasted. There's a difference.
[He titled his head]
Nighurath: Why are you talking to me, You came here to fight
[Nighurath said]
Mephisto: I came here to give you an opportunity, Once. One offer. The Null Collapse has a place in the new order. The Zealots Division could too. Voriath rewards useful intelligence and useful people.
[He said with a cheeky smirk]
[Nighurath was quiet for a moment]
[Then he looked at his group]
[Dahilia's Future Sight was already running, reading the outcomes of the next ten minutes]
Mephisto: What does she see, I assume she's looking.
[Dahilia looked at Mephisto]
Dahilia: She sees you making this offer regardless of our answer, She sees you already knowing what we'll say.
Mephisto: Yes, But I make offers anyway. It's a courtesy.
Nighurath: We decline
[Nighurath said]
Mephisto: Good, Genuine resistance is more interesting than compliance. You know what to do.
[Caladrache cracked his knuckles]
[His Copy Magic was already reading every member of the Zealots Division simultaneously. Cataloguing their abilities]
[Their patterns. Their timing]
Caladrache: I've got them
[Caladrache said]
[Nighurath looked at his group]
Nighurath: Separate, Nobody fights alone but nobody clusters. Paradox formation.
[The Zealots Division spread]
[The Null Collapse spread to match]
[And for a moment before the first ability was fired, the two groups looked at each other across a field that was about to become something else entirely]
[Mephisto looked at Nighurath one last time]
Mephisto: This is going to be interesting
[he said]
Nighurath: We've fought more interesting things than you
[Nighurath said]
Mephisto: Not today
[Mephisto said]
Meanwhile Euros faces Hias
-Euros vs Hias-
[Euros didn't use magic]
[He used fists]
[Specifically fist martial arts of a caliber that had been refined through decades of combat against things that required the concept of hitting to be fundamentally redefined before it could be effective]
[Hias used Primordial Force Magic]
[The kind of force that existed at the foundation of everything]
[The first push that had been present since the beginning of all things]
[They looked at each other across ten meters]
Hias: So your power is a power of a Fist user
[Hias said]
Euros: Yes
[Euros said]
Hias: My primordial force negates physical force, Every punch you throw will be absorbed.
[Hias said]
Euros: Good..
[Euros said]
Hias: Good, Why good?
[Hias said]
Euros: Because I'm not throwing physical force..
[Euros said]
[He moved]
Acausal Strike.
[His fist moved without cause]
[The punch existed as an effect that had no corresponding cause, which meant Hias's Primordial Force — which worked by intercepting and absorbing force at its origin point — had nothing to find]
[There was no origin. There was only the result]
Hias: What the...
[The punch landed]
[Hias flew]
[Not far. He was strong. He caught himself and returned]
Primordial Force — Absolute Barrier.
[The barrier didn't absorb. It existed as a layer of pure first-force between Hias and everything that wasn't him. Fundamental Before all concepts]
[Euros walked through it]
Acausal Existence.
[Mephisto's Acausality Magic had seeped into all of them over years of working together]
[Euros didn't exist in causality the way normal things did]
[The Primordial Force barrier required a causal relationship between the attacker and the defense for the defense to apply]
[Euros had none]
[He was inside the barrier before it registered him]
[Hias's eyes went wide]
Hias: You're inside my absolute defense
[Hias said]
Euros: Yes, but not for long
[Euros said as he releases a blast]
Primordial Force — Origin Blast.
[He fired at point blank range. The original force of creation itself, fired from the closest possible distance]
[Euros absorbed it]
[Not because he had absorption magic]
[Because the Null Collapse's acausal existence meant that force applied to them had no guaranteed outcome]
[The probability of the blast working was real]
[But the probability of it simply being redirected through acausal weirdness into nothing was equally real]
[This time it was the second one]
[Hias stared]
Hias: You're a nightmare to fight
[he said]
Euros: My boss designed me that way..
[Euros said]
[They settled in]
[It was going to be a long one]
On the other side was Callista vs Issis
-Callista vs Isiss-
[Water against ice]
[Neither of them needed words]
[Callista raised her hands and the moisture in the air responded]
[Every molecule within a hundred meters converging toward her and building into something that moved with the intelligence of someone who understood exactly how liquid behaved under every conceivable pressure condition]
[Isiss raised her hands and everything in front of her stopped being water's temperature]
Ice Magic — Absolute Zero Field.
[The water Callista was building froze in mid-air. Not slowly. Instantly. A hundred meters of gathered moisture becoming a sculpture of still ice in a fraction of a second]
[Callista looked at her frozen water]
Callista: That's a lot of ice..
[she said]
Issis: Yes
[Isiss said]
Callista: That's also a lot of projectiles
[Callista said]
[She pushed]
Water Magic — Pressurized Release.
[Even frozen, water remembered what it was]
[She forced it to remember with enough pressure that the ice didn't have time to stay ice]
[The field of frozen sculpture shattered outward in every direction]
[Isiss raised her shields]
Ice Barrier — Absolute Cold Wall.
[The ice shards hit the barrier and stuck to it and became part of it, making the barrier bigger and thicker and more insulated with every piece that hit]
[Callista watched the barrier grow]
[Then she looked at the ground under Isiss's feet]
[It was already wet]
[She'd put the water there ten seconds ago]
[Isiss felt the ground shift]
Water Magic — Hydraulic Pressure: Rising.
[The water under the ice field erupted upward, breaking through the frozen surface from below with the specific force]
[Isiss was lifted off her feet]
[She caught herself in the air. Ice platforms forming under her as fast as she needed them]
Isiss: You planted water under the field before I froze it
[she said]
Callista: I always put water somewhere it won't be noticed first, Then I work with what's visible while the hidden part builds.
[Isiss landed on her ice platform and looked at Callista]
Isiss: You're smarter than you look
[she said]
Callista: Most water people are, We have to be patient. Water works slowly and suddenly.
Issis: Patience, I know patience.
[She raised her hand and the air temperature plummeted]
Ice Magic — Concept of Cold: Active.
[Not just freezing the air. Freezing the concept of warmth. Making cold not a temperature but a state of being that applied to everything in the area including abilities that generated heat]
[Callista's water lost its kinetic energy]
[Still liquid. But slow. Heavy. Unable to move with the speed it needed]
[She looked at her hands]
[Then at Isiss]
Callista: That's conceptual cold
[she said]
Isiss: Yes
[Isiss said]
Callista: I need to think about this
[Callista said]
Isiss: Please, I'll wait.
[They reset]
Meanwhile Corvus Faced Caladrache
[Caladrache vs Corvus]
[Copy Magic against Death and Weapons Magic]
[Caladrache had already copied the entire Zealots Division's ability list by the time the fight started. Every technique]
[Every approach. Every weapon Corvus carried catalogued and replicated in the three seconds since they'd spread]
[Corvus looked at him]
Corvus: You copied my abilities..
[Corvus said]
Caladrache: All of them
[Caladrache said]
Corvus: Then you know how lethal they are
[Corvus said]
Caladrache: Yes
[Caladrache said]
Corvus: Good, Then you know what this is
[He raised his hand]
Death Magic — Soul Severance.
[The ability reached for the thread connecting Caladrache's soul to his body]
[Caladrache used the same ability back at him]
[Two identical Soul Severances launched at each other simultaneously]
[They met in the middle and canceled perfectly]
[Corvus looked at the canceled techniques]
Corvus: You copied it perfectly
[he said]
Caladrache: That's the job
[Caladrache said]
Corvus: But copying isn't the same as understanding
[Corvus said]
[He reached for a weapon. Not a physical one]
[A conceptual weapon he'd been building for three years in preparation for exactly this kind of opponent]
[— a weapon whose fundamental function was to be impossible to copy because it existed as a unique conceptual artifact rather than a reproducible technique]
Weapons Magic — The Unnamed Blade.
[The blade had no name because naming it would define it and defining it would make it copyable]
[Corvus had spent three years making a weapon that was a concept without a definition]
[Caladrache tried to copy it]
[Copy Magic required something to copy. A definition. A nature. A fundamental essence that could be replicated]
[The Unnamed Blade had none of those things]
[Caladrache stared at it]
Caladrache: What... I can't copy something with no identity
[he said]
Corvus: I know, I made it specially for you, let's see if you can replicate a weapon with no name
[Corvus said. He looked at the blade with the expression of someone who had prepared this specific countermeasure for someone with exactly Caladrache's power set]
[Caladrache looked at the blade]
[Then at Corvus]
Caladrache: You researched me
[he said]
Corvus: We researched all of you, Two hundred years ago we learned that you were the ones we'd face again. We prepared. Some of us more specifically than others.
[Corvus said as he raised his blade]
[Caladrache stepped back]
Caladrache: Alright, No copying. Let's try something different.
Copy magic — Acausal Replication.
[Instead of copying the ability, he replicated the effect. Not the technique. Not the definition]
[Just the physical outcome of the technique appearing in real space without a corresponding technique to generate it]
[The effect of the Unnamed Blade appeared in his hand without a cause]
[Corvus looked at it]
Corvus: You replicated the effect without copying the technique
[he said]
Caladrache: Acausality, I don't need a cause to produce an effect.
[Corvus looked at the two identical blades]
Corvus: I didn't prepare for that
[he said]
Caladrache: I know
[Caladrache said]
[They circled]
The Solstice Sisters vs Dioscuri and Gao
[Two against two]
[The Sisters moved like one thing because they were, functionally, one thing — Transduality and Duality Magic operating as a unified consciousness across two bodies]
[Dioscuri's Probability Magic was already running at maximum]
[Every possible outcome of the next three minutes mapped and weighted]
[Gao's Realistic Appearance Magic was building]
[He could make anything appear real. Indistinguishably, functionally real. Including fake versions of the Sisters that would respond to attacks aimed at them]
Solstice One: Two of them
[one Sister said]
Solstice Two: Probability and appearance..
[the other Sister said]
Solstice One: He maps outcomes
[the first said]
Solstice Two: She makes fakes
[the second said]
Solstice: We handle both!!!
[they said together]
Transduality — Duality Inversion.
[They reached into the conceptual duality between Dioscuri and Gao — the binary of two separate people — and inverted it]
[Made the concept of them being two separate entities temporarily false]
[Dioscuri and Gao felt themselves losing the distinction between their individual identities]
[Not physically. Conceptually. The idea that they were two separate people with two separate abilities started blurring]
[Dioscuri pushed back with Probability Magic]
[The probability of the inversion working dropped to something manageable]
Solstice One: You resisted
[one Sister observed]
Dioscuri: Yes, But only partially.
[Dioscuri said]
Solstice Two: Partial is enough
[the other Sister said]
Solstice One: Partial is a foothold
[the first said]
Solstice: And we are nothing if not thorough
[Both said]
[Gao moved. Creating perfect replicas of the Sisters that appeared from every direction simultaneously, each one functionally real, each one armed and attacking from a different angle]
[The Sisters looked at the replicas]
Duality — Self-Recognition.
[They knew which things were real extensions of duality and which were unitary objects pretending]
[The replicas were single things pretending to be two. The Sisters could feel the pretense]
[They walked through the replicas]
[Gao stared as his perfect illusions failed to be perceived as real by beings whose entire existence was built around distinguishing true duality from false imitation]
Gao: They can see through appearance
[he said to Dioscuri]
Dioscuri: Because they exist as duality, They know what it looks like from the inside.
[Dioscuri explained]
Gao: Then we need a different approach, if we wanna win this
[Gao said]
Dioscuri: Yes
[Dioscuri said]
[They reformed their strategy]
[The fight continued]
-Blaise vs Vanessa-
[Cosmic Manipulation against Star Magic]
[Blaise looked at Vanessa with the particular expression of someone who finds their opponent genuinely interesting and is trying not to show it]
[Vanessa looked at Blaise with the particular expression of someone who has fought cosmic-level threats before and is carefully not showing that she finds this one significantly bigger than most]
Blaise: Star Magic
[Blaise said]
Vanessa: Yes
[Vanessa said]
Blaise: The power to create, control, and weaponize stars, Every star in every galaxy accessible to you as both projectile and energy source.
[Blaise explained]
Vanessa: That's a fair summary
[Vanessa said]
Blaise: I have Cosmic Manipulation,The cosmos includes stars.
[Blaise said with a smile]
[Vanessa looked at him]
Vanessa: Are you telling me you can negate my magic by claiming jurisdiction..
[she said]
Blaise: I'm telling you the overlap is interesting, Stars are part of the cosmos. My manipulation includes them.
Vanessa: So does mine
[Vanessa said]
Blaise: Which means we're fighting over the same resources
[Blaise said]
Vanessa: Yes, but different source
[Vanessa said]
Blaise: Good, I prefer fights with an interesting structural conflict.
[Vanessa raised her hands]
Star Magic — Stellar Summon.
[A star materialized above the battlefield. Not a full star. A controlled fragment. A piece of a red giant condensed into a manageable volume and aimed]
[Blaise reached out with Cosmic Manipulation]
Cosmic Manipulation — Domain Claim.
[He claimed jurisdiction over the summoned star fragment. The fragment felt two different wills pulling at it simultaneously. Vanessa's Star Magic origin claim and Blaise's Cosmic Manipulation domain claim]
[The star fragment vibrated]
[Then it split the difference. Half responding to each of them]
[Blaise and Vanessa looked at it]
Vanessa: That shouldn't be possible
[Vanessa said]
Blaise: And yet
[Blaise said]
[He pushed]
[She pushed]
[The star fragment detonated from the pressure of two equal and opposite claims on its fundamental nature]
[The explosion pushed both of them back]
[They straightened]
[Looked at each other]
Vanessa: Again
[Vanessa said]
Blaise: Again!!
[Blaise agreed]
-Viaa vs Liangyo-
[Replication Magic and Unreality Magic against Arrow Magic]
[Liangyo drew his bow]
[Viaa looked at the arrow already being prepared]
Viaa: Arrow Magic, Accurate to the point of being conceptually precise. Every arrow you fire hits not just a target but the specific vulnerability of the target.
Liangyo: Yes..
[Liangyo said]
Viaa: I replicate, Every attack that hits me gets copied and returned.
Liangyo: Interesting
[Liangyo said]
Viaa: Then you know the problem with firing arrows at me
[Viaa said]
Liangyo: Every arrow I fire comes back with whatever property I aimed at you
[Liangyo said]
Viaa: Yes, So in this case your magic is useless
Liangyo: And Unreality Magic makes whatever you designate as unreal cease to exist according to the rules of what's real
[Liangyo said]
Viaa: Yes.
Liangyo: So if I fire, you could replicate the arrow and then use Unreality to designate the original as unreal, making my technique disappear.
Viaa: Yes!
[Viaa said]
Liangyo: But if I fire multiple, faster than your replication can keep up with
Viaa: Then some get through
[Viaa said]
[Liangyo smiled]
[She fired forty-seven arrows simultaneously.
Viaa's Replication Magic grabbed fourteen of them]
[Thirty-three kept coming]
Unreality — Mass Designation.
[She designated thirty of them as unreal]
[They ceased to exist]
[Three hit]
[She stumbled]
[The three arrows had aimed at her ability to replicate. Hos ability to use Unreality. And her will to continue fighting]
[She felt each one land]
Viaa: You targeted my abilities
[she said]
Liangyo: Arrow Magic targets vulnerabilities, Yours are your techniques.
[Viaa looked at his arrows]
[Then began her replication]
[The thirty returned arrows fired back at Liangyo carrying the properties Viaa had reversed]
[Liangyo's barrier caught them]
[And the dance continued]
[The First War has Begun]
To be continued...