POV: Cao Cao
Where did he go?
Haruki Yamashiro had spoken with that same easy grin, had said he found what he was looking for, and then he was gone, leaving Cao Cao standing alone in that silent and distorted space, the stillness pressing in from all sides and making the absence feel heavy.
He must have gone to Leonardo.
The conclusion came instantly and Cao Cao moved without hesitation, raising his hand and beginning the familiar sequence of a teleportation spell, tracing the circle in practiced motion, gathering magical energy together into the precise structure required to bend space.
Then the circle collapsed.
The circle flickered once, unstable, and then collapsed into nothing, the energy dispersing uselessly into the unmoving air.
Cao Cao's brow furrowed, and he tried again, faster this time, forcing more power into the formation, tightening his control, correcting every minor deviation with the reflexes of someone who had done this countless times in battle.
Again, nothing.
The spell formed, stabilized for a fraction of a second, and then unraveled like thread cut loose, leaving his hand empty and the space around him unchanged.
A third attempt followed immediately, then a fourth, each one sharper, more forceful, more desperate, his breathing beginning to shorten as a thin edge of panic crept into his chest.
A faint tremor crept into his hands.
That shouldn't be possible.
His mind raced, dissecting the phenomenon even as his heart began to beat harder against his ribs, analyzing the nature of the failure. Teleportation magic did not simply "fail" without cause, because it was not a spell that depended on external permission or environmental harmony. It was a manipulation of space itself, a rewriting of position that bypassed conventional distance entirely.
For such a spell to collapse so completely, so consistently, there had to be a fundamental disruption in the very framework of reality surrounding him.
A cold weight settled in his chest.
With a growing sense of dread, Cao Cao abandoned the circle and reached for something far more greater.
Cao Cao closed his eyes for a brief moment and reached inward, calling upon the power of his sacred gear, the [True Longinus], invoking one of its treasures.
[Assaratana]
The ability that allowed him to designate a target and transport it instantly across space, including himself, a power that had never once failed him, a power that ignored conventional limitations and functioned on a higher principle than ordinary magic.
He pictured it clearly.
Leonardo's location, the hidden pocket dimension where the boy preferred to stay, the layered concealment, the warped interior filled with shadows and constructs, every detail he had memorized through long familiarity.
He activated the ability.
Nothing happened.
The power gathered.
It strained and then it vanished, slipping through his grasp as though the very concept of "elsewhere" had ceased to exist.
For the first time, genuine panic surged through him. He tried again, forcing more will into it, pushing deeper into the connection with his sacred gear, demanding a response.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
Impossible.
[Assaratana] did not fail. It could not fail.
His thoughts accelerated, his mind dissecting the anomaly even as his pulse thundered in his ears. If both conventional teleportation magic and a sacred gear ability that overrode the limitations of space itself were being nullified, then the issue could not lie within the techniques themselves, because those techniques operated on entirely different principles. The only constant between them was the medium they acted upon.
Space. And beyond that…Time.
That bastard…Cao Cao muttered under his breath, his eyes narrowing as realization began to take shape. He said we are outside of time and space…
If that statement were true, then...
Teleportation required a framework in which positions could be defined, a system of coordinates that allowed the caster to distinguish between "here" and "there," between origin and destination, and if such distinctions no longer existed, then any attempt to traverse them would collapse before it could even begin.
If time itself had been severed or suspended, then the progression required for a spell to activate might also be disrupted, preventing even instantaneous abilities from completing their function.
He forced himself to think deeper.
If they truly existed outside of time and space, then the concept of distance would be meaningless, because there would be no continuum to measure it against, and yet Haruki had moved, had disappeared, had probably reappeared elsewhere.
That meant movement was still possible, which meant there had to be a governing structure that replaced conventional space-time, some artificial or imposed framework that allowed for interaction while simultaneously rejecting external interference.
Cao Cao's expression darkened as the conclusion solidified.
This is his world…
A space severed from reality, governed entirely by Haruki's authority, where external techniques that relied on the natural laws of the universe were rendered meaningless because those laws no longer applied.
Teleportation failed because there was no "distance" to cross, no "location" to anchor to, and even [Assaratana], which forced its will upon space itself, had nothing to seize, because space as he understood it simply did not exist here.
But that raised a far more dangerous question. How did Haruki leave?
If this domain was truly detached from reality, then exiting it should be just as impossible as teleporting within it, unless…Unless the one who created it retained the authority to define its boundaries.
Cao Cao's eyes widened slightly.
Perhaps, he controls the exit…
Which meant there was a method, a mechanism, some condition that allowed passage between this isolated world and reality, a rule embedded within the structure of the domain itself. Haruki had used it without hesitation, which meant it was not a one-time anomaly but an inherent function of this space.
There had to be a way out.
There had to be–
A sudden shift in the air cut his thoughts short.
Then, in the distance, the last remaining Jabberwocky shuddered.
The massive creature, which had stood frozen in that suspended world, began to lose its form, its body breaking apart into loose strands of shadow that unraveled from within, dissolving piece by piece until nothing remained but drifting fragments that faded into the still air.
Cao Cao's heart sank.
Leonardo…
The disappearance of the summon could only mean one thing.
Dammit…he hissed, his voice tightening as frustration and dread coiled together within him. Why can't I teleport…
The answer was already clear, yet it did nothing to ease the growing pressure in his chest.
And then–
The space before him distorted.
A faint ripple spread through the empty air, like the surface of water disturbed by an unseen force, and from that distortion, a deep violet light began to emerge, coalescing into a swirling vortex that tore open the fabric of the domain itself. The portal expanded slowly, deliberately, its edges crackling with an energy that felt fundamentally different from anything Cao Cao had encountered before, as though it existed on a level that transcended even Longinus.
From within that shifting abyss, a figure stepped forward.
Haruki Yamashiro emerged as though returning from a casual stroll, his posture relaxed, his expression carrying that same satisfied amusement that had never once wavered, as though the passage of time within this isolated world held no meaning for him whatsoever.
Cao Cao's breath caught.
Impossible.
It had only been moments.
Barely seconds had passed since Haruki had vanished, and yet here he stood once more, completely unscathed, completely at ease, as though whatever confrontation had occurred beyond this domain had already reached its conclusion.
A conclusion that made no sense.
Leonardo would not fall so easily.
His mind rejected the possibility outright, scrambling to construct alternatives, to find any explanation that did not lead to the inevitable conclusion forming in the depths of his thoughts.
Leonardo was powerful, overwhelmingly so in the right conditions, his [Annihilation Maker] allowing him to create endless monsters, to overwhelm enemies through sheer volume, to grind down even the strongest opponents through relentless pressure and attrition.
Yet that power came with a weakness that Cao Cao understood better than anyone.
Leonardo was a summoner.
And like most who relied on summoned forces, his personal combat ability lagged behind, his direct defenses limited, his reactions slower when stripped of his constructs, his body far more vulnerable than the monsters he created.
The simplest and most effective strategy against such a fighter had always been clear.
Bypass the army and strike the summoner. A famous tactic when facing a summoner known as the "behead the leader."
Cao Cao had relied on that principle many times, and he knew that if Haruki reached Leonardo directly, then even a brief exchange could be fatal.
Haruki's grin widened slightly, as though he could see every thought unraveling within Cao Cao's mind.
"Why, dear Cao Cao," he said softly, his tone laced with amusement, "you look troubled. Anything I could do to ease your mind?"
Cao Cao's voice trembled despite his effort to steady it.
"Y-you… what did you do…?" he asked, his gaze locked onto Haruki as though searching for any sign that this was some elaborate deception. "What did you do to Leo…?"
"Worried about your friend?" Haruki replied, his smile sharpening with a mocking warmth that only made the words more unbearable. "How touching. But I digress, you are the man of the hour, and it would be rather unfortunate if our long-awaited reunion was turned into an orgy. Let us simply say… your little moss-headed friend will not be bothering us."
The world seemed to tilt.
Cao Cao's blood ran cold, the implications of those words crashing into him with a force that his mind struggled to contain, and for a moment, he simply stood there, unable to reconcile what he had heard with everything he believed to be true.
Leonardo…Dead?
No.
That was impossible.
The original seven were not meant to fall.
They were the chosen pillars of humanity's rise, the core of the Hero Faction, individuals who stood above the countless others who had rallied under their banner, and the idea that one of them could be erased so suddenly, so effortlessly, tore at the foundation of everything Cao Cao had built.
His thoughts fractured.
Memories surged forward unbidden, fragments of conversations, shared battles, plans for the future that now felt distant and fragile, as though they belonged to a world that no longer existed. Leonardo's confidence, his eccentric brilliance, the way he spoke of overwhelming the supernatural world through sheer numbers and ingenuity, all of it clashed violently with the image being forced upon him now.
Gone.
As though he had never mattered.
A sharp, suffocating pressure built in Cao Cao's chest, his breathing growing uneven as the weight of that possibility pressed down on him, threatening to crush the clarity of his thoughts beneath a rising tide of something far more primal.
Fear.
Loss.
And beneath it all, something darker.
His hands clenched tightly at his sides, his nails digging into his palms as his mind struggled to maintain control, to impose order upon the chaos threatening to consume him, yet the more he tried to rationalize it, the more the reality of the situation bled through, seeping into every corner of his consciousness.
If Leonardo had truly fallen…then this enemy stood on a level that could not be ignored.
Then this battle was no longer a matter of strategy.
Something within him snapped and the fear in his heart twisted. The grief burned and what remained surged forward with overwhelming force.
"Y-you…" Cao Cao's voice trembled at first, the words catching in his throat as his emotions clawed their way to the surface, "…you… monster! Abomination!"
The word tore from him with a fury that could no longer be contained, his eyes blazing with a mixture of rage and something far deeper, something that refused to accept the reality before him even as it drove him to confront it.
Because if Leonardo had truly been taken from him…then Cao Cao would make certain that the one responsible paid for it with everything he had.
Yet even in his rage, Cao Cao understood the gap between them with perfect clarity. It pressed against his mind with every breath, with every instinct that warned him of death. The thing standing before him wore the shape of a man, spoke like a man, even smiled like one, and yet every sense he possessed rejected that idea.
This was not something he could match in a drawn out fight. There would be no exchange of blows, no gradual turning of the tide. If he allowed this to continue, he would die.
That left him with a single option.
End it in one strike while the creature still treated him as a thing to be toyed with.
The thought burned, sharp and bitter. To be toyed with, to be dismissed, to be measured and found wanting, it stirred a deep anger in him. Yet even that anger had its place.
Arrogance had always been the weakness of those who stood above others. The higher they rose, the less they looked down. And had this, indeed, not been the story of mankind since the beginning?
History has proven it again and again.
There has never been a shortage of monsters in this world. Creatures larger, stronger, faster, beings that could tear through armies and reshape the land beneath their feet. By all logic, humanity should have been crushed under their weight long ago. A fragile species of flesh and bone had no right to stand at the pinnacle of creation.
And yet it did.
Because humanity did not win through strength. Humanity learned, adapted, and overcame.
Cao Cao steadied his breathing, his thoughts sharpening as he forced his anger into focus. He remembered the stories, the truths that had been passed down and proven through blood.
Heracles had not defeated the Hydra through brute force alone. Each severed head had only multiplied the threat, and it was only when he understood the nature of the beast that he changed his method, burning the wounds and denying it the chance to regenerate.
Perseus had not faced Medusa with empty pride. He had used reflection to turn her own power against her, striking without ever meeting her gaze.
Odysseus had escaped the Cyclops through cunning, blinding a creature that no man could overpower and walking free beneath its very hands.
David had stood before Goliath, a giant clad in armor, and brought him down with a single stone, guided by skill and faith rather than force.
Hannibal had crossed the Alps and brought war to Rome itself, achieving what no one had thought possible through sheer resolve and daring.
Again and again, the pattern repeated.
Man stood before something greater, something that should have crushed him, and instead found a way to win.
Because man was not bound by limits in the same way.
Man did not win because he was the strongest. Man won because he understood, because he adapted, because he refused to accept the limits placed before him. That was what separated him from beasts and monsters, from gods who relied on overwhelming power and believed it to be absolute.
Cao Cao could feel that belief rise within him, the same conviction that had driven heroes across history, the certainty that mankind stood above all other forms of life by right of will and intellect, by the divine mandate that had been spoken at the dawn of creation itself.
Then God said, Let us make man in our image… and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth.
He had always believed in those words. He had always carried them within him as truth.
This world belonged to humanity. Everything else that walked upon it, crawled beneath it, or claimed dominion over it existed only as something to be overcome, to be understood, to be brought to heel.
And so this moment, this battle, this impossible opponent standing before him, it was nothing more than another trial in that long history. Another monster that needed to be cut down.
Another false god that needed to be reminded of its place.
Cao Cao tightened his grip on his spear, his eyes locking onto Haruki with cold fury.
Let it look down on him. Let it believe this was already decided.
Like every hero before him, he would take that moment of carelessness, and show this creature why hubris indeed is a cardinal sin.
Cao Cao drew in a slow breath that burned through his lungs and gathered every fragment of power he still possessed into a single point of focus, forcing aside the noise of the battlefield and even the oppressive weight of Haruki Yamashiro's existence until there was nothing left in his mind except the execution he was about to carry out.
There would be no second attempt. There would be no retreat. Everything he had, everything he represented, every drop of will that defined him as the one who stood at the forefront of humanity's defiance.
Supreme Release: The Sun King's Final Verdict.
One by one, their lights ignited behind him, each Sacred Treasure unfolding into existence with a brilliance that strained the eye. Then the lights began to move, drawn together by his will, compressing, merging, folding into one another until they formed a single blazing core. It burned like a newborn star at his back, dense and radiant, its surface rippling with layers of divine power forced into perfect alignment.
A colossal black gold sphere formed at his back, vast enough that it seemed to eclipse the entire frozen sky. Its surface churned with layered script and divine patterns, each line representing one of the Treasures now fused into a single authority.
The six wings of white gold light folded inward, their brilliance compressing and feeding into the core, tightening the power further, concentrating it until even the halted world around them seemed to strain under the pressure.
The ground beneath Cao Cao cracked in glowing fractures that spread outward in intricate patterns, each line echoing the structure of the divine law he now wielded. The suspended debris around him began to tremble despite the halted flow of time, caught in the gravity of something that no longer obeyed ordinary rules.
Cao Cao raised the True Longinus.
The spear trembled in his grasp, responding to the surge of power, its tip shining with a concentrated brilliance that seemed to tear at the space around it. He pulled his arm back and then launched forward.
The world blurred.
Air split apart in his wake. The ground beneath him cracked under the force of his acceleration. He crossed the distance between them in an instant, his body pushed to its absolute limit as he drove the spear forward with everything he had.
When he reappeared it was directly before Haruki Yamashiro with all the gathered force of the Sun King's driving through his body.
All of it surged forward in one final thrust meant to end the battle in an instant.
Haruki did not move and instead stood there, watching.
And then Haruki raised his left hand.
There was no urgency in the motion.
Cao Cao's spear reached him and stopped.
Two fingers closed around the spear.
The impact never came. The moment Haruki touched the spear, everything collapsed.
The force behind Cao Cao's charge vanished completely. The immense kinetic energy he had built, the overwhelming pressure of the Sun King's, the layered authority of the Seven Treasures driving the strike forward, all of it disappeared without even the slightest ripple.
Cao Cao felt it happen through his entire body, the sudden absence of power so absolute that it left him hollow for a fraction of a second, like stepping forward expecting solid ground and finding nothing beneath his feet.
Haruki held the spear casually in his left hand.
Then, with the same lazy indifference, he reached out with his right hand and flicked Cao Cao lightly in the chest.
The effect was instantaneous. The six wings of white gold light behind Cao Cao flickered once and disappeared. The vast rings of his Balance Breaker collapsed in an instant, their immense structure erased without sound or resistance.
The black gold sun that had dominated the battlefield simply disappeared, leaving no trace that it had ever existed.
There was no explosion or shockwave or backlash or distortion in the frozen world that might have suggested any movement having occurred.
It was as if the entire Balance Breaker had never been activated at all.
Cao Cao fell to his knees.
A harsh cough tore from his throat, but it came from shock rather than injury. His body remained intact. His power had not lashed back at him. There was no damage to explain what had just happened.
He stared ahead, unable to process what had just happened. His Balance Breaker had been erased with a single touch.
There had been opponents before who could interfere with Sacred Gears. The Worthless ability of the House of Belial could strip away specific functions. The Crack ability of the House of Belphegor could introduce faults into their structure and cause them to malfunction. Certain gods possessed sealing techniques that could suppress or bind their power temporarily.
All of those methods attacked a part of the system. They disrupted functions, introduced flaws, or restricted output.
What Haruki had just done was entirely different.
It was not suppression, of that Cao Cao was sure nor was it an interference to the general function of his sacred gear. There was no damage done to his Sacred Gear that explained why it suddenly ceased to function.
No, what haruki has just done was erasure of function at its root.
It was like extinguishing a flame without smoke, without heat, without leaving behind even the memory of light. Like removing the concept of sound from a bell so that it could never ring. Like reaching into reality itself and deciding that something which existed a moment ago no longer had the right to do so.
Haruki had rejected the Sacred Gear, denying its existence as a functioning miracle.
Cao Cao's mind struggled to catch up, searching for an explanation and finding none.
He reached out instinctively, trying to call upon the True Longinus again. The connection that had always been there, constant and absolute, felt distant now. Muffled. Cut off.
For the first time since he had obtained it…True Longinus did not respond to him.
"You noticed it, didn't you?" Haruki said conversationally, still holding the spear between his fingers. "That ugly brain of yours must be working overtime trying to understand what just happened."
Cao Cao did not answer.
He remained on his knees, his body refusing to move, his pride screaming at him to stand while something deeper held him in place. The position was unbearable. To kneel before this creature, this abomination, this… thing that defied everything he understood about power.
He would not give him the satisfaction of a response.
Haruki sighed faintly.
"It's a special little trick from that disgrace of Lucifer's bloodline," he said, his tone laced with open contempt. "That wretched excuse for a devil managed to produce something worthwhile for once in his otherwise pointless existence, and even then he managed to stain it with his own lack of imagination. Sacred Gear Canceller. That was the best name he could come up with. I sometimes wonder how beings like him manage to exist without suffocating under the weight of their own mediocrity."
Haruki glanced down at Cao Cao. "Still, the name does make things clear. Anything tied to a Sacred Gear, anything enhanced by it, anything derived from it, can be nullified completely. All it takes is a single touch."
Cao Cao's fingers clenched against the ground. What an absurd ability!
He forced himself to think.
Fear pressed against him, heavy and suffocating, but he refused to let it take control. Every ability had a weakness. Every power had a limitation. There had to be a flaw, something he could exploit, something he could turn against Haruki.
He just had to find it or create it.
"So," Haruki said quietly, meeting his gaze without flinching, "what am I to do with you, Cao Cao?"
"If you expect me to beg for my life, you are sorely mistaken," Cao Cao replied, his voice steady with defiance. "I am the champion of mankind. I will not bow before the likes of you. Go on. Kill me, and prove at last the monster you truly are."
"I have spent a long time thinking about this moment," Haruki said quietly. "Imagining what I would do when you finally stood at my mercy. I dreamed of breaking you…of inflicting every form of pain the mind can conceive. And yet…" He paused. " I find I have no desire to touch you at all."
"What, no stomach for it?" Cao Cao let out a sharp, contemptuous laugh. "Still clinging to whatever scraps of humanity you pretend to have? Or do you still cling to the illusion that mercy makes you human? How pitiful."
"Don't misunderstand," Haruki said, his voice turning cold. "I could snap your neck this instant and sleep like a baby tonight. But death …would be too kind. I will not grant your soul even a moment's rest, not after what you took from them."
Cao Cao's laughter returned, louder this time. "Truly astonishing. A devil lamenting the death of my people. By what right do you judge me? In what world does a creature steeped in lies, manipulation, and betrayal stand before me and speak of justice?"
"And yet," Haruki said, a faint edge of irony in his voice, "it was this very 'creature' who stood before you as you butchered those you claimed to protect and told you that what you were doing was wrong."
"I have no need for your mockery, Devil!" Cao Cao snapped, anger breaking through his composure. "Do you think it was easy? Do you think I did not feel the weight of it? Ordering their extermination was the most painful decision of my life. It broke me. And you dare judge me?"
His voice hardened.
"I did what I had to for the sake of humanity. Those… things… were never meant to live as humans. They were engineered for one purpose - to become the next generation of mankind, stripped of everything that makes us human. They would have existed only to serve, reduced to obedient vessels for something greater to exploit."
He took a breath, steadying himself.
"They would have been robbed of the brilliance, of the defiance…of the very spirit that defines us. Stripped of the ability to love, to resist, to stand beside one another. Reduced to nothing but obedient husks. Livestock dressed in human skin, bred to worship their masters.
"Compared to …that fate, death was mercy. The only mercy I could offer. So don't stand there and condemn me. I will not stand here and be judged by a creature like you."
"'Things.' 'Livestock.'" Haruki echoed quietly. "Even now, you refuse to call them human. Tell me, does that make it easier? If you strip them of their humanity in your mind, does it dull what you did? To pretend you didn't slaughter an entire generation of innocent people?"
"Don't be absurd," Cao Cao said with a sneer. "They were nothing of the sort. They were never human to begin with."
"Then what is a human?" Haruki asked, tilting his head. "Enlighten me, oh great protector of mankind."
Cao Cao's expression grew solemn, almost reverent.
"Humanity began the moment Adam defied his creator," he said. "when he chose his own will over blind obedience. To reject the limits imposed upon you, to break free from those who would cage you, to look upon the world and give it your own meaning…that is what it means to be human… To defy. To assert. To become. Any being incapable of that… is no true human at all."
Haruki studied him in silence for a long moment, as though searching for something beneath the surface.
"Tell me," Haruki said at last, his voice quieter now, almost contemplative. "Has there ever been a single moment in your life when you weren't lying to yourself?"
Cao Cao did not answer. He would not dignify the question with a response.
Haruki exhaled softly, as though setting something aside.
"Now… where was I?" Haruki murmured, tapping his chin as if in thought. Then his expression shifted, as though something had just clicked into place.
"Ah. Yes!" He looked back at Cao Cao, a faint smile forming. "What to do with you…Since death would be a mercy, I thought I might try something different this time. The idea came to me just now. I do hope you'll like it."
Before Cao Cao could gather his thoughts or form a response, Haruki moved.
There was no warning in it, no shift in posture or surge of power that could be tracked, only a sudden change in position that his eyes failed to follow, and in the next instant Haruki stood directly before him with his arm already thrust forward.
His hand drove into Cao Cao's chest.
Cao Cao's eyes widened.
He felt the motion. He saw the arm pass through his body, felt the intrusion with absolute clarity, and yet there was no resistance, no tearing of flesh, no blood spilling from the wound. Haruki's hand slipped through him with unnatural ease, passing beyond muscle and bone, reaching into a depth that had nothing to do with the physical body.
It felt wrong. It was neither painful nor painless, as if the hand that had pierced him did not belong to the same layer of existence as his body, as if it had slipped past the surface of him and reached into something deeper that he had never been aware of until this moment.
A cold realization gripped him.
He is not touching my body. He's reaching for my soul.
Before he could act on that thought, before he could even begin to resist, the pain came. Erupting from within him in a way that bypassed the senses and went straight to the core of his being, it dwarfed every injury he had ever endured in all his years of battle.
His entire existence felt as if it had been set ablaze from the inside, every part of him burning at once while something unseen clawed through him, ripping, tearing, pulling at pieces that had never been meant to be touched.
His thoughts fractured under the strain, his vision blurring as the sensation intensified, as if he were being pulled apart into fragments like paper caught in a violent storm.
Haruki's arm moved deeper.
Then it stopped. For a brief moment there was a stillness, a dreadful pause where Cao Cao felt that something had been found.
And then Haruki pulled.
Cao Cao felt it immediately. Something was taken from him, a piece of himself was gone.
The absence settled in instantly, a hollow space where something vital had once existed, and his mind struggled to comprehend it, trying to grasp at something that was no longer there, like a limb that had been severed yet still lingered in memory.
Through the haze of pain, Cao Cao forced his eyes open and looked forward.
Haruki Yamashiro stood before him, the god of devils, holding the holiest of all artifacts, the spear blessed by the blood of Christ, ripped from the depths of Cao Cao's very soul.
The sight froze his thoughts.
Impossible. Impossible. Impossible.
The words echoed in his mind without end, his understanding refusing to accept what he was seeing, because Sacred Gears were not objects that could simply be taken. They were bound to the soul of their wielder, woven into their existence so completely that separating the two would be the same as tearing out a part of the self.
Such an act should have killed him instantly.
No human could survive with a piece of their soul removed.
No man.
So why…Why was he still standing? Why had his body not collapsed into lifeless ruin?
Why did he still draw breath, even as the very core of his existence had been mutilated?
And more than that…Why did the spear not burn Haruki to ash?
The holiest of relics, a weapon that should have rejected him, that should have annihilated any creature of darkness upon contact, rested calmly in his grasp, as though it acknowledged him, as though it answered to him.
His soul reacted.
The pain surged again, stronger than before, and this time it carried something deeper, something that broke through his composure entirely, forcing a raw, involuntary cry from his throat as his body trembled under the strain, his mind unraveling under the weight of what had been done to him.
"You have been judged, Cao Cao, and found wanting," Haruki said, his voice steady, carrying a quiet authority that filled the frozen world around them. "By the dominion granted unto me over light and darkness, over that which is sacred and that which is profane, I strip thee of the blessings that were entrusted to thee, for thou hast proven unworthy of their grace."
Cao Cao had always thought of Haruki as a creature of darkness, something born from devils and steeped in corruption, and even when he had heard of his ascension he had imagined a god of ruin, a sovereign of the profane. A being that ruled over suffering and chaos alone, for how could anything touched by such carnage ever embody anything pure?
He had never imagined this. He had never considered that the light within Haruki had ascended as well.
That something both radiant and monstrous could exist within the same being. That a god of mercy and vengeance could stand before him.
That realization came too late.
"And hear this, O bearer of false righteousness," Haruki continued, his voice deepening as something vast and unyielding settled behind his words. "And bear witness to the sum of your deeds, and you shall not turn your gaze away. As you have sown, so shall you reap. As you have judged, so shall judgment be visited upon you.
"You who deemed their deaths mercy, now shall thou partake of the mercy thou hast given. Every cry that rose unheard… every plea that was silenced… every soul that trembled before thy light, these shall be thy companions.
"Thou shalt feel their suffering as thine own. Their pain shall be thy flesh. Their despair shall be thy breath. Their terror shall be the marrow of thy bones. And not for a moment, nor for a breath, shall thou be granted release. For as thou hast done unto them, so shall it be done unto thee. And thus, thou art condemned."
It began at once.
Cao Cao's mind was flooded.
He felt fear that was not his own, raw and consuming, the kind that seized the body and froze it in place as death approached without mercy. He felt the panic of those who had run with no escape, the desperation of those who had begged for mercy that never came.
He felt the sharp, sudden end of lives cut short without warning, the confusion of minds that could not understand why they were being erased.
A child, small and trembling, clutching the hand of a mother as blinding light consumed them both. He felt the child's confusion, the inability to understand why. The desperate hope that someone, anyone, would save them.
Then the mother. The raw, primal terror, for her child. The helplessness of holding someone she loved could not protect. The moment she realized there would be no miracle.
A young man. Burning. His skin searing, nerves igniting, yet unable to die quickly. The agony stretched, prolonged, merciless. His scream tore through Cao Cao's mind, viscerally reliving it.
An old man kneeling. Accepting death, yet filled with quiet grief for all that would be lost. Memories of a life unfinished, of people left behind, of words never spoken.
A girl running. Heart pounding, lungs burning, terror clawing at her mind as light devoured everything behind her. The certainty that she would not escape.
He felt the grief of families torn apart in an instant, the hollow emptiness left behind in those who survived, the weight of loss that lingered long after the moment had passed.
He felt the terror of being hunted, the dread of knowing something unstoppable was coming, the suffocating certainty that there would be no salvation.
He felt the despair of those who had lost everything, the quiet, crushing realization that there was nothing left to hold onto, no future waiting ahead, only an end that came too soon.
Each sensation layered over the other, distinct and overwhelming, each one carrying its own weight, its own voice, its own story, and all of them pressed into him at once without pause or relief.
His mind could not separate them.
His sense of self began to fracture under the strain, buried beneath the sheer volume of their pain that poured into him without end.
Cao Cao screamed.
And the judgment did not end.
The world around him remained still.
Only his suffering moved.
AN: We are sooo back! So the long-awaited retribution has come for Cao Cao. Becoming a god does give one far more options for punishing someone than simply killing them. In any case, we are almost done with the whole Cao Cao fiasco. There is only one thing left to take from him.
Btw, most of you predicted Cao Cao's fate.
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