The void was a canvas of absolute nothingness where our struggle continued to play out in a cycle of perfect, brutal repetition. I drifted through the darkness, my movements dictated by the cold heat of my fifty percent output as we fought with fist and blast. The silence of the vacuum was broken only by the internal resonance of our impacts and the soundless roar of mana colliding against mana. I threw a heavy straight right that Sagha parried with his forearm, the contact sending a shockwave through the empty space that distorted the distant, pale fissures of the multiverse. I followed up by raising my left hand, unleashing a point-blank blast of golden-grey energy that erupted from my palm like a miniature sun. Sagha leaned his head to the side, the beam whistling past his ear and vanishing into the infinite dark, only for him to counter with a palm strike aimed at my chest. I took the hit, the force vibrating through my ribs, and immediately launched a flurry of jabs that rained down on his guard. We were locked in a high-speed exchange where every physical strike was punctuated by a sudden burst of energy. I fired a series of rapid-fire mana pulses that forced him to weave through the vacuum, and he responded by manifesting a torrent of dark indigo fire that I had to quench with my own aura.
While fighting, a cold clarity began to settle over my mind as I analyzed the state of our conflict. I watched Sagha regenerate from a grazing blow I landed on his shoulder, the dark essence of his being reweaving itself with a monstrous efficiency that defied the scale of my power. I realized that I could not damage nor erase Sagha because of the otherworlder rule of anti-erasure, anti-soul attack and manipulation, and anti-control over other otherworlders. Every time I applied the conceptual pressure of erasure, the rule acted as a fundamental buffer, a law of the universe that rendered my absolute negation into a mere physical impact. My ability to manipulate his soul or exert control over his essence was met with a nullifying resistance that existed beyond the reach of my fifty percent output. The stalemate was not just a result of our equal speed and strength; it was a result of a cosmic safeguard that protected one otherworlder from the existential interference of another. I could strike him, I could blast him, and I could stagger him, but the core of his existence remained untouched by my most lethal techniques. I looked at the God Breaker as he stabilized himself in the dark, his presence unyielding and his soul shielded by the very laws that governed our nature. I knew that if I continued with the same methods, we would remain in this vacuum until the end of time itself.
I decided to invent a new attack. I needed a way to bypass the restrictions of the rule without violating the fundamental logic of the multiverse. I focused the entirety of my intent into the space surrounding Sagha, my mana extending outward like invisible threads of authority. I instantly put a barrier on Sagha. The construct manifested as a sphere of shimmering, translucent energy that snapped into existence, encasing him within a tight, pressurized diameter. It was not a simple wall of force; it was a cage of localized reality, a barrier designed to isolate him from the surrounding void and anchor him to a single point in space. Sagha did not immediately struggle against the enclosure. He stood in the center of the shimmering sphere, his dark aura flickering against the interior walls. He looked at me through the translucent energy, a sharp, manic resonance in his expression as he let out a laugh that seemed to vibrate through the barrier itself. Sagha laughed and asked me, "Why would you even do that? I can escape it." He sounded confident, his voice carrying the weight of a being who had broken every cage the universe had ever tried to put him in. He shifted his weight as if preparing to shatter the construct with a single surge of his indigo mana.
I did not say anything. I did not need to explain the logic of the trap or the nature of what was coming next. I raised my right hand, extending my index finger and pointing it directly at the center of the barrier where Sagha stood. I began to draw upon a specific frequency of my power, pulling the golden-grey energy of my output and refining it until it shifted into a deep, predatory hue. I used my mana to make a glowing, piercing purple of soul-damaging arrow as I pointed my finger at Sagha. The energy coalesced at the tip of my finger, a jagged and lethal projectile that hummed with a resonance that sought to pierce through the fundamental layers of existence. The arrow was thin, elegant, and terrifying, its purple light casting a violent glow across the void and reflecting off the surface of the barrier. It was a weapon designed for a single purpose: to reach the core of a being and tear through the essence that held them together.
The rule states that I cannot target the soul of other otherworlders unless I find a way to interact with it indirectly. I looked at the purple arrow, its tip vibrating with the hunger to erase what it touched. I knew that if I fired it directly at Sagha, the anti-soul attack rule would manifest, and the arrow would simply dissipate against his innate protection or turn into a harmless physical impact. The law was absolute, but every law had a coordinate. I looked past Sagha, staring into the dark space directly behind him within the confines of the barrier. My mind worked through the calculations of the soul-system, seeking the one loophole that would allow me to land a killing blow. Suddenly, I created an artificial soul behind Sagha. I did not manifest a living being or a consciousness; I wove a cluster of pure, artificial soul-matter into a concentrated point of existence. It was a decoy of essence, a target that possessed the spiritual signature of a soul without the protection of the otherworlder rule. It flickered in the dark behind Sagha's back, a small, glowing orb of vulnerability that existed only to be destroyed.
I adjusted my aim, my finger now pointing through Sagha and toward the artificial soul I had placed behind him. My focus was not on the man in front of me, but on the target in the rear. I felt the fifty percent output of my power stabilize, the purple energy of the arrow reaching its peak saturation. I spoke the words of the technique, my voice a cold and mechanical command that echoed through the silence of the void. "Supreme soul cutting arrow."
Bang. The arrow blasted from my fingertip. It moved with a velocity that defied the concept of travel, a streak of purple light that bypassed the intervening space in an instant. I did not target Sagha, but the soul behind him. However, the nature of the arrow was absolute. It was a piercing projectile designed to travel through the spiritual plane to reach its destination. The arrow pierced through any soul it goes through on its path to the target. As it streaked through the center of the barrier, it tore directly through Sagha's chest, ignoring the otherworlder rule because its intended target was the unprotected artificial soul in the back. The rule prevented me from targeting him, but it did not prevent the collateral damage of a piercing strike aimed at a valid coordinate. The purple arrow passed through his essence like a hot needle through silk, its jagged energy shredding the fabric of his soul as it transited through his body.
The arrow reached the artificial soul and exploded upon impact. It resulted in a purple explosion with the power to destroy from trillions to an infinite amount of universes. The detonation was not a conventional burst of fire or light; it was a conceptual eruption of soul-shattering force. The purple energy expanded with a violent, geometric precision, filling the interior of the barrier with a swirling vortex of annihilation. The output that I used on Sagha is only fifty percent because I don't even know what it can do at full capacity. Even at half power, the scale of the destruction was incomprehensible. The explosion sought to expand and erase everything in its path, the pressure of a trillion collapsing realities condensed into a single point within the vacuum. The barrier is there to keep the enemy from moving and to contain the explosion. The shimmering sphere I had placed around Sagha held firm against the initial surge of the purple fire, acting as a pressure cooker of existential erasure. The energy bounced off the interior walls of the barrier, refocusing the brunt of the infinite destruction back onto the center where Sagha stood. He was caught in the heart of the cataclysm, his form drowned in the violent purple light of the soul-cutting arrow's aftermath.
The void was illuminated by the fierce, throbbing glow of the containment. For a few seconds, there was nothing but the purple brilliance and the terrifying resonance of a soul being torn apart. I watched as the barrier finally began to fray under the strain of containing an infinite explosion, the surface cracking and leaking streaks of purple energy into the surrounding dark. When the light finally began to subside and the energy of the explosion dissipated into the vacuum, the scene that remained was one of absolute devastation. The barrier vanished, its structure having been consumed by the very force it was meant to hold. Sagha was still there, but he was no longer the unyielding silhouette of absolute resolve. After the explosion, Sagha is staggering but still alive. His body was a mangled mess of smoking mana and frayed essence, his dark aura flickering like a dying candle. He was slumped forward in the void, his hands trembling as he struggled to maintain his orientation in the zero-gravity environment. His soul is barely handling the attack. I could see the cracks in his spiritual integrity, the purple residue of the soul-cutting arrow still hissing against his essence. The attack had bypassed his defenses and struck the one place he thought was unreachable. He was weakened, his fifty percent output struggling to provide the energy needed for a full regeneration.
He drifted for a moment, his head hanging low as he fought to regain his composure. The silence of the void returned, but it was now heavy with the lingering heat of the purple explosion. I prepared to move in for the finishing blow, my own golden-grey aura flaring as I closed the distance. Suddenly, he sensed something. I saw his eyes widen, his head snapping to the side as if he were hearing a call from across the multiverse. The staggering weakness in his form was momentarily replaced by a sharp, urgent focus. Before I could reach him, he disappeared. It was not the tactical disappearance of our earlier fight; it was a full-scale retreat, a spatial jump that took him out of my immediate vicinity. He was flying back to where Sogha, Celdrich, and the others were at. He was moving with a desperation that bypassed the usual rules of his combat style, his presence becoming a receding streak of indigo light that vanished into the distance of the 100 trillion universes we had crossed.
I flew behind him, my own velocity reaching its peak as I gave chase. I pushed my fifty percent output to its limit, my body becoming a spear of iridescent light as I tracked the fading resonance of his mana. But he's too fast. The urgency of whatever he had sensed seemed to provide him with a burst of speed that exceeded my own tracking capabilities. I watched the indigo streak grow smaller and smaller, the gap between us widening despite my best efforts. I calculated the distance and the speed of our transit through the void, realizing that I was falling behind the pace he had set. I may reach there about one to three minutes after he's there. The realization was a cold weight in my chest. If he reached Sogha and Celdrich before me, the entire dynamic of the war would shift. I continued to push forward, my aura carving a jagged path through the darkness, but the God Breaker was a phantom in the distance, a dying star racing toward a destination I could not yet see.
The void rushed past me, a blur of absolute black and the distant white scars of our struggle. I was alone in the dark again, the silence returning as the sound of our combat faded into the past. I focused on the vanishing point where Sagha had gone, my mind running through the implications of the purple explosion and the state of his soul. He was staggered, he was damaged, and his soul was barely holding together, but he was still fast enough to outrun me in a straight flight. I felt the hum of my power, the purple residue of the supreme soul cutting arrow still tingling in my fingertips. I had invented a way to hurt him, a way to bypass the otherworlder rule that had protected him for so long, but the victory was incomplete. I was chasing a ghost through a dead universe, knowing that by the time I arrived at the coordinate where the others waited, the situation would have evolved beyond my control. I gritted my teeth and accelerated, my iridescent light the only thing left in the vacuum as I followed the indigo trail of the retreating God Breaker. One minute, two minutes, three minutes—every second felt like an eternity as I raced toward the gathering of the others, wondering what Sagha had sensed and what he would do when he reached them. The void was vast, and I was a solitary light chasing a shadow into the heart of the next conflict. I would be there, but I would be late, and in a war between otherworlders, three minutes could be the difference between the survival of a universe and its absolute erasure. I continued my flight, my eyes fixed on the horizon of the nothingness, the golden-grey and the purple light of my essence the only witnesses to my pursuit. The distance remained a cruel barrier, the 100 trillion universes a vast obstacle between me and the end of this war. I flew on, the silent vacuum my only companion, as I moved to close the gap and face whatever was waiting for me at the end of the indigo trail. One to three minutes was all that separated me from the next clash, and I intended to make every second count.