The fight between Despair and Zane continued, and this one was worse. The transient moment of quiet conversation in the vacuum evaporated into an immediate, apocalyptic collision.
The vast internal cosmic expanse of the moving planet became a stage of pure, unrestrained terror. Despair, a monolithic entity whose white, bone-like face mask split open to reveal a grotesque, jagged array of dark teeth and four vertically stacked crimson eyes, lunged forward. His long, wild white hair flowed behind him like a halo of death, catching the distorted starlight of the swallowed celestial systems.
Despair did not simply strike; he rewrote the rules of engagement. Raising a long, clawed hand toward the ceiling of the cosmic zone, his voice echoed through the vast expanse like a chorus of screaming souls.
"Let sorrow rain down upon you." Despair roared.
With a sweeping motion, the demon unleashed his ultimate technique: BlADE OF SORROW.
The blade of condensed, unholy energy that flew from his fingertips did not merely travel through the vacuum.
The strike wiped out an entire solar system with his technique, slicing straight through a captive yellow sun and its 12 orbiting worlds, detonating them into a spectacular, expanding wave of cosmic fire.
The attack almost cut reality itself, leaving behind a jagged, bleeding crack of pitch-black void In space.
Zane's eyes didn't even widen. His cold expression remained perfectly unyielding as the edge of blade of sorrow ripped toward his torso.
Zane activated into his core Evoliths.
The moment the blade of sorrow edge was about to touch his skin, Zane warped the localized space around his body.
To Despair, it looked like Zane was standing still, but in reality, Zane had slowed down the progression of time within a tight three-inch field around his silhouette while expanding the spatial distance between himself and the incoming blade by millions of conceptual miles.
The devastating, system-destroying strike passed through the empty space where Zane stood, missing his flesh by a fraction of a hair.
"Is that all a demon of Hell can manage?" Zane asked, his voice echoing across the silent void, cold as ice.
"Do not mock me , human!" Despair screamed, his four red eyes flaring with an unholy, malevolent ignition.
The demon snapped his fingers, and the surrounding space filled with a dark, suffocating purple miasma. "Rain of Despair!" he bellowed. Instantly, thousands of dying, miniature stars caged within the upper structural pillars of the region were violently ripped from their orbits, turning into black, compressed meteors enveloped in dark demonic flames. They rained down upon Zane like a continuous, unholy firing squad, with a terrifying accuracy.
Zane dodge everything effortlessly and continued to fight,Moving with an impossible, fluid rhythm, he stepped through the downpour of burning cosmic ordnance.
He tilted his shoulder back to let a screaming meteor graze past his jacket, twisted his torso gracefully to slip through the narrow pocket between two collapsing stars, and compressed the space beneath his boots to flash-step across vast light-years in the blink of an eye.
Zane materialized directly inside Despair's guard. His fists blurred into a relentless, high-impact combination of close-quarters striking. Zane drove a crushing right hook straight into the side of Despair's jaw, followed instantly by a rapid-fire barrage of palm strikes aimed at the demon's chest and a brutal, downward elbow that target the collarbone.
BANG! BANG! CRACK!
Every single punch Zane landed generated a shockwave that shattered the floating crusts of distant, ruined moons. The sheer force of his strikes was enough to flattened the entire planet.
Yet, despite the precision and overwhelming force of the assault, Despair was winning, out powering Zane in every way.
The demon did not even flinch. The cracks Zane tore into his white face mask simply mended themselves instantly, the dark, vaporous miasma flowing back into the wounds.
Despair's physical output was monstrous, completely exceeding the limits of human muscle and bone. Catching Zane's final left hook with his open, clawed palm, Despair smiled, his jaw unhinging to mock the warrior.
"Your speed is admirable, Zane, but your hatred and guilt is holding you back" Despair laughed.
With a brutal, strength, Despair twisted his wrist, swinging Zane through the void like a ragdoll.
The demon unleashed a devastating, close-range counter-assault. He drove a heavy, dark-infused knee straight into Zane's sternum, the impact emitting a dull, sickening THUD that echoed through the vacuum.
Before Zane could recover his balance, Despair spun on his heel, delivering a sweeping, wide-arched backhand that caught Zane squarely across the face, sending him rocketing backwards through space at supersonic velocities.
Zane crashed violently through a cluster of floating, crystalline asteroids, his body shattering the ancient space rocks into millions of glittering fragments. He managed to force his boots down against a drifting piece of planetary crust, halting his momentum, but a thick stream of dark blood leaked from his lips, his chest heaving under the immense, crushing weight of the demon's physical superiority.
Every living creature in the moving planet felt the planet shake.
The sheer scale of their hand-to-hand combat was so extraordinarily dense that the shockwaves traveled through the foundational layers of the gargantuan world.