Zer0RUIN stood perfectly still amidst the cracked bedrock, his long, spectral white hair drifting in the cold wind.
The halo of organic, demonic eyes floating around his shoulders stopped their frantic tracking for a split second, their pupils dilating in sudden, genuine shock.
The crimson cross on his obsidian chest plate—still dripping blood from the massive fracture Zarek Solis had dealt it—flickered unevenly.
*What just happened?* Zer0RUIN thought to himself, his mind racing as a cold spike of disbelief hit his chest. *I can't feel DOOMTAG's presence. Could she have been taken down? No... that's completely impossible. Those human don't stand a chance,so What could have—*
*FRAME GLITCH.*
The dimensional fabric right beside his left temple tore open with a sharp, static hiss. Before Zer0RUIN could shift his weight, Zorin Lyx materialized from the localized digital corruption, his body flickering like a broken video file.
Zorin hauled his arm back, channeling a high-frequency vibration into his knuckles as he delivered a brutal, straight right punch directly into the side of Zer0RUIN's jaw.
*BANG!*
The impact Snapped zeroruin head sideways, forcing him to stumble two steps across the loose gravel.
Zorin landed lightly on his feet, a confident, mocking grin plastered across his face as his form glitched a millimeter to the left.
"Hey, eye man, what's wrong?" Zorin sneered, cracking his knuckles as his body rapidly blurred in and out of reality. "Are you scared?"
Zer0RUIN's central eye snapped toward Zorin, burning with an unholy, crimson rage. "Insolent insect!" he roared, swinging his arm in a wide arc.
A wave of absolute destruction power erupted from his palm, aiming to vaporize the vice-captain on the spot.
Zorin didn't even try to duck. He simply glitched. The crimson wave of energy passed entirely through his translucent afterimage, obliterating a massive boulder fifty meters behind him into fine powder, but leaving Zorin completely untouched.
As the energy passed, Lady Ness surged forward from the opposite side.
She slammed both hands into the earth, unleashing a massive, swarm of parasite that traveled through the air like a dense, living fog.
The parasites bypassed Zer0RUIN's external defense aura, swarming over his open chest wound and aggressively burrowing into his exposed muscle tissues to eat him from the inside out.
Zer0RUIN hissed in discomfort, his floating demonic eyes spinning violently as they fired a synchronized, rapid-fire barrage of crimson lasers downward to cleanse his own skin. The intense heat incinerated the parasites, but the distraction was already complete.
"Hold him Tessa!" Lady Ness shouted, her fingers twitching as she controlled the secondary swarm.
Tessa Sol launched herself off a ruined pillar, her hands thrown wide. Hundreds of micro-thin, razor-sharp metallic wires zipped through the pressurized air, weaving an intricate, steel-hard web around Zer0RUIN's limbs.
The threads wrapped tightly around his throat, wrists, and ankles, anchoring his body directly to the heavy, deep-set bedrock floorboards.
" Captain Zarek, move!" Tessa screamed, her gloves tearing open due to the immense physical pull.
Zarek Solis didn't say a word. His expression was dead serious, completely locked in. He sprinted forward across the cracked stones, his boots kicking up dust as he hauled his massive, heavy greatsword over his right shoulder. He didn't waste time looking for a signal; he relied entirely on raw, devastating martial leverage.
Zarek leaped into the air, bringing the massive blade down in a vertical execution strike aimed directly at the center of Zer0RUIN's skull.
Zer0RUIN's floating eyes tracked the descending blade.
Unable to lift his arms due to Tessa's restricting threads, zeroruin focused the collective kinetic power of three floating eyes into a localized, invisible barrier of pure destruction right above his head.
Zarek's massive blade slammed into the crimson barrier with a deafening *CRASH*. The shockwave of the blade hitting the shield sent a heavy, gale-force wind sweeping across the center flank, shattering the surrounding stone floorboards into millions of tiny fragments.
"I've had enough!" Zer0RUIN bellowed, his muscles swelling as he flexed his torso outward.
The absolute, raw density of his destruction aura exploded from his frame, snapping Tessa's razor threads all at once.
The backlash of the snapped threads sent Tessa skidding backward, blood dripping from her fingertips.
Zer0RUIN immediately utilized the freedom of his right arm to launch a high-velocity palm strike directly into Zarek's midsection while the captain was still airborne.
Zarek reacted with flawless defensive instinct.
He rapidly shifted the orientation of his massive greatsword, placing the flat of the heavy blade in front of his torso to act as an impromptu shield.
*BOOM!*
Zer0RUIN's palm struck the flat of Zarek's blade, the sheer output launching the 4th Division Captain backward through the air.
Zarek flipped gracefully mid-flight, driving the tip of his big blade deep into the stone floorboards to slide himself to a halt, leaving a twenty-foot groove in the bedrock.
"Behind you again, slow-poke," Zorin Lyx's voice glitched from the air right above Zer0RUIN's neck.
Zorin reappeared in a split-second frame drop, driving a hard, double-axe handle strike down onto Zer0RUIN's injured shoulder blade. The blow connected, forcing the zeroruin down to one knee, but Zer0RUIN's floating eyes immediately spun 180 degrees, firing three overlapping laser beams at point-blank range.
Zorin glitched out of existence a millisecond before the lasers could touch his chest, reappearing five feet away on the gravel, panting slightly as the continuous spatial displacement began to drain his stamina.
Lady Ness capitalized on the opening instantly. Sprinting past Zorin, she threw a handful of condensed, crystalline pods toward Zer0RUIN's face.
The pods burst upon contact, releasing an advanced strain of airborne neuro-parasites that aggressively targeted his sensory organs. Zer0RUIN's vision instantly blurred, a thick, dark film clouding his floating eyes as the parasites began disrupting his cognitive perception.
"Damn it!" Zer0RUIN roared, blindly swinging his massive fists in a frantic, omnidirectional flurry.
His fists cleaved through the air, creating violent spatial distortions that tore up the ground floorboards.
Tessa Sol expertly navigated the chaos, her body moving with gymnastic fluidity as she ducked beneath his blind swings.
As she slid under his guard, she threw her hands upward, sending another volley of metallic threads wrapping around his ankles, violently pulling his legs out from under him.
Zer0RUIN crashed heavily onto his back, his blurred vision and the parasites inside his chest wound keeping him disoriented.
Zarek Solis surged forward once more, his boots pounding against the stone. Holding his massive blade with a white-knuckled grip, he executed a powerful, low horizontal sweep. The heavy edge of the big blade cut deeply into Zer0RUIN's flesh, fracturing the dense skin and drawing a thick stream of blood.
Zer0RUIN howled in pure, unbridled fury. The red cross on his chest flashed with a blinding, apocalyptic light as he forced his body to stand through the pain. The floating eyes around his shoulders grew twice their original size, their pupils glowing with a catastrophic crimson hue.
" Get off me !" Zer0RUIN screamed, preparing to unleash an omnidirectional wave of total destruction that would leave nothing alive in the center flank.
Zorin Lyx glitched directly into his line of sight, his expr
ession dead serious as he prepared his next move.