Meanwhile back to SHATTERX:
Alina Icter continued to rain down a slow, silent deluge of shimmering crystalline shards.
In the center of the impact zone stood SHATTERX. His towering, muscular frame stood stark against the blue light, defined by pale, wood-like bark skin that twisted up into an intricate crown of branches atop his head.
Four golden hoop earrings glinted from those branches, rattling softly with every movement.
A heavy necklace of massive white prayer beads rested against his bare, chiseled chest, contrasting sharply with the long katana tucked into the purple sash of his hakama-like trousers.
Right now, his singular, vertical crimson eye was clouded over with a milky, unfocused film.
One of Alina's shards had sliced cleanly across his silver shoulder pauldron, and the psychological payload of the curse had taken hold—his memories and instincts were completely fractured, leaving him staring blankly into the void, frozen in deep, existential confusion.
"Do it now, Lenny!" Alina screamed from the ridge, her pale face slick with sweat. "He's fighting back I can't hold his mind for long!"
Captain Lenny D Mic didn't waste a single microsecond. Lunging forward across the scorched gravel, the 7th Division Captain drew a deep, explosive breath into his lungs. He brought his hands up to his mouth in a megaphone shape, his vocal cords vibrating with a high-frequency hum that made the surrounding air distort like a heat mirage.
"Solid Wall !" Lenny roared.
The sheer volume of his voice didn't create a destructive shockwave; instead, the sound waves compressed instantly upon leaving his lips, rapidly densifying into four massive, translucent plates of solid sound.
The invisible, bulletproof barriers slammed down violently around SHATTERX, forming a seamless, airtight geometric cage that pinned his limbs.
Simultaneously, Captain Torin Kez stepped past Lenny, his eyes glowing with a feral, amber light as his creature summoning activated.
He slammed his palm hard onto the ground, a massive, obsidian summoning circle expanding rapidly beneath his boots.
"Awake, Dread-Beast of the Abyss!" Torin bellowed, his voice echoing through the trenches.
The earth groaned as a massive, armored tectonic hound—.
The beast stood twelve feet tall, its obsidian hide covered in razor-sharp crystal spikes. With a deafening roar, the Dread-Beast lunged forward, slamming its massive, boulder-like paws onto the top of Lenny's solid sound cage, adding thousands of pounds of raw physical pressure to keep SHATTERX anchored into the bedrock.
"JJ, roll the slot! We need a heavy finisher before he breaks the seals!" Torin shouted,
Vice-Captain Jane Jiren—JJ—was already in motion. Sliding into a defensive crouch behind a ruined pillar, he slammed his hand against his chest.
With a loud, mechanical *CLANG*, a massive, glowing neon gambling machine materialized out of thin air right beside him.
The machine whirred to life, its digital reels spinning at blinding speed as a massive, floating six-sided die materialized above his head,
"Come on, lucky number seven! Daddy needs a planet-busting nuke!" JJ cheered maniacally, leaping into the air and driving his elbow down onto the machine's primary lever.
The reels spun: *Seven... Seven...* and finally settled on a glowing, golden *Four*.
The floating die above his head snapped down, shattering into data fragments that absorbed directly into JJ's body.
Instantly, his uniform began to crackle with blue, high-voltage plasma. His gambling dice had granted him a temporary, high-tier **Lightning Manipulation** Evolith.
"Not a seven, but it'll damn well do!" JJ grinned, his eyes lighting up with blue electricity as he sprinted toward the trapped enemy, his hands gathering a massive, crackling sphere of lightning.
SHATTERX's single vertical eye suddenly shattered. The confusion of the *Star-Fall Curse* evaporated, replaced instantly by an explosive, terrifying wave of pure, unbridled malice.
The gold rings in his head branches chimed aggressively as he snapped out of the trance, his eye locking onto the solid sound plates encasing him.
"Insolent, short-lived vermin!" SHATTERX hissed, his voice sounding like grinding glass.
He didn't draw his katana yet. Instead, SHATTERX simply flexed the fingers of his left hand, pressing his pale, bark-like palm directly against the inside of Lenny's solid sound barrier.
He pushed against the weight on he's body.
*CRACK-BOOM!*
The solid sound walls fractured like brittle glass, detonating outward in a violent storm of razor-sharp acoustic shrapnel.
The sheer kinetic backlash of the explosion tore through the atmosphere, ripping the giant white prayer beads against his chest. The explosive fragments slammed directly into Torin's Dread-Beast, pulverizing its obsidian armor and forcing the creature to dissolve back into a pool of gray mist with a pained howl.
Lenny D Mic took the brunt of the shockwave, his ears bleeding as the shattered frequencies of his own technique blasted him backward.
He rolled over the stone floorboards, his boots tearing deep grooves into the dirt before he forced himself back into a defensive crouch.
SHATTERX lunged through the dissipating smoke, his orange robe billowing wildly behind him.
His movement was flawless, fluid, He closed the distance to Lenny in a fraction of a heartbeat, his bare, wood-textured fist cocked back to deliver a strike that would kill the captain upon impact.
"I don't think so!" JJ's voice roared from above.
JJ dropped from the sky like a blue meteor, utilizing the electric propulsion of his temporary lightning ability.
He intercepted the trajectory, driving a lightning-clad elbow strike directly down toward SHATTERX's head.
SHATTERX intercepted the blow without breaking his stride. Raising his left arm, his silver pauldron caught the brunt of JJ's descending elbow. Lightning arcs welded across the metal, scorching the surface and sending bright blue plasma cascading over his pale shoulders, but the enemy didn't yield an inch. With a cold, calculated twist of his torso, SHATTERX used his free hand to grip the front of JJ's tactical vest.
*He's incredibly fast,* SHATTERX thought, his vertical eye tracking the residual electricity humming through JJ's muscles. *This wildcard can switch attributes at random. If I allow him to cycle through his techniques, he would be a problem.*
SHATTERX channeled a burst of energy directly into the fabric of the vest.
The material dissolved into an explosive blast of high-velocity threads that detonated right against JJ's chest, launching the vice-captain backward through the air like a broken doll.
Before SHATTERX could pursue the falling vice-captain, Torin Kez crossed the gap.
His amber summoning circles flared around both of his wrists like roaring fires.
He knew he couldn't match the raw structural destruction of the enemy's hands, so he changed his martial approach entirely.
"Sky-Scythe Wyvern! Obsidian Golem! Python of the Trench! Merge!" Torin roared.
Instead of spawning the creatures independently onto the field, Torin forced the raw, spectral essences of his three most powerful tamed beasts to condense directly over his own right arm.
His limb transformed, encased in a massive, monstrous gauntlet of shifting bone scales, dense stone plates, and razor-sharp reptilian talons.
Torin lunged forward, executing a brutal, low-weaving slip beneath a sweeping palm strike from SHATTERX.
Utilizing the massive physical leverage of his creature-fused arm, Torin drove a devastating, heavy right hook straight toward the center of the enemy's exposed chest.
SHATTERX's vertical eye tracked the massive gauntlet.
he quickly brought his forearms together in a cross-block, his heavy white prayer beads clinking violently as the impact landed.
*BANG—!!!*
The sheer physical force of Torin's fused strike generated a massive, deafening shockwave that tore across the area, shattering the remaining stone spires into fine powder.
The bedrock beneath their feet cracked and groaned, depressed into a shallow bowl from the absolute downward pressure.
SHATTERX was forced backward, his sandals scraping sharply across the stone floorboards as the friction scorched his purple hakama pants.