The land did not celebrate their fall.
Where Wrath and Envy had vanished, there was no relief—no cleansing wind, no sense of balance restored. The ravine behind him lay shattered and scorched, stone still warm where names had been forced into reality by will alone. Two new weights rested within the reinforced box at his side.
Assassin.
Lancer.
They were silent.
He moved on anyway.
Each step was deliberate. Pain followed him like a shadow that refused to detach—his ribs screamed when he breathed too deeply, his left arm still trembling faintly from the echo of impact. The Archer card rested against his chest once more whole, no longer fractured, but its presence was heavier now. Not broken.
Sharpened.
The highlands descended into a wide valley of ruin.
This place had once been alive. Wide stone roads crisscrossed the land, cracked but unmistakably deliberate in their design. Collapsed arches jutted from the earth like broken ribs. Wagons lay flattened, splintered beyond recognition. Bones—too large to belong to any ordinary beast—were half-buried beneath rubble, bleached and shattered.
He slowed.
The air here felt claimed.
Not distorted by illusion.
Not pressed down by rage.
It was ownership—quiet, suffocating, absolute.
A low sound rolled across the valley.
Not a roar.
A breath.
Then came footsteps.
Heavy. Measured. Each one sank deep into the earth, leaving impressions that did not fade, as though the land itself refused to forget being stepped on.
He lifted his gaze.
The figure emerged from behind the ruins of a collapsed aqueduct.
Greed.
He was enormous—taller than Wrath had been, broader, denser. His body looked less like flesh and more like something grown for endurance alone. Crude armor wrapped his frame, not forged so much as layered on through repetition—thick plates warped by countless impacts, fused together unnaturally, as if repaired again and again without regard for elegance.
His skin was bronzed and scarred, etched with old wounds that had healed wrong, crooked lines overlapping one another. Veins bulged along his arms like iron cables beneath skin. His hair hung wild and dark around a face that might once have been noble, now locked into an expression of permanent acquisition.
Not hunger.
Possession.
His hands were empty.
He did not need a weapon.
The space around him felt subtly displaced, as if reality itself leaned away from his presence.
Greed's eyes fixed on him.
Bright. Clear. Intelligent.
Calculating.
"So," Greed said, voice deep and resonant, carrying easily across the ruined valley. "You're the one who's been collecting what doesn't belong to you."
The boy stopped at the edge of the broken road.
"I remove what shouldn't exist," he replied evenly. "There's a difference."
Greed laughed.
The sound shook dust from broken stone and sent a dull tremor through the ground.
"Is there?" he asked, spreading his arms slightly, as if welcoming the devastation around them. "Everything here exists because I allowed it to keep doing so."
He stepped forward.
The earth cracked beneath his foot.
"I don't steal," Greed continued calmly. "I keep."
Another step.
The pressure thickened—not crushing, but asserting. A declaration rather than an attack.
"I take," Greed said, smiling now, teeth too white against scarred skin, "and what I take stays mine."
The boy's stance shifted subtly, feet planting more firmly. Mana flowed—controlled, restrained, coiling beneath his skin like tension drawn into steel.
"You're wrong," the boy said.
Greed tilted his head, curious.
"You mistake possession for permanence."
For the first time, something like amusement flickered through Greed's eyes.
"Prove it."
The boy inhaled.
Mana surged.
Steel answered his call, forming with familiar weight and certainty in his hands. The Archer card responded—not violently, not recklessly—but with grim readiness.
Greed moved.
The distance between them vanished in an instant.
The first clash detonated across the valley, stone exploding outward as blade met flesh—
—and the world learned that this battle would not end quickly.
Not cleanly.
And not the way the boy expected.
Because when he would finally strike true—
when one of Greed's lives would be taken—
only then would the rule reveal itself.
And only then would the real fight begin.
The impact should have ended it.
Steel met flesh with a sound like a mountain splitting—mana compressed into a killing edge, force focused with absolute intent. The blade buried itself deep into Greed's torso, carving through muscle, bone, and whatever lay beneath with merciless precision.
The boy did not hesitate.
He twisted, wrenched the weapon free, and leapt back as blood sprayed across the shattered road.
Greed staggered.
For half a heartbeat, the giant actually fell to one knee.
The ground cracked outward in a spiderweb pattern, dust and fragments leaping into the air. Greed's breath hitched, a deep, rumbling sound forced from his chest.
The boy stayed ready, eyes locked, body coiled.
This was it.
The wound was catastrophic. Any human—any creature—would have collapsed. The strike had been clean, absolute, lethal.
Greed looked down at the gaping hole in his chest.
Then he laughed.
Not weakly.
Not desperately.
He laughed with genuine delight.
"Oh," Greed said, straightening slowly, blood pouring freely down his body. "That one hurt."
The wound began to close.
Not quickly.
Not cleanly.
But undeniably.
Muscle knitted together with an ugly, grinding motion. Bone shifted back into place with dull, sickening pops. Flesh crawled over itself like something remembering how it was supposed to exist.
The boy's breath caught.
He had seen regeneration before.
This was not regeneration.
This was refusal.
Greed rolled his shoulders once, as if testing his body, then lifted his gaze again. His eyes burned brighter now—excited, sharp, possessive.
"One," Greed said casually. "That was one."
The boy didn't respond.
He was already moving.
Mana surged again, this time heavier, denser. The air warped as a new shape began to form in his hands—larger, broader, impossibly curved. The pressure alone bent the light around it.
A spiral of steel manifested.
Not a blade meant for precision.
A weapon meant to end things.
Greed's grin widened.
"Yes," he breathed. "That's it. Show me what you really have."
The boy planted his feet.
The valley seemed to lean inward, as if reality itself wanted to witness what came next.
Mana roared through his circuits, pain flaring as he forced far more than his body wanted to handle. The weapon finished forming—vast, brutal, twisted like a coiled comet frozen in metal.
He raised it.
His voice did not shake.
"—Caladbolg."
The throw split the world.
The weapon tore forward, space folding violently around its path. Stone vaporized. Air screamed. The spiral blade struck Greed dead center, detonating with catastrophic force.
The explosion erased everything within its radius.
For a moment, there was nothing but light and ruin.
Then the dust fell.
The valley was gone—replaced by a massive crater, edges still glowing faintly with residual mana. At its center lay Greed's body.
Broken.
Crushed.
Pulverized.
Limbs twisted at impossible angles. Armor shattered. His chest was no longer recognizable as a chest at all—just destruction.
Silence stretched.
The boy stood at the crater's edge, chest heaving, vision swimming. Blood ran freely now from his nose, from the corners of his mouth. His hands shook violently.
That had taken everything.
If that didn't work—
Something moved.
A low sound echoed from the crater.
A chuckle.
Greed's body twitched.
Then it moved.
Slowly, inexorably, Greed pushed himself upright. Bones shifted back into place. Flesh crawled, reformed, reclaimed. The damage undone not by speed, but by certainty—as if death itself had been informed it was not permitted to stay.
Greed stood again.
This time, there was no laughter.
Only satisfaction.
"Good," he said, rolling his neck once. "That one counted."
The boy's heart sank.
Greed lifted his gaze, eyes locking onto him with absolute certainty.
"Now," Greed continued, stepping out of the crater, each footfall shaking the ground, "try it again."
The weight of the truth pressed down on the boy's chest—not yet understood, not yet named, but undeniable.
Killing him once meant nothing.
And whatever this was—
—it would not allow the same mistake twice.
The impact should have killed him.
The moment Greed closed the distance, the world collapsed into motion—one step, one shift of weight, and then the sword came down.
Not a spear.
A slab of stone sharpened by slaughter.
The blade was grotesque in its simplicity, wider than it was elegant, its surface cracked and veined like an ancient ruin torn free from the earth. It did not gleam. It did not shine. It drank light, swallowed momentum, and carried the kind of weight that did not ask permission to exist.
The boy reacted on instinct alone.
Tracing—now—
Steel flashed into his hands, a longsword formed in less than a breath.
It shattered.
The stone blade struck through it as if it were smoke, the force detonating outward in a concussive wave that pulverized the ground beneath them. The boy was hurled back, body spinning, ribs screaming as he smashed into broken terrain and skidded through gravel and shattered rock.
He barely rolled aside before the sword struck again.
The ground exploded.
Stone disintegrated into dust and shrapnel, the trench carved through the earth deep enough to expose raw bedrock. The shockwave tore past him, ripping the air from his lungs and slamming him hard against a half-buried pillar.
He coughed blood.
Greed did not slow.
He advanced through the destruction without urgency, massive frame steady, the stone sword resting against his shoulder as if it weighed nothing at all. Each step left fractures in the ground, the earth protesting his existence.
"You adapt quickly," Greed said, voice calm, almost amused. "But you still think this is a contest of weapons."
The boy forced himself upright, boots scraping against loose stone. His arms trembled—not from fear, but from strain. Tracing again would buy him seconds at best.
Greed swung.
Not wide.
Not reckless.
The sword descended in a brutally efficient arc.
The boy leapt back, tracing mid-air—
A shield formed.
It didn't shatter.
It ceased.
The blade passed through it like judgment, the remaining force slamming into the ground and throwing the boy aside like debris. He hit hard, breath torn from his chest, vision flickering.
Too heavy.
Too fast.
Too absolute.
Greed adjusted his grip, stone grinding softly as the blade shifted in his hands.
"You already killed me once," he said.
The boy's breath hitched.
Greed smiled.
Not cruel.
Certain.
He stepped forward and swung again.
The boy traced desperately—short blades, curved edges, anything to redirect—
Nothing held.
Every contact ended the same way: weapons shattered, defenses erased, the stone blade advancing without loss of momentum. Each impact rattled his bones, drove pain deeper into his body, forced him closer to collapse.
Then—
An opening.
The boy saw it—not in Greed's stance, but in the timing. The brief moment after a full swing, when the sword's weight had to settle before it could rise again.
He acted.
Mana surged.
A spiral of compressed force formed in his hands, violent and unstable, screaming as it took shape.
He hurled it.
The projectile tore through the air like a drilling star and slammed into Greed's chest.
The explosion was deafening.
Stone, dust, and shockwaves consumed the battlefield. The ground cratered inward, debris launching skyward in a towering plume. The force alone should have erased anything human.
Silence followed.
The boy staggered, breathing hard, blood running freely now. His legs shook beneath him, threatening to give out.
Then—
Greed walked out of the dust.
His armor was scorched.
Cracked.
But intact.
The wound in his chest—if it could be called that—was already sealing, stone knitting itself back together with a sound like grinding mountains.
Greed rolled his shoulder once.
"You took one," he said calmly.
The boy froze.
Greed lifted the sword again.
"Do not mistake that for progress."
The pressure hit him then—not mana, not killing intent, but finality. The weight of something that had already died and refused to stay dead.
The boy clenched his teeth.
So that was it.
Not regeneration.
Not endurance.
Persistence.
The sword came down again.
The boy moved on instinct, diving sideways as the blade struck, the impact collapsing the ground behind him into a jagged chasm. He barely caught himself at the edge, fingers digging into stone as debris rained into the abyss below.
Greed stood above him, silhouette massive against the fractured sky.
"One life gone," he said. "Eleven remain."
The boy hauled himself up, chest heaving, body screaming in protest.
For the first time since the fight began—
He smiled.
"Good," he rasped. "Then I won't waste them."
Greed raised the sword.
The ground cracked beneath his feet.
And the second death loomed closer than the first.
Greed came down on him like a falling mountain.
The stone sword screamed through the air, not because it cut it—but because the air failed to move out of the way fast enough. The boy rolled beneath the descending arc, feeling the pressure tear past his spine as the blade struck behind him and collapsed the ground outright, the impact punching a shockwave that lifted him off his feet mid-motion.
He twisted in the air, traced—
Twin short swords formed just long enough to bite.
Steel met stone.
For the first time, Greed was forced to adjust.
The swords didn't stop the blade, but they shaved its trajectory, altering the angle by a fraction. The stone sword crashed into the earth instead of cleaving him in two, detonating debris upward like a volcanic eruption.
The boy landed hard, knees buckling, but he didn't stop moving.
He couldn't.
Greed followed immediately, ripping the blade free and swinging horizontally, the sheer reach of the weapon turning the battlefield itself into a killing zone. The boy sprinted toward the attack instead of away from it, sliding beneath the sweeping arc as stone screamed inches above his head.
He traced mid-slide.
A spear.
He hurled it upward at point-blank range.
Greed didn't dodge.
The spear shattered against his chest, exploding into fragments of mana that scattered uselessly across his armor. Greed stepped forward through the debris and kicked.
The impact caught the boy in the ribs and sent him flying end over end, slamming into a broken pillar hard enough to split it cleanly in half. He bounced, skidded, and barely managed to roll before the stone sword plunged down where his head had been.
Too slow.
Too heavy.
Too relentless.
Greed lifted the blade again, expression unchanged.
"You adapt," he said. "But you still think like a survivor."
The boy spat blood and forced himself upright, tracing again—not weapons this time, but movement. His body moved before thought caught up, feet skidding sideways, leaping onto broken terrain, using elevation and debris to break line and rhythm.
Greed tracked him anyway.
The stone sword struck the ground ahead of the boy, not aiming to hit him—but to reshape the battlefield. The earth buckled, stone slabs rising and collapsing, forcing the boy to leap, twist, and rebound mid-motion just to stay alive.
Greed was controlling space.
So the boy changed the rules.
He vaulted off a falling slab and traced mid-air—dozens of blades flashing into existence at once, not to strike Greed, but to pin the environment. Swords embedded themselves into stone, walls, debris—creating artificial anchors, altering trajectories, giving him places to land that hadn't existed a heartbeat before.
Greed paused.
Just for a fraction of a second.
The boy used it.
He launched himself forward, tracing a heavy two-handed sword mid-charge and driving it straight into Greed's shoulder joint, pouring mana into the strike until the blade screamed.
The sword shattered.
But the force twisted Greed's stance.
Enough.
The boy followed with a kick to the knee, then a spinning slash with a new blade, carving a deep gouge across Greed's thigh. Stone cracked. Dust burst outward.
Greed grunted.
Not in pain.
In acknowledgment.
"Better," he said.
Then he backhanded the boy with the flat of the sword.
The hit crushed the air itself, slamming into the boy's chest and launching him like a projectile across the field. He hit the ground hard, bounced once, and skidded until he slammed into a rock wall and stayed there.
His vision swam.
His body screamed.
Greed advanced again, stone sword dragging a furrow through the earth with every step.
"You learn," Greed continued. "But learning won't save you."
The boy coughed, forcing himself upright against the wall.
"No," he said hoarsely.
He traced again.
This time—he didn't choose a weapon.
He chose weight.
A massive axe formed above him and dropped—not at Greed, but at the ground between them. The impact shattered the terrain, throwing up a wall of debris and dust that briefly obscured sight.
Greed swung blindly through it.
The blade hit nothing.
The boy was already gone.
He emerged from the dust at Greed's flank, tracing a long, narrow blade and driving it straight into the seam beneath Greed's ribs. Mana detonated outward in a focused burst.
Stone cracked violently.
Greed staggered one full step back.
The boy didn't let him recover.
He pressed in—slashes, thrusts, kicks, blades appearing and vanishing in rapid succession, not trying to overpower, but to test, to mark, to map. Each strike taught him something new: resistance thresholds, recovery timing, the way Greed's body reasserted itself after damage.
Greed roared.
Not in rage.
In excitement.
He slammed the stone sword down with both hands, releasing a shockwave that ripped outward in a perfect circle. The boy was caught mid-strike and hurled away, body smashing through debris and skidding to a halt in a spray of blood and stone.
Greed planted the sword into the ground and looked at him.
"You're starting to understand," he said.
The boy dragged himself upright, shaking, blood dripping from his chin.
"Yeah," he replied.
He looked at his hands.
At the fading traces.
At the memories trying to surface.
"I am."
The ground trembled again.
Greed pulled the sword free and raised it high—mana surging, pressure spiking, the battlefield itself screaming in protest.
The boy felt it.
This wasn't another swing.
This was escalation.
And somewhere deep within him, something answered back—
not strength,
not certainty,
but recognition.
The fight had crossed a line.
And neither of them could step back anymore.
The impact reverberated through the battlefield like a tolling bell.
Greed's massive form was driven backward, boots carving trenches into stone as the crimson spear completed its impossible arc. Gáe Bolg did not explode. It did not flash. It simply arrived—rewriting the moment so that the wound had always been there.
The spearhead burst from Greed's chest in a violent bloom of blood and fractured armor.
For a heartbeat, the world froze.
Greed stared down at the weapon impaled through him, eyes wide—not in pain, not in disbelief, but in recognition.
"…Ah."
His knees struck the ground with a force that shattered the stone beneath him. The weight of his body alone cracked the earth outward in spiderweb fractures, dust and debris thrown high into the air.
The boy staggered back immediately.
He did not watch in triumph.
He raised his arm instead—just in time.
A wall of petals manifested before him.
Rho Aias.
Seven layered barriers of interlocking crimson shields unfolded in a half-circle as Greed's collapsing body detonated outward in raw backlash. The shockwave slammed into the shield, each layer cracking in sequence, petals shattering and dissolving into light until only the final one held.
The boy was thrown backward anyway.
He rolled across broken stone, breath tearing from his lungs, blood streaking the ground where his body struck. The shield vanished in a rain of fading fragments as he skidded to a halt on one knee, coughing violently.
His vision swam.
His chest burned like it had been torn open from the inside.
But he was alive.
Across the battlefield, Greed's corpse did not remain a corpse.
Stone crawled back over flesh.
Muscle rewove itself with violent force. Blood reversed its flow, pulling itself back into veins that reformed mid-motion. Cracks in armor sealed with a grinding scream of metal on metal.
Greed inhaled.
Deep.
Slow.
He rose again.
Not untouched.
A fracture remained across his chestplate, thin but unmistakable—a scar that refused to vanish completely.
Greed placed one massive hand over it.
"…So," he said, voice lower now, heavier. "That makes two."
The words were not a threat.
They were an inventory.
Ten lives remained.
The boy forced himself upright, legs trembling violently as the reality settled into his bones. His circuits screamed. Tracing Rho Aias had nearly shattered him. Forcing Gáe Bolg through causality had ripped something fundamental loose inside his body.
But it had worked.
Once.
Twice.
Greed rolled his neck slowly, then lifted his stone sword again, resting its massive weight against his shoulder. Now, with the dust cleared, his full form was unmistakable.
He was colossal—nearly twice the boy's height, body carved like a monument to endurance rather than beauty. His skin bore the color of weathered bronze, etched with old scars that looked older than memory itself. His armor was brutal and utilitarian, layered plates fused directly to his frame in places, as if he had worn it through countless deaths and refused to remove it even once.
His eyes burned red—not mad, not wild.
Patient.
"You're not chipping away at me," Greed said calmly. "You're committing."
He took a single step forward.
The ground sank beneath his foot.
"Every strike you use," he continued, "is one you don't expect to survive."
The pressure surged again—denser now, heavier, crushing the air until breathing felt like resistance itself.
"Ten lives," Greed said. "Ten different deaths."
The boy wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. His arms shook. His body begged him to stop.
His eyes did not.
"Then don't blink," he said hoarsely.
Because next time—
He wouldn't stop at one life.
Greed moved first.
Not with speed—but with certainty.
The massive stone blade came down in a vertical arc that split the battlefield in two. The boy leapt aside as the ground where he had stood ceased to exist, pulverized into a crater that belched dust and broken rock skyward.
The shockwave alone flung him backward.
He twisted midair, barely landing on his feet before Greed was already there—impossibly close, sword sweeping low in a horizontal cleave meant to take him at the knees.
Steel screamed into existence.
A traced longsword intercepted the strike—
—and shattered instantly.
Fragments ripped into the boy's arms and chest as the impact hurled him across the stone like a discarded doll. He rolled hard, shoulder slamming into the ground, vision flashing white as pain detonated through his side.
Greed did not pursue.
He stalked.
Each step sent tremors through the earth, pressure bearing down on the boy like gravity itself had decided he was unnecessary.
The boy forced himself upright, blood dripping steadily from torn flesh. He traced again—short blade, light, disposable—and hurled it forward. The weapon spun end over end, not meant to kill but to buy time.
Greed caught it.
Barehanded.
Stone fingers crushed the blade to powder.
"That one doesn't count," Greed said calmly.
The boy didn't answer.
He was already moving.
He sprinted forward instead of away, ducking low as Greed swung overhead, the blade passing so close it shaved strands of greyed hair from his head. He slid beneath the giant's reach, came up inside his guard, and drove a spear upward toward the gap beneath Greed's arm.
The spear bent.
Snapped.
Greed brought his knee up like a battering ram.
The impact drove the air from the boy's lungs as he was launched backward again, skidding across stone, coughing blood as he struggled to breathe.
Too heavy.
Too strong.
Greed adjusted his grip on the sword.
"You're thinking like a man," he said. "That's your mistake."
He hurled the sword.
Not threw—
launched.
The weapon spun end over end, tearing through the air like a siege projectile. The boy traced desperately, crimson petals blooming as Rho Aias flared into existence just in time.
The blade hit.
One layer shattered.
Then another.
The force drove him backward, heels carving trenches as shield after shield collapsed in violent succession. The final layer barely held as the sword dropped, embedding itself into the ground inches from his face.
The shield dissolved.
The boy collapsed to one knee, shaking violently.
Greed was already retrieving his weapon.
"You defend well," Greed continued. "But defense is repetition."
The boy's eyes widened.
The ground beneath him exploded.
Greed's fist slammed down where he had knelt a moment earlier, forcing him to dive aside as stone and dust consumed the space. A follow-up kick caught him mid-roll, sending him tumbling across the battlefield again.
Greed pressed harder now.
Relentless.
No pauses.
No mercy.
Strike after strike rained down—overhead cleaves, thrusts meant to pin, sweeping blows that denied escape. The boy barely kept up, tracing and discarding weapons mid-motion, adapting constantly just to stay alive.
A sword shattered.
A spear failed.
A dagger glanced uselessly off stone skin.
Greed watched it all.
Learning.
"You change," he said. "But you don't evolve."
The boy felt it.
Each failed strike was narrowing his options.
Each blocked blow was closing doors.
Greed wasn't just surviving.
He was removing futures.
The boy staggered as another blow grazed him, armor and flesh tearing together. Blood soaked his sleeve. His breathing came ragged now, vision darkening at the edges.
Then—
Something shifted.
Not power.
Perspective.
For a fleeting instant, as Greed raised his blade again, the boy saw it.
Not the giant.
Not the sword.
But space.
The distance.
The timing.
The inevitability.
His heart skipped.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Greed's blade came down—
—and the boy stepped into it.
Not to block.
Not to flee.
But to intercept at the only angle Greed could not fully commit to without overextending.
Steel traced into his hand—different this time.
He didn't attack.
He set up.
Greed's eyes narrowed for the first time.
"Oh?"
The battlefield held its breath.
The boy smiled faintly, blood dripping from his chin.
"Now I see how to kill you."
Greed grinned.
"Good."
The world narrowed.
Greed stepped forward, sword rising again—confident, unhurried, utterly certain that whatever trick the boy had seen would fail like the rest.
That certainty was his mistake.
The boy did not trace immediately.
He waited.
Greed's blade came down in a diagonal cleave meant to crush him from shoulder to hip, an attack so heavy the air screamed in protest.
At the last possible instant—
The boy stepped inside the arc.
Steel tore into existence.
Not light.
Not disposable.
Not fragile.
A sword manifested in his hands with a weight that rejected the world's permission.
Long. Broad. Impossibly solid.
Its blade shone with a muted, unwavering radiance, edges so precise they seemed to divide the air rather than cut it. Runes flared faintly along the fuller—not decorative, not mystical flourish, but declarations of endurance.
Greed's eyes widened.
"That sword—"
Too late.
The boy braced both hands around the hilt and met the blow head-on.
Steel struck steel.
The impact did not explode.
It stopped.
Greed's sword—capable of shattering mountains—halted mid-swing, locked against the traced blade as if reality itself had decided the clash would go no further.
The ground beneath them cracked in a perfect circle.
Greed pushed.
The boy did not move.
His boots dug in, stone pulverizing beneath his feet, but the blade held. The sword did not bend. Did not fracture. Did not acknowledge the force pressing against it.
Greed snarled, muscles bulging, power flooding into the strike.
"Impossible—!"
The boy looked up at him through blood-matted hair, eyes steady, clear.
"Durandal," he said quietly.
Then he pushed back.
The balance shifted.
Greed staggered half a step—just one—but it was enough.
The boy twisted the hilt and drove forward.
Durandal carved through stone flesh like it wasn't there.
The blade pierced Greed's torso cleanly, punching through armor, muscle, and bone in a single unstoppable line. The force carried through, erupting out his back in a burst of shattered stone and golden sparks.
Greed froze.
For a heartbeat, the world held still.
Then cracks raced across his body—jagged lines of glowing rupture spreading from the wound as the impossible truth asserted itself.
Greed looked down at the blade impaled through him.
"…That one counts," he said softly.
His body exploded outward in a violent shockwave, stone and light scattering across the battlefield as one of his lives was forcibly torn away.
The boy was thrown back by the backlash, skidding across the ground before crashing to one knee, Durandal dissolving from his hands as exhaustion hit like a hammer.
He coughed blood, chest heaving.
Greed reformed several paces away.
Stone knitted back together. Flesh reasserted itself. Armor sealed.
But something was different now.
Where once he had been immovable—
Now there was tension.
A faint glow pulsed beneath his skin, slower than before.
Nine lives remained.
Greed rolled his shoulders, testing the restored body, then looked at the boy with something new in his eyes.
Not contempt.
Not curiosity.
Respect.
"That blade," Greed said, lifting his sword again, "can kill me."
The boy dragged himself upright, shaking but unbowed.
"Yes," he replied. "And I won't use it again."
Greed laughed—deep, booming, delighted.
"Good," he said. "Then show me something else."
The battlefield trembled as he advanced once more.
The real fight had only just begun.
The ground bent beneath Greed's advance.
Stone did not merely crack—it yielded, compressing under weight that defied reason. Each step he took crushed the earth into powder, dust boiling upward in choking clouds as if the land itself recoiled from his existence.
Greed was immense.
Not simply tall, but dense, his frame built like a weapon forged for siege rather than battle. Muscle layered over muscle until his silhouette seemed carved from something harder than flesh. His skin bore the dull sheen of an inhuman blessing, etched with scars that crossed one another in brutal lattices—wounds that had once killed him, now reduced to meaningless history.
In his right hand rested the sword.
A slab of iron shaped into inevitability.
Thick. Rectangular. Brutal.
Its chipped edge carried no elegance, only certainty. Mana bent away from it instinctively, as if recognizing a hierarchy it could not challenge.
The boy stood opposite him.
Barely.
His breathing came shallow and uneven, blood soaking through his clothes and dripping onto fractured stone. One arm hung low, shoulder damaged, fingers trembling as if they no longer belonged to him. His legs shook when he shifted his weight, boots scraping weakly against the ground.
The Archer card pulsed faintly against his chest.
Stable.
But strained.
Greed regarded him silently for a long moment.
Then—
"You persist," he said, voice calm, unburdened by effort. "Despite having no path left."
The boy did not answer.
Greed moved.
The sword descended.
It wasn't fast.
It didn't need to be.
The sheer force behind it tore the air apart, pressure collapsing inward as the blade fell like a guillotine meant for mountains. The boy twisted aside at the last possible instant—
—and the impact detonated.
Stone exploded upward in a violent shockwave, fragments shredding the air as the boy was hurled backward. He twisted mid-flight, crashed hard into the ground, breath ripped violently from his lungs. Pain flared white-hot along his ribs.
Something cracked.
He forced himself to move anyway.
Steel folded into existence in his hand—short, light, meant for speed. He lunged forward, slipping inside Greed's reach, slashing upward toward the giant's thigh.
The blade shattered on contact.
Not blocked.
Not deflected.
Rejected.
Greed did not even flinch.
The sword reversed direction instantly, sweeping low. The boy traced again—another weapon forming just in time to intercept.
It snapped in half.
The impact sent him tumbling, ribs screaming as he skidded across stone. He rolled instinctively, barely avoiding another crushing blow that carved a trench through the earth where his head had been.
Greed advanced.
Relentless.
Each swing forced the boy to move. Each movement cost him more than the last. Traced weapons collapsed the instant they fulfilled their purpose, their mana structures unable to withstand the pressure of Greed's strength.
He couldn't trade blows.
He couldn't overpower him.
He couldn't wear him down.
And Greed was learning.
Every failed attempt refined the monster's timing. Every dodge tightened the noose. The intervals between strikes shortened until there was barely room to breathe.
A horizontal sweep caught him mid-step.
The sword slammed into his side.
Pain detonated.
He flew, body twisting helplessly before crashing through a standing slab of stone that shattered around him. He hit the ground hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs completely, vision flashing white as something inside him gave way.
Greed loomed over him, shadow swallowing what little light remained.
"You borrow strength," Greed said evenly. "But you do not own it."
The sword rose.
The boy's fingers dug weakly into the ground. His body refused to respond. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, drowning out everything else.
Then—
The world slipped.
Not darkness.
Not unconsciousness.
Motion without place.
He was running.
No—chasing.
The battlefield vanished, replaced by endless white stretching in all directions. No sky. No horizon. Just space. His breath came hard as he ran, legs moving without pain, without injury.
Ahead of him—
A man.
Broad-shouldered. Taller. Older.
Grey hair tied back loosely—but not fully grey. Strands of brown still threaded through it, stubborn remnants of what he once was. His posture was precise, efficient, stripped of hesitation. Every movement carried the weight of battles survived rather than won.
Familiar.
Painfully so.
"Wait—" the boy tried to shout.
No sound came.
The man did not slow.
They ran.
Memories bled into the air—steel ringing endlessly, battlefields layered atop one another, victories without celebration, survival without rest.
The man stopped.
Turned.
Their eyes met.
There was no warmth in that gaze.
No hostility either.
Only understanding.
The man raised his arm.
And the boy's bones screamed—not in pain—
—but recognition.
The world collapsed inward.
He was back.
Greed's sword was descending.
Time fractured.
The boy moved.
Not faster.
Simultaneously.
Steel erupted around him—not one weapon, not two, but many—manifesting and dissolving in overlapping flashes of silver and black. His body twisted into motion beyond thought, joints screaming as he stepped, lunged, and struck in a sequence that denied causality.
But this time—
The weapon in his hands did not shatter.
It was massive.
Rectangular.
Brutal.
The same sword Greed wielded.
He had traced it.
The boy's voice tore free from his chest, hoarse but absolute.
"Nine Lives—"
Greed's blade cleaved downward—
—and met resistance.
The boy was already inside the strike.
"—Blade Works."
The first blow pierced Greed's side, driven with terrifying precision. The traced sword dissolved the instant it fulfilled its purpose.
A second strike followed immediately, tearing upward through the abdomen.
A third crushed into the collarbone.
Each blow landed with a different traced instance of the same weapon, each collapsing into fragments of light the moment it struck.
Greed roared—not in pain—
—but disbelief.
The sequence accelerated.
The boy's body moved beyond limits, muscles tearing, nerves screaming as he executed the technique in full. Every motion was perfect. Every strike absolute.
A blade shattered against Greed's skull, snapping his head sideways.
Another pierced his back.
Another severed through the neck.
Greed swung wildly, sword carving through afterimages as the boy's form flickered across space.
Then—
The final strike.
The boy drove the traced sword straight through Greed's heart.
The world froze.
Greed staggered.
He looked down at himself.
Regeneration tried to begin.
Then failed.
All at once.
Nine lives ended.
Not sequentially.
Not gradually.
Simultaneously.
God Hand collapsed inward, unable to adapt, unable to reject, unable to comprehend a death that struck every remaining life at the same time.
Greed laughed softly.
"…So that's it."
His body cracked—not flesh, but concept—before disintegrating into ash and broken light. The massive sword dissolved with him, leaving nothing behind.
Silence followed.
The boy collapsed.
His body convulsed violently as blood poured from his mouth and nose. His limbs twitched uncontrollably, bones fractured, nerves overloaded. He lay gasping, vision swimming, barely conscious.
The Archer card pulsed once.
Then steadied.
Greed was gone.
Completely.
And the boy remained—
—at the cost of something he would never recover.
Silence settled slowly.
Not the sudden kind that followed destruction—but the hesitant kind, as if the world itself needed time to confirm that what had stood there no longer did.
Ash drifted where Greed had fallen.
It did not scatter on the wind. It simply fell, heavy and inert, piling against cracked stone like the remains of something too dense to return to nothing easily. The ground beneath it was scorched black, fractured in concentric rings that marked where a legend had finally failed to stand.
The boy lay amid the ruin.
He did not move.
His body was twisted at an unnatural angle, one arm folded beneath him, fingers clenched so tightly they had gone white. Blood stained the stone beneath his face, still warm, still spreading. His chest rose and fell unevenly, each breath shallow and delayed, as though his lungs needed to be reminded how to work.
Pain existed everywhere at once.
Not sharp.
Not loud.
Just constant.
The kind that made thought feel optional.
Nine Lives Blade Works had not ended when the strikes stopped.
It lingered in his bones. In his joints. In the torn pathways of his circuits, still smoldering from the act of forcing a mortal body to perform something meant only for legends. His muscles spasmed intermittently, nerves misfiring as if confused about whether the fight was truly over.
For a long time, he did not open his eyes.
When he finally did, the sky above him was pale and empty.
No clouds.
No signs.
Just indifferent blue stretching endlessly onward.
"So," he murmured, voice barely audible. "That's how it ends."
No answer came.
He laughed weakly—once—and immediately regretted it as pain flared along his ribs. Something inside him shifted with a wet, uncomfortable sensation. He bit back a groan and forced himself to roll onto his side.
The movement took far more effort than it should have.
His body felt heavier now.
Not injured—changed.
Like something fundamental had been carved deeper than flesh.
He pushed himself up inch by inch, trembling violently until he finally managed to sit. The world tilted, swayed, then steadied again. He stayed still until the dizziness passed, breath coming slow and measured.
Only then did he look forward.
Where Greed had fallen, something remained.
A card.
It lay amid the ash, half-buried, its surface dark and unmarred by the destruction around it. Unlike the others, it did not glow. It did not pulse.
It waited.
The boy stared at it for a long moment.
He did not feel triumph.
He did not feel relief.
He felt… weight.
Standing hurt.
Everything hurt.
But he knelt anyway.
Each step toward the card felt deliberate, measured, as if the ground itself resisted his approach. When he reached it, he gathered it gently in both hands.
He opened the reinforced box.
The Rider and Caster cards rested inside. Their presence felt calm, contained. He set the Berserker card alongside them, its bulk heavier than either, a reminder of the foe that had pushed him to the brink.
The box clicked shut.
The weight pressed against his awareness—not a burden, not a gift, just a reality he now carried. Three cards, three victories, three markers of the cost exacted on him and on the world.
He rose slowly, forcing the pain to settle into manageable edges. Blood still leaked from old wounds; muscles screamed at every movement. Grey streaked through his hair more visibly now, his sun-darkened skin tightened and coarse. His eyes carried the patience of someone who had survived through torment, calculation, and the extreme of experience.
The battlefield looked smaller now.
Not because it had changed—but because he had.
He turned from the ash, from the place where Greed had ceased to exist, and began walking. Each step still hurt. Each breath still burned.
But he did not stop.
The road ahead stretched onward, scarred and uncertain, leading toward sins not yet faced and costs not yet paid.
Behind him, the wind finally stirred.
The last of the ash scattered.
And somewhere, far away—
Something watched.
Measured.
And learned.
The hunt was not over.
It had simply lost another immortal reason to believe it could not end.