Loop 1
The very next time, Subaru thought he could reason with him. After all, Reinhard was a nice guy. The embodiment of benevolence. There was no doubt about that in the slightest.
Days passed. They returned to the Sanctuary—Ram indifferent, Gojo unconscious and slung over Subaru's shoulder like unwanted luggage.
Subaru thought, This time, I'll explain... Reinhard is a hero... he'll believe me.
Reinhard arrived the same way. Somehow. Quiet, gentle, his sword still sheathed. His eyes were already grieving before he even spoke.
And still—he killed him.
It was swift. A mercy. Subaru woke up before his body hit the ground. Painless.
Loop 4
Hide. Subaru tried hiding this time. Deeper in the forest, burrowing like a frightened animal far beyond the Sanctuary's borders. Gojo had warned him about something—cursed energy residuals, perhaps—but it didn't matter.
Reinhard still found him.
The Dragon Sword Reid was unsheathed only at the very last second. An apology was whispered against his ear like a prayer. Subaru died in the dirt, breath frozen in a throat that had been severed an instant prior. Painless.
Reinhard's a good guy...
Loop 7
Attack first.
Pride took over. Black spikes erupted from the earth like a forest of death. The ground cracked, the trees screamed as they splintered, and the sky blackened with malice—
Reinhard's blade never even left its sheath.
A single step. A single flash of blue.
Subaru's body collapsed in wet chunks, his vision swimming in the pool of blood expanding beneath him. Painless.
Reinhard's... a good... guy...?
Loop 11
Subaru begged. He groveled. He threw away every ounce of dignity, his hands scraped raw from clawing at Reinhard's pristine white boots.
The Sword Saint's eyes trembled with profound regret... but the blade still fell. Painless.
Reinhard...
Loop 15
Total surrender.
Subaru let Pride run wild. He destroyed villages. He slaughtered nameless soldiers in his own internal despair, becoming exactly the monster Reinhard feared he was.
It didn't matter.
It never did.
Reinhard wept openly when he killed him that time. Subaru almost pitied him as his skull split beneath the steel. Painless.
Please, no more...
Loop 20
Sanity began to slip.
What was real? What was a memory?
The moment he woke up, before Ram even noticed the twitch behind his eyes, Subaru's hands shook uncontrollably.
His reflection in the window smirked at him.
It was only day one... but the clock was already ticking.
Subaru screamed into his pillow that night. His voice cracked, bled, and died by morning.
Loop 24
Ram noticed.
"...Barusu?"
Her voice was uncharacteristically soft. Genuine concern bleeding into the usual venom.
Subaru flinched violently at her hand on his shoulder. She wasn't real. She was just a ghost who didn't know she was dead yet.
Loop 29
He read books instead.
Hoping to find anything, anywhere, a weakness, a spell, a miracle...
Eventually, he killed himself just to stop the reading.
Rope. Knife. Poison.
The loops still started. Still reset. Still dragged him through the days like a marionette with tangled strings.
Loop 34
Gojo attempted to stop Reinhard alongside him.
It didn't help.
Even that monster's cursed technique couldn't save him. Not when Reinhard decided to truly act.
The concept of Limitless couldn't counter the concept of Inevitability.
Neither could Subaru. Painless.
Sword Saint...
Loop 41
Subaru stopped sleeping altogether.
Eyes sunken, voice ragged. He muttered numbers under his breath constantly, a mantra of failures.
"Forty-one. Forty-one. Forty-one..."
Ram slapped him across the face. It barely registered.
Loop 40... something...
Pride ran the whole loop once more.
Subaru watched from the backseat. Eyes wide, helpless, a passenger locked inside his own ruined body.
Villages burned. The Sanctuary shattered.
Reinhard still killed him. Painless.
He's a monster...
He lost count...
He didn't speak.
Didn't eat.
Didn't cry.
Just waited.
When Reinhard finally arrived... Subaru simply opened his arms, head tilted back, exposing his neck.
"Do it."
The Sword Saint hesitated... just for a fraction of a second.
But the result was the same. Painless.
He's unbeatable...
He lost count...
The voices never stopped.
Gojo's arrogant lectures.
Pride's dark promises.
Ram's sharp insults.
Garfiel's roar as he attacked.
Reinhard's soft, weeping apologies.
A constant, drilling hum, even when he plugged his ears.
Even when he clawed at his own skull until blood stained his palms and matted his hair.
He's unkillable...
He lost count...
The line between life and death blurred into gray.
Between Subaru and Pride.
Between memory and nightmare.
The loops stretched endlessly, days bleeding into weeks, weeks collapsing into moments before the inevitable, inescapable flash of steel.
And yet... he still woke up.
Every. Damn. Time.
A quiet, gnawing realization wormed its way into the fractures of his mind. A laugh bubbled up from his throat, dry and broken like dead leaves.
"Aaahhahahaa... There's no winning this..."
"...But there's no dying either..."
The worst kind of hell.
The one where death wasn't a punishment.
It was just a checkpoint.
—————————————————————
Time was a myth now. Days bled into nights, nights collapsed into loops, and the loops blurred into a maddening purgatory. Subaru stopped counting at some point—fifty, sixty, eighty… maybe more of the same three days repeated for almost a year.
The wooden hut was the same every time. Four walls. One table. A chair. A battered, ink-stained map of Lugnica and the world beyond stretched across the wood.
His eyes—bloodshot, hollow—scanned every inch of it for the hundredth time, nails gnawed down to the quick, fingertips raw with anxious scabs.
His hair was matted, tangled like dried weeds. His clothes hung loose on his frame. His lips were chapped, cracked open like brittle parchment.
But his mind?
His mind refused to break completely.
The Augria Sand Dunes…
That was it. That had to be it.
An impossible place, a cursed, lifeless desert the size of a small kingdom. If there was any location in the world where fate itself would struggle to function, where the Sword Saint's blessed, divine protections might weaken, even if for an instant…
It would be there.
Subaru clutched his head, fingers clawing through his spiked black hair. His breathing hitched. Pride's voice hummed in his skull, serpentine and sickeningly amused.
Oh, that could be a great idea, nice one other me!
Subaru didn't respond. He didn't have to.
The map was stained now. Blood pooled across the parchment as a black spike burst through his chest—
The pain was a dull whisper now. He barely noticed. Subaru's body slumped forward, eyes dimming, lips twitching in a final, stubborn grin.
I will survive.
The words echoed through the walls. Through his dying mind. Through the endless spiral of rebirth.
I will survive.
No matter how many times his ribs shattered.
No matter how many forests burned.
No matter how many friends, allies, strangers died screaming as collateral to this cursed loop.
No matter how often his soul may fracture into pieces…
I will survive.
Right…?
—————————————————————
The familiar nausea. The sting of bile in his throat. The taste of time resetting.
Ram's voice again.
"Barusu, wake up."
The Sanctuary's cold breeze through the window.
Gojo unconscious in a hut nearby.
The same damned day he's went through almost a hundred times.
Subaru exhaled slowly, eyes glinting faintly in the dim light.
This time… he was heading for the Sand Dunes, he had a proper plan, a chance, an opportunity unlike any other prior.
If fate, destiny, and divine blessings played by the rules everywhere else—then he'd simply go where the rules broke down entirely.
Reinhard would take atleast two more days to get there judging by how he came on the third day every single time. That's plenty of time to travel across Lugunica with Patrasche.
—————————————————————
The Augria Sand Dunes.
Endless.
Unforgiving.
A wasteland of scorching sun and nightmarish beasts that made the forests of Lugnica look tame.
The horizon shimmered with heat haze, and the sand beneath Subaru's boots burned like smoldering coals. His clothes clung to his body with sweat, dirt, and blood. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and his lips were cracked open from dehydration.
But he kept going.
Because she kept going.
Patrasche.
The black Earth Dragon, the only thing in this gods-forsaken world that still carried him without hesitation, even after loop upon loop of agony.
Her flanks rose and fell with labored breaths, scales dusted in sand, but her sharp eyes scanned the dunes tirelessly.
"Good girl… just a little more.."
Subaru muttered hoarsely, patting her side as they crested another dune.
Beneath them, sprawling like a cracked, desolate scar, the dunes stretched for miles—bleached bones of long-dead creatures poking through the sand like jagged teeth.
And among them, the shadows moved.
Mabeasts.
They stalked him relentlessly. The dunes were their domain. Sand wyrms that swam beneath the surface like sharks. Spindly, monstrosities with chitinous shells and fanged mandibles. Beasts mutated beyond nature's design, crafted specifically for the harsh environment of the desert.
And they all wanted him dead.
Or worse.
Subaru's bloodied hand flexed at his side, black tendrils of Pride's Authority flickering faintly beneath the surface of his skin.
Pride was… quiet, for once. Watching.
He wasn't fully in control yet. Subaru wouldn't allow that. Not here. Not yet.
But to survive these dunes… he'd need that power.
The sand shifted. The ground rumbled.
A serpentine maw erupted from beneath the sand, scales glistening like molten glass, jaws wide enough to swallow both him and Patrasche whole.
Subaru didn't hesitate.
"Now!"
Patrasche darted sideways, hooves kicking up sand as the massive beast burst forth. At the same time, Subaru's arm snapped forward, black spikes erupting from the ground, impaling the creature through its gaping maw.
It shrieked, blood—dark and steaming—pouring from the wounds as it writhed, flailing its body in the sand.
The ground quaked again. More movement. More of them.
Subaru's lips peeled back in a snarl, his eyes burning red with strain from the authority.
"You picked the wrong prey."
Another lunged—massive, feral—but Subaru bent his knees and twisted sharply, launching himself off Patrasche's back in an eruption of cursed energy that cracked the air.
He wasn't stronger. Not physically. Not after the same hellish three days over and over.
But skill? Control? Precision? He had honed those to lethal perfection.
The Authority of Pride, once a chaotic, volatile force, could now be wielded minutely with minimal pain.
Darkness pulsed through his veins—thick, viscous, alive—before contorting, stretching into an obsidian blade that hissed with pride. Subaru twisted mid-air, dragging the blade down the length of the colossal mabeast.
The flesh peeled apart like paper. A single, clean, ruthless gash cleaved across its body as Subaru landed first, the weight of the beast crashing down behind him like a dying mountain.
He exhaled slowly, the blade dissipating in a shadowy wisp as he whispered:
"'Till there's none left."
—————————————————————
The battlefield fell silent. He had long ago told Patrasche to flee. Although it took a moment of motivation, his trusty ground dragon eventually left. Dozens of monstrous corpses lay scattered around him like fallen titans, their twisted forms painting the sand with blood and shadow.
Subaru sat atop the still-warm body of the largest, eyes locked on the distant silhouette of the Pleiades Watchtower, its spire clawing at the night sky. The moon hovered, high and proud, casting its silver gaze upon him.
What do you think of stars, Pride?
Well we are the same, so that's your answer.
Subaru's eyes narrowed.
He spotted it—a star that moved. Fast. Controlled. Intentional.
He was here.
The Sword Saint.
Subaru closed his eyes and exhaled, his body tensing not with fear, but with a simmering, manic anticipation.
Seventy deaths to Reinhard. Eighty failures, at least. But tonight? Tonight was different.
He remained seated atop the mountain of corpses as the red comet touched down. The earth did not just shake; it groaned in submission beneath Reinhard van Astrea's arrival.
Reinhard's blue eyes widened, genuine disbelief fracturing his stoic mask as he recognized the figure perched atop the carnage.
"You're... Pride?"
Subaru stretched his arms lazily, shadows coiling around his limbs like possessive smoke.
"Yeep. I am Pride, Pride is me... yadda yadda. You know the drill. Well, actually, I guess you don't."
His voice held no fear, only a sharp, grating annoyance. It was the tone of a man who had rehearsed this conversation a hundred times in the mirror of his own insanity.
Reinhard's fists unclenched, his expression faltering. Deep, human regret bled into his features.
"...Subaru... how... why?" His voice cracked, haunted by the ghost of a friend he thought he knew.
"Do you even know what the Dragon Tablet says about Pride? About the one who carries that Sin?"
Subaru rolled his eyes, his voice dripping with mockery.
"Yeah, yeah. Disaster, corruption, end of the world. I've heard the spiel, Rein. It's getting old."
Reinhard's gaze hardened. The grief evaporated, replaced by a cold, bitter resolve. His hand drifted to the hilt of the Dragon Sword.
"In accordance with the prophecy and the Order of the Wise Men..." Reinhard declared, his voice steady as steel. "...I will slay the Archbishop of Pride and bring prosperity to the Dragon Kingdom."
Subaru chuckled, lowering his head as the Authority of Pride slithered to the surface.
His posture shifted—loose, arrogant, predatory.
"Pride. Just Pride."
His neck cracked as he straightened, an obsidian blade manifesting from the shadows with a low, nauseating hum.
"The one who is going to slay the strongest Sword Saint in history."
Reinhard's brows furrowed. That manner of speech. That stance. That... presence. It wasn't Subaru—not his friend. And for the first time in a long while, the Dragon Sword Reid stirred. It hummed with excitement, acknowledging a threat worthy of its edge.
Subaru—no, Pride—smirked. His internal monologue raced with cruel certainty.
This desert's miasma fuels me. It strengthens me. And it will only weaken Reinhard more and more over time. The mana here is twisted; I doubt even his physical prowess will be at its peak in this hellscape.
"This is my peak..." Pride muttered, his eyes burning with the delusion of a protagonist reaching his climax. "The best I'll ever be."
Reinhard reached back, his fingers closing around Reid's hilt. Reality groaned. The dunes quaked. The air itself screamed as the strongest sword in existence was drawn.
And then...
A colossal pillar of searing light erupted skyward, annihilating the clouds in the atmosphere and vaporizing the sand instantly. A divine glow spun and illuminated the entirety of the desert, outshining the Watchtower that lingered in the distance like a tombstone.
The battlefield shattered.
Mabeast corpses disintegrated into ash.
A crater dozens of meters deep split the earth, stopping mere inches from Reinhard's toes.
Smoke curled. Shadows danced. Pride surged through the haze, his ebony blade cleaving upward in a wide, vicious arc intended to decapitate.
CLANK—!!
Reid met darkness incarnate.
The impact detonated a hurricane of shockwaves, screaming into the sky like meteor shards.
The desert floor liquefied, molten glass bursting upward.
Thousands of crystalline fragments caught the moonlight, suspended mid-air—stars frozen between worlds.
And through that stillness, two apex predators collided.
Light and darkness exploded outward, jolting the very air between them.
The force of Reinhard's blade—a radiant crescendo of divine power—clashed against Pride's seething black Authority, tearing the dunes asunder with a thunderous roar. Shockwaves rippled through the sand, shattering the earth beneath their feet as colossal ravines split the desert wide open like broken glass.
CLANG—
Reinhard dropped low, a flawless arc of steel slicing down toward Pride.
It should have cut him in half.
But the strike missed by inches, the blade curving effortlessly around his opponent's form to slam into the ground beside him, cleaving a furrow into the scorched sand.
Pride's black blade surged forward, a shadow made sharp, the tip humming as it hovered inches from Reinhard's eye. But Reinhard, moving on pure instinct, snapped his neck sideways. The deadly thrust sliced past, missing by the barest hair's breadth.
One step. One seamless movement.
And yet the attacks kept missing.
Why?
Reinhard's eyes narrowed. The space between them pulsed with deadly tension.
Then, like a sudden revelation, the Sword Saint understood.
He isn't dodging. He's manipulating the concept of the hit itself.
Reinhard's legs sprawled wide as his body flickered—too fast for the human eye to track—vanishing beneath an overhead slash from Pride's dark sword. He blitzed around like a viper, speed beyond mortal perception, wrapping around to strike behind Pride not with his sword, but with a crushing shin strike to the ribs.
"...So that's how it is." Reinhard muttered, his voice steady beneath the storm.
CRACK.
Pride coughed blood as the blow connected. His Authority couldn't fully negate the sheer kinetic force of the strongest man in the world. His spine rattled with brutal precision, and he was hurled through the air.
He flew—hundreds of meters—twisting mid-flight like a broken javelin before crashing through a towering stone spire. The ancient column shattered and collapsed in a rain of rubble.
But Pride was not beaten.
Not so soon. He was the hero of this story, wasn't he?
Threads of blackened darkness erupted from his body—tendrils writhing like living shadows, piercing the earth beneath to arrest his momentum. They coiled and tangled around the falling spire mid-air, yanking it with inhuman strength and pulling it downward like a deadly whip.
Reinhard charged beneath the descending ruin, calm eyes narrowing.
So he figured it out already... the weakness to my Authority. He knows he has to avoid my line of sight.
The spire shattered into countless shards before it could strike, reduced to dust by a casual wave of the Dragon Sword as Reinhard closed the distance in two impossibly swift steps.
Pride's eyes widened in shock—the gap between them had closed instantaneously.
The Reid Sword swung—only a feint.
Reinhard knew better than to unleash a slash in Pride's direct line of sight now. Thus, with a flicker of movement, he slithered behind Pride with predatory speed.
But Pride was ready this time.
He pivoted, meeting the Sword Saint face to face, his grin manic and bloody.
BOOOOM—!!
An earth-shaking explosion detonated. This was not thunder—thunder was child's play in comparison. This was a celestial roar that cracked the very atmosphere, rippling like a shockwave for miles, warping the sands of the Augria Dunes into tidal waves of dust and shattered stone.
Darkness collided with steel, and the world convulsed under the pressure. The impact wasn't an explosion—it was akin to a miniature supernova. Black tendrils of Pride's Authority lashed like living things, gnashing and writhing as Reinhard's blade cut through them, each stroke a hymn of divine power.
The clash lasted only a heartbeat—and then both fighters vanished from sight entirely.
SWISH—!
A blur. The ground split in their wake.
SWOOSH—!
Sand funneled into cyclones behind them.
STEP—!
Reality fractured under the sheer force of their footfalls.
SLASH—!
The black blade screeched through the air—missed by millimeters.
CRACK—!
A boulder the size of a house ruptured from the aftershock alone.
DUCK—!
Reinhard dipped low, his red hair trailing behind like a comet.
DODGE—!
Pride swayed, his eyes gleaming with malice—unharmed, but sweating.
SLASH—!
The air hissed, sliced apart by divine steel.
It was a symphony of violence, a blur of motion so fast it defied mortal comprehension. There were no sparks—their weapons never truly connected. It was speed, precision, intent. Each missed strike carried enough force to disintegrate lesser beings, hurling the combatants across vast distances, teleporting across the sandy region with each clash.
The dunes were obliterated, turned into sprawling trenches. Sandstorms howled like falling gods, the sky veiled in perpetual ash and smoke.
Up a jagged mountain they raced—their clash a storm, carving away at colossal slabs of stone with each failed strike. Peaks shattered beneath them, avalanches of rock tumbling in their wake.
Then—
They flickered atop the summit.
Not climbed. Not leapt. They simply appeared—standing on fractured stone that hung suspended like stars in the Milky Way, the desert howling below them, the mountain trembling under the pressure of their battle.
Pride's blade thrummed with malevolence, black veins of power spiderwebbing up his arm. His eyes burned—a predator's glare mixed with the twisted glee of his Authority. He was panting, his body screaming, barely holding together against the onslaught.
Reinhard stood opposite him.
He wasn't even out of breath.
The mountain beneath his feet cracked and groaned under the quiet hum of his presence. His sword gleamed unnaturally bright, a thread of divinity so potent it distorted the air itself.
A moment passed.
Reinhard adjusted his grip.
And Pride realized, with a sinking, thrilling horror...
He's still holding back.
Reinhard vaulted over Pride's head, hammering a brutal kick into his ribs from the flank. The impact didn't just break bone; it launched Pride through the mountain's peak like a cannonball, triggering a massive landslide that vanished into the horizon, swallowed by the sheer velocity of his flight.
This is—
Pride's instincts screamed—but there was no time to process, let alone react.
From above, a savage stomp struck his spine, forcing his body downward through layers of rock and sand. They tore through the hidden crust beneath the desert—walls cracked, crumbled, and shattered as they plummeted into a subterranean ravine.
Pride crashed through the final layer of bedrock, landing heavily in a cavernous hollow, vomiting a spray of blood.
"Beyond expectation…"
His head snapped up, eyes locking onto Reinhard's fist. An unseen force—his Authority—yanked the blow aside the moment his gaze fixed on the strike.
He abused the opening, swiping a leg across to hook a shin against Reinhard's stomach, intending to crush his internal organs.
THUD.
The Sword Saint was hardly affected. His brows merely furrowed, his body sliding back a few feet—not from pain, but from simple physics. He shifted back to offense instantly.
One arm swept across Pride's torso to pin him, while the other hand cupped Pride's face—blinding him with a cruel, tactical efficiency.
Before Pride could react, Reinhard's fist crashed upward in a devastating uppercut.
The cave imploded. So did multiple ribs.
Stone exploded outward, fragments flying like glass shards catching the moonlight. Pride's cursed energy, reinforced to levels far beyond anything he had wielded before, shattered like fragile porcelain.
His body was blasted skyward—rock and sand tearing away beneath him as he breached the surface.
Darkness sprouted anew from the ground, encasing his limbs and yanking him back down to the dunes where the moon watched indifferently.
Staggering upright, he glared at the steadily approaching Reinhard.
No words. No taunts.
Only cold, steely resolve.
They locked eyes.
Pride shifted, readying for the next exchange.
A better word currently would be survival.
Reinhard's form blurred—no wasted motion, no hesitation. His blade carved a silver crescent through the sky, the descending arc aimed to cleave Pride—and the very battlefield—in two.
But Pride pivoted, slipping the strike by a hair's breadth.
The force alone was cataclysmic. The missed blade sundered the earth beneath them with a thunderous CRACK, a colossal fissure ripping outward, exposing molten glass glowing from the sand's sudden, violent fusion.
THUD—!
Pride's heel slammed down onto Reinhard's wrist with all his might. Bone and muscle flexed beneath the pressure, but the Sword Saint's grip never faltered. His blade remained steady, unyielding as the earth itself.
Pride's fist rocketed upward like a piston, aiming for the chin—but Reinhard dipped. Perfect. Effortless. His shoulder drove forward with one swift step, slamming into Pride's torso.
The impact didn't just stagger him—it sent him skidding back like a ragdoll, carving deep furrows into the sand. Fine glass shrapnel bit into his legs as he tried to stabilize along the molten trail.
THUNK—THUNK—!
The ground trembled, sand shifting unnaturally. Reinhard's sharpened senses twitched.
A trap.
From beneath, a swarm of pitch-black spikes erupted—jagged spears of Authority homing in on the Sword Saint from every conceivable angle.
But Reinhard was already airborne. His body arced high, the dunes blurring below him. His eyes remained fixed—not on the sky, but on the inevitable assault reaching for him from below.
FWOOSH—
The black tendrils continued to branch forth, endlessly, a forest of hate.
And with a gleam of celestial steel, Reinhard deleted them. It wasn't a cut. It was an erasure. The light—the mana—shrouding the Dragon Sword incinerated Pride's darkness mid-air, purging it as though it had never existed in the first place.
The shockwave shattered the dunes into flying glass, molten shards crystallizing and splintering under their own chaotic birth. It was a brutal, almost foreign beauty—sand turned to razor-sharp rain under the pale moonlight.
Pride grimaced, his wrist flicking. Another tendril—twice as large, feral and desperate—surged upward to skewer Reinhard mid-fall.
But Reinhard's blade was already curving downward. His instincts were transcendent, far beyond what eyes alone could offer.
The tendril never even breached the surface. The strike split the ground first, a SPLIT so deep it was less a crack and more a yawning ravine, a new scar on the desert stretching hundreds of meters.
Pride narrowly leapt aside as the terrain was eviscerated, eyes wide.
And then, Reinhard landed.
It was effortless. Divine.
The shards of molten glass fell around him like rain, refracting moonlight, wrapping his figure in an ethereal halo. His presence alone weighed on the desert heavier than any amount of the Witch's miasma could weigh on him—the inescapable, suffocating pressure of inevitability in the form of a man.
Pride's breath stuttered, that gnawing feeling building beneath his skin—the dread, the bitter, creeping realization.
Untouched. Unharmed. The Sword Saint stood tall.
But him? A half-broken wreck of bruises and cuts. His arms trembled beneath the pressure of parrying even the lightest blows.
Reinhard advanced—just a single step—and the distance vanished. Their blades collided, Authority clashing with Divinity. A silent quake rippled through the dunes.
Pride's knees nearly buckled under the weight.
"So, huh..." His words hissed through gritted teeth, bitterness lacing every syllable. "Untouchable. Must be nice... being a fucking CHEAT!"
Reinhard's expression barely shifted, save for a faint, sorrowful crease of his brow.
"My apologies..." he replied, voice calm as stone. "But I'd have to disagree...."
His hand released the blade.
Pride reacted, but it was too late—both of Reinhard's palms drove forward in perfect synchronization, impossible to track, impossible to counter for any mortal man.
Fingers clamped around Pride's chest, crushing the air from his lungs, hurling him backward with godlike force. Sand detonated beneath them as Pride's body was launched, tumbling through the air like a discarded doll.
But before Reinhard's sword could even touch the ground, the Saint caught it in mid-flight—and pursued.
Pride twisted mid-air, black tendrils uncoiling like serpents, anchoring into the earth, bending the desert itself into a trampoline of writhing darkness.
He rebounded, slingshotting himself forward, weapon raised overhead, borrowing the insane momentum Reinhard himself had gifted him.
Even the Sword Saint faltered for a breath—surprised by the sudden reversal.
"——!!"
Pride's blade screamed downward, a wide, desperate arc of pure malice, crashing into Reinhard's guard with the fury of a collapsing mountain.
The ground beneath Reinhard's heels cratered, sand spraying in every direction, molten glass crackling under his feet.
But Reinhard slid back maybe a dozen meters—nothing more.
And Pride... Pride landed, shoulders heaving, purple eyes wide with annoyance, confusion.
Nothing.
Even that—even that—did nothing.
His fist clenched around the hilt of his ebony blade until his knuckles paled, his muscles trembling not from fatigue—but from what churned inside his gut.
Dread.
Realization.
The uncomfortable, maddening truth.
Reinhard wasn't a man.
He wasn't a warrior to be outmaneuvered, overwhelmed, or broken.
He was inevitability incarnate.
A force.
The end of all defiance.
And if he lacked a heart?
This fight... this world... would've ended long ago.
"What can I even do...?"
"What can anyone do against this...?"
Pride frowned, his voice bitter. The voice in his head—Subaru—echoed mockingly from the confines of his mind.
It's not a fun feeling, is it...?
His teeth ground together at Subaru's words.
"Shut... your... mouth."
Reinhard's gaze remained firm. There was no pity—in fact, it was closer to respect—but his stance shifted again, blade poised, unwavering.
The pinnacle of power approached once more.
The air cracked—a sound like the sky itself tearing—as Reinhard lunged in an instant.
No sound warned of his approach. No shift in sand, no gust of wind. Only impact.
Pride barely raised his blade as Reinhard's strike collided against its black edge. The sheer weight behind it turned the world into a blur of sand, glass, and writhing pain.
CLANG—!!
Pride's arms screamed, bones shuddering beneath the impossible force. He was hurtled backward once more, body cartwheeling uncontrollably across the dunes, flinging endless sand skyward as he speared a ravine through the ground with his own body.
But even spinning through the air, his instincts took hold.
Darkness coiled from his limbs, spiraling tendrils of black snatching at the ground, anchoring him mid-flight. His body slammed to a halt, skidding along the desert, scorching molten trails into the sand as his Authority strained to control the kinetic energy.
No time.
Reinhard was already upon him.
BOOM—!
The Sword Saint's foot shattered the space where Pride had landed, obliterating sand into glass and glass into vapor. The aftershock alone flung Pride away again like a leaf caught in a hurricane.
SLASH—!
His black blade lashed out mid-air, a jagged arc of shadows splitting the dunes below, aiming to carve Reinhard's legs from beneath him.
But Reinhard pivoted, impossibly fast, blade flashing downward in a radiant curve. The Authority strike vanished—deleted, as though the concept of the attack had been revoked.
A web of molten fissures crisscrossed the desert, glowing crimson, their heat distorting the air and the desert's surface.
Pride landed in a crouch, heart hammering in his chest like a trapped bird. His arms shook. His legs ached. Every breath burned like inhaling fire.
But his eyes stayed locked on the Sword Saint.
Reinhard approached, blade steady, expression unreadable save for the faintest crease of determination.
No wasted steps. No fear. No doubt.
Pride's teeth clenched until they threatened to crack.
This isn't a man.
I refuse to believe it...
That didn't mean he would kneel. Even if he stood before a god. He was Pride. He was the protagonist of this twisted story. He was unbreakable.
Pride's Authority surged yet again—the ground buckled, black spikes and tendrils erupting in all directions, coiling, weaving, screaming for blood.
A fortress of darkness.
He couldn't match Reinhard. But maybe… he could bury him.
The spikes shot downward like a tsunami, upward, inward, encasing Reinhard in a labyrinth of shadows that devoured the moonlight itself.
And for a fleeting heartbeat…
Silence.
Then—
FWOOOOOOM—!!
Light detonated from within the labyrinth. Seeping through the non-existent cracks and lighting ablaze.
A sphere of celestial brilliance erupted outward, evaporating the Authority constructs like smoke caught in a furnace before funneling toward the sky as a pillar of white mana. The dunes liquefied, molten glass exploding across the battlefield in shimmering shards.
Reinhard walked forward, untouched, his blade glowing faintly with residual radiance.
Pride's breath hitched.
Reinhard closed the distance—one step—two—gone.
WHAM—!!
Pride's vision spun as Reinhard's elbow slammed into his jaw, launching him skyward. The stars twisted overhead as he tumbled through the air, blood filling his mouth.
But even dazed, he retaliated.
Tendrils of darkness lashed out, snaring the fractured shards of molten glass mid-air, hurling them like missiles toward the Sword Saint.
Reinhard parried them without looking or even attacking, the fragments vaporized before they even came close.
Pride descended from the sky, blade drawn back, twisting, pouring every ounce of power and desperation into the strike.
One clean hit...
Just one...
His body screamed downward, a comet of black hatred aimed straight for Reinhard's heart.
Reinhard's eyes never left him.
And at the last possible instant—
He stepped past Pride's attack, moving inside the arc, impossibly close, blade reversed in his hand.
Pride's strike hit only empty air.
A palm crashed into his sternum. The world tilted until the sky-filled sky was in view.
BOOM—!!
Pride's body cratered into the desert floor with seismic force, sand, glass, and darkness billowing outward like a tidal wave.
He coughed, agony radiating from every nerve. His vision doubled. His limbs shook.
Standing above him, framed in the moon's dying light—
Reinhard.
Unharmed.
Unstoppable.
Pride's grip faltered on his blade.
His mind—the very essence of Pride—screamed in defiance, in rage.
But beneath the noise…
That cold, creeping realization.
Nothing he did mattered..
This was a fixed point..
The wall that wouldn't fall..
The wall that couldn't fall..
Reinhard Van Astrea. The Sword Saint.
Unbreakable.
Blessed.
Unfair.