The atmosphere didn't just vibrate; it tore. Naobito Zenin didn't wait for a dramatic standoff or a monologue. In the world of the Zenin Patriarch, speed was the only truth, and a single second was an eternity of missed opportunities. Before the golden light of my eyes could even reach the ground, he was gone.
[WARNING: PROJECTION SORCERY ACTIVATED]
[VELOCITY: MACH 1.2 AND RISING]
[SYSTEM ANALYSIS: THE TARGET IS DIVIDING ONE SECOND INTO TWENTY-FOUR FRAMES]
I didn't see him move. I only felt the sudden, violent displacement of air—a vacuum created by his sheer velocity. A split second later, a fist as hard as weathered iron slammed into my jaw. The world tilted. My [Cloak of the Fallen King] whipped violently, its gravitational fibers shrieking as they struggled to absorb the kinetic energy, but the force was enough to rattle my teeth and send a shockwave through my skull.
"Ren!" Nobara's scream was a distant echo.
She swung her hammer with a desperate, wide arc, sending a flurry of nails toward the space where Naobito had been, but he was already twenty-four frames ahead of her. He appeared behind her in a stuttering blur, his hand raised for a strike that would have snapped her spine like a dry twig.
"SLEEP!" Inumaki's voice tore through the courtyard, sounding like a thunderclap in a small room.
The command was so powerful that blood sprayed from Toge's mouth instantly, coating his high collar in crimson. He was pushing his technique against a Special Grade opponent, and the "kickback" was tearing his throat apart. Naobito froze for a fraction of a second—a glitch in his high-speed animation—which was just enough time for Nobara to roll away and for me to plant my feet back into the shattered stone.
"Impressive," Naobito mused, his voice coming from three different directions at once as he flickered around the perimeter of the courtyard. "A Cursed Speech user with the lungs of a lion, a girl with the soul of a carpenter, and a Vessel of the Void. You almost have a chance. Almost."
The Strategy of the Damned
I wiped the blood from my mouth, the violet marks on my hands glowing with a frantic, pulsing heat that felt like it was melting my skin. I couldn't hit him. He was too fast, his movements calculated by a logic that bypassed human reaction time.
"He is moving within the frames of time, Ren," Valthazar whispered, his voice sharp and cold with predatory focus. "You cannot chase a shadow in a strobe light. You must stop the light itself. Give the world weight, or you will die in the gaps between his movements."
'Nobara!' I yelled through our soul-link, the mental connection buzzing with static. 'I'm going to anchor the entire courtyard! When the world slows down, you give him everything you've got! Don't hold back or we're dead!'
'You got it, Alley-Cat! Just make sure he's still enough for me to nail!'
I slammed both palms onto the broken stone floor, feeling the coldness of the earth and the heat of the system colliding in my chest.
[MAX OUTPUT: GRAVITY ANCHOR - AREA EFFECT]
A ripple of dark, distorted energy exploded from my hands, turning the courtyard into a high-gravity tomb. The air became thick as honey. The falling rain didn't just fall; it plummeted like lead pellets, shattering against the ground. Naobito's flicker-motion stuttered violently. He was caught mid-stride, his "frames" crashing into the reality of the increased weight. He groaned, his knees buckling as his body suddenly weighed ten times what it should.
"Now, Inumaki! Nobara!"
"DON'T... MOVE!" Toge screamed, his voice a raw, bleeding roar of defiance that shattered the remaining windows of the safehouse.
"RESONANCE!" Nobara didn't aim for Naobito's body. She knew his reinforcement was too high. Instead, she aimed for the Resonance Stone shards I had kept in my pocket since Nagano—shards that carried the unique frequency of my soul and the gravity I was currently forcing onto Naobito.
The Singularity Finisher
This was the moment where space and soul collided.
Because the shards were linked to me, and I was currently anchoring Naobito in a gravitational lock, Nobara's Resonance didn't just hit the shards—it traveled through the gravitational ley lines I had established. It was a localized, spiritual earthquake.
Naobito's eyes widened, the arrogance finally draining from his face to be replaced by the primal fear of a man who realized the "children" had outplayed him.
"You... brats..."
I stood up, the third eye on my forehead bleeding violet fire that blinded anyone who looked directly at me. I pulled all the gravity back from the courtyard, compressing it into a single, terrifying point—a tiny, obsidian marble floating between my palms that seemed to drink the light around it.
"[EVENT HORIZON: SOUL-CRUSH]!"
I thrust my hands forward. The singularity didn't travel; it simply consumed the distance. It hit Naobito at the exact microsecond Nobara's Resonance peak reached his heart.
The resulting explosion wasn't made of fire or light. It was a silent, white expansion of pure, negative force. The safehouse didn't burn; it was disassembled. A shockwave tore through Roppongi, blowing out every neon sign for three blocks and leaving the street in a sudden, eerie darkness.
[SYNC RATE: 19.8%]
[CRITICAL SUCCESS: PATRIARCH NEUTRALIZED]
[LEVEL UP: 45 → 52]
The Final Reveal
When the dust finally cleared, the courtyard was gone. In its place was a massive, perfectly smooth crater, as if a giant had scooped a bowl out of the earth. Naobito Zenin lay in the center, his expensive silk kimono shredded, his breathing shallow and rattling. He wasn't dead—his massive cursed energy had saved him—but his spirit was shattered. His "frames" were broken.
I stood at the edge of the crater, gasping for air, the black cloak dissolving into embers that floated away on the wind. Nobara leaned against my shoulder, her hammer broken in half, her face covered in soot but her eyes shining. Toge was on his knees, coughing into a blood-soaked handkerchief, but he gave a small, weary nod.
"It's... over," I whispered, the weight of the fight finally hitting me.
"Is it?"
A new voice, cold and smooth as fine silk, drifted from the shadows at the edge of the crater.
We turned as one. Standing there, silhouetted against the flickering neon of the city, was a man with long, dark hair and a forehead marked by a horizontal line of stitches. Beside him stood a massive, four-armed figure with a face like carved stone and eyes that held no humanity.
Geto Suguru. And the disaster-grade curse, Hanami.
"Well done, Ren-kun," Geto smiled, his eyes narrow and mocking, as if he were a teacher praising a talented but doomed pupil. "You've done exactly what I hoped. You've broken the Zenin. Now, the seat is empty... the barrier is weak... and Valthazar is finally ready to come home."
[VOLUME 2 COMPLETE: THE CULLING OF FATE]
[SYSTEM ALERT]
THE CULLING GAME HAS BEGUN.