The golden light had barely faded when a blade flash, like silver under the moon, followed in its wake, its brilliance blinding.
But in truth, it was all over in an instant. By the time Hua pushed her weakened body to its feet, she saw Michael with an ice blade piercing his heart.
At the last possible moment, with an almost unimaginable reaction speed, he had dodged the eight slashes aimed at his body and limbs, but in doing so, he had failed to avoid the one that stabbed for his heart.
But... what did it matter?
"Sakura. Hua. Is this your grand plan? What's the point?"
Michael tilted his head up. The golden curtain of light had not vanished; it was still expanding, covering the entire sky port in a matter of moments. However, contrary to its appearance, it didn't seem to cause any disturbance.
The effect of the two binding fields neutralizing each other was like a double negative. The power that could have nullified all Honkai energy in an instant was now just a meaningless golden screen. But this proved one thing, at least: the field itself still existed. It was only the Authority of Binding that was neutralized, not the field itself.
And that was Sakura's goal.
SCHLICK—
The frost-covered blade was pulled swiftly from Michael's chest. The biting frost tore out a spray of blood and flesh. As the droplets of blood flew through the air, they seemed to steam, but if one were to pause time and look closely, a faint golden light would be reflected on their translucent surfaces.
Sakura's face was colder than ever before. She withdrew the blade, then swung it down in a backhand slash. The pale, frosty mist stirred by the sword's movement blurred her features, leaving only the purple glow in her eyes locked tightly on her target. This was how she looked when facing an enemy. And Michael was likely the first person to ever see this side of her.
CLANG!
Michael made a grasping motion with his right hand, and a short, golden spear appeared just in time to block the icy blade. But it only delayed it for a moment. The blade deflected at an angle and continued forward, effortlessly slitting Michael's neck.
Michael's head spun through the air, but his body seemed unaffected. Seizing the instant before Sakura could retract her blade, he shot out a kick. Sakura tried to twist away, but she wasn't fast enough. The kick landed squarely on her abdomen, sending her flying.
He stabbed the short spear in his right hand upward, perfectly catching his falling head. With his left hand, he grabbed his hair and pressed his head back onto his neck.
The ice crystals on the wound melted in an instant. Only the blood streaming down his neck served as proof that his head had, for a moment, taken flight.
"Hmph..."
Sakura stabbed her ice blade into the ground to halt her backwards momentum. Before she had even come to a complete stop, she charged forward again without a word.
The binding field generated by the 11th Divine Key at its rated output only lasted for one minute. She had no time to waste, not even enough for a single word to Michael.
Only within this one-minute window, when Michael couldn't use his own Authority of Binding, could she fight him on the most level playing field possible.
The thought flashed uncontrollably through her mind, but before she could even banish it, she was once again upon him.
The ice blade rested at her waist before she unleashed a sudden, vicious slash. The blade's tip carved a perfect arc. For a split second, Michael saw his own eyes reflected in the thin layer of frost on the steel.
Those eyes might have once stared with purpose, but now, they were as dull and lifeless as those of a disinterested bystander.
But he didn't hesitate. Or rather, for a battle of this caliber, he didn't even need to think; his body would move on its own.
His right hand shot forward, and Black Abyss White Flower appeared in a reverse grip. He stabbed the spear's tip into the ground, angling the shaft to the right, perfectly intercepting the ice blade's path.
At the same time, a thin layer of soil, which Sakura hadn't even noticed, appeared at her feet. Green vines sprouted from the soil, rapidly snaking up from her ankles to her calves.
Indeed, even with Michael's mastery over the Authority of Death, he couldn't bring forth new life from a completely inanimate object like metal. But... he was also the Herrscher of Reason. He could simply construct the soil needed to grow life. A shame, he thought, that Durandal would likely never learn that trick.
Time seemed to stop in that instant. Sakura's blade was blocked by Black Abyss White Flower, and her legs were ensnared by the vines. Even if she could break free quickly, it was already too late.
Michael's other hand, formed into a hand-blade, was already almost at her chest, and in the instant before contact, it crackled with purple lightning.
Coincidentally, this was also the exact moment their eyes met.
Michael gazed quietly into those purple eyes. There was no tension, no fear. Besides her usual calmness, there seemed to be a hint of relief, of acceptance.
He had no idea what the point of all this was.
Even without his Authority of Binding or Time, as the Flame-Chaser who knew him best, she couldn't possibly be unaware that the combined power of his Authorities of Reason and Death already made him virtually immortal.
So what was the meaning of this? As far as Michael was concerned, the only moment in this entire battle that had posed a genuine threat to him was when Theresa had unleashed Judah.
So...
Even if time were stretched to infinity, as long as it wasn't truly frozen, it would eventually run its course.
And the very instant time resumed its normal flow, Michael's hand-blade would pierce Sakura's heart. She wasn't a Herrscher. And the Yasha... it was merely resilient, not like the Garuda, with its rapid healing, or the Sesha, with its ability to revive.
But so what?
Michael had already told Hua that the next time they met as enemies, they should both stop holding back.
He had always been a man of his word. At least, he hoped he could be.
But just as his fingertips touched Sakura's chest, the purple lightning already having torn an inch into her flesh, space itself was frozen.
As space froze, Sakura's right hand released her ice blade. Her body twisted to the right, and from her left hand, which had been resting on her scabbard, a lightning as brilliant as Michael's own erupted. The scabbard had transformed into the 3rd Divine Key, the Seven Thunders of Retribution!
Sakura swung the Seven Thunders upward in a reverse grip, easily severing Michael's left arm. She then smoothly twisted her wrist and, at almost the same instant Michael used his Authority of the Void to break free from the frozen space, she once again plunged the lightning-wreathed blade into his heart.
Still, what was the point?
Stabbing him in the heart a thousand, ten thousand times would only give him a sensation of pain that was almost pleasurable. It couldn't truly harm him, unless she had some way to temporarily seal all of his authorities with that one strike.
But besides the 10th Divine Key, Michael couldn't think of any other weapon capable of that.
He had, of course, seen through Sakura's feint from the very beginning. But he was confident that any trick she pulled would be nothing more than a minor inconvenience to him, the master of twelve Herrscher authorities. That was why he had dared to go along with her plan with almost no defenses up.
But... it seemed the worst-case scenario had actually happened.
Michael's expression changed abruptly. If he had the chance to say one thing, it would probably be:
"Are you serious?!"
As a strange electromagnetic wave exploded within him, he felt as if he had been thrown back five hundred years, to the moment Prometheus had severed and stripped away his authority as the Finality.
"I can't use any of my authorities... No, that's not it. My connection to the Imaginary Singularity is in disarray..."
It was like someone had thrown an EMP into a room full of wirelessly connected devices.
While Michael himself was the router—the true Singularity, the Cocoon of Finality—using a specific Authority required the Imaginary energy to flow through the projection of the corresponding Singularity in its respective plane. But under the interference of that bizarre electromagnetic wave, his connection to the Singularities representing each authority was in complete disarray. The Authority of Reason didn't respond.
The Authority of the Void didn't respond. He tried to call upon the Authority of Thunder, but connected to the Singularity of Ice instead... and most importantly—the Authority of Binding!
With Michael's sudden loss of control over his own authorities, the two binding fields that had been neutralizing each other also went haywire.
But, should he call it luck? The 10th Divine Key ran out of Honkai energy at that exact moment.
Or perhaps it wasn't a coincidence. A binding field of such an immense scale, if it were truly allowed to operate, even for a single second, would be enough to turn the entire sky port into a living hell.
So that was it. No wonder. With Sakura's swordsmanship, she could have forced her body to overcome the awkwardness and plunged the 3rd Divine Key directly into his heart. But she had deliberately chosen the slower option, severing his arm first, using that extra second to perfectly time it with the 10th Divine Key unleashing its rated power!
And while the 10th Divine Key's field seemed to vanish along with Michael's own authority, it had actually disappeared a fraction of a second later. There was a time lag between the two that a normal human could never perceive.
Imagine time as a road. A normal person walks by taking steps. The portion where the two binding authorities were neutralized was a sixty-meter stretch of normal road. That time lag, projected onto the road, could be seen as a piece of filth less than a millimeter wide.
A person's stride is nearly a meter long, and only the chosen one of a million would have the luck to step right on it. Even then, you wouldn't get much on your shoe, and your body would be unharmed.
But Michael was different.
The Cocoon of Finality's authority is time; its very existence is proof of time. It had truly traveled over every inch of that road. Imagine it's not a person walking, but a stone sphere rolling on the ground. No matter how narrow that sliver of filth is, it's unavoidable. It will roll right over it.
And so, he was well and truly affected by the Authority of Binding. Even if it was for an instant that a normal person couldn't perceive, if one were to observe it with their consciousness, it could surely be captured.
Michael lifted his head with his last ounce of strength. A flicker of flame, visible only to him, tore through the dark clouds that had gathered when he used the Authority of Thunder, growing larger and larger in his pupils.
"What a tired old cliché," Michael muttered weakly.
In the next moment, everything around him—the sky port, the shattered dark clouds, the raging flames—ceased to exist. He was surrounded by nothing but pure, stark white.
But to his surprise, the person standing before him this time was not Hua, but Sakura.
"Is it strange? You should know, Hua's consciousness can no longer support appearing before you like this. Besides, given how much of her memory is gone, even if she did appear, there would probably be nothing left to say."
Seeing Sakura speak so formally, Michael suddenly couldn't help but laugh out loud.
"Hm?"
"It's nothing. It's just that you're still not used to having a sword missing from your hip, are you?"
Sakura's expression remained unchanged. She simply lowered the left hand that had been resting at her waist.
"I have to admit, this was the most effective counterattack you've mounted in five thousand years. From the timing to the use of the weapons, you squeezed every last drop of value out of them. I am curious, though. I can understand Vill-V taking the 3rd Divine Key for an overhaul and a facelift, but what was it that ultimately severed my connection to my other Herrscher authorities?"
That power was very different from the Authority of Binding. The Authority of Binding was a brute-force erasure of everything. This power hadn't erased anything; it had simply thrown his perception and connection to the various Imaginary Singularities into utter chaos.
"You should actually have some memory of it. Honkai Fission Bombs proved on the battlefield that they were good for nothing but wasting taxpayer money. After the Eighth Eruption, the Fire Moths tried to develop a low-cost weapon specialized against Herrschers. This is the Scepter of the Underworld(Acheron). Its principle is not to erase a Herrscher's authority, but to use a special electromagnetic frequency to disrupt the Herrscher's neural and energy connections, making them gradually lose track of what they are trying to do, while also forgetting how to access and use their own power."
Now that she mentioned it, Michael did remember. The weapon had indeed been fully developed, but in the end, due to prohibitive costs and material requirements, it was deemed less effective than the MANTIS system and was thus tossed into the scrapheap by the Fire Moths.
Neither Michael, nor Sakura, nor Mei would have ever imagined it would see the light of day again.
"Alright, say what you have to say. I don't think we have any time to waste."
"Michael, aren't you curious? Why we, as Flame-Chasers, are trying to stop you?"
Michael nodded, then shook his head. The smile on his face was somewhat comical. He threw Sakura's question back at her:
"If you're going to beat around the bush, then I'd rather you didn't say anything at all. I believe we both know each other quite well. Just as I can sometimes easily guess your actions, you should also understand what I'm thinking. None of us need those phony pleasantries."
"Very well... I'll be direct. Michael, based on our calculations, the thing you want to do... is simply impossible."