The biggest battles of our life are fought in the darkness of our mind.
....
The world beneath Lynn's feet crackled like something on its last breath.
This place had never lived.
It only pretended.
Fractures across the broken plane pulsed with weak gold, mana fizzling through them like stubborn lightning that didn't understand what end meant. The false city- if it ever deserved the name had already collapsed into dust and memory.
All that remained was a shattering platform suspended in a darkness with no sky, no depth, no horizon.
Only a void that swallowed meaning.
A battlefield carved out of someone else's imagination.
Above the wasteland, the kid hovered on his trembling drone.
His cracked night-vision specs flickered, painting tiny green scars across his cheeks every time they sparked back to life.
He stared at Lynn like the universe existed for this single moment.
Lynn stared back.
His thoughts kept sinking inward, pulling him down into questions he didn't want.
Questions that tightened the mana in his body, pressing cold weight into the back of his skull.
It irritated him.
He didn't have time for unnecessary thoughts. Not here. Not now.
Yet they came anyway.
This kid—this strange, impossible manifestation had shown him absurdity after absurdity since the moment Lynn stepped foot inside this mindscape.
War machines conjured out of thin air. Buildings erased like chalk.
Reality bent like wet paper.
Logic thrown off a cliff and left to rot.
Fine.
He could accept danger.
He could accept power.
Lynn had lived through enough strangeness in his own world to know when to stop asking questions.
But this didn't align.
If this brat could rewrite the world with a blink…
…why was Lynn still standing?
If Lynn was an intruder,a borrowed soul walking through someone else's memories then erasing him should've been easy.
So why give him this fight at all?
Lynn's jaw tightened.
He didn't like where his thoughts were going.
Was the kid holding back?
This child wasn't just reacting.
He was controlling.
Every shift in terrain. Every machine. Every weapon.
This entire world bent to his whims.
So why allow Lynn to exist?
Why not unmake him with a single decision?
Golden dust drifted around Lynn, settling onto his white clothes like dying stars.
He raised his eyes to the kid—sharper now, cutting straight through him.
"What exactly do you want from me?"
The question didn't leave his lips.
But it burned in his gaze.
The kid cupped a hand around his mouth.
"Huh…? Can't hear you, Lynny.
Come a little forward!"
His small voice echoed just enough to mock, refusing to fully exist in the swallowing dark.
Lynn exhaled through his nose. A tired, irritated sigh. The kind he gave when the world insisted on wasting his time.
He stepped forward.
"Ah.....Watch your feet."
Lynn involuntarily glanced down—
CRAAAAASH!
A bus fell from the heavens.
Upside down.Spinning.
It slammed into him like a meteor ending a dynasty.
Metal shrieked.
Golden dust erupted outward.
The platform beneath him cracked deeper, trembling like it would finally give out.
Above, laughter rained like shards of glass.
"Pffff—HAHAHAHA!"
The kid nearly toppled off his drone.
"'Want from you?' Come on, Lynny.
You have nothing to give anyway!"
He tapped his heel against the drone, sending it circling the steaming wreck.
"If anyone has anything here… it's me."
He flashed teeth boyish, gleefully tyrannical.
"You? You're just the visitor nobody asked for."
His eyes drifted upward, following the fading motes of Lynn's leaking mana.
"Huh… pretty. Shame it doesn't last."
A soft buzzing—
FWIP.
Something cut the dark.
The kid blinked.
A metal rod speared through his drone's chassis, a single merciless strike.
The drone didn't scream. Didn't even spark.
It simply surrendered.
The machine exploded beneath the kid, flinging him into open air. His limbs flailed,not from fear, but disbelief.
He hadn't predicted this.
That alone shocked him more than the blast.
"…wait.....WHAT—?!"
He dropped like gravity finally remembered him.
He didn't splatter. Didn't even grunt.
The kid landed like he stepped down from a stair and brushed dust off his sleeves.
"Guess I got distracted," he said. "Good shot."
Another rod sliced the air.
The kid didn't dodge.
It hit his torso and bounced off like a twig hitting stone.
His eyes dimmed a fraction.
The air behind him warped.
Heat-haze shimmered.
Mana folded.
Footsteps emerged.
Lynn walked out of the dark slow, deliberate.
His eyes were hard, golden mana crackling along his shoulders like residue from a star forced to shine twice.
The kid smirked.
"Finally got one in on me."
He snapped his fingers.
"Here's your reward."
The world inhaled.
And exhaled metal.
Hundreds of guns materialized in a ring around Lynn-barrels, chambers, rails
an armory suspended midair like a predatory halo. Shotguns. Rifles. Snipers. Handguns.
Things that shouldn't exist.
They aimed at him in perfect mechanical unison.
The kid raised an eyebrow.
"Round three. Don't blink."
Lynn opened his palm.
Darkness tore.Mana surged.
Hundreds of golden magic circles spiraled behind him like divine gears rotating in smooth, terrifying harmony.
Lynn stepped forward....and everything fired.
.....
For a heartbeat, the world froze.
Then,Everything moved.
The kid's guns unleashed a tidal wave of bullets and beams.
Lynn's circles answered with arrows of condensed magic white-hot bolts, razor lines, spiraling blasts trailing gold fire.
The two storms collided midair.
Explosions bloomed like violent flowers.
Bullets melted into mana.
Mana shattered into sparks.
The ground beneath Lynn cratered from the shockwaves.
The kid stood unbothered in the center of the chaos.
Lynn braced himself.
Even with mana cushioning his body, the relentless pressure shoved him back a step, then another.
He wasn't bleeding. He wasn't hurt.
But he was being overpowered.
The frustration hit harder than the bullets.
Several rounds slipped through the cracks of the storm.
Lynn snapped his wrist.
A circle flared to life and released a sweeping arc of gold. It sliced the bullets mid-flight, scattering glittering fragments into the void.
But the kid was already smiling.
He flicked his fingers.
The remaining guns rotated like predators tasting blood.
"Try blocking this."
They surged inward.
Lynn slammed his foot down, golden cracks spidering beneath him.
He thrust both hands forward and the circles fused into a radiant barrier.
Point-blank.
The world shook.
Lynn gritted his teeth. The shield held but every hit rattled through his arms, pushing him back inch by inch.
"Tch…"
A gun clipped his shoulder barrier and exploded in sparks.
No more.
He pulled all his circles inward.
A sphere of blinding gold formed behind him—dense, burning, trembling with contained destruction.
The kid's smile flickered.
Lynn breathed out, slow and steady.
Then released it.
The sphere detonated.
A tidal wave of golden force carved through the storm. The guns shattered instantly, bursting into shards of metal swallowed by light.
The kid stumbled one step back.
"You…" he murmured, brushing soot from his sleeve. "…Okay, Lynny. That one stung."
Lynn walked forward, irritated but unshaken, giving a cold, sharp smile.
The kid tilted his head.
"Well, if you can survive that—"
He snapped.
Lights dotted Lynn's body.
"—you can survive this too."
Sniper sights.
Dozens.
Lynn lifted his chin.
The kid pointed a finger like a toy pistol.
"Bang."
The world obeyed.
Gunfire erupted from every angle,an impossible downpour of metal rain.
The sound became a deafening storm.
Lynn conjured a golden shell, but each impact hammered it like hail on glass. His feet dug into the fractured ground as he pushed back against the torrent.
It intensified.
All red sights converged on his forehead.
The kid lowered his hand.
"Game over, Lynny."
Lynn smirked.
"Is that the best you can do?"
"Oh? You want more?"
The kid reached behind himself casually.
"Then here's my souvenir."
He pulled out a smooth metal sphere.
Tossed it once.
Caught it.
"Cute, right?
This cutie is called an atom bomb."
"Well,throwing it is boring" the kid said.
He placed the bomb gently on the ground.
Then smiled sweetly, like a child after bedtime mischief.
"Okay, Lynny. Bye-bye. "
He waved.
Pop.
He vanished.
Lynn narrowed his eyes.
The sphere clicked.
Expanded.
The horizon ignited—
BOOOOOOOM.
A second sun erupted point-blank.
Lynn raised his hand.
Mana surged.
He whispered another counter-spell and drove it into the heart of the blast.
Heat met magic.
Reality peeled apart.
Then—everything detonated.
White consumed all.
.....
When the world finally rebuilt itself
or pretended to,nothing remained except a blank void.
A colorless canvas.
And two shapes:
Lynn, his mana flickering like dying embers…
…and high above, the kid reappeared, floating with a grin too sharp to belong to any real child.
He clapped once, delighted.
"Isn't this actually fun?"
Lynn lifted his head.
Golden mana rose behind him.
"Yeah,but it's going to end....now"