"The God Defier"
"Michael…"
Lord Arcade hovered, feet inches above the fractured battlefield, arms slowly spreading apart as the wind spiraled around him. Dust spun wildly at his back. His eyes golden and cold remained locked on the massive, kneeling warlord ahead.
"The strongest warlord in my books," he said, voice low and reverent. "And still is… standing before me."
Michael remained silent, still holding the posture of a servant, the massive Viking shield buried in the ground beside him.
"I admire your strength," Arcade continued, voice rising like thunder behind a veil. "But thou shall not—defy me, Michaelllllllllll!"
His voice rippled through the sky like a pulse of godhood.
Instantly, something inside him shifted. A horrific clack-clack-clack erupted from within his chest. Glowing mechanical veins bulged through his neck and arms, wrapping around bone and muscle. His spine arched. Limbs thickened. Even his face, once pristine, twisted into something slightly… broken.
**Lord Arcade's internal mechanics were reconfiguring themselves—**amplifying his body for strength alone.
Draven's eyes flickered.
In his vision, the world split.
The All Creation Eyes awakened every flow of energy, every neural signal, every unseen current illuminating like radiant threads through reality. And Lord Arcade… he was moving like a storm. But now, Draven could see him.
"…I see his movements," Draven muttered, eyes narrowing as divine data poured into his brain. "I see his vitals… his Shen flow… Wait he's changing the mechanics and logic of Shen itself? He's… rewriting his own system…"
His breath caught. "That's not enhancement. That's overwriting divine law."
The moment those words left his mouth, Lord Arcade shot forward.
A sonic pulse tore the air behind him as he vanished. The battlefield quaked. Wind shattered upward like a vertical wave.
Draven didn't hesitate.
"Sitra Achra—Dual Manifestation!"
Behind him, reality cracked open like porcelain. Two colossal executioners emerged, one black, one white towering constructs draped in executioner's robes, their visages emotionless and blindfolded. Each bore a bow one held a massive bow formed from vertebrae, the other a twisted bow crackling with reversed Shen.
The air vibrated under their presence.
Draven's mouth twisted into a cold line. "Now we're even."
Draven's pupils dilated.
"Sakamoto!"
Draven's warning tore through the air just as Sakamoto turned too late.
Lord Arcade was already there.
His figure appeared in a white blur of warped space, fist aimed directly at Sakamoto's head with enough velocity to crater the world behind it. The force ruptured the dust beneath, split the air in a jagged wake of heat.
But something else moved first.
BOOM.
A monolithic sound cracked through the battlefield as Ark Angel Michael's shield slammed down like a meteor between them. It struck the ground upright, planted like a wall of divine judgment before Sakamoto.
Arcade's punch collided dead-on with the surface of the tortoise-skin shield.
A shockwave burst outward.
The impact was so cataclysmic it sent the massive shield flying backwards, spiraling through the air, carving a burning trench of displaced snow as it spun.
Lord Arcade himself stumbled back midair, his punch arm twitching slightly from the recoil.
He didn't hesitate.
He shot forward again with another blur, his second fist rocketing straight for Sakamoto's skull.
Michael, unmoving behind them, opened his mouth.
"Gravity Curse: Death Room."
A black-red aura exploded from beneath Lord Arcade's position anchoring him like celestial anchors wrapping around him.
Suddenly, Lord Arcade froze.
His punch hung suspended inches from Sakamoto's nose. His body trembled, locked inside an unseen pressure field. Muscles surged against invisible restraints. His eyes widened in fury.
But
CRACK.
Even without moving, even while bound, the sheer force in Arcade's halted punch ripped the air apart.
The resulting shockwave blasted Sakamoto away like a paper doll caught in a hurricane.
He was flung sideways through the sky, tumbling midair, blood bursting from his mouth in twin streams as he spun.
"SAKAMOTO—!"
Draven's executioner construct moved instantly.
The black Sitra Achra Warrior the one bearing the vertebrae bow stepped forward and raised its free hand toward the air, fingers elongating.
A spectral string of reverse-Shen webbed the sky.
Sakamoto's tumbling body hit it and the black executioner gently snatched him midair, halting his momentum.
Sakamoto groaned, bleeding from his mouth and ears, clutching his ribs. "Damn… he didn't even touch me…"
The executioner lowered him gently to the ground beside Draven.
Draven glanced at him, voice stern. "You cannot be fighting stupidly and depending only on the summon."
Sakamoto smirked weakly, spitting out red. "Thank you. You're my teacher now, huh?"
He staggered slightly, eyes dazed. "My goodness… that punch didn't even connect. And I'm like this?"
Draven's expression darkened.
"No. Listen closely. I've noticed something."
He turned toward the figure still bound midair.
"He's not healing… after I struck him with Mjölnir."
Sakamoto's expression shifted.
"…So?"
Draven lifted the hammer once more. "That weapon is his weakness. A Shinkai-class disruption effect. If we want to end this or even hurt him properly, I need an opening."
Sakamoto wiped blood from his lips and nodded.
"Alright, fine," he said, breathing heavy. "I got you."
Lord Arcade's fist hovered still locked just inches from Sakamoto's face by the Gravity Curse: Death Room. Every tendon in his body bulged, fighting against the invisible weight crushing his limbs.
But his fingers twitched.
A root emerged from the ground,Thick. Vein-lined. Alive.
It slithered upward like a serpent, wrapped itself once around Lord Arcade's wrist, then pressed against his palm.
The moment it made contact
The gravity curse began to shimmer.
The air quaked.
The binding seal… cracked.
The gravitational force was devoured.
The field shattered like black glass, and Lord Arcade's body stood tall again. He dropped his raised hand, flexing his fingers as he looked at his palm.
Then, with calm precision, he lowered his feet to the ground.
The Faust beneath him melted in a ring as soon as his soles met earth.
From afar, Ark Angel Michael stood firm, one arm raising slowly.
Across the field, his distant shield pulsed.
It responded instantly the tortoise-skin shield tore through the air, spinning back toward his palm like a boomerang.
Michael caught it.
And then, with full force, he slammed it straight down toward Lord Arcade's position like divine judgment being hurled from heaven.
The ground shattered beneath its descent.
But Lord Arcade didn't flinch.
He raised only one hand.
SLAM.
The shield collided into his palm.
And stopped.
Held.
Not moving.
Not even shaking.
Lord Arcade stared up at the warlord.
"Oh, Michael," he said softly. "You forget."
His eyes began to glow bright emerald.
"I possess the power of a god… one with Yggdrasil."
The roots underfoot twisted.
"Anything that lives within nature trees, stone, earth, water I can overthrow by will alone."
More roots exploded from beneath the battlefield, spiraling upward like serpents uncaged.
"Whatever is on this earth," he said, his voice deepening, "belongs to me."
Michael's shield was yanked from his grip.
Six massive roots surged from the ground below coiling around Ark Angel Michael.
One looped around his right arm.
Another around the shield arm.
Two curled around his waist.
One hooked around his neck.
And the last plunged into the ground beneath him, wrapping his legs like manacles.
Michael didn't move.
The roots squeezed.
Cracked.
Held.
He was completely restrained.
Draven and Sakamoto stood from a distance, watching the chaos unfold.
"Shit," Draven said. "I thought we could use him as a cover to strike…"
"Can you swap him like you did me earlier?" he asked without turning his head.
Sakamoto nodded once. "I should be able to."
Lord Arcade ascended steadily, hovering through the dust-flecked air as if carried by thought alone. His white rod dimmed in one hand, the other arm extended behind him casual, like a predator approaching a pinned animal. His gaze never left Ark Angel Michael's face.
The giant warlord remained frozen, wrapped tight in the six roots that coiled around him like serpents. His shield had been torn from his hand, still held aloft by Lord Arcade's root. His limbs groaned under the pressure of Yggdrasil's binding.
"You were once a king, Michael," Lord Arcade said quietly, the storm roaring around his voice. "Now you bow like a beast. You thought dying in shadow made you immune to nature's domain? No you became part of it."
But then something shifted.
A faint hiss.
Lord Arcade's eyes twitched, pupils narrowing.
The serpent emblem on Michael's tortoise-skin shield the painted snake twitched.
Then its eye opened.
Fully.
Vertically slit.
Pupil burning red.
The serpent image peeled from the shield, not tearing, not breaking, but sliding cleanly out of the surface as though it had only been resting.
The snake's body coiled outward, painted markings becoming scale and sinew. What was once myth became matter.
A living curse.