"Im... impossible!"
Seeing this inconceivable scene unfold before him, Varnava's face was filled with utter shock, as if he had seen a ghost.
"You... you're not..."
He stretched out a trembling finger, pointing at Yuki, his lips quivering as he tried to speak.
"You're trying to say—you clearly saw that I have no elemental power and no Vision, so how could I break your move so easily?"
Yuki's lips curved slightly upward, a mocking smile surfacing on his face as he finished Varnava's sentence for him.
Hearing this, Varnava's heart suddenly skipped a beat. A terrible sense of foreboding rose within him.
"The reason you chose to duel me was precisely because of that—you thought I was just an ordinary person. But... the truth is, you were wrong. I am no ordinary man. And my strength is far beyond anything you could ever imagine. Even the Tsaritsa of your nation is hopelessly out of reach of it. So it seems your little scheme was sorely mistaken."
Yuki gazed calmly at Varnava. His even tone brimmed with boundless confidence, compelling absolute conviction in his words.
Even the onlooking crowd felt an inexplicable sense of trust.
"Really? Even the Tsaritsa of Snezhnaya, one of the Seven Archons, can't hold a candle to him?!"
"I don't know if it's true or not, but what's with this inexplicable feeling of conviction?!"
"Ah, whatever! Just believe it and be done with it. In any case, that Fatui Harbinger is utterly heinous. This is the perfect chance to make sure he doesn't escape punishment!"
Having just witnessed Yuki effortlessly dispel the enemy's attack, the crowd felt far more at ease. This way, they no longer had to worry that the arch-criminal who had thrown all of Inazuma into chaos might evade justice.
"Th-this... he just destroyed that man's fireball with his bare hand?! How incredible."
Kujou Sara stared at Yuki with an expression of sheer astonishment, muttering under her breath. She could sense just how powerful that move the Harbinger had unleashed was.
As expected of the Fatui, the strongest fighting force of Snezhnaya—that strike was something even she wasn't fully confident she could have blocked.
"Damn it..." Realizing he had gravely miscalculated, Varnava's face instantly darkened. "Blazing Conflagration—Flame Sword!"
With a sharp cry, he raised both hands above his head. A massive concentration of Pyro elemental energy gathered above him, forming a colossal sword of flame.
The blade was a full thirty meters long, wreathed entirely in billowing fire, so hot that the very air around it was scorched, twisted, and evaporated. If one had the equipment to measure the temperature of this flame-forged sword, they would find it already approaching the heat of molten magma.
"Die!!!"
Not daring to be the slightest bit careless, Varnava let out a furious roar and swung the blade down at Yuki with both hands.
Due to the enormous attack range of the sword, the citizens standing behind Yuki at a distance had already scurried far out of the way the moment Varnava had begun condensing it, terrified that the ensuing attack might drag them in.
Swoosh—crack!
The blade of flame cleaved downward, splitting apart the very air along its trajectory, as if rending heaven and earth themselves as it bore down upon Yuki.
Yuki shook his head and spoke in a tone tinged with faint helplessness. "It's useless. Even if you mustered all your power, the moment you chose to duel me, the outcome was already sealed!"
With that, Yuki flicked his hand and extended a single finger, pointing through the air at Varnava from a distance. In the next instant, a beam of radiant light shot forth from Yuki's fingertip, striking Varnava at an imperceptible speed.
The moment the ray hit him, Varnava's entire body deflated like a balloon, rapidly contracting upon itself, until he became completely flat.
Even the colossal flaming sword he had conjured underwent the same transformation alongside him, shifting from three-dimensional to two-dimensional.
Witnessing this sight, the surrounding citizens all gaped with wide eyes, their faces full of horror and amazement.
"Th-this... how did a living, breathing person suddenly get flattened like that!"
"He's practically a paper doll!"
"What kind of ability is this? Turning a person into a paper cutout?!"
"Even that giant flame sword turned into one along with him! That's absolutely incredible!"
Seeing this miraculous spectacle, Yae Miko and the others were equally filled with shocked astonishment.
"It's as if someone who was perfectly three-dimensional has suddenly become a character inside a painting!"
Yae Miko murmured softly, her eyes sparkling with a strange light. Kujou Sara beside her nodded in full agreement.
Indeed, it was just as everyone suspected. Yuki had truly turned Varnava into a paper cutout, reducing a three-dimensional human being straight down to two dimensions, making him a genuine paper person.
And yet, Varnava, now transformed, was not dead. His face was still frozen in a mask of horror. He looked down to examine his own body, and upon seeing his current state, he froze for a long moment.
When it finally dawned on him, he erupted in rage and tried to hurl accusations at Yuki. However, after being dimensionally reduced, he could no longer produce any sound.
And so his words, to Yuki and everyone present, manifested as a physical speech bubble suddenly extending from him, displaying his words in text.
The text in the speech bubble read: Bastard! What have you done to me?! Why have I become like this?!
It was even thoughtfully accompanied by symbols denoting fury—the entire mode of expression no different from that of a comic strip. Yuki watched the scene unfold with great amusement.
"Guess." He couldn't help but find it rather funny as he tossed the question back at Varnava.
The surrounding onlookers were all grinning from ear to ear, thoroughly entertained by the amusing spectacle.
Varnava, however, could not bear such humiliation. His emotions were in a state of extreme agitation, and deep inside, he felt utter terror at the state he had been reduced to.
So all he wanted now was to eliminate Yuki as quickly as possible—perhaps then there would still be a chance to return to his original form.
Immediately, he raised the colossal flaming sword in his hands and swung it violently at Yuki. But the man himself had already been dimensionally reduced, so naturally, his attacks suffered the same fate. As the massive flame blade was just about to reach him, Yuki simply sidestepped and dodged it with ease.
The sword cleaved through empty air, then came crashing down onto the ground. Yet, where the blade should have possessed enough power to split the very earth and set it ablaze—instead, it was like paper meeting stone.
The instant it made contact with the hard floor, the entire blade bent and crumpled. A few drops even splattered out from it—what should have been bursts of elemental Pyro power were now nothing but splashes of red ink.
Varnava stared blankly, first at the ground, then at the flaming greatsword in his own hands. His mind went completely blank. Since when could this move not even cleave through a floor?! Was he still dreaming?!
Such a ridiculous, farcical scene made everyone present double over with laughter, all gleefully reveling in his misfortune. Seeing that he had had his fun, Yuki gave a light snap of his fingers.
Instantly, flames spontaneously ignited all over Varnava's body, setting him ablaze. Reduced to a paper cutout, Varnava was exceptionally easy to burn—one touch and he was alight.
As the fierce flames consumed him, speech bubbles kept popping out from him in rapid succession, all essentially crying out in agony.
Only when everything had been burned away to nothing was it finally declared—the Fatui Diplomatic Mission's Harbinger of Snezhnaya, Varnava had met his complete demise.
Ei, entirely unsurprised by this outcome, announced the result with perfect equanimity.
"The victor of the duel before the throne—Yuki!"
With Ei's proclamation, the Watatsumi Island rebellion incident in Inazuma drew to a close, ending with the Fatui's conspiracy exposed and its mastermind dead.