The infinite void between galaxies offered no sound, no air, only the crushing silence of absolute zero and the distant, indifferent glitter of stars. Shinji Kazuhiko hovered, Act 3 energy shimmering like contained starlight beneath his feet, forming unstable platforms that hissed against the vacuum. Opposite him, Khoseph, the Magikill Monarch, stood with infuriating nonchalance, his simple robes undisturbed, his messy brown hair floating gently as if underwater. His hazel eyes held a detached curiosity, like a scientist observing a particularly aggressive microbe.
"Magikill?" Shinji echoed, his voice transmitted through the void by focused spiritual energy. "Didn't understand, but you feel... excessive. Where do you rank among Saganbo's pets?" He kept his tone deliberately provocative, probing for weakness, for pride.
Khoseph waved a dismissive hand. "Call it 'Magic' if 'Magikill' sounds gauche. Lord Saganbo has a flair for the dramatic. And me?" A bland, almost bored smile touched his lips. "I'm considered... potent and reliable. Less theatrics, more results. That's all I can tell you." He tilted his head, observing Shinji's energy platforms flicker. "You're struggling just to stay aloft, Trascender. Cockiness seems premature."
Shinji's lips thinned. He sees the instability. With a surge of will, the Act 3 energy beneath his feet solidified, glowing brighter, stabilizing his stance. "This?" Shinji retorted, forcing calm into his voice. "Act 3: Spiritual Energy Manifestation. Just reshaping my power. Crude flight, maybe. But who said you hold the high ground?" A pulse of raw power emanated from him. Not the terrifying release that glassed Mount Veridian, but a focused declaration, a flexing of spiritual muscle. "You're the cocky one."
The void itself seemed to flinch. Distant nebulae momentarily dimmed. Space-time rippled subtly around Shinji, a visible distortion propagating outward. For a single, heart-stopping moment, the fabric of Universe 3 trembled.
Khoseph's eyes widened a fraction, the first crack in his mask of boredom. The mundane hazel seemed to deepen, revealing cold, calculating depths. "Fascinating," he murmured, the word carrying genuine surprise across the void. "I underestimated you, mortal. Significantly. We might indeed be... comparable." He shifted his weight, a subtle coiling of unseen power. "This changes the retrieval parameters."
Before Shinji could respond, a streak of cerulean fury tore through the void. Merus, battered but blazing with righteous fury, materialized like a vengeful comet. His pearlescent suit was cracked, luminous blue blood oozing from the spatial shear wounds inflicted by the planetary kick, but his glacial eyes burned with absolute focus. "Khoseph!" The name was a thunderclap in the mindscape.
He didn't speak. He acted. A fist wreathed in the raw, shimmering energy of Creation itself; light and heat and nascent matter coalescing; slammed towards Khoseph's seemingly unprotected head.
Khoseph reacted not with panic, but with eerie precision. He raised his forearm, not to block, but to intercept. The space around his arm warped violently, a localized distortion field snapping into existence.
CRACK-BOOM!
The sound of colliding fundamentals ripped through the silent void. Merus's creation energy met Khoseph's spatial distortion. Light flared, blindingly white, then collapsed inwards. The recoil was catastrophic. Khoseph was blasted backwards, not through space, but across it, a human-shaped projectile hurtling towards a small, blue-green planet orbiting a distant star.
He struck its atmosphere like a meteor, trailing fire, vanishing into its cloud cover. Seconds later, a plume of dust and debris mushroomed from the impact site, visible even across the stellar distance.
Merus hovered, panting slightly, his fist smoking. "Glad you blocked," he projected, relief warring with fury. "Leveling another world... the loss of life..." He shook his head, the weight of his domain heavy upon him. "Unacceptable for a God of Creation."
Before Merus could finish, the planet convulsed. Not an explosion from within, but a violent tearing. From the opposite hemisphere, Khoseph erupted back into the void, propelled by his own power. He was unharmed, his robes slightly scuffed, a look of mild annoyance on his ordinary face. He didn't attack Merus directly. He punched the space beside the planet.
RRRIIIPPP!
The fabric of reality tore. A jagged fissure of pure spatial force ripped through the planet's core. The blue-green world didn't explode; it was sundered, ripped cleanly into two smoldering halves, continents sheared, oceans boiling into vacuum. Millions of tiny, final screams echoed psychically for a microsecond before being silenced forever. Debris fountained outwards, a silent funeral pyre.
"Why," Khoseph sighed, drifting calmly amidst the planetary wreckage, brushing dust from his sleeve, "would you care about such transient sparks? Weakness. Noise. They merely clutter the board." He looked at Merus with genuine puzzlement. "Sentimentality is inefficient."
"DAMN YOU!" Merus roared, the psychic blast carrying his grief and rage, raw enough to fracture asteroids light-years away. Creation energy surged around him, ready to lash out.
"Merus!" Shinji's voice cut through the god's fury, sharp as a diamond blade. He floated between them, Act 3 energy now swirling defensively around his own form. "Stand down! This is my fight!" His deep-sea blue eyes locked onto Merus's glacial ones, radiating absolute conviction. "He isn't too strong. Not for me. Trust me. Watch if you must, but stay clear."
Merus hesitated, the cosmic energy flickering around him. He saw the cold fire in Shinji's gaze, the controlled power, the echo of the entity that had unmade a mountain. Slowly, reluctantly, the creation energy dimmed. "...Very well, Shinji." The words were heavy with worry, but laced with newfound respect. "Don't make me regret this."
Khoseph clapped his hands together once, a dry, soundless gesture in the void. "Splendid! Efficiency restored. Thank you, Trascender. You've saved me considerable paperwork." He offered that bland smile again. "Now, shall we relocate? This debris field is... untidy. Higher void? Emptier?"
Shinji nodded curtly. "Agreed." He didn't wait, pushing off with Act 3 thrusters, ascending rapidly towards a region of pure, starless dark, far from celestial bodies or debris.
Khoseph followed effortlessly, seeming to simply arrive at the designated spot moments later. "Much better... room to work."
Shinji didn't waste words. He moved. Act 3 energy flared around his fist, condensing into a hammer-blow of solidified spirit. He crossed the distance in a blink, the punch aimed not just at Khoseph's chest, but at the space he occupied.
THUD-WHUM!
The impact resonated strangely, a deep, muffled sound that vibrated through Shinji's bones rather than echoing. Khoseph didn't dodge. He absorbed it. His body barely shifted, the simple robe absorbing the kinetic force with unnatural stillness. Only a faint ripple spread outwards from the point of impact, warping the distant starlight.
Shinji recoiled, knuckles stinging. *Weird. Like punching a singularity wrapped in cloth.* "Oh, scary," he admitted, flexing his hand. Act 3 energy soothed the minor damage instantly. "My punch barely registered. Thought Monarchs hit back?"
Khoseph brushed an imaginary speck from his robe. "Please," he scoffed, genuine distaste in his voice. "Brawling? Barbaric. Crude. I am the Magikill Monarch. My methods possess elegance and Precision. Allow me to demonstrate."
He didn't raise a hand. He didn't chant. He simply looked at Shinji's feet.
Shinji's Danger Sense shrieked a nanosecond too late. The void beneath his feet wasn't empty anymore. A circle of absolute darkness, rimmed with sickly violet light, yawned open. Not a black hole; something worse. A portal, not to another place, but to a state.
Agony, pure and icy, lanced up Shinji's legs. It wasn't physical damage; it was his vitality being siphoned. He looked down in horror. Tendrils of shimmering darkness, like solidified entropy, had coiled around his ankles, burrowing into his spiritual energy, draining his life force directly. His vision tunneled. His limbs grew leaden. The vibrant Act 3 glow around him flickered, dimmed. He felt consciousness slipping, pulled down into the hungry maw beneath him. Not just blood... essence! Soul!
"SHINJI!" Merus's psychic scream was pure terror, laced with helpless rage. He surged forward, creation energy gathering, but Khoseph merely flicked a glance his way. Space thickened before Merus like hardening amber, slowing him to a crawl.
*Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!* Shinji's mind raced, fighting the soul-deep chill. *Magic? No... manipulation! Fundamental forces! He twisted space and made some kind of siphon!* Panic warred with furious analysis. He couldn't break the tendrils; they were part of the distorted space itself. He needed to break the source.
His blurring vision caught it; a faint, almost invisible point of violet light within the rim of the draining portal. The anchor. The focal point of Khoseph's spell.
Gathering the dregs of his draining power, fueled by desperation and transcendent will, Shinji raised a trembling finger. Not towards Khoseph, but into the portal itself, aiming at that tiny violet nexus. "ACT 3!" The mental command was a ragged scream.
A needle-thin beam of pure white spiritual energy, the last concentrated essence he could muster, lanced from his fingertip. Not outwards, but downwards, into the hungry darkness. It struck the violet nexus dead center.
PING-SHATTER!
The sound was like crystal breaking in a tomb. The violet light winked out. The draining tendrils dissolved into harmless smoke. The dark portal imploded with a soundless pop, leaving only undisturbed void. The horrific suction vanished.
Shinji gasped, shuddering violently as his stolen vitality rushed back, Act 3 energy flaring back to life around him, brighter, fiercer, fueled by the returning surge and pure adrenaline. He pushed himself upright in the void, breathing hard, glaring at Khoseph with renewed fury. His body healed, but the memory of that soul-deep cold lingered.
Khoseph actually looked surprised. He tilted his head, examining the spot where his portal had vanished. "Amazing," he conceded, a flicker of genuine, professional admiration in his hazel eyes. "Direct counter-spell targeting the anchor point. Instinctive and Impressive." He clapped slowly, soundlessly. "You are full of surprises, Trascender. A worthy specimen." The admiration vanished, replaced by chilling focus. "Which means playtime is over."
He raised both hands, palms open towards the empty void behind Shinji. Not towards Shinji himself. "Observe," Khoseph stated calmly, "efficiency." The space behind Shinji writhed. Not torn, but pinched. Three points of impossible darkness blossomed, not like portals, but like wounds in reality itself. They weren't large, perhaps only meters across, but the sheer gravitational terror they radiated was palpable, bending light into impossible curves, making the distant stars smear like wet paint.
Black holes. Not natural cosmic phenomena, but conjured singularities. Khoseph's "favorite move".
Shinji felt the pull instantly. Not just physical, but spiritual. The Act 3 energy around him strained, threatening to be ripped away. His very essence felt tugged towards the all-consuming darkness.
"This," Khoseph explained, his voice calm over the rising, psychic scream of the singularities, "is optimal. Minimal exertion, maximum containment. Let them do the work." He gestured almost lazily. The event horizons of the artificial black holes flared violet, their pull intensifying exponentially, focusing solely on Shinji. "They'll compress you nicely. Stable. Easy transport. Once delivered to Lord Saganbo, we simply... pop one open and retrieve you. Relatively intact. Fascinating, isn't it? Clean. Precise. No messy planet-breaking required."
Shinji fought against the inexorable pull, Act 3 thrusters flaring at maximum, carving brilliant arcs of light in the void as he strained, but he was sliding backwards. Slowly. Inevitably. Towards the central, most voracious singularity. Compression... Transport... Saganbo... The monstrous simplicity of the plan chilled him more than the spatial drain.
"Telling me your plan..." Shinji gritted out, pouring more power into resisting, his voice strained against the gravitational tide, "...isn't exactly smart, you know?"
Khoseph smiled, a cold, confident curve of his lips. "Escape is statistically negligible," he stated, sounding like a professor citing data. "The parameters are fixed. The gravity wells are self-sustaining and focused. And even if, by some miracle, you defy entropy..." He raised his hand again, fingers poised to snap. Violet energy crackled around them. "...my magic has infinite variations. It never disappoints. Surrender to the inevitable, Trascender. Your struggle only wastes energy... and my valuable time."
Shinji hung suspended in the maelstrom of gravity, the light of his Act 3 energy the only defiant spark against the swallowing dark. Behind the implacable Monarch, Merus strained against the solidified space, his face a mask of helpless fury. The three artificial black holes pulsed with hungry violet light, their event horizons inches from claiming their prize. The Magikill's gambit seemed absolute. But within Shinji Kazuhiko, the Transcended soul, forged in the crucible of Suchumus and tempered by terror, a spark of defiance colder than the void itself began to ignite. Surrender wasn't in his nature. The battle for existence had reached its event horizon, and Shinji had one ultimate, desperate play to make. The grammar of godhood demanded a verb even magic couldn't predict.