The void wasn't just cold; it was hungry. Three points of absolute negation, Khoseph's conjured singularities, warped the fabric of reality around Shinji Kazuhiko. Their violet-rimmed event horizons pulsed with insatiable gravity, pulling not just at his physical form but at the very essence of his spiritual energy. The Act 3 aura, a defiant corona of contained starlight moments before, now streamed away from him in desperate, flickering tendrils, sucked into the all-consuming dark. Distant stars stretched into impossible smears of light, painting a terrifying panorama of spatial distortion.
"Surrender is the optimal path, Trascender," Khoseph's calm baritone resonated directly in Shinji's mind, untouched by the gravitational maelstrom. The Magikill Monarch hovered serenely beyond the pull, a mundane silhouette against the cosmic carnage he commanded. "Resistance only prolongs the inevitable and wastes valuable resources. My calculations account for even transcendent stubbornness."
Shinji gritted his teeth, muscles screaming as he fought against the inexorable tide. *Compression... Transport... Saganbo.* The words echoed Khoseph's chillingly efficient plan. *No.* Panic threatened to surge. *Think. Spirit versus Space. Force versus Fabric.* His Danger Sense screamed the trajectories, the points of maximum pull. The central singularity yawned widest, its violet rim flaring as it focused its hunger solely on him.
"Optimal... my ass!" Shinji roared, the sound ripped away by the vacuum but conveyed through raw spiritual projection. He stopped fighting the pull. Instead, he embraced it, channeling every shred of will inward. He didn't try to hold his energy back; he gathered it. Not to resist, but to feed. He focused the immense, churning power of his core; the near-totality of his being that had glassed Mount Veridian; into a single, infinitesimal point within his own spiritual center. It wasn't compression like before; it was detonation in waiting.
"What are you-?" Khoseph's detached curiosity flickered, his hazel eyes narrowing a fraction as his spatial senses registered the bizarre shift in Shinji's energy signature; not resisting, but amplifying under the strain.
Shinji poured everything into that internal point. His Act 3 aura winked out entirely, consumed by the internal implosion. For a terrifying microsecond, he felt utterly hollow, a shell about to be crushed. Then, he released it. Not outwards, but inwards, towards the heart of his own gathered power.
"ACT 3: SPIRITUAL ANNIHILATION!"
The effect was not an outward explosion, but an implosion turned cataclysm. From the point within Shinji, a sphere of pure, blinding white light erupted, not radiating heat or force in the conventional sense, but unmaking the very concept of containment. It was spiritual energy forced into a state of critical mass and unleashed as a wave of erasure. The light didn't illuminate; it consumed.
It hit the gravitational wells of the black holes not as opposing force, but as an annihilating tide. The meticulously warped space, the focused gravitational singularities Khoseph had conjured, met a power that transcended spatial manipulation; raw, unadulterated spiritual potential unleashed in self-destructive transcendence.
KRACKOOM-SSSHHH!
The sound was less a bang and more the universe itself tearing. The three points of darkness flared violet-white in protest, then simply... ceased. The event horizons shattered like obsidian glass, the spatial distortions snapping back violently. The gravitational pull vanished instantly, replaced by a silent shockwave of released spatial tension that rippled outwards, momentarily straightening the light of distant galaxies before fading. Where three artificial singularities had hungered, only undisturbed void remained.
Shinji hung suspended, panting, wisps of smoke-like spiritual residue curling from his body. He felt terrifyingly empty, drained down to the dregs. The backlash of detonating his entire energy reserve vibrated through his being, leaving micro-fractures in his spirit and visible cracks spiderwebbing across his skin. Blood, seeped from his nostrils and the corners of his eyes.
Khoseph stared, his infuriatingly bored mask finally slipping completely. His hazel eyes widened, genuine astonishment replacing detached calculation. He drifted slightly closer, examining the space where his constructs had been annihilated. "As expected... you've transcended humanity," he murmured, the words carrying a newfound weight. "Destroying three singularities that bend space and time... that is an outrageous feat. Calling you a mortal would be disrespectful. A statistical anomaly made manifest."
Shinji forced a pained grin, spitting a globule of shimmering blood into the void. "Act 3, huh?" he rasped, his voice raw. "What a useful Act!" He focused inward, drawing on the fundamental core of his being. A faint, warm glow began to emanate from his chest; Act 1: Regeneration. The visible cracks on his skin started to knit together with agonizing slowness. "Well, yeah, of course," he continued, gesturing weakly at his battered form. "After all, I exploded my entire spiritual energy. Don't get too excited, though." The glow intensified slightly. "That means my energy temporarily went away." He clenched a fist, feeling a trickle of power begin to flow back, a river refilling from a hidden spring. "It's coming back now. Through my Act 1. Regeneration. Looks like it's even able to regenerate energy..." The revelation was as surprising to him as it was crucial.
Khoseph watched the process, his head tilted like a scientist observing a fascinating new reaction. "Marvelous," he breathed, a flicker of genuine, almost predatory fascination in his eyes. "You continue to amaze me, Trascender. A self-replenishing wellspring of power capable of annihilating spatial constructs. Lord Saganbo will be... intrigued." The bland smile returned, colder now. "But regeneration takes time. Time you no longer possess."
He raised both hands, not in a grand gesture, but with the precise, economical movement of a master craftsman. His fingers danced in intricate, unseen patterns. The void around Shinji rippled. Not in one place, but in seven distinct points, forming a perfect, lethal cage.
FWOOMPH
Seven new singularities bloomed into existence, their violet rims casting an eerie, pulsing light. Their gravitational pulls weren't unified; they pulled in different directions, a chaotic maelstrom designed to tear matter apart at the subatomic level. The force hit Shinji like seven cosmic hammers.
"GAAAAH!" The scream tore from him unbidden. His body, still weakened, still healing, was wrenched violently. Muscles strained to the tearing point. Bones groaned under conflicting stresses. Blood vessels burst under his skin, painting him in grotesque constellations of crimson. His left arm dislocated with a sickening pop audible only in his mind. He felt his very cells screaming as spacetime itself tried to pull him in seven directions at once. The regenerating trickle of energy faltered, overwhelmed by the sheer agony and the relentless spatial assault.
*Dammit! I barely recovered anything!* Shinji thought, desperation clawing at him. He tried to repeat the Annihilation tactic, gathering the pitiful dregs of returning energy. But the chaotic, multi-directional pull scattered his focus, making internal compression impossible. *Not enough! Too scattered!*
Suddenly, the pressure directly behind him lessened infinitesimally. Khoseph had moved. Not with speed, but by folding space. He was there, directly behind Shinji, within the chaotic cage of singularities yet untouched by their conflicting pulls, a master standing calmly within his own lethal storm.
A single, ungloved finger, seemingly mundane, reached out and tapped Shinji lightly on the back, between the shoulder blades.
The touch was cold. Not physically, but conceptually. It felt like a drop of absolute zero spreading through his spirit.
Shinji reacted instantly, pure survival instinct honed by countless battles. He didn't try to turn; he phased, using a burst of Act 3 propulsion to violently fling himself forward, away from the touch and the epicenter of the tearing forces. He tumbled through the void, gasping, his body a tapestry of fresh agony.
Khoseph didn't pursue. He simply lowered his hand, observing Shinji's desperate evasion with that detached curiosity. "You felt it right away, so you went back. Great reflexes," he acknowledged, sounding almost complimentary. "Truly impressive sensory acuity."
Shinji stabilized himself, glaring back, Act 1 working furiously to mend dislocated joints and torn flesh, the process visibly slower than before. "Of course," he spat, the taste of blood strong in his mouth. "No dirty tricks of yours will work on me twice, Monarch."
Khoseph's bland smile widened a fraction. "Too bad... I already activated my magic by touching you." He flexed the finger that had made contact. "Already too late, in other words."
Shinji's Danger Sense screamed a new kind of warning; not an external threat, but an internal dampening. "I don't get what you're saying at all!" he growled, defiance masking rising dread. He needed to attack. Now.
Ignoring the screaming protests of his body, Shinji launched himself at Khoseph. Act 3 energy, a thin, flickering stream compared to its former glory, coalesced around his fist. He put everything he had into a single, desperate punch aimed at the Monarch's impassive face.
THUD.
The impact was... nothing. No shockwave, no recoil. His fist connected with Khoseph's cheekbone, but it felt like punching a singularity wrapped in silk. The spatial distortion field around the Monarch absorbed the kinetic force utterly. Khoseph didn't even blink.
"Predictable," Khoseph sighed, sounding genuinely disappointed. "Brawling is so... inefficient." He raised a hand. Five new singularities snapped into existence around Shinji, smaller but faster forming, renewing the chaotic tearing pressure instantly.
*Enough!* Shinji thought, rage mingling with pain. He tried to gather his returning energy, to repeat the Annihilation that had shattered the first three.
Nothing happened.
He strained, pouring his will inward. The energy was there, trickling back, but it refused to coalesce. It felt sluggish, unresponsive, like trying to ignite wet kindling. *What the hell? I can't explode my energy! It won't gather!*
The renewed pull of the five singularities was immediate and brutal. Before he could adapt, a sickening RIIIP echoed in his mind. His right leg, caught in a particularly violent cross-current of gravity, tore off at the knee. Agony, white-hot and blinding, lanced through him. He screamed again, the sound a raw scrape in his throat.
Act 1: Regeneration flared, golden light knitting bone, muscle, and sinew. But it was agonizingly slow. Where a limb might have regenerated in seconds before, this felt like minutes crawling by under torture. The severed leg reformed particle by excruciating particle.
"Why the hell did I regenerate just now?" Shinji gasped through the pain, cold terror joining the physical agony. "It took more than double the time! What did you do?!"
Khoseph hovered calmly outside the cage, observing Shinji's torment with clinical interest. "By touching you," he explained, his voice calm, almost instructive, "I initiated a spatial-decay matrix within your spiritual field. Think of it as... localized entropy. It weakens every function; physical, spiritual, regenerative; slowly, exponentially. A very useful containment protocol." He tilted his head. "You would need to re-touch me in the exact same spatial coordinate where I touched you to disrupt the matrix. A simple counter, statistically improbable under these conditions."
Shinji's eyes blazed with fury and pain. The five singularities pulled relentlessly. His newly regenerated leg felt weak, the flesh around the joint still tender. He could feel the insidious decay spreading, a cold numbness seeping into his core, making the trickle of energy feel even slower, the regeneration more labored. "How generous of you telling me this!" he snarled, defiance his only shield against despair.
"Merely stating parameters," Khoseph shrugged. "You will reach a point where regenerating a finger takes hours. Where your spiritual recovery ceases entirely. Where you become... inert. Efficient, wouldn't you agree?"
Rage, pure and incandescent, surged through Shinji, momentarily burning through the cold decay. *Touch him. Same spot. Impossible... No... But there is a way.* He gathered the fading dregs of his will, focusing not on explosion, but on motion. He threw himself towards the edge of the singularity cage, towards Khoseph, ignoring the fresh tearing sensations in his limbs, the way his newly formed leg threatened to buckle. "DAMN IT, LET ME GO!!" The psychic scream ripped through the void.
"AAAAH!" Physical agony joined the spiritual as a gravitational shear ripped a chunk of flesh from his shoulder. His regeneration flared, gold light sputtering against the cold decay, barely keeping pace. He was a puppet of pain, dancing on strings of warped space.
Khoseph watched, a flicker of something akin to pity in his hazel eyes. "How painful. And ultimately, futile."
"ALRIGHT, I SAW ENOUGH!" Merus's roar of pure, helpless fury shattered the grim tableau. The God of Creation, battered and bleeding luminous blue, surged forward from where he'd been held back by the residual spatial thickness, creation energy blazing around his fists like captured supernovae. He couldn't stand idle any longer.
Khoseph didn't even turn his head. He merely snapped the fingers of his free hand. "Barrier: Absolute Quarantine."
Space didn't warp; it crystallized. A sphere of pure, impossible darkness, shot through with swirling violet fractals, snapped into existence around Khoseph, Shinji, and the five tearing singularities. It wasn't a shield; it was a pocket dimension, severed from the local universe. Merus's fist, wreathed in creation light, slammed into its surface.
THOOOOOM!
The impact resonated like a dying star, but the Absolute Barrier didn't buckle. Not a ripple marred its obsidian perfection. Merus was thrown back, creation energy sputtering against the absolute spatial lock.
"It's useless!" Khoseph's voice was calm even through the barrier, carrying to Merus. "This Barrier is Absolute. A one-use protocol. Requires a millennium's worth of accumulated spatial potential to invoke. But for a specimen like this? Worth the expenditure."
"SHINJI! GET AWAY!" Merus screamed, pounding futilely against the impossible barrier, his face a mask of anguish and rage. His creation energy flared, scorching the void around the barrier but leaving it untouched.
Inside the quarantine, Shinji felt the barrier snap shut. It wasn't just a wall; it felt like the universe itself had turned its back. The cold decay within him seemed to intensify in the enclosed space. The pain from the relentless tearing was becoming unbearable, a constant white noise drowning thought. His regeneration was visibly failing now; a deep gash on his chest remained open, oozing shimmering blood, the golden light flickering weakly. His vision blurred at the edges. *Too much... too fast... can't... focus...*
He saw Khoseph turn slightly, perhaps to observe Merus's futile efforts, perhaps already considering the next step in his "retrieval protocol." The Magikill Monarch's posture radiated finality. "I overestimated you," Khoseph murmured, the words cold needles in Shinji's fading consciousness. "How weak... in the end."
The pull of the nearest singularity intensified. Shinji lacked the strength to resist. He felt himself sliding towards the event horizon, the violet light filling his vision, the spatial distortion promising oblivion. *Black hole... compression... Saganbo...* The thoughts were sluggish, distant. *No...*
His body passed the threshold. Darkness, absolute and crushing, swallowed him. The tearing forces vanished, replaced by an immense, uniform pressure promising dissolution.
Khoseph fully turned his back. "Mission Successful," he stated, the bland satisfaction returning to his voice. He reached out a hand, preparing to collapse the quarantine and contain his prize.
Inside the crushing darkness, on the brink of unconsciousness, Shinji Kazuhiko's transcendent spirit ignited one final spark. *The touch... the absorption... but also... the conduit.* A memory flashes; the brief contact when Khoseph tapped him. Not just deterioration implanted... but a connection momentarily formed. And Shinji, even in his depleted state, understood connections. Act 3: Manifestation. Not for explosion. Not for healing. For... seeding.
With the last iota of his will, buried deep within the singularity's crushing embrace, Shinji Kazuhiko flicked his right index finger.
FWUMPH-BOOOOOM!
The sound was muffled, colossal, and utterly wrong inside the spatial prison. Khoseph, hand outstretched, convulsed. His ordinary robes bulged violently outwards from his torso. His eyes, wide with genuine shock for the first time, stared down at his own chest as a geyser of pure, white spiritual energy erupted from within him, shredding the fabric along with some blood. The force wasn't enough to destroy him, not nearly, but it was a catastrophic internal detonation. He was thrown backwards, a marionette with cut strings, slamming hard against the inner surface of his own Absolute Barrier. Violet fractals flared angrily where he impacted.
PFFFTT... The five singularities surrounding Shinji winked out instantly, their control severed as Khoseph's focus shattered. The crushing pressure vanished. Shinji tumbled free from the dissipating event horizon, gasping like a drowning man breaching the surface.
Khoseph pushed himself off the barrier wall, clutching his smoking chest. Luminous blood leaked from tears in his robes and the corner of his mouth. His messy brown hair was disheveled. "What the!?" The exclamation was raw, stripped of its usual calm. "Dammit! I lost control!" He staggered, the backlash of his own barrier combined with the internal explosion disrupting his impeccable equilibrium.
Shinji didn't hesitate. Pain was a distant echo. Exhaustion was fuel. The cold decay still gnawed, but the path was clear. "THERE WE GO!" He phased, crossing the short distance within the barrier not with speed, but by momentarily folding his own spiritual field, a crude mimicry of Khoseph's art fueled by desperate need. He reappeared directly in front of the staggering Monarch.
"HOW CARELESS!" Shinji roared. Act 3 energy, still thin but burning with renewed fury, blazed around his right leg. He pivoted, putting the entire weight of his transcendent body, every ounce of returning power, into a roundhouse kick aimed not just at Khoseph's injured torso, but at the fabric of space he occupied.
KRUNCH-SHATTER!
The kick connected. Hard. Khoseph's spatial distortion field, weakened by the internal explosion and his loss of focus, buckled. Shinji's foot slammed into the Monarch's ribs with the force of a meteor strike. The sound was of breaking reality and fracturing... something unearthly within Khoseph. The Magikill Monarch was launched across the quarantine sphere like a ragdoll, impacting the barrier again with enough force to make the violet fractals scream in protest, before slumping, momentarily stunned.
Shinji landed lightly, breathing heavily, Act 1 already flaring to mend the fresh damage from the kick and combat the persistent decay. He faced Khoseph, who was slowly pushing himself up, ichor dripping from his lips, his hazel eyes blazing with a mix of pain, fury, and chilling, recalculating interest.
"What was that?" Khoseph rasped, wiping blood from his chin, his voice tight with unfamiliar strain.
"Part of my Act 3," Shinji stated, his voice steady despite the tremors in his limbs. He held up his right hand, the finger that had flicked within the singularity. "When you touched me, you created a connection. A conduit. I didn't just feel your energy... I used it. I stored a seed of my own energy inside you, right where you touched me. And then..." He clenched the fist. "...it continued growing until it exploded. A little gift, buried deep."
A flicker of something like grudging respect crossed Khoseph's pained expression, quickly replaced by icy resolve. He straightened, ignoring the damage. "Welp. What a useful trick!" He spat more blood. "Statistically improbable... and therefore fascinating."
Shinji settled into a ready stance, Act 3 energy shimmering brighter now as his regeneration fought the decay and his core replenished. The Absolute Barrier still held, trapping them together in a sphere of warped space. Outside, Merus pounded silently, desperately. Inside, two battered powers faced each other across a void littered with the echoes of shattered singularities and betrayal.
"I guess we should end this," Shinji said, his stellar eyes locked onto Khoseph's. The cold fire of transcendence burned bright, tempered in the crucible of pain and the Monarch's spatial traps. "Don't you agree?" The air within the barrier crackled, not with energy, but with the promise of finality. The Magikill Monarch versus the Transcended Trascender. Round two began not with a bang, but with the silent, deadly calibration of absolute focus.