The air in Chamber Three hung thick and heavy, saturated with the metallic tang of blood and the suffocating heat radiating from the cooling obsidian shards that littered the shattered landscape. It was the stench of desperation and defeat. Kuro Okugami dragged himself upright, the movement sending fresh waves of agony lancing through his shattered ribs and multiple puncture wounds. His back scraped against a jagged spike of rapidly cooled magma, the only solid thing left in this hellscape he and Netsudo had forged. Crimson bloomed across his dark tunic, a stark, wet counterpoint to his unnaturally pale skin, slick with sweat and luminous orange residue from Netsudo's earlier efforts. Each ragged, wet gasp felt like inhaling shards of glass.
Across the desolate expanse, Daganu stood like a monolith carved from cosmic indifference. His event-horizon armor absorbed the weak, ambient light of the chamber, rendering him a silhouette of pure void against the fractured backdrop. His hair, once its natural hue, was now a deep, unnatural green – the only visible concession to Kuro's desperate, near-suicidal gambit with the amplified HeartDeath Rod. The Monarch radiated an aura of absolute, effortless dominance, a predator surveying wounded prey with detached curiosity. The chamber's amplified hyper-kinetic field hummed around him, a constant reminder of his domain.
*He hasn't slowed. Not a picosecond. Not a fraction of a Planck time.* Kuro's mind, usually a fortress of cold, relentless logic, felt fractured, crumbling under the twin assaults of excruciating pain and crushing disbelief. *The Rod... three direct hits. It drains body, mind, spirit... fundamental vitality. Yet his velocity... it's absolute. Unchanged. Infinite? Is that even a quantifiable state?* He tried to focus past the pain, analyzing the residual energy readings flickering erratically in his cracked visor. *But his strength... it feels different. Less like raw power density, more like... concentrated kinetic potential. Translational energy weaponized.*
"Pathetic," Daganu rumbled, the sound vibrating through the scorched rock beneath Kuro's feet and resonating deep within his battered bones. "Still clinging to the illusion of resistance? Your data streams flicker with terminal errors." His voice was the grinding of tectonic plates, devoid of malice, only profound, absolute disdain.
Driven by a surge of defiance that felt like the last ember in a dying fire, Kuro pushed off the obsidian spike. Pain screamed through his legs, but he channeled it into motion. *Analyze the attack vectors! Find a pattern, a micro-hesitation, a tell!* He feinted left, a clumsy stagger disguised as a lunge, then propelled himself forward with a surge of adrenaline, a desperate, energy-imbued punch aimed not to kill, but to connect, to gather data on Daganu's reactive field. It was a move born of agony and raw necessity, not strategy.
Daganu didn't dodge. He didn't even shift his weight. He simply raised his right hand, index finger extended with casual contempt. A point of impossible, searing white light coalesced at its tip, brighter than a welding arc, and vanished almost instantly.
THWIP!
The sound was a sharp, high-pitched crack, like reality itself snapping. Kuro gasped, stumbling back violently. A searing hole, perfectly circular and instantly cauterized at the edges, bloomed high on his right shoulder. Blood, shockingly bright and arterial, welled sluggishly for a millisecond before being sealed by the heat, then spilled in a hot rivulet down his ruined arm. The impact felt less like physical force and more like concentrated time punching through him – a violation of causality localized to his flesh. *Speed... pure kinetic energy focused to a singularity. His strength is speed. He weaponizes velocity itself.*
"Running in circles like a trapped insect?" Daganu mused, a cruel, detached amusement underlying the grinding bass of his voice. Kuro, ignoring the white-hot brand searing his shoulder nerves, forced his trembling legs into motion, circling the Monarch, trying desperately to create distance, trying to think past the encroaching fog of blood loss and shock. Each step sent jolts of agony from his wounded thigh.
Daganu's hand blurred. Not a punch, not a beam. Another pinpoint flash of light, impossible to track with organic eyes.
THWIP!
This time, Kuro's left thigh erupted. He cried out, a raw, animal sound torn from his throat, collapsing hard onto his good knee. Blood pulsed hot and fast between his fingers where he clutched the wound, soaking his pants leg instantly. The pain was immense, a supernova detonating in his nervous system. *Massively faster than light projectile... compressed kinetic energy... impossible vector prediction... impossible evasion... impossible defense...* The cold equations of his doom scrolled relentlessly through his pain-fogged mind.
"Tiresome," Daganu stated, the word a final judgment. He raised his hand again, energy swirling with lazy malevolence around it, coalescing into a larger, fist-sized orb of searing, unstable light. "Cease your flailing. Accept the terminal state."
FWOOOOM!
The energy-imbued Light Bullet wasn't a beam; it was a localized supernova. It slammed into Kuro's chest with the force of a collapsing star. His world dissolved into pure, blinding agony. Ribs cracked like dry twigs. Breath exploded from his lungs in a spray of blood, spittle, and something darker. He was hurled backwards like a sack of broken bones, crashing through the fragile remnants of an obsidian pillar, skidding through a shower of black crystal shards to land in a crumpled, broken heap against the far chamber wall. He lay sprawled, gasping wet, ragged breaths that felt like shards of glass tearing his lungs. Each inhalation drew in the coppery tang of his own blood and the acrid stench of his smoldering clothes. Crimson pooled beneath him, spreading slowly on the hot stone. Consciousness was a fragile thread, fraying fast.
"D-Damn it..." Kuro choked, blood bubbling on his cracked lips. He tried to push himself up, his arms trembling violently, muscles shrieking in protest. They buckled instantly. "Can't... even... formulate... a counter... Those three hits..." He coughed, spraying more blood. "...pure stochastic fluke..." His voice was a wet, broken rasp, the admission tasting like ash. The HeartDeath Rod lay useless a meter away, its fractured tip dark.
Daganu materialized beside him, silent as a shadow, looking down with utter, cosmic disdain. He nudged Kuro's ruined shoulder with the toe of his armored boot, eliciting a choked gasp of agony. "Glad you acknowledge the futility. Now, embrace silence." He raised his right arm, the movement effortless. Energy gathered, humming with lethal intensity, forming a blade of pure, compressed light and relativistic speed – a scalpel forged from the fundamental force of motion. "This ends."
"WATCH OUT, SPEED DEMON!"
The raw, unfamiliar voice cracked through the chamber's oppressive hum like a thunderclap. It wasn't Kuro's weak rasp. It wasn't the terrified whimper of the Netsudo they knew. It was fierce, confident, edged with manic glee.
Daganu spun, faster than thought – a blur of void-black against the scorched rock. But not fast enough to completely evade the superheated torrent of magma that erupted from the chamber floor beside Kuro's island refuge. FWOOSH-CRACKLE! It wasn't a solid impact; it was liquid fury, a searing cascade of molten rock that slammed into his back, splattering across his event-horizon armor with terrifying force. The impact wasn't kinetic; it was thermal annihilation. Daganu snarled, a sound like tearing neutronium, as his armor sizzled and smoked, glowing cherry-red where the magma clung and burned with volcanic ferocity. He staggered forward a step, the stench of scorched ozone, superheated metal, and vaporized rock filling the suddenly superheated air.
Kuro blinked through blood, pain, and encroaching darkness. Standing near the chamber's entrance, radiating heat waves that distorted the air like a desert mirage, was Netsudo. But profoundly different. His posture was straighter, almost arrogant, radiating an aura of fierce, unyielding energy utterly alien to the perpetually terrified Pyrasian. The usual wide-eyed panic was gone, replaced by amber eyes blazing with fierce, almost manic intensity. A confident, challenging smirk played on his lips, utterly out of place.
"How...?" Daganu growled, peeling the rapidly cooling, slag-like magma from his back with a grimace of disgust, revealing scorched, blistered skin beneath his damaged armor. Dark, viscous blood welled from the burns. "You were incapacitated, If not even dead..."
Netsudo barked a sharp, humorless laugh. "Oh, he was down for the count! Lights out! Me? I'm just hitting my stride!" He slammed his palms onto the obsidian floor with a resounding CRACK. "HELL RISING: SEARING BAPTISM!"
The chamber floor didn't just melt; it detonated into liquid fury. Molten rock surged upwards not like a wave, but like the fist of an angry planet, swallowing the jagged landscape Kuro and the previous Netsudo had created. Walls of incandescent orange and yellow lava roared upwards, crashing against the chamber's energy-dampened walls, sending superheated spray everywhere. Only the small island Kuro lay on remained untouched, a precarious raft of solid rock in a sudden, churning sea of incandescent death. Heat radiated like a physical blow, warping the air, making it difficult to breathe, searing exposed skin. Kuro felt his hair crisping, his ruined clothes smoldering anew.
Daganu reacted instantly, leaping skyward with impossible grace, hovering above the molten lake, his expression shifting from annoyance to cold, analytical assessment. "Your energy signature... it spiked exponentially. Defying all previous physiological models. Explain this aberration."
Kuro stared, struggling to comprehend through the haze of pain and the oppressive heat. "Netsudo... your output... thermal readings off the scale... how?"
The figure standing at the very edge of the lava sea, seemingly impervious to the heat radiating in visible waves, grinned fiercely, actual flames dancing in the reflection of his amber eyes. "Told ya, Pointy-hair! Ain't the same dude piloting this meat-suit!" The shift in speech – sharper, brasher, devoid of stammers – the posture radiating aggressive confidence, the sheer disregard for the terrifying Monarch – it screamed a fundamentally different personality had seized control. "Call me... Ignis if you want to differentiate!"
Without hesitation, Ignis/Netsudo became the eruption. His body dissolved into flowing, living magma, discarding the human form like a shell. He surged upwards in a blazing, serpentine arc, a humanoid torrent of liquid rock and primal fury, aiming not just to hit, but to engulf the hovering Monarch, to drag him down into the molten hell below.
Daganu's lip curled in disdain. "Predictable pyrotechnics." His finger flicked with contemptuous ease. THWIP! A Light Bullet, faster than sight, lanced through the center of the magma form. Luminous orange "blood" – superheated plasma and semi-molten rock – sprayed from the exit wound in a geyser. The magma form recoiled violently, its cohesion shattered. It splashed back towards the lava lake, solidifying rapidly as Ignis/Netsudo forcibly rematerialized on a precarious obsidian outcrop, gasping, clutching a cauterized hole sizzling in his chest. The confident smirk was replaced by a grimace of intense pain, his fiery aura flickering erratically.
"You survived an Energy Punch before," Daganu observed, floating calmly, untouched by the splatter. "This strike was calibrated to exceed that impact by orders of magnitude. How does this vessel endure?"
Ignis spat a glob of molten rock that hissed as it hit the lava below, his eyes still blazing with defiance though laced with pain. "He barely survived! I'm forged in the damn core! Built tougher! But talk is cheap, chrome-dome! LAVA BARRAGE: HELLFIRE RAIN!" He threw his arms wide, veins standing out on his neck. Dozens of basketball-sized orbs of magma, glowing white-hot at their cores, erupted from the churning lake below. They arced upwards with terrifying speed, not aimed, but blanketing the entire airspace around Daganu in a deadly, indiscriminate hail of incandescent death.
Daganu moved. Not in a blur, but in a series of instantaneous, discontinuous reappearances. *Here. There. Gone. Here.* He wove through the magma storm with impossible, almost lazy grace, an afterimage flickering where each orb passed harmlessly through empty space. Then, a pinpoint flash, almost an afterthought. THWIP! Another Light Bullet struck Ignis/Netsudo high in the abdomen, spinning him around, more luminous orange blood splattering the steaming rocks. He stumbled, breathing heavily now, the manic energy visibly draining, his connection to the lava sea weakening. The magma aura around him guttered like a dying candle.
*Damn it... burning out too fast... This chassis is cracked. Can't channel the big boom for long. Gotta make it count... Where's the third lazy persona bastard when you actually need a hand?* The bravado was cracking, revealing the desperation beneath. He was running on borrowed time and borrowed fury.
Daganu saw the flicker, the momentary vulnerability. He blurred, appearing directly before the staggering Pyrasian, energy gathering with ominous speed around his fist for a point-blank Light Bullet execution. "Enough theatrics. Cease function."
CRACK-SHOOOOOM!
A surge of unstable, violent violet energy, channeled through the fractured shaft of the HeartDeath Rod like a lightning rod for pure negation, slammed into Daganu's side. Kuro, driven by a final, agonizing burst of will that screamed through every nerve ending, had lunged from his position near the wall. He hadn't aimed to kill; he'd aimed to connect, to disrupt, to buy a single, crucial second. Using the Rod not as a weapon, but as a conduit and a physical lever, he drove its sparking, overloaded tip into the vulnerable joint between Daganu's chest plate and back armor, right where the magma burns were deepest.
SCREEEEEEE! The Rod shrieked in protest, violet energy arcing violently, grounding itself through Kuro's body. He screamed, a soundless rictus of agony tearing at his face. His left forearm, braced against the Rod and pressing Daganu down, plunged elbow-deep into the churning lava at the edge of their island sanctuary.
The smell was horrific – burning hair, vaporizing flesh, melting bone – mingling with ozone and blood. Agony beyond any sensory description, beyond any threshold of endurance, seared through Kuro's nervous system, threatening to vaporize his consciousness. His vision whited out. But through sheer, insane willpower, he held on, teeth gritted so hard he felt molars crack, his eyes wide and unseeing pools of pure agony and determination. Every fiber of his being shrieked to let go, to escape the unimaginable pain. He locked his remaining muscles, becoming a human anchor. *NOW!* The thought was a silent, desperate detonation in his mind.
"Netsudo! NOW!!" Kuro's voice was a raw, shredded roar, tearing from a ruined throat, barely audible over the sizzle of his own flesh and the Rod's violent discharge.
Ignis/Netsudo didn't hesitate. Seeing Daganu momentarily pinned, off-balance, and critically distracted by the HeartDeath Rod's disruptive energy surge grounding violently through his armor, he drew on the entire lake. Lava surged upwards, not just around him, but through him, converging into a colossal, swirling vortex of molten fury focused around his right fist. The heat radiating from it warped light, making the air scream. "HELL'S MAXIMUM FURY: CORE ERUPTION! BURN, YOU OVERCLOCKED TOASTER!"
The blast wasn't a beam; it was a localized supernova of geological rage. A tsunami of molten planet-core, dense enough to distort gravity, struck the pinned Daganu point-blank.
KRA-BOOOOOOOOM!
The chamber ceased to exist for a microsecond. Light, heat, and concussive force beyond measurement obliterated everything. Remaining obsidian structures vaporized. The shockwave hit Kuro like a physical god, ripping the overloaded HeartDeath Rod from his grasp and hurling him backwards like a discarded toy. His connection severed, his lava-seared arm a blackened, twisted ruin of unrecognizable flesh and charred bone, he slammed into the far chamber wall with bone-jarring force and slid down, leaving a smear of crimson and ash. Consciousness fled, then clawed back to a dim, pain-wracked flicker, his world reduced to agony and roaring silence. Ignis/Netsudo was hurled backwards by the cataclysmic backblast, his magma form collapsing mid-air as consciousness fled. He reverted to his base form, his first persona, a limp, smoldering projectile that slammed into the chamber wall near Kuro and crumpled, utterly still.
Seconds stretched like eons in the aftermath. Superheated steam and dense, acrid smoke choked the chamber, reducing visibility to mere feet. The intense glow of the lava lake subsided rapidly as the energy fueling it dissipated with its creator's unconsciousness, leaving bubbling pools of rapidly cooling slag.
As the haze began to thin, stirred by the chamber's residual energy currents, a figure coalesced. Daganu stood revealed. He was scorched. Smoke curled from deep gouges and cracks in his once-pristine event-horizon armor. Several plates were warped, glowing a dull red. A steady trickle of dark, viscous blood seeped from multiple points – the crack near his shoulder, a gash on his temple, a split lip. He breathed heavily, a low, grinding sound like damaged machinery, his expression a terrifying mask of cold, incandescent fury that radiated palpable heat. He slowly raised a hand and wiped the blood from his lip, staring at the smear on his armored fingers with utter disbelief that quickly morphed into homicidal rage.
"Bastards," he spat, the word dripping with venomous hatred, each syllable vibrating with suppressed power. "Insignificant, mortal gnats... yet you dared... you DREW BLOOD?" His voice rose, shaking the chamber, causing loose debris to rattle. He scanned the devastation, his gaze like twin event horizons sweeping over the ruined landscape. Kuro lay motionless near the wall, barely breathing, his right arm a horrific, blackened ruin. Netsudo was a crumpled, smoldering heap, unmoving. "One nuisance extinguished." His gaze locked onto Kuro. "Now for the other." He strode towards the unconscious scientist, his steps deliberate, heavy, each footfall echoing like a tombstone being laid. "Once your heart is pierced, this tedious room releases its hold. Seems Kokuto's blade remains sheathed. A waste of potential." The dismissal of his fellow Monarch was absolute.
He loomed over Kuro, a shadow of cosmic wrath. Energy gathered with lethal focus around his index finger, forming the familiar, terrifying point of light – a scalpel of relativistic death aimed precisely at Kuro's heart. "Farewell, mortal annoyance. Your data is corrupted."
WHUMPF-KRACK!
Not a blur. A detonation of cerulean light and unstable, flickering yellow energy. It slammed into Daganu's side not like a comet, but like a fragment of a dying star. The impact carried the desperate, ragged force of Creation itself, amplified by a savage, borrowed divinity that reeked of the void. It wasn't just physical; it was a localized reality distortion.
Daganu grunted, a sound of genuine shock and profound pain, a stark contrast to his earlier roars. He was ripped from his position, armor shrieking in protest, hurled across the chamber like a discarded weapon. He crashed through a half-melted obsidian outcrop with a sound like mountains collapsing, skidding through a shower of superheated debris to land in a heap near the chamber's opposite wall, dark ichor now freely flowing from his nose, mouth, and fresh cracks in his armor.
Merus landed lightly, though with a slight stumble, between Daganu and Kuro. His pearlescent suit was torn and stained with smears of cerulean blood and soot. A deep gash marred his temple, leaking luminous blood. His face was etched with profound exhaustion, pain, and the lingering horror of his own recent battle, but his eyes – ancient, cosmic eyes – blazed with furious, unwavering determination. Around his torso, a faint, flickering ring of volatile yellow energy pulsed erratically, like a dying star struggling against collapse – the desperate, forced echo of stolen Gorogilian power, pushed far beyond its limits.
Daganu pushed himself up slowly, painfully, wiping the dark blood from his face with the back of his hand. His movements, for the first time, lacked their usual impossible grace. He spat a glob of viscous black onto the scorched stone, his eyes narrowing with pure, predatory focus on the new arrival, a spark of dark excitement replacing some of the fury. "The God of Creation..." he rasped, his voice rougher, damaged. "...gracing this charnel house with your presence at last. Dragging your broken divinity through the muck." He rolled his shoulders, a cascade of cracks echoing, energy beginning to crackle anew around his fists, darker, angrier. "Tell me, relic... is your speed," he paused, the grinding voice dropping to a deadly whisper laced with challenge, "sufficient to dance with infinity?"
Merus settled into a low, grounded combat stance, the flickering yellow ring flaring defiantly for a second, casting sharp, unstable shadows. He took a slow, deliberate breath, the air crackling not just with heat and ozone now, but with the clashing, oppressive auras of a wounded primordial force and a furious, bloodied Monarch. The chamber seemed to hold its breath. The desperate, brutal struggle for survival was over. The true trial of speed, the deadly dance promised by the chapter's title, was about to begin.
"More than sufficient," Merus growled, his voice raw with exhaustion but resonating with an ancient, unyielding power. "To see you erased from existence. Insignificant lacket." The final word hung in the superheated air, a divine promise etched in the scars of the ruined chamber. The Need for Speed had reached its critical, apocalyptic apex and help, has arrived.