***
[Stigma: Equal Correlation — Sequence 8.5]
[Skill: Sephiwrath — Eighth Gate of Tiferet!]
In a frenzy of wrath, I hurled myself from the heart of clashing armies, shattering the ground with the force of my leap. I shot through the air like an amber storm, crashing straight into a warship, tearing through it like paper. Behind me, the four colossal [Naegal Whips] lashed the heavens, ripping through the armadas of gods and monsters as I sailed past them.
Then, with a twist, I plummeted back to the surface—a meteor of righteous fury. My impact flattened an entire legion, quaking the earth until it cracked open in a ring of devastation. The whips slammed down around me, demolishing mountains in a cascade of stone and ruin.
[Skill: Astral Third Eye — Detection]
Pausing just a moment, I turned my gaze toward the skies. Something wrong—something foul—was spilling down from the atmosphere. A presence so violent, so absolute in its loathing, it obliterated entire armadas without even leaving explosions behind. Just silence. A dark void among the burning heavens.
I narrowed my eyes. Then, in the distance, a brilliant burst of starry white light detonated across the continent.
"Vita," I murmured with pride. "She really didn't hold back. A full-force [Regalius Breaker], huh?" Smiling, I waved a hand and sent a tether of support to her soul with a flick of telekinesis.
"Taul should be nearing her now," I added, mostly to myself. "He'll hold the line until the recoil of the Regalius fades. The ritual will be finished by then... and I'll deal with that thing afterward."
[Skill: Anti-Matter Energy — Domain!]
The enemy didn't wait.
Its presence spread like oil across the world—an open challenge. Its anti-matter energy sparked against my aether-charged skin like firecrackers, cascading across my body in bursts of unstable pressure.
I stomped once into the ashen dirt. Then I vanished in a storm of amber lightning. I blitzed across the world in a golden blur, streaking beneath the burning firmament until I arrived at the point of origin—where 'it' entered.
Above me, a vortex churned: warped, surreal, like a painting that had forgotten its frame. From within it, mannequin arms twisted down like grotesque vines.
And in the center of that whirlpool stood my summoner. An Oblivion Hunter.
A weapon created by the Outer Realms—crafted in the distant, alien dimension of by the [Oblivion Mother] herself. Built for a single purpose: to hunt and destroy Kralscells like me.
It had the body of a smooth stone mannequin clad in bronze armor, its joints flawless, its posture regal. A tattered cloak covered in neon graffiti shrouded its frame, hiding four mannequin arms and two longswords strapped to its back. If I had to describe it with three words?
Graffitied. Mannequin. Knight.
It stared down at me with no face, no eyes, no expression—only a hollow helmet and perfect stillness.
As a greeting, I hurled two of the [Naegal Whips] behind me—launching them like spears of divine flesh, streaking across the continent into the sky toward the interloper.
[Skill: Puppet Sword — Controlled Strike]
The Outer God drew its yellow glowing blade, gripping it with both right arms. In a single, flawless swing, it severed both whips in mid-air. A crackling arc of anti-matter energy surged behind the cut, slicing clean through the continent behind me, leaving a smoking gash across the horizon.
[Stigma: Equal Correlation — Sequence Release!]
"Of course you wouldn't fall for the same trick twice," I muttered. Ripping the chains from my arms, I let the broken whips fall, abandoning the tools I had shaped from my own body. "Guess I'll have to play the role of weapon thief now..."
Scanning the horizon. I saw the beacons of black ink pulsing in the distance shooting up from their abyssal domes. So many had been destroyed now but no one had realised where Sathuna and the real ritual were yet. There was only sixteen minutes before completion now.
"Oh... this is gonna be fun."
The Outer God descended. Gripping its yellow sword still with its right-side arms. The left remained hidden beneath the graffiti cloak. It moved slowly, methodically. When it landed, it tapped its blade against its helmet, then plunged it into the ground in a gesture of ancient knighthood.
Its voice echoed like scraping glass. "My name is Drallknit. I challenge you to mortal combat, Kralscell of Sentience."
An Outer God... with chivalry? I grinned wide. A familiar maddening thrill surging through my blood and mind as battle hungry whispers.
"I accept." Spreading my arms, I drew in breath and shouted, "WITNESS ME!!!"
[Narrator-admin
[DUEL: 'Traveler on a Journey' Vs 'Gilded Epitaph Graffiti' has begun!]
My voice roared through the sky—tearing the clouds apart, parting the border between day and night. Fires extinguished. Smoke rolled back. And across the universe, my signal reached millions of exalted beings and trillions of mortals.
Every in every realm had now locked onto me. I forced the cosmos to look.
Drallknit raised its cloak to shield itself from the wind of my declaration. And though it had no face, I could feel its hesitation. It understood now—just why it was created as it was to hunt the kralscell's.
It withdrew the yellow sword from the dirt, then reached over its shoulder with its left arms, drawing a second longsword—this one glowing neon green.
"Second stage already?" I called out, amused, as I stretched out both arms.
Across the planet, my telekinesis reached—summoning weapons, artifacts, fallen relics from every battlefield.
A massive mace wreathed in gravitational energy slammed into my right hand. More weapons screamed through the sky, racing toward me like comets.
Drallknit entered his stance, both swords drawn. "You made it clear not to underestimate you," he said. "Even if I'm your predator."
"My predator, huh?" I chuckled darkly. "Then I won't underestimate you either... because I'm your slayer."
***
Amber lightning cracked through the air—feral, divine, undeniable. In an instant, Strife blurred forward, gravity mace in hand, a sneer carved across his wild face. He brought the mace down with the weight of planets behind it, like a god hammering reality into submission.
Drallknit met the blow with a single clean motion, his yellow blade severing the attack with surgical precision. Without pause, he drew his green blade and swung at the mad homunculus—but Strife, grinning like a lunatic with too much power and not enough restraint, caught the blade mid-swing with raw telekinetic finesse.
Then, he somersaulted upwards, pushing of from the blade with mocking grace. Like a thief ridiculing royalty.
Even Drallknit, born of apocalypse and tailored to kill, seemed caught off-guard. Recovering quickly. The Oblivion Hunter spun, unleashing a wide anti-matter arc to catch Strife mid-air, but then the heavens intervened.
A torrent of weapons rained from the sky. Cracked spears, ruined relics, broken blades—each smashed against Drallknit's armour and his graffitied cloak. He staggered just enough that his anti-matter slash missed Strife by inches and carved a yawning hole through the sky, annihilating multiple descending armadas instead.
[Skill: Winter Inverse — Armour!]
"Aren't you quite the swordsman," Strife hissed with manic delight. His eyes blazed, and with a gory snap, black-gold scales erupted from his skin. They slammed shut into a jagged helmet over his head, and his shredded clothes reformed into a warped knight's armor—metal and madness fused into one.
He hit the ground with a crash and snatched a gauntlet flying in from the distance, sliding it onto his fist mid-charge. He met the yellow blade again—but this time, fist to edge. The gauntlet detonated on impact, vaporized by sheer force.
Drallknit was blasted backward.
The Outer God smashed through mountains, armies, and fortresses alike. He tore a scar through the world before finally regaining control, standing firm—but surrounded by endless weapons hovering in the sky and amber lightning tearing across the horizon.
Then the earth groaned.
He turned and saw it. A colossal dreadnought warship, half-melted and long-dead, dragging behind Strife's frame like a child's toy on a string. Dust and debris followed in his wake.
[Aspect: Taken Devourer — Telekinesis!]
"This still counts as a weapon, right?!" Strife bellowed, voice cracking into hysterical laughter across the sky.
With a motion as flippant as a god flipping a coin, Strife lifted the dreadnought above his head with one hand. The atmosphere screamed around the falling mass—a moon's worth of death in the shape of a broken warship.
He dropped it. The ground shattered beneath it.
The
But Drallknit remained still. Cold. Precise. He drew in power, funnelling anti-matter through his swords until they hissed like hellfire.
[Skill: Painted Destination — Flow Rush!]
Drallknit carved a malformed horn in the air with his twin swords, like a painter summoning madness. The horn blew—a silent screech—and split the dreadnought in two. He shot through the wreckage, untouched, stepping from fire like an avenging spectre.
Blades and war relics came at the Oblivion Hunter from every direction. He broke a saber in mid-air, parried a flying axe, and shattered a mace with his two swords. Fighter jets, swords, spears, even hunks of fallen gods all came screaming toward him.
[Skill: Painted Destination — Tracked Finish!]
"Try this, mad one."
Releasing the massive longsword from his right hands, Drallknit poured anti-matter into it, twisting it into a burning arrowhead. With a shriek of displaced reality, he fired.
It punched straight through Strife's chest. Dragging him halfway across the planet in a line of destruction. He went through obsidian domes. Through mountains. Through living armies and dead gods. Everything in his path turned to red pulp and black ash.
"RhhhhhAAAAAGHH!!" Strife resisted in a mad frenzy trying to remove the arrow.
But the painted arrow sank deeper, until blood and molten aether poured down his armour. Then he let it pass. It burst out his back, and before it could flee, he grabbed it, twisting the anti-matter weapon in his grip as the gaping hole in his torso sealed shut with unnatural speed.
"You want your pin-needle back?! HERE!!!" Strife hurled it with enraged egoism.
Drallknit stopped mid-pursuit. He reached out to seize control of the arrow—but his fingers twitched.
The pirated arrow didn't stop. Strife's telekinesis overpowered the creator's grip. And in the instant before impact, Strife was behind the Outer God. Blurring through space with super speed, fist clenched, grinning like a mad god of ruin.
Pinned between his own weapon and Strife's knuckles, Drallknit had no time.
The arrow punched into the Oblivion Hunter's bronze helmet, cracking the mannequin skull beneath. Drallknit jerked sideways, barely saving his head.
Then Strife's fist slammed into Drallknit's spine—stone-like, ancient, sacred—and shattered the illusion of stability. The mannequin knight exploded forward like a meteor. His body tore through molten fields, smashed apart war machines, ripped through collapsed sanctuaries and temples left to rot in false gods' names. Rivers of scorched oil frothed around him. He was a broken relic tumbling through a ruined altar.
Behind him stood Strife. Madness incarnate.
His body bled golden light through the jagged veins and sigils of [Sephiwrath] etched into his flesh and twisted armour. The air around him shimmered with unfiltered chaos, and his laugh echoed louder than any war horn.
"HahaHA! Come on, Oblivion Hunter! You've got the power of a hundred black stars and you still swing like a disgruntled monk. Learn to enjoy violence!"
There were no words in response. Only fury.
From the distant crater Drallknit had been flung into, arcs of anti-matter erupted. Slashing across the planet, cutting through clouds and splitting tectonics. The earth wailed beneath them.
Strife raised his arms. The weapon storm around him twisted and transformed. Swords unfurled into serpent heads, spears morphed into clawed hands, maces became gnashing maws.
His telekinesis turned metal into madness, and they collided mid-air with Drallknit's surging antimatter, detonating in shockwaves that stripped the sky bare.
Through the chaotic explosions the Oblivion Hunter charged, crashing through a continent, cloaked in divine energy, four swords burning like prison bars bent around a singular rage.
Strife summoned the last of his arsenal. A shield slammed onto his arm. A slab of black iron lined with revving saw-blades, screaming like tortured engines just in time.
The heavens ignited and Drallknit descended, a divine executioner. Mountains behind Strife vanished in the blast. Ripped into oblivion by a flash of sickly green and dying yellow light. Land folded like paper. The world bent.
But the shield held.
Strife shoved forward, laughing as he ground the shield thrumming saw-edge into Drallknit's chest. Sparks flew. The mannequin knight staggered. His cape shredded, anti-matter blood spraying in warped ribbons. Yet he lashed back, carving a clean slice through Strife's neck. His head nearly coming off.
Strife grinned as he rotated his neck back into place with a grotesque crunch. Stitched its flesh back together. Across from him, Drallknit stabilised, regaining balance despite the gash across his torso.
Strife glanced down. "Huh. Still ticking?"
He found a button on the shield handle. He clicked it. The front exploded—firing a shotgun blast of pure hellfire that hurled the mannequin knight through a black dome, his body a burning arrow across the landscape.
"Where in finality's truth did this thing come from?" Strife muttered, twirling the still intact shield with admiration. "Resilient and cursed. That's two reasons to keep it."
With a snap of his fingers, he tossed it aside. The air split, and the shield fell into a shimmering crack in space. Vanishing into Strife's
Stepping through the ashen aftermath of their clash, Strife called out like a performer stalling for applause. "Don't tell me you're done, Oblivion Hunter! I've still got ten minutes left before the ritual wraps up!"
Smoke parted and Drallknit emerged. Majestic despite his mangled form. His mannequin body was missing pieces. Cracked stone skin, bronze armour shattered, cloak in tatters, but he stood tall. Purpose intact. Dignity smouldering.
Strife licked his lips, amused. "Nice. I'll admit. One thing that actually disappoints me about this fight is how easily I can bypass your immortality. Other than that I'll give you ten points for everything aside from banter. Zero on that with your stoicism. My [Aspect] comes with a severance trait that bypasses concepts, you see... Care if I guess how yours works?"
Drallknit didn't respond. He watched Strife's broken armour slough off like dead skin, only for new plates to grow from his flesh. Organic, glimmering, perfect. Wounds healed. Holes of blood sealed. Even anti-matter couldn't prevent his immortality.
It wasn't regeneration. It was rejection by death itself as if to spite this being in particular and curse the rest of the living with their existence.
"Be my guest," the Oblivion Hunter said, breathing hard. Deep down, he was calculating. Now realising the gravity of his mistake—challenging a Kralscell and the only being in the entire universe with true immortality.
"Alright then~" Strife cooed. "First guess. Shot in the dark. Your immortality is tied to that neon graffiti covering your body and cloak, yeah?"
Drallknit flinched. A rare crack in the mannequin knight's composure.
Strife's grin widened like a wound. He tapped his armoured chin, helmet echoing hollowly. "Outer God glyphs, right? Not obvious at first with the artistry. If I were anyone else, I'd waste centuries deciphering them. Trying to chant some half-baked Otroul incantation. But me?" He pointed. "Right shoulder. It's the word 'Dusha' which means 'passion or desire' in Otroul."
The graffiti rune blazed to life on the Oblivion Hunter's shoulder. Drallknit staggered as it ignited—only to sigh when it fizzled. The protections staying intact.
Strife chuckled. "So it's in a specific order. Cool-cool-cool." He started pacing. "I could crack the sequence. Wouldn't take long. But let's be real... why would I waste time when I can just overwrite your entire concept of resilience?" Stopping suddenly, he stared at the mannequin knight. "Anyway, that's enough of a breather. Seven minutes left until the ritual's done and I'd like to make this even more fun!"
Strife snapped his fingers as telekinetic energy rippled through the air. A distant screech. Then a howl of metal drawing close.
A train—the length of a city—ripped across the landscape at super speed. Driving right behind Strife through the ground as Strife sauntered backwards towards it. Strife saluted, two fingers to his temple, then grabbed onto the moving train, letting the momentum drag him into the horizon as he climbed on.
"I've always wanted to fight on a train! Since Trannorri's the planet of railways, now's the bestest time to live out a fantasy!"
Drallknit didn't hesitate.
Even if he was being mocked, toyed with, paraded as a spectacle. It didn't matter. He leapt off the shattered earth and landed atop the roaring train, sword raised high. Neon yellow, humming with hate, it pointed at the mad god before him.
Strife grinned beneath his smiling helmet like a devil given form. "Round two, mannequin god."