Henry twisted his torso sharply and drove his heel forward with explosive force. His boot crashed straight into Roland's face.
The impact snapping Roland's head sideways as droplets of blood scattered into the heated air. The strike rang like a hammer against steel.
Roland staggered one step. Only one, before his hand shot out like a vice.
He caught Henry's leg mid-retraction, fingers locked around the ankle with brutal precision.
"Annoying." Roland muttered.
With terrifying strength, he swung Henry in a full arc and hurled Henry across the battlefield. Henry's body smashed through a half-melted pillar, stone exploded outward into jagged fragments.
He rolled across the scorched floor, boots scraping sparks, barely managing to regain footing before Roland was already upon him.
Roland slashed downward with Kanto. The flames trailed behind the blade like a comet's tail.
Henry deflected at the last second but the sheer pressure drove him to one knee. The floor beneath them cracked open, molten lines spreads outward like veins.
Henry retaliated instantly. He spun low, sweeping Roland's legs. Then followed with a rising elbow aimed at the jaw.
Roland turned mid-motion deflecting the elbow with his forearm before countering with a brutal knee to Henry's ribs. The air burst from Henry's lungs as he staggered backward.
Both men lunged again. Their blades collided in rapid succession.
Out of nowhere, a sound came...
GNNNNNNNNNNNN—
Behind them, Pandora's Box began to hum, its surface glowing with unstable light. The machine surrounding it vibrated violently, emitting sharp pulses that distorted the air itself.
Roland slowly tilted his head upward, eyes fixed on the trembling void where the sky once existed.
The humming of Pandora's Box deepened into a dreadful resonance, vibrating through bone and stone alike. Light from the machine flickered across his face.
"It's too late."
Roland said quietly, not even looking at Henry. "Even if you kill me now, it will not matter. The process has already begun. The border is dissolving. The sky is already gone."
Henry's jaw tightened. He stepped forward, intending to rush past him toward the machine but Roland shifted just enough to block the path, blade lowering into position.
"If you want to reach it," Roland murmured, finally meeting his eyes, "you will have to walk over my corpse."
Henry exhaled slowly, frustration emerged behind his composure.
"There is no use doing all this anymore. If you know it cannot be stopped now, then why continue? Why hold the line?"
Roland gave a short, humorless smile.
"Because reality does not reward struggles. It rewards only completion, no matter how you achieve it. In this world, justice is blind. People doesn't care about anyone anymore. They will say many things about why they like them. But the thing is to hate someone you don't need any reason.
People like us spend our lives pretending we can fix broken systems and save strangers who will never remember our names. Yet the world remains unchanged. Suffering continues, corruption thrives, ideals decay into bureaucracy. Why are you still arguing dammit!? After seeing all those rich b*tches spitting at poor people's sufferings even after having the knowledge about which is good or bad!!?"
Henry stared at him. He had nothing to say.
Roland continued. His tone was calm and painfully rational.
"This world functions on decay. Empires rise by exploiting weakness of another empire. Peace exists only as an interval between conflicts. I am not destroying reality, Henry. I am refining it through becoming the law of it! By removing the illusion of mercy that keeps people docile while they suffer endlessly!"
Henry shook his head slowly. "If it was all about that, like we were just about to chill, rest and enjoy instead of labouring, then why we even exist?"
Roland's grip tightened around his katana.
"No." he replied, voice cold but steady. "I am finishing what reality itself was too cowardly to do."
On the far side of the shattered chamber, Blyke had already stepped aside from his formation.
While Henry and Roland argued, he seized the opening and sprinted straight toward the towering mechanism that held Pandora's Box in its core.
Roland noticed instantly. His eyes snapped sideways, sharp as a drawn blade.
"Guards!" he barked. "Shoot him down!"
Rifles lifted in unison. A storm of gunfire erupted, bullets sliced through the heated air with deafening cracks.
Blyke did not slow down an inch.
He zigzagged through the wreckage. Their boots strikes broken stone in precise rhythm. A bullet tore past his shoulder, grazing fabric but he twisted sharply behind a fallen slab of molten pillar.
Sparks burst as bullets ricocheted off stone.
He grabbed a chunk of shattered metal and hurled it sideways, forcing two guards to flinch.
In that split-second distraction, he vaulted over the slab. Sliding across scorched ground before rolling behind another piece of debris.
Roland clicked his tongue in irritation.
"Persistent fool."
Without hesitation, Roland dashed forward himself as flames trailed behind his steps as he pursued Blyke with frightening speed.
Henry's eyes widened. He understood the move immediately. If Roland reached Blyke first, the chance to stop the machine would vanish completely.
Henry lunged forward, chasing after Roland through smoke and burning ruins, his blade clenched tightly as the distance between all three men shrank into a deadly race.
The machine holding Pandora's Box loomed ahead, only several meters away now, humming louder with every step. The sound drilled into Blyke's skull like a warning bell.
Think… think fast, he told himself. Destroy the frame? Pull the core? Cut the power? None of it looked simple.
Every part of the machine pulsed with unstable energy, as if touching the wrong section would tear the chamber apart instantly.
Behind him, heat surged violently. Roland was closing in.
Blyke did not need to look back to know. The air itself was enough to feel Roland's presence. A burning arc of crimson light flashed into his peripheral vision as Roland lunged forward, his blade cut downward toward his spine with lethal precision.
CLANG!
Henry burst in from behind Roland, intercepting the strike at the last possible second.
Their katanas collided with explosive force.
The impact forced Roland to pivot, changing his focus entirely to Henry once again.
"Go!" Henry barked, locking blades with Roland. Blyke did not hesitate.
He continued running toward Pandora's Box, knowing that every second Henry held Roland back was another fragile chance to stop the end.
Pain stabbed through Blyke's shoulder and head deeper with every step. The earlier injuries had not faded; they had only been hidden beneath adrenaline.
Now they returned with cruel clarity. His head throbbed, vision blurred at the edges but he bit his tongue and forced his legs forward.
The machine pulsed brighter with each second. Pandora's Box was so close that he could feel the vibration under his boots.
Behind him, Henry and Roland clashed in another violent exchange.
Henry pressed forward, trying to lock Roland into a direct engagement, refusing to give him even a breath of space.
Roland, however, did not resist the pressure. Instead, he changed rhythm entirely. He allowed Henry to drive him backward, feigning fatigue, letting his stance appear unstable.
His breathing grew deliberately uneven, his posture slightly misaligned. Subtle signals meant to manipulate expectation.
Henry noticed the weakness and committed to a finishing thrust. That was the trap.
Roland twisted sideways at the last possible instant, letting Henry's strike overshoot by a fraction.
Using Henry's momentum against him, Roland pivoted around his flank, stepping through the blind angle Henry himself had created.
Before Henry could recover, Roland slipped free entirely. Flames burst beneath Roland's feet as he launched forward again... straight toward Blyke.
Henry again lunged from behind, sliding his leg low across the scorched floor. His leg swept cleanly beneath Roland's stance, striking the ankle with brutal precision.
Roland's balance broke and he crashed hard onto the fractured stone, sparks bursting from the impact.
Henry followed instantly, dropping into close combat. Fists slammed into forearms, elbows crashed into ribs, blades flashed at impossible angles.
Then... Henry's body faltered.
His muscles seized mid-motion. The strength drained from his limbs as if the air itself had been stolen from inside him. He staggered, breath shuddering.
Too much Runic Flow usage overload.
His output had crossed the limit.
He dropped to one knee. His vision was shaking eerily.
Ahead, Blyke was only a meter away from the machine now, fingers stretched toward the mechanism holding Pandora's Box.
Roland rose again and then he appeared beside Blyke like a flame given human shape.
Without hesitation, Roland swung his katana in a wide, devastating arc. A massive fire wave erupted outward, roaring like a collapsing star.
The heat was unbearable for a physical being to tank directly. The light blinded an attack that carried the impact of a final strike from a battle that had stretched too long.
The flames consumed everything in their path.
Blyke's skin blistered instantly. Cloth ignited and peeled away. Both his hands began to disintegrate slowly under the overwhelming backlash. Flesh turned to ash under Roland's catastrophic output.
Roland was standing there carrying his katana upside down in his side. Coming out from the smoke calmly and cold.
Everything's over... It's all gone... So, the evil wins this time?
Suddenly,
Through the inferno, Roland suddenly felt it.
A presence behind him.
Henry stood there, barely upright, raising his blade with a killing intent so absolute that his presence felt terrifying more than anything else in the Arcology.
Roland spun instantly and swung backward. But there was none.
Then the floor beneath him darkened. A shadow stretched unnaturally upward, rising like liquid night. From it emerged a figure, dressed in a black suit and top hat, light yellow hair gleaming faintly in the burning light.
He adjusted his gloves and smiled faintly.
"My, my." the man said smoothly. "What a dramatic stage you have prepared."
He tilted his head slightly revealing his golden eyes in shadow of the top hat.
"Allow me to introduce myself. You can address me as, Edmond Dantes."