All around, the strongest protectors humanity had to offer lay silent, their bodies broken against the cold, unyielding reality of Malkor's power.
Only one man remained standing.
Captain Drakye Void took another agonizing step forward. His boots dragged across the ground, leaving a faint trail of blood behind him.
His uniform was torn to shreds, his ribs were shattered, and thick blood streamed from a jagged wound on his forehead, obscuring the vision in his left eye.
Yet, as the chaotic, fragile gusts of air swirled around his trembling hands, there was no fear in his stance.
Malkor paused, then He slowly turned his head back, his golden eyes narrowing into thin, icy slits.
"You can barely keep your knees from buckling," Malkor said, his voice ringing with a cold, detached finality. "Your lungs are punctured, your energy is almost depleted, and your allies are broken. What do you possibly hope to achieve by standing back up?"
Drakye stopped ten paces away. He spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor and slowly raised his head. His right eye, clear and piercing through the grim and blood, locked onto the conqueror.
Then, impossibly, Drakye chuckled. A ragged, raspy sound that turned into a soft, genuine smile.
"What do I hope to achieve?" Drakye asked softly, his breath coming in shallow, painful hitches. "You look at us, Malkor, and all you see are numbers. You see power levels, calculations, time limits, and victory conditions. You think because you're stronger, that you've already won."
Drakye raised his right hand, forcing his fingers to straighten. The air around him began to tremble, vibrating with a desperate, subtle frequency.
"But you don't understand us at all," Drakye continued, his smile broadening slightly despite the sheer agony tearing through his frame. "We don't fight because the odds are in our favor. We fight because behind us... there are people who wake up every morning, who love, who dream, who want to see tomorrow. My squad, my comrades lying here... every single one of them put their lives on the line for that tomorrow. I'm the Captain of the 10th Division. If I lay down while I still have air in my lungs, what kind of example am I setting for them?"
Malkor's expression hardened. "Sentimentality. The exact flaw that has brought your race to the brink of extinction. Your speech changes nothing. Earth has less than two hours."
"Two hours is a lifetime," Drakye whispered.
In an instant, Drakye erased the distance between them.
He didn't launch a massive, flashy assault. Instead, he manipulated the air pressure directly in front of his boots, creating a localized vacuum that pulled him forward at blinding speed.
He closed in on Malkor's right flank, driving a sharp, air-compressed palm strike directly toward Malkor's ribs.
Malkor didn't move. He simply extended his aura, applying a time lag to the space surrounding Drakye's strike.
The air pressure vanished, and Drakye's strike slowed down to an absolute crawl, hanging helpless mid-air.
"Predictable," Malkor muttered, raising his left hand to drive a lethal strike through Drakye's chest.
"Is it?" Drakye wheezed.
Instead of trying to force his hand through the time lag, Drakye manipulated the air pressure *behind* Malkor's own head.
A sudden, massive pressure drop violently yanked Malkor backward, disrupting his balance for a fraction of a second and throwing his counter-attack off course.
Drakye canceled his slowed forward momentum, using a dense cushion of high-pressure air beneath his heel to bounce sideways.
He spun mid-air, manipulating the wind around his left forearm to create a razor-thin blade of compressed atmosphere, and swung it down hard toward Malkor's neck.
*SWOOSH—!*
The wind blade cut through the air with a terrifying, high-pitched hum.
Malkor was forced to duck his head back, the invisible blade grazing the collar of his coat and leaving a fine slice across the metal wall behind him.
Malkor's eyes flickered with faint irritation. He rotated his wrist, manipulating the concept of weight itself around Drakye's body, instantly multiplying the gravity dragging on the captain by a hundred times.
*CRACK!*
The floor beneath Drakye instantly shattered into a spiderweb of deep trenches.
Drakye was slammed onto his knees, his jaw clenching so hard his teeth bled as the sheer crushing force threatened to flatten his organs.
"Stay down," Malkor commanded, stepping forward and raising his heel to crush Drakye's skull.
Drakye gritted his teeth, tears of blood mixing with the sweat on his face. He looked at the fallen bodies of his fellow captains nearby—at Reid, sitting armless against a pillar; at renji lying unconscious in a pool of his own blood.
*Not yet. Not yet!*
Drakye didn't fight the crushing weight pushing him down. Instead, he compressed every cubic inch of air within a ten-foot radius around himself into a super-dense, volatile sphere, then violently expanded it outward all at once.
*BOOOOOM—!*
A localized atmospheric burst erupted like a bomb. The sheer explosive pressure negated the downward gravity force, launching both Drakye and Malkor backward.
Drakye flipped in mid-air, landing unsteadily on his feet. Before the smoke could even clear, he sprinted straight into the heart of the explosion.
He manipulated the wind currents to erase all air resistance around his own body, moving so fast he became an invisible blur.
He appeared directly in front of Malkor, throwing a relentless flurry of close-quarters strikes.
Left hook! A vacuum blade clipped Malkor's cheek.
Right jab! High-pressure wind hammered against Malkor's forearm barrier.
Spinning back kick! A concentrated jet of air blasted directly into Malkor's chest!
For ten straight seconds, Drakye pushed his body far past its physical breaking point.
He was a force of nature—a dying storm pouring every last drop of its existence into a single, desperate assault.
Strike after strike echoed through the ruined plaza like rapid thunderclaps. He moved faster, hit harder, and fought with more raw, heart-wrenching fury than he ever had in his entire life.
Malkor was forced back step by step, his arms raised to block the endless stream of compressed air strikes.
He looked through the storm of wind and saw Drakye's face.
Drakye was crying, blood pouring down his cheeks, but he was still *smiling*. It was the smile of a man who had accepted his fate, a man who had thrown away all fear, all regret, and all doubt, leaving behind nothing but pure, unyielding resolve.
"This is for my team!" Drakye screamed, his voice echoing across the silent plaza. "This is for every single life you think you can just erase!"
Drakye pulled both arms back. He gathered every remaining trace of air in the vast central plaza, vacuuming the entire room until the atmosphere was stripped bare, compressing it all into the palm of his right hand.
A miniature, swirling vortex of absolute compressed pressure formed in his fist, screaming with the force of a hurricane.
He lunged forward, driving his ultimate strike straight for Malkor's heart.
"Final Art... Atmospheric Collapse!"
Malkor looked at the incoming strike. For the first time in the fight, his golden eyes showed a trace of absolute seriousness.
"You fought valiantly, human," Malkor said quietly. "More valiantly than most."
Malkor didn't dodge. He simply raised his open palm to meet Drakye's ultimate strike.
He activated his power at its absolute peak—manipulating the concept of "Impact" and applying a massive, stacked Time Lag to the dynamic energy within Drakye's fist.
The moment Drakye's compressed wind vortex touched Malkor's palm, the entire attack stopped dead.
The roaring hurricane force, the compressed atmospheric pressure, the lethal shockwaves—all of it was instantly delayed, stripped of its motion, and frozen harmlessly in time. The roaring wind fell dead silent.
Drakye's eyes widened in horror. His ultimate attack, the absolute limit of his life's power, hung motionless between their hands, neutralized as if it were nothing more than a gentle breeze.
"Your resolve is undeniable," Malkor murmured softly. "But resolve is nothing in the face of power"
Malkor shifted his stance and pushed his palm forward, releasing the delayed concept of Drakye's own attack back onto him, multiplied by his own dark energy.
*FLASH—!*
An overwhelming, blinding shockwave of compressed kinetic force exploded directly inside Drakye's chest.
*THUMP.*
The sound of shattering bones and tearing tissue echoed clearly through the quiet hall.
Drakye was lifted off his feet, his body flying backward across the entire length of the plaza before crashing heavily into the base of the control terminal.
He hit the floor with a sickening thud, sliding several feet before coming to a complete halt.
Silence returned to the Moving Planet.
The swirling gusts of wind died down completely. The atmospheric pressure stabilized.
Drakye lay flat on his back , He couldn't feel his legs. He couldn't feel his arms. The rise and fall of his chest was impossibly shallow, each tiny breath feeling like liquid fire in his throat.
"Damn it ".