Chapter 66: The Reset
The burning match continued to fall.
Its tiny orange flame flickered gently in the wind, descending toward the shattered streets of Gregor Naught with almost mocking slowness.
Flick...
One rotation.
Flick...
Another.
Time itself seemed unwilling to let it touch the ground.
Above the city...
Three warriors stood suspended between existence and oblivion.
Their eyes met.
No hatred remained, no anger, no desire to prove superiority, only one shared understanding.
This battle...had reached its conclusion.
There could be no second chance.
No prolonged exchange, no holding back.
One strike, answer and ending.
Daito slowly inhaled.
Every lesson he had learned throughout his life flowed through him.
Every sword lesson from Ntate Greyhell.
Every defeat, every victory, every sacrifice and every wound.
Every moment that had shaped Daito Greyhell became part of a single motion.
BZZZZ!
Across from him, Monday Valhalla allowed the last remnants of God Speed V2: Overdrive to gather inside his trembling body.
His muscles screamed.
Buzzztle!
Tiny fractures spread beneath his skin as bolts of blue electricity escaped through microscopic tears.
His body had already exceeded its natural limits.
One final movement...Would destroy it.
He smiled anyway.
"Worth it."
Cassian lowered his center of gravity.
The smile returned to his face, not playful, not arrogant, but peaceful.
His breathing became impossibly calm. He gathered not only the strength of his Savage Power... But the experience of countless battles.
Every opponent.
Every technique.
Every lesson.
Everything he had accumulated throughout his life compressed into one perfectly balanced stance.
Three monsters.
Three different paths.
One conclusion.
* * *
The match continued falling.
Flick...
Its tiny flame reflected inside every shattered window surrounding the battlefield.
The entire city seemed frozen beneath its descent.
Far below, Aerin watched helplessly.
Brandon clenched his fists until blood dripped from his palms.
Wei-Wan remained silent.
Wasabi forgot to breathe.
Shinsei never took her eyes off Cassian.
Even the wind refused to move.
Then they stepped, not forward, not backward.
Reality folded.
SWOOOOOOOSH!!
They vanished.
Not because they accelerated, not because they teleported. Because the universe itself could no longer calculate where they should exist.
The battlefield collapsed.
The Future Fight ended.
The present reclaimed them.
Daito blinked.
He stood exactly where he had first faced Cassian.
Only a few steps ahead of Aerin.
Monday found himself beside Brandon once again, blue sparks quietly fading from his exhausted body.
Cassian stood before Shinsei, his posture unchanged, as though he had never moved at all.
Everything...had returned.
Exactly as it had been.
For one impossible heartbeat... No one understood what had happened.
Then the match touched the ground.
Tick.
Silence.
Absolute silence.
Then the world died.
There was no explosion.
Explosions expanded outward.
This...collapsed inward.
The very center of Gregor Naught folded into itself before violently reversing.
KRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAK—BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!
Light consumed everything. Buildings dissolved before they could collapse. Roads were erased from existence.
The earth beneath the city caved inward while simultaneously erupting skyward, creating a contradiction so violent that reality itself struggled to decide which event should happen first.
The air ignited.
The horizon disappeared.
The center of Gregor Naught transformed into an ever-growing sphere of impossible destruction.
Expansion.
Compression.
Creation.
Annihilation.
All occurring simultaneously.
The pressure dug downward toward the planet's core while tearing upward into the heavens.
It wasn't merely destroying a city. It was attempting to overwrite the world itself. Cassian saw it instantly.
Not as it existed.
As it would become.
His eyes sharpened.
"...Tch."
There was no hesitation. No dramatic declaration. He simply raised one hand. The strange distortion surrounding his body returned.
"...Give or Take."
The words carried across the battlefield like law itself.
The catastrophe stopped,not frozen.
Taken.
The impossible sphere of destruction compressed violently, folding inward again and again until an entire city's worth of annihilation had become a pulsating sphere no larger than a basketball.
WHOOOOOOOM!!
The compressed energy screamed inside Cassian's palm. His arm trembled.
CRAACK!
Tiny cracks spread across the ground beneath his feet.
Even he...struggled beneath its weight.
Veins bulged along his forearm.
For the first time in the battle...Strain appeared on Cassian's face.
"...Heavy..."
He muttered.
Then with a violent twist of his body—
SHWOOOOOMMM!!
He hurled it upward.
The heavens split apart.
KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!
The compressed sphere exploded high above the continent.
A sun was born.
Blinding white light swallowed the sky before blooming into an enormous sphere stretching beyond the clouds.
A shockwave rippled across the heavens, racing farther than the eye could follow.
From the distant cliffs of Whaley Saw...People stopped what they were doing and looked skyward.
Deep within Uni-France...Soldiers abandoned their posts. Children pointed toward the glowing horizon. Prisoners pressed against iron bars.
Rebels paused their marches. Villains ceased their battles.
Travelers.
Merchants.
Kings.
Mercenaries.
Survivors.
Every pair of eyes turned upward. The sky itself appeared to crack beneath the impossible explosion.
For one unforgettable moment...The entire continent witnessed the same terrifying light.
* * *
But the danger wasn't over.
The upper atmosphere couldn't absorb such overwhelming force. The remaining shockwave curved downward toward Gregor Naught.
If it landed...everything Cassian had just saved...would disappear anyway.
Cassian clicked his tongue.
"...Not yet."
His eyes narrowed.
A deeper distortion spread around him.
"...Give or Take..."
The air trembled.
"...Version Two."
The descending wave halted.
Then slowly unfolded sideways.
Instead of crashing downward, the force spread harmlessly across the surrounding skies, its remaining energy dispersing into countless harmless ripples that rolled toward the horizon.
The walls of Gregor Naught remained standing.
The broken remains of Iron Bastion survived.
The people...Lived.
The pressure finally faded, Cassian lowered his hand.
His breathing had become slightly heavier. His shoulders relaxed.
The terrifying distortion surrounding him gradually disappeared until he once again looked like an ordinary man.
Almost.
Fwoosh.....
Smoke drifted quietly across the ruined city.
The silence that followed felt sacred.
No one spoke and no one dared.
Cassian's first glance wasn't toward the battlefield.
It was toward Shinsei.
She noticed immediately.
A faint smile crossed her lips.
She lifted one hand.
"I'm fine."
Only then...Did Cassian finally look ahead.
* * *
Daito Greyhell was still standing.
His clothes hung in tatters. Blood stained nearly every inch of his body. Bruises darkened his skin. Cuts covered his arms and face.
He looked like a man who should have collapsed long ago.
Instead...He smiled.
A genuine smile.
Small.
Satisfied.
"...Epic."
The single word escaped almost as a laugh.
Monday couldn't help smiling too.
Even Brandon let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
For one fleeting moment...It almost felt like victory.
Then something changed.
Not in the wind. Not in the ruins. Not in the sky.
Inside Daito.
Brrrkle.....
His body trembled, barely
Almost imperceptibly.
Then the trembling intensified.
CRACK!
His fingers twitched violently.
Dark veins slowly emerged beneath his skin.
Thin at first, then thicker.
Black.
Jagged.
They spread across the back of his hands... Crawled along his forearms...continued toward his neck.
Monday's smile disappeared.
"...Daito...?"
Aerin's exhausted eyes widened.
"No..."
Cassian's expression hardened.
He recognized those veins.
Recognition became concern.
But something was wrong, terribly wrong.
His pupils slowly contracted. The warmth vanished from his gaze.The familiar determination inside his eyes dissolved into something ancient...
Something hungry.
The air around him grew strangely cold.
No one moved.
No one spoke.
Because every instinct they possessed screamed the same warning.
The battle with Cassian...was over.
But another nightmare...had just awakened.
To Be Continued.....