The air within the barrier was no longer mere oxygen and nitrogen, it had become a conductive medium for the raw violent intent of two monsters. Jay stood amidst the scorched earth of the Inner Sanctuary, his black hoodie fluttering in the hot updraft created by his own presence.
A flickering shroud of purple flames danced around his frame, casting long erratic shadows against the ancient trees. Fifty feet away, Susanoo-no-Mikoto stood with his arms crossed, his rugged features illuminated by the rhythmic pulsing of his own dark blue lightning.
"To think a mere human could devise a logic to devour my lightning," Susanoo remarked, his voice echoing with the resonance of rolling thunder. He was grinning, a sight that would have frozen the blood of most humans. "That Rupture of yours... it didn't just block the strike but completely devoured it, such a magnificent use of Spatial Magic. You have a fine eye for the seams of the world, boy."
Jay ignored the praise. He wasn't there for a lecture on his own mechanics. His eyes were fixed on the god's posture, his mind already running a thousand simulations of the trajectories Susanoo might take. He didn't look back as he spoke, his voice cold and commanding.
"Azazel."
The Governor General, currently parrying a barrage of elemental talismans from the Himejima elders, glanced over his shoulder. "A bit busy here!"
"Put up a barrier," Jay ordered, his gaze never wavering from Susanoo.
Azazel's expression shifted from frantic to deadly serious. He recognized that tone immediately.
Even if it was embarrassing for someone of his position to be ordered around by a human, let alone one so young, he understood the scale of the battle and the necessity of the barrier.
"Understood. Don't let you get killed by him alright."
Jay then shifted his attention to Tobio, who was standing paralyzed, his hands still gripped tightly around the shadow-form of Jin. "Tobio. Get moving. Go help the others."
"I can't!" Tobio shouted back, his voice cracking. "He's here because of me! Because of Jin! I can't just leave you to fight a God alone to protect me while I run away!"
Jay finally turned his head slightly, his hazel eyes glowing with a cold light that seemed to pin Tobio to the spot.
"Do not misunderstand me, Tobio Ikuse. I am not standing against him for your sake. I fight because it is my creed, an oath I chose to bear and one I intend to see fulfilled. This is not justice, nor mercy, nor protection. It is a rule I imposed upon my own existence. The thing that even if I spent the next decade explaining it, you would not grasp it. Go."
Tobio flinched, the harshness of the words cutting deeper than any blade. But then he noticed Jay's hands. They were not shaking at all.
Tobio could not understand how someone who did not even look older than him could possess such resolve and courage. He wanted to be like him too, to protect Natsume, Sae, Samajima, and all of his friends.
There was no fear in Jay's eyes, only a terrifying, clinical focus.
Jin sensed the shift in the air and let out a sharp, encouraging bark toward Jay, a canine salute of fighting spirit, before nudging Tobio's hand.
"Fine," Tobio hissed, his face hardening. "Just don't die on me, Jay. Promise."
"I won't" Jay said.
Tobio turned and vanished into the shadows, rushing toward the chaotic skirmish where Natsume, Samejima, and Lavinia were being pressed by the sheer numbers of the Five Principal Clans.
Azazel didn't waste a second. He flung using his twelve wings wide, and a massive, intricate magic circle of gold and violet began to cycle around Jay and Susanoo.
It expanded rapidly, carving out a combat zone hundreds of meters wide. The barrier was a masterwork of containment, designed to withstand the heat of a sun or the pressure of a collapsing star from supernatural beings.
Susanoo watched the barrier settle with a predatory grin. "A cage? How thoughtful. Now I don't have to worry about accidentally killing some ants."
In the time it took for a human heart to beat once, Susanoo ceased to be a man and became a lightning bolt.
He blinked across the distance, his figure blurring into a streak of azure light. He appeared in front of Jay instantly and his fist already driving forward. It wasn't just a punch, the lightning aura surrounding his hand had sharpened into a puncturing spear of condensed thunder and storms, capable of piercing through dragon scales and divine armor alike.
The strike hit. Or it should have.
Susanoo's fist passed through Jay's chest as if the boy were made of smoke. The lightning spear discharged behind Jay, obliterating a massive cedar tree and turning the earth into a molten crater, but Jay remained untouched as he activated Phantasmagoria.
"Hoo," Susanoo hummed, his eyes widening in amusement. "You've turned yourself into a ghost. That's another interesting magic you have there."
Jay didn't respond with words. He flickered out of existence and reappeared above Susanoo, his hands wreathed in the purple flames of Incinerate Anthem.
He unleashed a concentrated wave of purple flames meant to melt the god where he stood, but Susanoo was a creature of the storm and lightning. He twisted his body with impossible fluidity, leaping back as the purple fire turned the air into a shimmering vacuum where he had been standing a micro-second before.
Jay landed softly, but his eyes narrowed. He had reappeared fifty feet away, yet Susanoo was already closing the gap again.
'His movement speed was encroaching on the response time of my Domain.' Jay thought.
It was a dangerous realization, if Susanoo moved faster than Jay's brain could process the spatial ripples, the intangibility of Phantasmagoria would eventually fail.
Jay teleported again, appearing directly behind Susanoo. He didn't use fire this time. He reached out with a hand, the space around his fingers warping into a jagged Rupture. He intended to end the fight by shearing through the god's spinal column before the deity could react.
Susanoo, however, possessed the instincts of a being who had fought primordial monsters. He felt the ripple in the space behind him.
Without turning, he moved forward, and in a flash of light, three colossal eastern dragon heads made of condensed lightning manifested from his aura. They lunged backward toward Jay, their jaws agape.
Jay didn't move. He simply clasped his right fist as a wide spatial tear triggered around him, deleting the three lightning dragons in an instant as their energy being fed into the void of space.
Not giving Susanoo a moment to breathe, Jay slammed his palm into the ground. A surge of purple flame raced through the earth, turning the forest floor into a sea of violet incineration.
Susanoo, showing superhuman agility, launched himself into the air. He blinked through the sky and reappeared directly behind Jay's head, his hand shaped like a blade, aiming to pierce the boy's heart from behind.
Again, the strike passed through. But this time, Jay was prepared.
As Susanoo's entire arm and torso moved through Jay's intangible form, Jay timed his return to tangibility with surgical precision. The moment Susanoo's back was within reach, Jay's hand snapped out and gripped the god's bare shoulder.
"...Incinerate."
The purple flames didn't just burn, they hungrily consumed. A pillar of violet fire erupted from Jay's palm, engulfing Susanoo's entire body. The divine lightning aura surrounding the god was instantly charred away, the purple heat bypassing his defenses and cooking his flesh.
Susanoo let out a guttural scream of genuine pain, a sound that shook the very foundations of the barrier. In a desperate surge of power, he blinked fifty meters away, his body smoking.
The god landed heavily. His lightning aura had been snuffed out by the Incinerate Anthem Purple Flames. His skin was melted in several places, and his fine Shinto robes were shredded, revealing a ripped battle-scarred upper body.
But as Jay watched, a crackle of blue lightning danced across Susanoo's wounds. The skin knit back together, the charred flesh sloughing off to reveal fresh divine muscle beneath. The burn wounds that Incinerate Anthem inflicted is being healed instantly.
"HAHAHA!" Susanoo laughed, his voice sounding slightly crazed. "Now that is dangerous! Truly dangerous! That bastard God of the Bible really gave humans some terrifying toys to play with."
Susanoo stood tall, his eyes no longer just predatory; they were serious. The casual mockery had vanished, replaced by the respect one gives to a lethal opponent.
"Human, what is your name?"
"Zayyn," Jay replied, his voice a flat, cold monotone.
"Zayyn," Susanoo repeated, testing the name. "I acknowledge you! You are no mere wielder of a stolen relic, like the other bearers of Longinus! I, Susanoo, acknowledge you as the strongest human I have ever had the pleasure of fighting. So, rejoice! For that feat, I shall show you the greatness of my heavenly armaments!"
A spiritual pressure erupted from Susanoo that made everything prior feel like a gentle breeze. The ground beneath his feet cracked as the gravity in the area intensified tenfold. Even outside the barrier, the shockwave of his presence was felt.
Azazel attention turned towards the sudden pressure.
Lavinia, who had been systematically freezing the reinforcements of the Five Principal Clans, turned her head, her face pale.
"Illya-kun..." she whispered, her heart hammering against her ribs. She wanted to rush to the barrier, but she knew that even with her Absolute Demise, entering that combat zone would be suicide. Unless she unleashed her Balance Breaker, she would only be a liability to him.
Tobio, Samejima, and Natsume also paused, their eyes wide as they felt the earth-shaking aura. It was the weight of a world.
In the center of the clearing, in the sky above dark clouds began to swirl, casting deep, unnatural shadows over the Inner Sanctuary Forest area. A bolt of thunder, white and pure, struck from the heavens directly into Susanoo's right hand. As the light faded, a sword appeared.
It was ten palm-lengths long, a Totsuka no Tsurugi. The blade was slightly curved, forged of a pale silver steel that seemed to hold a perpetually drifting mist. Crackling lightning danced along the edge, and archaic Shinto runes etched into the metal glowed with the soft cold light of a full moon.
The guard is simple and elegant, shaped like a stylized cloud ring, while the hilt is wrapped in white silk worn smooth.
Then, Susanoo reached into the empty air with his left hand.
And the moment Jay realized how dangerous the sword in Susanoo's right hand was, he drew a second blade from thin air with his left.
In his left hand, a sword manifests as a jet-black katana with a blade so thin it appears unreal, as if it were a void in space rather than solid steel. Along its edge runs a faint, fractured glow, like light struggling to escape a crack in reality. The blade's surface reflects nothing, not even light, while spatial distortions ripple subtly around it warping the air like heat haze.
The guard is angular and jagged, resembling a broken seal rather than a traditional tsuba, and the hilt is wrapped in deep crimson cord etched with ancient divine sigils meant to bind destruction itself.
"Behold!" Susanoo roared, holding both blades out. "Two of my four Divine Swords. Ame-no-Murakumo and Ame-no-Habakiri."
Hearing that, Jay grew wary.
The term Totsuka no Tsurugi literally translates to Sword of Ten Hand-Breadths or ten palm lengths, a reference to the immense size of these blades.
For those encountering Shinto mythology for the first time, it is easy to mistake the term as the name of a single, specific sword. That assumption would be incorrect. Totsuka no Tsurugi is not an individual weapon, but a class of divine swords, wielded by multiple Shinto God throughout myth.
Among them, as Natsume had explained, four are regarded as the most powerful. And to think that two of them are in Susanoo's hands right now.
One is the Cloud-Gathering Sword, Ame-no-Murakumo, a blade capable of summoning storms and thunder themselves in his right hand.
Another is the blade most commonly known as the Snake Slayer, though some texts refer to it as the Heaven-Severing Blade. In the epic, Susanoo slew the legendary Yamata-no-Orochi with a single slash that originated from Takamagahara, bypassing distance, space, and even dimensional boundaries. The strike did not merely cut flesh. It cleaved reality itself.
Susanoo grinned, his teeth white against his charred face. He raised the black blade in his left hand.
"Let's see if your intangible body can dodge a slash that severs the heavens themselves!"
Susanoo casually swung Ame-no-Habakiri.
There was no travel time. There was no visible arc. Jay's Domain of his Own screamed a warning, but it was like a siren going off after the bomb had already hit. He felt the space around him being torn like a sheet of paper.
'I can't dodge this using Phantasmagoria!' Jay's mind realized with a jolt of alarm. The blade wasn't hitting his physical body, it was cutting the space he occupied. Being intangible wouldn't save him if the "space" itself was being severed.
Jay initiated a blind, desperate teleportation.
SLASH
Silence.
BOOM
The sound of the world being unmade echoed through the barrier. Jay reappeared twenty meters away, stumbling. He had moved in a micro-second, but he was still a fraction of a frame too late.
Blood began to drip from Jay's left hand, staining the dark fabric of his hoodie. A jagged wound had opened along the side of his arm, the skin torn not by a metal edge, but by the spatial friction of the space-cutting slash. His left hand hung slightly limp, the nerves still reeling from the micro-second delay.
Outside the barrier, Azazel gasped. The slash had been so powerful that it had carved a clean hole through his high-grade barrier, a feat that should have been almost impossible.
"Illya-kun!" Lavinia cried out, her hands glowing with ice as she prepared to interfere, but the spatial pressure within the dome was now so erratic that even she couldn't find an opening to step in.
Tobio looked concerned as well, but his attention snapped back when Ouryuu Nakiri's incoming attack came straight at him.
"Don't turn your back, Black Dog!"
Meanwhile inside the barrier, Jay ignored the blood. He ignored the stinging pain. He stood up straight as his breath coming in measured icy exhales. He looked at the black blade in Susanoo's hand, then at his own bleeding arm.
"A space-cutting slash," Jay muttered to himself, his mind already beginning to dissect the technique, even as his blood hit the dirt. "This is getting complicated."
Susanoo stood with absolute confidence, the black blade humming with the sound of a thousand dying stars. "The next one won't just graze you, Zayyn-boy. I'm going to carve you out of this world."