[Last Chapter: The First War has Begun]
Chapter 113, Episode 113
Meanwhile Mephisto faces Nighurath
[They had been circling each other since everyone else found their opponent]
Mephisto: We've been saving each other for last..
[Mephisto said]
Nighurath: I wanted to see how my people did first
[Nighurath said. His Paradox Magic was fully active, the air around him in a state of constant logical inconsistency that most beings found deeply uncomfortable to stand near]
[Cause and effect in his immediate space were in a state of negotiation rather than certainty]
Mephisto: And how are they doing??
[Mephisto said]
[Nighurath looked at the various fights happening across the field]
Nighurath: Holding
[he said]
Mephisto: Mine too, This is going to take a while.
[Mephisto said]
Nighurath: Yes, I've been planning for this since two hundred years ago.
[He said with a clear answer]
Mephisto: So have I
[Mephisto said]
Nighurath: Then let's find out, whose two hundred years was better spent.
[Nighurath said]
Paradox Magic — Infinite Contradiction Field
[The field expanded from Nighurath and the space around Mephisto became a zone where every action contradicted itself]
[Every step he took forward moved him backward]
[Every offensive ability he activated simultaneously neutralized itself. Every defense he raised lowered something else.
Mephisto walked through it]
Acausality — Full Expression.
[He didn't exist in causality. The contradiction field required causal relationships to work]
[[But Mephisto produced no effects from causes because he had no causal connections to his own actions]
[The field passed through him like weather through a ghost]
[Nighurath watched]
Nighurath said: Acausality negates paradox
[he said]
Mephisto: Yes, Because paradox requires logic and logic requires cause and effect. I have neither.
Nighurath: Then how do you fight
[Nighurath said]
Mephisto: Results, I produce results without causes. I generate effects without sources, but There's no logic in what I do and therefore nothing for your paradox to contradict.
Acausality Magic — Concept Devourer.
[He reached for the concept that defined Nighurath's Paradox Magic. Not the magic itself]
[The idea that paradoxes were possible at all. The conceptual framework that allowed contradictions to exist]
[If contradictions couldn't exist, Paradox Magic had nothing to work with]
[Nighurath felt the conceptual reach coming]
Paradox Magic — Self-Contradiction.
[He made his own magic contradict itself. Made Paradox Magic produce non-paradox]
[Made the framework of contradictions simultaneously possible and impossible]
[If nothing about his magic was consistent, there was nothing to grab onto]
[Mephisto's Concept Devourer found a framework that didn't stay still long enough to be eaten]
[He pulled back]
Mephisto: You made your magic consistently inconsistent
[he said]
Nighurath: If my magic is paradoxical then the paradox of my magic includes the paradox of it being paradoxical.
[He held up his hands]
Mephisto: Is that soo!!
Nighurath: Everything I do is a contradiction including my resistance to your techniques.
Mephisto: That's a headache
Nighurath: Yes, That's the point.
[Mephisto looked at him for a long moment]
Mephisto: Two hundred years
[He said slowly]
Nighurath: Two hundred years
[Nighurath confirmed]
[They moved]
[The fight between the Null Collapse leader and the Zealots leader was not loud. It was not dramatic. It was two people who had spent two hundred years preparing for this specific matchup testing each other's two hundred years of preparation with the quiet, relentless focus of people who understood that the outcome of this fight mattered more than how the fight looked]
MeanwhileThe Eastern World — The War Comes Home
[The rifts had opened above the Eastern World capital three hours after the first ones had appeared everywhere else]
[Voriath had sent Hyper Beings here too. A different cohort. Not Zagan's group. These were specifically targeted, specifically chosen for the Eastern World's particular defensive profile]
[Jeannette was outside before the rifts finished opening]
[The Hyper Beings descended]
[She looked at them]
[Then looked at her people assembled behind her]
[Lilura. Pandorami. Laxcarseel. Antoinette. Martha. Infinite. Jairulioyo]
[Eight of the most powerful beings in the Eastern World, assembled, ready]
Jeannette: Separate, Each of you knows your range. Don't overlap. Don't leave gaps.
[Jeannette said]
[She looked at the descending Hyper Beings. Read their formation. Distributed her people]
Jeannette: Laxcarseel!!
[she said]
Laxcarseel: Yes
[he said. His voice was controlled. Barely]
Jeannette: The largest one, The one at the front. That's yours.
[Jeannette said]
[Laxcarseel looked at the Hyper Being she was indicating]
[A creature whose presence made the ground crack from proximity alone. Power that radiated outward like heat from something that had been on fire for a very long time]
Laxcarseel: Mine
[he said]
[Not a question. A statement of intent]
Jeannette: Lilura, The ones on the eastern flank. You have range.
[Jeannette said as she made an order]
[Lilura's Sword Lunar was already in her hand]
Jeannette: Jairulioyo, The fast ones. Three of them, moving ahead of the formation.
Jairulioyo: I see them
[Jairulioyo said. Lightning already running up his arms]
Jeannette: Martha
[Jeannette said]
[Martha stepped forward]
Jeannette: The ones targeting the civilian sectors
[Jeannette said]
Martha: I see them
[Martha said]
Jeannette: Antoinette
[Jeannette said]
[Antoinette's Precognition was already reading the next five minutes of the battle]
Antoinette: The flankers going for the foundation structures, I know
[she said before Jeannette could assign her]
Jeannette: Good
[Jeannette said]
Jeannette: Infinite, You cover me and Pandorami.
Infinite: Always
[Infinite said]
Jeannette: Pandorami
[Jeannette said]
[Pandorami looked at her]
Jeannette: The ones that get through everything else
[Jeannette said]
[Pandorami nodded]
[Jeannette looked at the sky]
[At the Hyper Beings descending toward the world that Leo had built]
[The world that he was coming back to.
She raised her sword]
Jeannette: We hold this world, Until Leo comes home, That's it, That's the only objective
[She looked at each of them]
[They moved]
Meanwhile Laxcarseel vs Varox (Lead Hyper Being, Eastern World)
[Varox landed]
[The ground under him cracked in a ring ten meters in every direction]
[His power was the kind that didn't need announcement, It was simply present the way gravity is present]
[Laxcarseel landed in front of him]
[Varox looked at him]
Varox: Who are you...
[Varox said]
Laxcarseel: Laxcarseel, Supreme General of the Eastern World. First of Leo Sebastián's subordinates.
[He said]
[Varox looked at him with the expression of someone reading a document and finding it interesting but not alarming]
Varox: The Eastern World's strongest..
[Varox said]
Laxcarseel: One of them
[Laxcarseel said]
Varox: Your lord is absent
[Varox said]
Laxcarseel: He's coming back, and until he does, you answer to me.
[Laxcarseel said. His voice was completely flat. Completely cold]
[Varox raised his power]
[Laxcarseel raised his]
Nihilism Void — Active.
[The void source expanded outward from Laxcarseel's position and the conceptual weight of absence hit Varox like a wall]
[Conceptual. The absence of the things that made Varox what he was]
[The void reaching for the definitions that held his power together]
[Varox pushed through it]
Hyper Being — Existence Reinforcement.
[His power reinforced its own definition. Made the concept of himself more real, more dense, more fundamentally present, pushing back against the Nihilism Void]
[Laxcarseel watched the reinforcement]
Laxcarseel: You made yourself more defined, More clearly existing.
Varox: Yes
[Varox said]
Laxcarseel: That's a mistake
[Laxcarseel said]
Nihilism Void — Wonder Nullification.
[He didn't target Varox. He targeted the framework that allowed Existence Reinforcement to function]
[The conceptual infrastructure that made "being more real" a possible action]
[If becoming more real wasn't an option, the reinforcement had nothing to reinforce]
[Varox felt his reinforcement dissolve]
[He looked at Laxcarseel]
Varox: You destroyed the concept of reinforcement
[he said]
Laxcarseel: In this area, Yes..
[Laxcarseel said]
[Varox launched his first real attack]
Hyper Being — Absolute Causality Strike.
[A strike built on pure cause and effect. Uninterruptible. Unstoppable. Because every effect had a cause and this effect had been set in motion]
[Laxcarseel raised his hand]
Final Absolute Transcendence — Beginning.
[His presence expanded]
[The form where his existence alone destabilized the fabric of reality. The embodiment of Life, Death, and existence itself pressing outward]
[The Causality Strike hit the outer layer of the transcendence and slowed]
[It kept pushing through]
[Laxcarseel pushed back]
[The two forces met in the space between them and the Eastern World capital registered the collision as a shockwave that shook the foundations of several dozen buildings simultaneously]
[Both of them stood]
[Neither of them conceding]
[Laxcarseel's expression was stone]
Laxcarseel: This world,is Leo's Nobody takes it
[he said through the pressure]
[He pushed harder]
The Scene Martha vs the Civilian-Sector Hyper Beings
[Three Hyper Beings had broken from the main formation and were moving toward the civilian districts]
[Martha was already there]
[Because she had seen where they were going before they started moving]
Ultra Hope Dash Form.
[The form activated quietly. Not with a dramatic transformation or a surge of energy]
[Just a shift in the quality of her presence]
[Leo's vessel power, borrowed and held, running through her in the particular way that borrowed power from a being like Leo ran — carefully]
[She stood in front of the three Hyper Beings with her sword out]
[They looked at her]
Hyper: One person
[the lead one said]
Martha: One person
[Martha confirmed]
Hyper: Move
[he said]
Martha: No
[she said]
[He moved]
[The speed was at it's peak]
[The kind of speed that made the concept of distance irrelevant]
[Martha's sword was already where he was going to be]
Ultra Hope Dash — Precognitive Strike.
[Not because she had Precognition as an inherent ability]
[Because the vessel's power included a borrowed layer of cosmic awareness that let her feel the shape of the next moment]
[The sword met the Hyper Being mid-movement]
[The impact stopped him]
[He looked at the blade pressed against his advance]
Hyper: How
[he said]
Martha: I knew where you were going
[she said simply]
[The second Hyper Being flanked left]
[Martha turned]
Ultra Hope Dash — Multi-Response.
[She was in two places simultaneously for half a second, pressing the first back and meeting the second's flank before he completed it]
[The third launched from above]
[Martha raised her sword overhead]
[The three impacts came simultaneously]
[She held]
[The force pushed her back two steps. Three steps. She dug in at four]
Martha: Three of you against one of me.
[she said. Her voice was calm]
Hyper: Yes
[the lead one said]
Martha: Good
[Martha said and attacked all three at the same time]
Lilura vs Eastern Flank Hyper Beings
[The eastern flank was three of them. Moving fast. Coordinated. Each one built for wide-area destruction]
[Lilura watched them approach with the Sword Lunar already drawn]
[The moonlight that reached the Eastern World's capital tonight was heavier than usual]
[She was drawing it in as it arrived]
Source of Lunar — Environmental Absorption.
[Every photon of lunar energy in the atmosphere feeding into her sword, into her form, into the layered abilities that all stemmed from her connection to the moon itself]
[The lead Hyper Being looked at her]
[He could feel the accumulation. The building pressure of something that had been absorbing since before he landed]
Hyper: She's been charging since we appeared
[he said to the others]
Lilura: Yes, I saw you coming.
[Lilura said Tides of Inevitability]
[She pulled the fate of their attack toward her and pushed the outcome of her counterattack forward]
[Made her response faster than their action by manipulating the temporal relationship between attack and defense]
[Her sword moved before they finished closing distance]
Crescent Blade — The Edge of Nowhere.
[The slash went through distance itself and through the concept of distance]
[The blade appeared inside their formation, bypassing every spatial gap between her and them, arriving at all three positions simultaneously]
[Three cuts]
[All of them connecting in a single instant from a single swing]
[The flank screamed]
Hyper: How powerful is this lady, able to maneuver every single Hyper Beings amplified by Voriath, she is able to bypass any of our defense with that slash
[Not from pain exactly. From the particular shock of something that had bypassed every defense because it hadn't traveled through space at all]
[Two of them went down]
[The third caught himself and launched a counter]
Hyper Being — Reality Collapse Strike.
[His power hitting the local reality in a way designed to collapse the laws holding Lilura's abilities together]
[Lilura raised the Sword Lunar]
Lunar Mirror — Reflection of the Soul.
[She became a perfect conceptual mirror]
[The Reality Collapse Strike hit the mirror and the universe perceived the Hyper Being as the one who had collapsed reality, redirecting the effect onto him]
[He collapsed his own technique]
[Lilura looked at him]
Lilura: The moon reflects as everything that comes at it becomes a reflection.
[She said]
[He stared at her]
[Then gathered himself and attacked again.
This time she didn't reflect]
Lunar Apotheosis.
[Her form expanded]
[The weight of her existence increasing until the air around her had the particular quality of space around a celestial body]
[The Hyper Being felt the gravity before she hit him]
[She hit him anyway]
Meanwhile the Four Empire States
Across the four remaining Empire States, Voriath's subordinates arrived.
[Lily descended into the Guardians of the Galaxy territory]
[Icarus met her at the boundary]
[He looked at the True Enchantment Magic radiating from her and felt the particular quality of holy power layered beneath it]
[Two magics at once. Neither one simple]
Icarus: Lily
[he said]
Lily: Guardian
[she replied]
Icarus: You're here for my people's territory
[he said]
Lily: I'm here because I was sent here, Not because I chose this fight.
Icarus: Does the difference matter
[Icarus said]
[Lily looked at him]
Lily: Not to you, Probably.
[Lily said]
[She raised her hands]
True Enchantment — World Binding.
[The air between them thickened with a magic that was older than most fighting styles]
[A magic that didn't fight directly but wove itself into the environment until fighting became harder, slower, more difficult than it should be for everyone who wasn't her]
[Icarus moved through it]
Guardian — Reality Anchor.
[His ability kept him fixed in the current reality regardless of how the local conditions changed]
[Lily's enchantment couldn't slow him because his connection to the present moment was anchored independently of local magic]
[He reached her]
Lily: You anticipated that
[Lily said]
Icarus: I read about enchantment magic after the last time
[he said]
Lily: Two hundred years ago
[she said]
Icarus: Yes!!
Lily: I've improved
[she said]
Icarus: So have I
[he said]
[They fought]
[Isadora drifted into the Octavian Vanquishers territory like fog]
[Kars looked at her arrival with his Logic Magic reading every structural component of her Dream Magic and finding it deeply illogical in the specific way that things that operated on emotion and perception rather than reason were deeply illogical]
Kars: Dream Magic, Everything about it violates the premises of logic. Dreams are unreliable, inconsistent, contradictory.
Isadora: Yes, That's why they're powerful.
[Isadora said]
Kars: I operate on logic, Dreams can't affect logical systems.
[Kars said as he analyzed Isadora]
Isadora: Can't they??
[Isadora said]
[She closed her eyes]
Dream Magic — Shared Reality.
[She reached into the space between consciousness and logic and introduced something that had no place in pure reason]
[A feeling. An image. A half-remembered shadow of something that felt important but couldn't be defined]
[Kars felt it reach the edge of his logic framework]
[He pushed it away with pure reasoning]
Kars: Dreams cannot penetrate logic
[he said]
Isadora: Do you dream
[Isadora said]
[Kars paused]
Kars: No, I don't.
[Kars said]
Isadora: Do you know why
[Isadora said]
Kars: Because I don't permit irrational mental states
[Kars said]
[Isadora opened her eyes]
Isadora: And if I showed you something you couldn't reason away, Something that was perfectly logical by your own standards but existed only in a dream state?
[Kars looked at her]
Kars: That would be impossible
[he said]
Isadora: Would it
[She said]
[She reached into his framework not with feeling but with a perfect logical structure]
[A dream that obeyed every rule of reason. A sleeping thought that was entirely coherent.
Kars felt it touch the edge of his logic]
[It fit]
[It shouldn't have fit but it fit]
[He went very still]
Kars: A logical dream
[he said slowly]
Isadora: Yes
[Isadora said]
Kars: That's a paradox
[he said]
Isadora: Welcome to Dream Magic
[she said]
[Glutto arrived at the Legends of Light territory with green flame already burning on his sword]
[Wu Zetian met him at the city boundary with his Ice Magic reaching its natural state around him]
[Temperature dropping. The air becoming the kind of cold that had weight]
[Glutto looked at the cold]
Glutto: Ice against flame..
[he said]
Wu Zetian: Standard contest, My ice is conceptual. It doesn't just lower temperature. It conceptually negates heat.
[Wu Zetian said]
Glutto: And my flame is conceptual, It doesn't just burn. It erases the logic of resistance.
[Glutto said]
Wu Zetian: So neither of us has a natural advantage
[Wu Zetian said]
Glutto: No
[Glutto said]
Wu Zetian: Then it comes down to skill
[he said]
Glutto: Yes
[Glutto said]
[He raised his sword]
Green Flame Swordsmanship — Emerald Annihilation.
[The cut came with both a physical edge and the conceptual property of the green flame that negated every layer of defense as it moved]
[Wu Zetian didn't dodge]
Ice Magic — World Freeze.
[He met the blade with a wall of conceptual cold that froze not the physical blade but the concept of the blade's motion]
[Made the trajectory of the cut no longer possible]
[The blade stopped in mid-air]
[Glutto looked at it]
Glutto: You froze the motion
[he said]
Wu Zetian: Yes
[He said]
Glutto: Then I change direction
[he said]
[The blade moved to a completely new angle]
[The frozen trajectory remained where it had been, unoccupied and irrelevant, while the actual blade arrived from somewhere Wu Zetian had to turn to address]
[he turned]
[The fight for the Legends of Light territory began]
[Galacik descended into the 9 Heroes territory with True Darkness Flame trailing behind him]
[Zepar met him]
[The gravity between them immediately became a conversation]
[Zepar's Gravity Magic and Galacik's physical presence creating competing weight in the space between them]
[Galacik looked at Zepar]
Galacik: Gravity
[he said]
Zepar: Yes
[Zepar said]
Galacik: I can work with that
[Galacik said]
[He raised his sword]
True Darkness Flame — Gravity Devourer.
[His flame was darkness that had weight]
[Flame that pressed down rather than rising]
[Every swing of his sword adding gravity to the trajectory of the cut until the attack carried the weight of a falling star]
[Zepar felt the gravity in the attack]
[He felt it the way another musician feels a tune they didn't write but can follow]
[He redirected it]
Gravity Magic — Vector Inversion.
[He changed the direction of Galacik's attack gravity. Upward instead of downward. The heavy attack suddenly moved against its own weight]
[Galacik saw the inversion and adjusted]
[Mid-swing he shifted the darkness flame's gravity vector]
[Zepar adjusted again]
[They had a conversation through physics before either of them threw a second blow]
[Then Rousseau appeared behind Galacik.
Because this was the 9 Heroes and they fought as a team]
Infinite Strength — Full Expression.
[Galacik stepped aside without looking]
True Darkness Flame — Absolute Perception.
[He had seen Rousseau coming before Rousseau had decided to move]
[Rousseau's fist hit empty air]
[Galacik looked at both of them]
Galacik: Two on one
[He said]
Zepar: Yes, we would not go easy on you
[Zepar said]
Galacik: Good, I was worried you'd underestimate me.
[He moved]
[Jaxx, last of Voriath's five, descended into the space between two territories. Not by mistake. By intent]
[She wanted ground that belonged to nobody so that nothing could be protected from her Destruction Magic]
[She stood in the empty space and looked at the sky]
[The 9 Heroes and the Legends of Light had sent people to flank her from both sides]
[She saw them coming from six kilometers away]
[She raised her hand]
Destruction Magic — Total Field.
[The empty space around her became a place where the concept of structural integrity didn't apply]
[Everything in the field that had the property of being intact began to have trouble maintaining that property]
[The approaching defenders felt it from four kilometers out]
[They slowed]
[Jaxx watched them slow]
Jaxx: Come on
[she said quietly]
[She was not someone who enjoyed fighting.
She was someone who was very good at it and had made peace with the difference a long time ago]
[The defenders arrived]
[The fight began]
The Invictus World — Antechamber and Pocket Dimension and Throne Room
[And through all of it —]
[The Empire States burning]
[The Terra Celestial World holding its ground]
[The Zealots Division and the Null Collapse grinding through their matched fights]
[The Eastern World standing firm around Leo's absence]
[The Primus World flooded with Hyper Beings facing every ruler in the cosmology —
Through all of it, three fights were happening at the center of everything]
[In the antechamber, Leo and Xuantian crossed swords across time and space with the focus of two beings who understood that what they were deciding mattered beyond either of them]
[In the pocket dimension, Isaac and Mercurius fought at the intersection of fire and reality with the particular intensity of a fight between someone who burned through concepts and someone who rewrote them]
[And in the throne room, The Manipulator and Siriusniyo and Voriath Luminael fought the war's most important battle with the understanding that they were the only beings in the cosmology capable of having it at all]
[Outside, the calamity raged]
[Inside, the conversation continued in the only language three beings like them knew well enough to be honest in]
[The language of absolute power]
[The real war had begun!]