-The train continued-
Jasmine twisted his body, dodging the thirteenth ice pillar Frost hurled at him. The frozen spear grazed past his left ear, neatly slicing off a long strand of black hair before slamming into the snow behind him and exploding into thousands of razor-sharp fragments.
Black blood from his corroding left arm dripped onto the ground; every drop that touched the snow instantly turned into crimson arrows that shot back toward Frost. Useless. The gigantic penguin simply opened its glacier-blue beak and inhaled. Every blood arrow dissolved into red mist before it could even touch its feathers.
Absorption. Negation. Nothing could pierce Frost.
"If this keeps up… I'm really going to die," Jasmine whispered.
He bit his lip until it bled. Inside his subconscious, he was still kneeling beside Azurel's body. The man lay on the transparent ice floor of Jasmine's own mind, skin turning from deathly pale to bluish-gray. With every passing second, frost crept another centimeter up his neck.
"Hey… wake up, Azurel," Jasmine rasped. "Open your eyes. I'm not letting you sleep."
No answer. Only freezing wind whistling through the cracks of his mind.
Jasmine punched the ice beside Azurel's face. Cracks spider-webbed outward, but Azurel did not move.
"Stop lying there like a corpse! I need you!"
His scream echoed in both mind and reality.
Outside, Frost was closing in. Each step shook the earth. Its beak gaped wide, ready to swallow Jasmine and the half-formed black wing still clinging to his back.
Jasmine leaped backward, the incomplete wing beating violently, whipping up a crimson-black cyclone laced with fresh blood. With his left arm—now only white bone and red sinew—he drew a circle in the air. Blood poured like a waterfall, forming a hundred floating crimson swords.
"I know it's pointless, but I still have to try!"
He roared, hurling the hundred blood swords at Frost.
They tore through the air, shrieking like weeping demons. Three meters from Frost, every sword disintegrated into red dust, sucked clean into that gaping beak. Frost even let out a satisfied burp.
Jasmine dropped to one knee in the snow. His left arm was only bone now; the blood had run dry. He laughed—mad, broken laughter—as tears mixed with blood streamed down his face.
"Is this really the end…?"
Inside his mind, he knelt beside Azurel again. This time he didn't scream. He only whispered, voice trembling:
"You know… I'm so scared. I don't want to die here. I still haven't caught up to the old man… I still haven't confessed to Mary…"
He lowered his head, forehead pressing against Azurel's ice-cold chest.
"Wake up… please… I'm begging you…"
One second of silence lasted a thousand years.
Then Azurel's finger twitched—just one finger. Enough to make Jasmine jerk his head up.
Azurel's silver-and-crimson eyes slowly opened. Inside the pupils spun two bottomless voids, swirling as if to swallow the entire universe.
"…So damn noisy, kid," Azurel croaked, wearing that familiar twisted grin. "Your whining makes me want to puke."
Jasmine laughed through his tears. "You… you're awake!"
"Yeah. Thanks for waking me the most pathetic way possible."
Azurel sat up. The ice encasing him shattered and fell away like a broken cocoon.
"Alright. Let me out. I'm starving."
Reality and mind shuddered in unison.
Outside, the instant Frost's beak was about to swallow Jasmine whole, his body cracked open with thousands of pitch-black fissures. Black blood gushed like living tar, coiling around the tattered half-wing.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Bones snapped. Flesh tore.
From his back, the second black wing erupted—slow, agonizing, grotesquely beautiful. Feathers black as the abyss, each one a razor dripping fresh blood from the quill.
He raised his head.
A smile spread across Jasmine's lips—no longer human. The smile of something that had crossed the line between man and entity, between life and death, between sanity and madness.
Fangs sharp as needles. Pupils narrowed to thin black slits.
In his right hand, blood gathered, stretched, twisted, solidified—forming a radiant crimson katana. The blade had no fixed shape; it writhed endlessly, as though the very concept of "cutting" lived inside it.
Frost froze for the first time. The instincts of a perfect being sensed absolute danger.
Jasmine took one step.
Space shattered beneath his foot.
He did not run. He did not move. He simply was already there—right in front of Frost, distance itself erased.
The blood katana flashed.
No wind. No sound. No light.
Only a thin crimson line sliced across Frost's colossal body… and then was instantly absorbed and healed.
One heartbeat later, the frozen world began to melt.
Frost stared at Jasmine with emotionless eyes.
"You've grown stronger. Get ready."
It opened its beak again.
From its throat, the exact same crimson slash Jasmine had just unleashed shot back—hundreds of times faster, thousands of times stronger, carrying the very power to "cut concepts" that Jasmine had released.
Jasmine's eyes widened.
The slash pierced straight through him—not through his body, but through his very soul.
Black blood exploded like a geyser.
His already necrotic left arm was severed completely, falling to the snow and dissolving into black smoke.
He plummeted from the sky, crashing hard onto the ice, vomiting a thick torrent of black blood.
Frost looked down from above, regarding him like a crushed insect.
"You have grown stronger. But still not enough to surpass me."
Jasmine gritted his teeth, glaring up at Frost, and began forcing more power through his broken body.
At that exact moment—
In the eternal palace of ice, Cryzar turned to the kneeling subordinate.
"You look like you have something to say. The Crimson Emperor wants to see me?"
The attendant slowly nodded.
Cryzar sighed, breath turning to blood-mist.
"Fine."
He tore open a rift of frost and crimson and stepped through.
The council chamber appeared. The Crimson Emperor sat waiting, face expressionless.
"Sit, Cryzar. We have things to discuss."
Cryzar sat. His face was a mask of ice.
The Crimson Emperor smiled—a smile that made the air scalding hot.
"Where is Last Nine?"
"I don't know."
The lie was smooth as black ice.
The Crimson Emperor burst into laughter.
"Nearly eight thousand years ago, he was killed by me, the Emperor of Flame, and the Emperor of Light. His body, memories, and power were sealed inside the White World—no one knows who created that prison. His last words were: 'I will return as an Emperor from eternity itself and kill all of you.' Now two of my generals are dead, and a power beyond mortal limits has appeared. Don't insult me with 'coincidence.'"
Cryzar's reply was curt: "Someone is impersonating him."
The Crimson Emperor leaned in, whispering like poison:
"Last Nine trained that brat, didn't he? He's using the boy to finish what we started eight thousand years ago."
Cryzar raised his head, glacial-blue eyes freezing the air into floating snowflakes.
"I'll say it one last time. I don't know."
The Crimson Emperor laughed until blood ran from his eyes.
"Good. Then from this moment on, every Midsphere—every infinite world within them—will be conquered one by one. As for that Jasmine brat, I have my ways. I will tear apart this entire damned infinite multiverse to kill Last Nine. He dares stand in the way of the Five Emperors' shared destiny: to conquer and rule all worlds as we see fit."
Cryzar stood, turning his back.
"If you find Last Nine before I do… don't kill him. Leave that to me."
He stepped through the closing rift, voice dropping to absolute zero:
"And don't believe everything you see."
The gate slammed shut.
The Crimson Emperor sat alone, rolling a single long black hair between his fingers, still wet with fresh blood.
"You really are a terrible liar, Cryzar…"
– The War Continues –
Jasmine lay in a pool of his own black blood, the severed stump of his left arm still smoking.
White bone jutted out, yet he didn't utter a single groan. He only laughed—laughed until the corners of his mouth tore, black blood streaming down.
"Not… enough…"
He pressed his right hand against the shattered ice and forced his body upright.
Black blood poured from every pore like waterfalls, coiling around him like living serpents.
The second black wing beat once, hard, cracking the sky open for hundreds of kilometers.
Frost stood high above, its glacier-blue feathers still perfect, but for the first time a genuine flicker of wariness appeared in its eyes.
"You still want to continue?" Its voice rang directly inside Jasmine's skull, cold enough to freeze the soul.
Jasmine roared and summoned Yamamura:
"Infinite Layered Severance!"
He charged.
Space shattered beneath his feet again.
He was already there—right in front of Frost's beak, faster than the concept of "reaction time" could exist.
Yamamura slashed downward.
Frost opened its beak to absorb as always.
This time it failed.
The more layers Frost tried to absorb, the deeper Yamamura cut. Every single layer of infinite absorption was pierced, bypassed, ignored. The blade treated Frost's endless negation as if it were paper.
Frost's eyes widened in genuine shock.
"Impossible! Your energy is infinite?! My infinite layers of absorption cannot lose!"
Jasmine only grinned.
Yamamura moved faster than distance, faster than time itself, before Frost could retreat, the blade carved through every last layer of defense and kissed the creature's actual flesh.
Frost staggered back three steps. Each step cracked the earth into bottomless chasms.
A thin line of black blood seeped from its beak and chest, dripping like tears.
"…Impressive," Frost admitted, voice no longer cold but laced with real excitement. "You can completely cut through and negate every layer of my absorption. Well done."
"You have forced me to use 50%."
Frost declared, voice thundering across a clear sky.
Tens of thousands of divine ice spears fell like a meteor storm.
Jasmine looked up, his smile growing wider, madder.
"Perfect… just perfect…"
He whispered, black blood pouring from his eyes like tears.
"That's how it should be—big and loud."
He raised both arms to the heavens.
The second black wing beat violently, draining every drop of black blood from his body to form a colossal vortex that swallowed him whole.
Infinite Layered Severance reactivated, this time stacking so many layers that space itself warped and screamed.
Two absolute beings charged once more.
Ice and blood collided.
The world shattered yet again.
This was no longer a duel.
This was war between two entities that had long surpassed the concepts of "life" and "death."
One was the perfect lifeform capable of negating, immunizing, absorbing, and transcending everything. The other was a being destroying himself to forge something that could never be negated, never shaped, never manipulated, never dominated, never immunized against.
Inside Jasmine's mind, Azurel was laughing until tears of joy streamed down.
"Well done, kid… Just keep going like this…"
Jasmine gave no reply.
He only laughed.
And the two monsters crashed into each other once more.
Divine ice spears and blood slashes collided endlessly; every explosion erased thousands of kilometers of space.
Frost roared, feeling "pain" for the first time in ten thousand years.
Jasmine's black blood clung to the glacier-blue feathers, corroding each layer of eternal negation.
He laughed hoarsely; Yamamura had become billions of layered blades whirling around him.
"Only 50% and you're already like this… I want to see your 100%!"
Frost raged; its beak opened wide enough to swallow the horizon itself, millions of ice spears fusing into one endless primordial ice lance.
Jasmine didn't dodge.
He charged straight in, Yamamura slashing upward; the two ultimate techniques met dead-center in mid-air.
White and black light devoured everything.
When the light faded, Frost still stood, but now a deep, gaping wound ran from beak to chest, ice-blood pouring like rivers.
Jasmine knelt on one knee, half his body nearly disintegrated, yet he grinned ear to ear:
"Next time… I'll really kill you."
Frost laughed and said:
"Then come at me!"
Frost and Jasmine roared and crashed into each other. Every slash and every blow unleashed shockwaves that obliterated entire worlds. When a world died, its anti-world vanished with it.
Jasmine laughed wildly and shouted:
"Keep coming! I'm getting excited!"
Inside Jasmine's mind, Azurel was doubled over laughing:
"Oh my god! You're killing me! Hahahahahahaha!"
Jasmine said nothing aloud, but his eyes burned with unbreakable resolve, to grow stronger, to stand equal with the old man, to explore every last corner of this infinite multiverse, no matter how high it reached.
(To be continued…)