The air in the Colony, already distorted to the limit, suddenly... froze. This wasn't silence. It was the annihilation of sound. The roar of the fight, Dokuji's bellow, the whistle of ice shards, and the crackle of magic — all were ripped out at the root. The players, the instructors, Kagetori, Raidō — all froze, bound not by will, but by the pressure of reality itself. The air became heavy as molten lead, making it hard to breathe and pressing their feet into the ground.
From the rift, the very one created by Jintarō's hack, He stepped out.
Akatsuki Magoro. He stepped out unhurriedly, as if strolling through a garden, his hands hidden in the wide sleeves of his ashen kimono. His gaze, heavy and indifferent, slid over the mad casino of Jintarō, over the portal through which the fresh air of the outside world was pouring, over the warriors frozen in a silent scene. His eyes held no anger, no surprise. Only boredom. Infinite, cosmic boredom, hidden behind a black scarf.
Into the consciousness of everyone who could still think, a cold, impersonal impulse slammed. The Organizer's voice, but now it carried not mockery, but a panicked, furious attempt to assert his authority.
Magoro slowly, almost lazily, turned his head in the direction from which the mental command emanated. He wasn't looking at the Organizer. He was looking through him.
"You built yourself a sandbox and thought yourself a god?"
His voice was quiet, but each syllable carried the weight of an entire era. It didn't sound in the ears — it arose directly in the mind, burning away everything else.
And then... control vanished. Not with a crash or a flash. Simply, within a ten-meter radius around Magoro, the rules of the Game ceased to exist. Barriers, restrictions, energy flows — all turned to nothing. This wasn't suppression. It was negation on a fundamental level.
Reiden Kagetori stood rooted to the spot. His golden eyes, always full of either mockery or rage, were fixed on Magoro's figure. They held no anger, no desire to challenge. There was only cold, ruthless analysis. He saw the abyss. And for the first time in all his twenty-four years lived in an aura of invincibility, he felt its chilling breath on his skin. His fingers did not clench into fists. They hung limp.
Attack? That wouldn't be heroism.
It would be suicide, devoid of even the beauty of the gesture.
Their gazes met. Just for a moment. The gaze of a god slid over the gaze of the "Strongest of the Modern Era" — and found nothing in it that would hold his attention longer than a speck of dust.
Then Magoro turned away. He stepped to the side, and space tore open before him, revealing not the landscape of another Colony, but the yawning, starless darkness between worlds. He left. He didn't dissolve, didn't teleport. He simply ceased to be here.
The pressure subsided. Air rushed back with a resonant sigh. One of the young instructors collapsed to his knees, choking on a cough. Dokuji growled, but his roar held confusion.
Raidō, without uttering a word or looking at anyone, stepped towards the place where his master had disappeared. The icy warrior passed through the crowd as if it didn't exist and vanished into the same rift, which immediately snapped shut.
The temporary alliance was dissolved without a single word.
The cave met Raidō with the same tomb-like silence. The air here was crystal clear, cold, and motionless, as if sealed millennia ago. The walls, covered in frost that never melted, cast a ghostly glow emanating from the very center of the cave — the Well of Souls.
Its waters were black and still, like polished obsidian. In the very center, chest-deep in the dark water, stood Akatsuki Magoro. His eyes were closed, and his black hair, usually fiercely swept up towards the sky, now lay heavily on the surface like seaweed. A barely contained power emanated from him, a tremor felt by reality itself.
At the cave entrance, in a respectful pose, stood Pseudo-Sorato. His figure in a dark purple kimono seemed like a foreign object in this realm of primordial power.
"...thus, Reiden Kagetori is the first in this thousand years to inherit such a brain structure. Truly a phenomenon," his voice, sweet and poisonous, broke the silence, reaching the center.
Magoro slowly opened his eyes. His gaze was fixed into the depths of the water, but he wasn't seeing it.
"The Organizer of the Game of Shattered Eras, Narikawari... An ancient Majutsushi, parasitic in other bodies since time immemorial through his special Kokurō with a thousand years of experience..." Magoro uttered this with a light, almost intellectual smirk. "Afraid of the renegade Kagetori? What an interesting spectacle."
The one named as Narikawari, Pseudo-Sorato, barely opened his mouth to add something but was preempted by Raidō's icy voice, who reported his return and now stood a few meters away.
"You talk too much, worm. Leave the cave."
A chill swept through the air. Narikawari fell silent, his purple eyes shooting a quick, hate-filled glance at Raidō. But he dared not disobey. With a respectful but false bow towards the center of the Well, he turned and silently disappeared into the tunnel.
Apocalypse Casino
In the Colony, momentarily deprived of its creator's will, chaos reigned. The traps of Jintarō's Casino triggered randomly, cards flew through the air like maddened birds, and dice exploded before they could even fall.
"Stay inside my Zone!" shouted Akira, his voice breaking with tension for the first time. The bubble of stability he was creating jerked and pulsed like a soap film on the surface of a raging ocean. But it held.
"Kaede, left sector!" commanded Ryūnosuke, his sword cleaving a falling giant card.
Kaede, her face focused to the limit, snapped her fan. "Kokurō: Crimson Loop! Stabilization probability — 100%!" She wasn't trying to fight the system — she was forcibly "ordering" a small patch of space in front of them to behave predictably for a few seconds.
Shiori, clutching a scroll to her chest, pointed the way:
"There! I feel a weakening! It's an exit!"
They moved as a single organism, using the system's shock after Magoro's visit as their only chance.
Reiden Kagetori stood at the edge of the newly formed crater, staring into the void where a deity had stood minutes ago. His black-and-gold jacket was torn, a trickle of blood ran down his face. But he felt no pain. He felt nothing.
His whole life, all his power, his title of "Strongest" — all of it turned out to be a house of cards before the face of true, absolute power. He hadn't just lost. He hadn't even been allowed to participate in the game.
At the other end of the maddened Casino, Jintarō Kobayashi, buried in the code of the reality crumbling before his eyes, laughed. His laughter was pure, sincere delight.
"Now THAT'S something! Now THAT'S a player!" he wiped his face, brushing away sweat and dust. "No rules, no systems... Just... being. Absolute freedom!"
His eyes burned with a greedy fire. The plan to "become the new master of the Game" instantly seemed pathetic and small to him. A new goal was clear as day.
At that moment, Reiden appeared beside him, warping space. His face was grim.
"Forget it, Jintarō. You're too weak to even think of fighting him."
Jintarō turned, and his smirk grew even wider. He parried not with an insult, but with a question. A question that had long been spinning in his head.
"Sensei, tell me... Is he stronger than you? Than that icy ghost, Raidō?"
Reiden froze for a second, then answered coldly:
"Raidō is a servant. A shadow. What was just here... that was the Sun casting that shadow. There's an abyss between them."
Jintarō whistled, gambler's sparks igniting in his eyes.
"I see... So to reach the Sun... first, you have to extinguish its Shadow? An interesting puzzle. Very high stakes."
He laughed again, looking at the grim face of his former teacher. The game had just ascended to a completely new, dizzying level.