Colony No. 7: "Dome of Illusions."
A place where reality was punctured not by crude violence, but by refined madness. The air here was mirrored—it reflected not light, but intentions. Every thought, every fear, every fleeting impulse of aggression materialized as a ghostly double, which immediately lunged at its creator. To survive, one had to empty their mind, become perfectly calm, perfectly empty. Or... be so fast that your own reflections couldn't keep up.
Inazuma Raiden chose the second path. He didn't even try to tame his wild, boiling fighting spirit.
He walked across the mirrored floor of the central hall, and a wake trailed behind him. Not of light or dust—of his own, barely materialized copies. Dozens, hundreds of them. Each an exact, rage-distorted reflection of himself with a raised katana. They were born from the air behind him with the quiet rustle of shattering glass and immediately, before taking a single step, crumbled into crystalline dust.
They couldn't keep up. Couldn't hope to.
Before him stood the last living player in this Colony. A Majutsushi in armor of gleaming adamantine, whose Kokurō allowed him to infinitely multiply his physical parameters—strength, density, mass. He had already increased his power a hundredfold and now resembled a motionless, glittering mountain, an impenetrable fortress. His strategy was simple and brilliant within ordinary logic: become absolute defense, wait until Inazuma wore himself out fighting endless reflections, and deliver one crushing counterstrike.
Inazuma didn't stop. He didn't even speed up. He simply continued walking. Straight at the wall of shining flesh.
The fortress-mage saw this. His power-distorted face spread into a grin behind his helmet. He gathered all his monstrous, multiplied force into one fist. The space around him cracked, unable to bear the concentration of mass. It was a strike literally capable of splitting a continental plate.
Inazuma took the final step. And vanished.
Not in the sense of teleportation. He moved.
For this battle, Inazuma Raiden had to, for the first time in several hours, break the speed barrier of 100 Mach.
Between his starting position and the chest of the fortress-mage, a bluish, plasma wedge appeared—the visible trail of torn air. Not an impact, but a single, deafening crack, like the crack of a giant sail but a thousand times louder. It struck the ears, the bones, the very reality of the Colony.
The fortress-mage didn't even understand what happened. His super-dense, super-strong body, his multiplied mass—all of it proved no more substantial than mist before the edge of a blade heated to plasma state. The blow came not from the front, but... from all sides simultaneously. Inazuma passed through him. Literally.
Where the mage had stood remained only a cloud of gas heated to white heat, rapidly cooling metal, and ash slowly settling on the mirrored floor. No blood, no debris. Complete vaporization.
Inazuma stood on the other side of the smoldering spot, slowly sheathing his utterly ordinary-looking katana. Its blade bore no traces. He sighed, and in his sigh was not fatigue, but deep, cosmic boredom.
Another weakling, flashed through his mind, fierce and eternally unsatisfied. 400 years ago, things were much more serious... Opponents knew their magic. Could feel space. Not just pile on mass like clumps of dirt.
He raised his left hand, relaxed, without the katana. The air above his palm trembled, and three shining fragments materialized within it—crystals of complex geometry, etched with inner light. Keys. Energy squeezed from the three previous Colonies. He clenched his fist, and the keys vanished, absorbed into his personal Game inventory.
His wild, blue eyes pierced through the mirrored dome ceiling, through layers of distorted reality, to where he felt the true center of this madness pulsating.
Where are you, Magoro... he thought, and in that thought was no fear, only impatient, predatory longing. That worm promised... Four hundred years of waiting in exchange for a fight with you. Don't you dare burn out before I get there.
Somewhere on the periphery of the Game, in the "Neutral Interval."
This wasn't a place, but a state—a pocket reality devoid of any laws, a bubble of pure potential. Here sat Jintarō Kobayashi, legs crossed in lotus position on an absolutely black "floor." Beside him floated two others. One—a skeletal figure in a robe, face covered by a respirator emitting rhythmic hisses. The cyborg-biomancer, "Doctor Zilf." The second—a teenage girl in a jacket too large for her, with a murky, detached gaze, constantly drawing something in the air with a finger, leaving behind glowing, quickly fading symbols. The augur-seer, "Echo."
Allies? More like temporary fellow travelers in madness, hired for promises of "interesting probability distribution" and "unique biological samples."
It was at that moment that a familiar, hateful mental impulse, like an icy needle, pierced the consciousness of all three.
Good lord, Narikawari again... Jintarō grimaced internally, eyes still closed.
The Organizer's voice lacked its former theatricality. It held cold, honed rage and determination to regain control. "Act Two. Rules simplified. All chaff removed. Only essence remains—the hunt. All players now see each other's marks. And the score."
The mechanic was piercingly simple and cruel. It wasn't sensorics or illusion. It was the principle of the "Blood Moon"—an ancient, nearly forgotten technique of linking souls through a common ritual. Every player who had accepted the Pact was already part of the system. Narikawari simply inverted this connection, making the internal "Scar-beacon" visible to other such "beacons." In the players' perception, ghostly, glowing numbers now hung above each other's heads—the number of collected Keys. No information about strength, techniques, weaknesses. Only the number. Temptation. Target.
Jintarō mentally "surveyed" the new map. Dozens of dim marks, most with the number "0" or "1." And one... bright, insistently pulsing, in a station not far away. Above it burned the number "3."
"Raiden Inazuma..." Jintarō murmured, and a gambler's grin spread across his lips. "Three keys. A nice bank to start with. Looks like someone decided not to play small."
He was about to share the observation with his allies when an explosion occurred in his mental field of vision. Inazuma's mark blinked out for a moment, and when it flared again—the number above it now read "4."
"Whoa," Doctor Zilf drawled phlegmatically, his synthesized voice devoid of emotion. "Threat index of target specimen just increased by thirty-three point three percent. In a negligible time interval."
"He broke the Colony," Echo whispered, her eyes growing even murkier, as if she were seeing it right now. "Didn't pass through it. Didn't circumvent it. With a kick... shattered a sphere of condensed reality like a glass ball. Wild... absolute power. Doesn't obey any of my probabilities."
At the same moment, a new, universal mental impulse, this time impersonal like a system notification, pierced every player's consciousness. A simple ranked list:
Raiden Inazuma — 4 Keys
Homura En'en — 3 Keys
Jintarō Kobayashi — 2 Keys
Tatsumi Ryūsei — 1 Key
Jintarō laughed, rising to his feet. Fire burned in his eyes—real excitement, for the first time in a long while.
"Well now, we have a king of the leaderboard!" he exclaimed. "The strongest and most dangerous player... I wonder if his luck is susceptible to my influence? Doctor, Echo, we're relocating! Time to place a bet against the favorite!"
Flashback. 400 years ago. The Jūmon Seiki Era.
The sky wasn't just stormy. It was the storm. A solid, furious cloud from horizon to horizon, pierced by lightning not from top to bottom, but in all directions, as if in a boiling cauldron. And at the very heart of this madness, on the bare peak of Thunderclap Crag, sat he.
Raiden Inazuma. Neither young nor old. A man at the peak of his monstrous strength, temples already silvered, but with a body carved from steel and lightning. His spacious black haori was fastened, concealing a chest covered in old scars and fresh burns from his own energy. He sat cross-legged, his simple katana lying beside him—a dark, unremarkable blade, the sole conduit capable of withstanding the current of his soul without melting.
Behind him, down the mountainside, lay bodies. Dozens. Not hundreds, but each one a Majutsushi of the highest class, a legend of their clan, a hero or villain of their era. They had come to stop the "Lightning God," united, devised tactics... and fallen. Not to complex techniques. To one, two, three strikes they physically could not perceive.
The air behind Inazuma distorted, and Narikawari stepped out.
The body he had seized then belonged to Amano Kei—the last of the "Seven Sages of Wind," a man whose fame as a sage and warrior was the only one before which even Inazuma felt something distantly resembling respect. The body was clad in a strict black monastic kimono, over which was draped a golden kesaya—a symbol of renunciation and supreme knowledge. Kei's face was calm, wise, but deep within the eyes burned the cold, insatiable fire of a parasite that had lived millennia.
He silently surveyed the battlefield with his gaze, then turned it to Inazuma's back.
"Enjoy yourself?" Narikawari asked in Kei's voice, quiet and deep as a mountain echo.
Inazuma didn't even turn.
"Boredom," his voice was hoarse from long silence and rumbled in the thunder. "Meat. Even this one," he nodded towards a body in the remnants of luxurious green robes, "'Lord of Hurricanes,' turned out to be empty. I'd rather have fought you, Kei. Or the one speaking through your mouth now. Narikawari."
Narikawari allowed himself a light, almost sorrowful smile.
"Our confrontation would be... fruitless. I came to propose something else. Something to satisfy your hunger."
"Do you know," Inazuma interrupted him, finally turning his head, his blue eyes full of untamed energy meeting the falsely wise gaze of the parasite, "who Akatsuki Magoro is?"
For a moment, genuine, ancient surprise flashed in Narikawari's eyes, quickly replaced by interest.
"I do. Tenmao. The King of Majutsushi, whose will was fabric and whose body was law. His soul was scattered by us..." he made a theatrical pause, "...six hundred years ago."
Silence hung between them, broken only by the rumble of the eternal storm. Inazuma looked into the distance, as if seeing through time.
"His power..." he finally uttered, and for the first time, something besides boredom or fury sounded in his voice. Almost reverent curiosity. "They say he could make the sun rise in the west. Could rewrite death itself."
"You seek a challenge," Narikawari continued softly but insistently, stepping forward. "But challenges in this world have ended for you. You've outgrown them, Inazuma. You've become the last titan in an age of pygmies. But what if I tell you I can give you time? Give you a chance?"
Inazuma slowly raised his gaze to him.
"A chance for what?"
"For the battle. That very one. Against him." Narikawari extended a hand, and a complex, multi-layered Scar, resembling a lock with a thousand keys, shimmered in his palm. "Accept my Pact. Not slavery. A contract. Your soul, your fury, your might... they will sleep. For four centuries. And when they awaken—the world will be different. He will be in it. Resurrected. Hungry. And ready to crush everything. And you... you will be there. The first to challenge him. The only one who can measure your lightning against his absolute will."
Inazuma looked at the glowing Scar-contract. A storm raged in his eyes. Not doubt. Impatience. Four hundred years of sleep... for one fight. For a chance to measure himself against a legend, against one he himself considered a myth.
He smirked. Wildly, joylessly.
"Four hundred years... a long time. But what are four centuries of waiting..." he straightened to his full height, and the storm around roared in unison, "...compared to an eternity of boredom?"
His hand shot forward and clenched Narikawari's glowing Scar. Energy, burning and ancient, bit into his soul, imprinting the contract. Not pain. A promise.
"Agreed, worm," Inazuma rasped, his voice beginning to lose strength, sinking into artificial lethargic sleep. "Four centuries. And then... I demand what is mine."
Narikawari, watching the consciousness of the last titan of the era fade, smiled his true, predatory smile.
"You'll get it. You and all the others... will get more than you asked for."
End of the chapter.
In a rift between two dying Colonies, in a zone resembling a giant, half-destroyed railway station with rails of light hanging in the air, stood Raiden Inazuma. He looked at his hand, where the number "4" now glowed. Boredom was beginning to be slowly replaced by faint, barely perceptible anticipation. Someone would see this number. Someone would come. Finally, some movement.
And he came.
Not with a roar. With a quiet, gambler's whistle.
From around the corner of a shattered column, tossing and catching a gold coin, stepped out Jintarō Kobayashi. His eyes immediately found the number "4" above Inazuma's head, and a spark of the purest, most insatiable gambling excitement flared in them.
"Well, well, well," Jintarō drawled, stopping ten meters away. "Looks like someone decided not to play small. Four keys in one go—that's stylish. That smells like a big win."
Inazuma slowly turned his head towards him. His blue eyes, full of ancient lightning, slid over Jintarō without interest, over his coin, over the number "2" above his head.
"Another pathetic player," Inazuma uttered, his voice like a distant thunderclap. "Come to hand over your keys?"
Jintarō grinned widely, catching the coin and squeezing it in his fist.
"Oh, no no! I came... to make an interesting bet. You see, I believe in luck. And your power... it looks so... uncontrollable. I wonder what would happen if luck suddenly turned its back on you? Even for just a second."
The air between them tightened like a string before a strike. On one side—ancient, untamed nature in human form. On the other—a young, audacious chaos believing only in probabilities and his own genius.
The Game of Shattered Eras was entering a new, even more merciless phase.