The sound of footsteps.
Rhythmic... serene... and nauseatingly perfect.
Plato descended from the sky atop the chaotically piled tower with the weightlessness of a feather. Not a single current of air shifted. Not a speck of dust was disturbed.
His freezing porcelain eyes scanned the area. They locked onto Roxy, Celine, and Oria. His gaze held zero emotion, radiating only absolute disgust and aristocratic superiority.
"What filthy meat sacks."
He withdrew a pristine white handkerchief from the pocket of his tailored coat. He wiped an imaginary speck of dust from his porcelain-metal arm, acting as if occupying the same spatial volume as them contaminated his purity.
"Your very existence scars the perfection of this cosmos... The stench of blood and biological life sickens me."
With a single, weightless tap of his elegant boot... the world altered.
**Echo of the Ideal Forms!**
The chaotic metallic floor of the towering spire vaporized. The dense scrap metal vanished. In a fraction of a second, the entire battlefield transformed into pristine white tiles, reflecting his flawless image like a mirror.
The three Wives took a collective step back.
The pressure emanating from him projected a terrifying force designed to shatter willpower and crush hearts with dread. This gravity declared they stood before an entity operating on an entirely different plane of power.
But patience had never been one of the savage Roxy's traits.
"Hey... who are you calling a meat sack, you porcelain-faced bastard?!"
Roxy bared her fangs. A brutal, bloodthirsty grin split her face as she launched her body directly at him.
"I'll smash that perfect face of yours until you cry and beg!"
**Axiom of the Beast!**
*BOOM!*
The floorboards exploded beneath Roxy's feet. She launched forward, violently shattering the sound barrier, leaving a terrifying sonic boom and shredded air currents in her wake. Raw, devastating kinetic energy pooled into her right fist—enough force to obliterate an entire fortress.
She aimed straight for Plato's face!
Yet... he did not even blink.
*KRA-THOOM!*
A massive shockwave ripped through the area, tearing the wind around them to shreds.
But Roxy's eyes widened in pure shock.
Her devastating punch... stopped dead.
He did not protect himself with an energy barrier or a porcelain shield. He halted her entirely with the razor-thin tip of a silver rapier!
Plato had drawn his blade with an elegant motion, completely invisible to the human eye. He positioned the absolute point of his blade... down to the exact millimeter... directly into the dead center of Roxy's charging fist.
"The perfect mathematical distance."
Plato spoke with absolute zero. His eyes did not even look at Roxy. He simply admired the gleam of his own blade.
"The magnitude of your random, savage force is irrelevant. As long as I dictate the precise spatial distance between the point of attack and the point of defense... your kinetic output always equals zero."
"Tch! Don't you dare underestimate me, you bastard!"
Roxy roared and attempted to push forward with all her raw might. But her body began to pay the horrific toll of her power.
*RIP! TEAR!*
Her muscle fibers began shredding from the inside out. Surging her Axiom against a philosopher holding an immovable defense was violently tearing her own physique apart. Blood began to seep from her pores.
"Roxy! Fall back instantly!"
Celine cried out, her exceptionally soft voice saturated with panic. She dropped to her knees rapidly. She pressed her hands against the spotless tiles, attempting to activate her Resonance.
*I will synchronize my consciousness with the roots of this planet... I will siphon nature's energy to heal Roxy's musculature from a safe distance...!*
But... the very second her awareness plunged downward... the blood froze in her veins.
*There is... nothing?!*
No soil. No roots. Not a single microscopic cell pulsing with life existed! This Xyroth terrain never harbored nature, roots, crops, or harvests. It was as if this had never been a planet at all.
Plato noticed Celine's disorientation. He shot her a glare of pure contempt.
"Searching for nature within my ideal realm? The desperate attempts of lesser organisms to cling to life nauseate me. Filthy biological Akasha... do not contaminate my space."
Plato swung his rapier coldly through the empty air.
*SHING!*
The ethereal flow Celine channeled was severed instantly!
Celine coughed up a spray of blood. She collapsed to the floor, her spiritual connection brutally shredded.
A few paces away, Oria stood with clenched teeth. Her mind raced at maximum capacity.
*There is no opening... none!*
Oria bit her lip in bitter frustration.
*To activate the Emerald Purge and erase his Echo, my bare hand must physically touch his chassis. But... with his speed and absolute spatial control... taking a single step closer guarantees inevitable death... What do we do?!*
"Enough toying with ideals."
Plato's tone dropped, coated in terrifying frost.
"Time for cleansing. I will erase this visual pollution from existence."
Plato vanished.
It appeared as if his kinetic frame never existed in reality to begin with. He materialized directly in front of Roxy, who was panting heavily from the agony of her shredded muscles.
"Hah!" Roxy shouted at the top of her lungs, twisting to face Plato as he moved in for the kill.
In a fraction of a second, hundreds of stabs erupted from Plato's rapier. Every single thrust targeted a vital point with flawless precision.
"Aaaaargh!"
Blood sprayed like torrential crimson rain, staining the air.
"Roxy!!"
Celine rushed forward, tears flooding her eyes. Realizing there was no flora to synchronize with, she ruthlessly unleashed the dark application of her power.
**Life Flow: Siphon!**
She drained the residual life force directly from the ambient air! Reducing the atmospheric aether into dead ash, she pumped instantaneous cellular regeneration into Roxy's mangled body to stave off immediate death.
Oria flared with power. She fired successive emerald beams directly at his optics, desperately trying to break his focus at any cost.
But Plato did not even turn his head.
He marched steadily through the Akasha detonations. The cosmic rays simply deflected off his flawless porcelain armor.
Seconds passed...
And the three Wives crashed to the floor.
Gasping... bleeding... drowning in expanding pools of their own blood.
Plato stood tall above them. His white armor gleamed. Not a single drop of blood had touched him. Not a single millimeter of his form suffered a scratch.
He stepped slowly toward Roxy's sprawled body. He loomed over her, looking down with the absolute arrogance of an entity inspecting a dying insect.
He raised his silver rapier high. He aimed the razor-thin blade directly at her heart.
"Vanish, biological filth."
He smiled with supreme aristocratic disdain. The sword descended with the speed of lightning.
Celine screamed in despair. Oria squeezed her eyes shut in sheer helplessness.
...
...
*CLAAAAANG!*
A harsh, sickening screech of grinding metal deafened their ears!
Time froze.
Plato's optics widened in pure shock. The mask of aloof elegance shattered from his porcelain face for the very first time.
His rapier... the hyper-lethal blade that severed the void itself... stopped dead in mid-air!
Plato assumed for a microsecond that a barrier protected her, or another blade parried his strike. The horrifying reality was neither.
His blade was halted by two bare fingers!
"Wh— What...?!"
Plato's eyes darted downward.
The shadow cast by Roxy's paralyzed body... was mutating unnaturally. It no longer obeyed the laws of light or logic. It rippled violently, behaving like a pool of bottomless black ink.
And from within that abyssal dark...
A feminine hand emerged.
A hand wearing a black silk glove. It was this exact hand that pinched the silver rapier's blade between just two fingers, utterly shattering Plato's absolute concept of the "perfect mathematical distance."
The shadow solidified. A stunningly elegant, feminine figure rose from the dark. She had utilized her Paradox to fuse entirely with the abyss, manifesting from an impossible, unpredictable vector.
Layla slowly lifted her head from the shadows. Her crimson lips parted into a sadistic, terrifying smile that forced the very atmosphere to tremble.
"Ara, ara..."
Her elegant, passive-aggressive voice, dripping with lethal venom, echoed across the battlefield.
"What an irritating pile of scrap... daring to harm my family."