(Marvel, DC, images, manhuas, and every anime that will be mentioned and used in this story are not mine. They all belong to their respective owners. The main character "Karito/Adriel Josue Valdez" and the story are mine)
[Stability: 12%][Mobility: Restored: 23% Functionality][Hacker Access: Authorized (LIMITED)][Warning: System Threat Level = Catastrophic]
Adriel took a step forward.
Then another.
Sentry tilted his head.
"Still trying?" he said, half amused. "You couldn't beat me at full strength. Now you're limping."
Adriel didn't answer.
Because he wasn't fighting to win.
He was fighting to position.
He lunged—fast. But not berserk-fast. Calculated. With intent.
Sentry moved to intercept, cocky, already prepping a tendril swipe—
But Adriel dived under him. Not to attack.
To force Sentry to reposition.
It worked.
Sentry hesitated—half-beat off tempo—and Adriel drove a palm strike into the ground.
The ground?
Lit up.
Huo Huan's ribbons pulsed downward. Not to bind Sentry.
To anchor the courtyard.
Fire spirit code bled into the architecture. One corner of the battlefield started to solidify—reality calcifying like data frozen in RAM.
Sentry noticed immediately.
His eyes narrowed. "...You're not aiming for me."
"No," Adriel muttered. "I'm aiming for the frame rate."
He moved again—zigzag, limping, not attacking directly. But each impact against the walls, floor, broken pillars—each movement—was
intentional.
Each step rewrote a fragment of localized gravity using Toxin's anti-narrative threading.
He was turning the palace ruins into a physical firewall.
Sentry struck again—Adriel barely dodged, rolling across the floor and leaving a mark behind.
A glyph. Hidden in impact dust.
Sentry's brows twitched.
"You're coding."
"Damn right I am."
Adriel wanted Sentry chasing him.
He wanted him mobile. Focused.
So that the arena would forget him.
So it would remember the Guardian's imprint instead.
He led Sentry in a semi-circle—then cut across, drawing a final sigil with a ribbon swipe as he jumped sideways.
The courtyard flared.
Fire laced the edges of each fragment Adriel touched.
Then everything clicked.
Snap.
Reality lagged—for a moment.
Just one.
Sentry suddenly felt the delay.
His foot hit the ground—and the floor didn't respond right.
Like he was moving inside a container too small for his power.
A sandbox.
"You little bastard," Sentry muttered. "You're trying to trap me in a subnarrative."
Adriel grinned, teeth bloody.
"Congratulations. You finally caught up."
And then—
He activated it.
[HACKER SKILL: SYSTEM REWRITE - TARGET LOCKED][OVERRIDE INITIATED][EXECUTING: ROOT ACCESS — "ABSORB.EXE"]
He launched forward—not with brute force.
But with
admin access.
He didn't punch.
He tagged Sentry.
A single hand pressed against his chest.
Palm flat.
And the glyphs lit up around them like divine circuitry.
The ribbons constricted the air.
The symbiote pulsed with rewritten code.
And the Void Parasite inside Adriel?
Reacted.
Because now, it wasn't just being contained.
It was being called back.
Sentry's smile vanished for the first time in the entire fight.
"You wouldn't—"
"I would," Adriel whispered. "I am."
And the battlefield shook—
As the Void began to shift.
The moment Adriel made contact—palm pressed flat against the enemy's chest—the world paused.
Not in time.
In code.
The ribbons of fire twisted midair. The broken marble beneath their feet stopped cracking. Even the symbiote's strained whispers fell silent for a heartbeat.
The entity before him—once a godkiller, a devourer of fictions—tilted its head.
"You're not trying to kill me?" it asked, confused.
Adriel didn't answer.
He couldn't.
Because his body had just started screaming.
The Void—corrupted narrative incarnate—didn't flow into him.
It punched through.
Not like a stream of energy. Like a broken reality forcing itself into a vessel too small to hold it.
Adriel's back arched violently. His muscles snapped tight. Black fluid exploded from his nose and ears as a soundless shriek escaped his throat.
Inside, his system blinked violently:
[UNSTABLE CONNECTION INITIATED][ERROR: FOREIGN CODE BREACHING CORE][WARNING: PARASITE IDENTIFIED – MATCHING SIGNATURE][BEGIN FORCED MERGE]
His veins turned black.
Then his skin.
Then parts of his vision.
The world fractured at the edges—his sight pixelated, overexposed, flickering with red static and false memories that weren't his.
A battlefield of white that stretched into infinity. A library full of books. Voices—screams—calling his name in languages that had never been spoken.
Adriel fell to his knees, convulsing.
His spine cracked—once, then again, then again, each time bending slightly further than it should. His ribs folded inward like origami, then snapped back out with a wet pop, unable to decide what species they belonged to anymore.
He vomited black sludge, then blood, then code.
Huo Huan's ribbons tore away, scorched by contact with the infection. What had once been a healing spirit now burned into ash as it tried to hold Adriel's soul together and failed.
Toxin tried next—spreading across his body in full combat mode, clawing at the incoming Void energy. But the symbiote couldn't fight this.
It wasn't foreign.
It was part of him.
It had always been there, waiting for this exact override to finish what it started.
And now?
It was no longer fighting.
It was surrendering.
[WARNING: GAMER CORE OVERRUN][BACKUP PERSONALITY CHAMBERS LOCKED][FORCE-PROTOCOL: SELF/OTHER DEFINITION: COLLAPSING]
Adriel's screams turned inward.
His lips moved, but there was no sound.
His soul was howling.
The parasite wasn't being deleted.
It was being absorbed—into every line of his identity.
He didn't just feel pain.
He felt reprogrammed.
He lost the sense of where his fingers ended and the virus began.
His heartbeat stopped.
Then started again—but out of rhythm. It sounded mechanical. Wrong.
He tried to pull back.
Tried to scream "cancel."
Tried to let go.
But it was too late.
The merge was happening.
Not linearly.
Not safely.
But like a mad god stitching lightning into a skin suit.
His eyes burst black.
Shattered.
Rebuilt themselves as something other.
And still—
He held on.
Held on to the one thread that didn't break.
Purpose.
He remembered why he was doing this.
Not for revenge.
Not for strength.
But for control.
This wasn't corruption.
It was assimilation.
He wasn't becoming the Void.
He was stealing it.
He was owning it.
The world buckled around him as a scream—silent but thunderous—rippled outward from his soul like a gravitational collapse.
The sky blinked red.
Sentry took a step back, eyes narrowing. "What are you doing...?"
Adriel finally lifted his head.
His skin cracked like burnt stone. Glowing fissures ran through his chest, his arms, his face.
He was still in agony.
Still barely standing.
But his eyes—
They weren't white anymore.
Not burning.
Not glowing.
One side was brown, and the other iris was black.
His eyes.
Unblinking.
And deep inside them?
There was still pain.
But no fear.
Only focus.
[MERGE: COMPLETE][NEW STATUS: UNSTABLE – EVOLVING][VOID INTEGRATION: SYNCHRONIZED AT 68%][WARNING: HOST IS EVOLVING]
Adriel breathed.
The air hissed against his teeth.
He took one trembling step forward.
Then another.
And looked his enemy in the eye.
"You infected me," he said quietly.
"And now I'm rewriting you from the inside out."
The moment the merge completed, Adriel dropped to his knees.
Black ichor hissed against the stone, dripping from his mouth, eyes, and wounds—what was left of them. His body trembled, not from pain anymore, but from the static hum of power so dense it warped the very logic around him.
The air fractured.
And then—
It stopped.
Everything.
Adriel exhaled.
Once.
And that breath rewrote the battlefield.
The ruined courtyard surged in reverse. Shattered marble reformed beneath him, cracks stitching like reversed time. The fountains rebuilt, water flowing in perfect spirals. Burnt banners regrew their colors. Rubble uncrumbled. Trees regrew. Blood vanished from the tiles.
His body pulsed once—and all his wounds sealed in an instant.
Ribs snapped back into place. Flesh unbruised. Scars erased.
And with that—
[SYSTEM UPDATE: VOID CORE SYNCHRONIZED] [NEW SKILLS UNLOCKED]
Matter Manipulation
Regeneration
Psionics
Light Generation
Weather Manipulation
Appearance Alteration
Adaptive Possession
Infini-Tendrils
Darkness Manipulation
Army Creation
Intangibility
Night Augmentation
Negative Zone Augmentation
Biological Manipulation
[STATUS: STABILIZED] [REWRITE PROTOCOL: ENABLED]
Adriel rose to his feet.
Slowly.
With precision.
The moment he stood, the world felt it.
A tremor that wasn't geological, but conceptual—a shift in narrative weight. The kind that only happens when something divine reclaims its agency.
Adriel opened his eyes.
They weren't glowing.
Just normal.
But within them danced infinity.
The Toxin symbiote wrapped around his body like it had just found its true host. Huo Huan's ribbons, once flickering and torn, now flared with furious light, weaving around his limbs like living flame. His aura wasn't visible—it was palpable, like being near a sun that was trying to hold itself back.
Reality around him distorted. Not from instability—but from the strain of containing him.
Across the courtyard, Sentry stepped back.
Not out of strategy.
But fear.
He blinked at Adriel. Once. Twice. The Void that coiled within his chest thrashed like it had seen its own reflection.
"That's not possible," Sentry whispered.
Adriel didn't answer.
He took a step forward.
The ground beneath his foot didn't crack—it folded, compressed under divine weight and restructured itself to keep him level.
The sky above shimmered. Light bent unnaturally around him, casting shadows in all directions. The air, thick with silence, began to hum—not with pressure, but with potential.
He was no longer a glitch in the story.
He was becoming more than intended.
Sentry's fingers twitched. He tried to speak again—but the words failed.
Adriel finally looked at him.
"You shouldn't have let me live."
His voice wasn't loud. It didn't echo.
But it landed.
Like a hammer to the soul.
Sentry recoiled—not physically, but narratively. The thread of dominance he'd held over the fight frayed in an instant. He felt it. The shift. The loss of control.
Adriel clenched his fist. Power didn't surge—it coalesced. Everything around him responded. The wind froze. The trees bowed. The sky held its breath.
And then—
He moved.
Not with rage. Not with desperation.
But with clarity.
One blink and he was in front of Sentry.
One breath later, and his hand was already on the enemy's chest.
Again.
But this time—
He didn't take anything.
He gave something back.
A flicker. A pulse. A command whispered through code.
[REWRITE PROTOCOL: ACTIVE]
Sentry stumbled back like he'd been hit with a divine judgment. His form spasmed. The void within him glitched. Cracks ran down his body—not physical ones, but conceptual fractures. The logic holding him together couldn't withstand Adriel's authority.
Adriel's body began to rise slowly, lifted by nothing but intent.
He didn't gloat. He didn't smile. He simply was.
A force. A will. A Guardian restored.
He didn't need to shout. He didn't need revenge.
Because he wasn't trying to win the fight anymore.
He was going to rewrite the ending.
And Sentry?
Wasn't ready for the new draft.
Not anymore.
Sentry stared at him, trembling, his lips pulling back into a snarl of disbelief. His body shook not with rage—but a gnawing, festering helplessness.
"You..." Sentry rasped. "You absorbed it."
He took a step forward, his fists clenching.
"You stole what I could never control!"
The Void writhed under his skin, desperate, furious.
"It consumed me! It—it ruined me! I became stronger, yes—but it took everything! My mind! My soul! My hope!"
His voice cracked, ragged with the weight of a lifetime of failure.
"And you—you just..." Sentry's hands shook violently. "You just tore it away like it was nothing!"
He stumbled forward, half mad.
"I sacrificed myself! I gave in! I embraced the Death Seed! I became the monster because I had no choice!"
Sentry's aura flared wildly, unstable, his void energy tearing into the air around him.
"AND YOU—YOU LIVED?!"
He screamed, a raw, unfiltered roar of agony and fury.
"You're supposed to be dead! Erased! Hollowed out by now!" he raged. "You're supposed to be ME!"
Adriel said nothing.
He stood there—calm, immovable.
No anger. No pity.
Only certainty.
Because arguing with an insane man was pointless.
There was no redemption for Sentry.
Only mercy.
And Adriel's mercy—
Was death.
He stepped forward, the stone beneath his feet smoothing itself in his wake.
"You violated this story," Adriel said, voice low, deliberate. "You tried to break its heart."
He raised a hand, the ribbons of Huo Huan igniting along his arm.
"You turned hope into despair."
Energy coalesced at his fingertips—pure, blinding, final.
"And for that—"
Adriel's eyes narrowed.
"You will suffer."
The world darkened.
The Guardian moved.
And for the first time—
Sentry felt what true judgment looked like.
The space between them folded.
A hacking command flashed through Adriel's mind—and he teleported, not by moving, but by rewriting the rules of the battlefield.
His knee slammed into Sentry's face with a sound like thunder splitting stone.
Sentry's head snapped back, but he caught himself—only for Adriel to spin, driving an elbow into his temple, followed by a backfist laced with Matter Manipulation that crushed the air around them.
Sentry staggered, void energy lashing in wild arcs, but Adriel was already pressing the assault.
The symbiote armor absorbed and redirected the backlash, shimmering with a brilliance that eclipsed even the Void's darkness.
A barrage of punches rained down—each strike reinforced by gravitational distortions and molecular reconfiguration. Every hit reshaped the battlefield: craters formed, towers crumbled, statues shattered into dust.
Sentry retaliated with a roar, a blast of raw void energy—but Adriel twisted his form, becoming mist, the attack passing harmlessly through him.
Reappearing behind Sentry, he unleashed Infini-Tendrils—barbed shadows that pierced armor and psyche alike, each touch unleashing visions of Sentry's failures, his betrayals, his lost humanity.
Sentry screamed—not from pain, but from memory.
Adriel capitalized, his psionic abilities slamming into Sentry's mind, disorienting his thoughts, unraveling his rage into confusion.
Then, Light Generation activated—a burst of searing radiance that burned away the void's darkness, blinding Sentry long enough for Adriel to drive a punch straight into his sternum, sending him flying.
Before Sentry could recover, the sky answered Adriel's fury.
With a thought, Weather Manipulation conjured a storm—black lightning crashing down, each strike bending toward Sentry, hunting him like living spears.
He dodged, barely, but Adriel was already upon him.
A midair clash—knee meeting gut, fists trading blows faster than sound.
Adriel shifted again, altering his appearance into something vast and monstrous—a nightmare of wings and teeth and burning sigils—psychologically battering Sentry's already fragile sanity.
Another hacking command.
Space folded.
Adriel was below him now, driving a Matter-forged spear into Sentry's gut—the weapon disassembling molecules as it tore through him.
Sentry bellowed, darkness bleeding from his mouth, but Adriel didn't stop.
Darkness Manipulation exploded outward—a tidal wave of sentient shadow that crushed Sentry beneath its mass.
Sentry roared, tearing free, counterattacking—but Adriel phased, his Intangibility letting the blows pass through harmlessly, reappearing to drive a devastating kick into Sentry's spine.
Crack.
Sentry collapsed to one knee, gasping, the Void flickering violently around him.
Adriel hovered above him, ribbons of fire and shadow swirling in a maelstrom of impossible energy.
Night had fully fallen—and with Night Augmentation, Adriel was unstoppable.
He pointed one finger at Sentry's heart.
A pulse of Biological Manipulation fired—rewriting Sentry's cells, disrupting his regeneration, dulling his strength.
Sentry's eyes widened in horror.
"You... you're..."
Adriel landed, the earth trembling beneath his feet.
"I am," he said simply.
The storm raged.
The battle—had only just begun.
Sentry bellowed again, ripping apart the air as he tore a rift in reality itself, a jagged wound of unreality yawning wide. From it spilled more monstrosities—beasts that should not exist, creatures shaped by void-born madness.
Adriel didn't hesitate. His body blurred into afterimages, each clone made from shadowstuff and kinetic probability. They rushed forward, intercepting the monsters mid-spawn, ripping into them with pure ferocity. He couldn't allow the battlefield to shift, not now.
Above, Sentry hurled gravitational spears, black and screaming, each impact cratering the earth. Adriel weaved between them, timing his movements with ruthless efficiency, symbiote tendrils snapping outward to anchor him against the pull of collapsing space.
Sentry dove, trailing a comet tail of dissonant energy.
Adriel met him mid-air, fists clashing, the explosion visible for miles. Both were hurled apart, skidding across the shattered ground.
Sentry was up first. He tore a nearby mountain from its roots, matter-warping it into a spiked cudgel the size of a battleship. He hurled it at Adriel without ceremony.
Adriel blinked sideways through folded dimensions, reappearing above the weapon as it passed—then drove a singularity blast into its core, detonating it mid-flight.
Debris rained like meteors.
Adriel and Sentry were already moving through it, trading slashes, hammering each other with attacks designed not just to kill—but to annihilate, to erase existence itself.
Adriel grimaced as Sentry caught him with a grazing blow—a swipe of entropy that tore chunks from his armor, leaving raw exposed muscle beneath.
But he answered with brutality. Adriel extended his will outward, forging a blade made from condensed anti-reality. With a roar, he slashed Sentry across the chest, carving deep. Black ichor sprayed into the air.
Sentry stumbled, but he was laughing—an awful, broken sound, half man, half monster. He let the wound warp into new armor, armor with teeth, with eyes that wept void energy.
"You can't win," Sentry rasped, voice layered with countless broken echoes.
Adriel didn't respond. Words were useless here.
He called the storm instead. The black hurricane he had seeded earlier matured into a monstrous vortex above them, tendrils of liquid darkness hammering down like judgment itself.
Sentry fought it—punching, slashing, burning through—but it slowed him. It made him bleed.
Adriel pressed the advantage, teleporting in short, sharp bursts, striking at vital points with surgical precision. Each hit chipped away at Sentry's monstrous form, slowing the inevitable.
But inevitability was Sentry's weapon too.
With a roar that bent mountains, Sentry drew in the battlefield—folding the very arena into a sphere of crushing death, intending to grind Adriel into nothing.
Adriel's mind raced. No escape. No folding out.
Fine.
Through it.
He condensed every ounce of spatial energy he had left into a singularity shield, braced his body, and punched
through the collapsing prison with a blast that tore ligaments, shattered bones, and shredded reality itself.
He exploded free—wounded, but alive.
Sentry was already there, swinging a hammer of condensed starfire.
Adriel ducked low, the hammer brushing his symbiote and burning a layer of it away. Pain lanced through his system, but he used it, needed it, converting agony into momentum.
He drove his shoulder into Sentry's gut, lifting him off the ground, then hurled him into the broken remains of the void-army still battling below.
Sentry smashed through bodies, carved a bloody trench across the battlefield—and came up grinning, face half skeletal, half divine.
Adriel landed across from him, blood trickling from his mouth, body barely holding together. His shadow army flickered, weakening.
Sentry's void soldiers collapsed into dust, consumed by their own unsustainable corruption.
Two gods, stripped down to their last reserves, staring each other down across a wasteland they'd created.
The world around them didn't matter anymore.
Only will.
Only this.
Adriel moved first, throwing a spear of frozen time. Sentry caught it, shattering it with a flex of his corrupted aura—but that was the bait.
Adriel slammed into him from behind, driving a knee into his spine with enough force to rupture tectonic plates.
Sentry whirled, catching Adriel by the throat, lifting him high—but Adriel's symbiote sprouted barbed tendrils that stabbed deep into Sentry's flesh, siphoning his stolen energy, feeding it back into Adriel's dying form.
For a moment—just a heartbeat—Sentry's grip loosened.
Adriel wrenched free, wrapped himself in a cocoon of layered dimensions, and detonated it point-blank.
The explosion silenced the world.
Dust. Light. Silence.
When the smoke cleared—
Both still stood.
Broken. Ragged. Gods reduced to bloodied survivors.
Adriel staggered, vision doubling. His symbiote armor barely clung to him now, cracked and fraying. His breathing was ragged, shallow.
Sentry was worse—half his body missing, his regeneration fighting against the rot of the Death Seed corruption that even he couldn't fully master.
But Sentry smiled anyway. A slow, bloodstained grin.
"You've gotten stronger," he said.
Adriel wiped blood from his mouth, eyes cold.
"I had to."
Without another word, they charged one final time—no tricks, no powers, just raw, brutal violence, fists colliding, bones breaking, the sky above them collapsing into a singularity from the sheer force of their collision.
This was no longer about survival.
This was about who they were.
And Adriel—
Adriel had made his choice.
He would not lose.
Not today.
Their fists collided again, raw force detonating between them.
Adriel slid back, boots carving trenches through the shattered battlefield, his breathing jagged but controlled. Sentry stumbled, black ichor spilling from his mouth, one eye flickering between realities, barely holding shape.
Neither spoke.
No words left.
Only intent.
Sentry lunged first—telegraphing the movement deliberately, daring Adriel to meet it head-on.
Adriel accepted.
Their bodies slammed together with a sound like continents grinding. Bones cracked, the ground caved. Shockwaves ripped the air apart, sending debris screaming in all directions.
Adriel twisted mid-collision, driving a brutal knee into Sentry's ribs—fracturing what little internal structure he had left. Sentry retaliated with a hammer-blow across Adriel's jaw, spinning him, but Adriel rolled with it, used the momentum, and backhanded Sentry across the temple.
Another step. Another strike.
Sentry reeled.
Adriel pressed the assault, raining blows with clinical savagery. Elbow to temple. Forearm to throat. Rising punch to solar plexus. His movements had no flourish, no wasted effort—just brutal, perfect violence.
Sentry caught a wrist—tried to twist it—but Adriel headbutted him again, breaking Sentry's nose with a wet crunch.
Sentry stumbled—then roared, a broken, monstrous sound—and drove a fist into Adriel's stomach hard enough to lift him off his feet.
But Adriel didn't fold.
Mid-air, he twisted, grabbed Sentry's outstretched arm, and snapped it at the elbow with a savage wrench. Sentry screamed—a real scream, not a roar—and Adriel landed hard, dragging Sentry down with him, pinning him to the ground.
For a heartbeat—Sentry was beneath him.
Adriel raised his fist—and brought it down.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Each blow broke more of Sentry's facade, his corrupted armor splintering like rotten wood. Black fluid sprayed with every hit, splattering the battlefield, burning the ground.
But Adriel wasn't fighting to win yet.
He was hiding it.
Each strike masked layers of biological disruption—rewriting Sentry's molecular structure bit by bit. Matter manipulation subtly degraded his atomic bonds. Hacker protocols slipped into his regenerative code, corrupting recovery routines. Every brutal punch was a carrier for corruption.
Adriel was dismantling Sentry from within.
Sentry roared in frustration, summoning a surge of gravitational force—sending them both flying upward, out of the atmosphere.
The sky shattered as they broke through, trailing arcs of burning atmosphere. Stars spun around them, the Earth shrinking below.
In the vacuum of space, soundless, their battle continued.
Adriel lunged, smashing Sentry with a left hook that cracked part of his faceplate off. Sentry countered, launching beams of void energy from his eyes—Adriel twisted through them, tendrils shielding him, the blasts grazing him but never landing cleanly.
Around them, the debris field of shattered asteroids and frozen remnants of forgotten battles drifted. They used it all—hurling planet-sized rocks, reshaping moons into spears of death.
Sentry slammed a small meteor into Adriel's side—the impact fracturing several ribs—but Adriel absorbed the momentum, spinning and driving both feet into Sentry's chest, propelling him further into the void.
Each time they clashed, Adriel fed more corruption into him. Biological distortions made Sentry's muscle fibers twist incorrectly. Hacker subroutines crashed segments of his neural processing. Matter bonds decayed a fraction of a percent more with every moment.
Slowly.
Subtly.
Sentry was dying.
But he hadn't realized it yet.
Sentry howled, tearing a wormhole open and trying to hurl Adriel into it—to trap him in oblivion—but Adriel blinked through layers of dimensional space, reappearing right behind him.
With a brutal grab, Adriel locked Sentry into a hold and drove him downward—straight back toward Earth.
Their descent was a meteor.
Atmosphere burned around them, plasma sheathing their bodies in fire.
Adriel didn't let go.
He accelerated.
Sentry struggled—his void energy trying to blast free—but the corruption inside him weakened his control. His struggles became sluggish. Erratic.
Adriel snarled, every muscle screaming as he forced the trajectory.
They crashed into the Earth with apocalyptic force.
The impact shattered the landscape—a shockwave vaporized mountains, boiled rivers, and flattened forests for hundreds of miles. A crater the size of a small country was born in an instant.
At the center, in a pit of molten stone and broken dreams, Adriel rose slowly from the wreckage—smoke and steam pouring off him.
He looked down.
Sentry lay at the epicenter—barely moving, body flickering between forms, corrupted beyond recognition. His breath rattled like a dying machine.
Adriel's fists clenched.
He wasn't done yet.
Not until Sentry was erased.
And this time—there would be no coming back.
Groaning, Sentry pushed himself up on trembling arms. Every movement was agony, every breath a wheeze through shattered ribs and a collapsing lung.
"It's not fair..." he rasped, black blood bubbling from his lips. "Seven... almost eight months..."
He staggered to his feet, broken and flickering, eyes wild.
"I spent everything," he snarled, voice cracked. "I broke you! I broke this world! I turned your precious Vanadis into ashes! Killed your heroine in front of you!"
He took a half-step forward, stumbling.
"I shattered your body! I erased your hope! I made you suffer—day after day, month after month—I ripped apart Madan no Ou to Vanadis until nothing was left!"
Sentry pointed a trembling, cracked finger at Adriel.
"And you..."
His voice cracked harder.
"You still came back."
Adriel said nothing.
Sentry raged, spitting blood and bile.
"You copy-pasted my power! You survived the Void! You rebuilt yourself from the ashes! You hacked your own death! How?!"
The wind howled around the ruined crater.
Adriel just stared at him—calm. Resolute.
No rage.
No hate.
Only truth.
When he finally spoke, it was soft.
"You reaped what you sowed."
Sentry froze.
The words hit harder than any blow.
Because he knew—in his core—it was true.
Adriel took a step forward, the earth whispering under his feet.
"You thought you could break me," he said, voice like the edge of a blade. "But you just sharpened me."
Another step.
Sentry stumbled back.
"You thought you could erase my story," Adriel continued, "but you just made it inevitable."
The sky above crackled with dark lightning.
Adriel raised his hand—fingers curling into a fist.
"And now," he said, eyes narrowing, "I'm going to end yours."
The battlefield was silent for a beat.
Then—
The Huo Huan ribbons, glistening with a furious red glow, lashed outward like living whips. They wrapped around Sentry in an instant—binding his arms, legs, and torso with iron-tight force. His body jerked violently as Adriel yanked him forward, the ribbons tightening like a snare with a shrill crack of displaced air.
Adriel pulled hard.
And then—
The assault began.
Each punch, each blow, faster than the last—blinding speed that defied comprehension. Sentry was treated like a human paddle ball, rebounding off Adriel's fists with sickening precision. Every impact sent shockwaves tearing across the ruined battlefield, mountains trembling in the distance, oceans recoiling in fear.
The first hundred hits caved in Sentry's armor. The first thousand twisted his limbs at unnatural angles. The ten thousandth shattered his regenerative matrix, black ichor spraying like rain.
By the time Adriel crossed into the hundred-thousands, Sentry's form was barely humanoid—his body a grotesque canvas of broken bones, torn flesh, and unraveling code. His screams had long since become gurgles.
Adriel didn't stop.
Each punch snapped the air, lighting up the world like the rapid beat of a dying heart. Time itself seemed to stutter, trying to keep up with the impossible cadence.
900,000. 950,000. 999,000.
And then—
The 999,999th punch.
Adriel paused. Fist drawn back. Ribbons cinched so tightly around Sentry that his ruined body barely held shape.
The world held its breath.
And with a roar that shattered the sky itself—
Adriel launched the final blow.
The impact was cataclysmic.
The air detonated. Mountains were split like rotted wood. Oceans bucked like wild animals. The ground sundered for miles, a canyon carving itself into existence beneath the sheer pressure.
Sentry became a meteor of ruin, hurled across the landscape like a broken doll.
He slammed into a distant mountain range—
—and stayed there.
Embedded.
Unmoving.
The shockwave rolled outward, a wall of force so immense it bent the horizon, scattering clouds and darkening the sun.
The world itself—
held still.
And for the first time since the fight began—
Sentry did not rise.
Sentry's body stayed embedded in the mountainside, crumpled like a marionette with its strings cut. Smoke trailed from his limbs, his armor warped and crushed in a dozen places. His face—barely recognizable now—twitched, one eye swollen shut, the other twitching as his brain fought to process the last few seconds of unfiltered destruction.
Adriel walked.
Step by step.
The earth beneath his feet didn't just crack—it compressed, as if surrendering its structure with every stride. Huo Huan ribbons trailed behind him, still faintly glowing, twitching like serpents hungry for more. Toxin slicked across his body like living war paint, his symbiote calm now—no longer protecting, only asserting.
Sentry groaned.
Not a roar. Not a threat.
A groan.
Concussed. Disoriented. Barely alive.
Adriel came to a stop ten feet in front of the crater.
"You can stop pretending," he said coldly. "You're done."
Sentry didn't reply.
Couldn't.
His limbs twitched, trying to summon strength that wasn't there. His aura flickered like a broken broadcast. Once, he had radiated entropy.
Now? Just static.
Adriel folded his arms. "You're wondering how it happened. How a god got turned into a chew toy."
He took another step closer.
"I weakened you. Slowly. Intentionally. Every time you punched, I was rewriting. Every attack you absorbed? It wasn't power. It was a vector. A trojan. My Matter Manipulation, my Hacking, my symbiote—I didn't need to overpower you."
His eyes narrowed.
"I just needed you to carry the virus long enough."
Sentry twitched again—his mouth moved, trying to form words.
"I shut down your regeneration," Adriel continued. "Collapsed your psionic reinforcement. Your Void defenses are running in loops now—eating themselves trying to heal damage I coded to stay permanent."
He stepped closer.
"I've brought you so low, a street-level vigilante could put a bullet in your skull."
Sentry's throat rasped. "You... bastard..."
Adriel tilted his head. "You're still trying to talk?"
Sentry's one good eye locked on him, blood running from the corner of his mouth. "You ruined everything," he hissed, voice hoarse. "I just don't... get how... I made sure for people to hate you, nerf you... yet... why does the story love Guardians...?"
He coughed, spasming from the pain.
"You just walked back in. Rewrote yourself. Copied what I earned through agony. You cheated."
Adriel didn't blink.
"You cheated," Sentry repeated, spitting blood. "You weren't supposed to win. You were broken. You were alone. I destroyed Elen. I humiliated you. I made the world watch. And still—you climbed back."
His voice cracked.
"It's not fair."
Adriel raised his hand.
"And now I'll grant you mercy."
His fingers glowed with script.
[HACKER SKILL: TRUE DELETE.EXE – Target: Sentry]
Sentry's eyes widened—he opened his mouth, trying to scream, trying to speak some final curse, some last word of venom and ego—
But it didn't come.
Halfway through his breath, his voice cut off.
And then—
He vanished.
No explosion. No scream.
Just absence.
Like he had never existed.
The crater he had carved into the mountain remained—but the body was gone. The aura. The signature.
The presence.
Nothing remained of the Death Seed Sentry.
Not even dust.
Adriel lowered his hand.
The air around him calmed.
"No final boss monologue?" he muttered. "Good riddance."
He turned, walking slowly across the desolated plain. Wind tugged at his tattered symbiote cloak, flames from the earlier storm dying down with every step he took.
He paused once, looking at his hand.
The faint echo of Void still thrummed there—contained, controlled. His to command now.
"Thanks for the buff," he muttered. "I'll need it."
He looked toward the broken sky.
"Especially for Hercules."
The sky was quiet now.
No thunder.
No screaming void.
No clash of gods.
Just silence.
Adriel stood alone at the center of a broken battlefield, surrounded by scorched earth and twisted space. Where once an abomination had challenged narrative itself, now there was nothing. Not even dust remained of Sentry—just a faint glitch in the air where his presence had once defied logic.
Adriel stared into that emptiness for a moment longer, his new body still humming with barely-contained energy. The Void had been purged, not with violence, but overwritten like a faulty program. The parasite that had nearly taken his soul now slept quietly within, completely tamed. A tool.
He turned.
And his heart tightened.
The world—this version of it, anyway—was falling apart.
The corruption Sentry had unleashed had reached critical mass. Across the torn horizon, pieces of reality shimmered with static. Mountains dissolved into binary fog. Buildings flickered like bad film reels. The trees of Brune melted at the edges. Castles warped into hollow parodies of themselves. The sky bled old code—storylines abandoned, timelines canceled, characters broken.
The anime of Lord Marksman and Vanadis was dying.
Adriel clenched his fists.
"Not yet."
He walked, slow and sure, the restored ribbons of Huo Huan trailing behind him like divine threads stitching the world back together with every step. Each footprint stabilized the ground beneath it, drawing order from chaos.
And there, beneath a fractured column near the throne room ruins—
Tigre.
Tigre lay unconscious. His chest barely moved, his once-proud bow snapped in half beside him. Blood streaked across his armor, and his eyes—though closed—twitched faintly from the pressure of narrative collapse.
Adriel stood over him.
"You're the core. The spine of this story."
He crouched.
The world trembled again. Another portion of the sky vanished like a torn page.
Adriel didn't waste time.
He extended one hand toward Tigre's chest—his fingers glowing with raw code. Lines of golden thread danced outward, syncing with Tigre's latent narrative signal.
[ACCESSING: CHARACTER FRAMEWORK...]
[LOCATING: PROTAGONIST ANCHOR...]
Tigre stirred slightly as Adriel's fingertips made contact.
[ANCHOR DETECTED]
[PERMISSION: OVERRIDE – TEMPORARY]
A sphere of light emerged from Tigre's chest—a compact representation of his narrative ID. The essence of his place in the world. The anchor from which the story drew its emotional weight.
Adriel extracted a clean copy. Not to edit. Not to corrupt. But to restore.
He held it like a relic.
Then—a voice.
Soft. Weak.
"What... are you doing...?"
Adriel froze.
He turned.
Sofya Obertas.
The Vanadis was barely sitting upright, one arm wrapped around her broken ribs, blood streaking down her temple. Her eyes were half-lidded, dazed—but conscious.
Adriel blinked. "You're awake."
"Not for long," she rasped. "Answer me."
He looked at the sphere in his hand.
"I'm restoring your world."
Sofya tried to rise, but pain stopped her halfway. Her fingers clenched in the dirt.
"And... when you do that?" she asked. "What happens to us?"
Adriel didn't answer.
Sofya's expression sharpened. Her voice, though weak, carried the tone of a ruler.
"Adriel. What. Happens. To us."
He stood, turning fully toward her now. For a moment, the light in his eyes flickered—not power, but burden. A weariness that transcended the physical.
"You won't remember."
She stared.
"None of you will."
The answer landed like a sentence.
Sofya's lip trembled.
"Then everything that happened... the moments we had... all this pain... it's just gone?"
Adriel lowered his head slightly. "Not gone. Reset. The events will become echoes—distant, subconscious ripples. Lessons built into your code. You'll grow from them, even if you don't know why."
She swallowed. "Will Elen...?"
Adriel just nodded, "She'll come back."
Sofya looked away, tears slipping down her cheek.
Adriel stepped forward.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But if I don't act now... there'll be no story left to save."
He raised the sphere—and the world began to glow.
The final rewrite had begun.
Golden light flared from Adriel's palm, wrapping the narrative sphere in a cocoon of restored code. The world answered, subtle at first—a stabilizing heartbeat echoing through the shattered sky. Trees began to regrow. Stone reassembled. The corrupted haze along the horizon thinned like a morning fog under the first touch of sun.
And then—
Hands clung to him.
He turned sharply.
Sofya had moved. Crawled, more like. She threw herself against him, arms trembling as they wrapped around his waist, face pressed into his chest as if trying to bury herself in what little time remained.
"Don't," she whispered. "Please... don't do this."
Adriel stiffened. His free hand hovered above her back, unsure whether to hold her or push her away. "You're injured. You need to rest."
"No!" Her voice cracked. She looked up at him, eyes wide, unfocused with tears. "Don't make me forget. I don't want to lose you. Not again."
"You're not losing me."
"Yes, I am!" she shouted, voice breaking. "If you reset this world, we won't remember any of it! The palace... our moments... you... you—"
Adriel closed his eyes. "That's the point."
"Then I don't want it."
Her grip tightened. Desperate. Shaking.
"If forgetting you is the price for saving this world, then maybe it's not worth saving. Maybe I'd rather let the corruption take me."
Adriel's heart clenched—but his voice remained steady.
"Stop being selfish."
She flinched.
"You think I want this? You think I haven't bled for this moment? I'm not doing this for me, Sofya. I'm doing this for your world. Because it deserves to keep existing—even if it forgets me."
"Why does that matter more than you?!" she cried. "Why does your purpose always come before yourself? Why do you always throw yourself into the fire and call it duty?!"
He stepped back slightly, but she held on.
"Because it is duty!" he snapped. "Because if I don't do this, then everything you are—everything this world is—will be erased permanently. Not corrupted. Not damaged. Gone. Fictional death. Null. A story no one remembers, not even in echoes."
"Then let it!" she screamed.
He froze.
"Let it die if it means we keep what mattered!"
"No."
His voice cut through the heat of her words like frost.
"I won't let your grief erase everyone else's future. You'll go on. They all will. And that means letting go of me."
Her knees buckled. She sank lower, still clinging to him.
"Why do you always talk like that? Like you're nothing? Like you don't matter outside of your job?" Her voice trembled, choked by tears. "You gave us everything. You fought for us. You bled for us. You taught us how to stand. And now that we want to stand for you, you push us away like we're being unreasonable."
He tried to pull her hands off gently.
She refused to let go.
"Do you really think so little of yourself? That all you are is some repairman for reality?" she hissed. "For once—just once—let someone care. Let someone remember."
"I can't."
His voice had softened now. Weary.
"Yes, you can!"
"Sofya..."
She pressed her forehead to his chest again. Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"Why do you always walk alone?"
He hesitated.
Then quietly: "Because if I don't, no one else will."
She looked up at him again, expression shattered.
"Then let me walk with you. Just one step. Just—don't make this memory our last."
Adriel's hand hovered above her cheek. Trembled.
"Please," she begged. "Don't erase me from you. And don't erase yourself from me."
"You'll be happier this way."
"I'll be hollow."
They stood in the ruins of a castle that had seen too many deaths. Two figures caught between goodbye and duty.
Sofya leaned closer, voice barely audible.
"Have some self-respect. Just once. Please."
Adriel closed his eyes.
And for the first time in a long time...
He didn't know what to do.
Adriel opened his eyes slowly, the weight of her words digging deeper than any blade ever had. The air around them, once tense with divine energy and narrative authority, now hung heavy with something far more suffocating:
Regret.
He cupped her face gently, his thumb brushing away a trail of tears.
"You really believe that," he murmured. "That forgetting me is worse than the world ending."
"I don't care about the world," she whispered back, voice raw. "Not if it means I have to live in it without knowing you were ever here."
The honesty in her voice almost broke him.
Almost.
But a Guardian's job wasn't to be remembered.
It was to make sure there was something left to remember.
He smiled—soft, warm, and just a little too perfect.
Her breath caught.
"You're right," he said, voice low. "You've always been more than this kingdom. More than any war."
Sofya blinked up at him, surprised by the shift in his tone. "You mean that?"
He nodded. "I do."
She exhaled, a shaky smile forming on her lips.
"I never got to say it," she whispered, leaning forward. "Not properly. Not without fear."
Adriel's arms wrapped around her shoulders, drawing her in.
Now she was close enough to feel his heartbeat.
She didn't notice the golden flicker at his fingertips.
"I love you, Adriel."
He didn't say it back.
But he kissed her.
And it felt like forever folded into a single breath.
She pressed herself against him, all hesitation gone. His lips were soft but final, the kind of kiss that promised something beautiful, something real—even if just for this moment.
Her fingers clutched the back of his coat.
"I'm ready," she whispered against his mouth. "If this is how I go, I'm okay with it. As long as I remember you when the lights go out."
Adriel's arms tightened around her like a seal.
His right hand rose behind her back.
Golden code shimmered.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
The snap echoed louder than thunder.
Reality shattered.
Sofya's eyes widened. Not in pain.
But in disbelief.
"Wait—"
Her voice broke.
"No—Adriel, please—!"
He couldn't look at her.
Couldn't face what he was doing.
The narrative threads unraveled around them like glass breaking in slow motion. The air warped. Time reset. The entire story rewound in a luminous torrent of data and divine logic.
Her screams were the last thing he heard before everything dissolved into white.
And then—
Silence.
A new sunrise lit the mountains of Zhcted.
Birds chirped.
Children laughed in the village streets.
The palace stood whole, untouched by war.
And Sofya?
She smiled politely at a passing servant, a stack of papers under her arm.
No memory.
No scars.
No Guardian.
Just peace.
Just fiction, as it was meant to be.
Adriel stood atop the clouds, watching it all from a distance, arms folded tight to contain the shaking in his hands.
"I'm sorry," he whispered again. "But someone had to survive."
He didn't wipe his eyes.
Didn't speak another word.
He just turned.
A portal opened behind him—code laced with divine energy. On the other side: war.
The League of Legends Omniverse.
Where Artoria was losing ground to Hercules.
Where Guardians still bled for the stories yet to fall.
Where Adriel was needed.
He stepped through, one foot at a time, the glow of the reset world fading behind him.
He didn't look back.
Because the moment he did, he'd break.
And Guardians didn't break.
They rewrote.
With pain.
With sacrifice.
With love, buried under duty.
Goodbye, Sofya.
Hello, war.
To Be Continued...