...
{3rd Pov}
Subaru's expression turned icy cold. "When I'm done with you… not even your ashes will remain."
"Since you're unwilling to surrender yourself peacefully," Reinhardt stated in a cold, resolute tone as he slowly raised his sword, "I will carry out your execution for the crimes you've committed."
Just as Reinhardt prepared to take his stance—gripping the hilt of the Dragon Sword Reid with lethal intent—a deafening boom exploded through the air.
In an instant, Subaru vanished from his original position.
He had accelerated to Mach 50 without warning, his figure tearing through space like a living missile. His speed had been drastically amplified using a combination of advanced magic reinforcement, condensed Aura, and focused KI.
His entire body was enveloped in a radiant aura—a brilliant mixture of blue and rainbow hues—creating a shimmering afterimage behind him.
From Subaru's perspective, the world slowed to a crawl. Time seemed to bend under the force of his movement.
The winds howled around him as reality distorted under his speed.
The cobbled tiles of the street beneath his feet split apart, unable to withstand the immense force of his sudden takeoff.
The resulting shockwave burst out behind him, displacing air violently and cracking the ground with thunderous force.
Buildings near the impact zone trembled, windows shattered, and dust erupted like a mini explosion.
Reinhardt—the Sword Saint, often hailed as the pinnacle of human combat power—had no time to react.
At best, his reaction speed could match Mach 15, which in this case was woefully inadequate. All he could do was instinctively widen his eyes in shock and barely begin shifting his stance before Subaru was already in front of him, fists clenched with focused fury.
Subaru's punch connected—full force—against Reinhardt's chest.
The impact was devastating.
First came the crack—the shattering of Reinhardt's ribs under the incredible pressure of the blow. The shockwave from the punch alone rippled through his chest cavity.
Then, with a burst of unnatural strength, Subaru's fist pierced through his ribcage, obliterating Reinhardt's heart in an instant.
Blood sprayed out in slow motion, the vibrant red contrasting sharply against the night sky. Subaru's hand tore through his back, shredding Reinhardt's coat and flesh as it exited violently from behind.
A brief moment passed.
Then Reinhardt's body was launched skyward like a ragdoll struck by a meteor. The sheer kinetic force of Subaru's punch sent him hurtling into the air, spinning and flailing uncontrollably.
In mere seconds, he was nearly a thousand meters above ground, with his altitude still rising. Trails of blood followed him in a spiraling arc.
Subaru didn't let him go.
With a single, explosive leap—powerful enough to obliterate the surrounding houses and cause the ground to tremble like a localized earthquake—Subaru followed after him. The earth beneath his feet cracked, and shockwaves rippled out in every direction as debris scattered.
By the time Reinhardt's brain even had a chance to register the pain of having his heart destroyed, Subaru had already appeared above him in midair, like a god of wrath descending upon a heretic.
Subaru's body blazed with raw energy. His blue aura shimmered brighter than ever, and his arms were supercharged with layers of magical and physical reinforcement. He brought down his fists with a relentless barrage—dozens of punches per second—each one striking with lethal accuracy.
Every blow ripped into Reinhardt's body.
Bones shattered. Muscle tore. Skin split open under the brutal onslaught. With each impact, chunks of Reinhardt's flesh and pulverized organs were flung outward at hypersonic speed, scattering through the sky and raining down over the distant treeline of the forest outside the capital.
Finally, Reinhardt's limp, mutilated body crashed down on a massive boulder far away from the city center. The impact cracked the stone into countless fragments. Blood splattered across the grass and trees. Bits of brain matter and skull fragments lay strewn around him.
Reinhardt van Astrea—the so-called Sword Saint, wielder of the Dragon Sword, the man worshipped as the world's strongest human—was dead.
His Dragon Sword, Reid, had already slipped from his grasp during the midair assault. The legendary blade plummeted elsewhere, its destination unknown, as its wielder's corpse hit the ground like discarded garbage.
Subaru descended shortly after, landing with an earth-shaking crash.
The sheer velocity of his landing carved a crater into the ground, dirt and debris blasted outward from the point of impact.
His momentum caused him to skid several meters forward, his feet gouging deep ruts into the ground.
He came to a halt just over a dozen meters from where Reinhardt's remains lay broken and lifeless.
The battle was over.
Subaru looked at the body—what remained of it, anyway—his eyes narrowing, a complex mix of emotions swirling within him. Confusion. Frustration. Disappointment.
'Why… was he so weak?' Subaru's thoughts were clouded with disbelief. 'That was Reinhardt. That was the Sword Saint. The man who once stood so high above everyone else in the world. So why… did he die that easily?'
He hadn't even gone all out.
In fact, his entire strategy had been built around the assumption that Reinhardt would survive the first blow. His plan had been to strike quickly, throw Reinhardt into the sky, and then finish the battle away from populated areas to avoid civilian casualties.
But instead… Reinhardt had perished within seconds of the fight starting. There hadn't even been a clash. No exchange of blows. No dramatic power struggle. Just… one-sided slaughter.
Reina's physical capabilities had always far surpassed Subaru's, something he had grudgingly accepted early on. Her strength was undeniably greater than his. Her speed outclassed his best efforts. And her durability—that had been nothing short of monstrous.
There was a time when Subaru had landed a direct punch on her, a strike packed with nearly a thousand tons of force, moving at Mach 100, and yet… Reina had taken it like it was nothing more than a light tap on the shoulder.
She didn't even flinch.
No defensive posture.
No recoil.
She simply stood there, brushed the impact off like a speck of dust, and continued the sparring session as if nothing had happened.
He didn't think much of that, since Reina was supposedly strongest in the world.
But Driven by curiosity, he had questioned her afterward—about her blessings, her resistances, her Divine Protections.
It was then that he learned the terrifying truth: Reina had access to numerous high-tier Divine Protections, many of which Reinhardt never possessed.
Not only did she have all of the critical combat-related ones—like the Divine Protection of Unyielding Body, Reflex Acceleration, and Pain Nullification—she also possessed some rare, esoteric ones like the Divine Protection of Internal Reinforcement, Density Control, and even the Divine Protection of Elemental Synchronicity.
That changed everything.
It meant that in the hierarchy of raw potential and combat readiness, Reina wasn't just stronger than Reinhardt—she was in an entirely different league. A different category of threat altogether.
And yet, back then, Subaru had still underestimated the gap between them. He hadn't fully grasped just how overwhelmingly powerful she really was… until now.
Because while he had already gouged Reinhardt was weaker than her, he didn't expect him to be so weak.
Subaru clenched his fists and sent a command to the spirits within him, using his mental link.
'Aqua, Agni, Gaea, Sylphy—stay inside me. Focus solely on stabilizing Beatrice. She's unconscious, and I don't want her condition to worsen. Gloria, I'll call on you if I need your assistance in combat.'
Each of the elemental spirits responded with a pulse of acknowledgment, withdrawing deeper into Subaru's core. A protective barrier of energy pulsed around Beatrice, ensuring she would be safe while Subaru continued the battle.
But he knew better than to celebrate prematurely.
Even though Reinhardt's body was lifeless and torn apart, Subaru remained completely still, his senses hyper-focused. He didn't relax. He didn't let his guard down.
Because it wasn't over.
Not by a long shot.
And just as he expected, the worst-case scenario began unfolding right before his eyes.
Reinhardt's body—no longer breathing, no longer whole—suddenly began glowing with an eerie orange aura.
The blood, bone, and mangled flesh scattered across the earth began drawing toward a central point, reforming in a grotesque yet precise reconstruction of his once-pristine body.
His wounds vanished one by one. His internal organs regenerated. His skin healed. His iconic red uniform reformed as well, threading together from nothingness like it was woven by invisible hands.
Then, without so much as a gasp or grunt, Reinhardt opened his eyes again.
There was no shock in his expression. No fear. No confusion. He simply blinked and looked around, as if being violently murdered was just a minor inconvenience.
It was almost like he had simply not expected to die—like it was mildly surprising that it had even happened, but nothing worth emotionally reacting to.
Subaru's eyes narrowed sharply.
He understood immediately.
Reinhardt wasn't suppressing his trauma—he wasn't feeling it at all.
It made sense. Subaru recalled a conversation with Reina, where she once mentioned her brief experimentation with the Divine Protection of Apathy—a blessing from OD Laguna that dulled 95% of all negative emotions.
She had received it during a particularly traumatic mission, and for a time, it helped her endure things no human should have to.
However, after some thought—and remembering her grandmother's wisdom—she discarded the Divine Protection.
She had decided it was a poison that slowly killed her humanity. She didn't want to become a hollow, emotionless shell, no matter how useful it was in battle.
Reinhardt, however, must not have discarded it.
That would explain everything—his bizarre indifference to pain, to loss, to trauma.
That calm, righteous demeanor he always had… it wasn't just stoicism.
It was apathy, forced by Divine Protection.
He had traded his humanity for the ability to fight without fear, to experience hellish pain without flinching, to see death—and even resurrection—as something mundane.
"So," Subaru muttered, cracking his knuckles and staring Reinhardt down, "you can resurrect now, huh? That confirms it. You've acquired the Divine Protection of Phoenix Next, maybe even Phoenix Next, Next after using the original one at this point. That's fine. I'll just keep killing you over and over again… until you start begging me to end it."
Without wasting another breath, Subaru shot forward.
Reinhardt instinctively tried to summon his Dragon Sword, Reid, but the call didn't complete in time.
Subaru was already on him, faster than before.
His body moved with precision, cutting through air and sound with a streak of concentrated energy trailing behind him.
The force behind his punch was the same—thousand tons of pressure at high hypersonic velocity—and it slammed directly into Reinhardt's side.
CRACK!
Reinhardt's ribs exploded again, and blood burst from his mouth like a geyser.
His body shot off like a meteor, crashing through rows of trees. He tore through the forest, obliterating trunks like they were made of paper.
Dirt flew in the air. Branches snapped. Rocks shattered.
He finally crashed into a cliffside nearly half a mile away, embedding himself into solid rock.
For the first time, Reinhardt coughed and sputtered blood, his eyes wild and bloodshot. A small twitch ran across his face—perhaps a flicker of pain, or rage, or confusion—but it disappeared as quickly as it appeared.
Still, Subaru noticed something important.
This time, he hadn't been able to punch through Reinhardt's chest. There had been more resistance than before. It was faint, but it was there.
Reinhardt had gotten stronger.
Subaru's eyes narrowed again. "So… you've got that one too."
He was referring to the Divine Protection of Shedding Blood—a blessing that made the user physically stronger, faster, and more durable the more they bled, the more damage they took.
Due to the activation of Reinhardt's Divine Protection, which significantly amplified his physical durability in proportion to the severity of his injuries, Subaru found himself unable to punch directly through his chest as he had during their initial clash.
The protective effect drastically hardened Reinhardt's muscles and bones, reinforcing his body against further trauma.
Subaru's fist, which had effortlessly pierced the Sword Saint's heart before, now met a wall of resistance—his knuckles crashed into Reinhardt's ribcage, fracturing several bones, but failing to penetrate.
Yet, even with the Divine Protection working at full capacity—its energy output pushed to the absolute limit in a desperate bid to keep Reinhardt alive—it ultimately proved insufficient..
Already, a fresh sonic boom cracked the air as Subaru's form tore across the sky again, leaving another trail of shattered sound in his wake.
In less than a blink, he was upon Reinhardt once more.
And this time, he didn't punch, instead-
"Inferno!" he roared.
The command activated a joint magical assault. Subaru, together with Agni, channeled an enormous quantity of mana through their gates.
The fusion of their powers resulted in a massive fire-based magic attack.
This wasn't just a high-level spell—it was a blast of flame stronger than AL Goa, more destructive than most battlefield-grade spells, and deadly enough to incinerate armies.
The massive flame exploded outward with a deafening roar, the air itself superheating as the devastating blaze engulfed Reinhardt entirely.
The moment the flames touched him, Reinhardt's body began disintegrating almost immediately.
His skin peeled off and melted into bubbling globs. His muscles, sinew, and internal organs liquefied in seconds.
Even his bones, forged through divine blessings and strengthened by shedding blood, couldn't withstand the pure heat.
They crumbled, blackened, and finally turned into fine ash.
In less than ten seconds, the man known as the Sword Saint had once again been reduced to nothing more than scattered dust particles.
The firestorm didn't stop with him.
The trees caught in its wake combusted violently, burning from the inside out. Entire rows of forest were vaporized.
The heat scorched the earth, leaving a path several hundred meters long in ruins. Soil became cracked and dry, and molten stone pooled into glowing puddles.
The sheer scale of destruction left no doubt—it was a battlefield meant for gods, not mortals.
And yet…
Despite all of that…
The Divine Protection of Phoenix Next, Next activated once again.
Only now, Reinhardt's Divine Protections had gone even further. He had acquired yet another layered resurrection blessing—the Divine Protection of Phoenix Next, Next, Next.
The ashes began swirling, forming an unnatural spiral of flame and wind. A body began reassembling from the nothingness.
Bones materialized first, stacking and fusing together at high speed. Muscles formed next, wrapping around the skeleton like something out of a twisted biological diagram.
Organs pulsed into place. Skin formed a second later, followed by clothing.
His red uniform and armor returned in pristine condition.
Once again, Reinhardt van Astrea was alive.
But Subaru had anticipated this resurrection.
Before Reinhardt could even lift his head, before he could even process the sensation of existing again, Subaru had already acted.
From beneath him, shadow hands exploded out of his back like black serpents. Using the Authority of Sloth—Invisible Providence—Subaru manifested his intangible weapons of shadow and stabbed directly into Reinhardt's chest.
One of the hands crushed Reinhardt's heart instantly, obliterating the newly formed organ before it could even begin pumping blood.
The impact caused his body to jerk violently, his pupils dilating for a brief second before all light faded from them.
He coughed up a mouthful of blood, his body slumping forward, once again lifeless.
But Subaru wasn't finished.
'Gloria. Show him what you're capable of,' Subaru mentally commanded.
At his signal, Gloria appeared in the sky, materializing like a goddess of divine judgment. She hovered mid-air, suspended by pure mana, her expression calm and her aura dangerous.
From behind her, the heavens split open.
Hundreds—no, thousands—of golden weapons, formed entirely of concentrated light, shimmered into existence. They were spears, swords, halberds, lances—each one brimming with lethal magic and reinforced by Gloria's authority over divine energy.
As Reinhardt's body once again glowed—his next resurrection about to complete—the golden weapons launched at him like a rain of death.
In the span of a heartbeat, Reinhardt's resurrecting body was pierced dozens of times over. A lance drove through his abdomen. A sword lodged into his collarbone. A halberd sliced through his thigh. And most horrifically, a long, barbed spear impaled his throat and exited through the top of his skull.
His body resembled a grotesque porcupine, full of radiant weapons, each one continuously burning and disrupting his divine mana flow. He was alive again, yes—but it was far from pleasant.
Even with his Divine Protection of Pain Nullification, which dulled almost all physical pain, Reinhardt's body was still experiencing extreme levels of dysfunction.
His limbs trembled. His eyes were unfocused.
His lungs tried to breathe, but didn't work properly. Even if his nerves didn't scream in agony, his mind was slowly becoming a haze, disconnected from the sensations of his body.
The cognitive dissonance—the pressure of operating in such a state—was pushing even his divine tolerances to the limit.
And Gloria was far from done.
She raised her arm, pointing a single finger skyward.
"Get ready to be pulverized by this concubine's latest invention!" she shouted with a proud smirk.
In an instant, the surrounding mana vanished from the atmosphere.
No—it wasn't gone. It had simply been siphoned, all of it sucked into a vortex around Gloria, flowing into her gate at a speed that would've been impossible for any ordinary magician. Her body glowed red, pulsating with power. And then, at her fingertip, a sphere of condensed red-hot energy formed.
It wasn't nuclear magic—not exactly.
But it was something horrifyingly similar.
A miniature sun.
It glowed so brightly that the night sky turned to day, illuminating the battlefield with blinding light. The heat it emitted immediately began vaporizing nearby vegetation.
Trees turned to ash.
The earth beneath it started to melt, creating a molten crust. Subaru, realizing the sheer danger of what she was about to unleash, had already retreated hundreds of meters back.
Inside the core of this spell, Reinhardt's Divine Protection of Light Disentanglement kicked in—desperately trying to redirect 80% of the incoming Yang-aligned magic damage to other sources.
Dozens of the golden weapons impaling him cracked and shattered, disintegrated by his protection's effect. But it wasn't enough.
"Cruel Sun!" Gloria declared triumphantly.
She hurled the sun downward.
The orb of fire descended like a falling meteor, striking Reinhardt directly.
Everything vanished in a blinding explosion.
There was no scream. No sound.
Just white.
And then—
Darkness.
Reinhardt's body was gone. Not a single cell remained. There were no bones, no blood, not even ash. He had been utterly obliterated, erased by the overwhelming solar magic.
When the light finally faded, Subaru approached the epicenter of the blast.
The land was devastated. Scorched black. Trees had been atomized. Stones had melted into pools of glowing red lava. It was a hellscape, a battlefield that would remain barren for decades, if not centuries.
Gloria appeared beside him, her body shimmering with the last remnants of her spell's energy.
"That mongrel…" she said, scoffing while placing her hand on her hip. "Surely, surely, there's no way he can regenerate now, right? His body's been turned into subatomic particles. Pulverized. Obliterated. There's no flesh. No magic residue. No anchor for the soul. That should be it."
She smiled—confident. Satisfied.
But her smile didn't last.
Because just as she finished speaking, flames—holy, searing, glowing red-orange flames—appeared out of nowhere, twisting and dancing in the air like they had a mind of their own.
The flames started condensing.
Bones began forming again.
Then organs.
Then muscle.
Then flesh.
Reinhardt was coming back. Again.
To be continued...
(A/N: I have decided to upload today's chap a bit early today.
I also forgot to update the chaps that Patreon are getting yesterday despite uploading a new chap, in simple words only the 20 dollar ones got new chap. Sorry about that, I have updated the 2 chaps for each tier.
GIVE THIS FIC POWERSTONES! I HAVE CONFIDENCE THAT YOU WILL CHOOSE THIS FIC BEFORE OTHERS!
Also, I have increased membership limit for each tier.
Here are some extra benefits other than chaps:
All Patreons get a role, even 2 dollars one(However 2 dollars one won't be counted as under patreon role)
All Patreons, above 5 dollars will get that Unpublished fics and ideas, alongside they will have access to exclusive AI arts.
All Patreons of 15 dollars and above will from now onward gets exclusive Ai art sex scenes(Since Reina's already available for all 5 dollars and above patreon, you will get the new sex scenes such as SubaruXCrusch, Satella and so on)
I am still debating whether to make new Ai arts to sell it on deviant, it would mean from now onwards you won't get exclusive AI arts then.
I mean I have given enough benefits, it is for you on how to utilize them until they are free.
Because let's be honest I can still make 200 dollars or more a month from selling those AI arts alone.
And 200 dollars will be enough to give my parents some support, so yeah. Better grab it before your luck runs out!)