Kenji Takahashi exhaled sharply, blood-warm air leaving his lungs like thick smoke in the freezing, ash-choked Gotham night. His body hurt. It was like everything was broken, oh, the pain. He had taken hits from both the Man of Steel and Shazam, they had gotten their licks in, and it really hurt everywhere. God, he was going to be feeling all this tomorrow.
His vision was swimming, a chaotic cocktail of adrenaline and exhaustion. He really wanted to just lie down and take a nice nap right about now.
He had been fighting for just a few minutes, but it felt like a lifetime had passed within the confines of that golden-purple dome. Time seemed to chip away in milliseconds.
Things had gone sideways the moment Superman and Shazam stopped fighting him as just one random individual and started fighting him the same way they had fought their villain back when they were in the Justice League. It was completely different, and oh, he knew, because everything about the way they fought him just changed.
The rhythm of the battle had shifted. The two vampires were no longer just trying to kill him outright, they were also trying to uproot the Yamato from the earth, to remove his law and destroy the limit he had imposed upon reality in this space.
He had gotten some hits in, sure, but he was the one getting trashed. These two had been on the Justice League for a long time, they were the World's Finest team for decades, and even as predatory vampires that didn't just magically change the past, all those memories were still there, and it made them more terrifying, in fact.
To know that the Justice League was after you was not something anyone wanted.
They moved in sync. Shazam would rain down magical thunder and lightning to cover Superman whenever Kenji tried to capitalize on a gravity attack to try to get close to deal with the man, and Clark would pin him down with concentrated heat vision the second Kenji tried to close the distance. Their coordination was once again a grim reminder that "Plot" was the only thing that usually held these titans back, without it, he really didn't know how their enemies got the better of them.
He really needed to end this fight and fast, because he was losing fast. He couldn't keep his field up forever after all.
Kenji's Nen pool, massive as it was, equalized with his mana through the Gamer's unique perks, was plummeting toward zero. Fast. He had successfully kept them away from the sword so far, but he was burning through his reserves just keep it going.
Nen was a tool of infinite creativity, but as Kenji knew already, you cannot be creative when your "ink" is running dry. Sooner or later, the field would drop, the speed cap would vanish, and after that... he didn't think he would survive ten seconds in a world where a vampiric Superman could move at his true, unhindered velocity, especially when it looked like he, the man, really was dying to get his hands on him and rip him to shreds.
Ping.
A System notification flared in his peripheral vision. It was a message from Vandalieu. Barbara Gordon was closing in for extraction, but Nightwing, the architect of this local apocalypse, was right on her tail with a legion of high-tier vampire reinforcements.
'This is bad. Very bad,' Kenji thought, his teeth gritting so hard he felt the enamel groan. He looked at the two titans before him. There was no winning this through conventional means.
He sighed, a heavy sound, before steeling his face and standing up straight. He shoved the Nth-metal mace back into his inventory and opened his right palm. In a flash of violet light, the Yamato returned to his hand.
The two vampires tensed, floating in the air with stillness, visibly surprised that the barrier stayed active even without the sword anchored in the ground, no doubt thinking he was wrong or something.
Kenji felt a ghost of a smirk pull at his bloody lips. But he knew the dome wouldn't last, without the anchor, the specific Nen condition, it was already beginning to shrink.
No Nen technique was flawless, and Kenji had always believed it was better to build your own flaws into a technique. By choosing his own "Break Condition", he amplified the power of his abilities.
The Yamato began to glow with a violent, pulsating hue, responding to the final dregs of his Nen. To add every possible edge, Kenji summoned a few more pieces of gear he'd enhanced or gotten during his long hours of ID grinding, minor charms, and short-term buff trinkets. They were insignificant on their own, but in a game of inches, every millimeter mattered.
Then, he vanished.
He appeared directly in front of Shazam. [Blink]. It was an ability granted by the enchanted boots he'd looted in an ID long ago. It offered short-range, instantaneous teleportation, but it was limited to 20 uses a day.
He brought the Yamato down in a vertical arc. Billy Batson raised a massive, lightning-shrouded arm to block, his undead eyes widening, taking him off guard, but Kenji [Blinked] again mid-swing. He reappeared behind Superman, who was already lunging to intercept what he thought was a strike on his partner. The Yamato carved a deep, diagonal gash across the Man of Steel's back. The magic blade cuts through the "invulnerable" cape and skin like a hot wire through wax.
Kenji [Blinked] a third time, appearing behind Shazam and thrusting the sword toward the man's spine. Shazam, fueled by the vestigial wisdom of Solomon and raw vampire instincts, twisted at the last moment. The blade missed the heart but punched entirely through his shoulder. Shazam roared, a sound of thunder and pain, his hand striking out with unnatural speed to catch Kenji by the ankle just as Kenji [Blink] away again, appearing as Clark.
Clark spun mid-air, his eyes detonating with twin beams of heat vision that turned the air to plasma. Kenji raised his arm and summoned [Valor's Shield], a heavy, runic bulwark he'd taken from an Alpha Werewolf in the IDs.
The shield absorbed the kinetic force of the lasers, glowing white-hot as it hummed with stored energy before reflecting a portion of the blast back at the source. The reflected beam smashed Clark through the nearby skyscraper, burying him in tons of reinforced concrete.
The shield cracked and then shattered into glowing dust. A one-time use item, now gone. Kenji didn't care. He gripped Yamato and went back into the meat grinder.
He [Blink]-fought. He warp-countered. He used every dirty trick in the Gamer's handbook to push them back. Vandalieu sent the final signal, the extraction window was open. It was now or never.
Kenji looked at the two gods and the growing swarm of red eyes at the edge of his shrinking dome. He sent a final message to the group chat: Go. I'll cover you. I'll meet you later.
He used his gravity manipulation to create a massive, semi-permeable wall between his fleeing team and the incoming swarm. Then, with a roar of effort, he shifted the gravity of the entire sector, pulling all the surrounding vampires toward himself, away from the extraction plane.
He transformed the barrier into a [Containment Dome], locking himself and the hundreds of vampires in, even if just for a little while.
He focused everything he had on the dome. He had to hold it. He had to give them the seconds they needed to reach the sky. And that focus, that singular obsession with the safety of his friends.......was his fatal mistake.
His [Danger Sense] flare, but it was too late. He felt a cold, sharp intrusion between his ribs. A blade of steel slid through his back and exited through his sternum.
Kenji dropped to one knee, a spray of hot blood hitting the cracked asphalt. He turned to his back and looked up, coughing, to see the red-eyed, warrior-poise of Wonder Woman standing over him. Diana glaring down at him as she simply twisted the blade, her face a mask of cold, unliving duty. The grace of her movement was a stark contrast to the brutality of the wound.
He felt the [Gamer's Body] trying to stitch his organs back together, but his HP was in the single digits, flickering like a dying candle. He was a dead man walking already.
"Well now, just who the hell are you?" a voice asked, casual and mocking. He turned to see Nightwing.
Nightwing landed a few meters away. He looked at Kenji with a crooked grin, the heir to the Batman now nothing more than a high-functioning corpse. Kenji stayed silent, blood dripping from his mouth onto his chest.
"Not much of a talker, huh?" Nightwing smirked, stepping closer as the other vampires circled like sharks. "Don't worry. After we're done with you, you'll be begging to tell me everything I need to know. We have all of eternity to play."
Kenji looked at his trembling hands. He recalled the Yamato into his inventory.
He had no Nen left to hold the dome. The barrier was flickering, the purple light sputtering out as it held a lot of people it. The vampires were closing in, their fangs bared and eyes.
'Guess it's time,' Kenji thought. He didn't have the physical strength to fight, but he had the mana of a Satan-Class soul to end the game on his own terms. He pulled every ounce of mana he had into his core.
He summoned it all, the fire, the raw, unrefined energy of his very being. A sphere of violet light enveloped him, so dense it began to crack the space around it, making the very air hum with the sound of a universe breaking.
As the first vampire lunged for his throat, Kenji let out a final, lazy grin.
"See you in hell."
Then, he let go.
A catastrophic burst of mana detonated outward. The underground bunkers vaporized. Arkham Asylum was leveled to its foundation, turned into fine dust.
The System window blinked as a panel appeared in front, and he struggled to stay awake.
[GAME OVER]. Then darkness.
———————————————————
If you want to read ahead and access 40 advanced chapters, check the patreon. $4 Dollars
Link:patreon/Phantomking785