Chapter 675: The Three Battlefields
Jiming Shirogane's heart jumped in sheer terror. His physical form vanished into a shattered blur of motion, leaving the surrounding air wailing with supersonic friction.
The tempest of sword strikes unleashed by Solar Flare was exceptionally horrific, completely saturating a radius of several hundred meters out of thin air.
Pfft, pfft, pfft!
The sharp, continuous sound of punctured air ripped through the bamboo forest. But what truly struck deep existential dread into Jiming Shirogane's core was that loose, drifting thread of sub-zero, absolute death aura intertwined within the storm.
Every veteran across the Space archive held a pristine comprehension of why the title [Death Sword] was so feared. Engaging Solar Flare meant your motor nerves could completely lack the priority to relax for a single frame; your system could never safely calculate whether the next incoming strike carried a high-priority instant-death proc.
Damn it all to hell! Jiming Shirogane thought, his veins bulging with sheer, bitter resentment. The Title Tournament was right on the event horizon. If he could simply bide his time for a marginal window longer, his own parameters would have comfortably cleared the benchmark to claim a title crown of his own.
Rows of lush bamboo stalks caved to absolute ruins, snapping and crashing across the soil. Deep within the mountain ranges, wild beasts frantically scattered toward all coordinates. The continuous, heavy mist characteristic of the central East Asian highlands was violently driven outward by the sheer kinetic displacement of the duel.
Solar Flare smoothly landed her boots against the dirt, her weapon held at the ready, yet her tracking arrays verified that the target's presence had cleanly vanished from local space. Existing as a premier mercenary-type Reincarnator, her tactical focus was fundamentally disqualified from ever mismanaging intelligence resources.
The interloper logged under the codename [Temür] was an exceptionally obscured asset, housing virtually zero comprehensive files across the network grids. Beyond the baseline diagnostic holding that he was a hyper-specialized Agility-side powerhouse, the sole empirical datum came from Su Enfei's historical attempt to capture him under [The Heaven]'s directive, where she was sliced open by a lone [Blade of Light]. This single data point verified that his energetic matrix was heavily rooted in mana, and his combat methodology leaned entirely toward traditional swordsmanship.
Solar Flare lowered her eyelids, her gaze perfectly vacant and detached as her brain tissue meticulously calibrated the sensory feedback extracted from their brief head-on exchange.
The target's displacement velocity was indeed monumentally fast—at the very least, his speed comfortably out-scaled her own—yet it blatantly lacked the processing priority to leave her motor nervous system incapable of compiling a counter-interception track.
Furthermore, his structural Mastery parameter across the Swordsmanship Specialization was highly, statistically likely locked beneath Tier 7. Evaluated strictly through an unrefined combat power framework, his baseline parameters cede her agency an immense strategic advantage.
Her loose purple hair whipped softly in the wind currents, when a sudden, microscopic wisp of killing intent forcefully punched out from the void.
Solar Flare took a sharp, calculated stride to her flank. A heavy thrust violently emerged from the empty air, skimming harmlessly past her shoulder plates. Executing a rapid, fluid pivot, her fingers tightly locked onto the hilt of her Demonic Blade, [One-Cut Killer: Murasame], driving the steel forward in a vicious, reverse-hand counter-thrust.
Jiming Shirogane's physical framework vibrated like an unstable phantom afterimage. Within that microsecond of point-blank space, a stygian, crimson luminescence violently ignited across his right hand.
Pfft!
Jiming Shirogane's biological vessel looked as if it had manually re-engineered its mass to replicate the profile of a literal, unyielding sword, aggressively launching itself forward from between two separate phantom afterimages.
Solar Flare's scalp prickled with an intense wisp of instinctual alarm, yet her muscle groups completely refrained from compiling a single frame of retreat. She drove her blade straight forward into the intercept vector.
If your edge carves through my flesh, my vitality lacks the criteria to immediately expire.
But if my point punctures your biology, your system hits an absolute terminal liquidation loop!
This was explicitly the high-priority mechanic anchoring the [Death Sword] title—manually selecting a specific offensive strike to systematically manual-override and ignore all physical defenses, spatial barriers, and energy shields, hardcoding a flawless instant-death curse onto the target's files.
At that exact microsecond of contact, Jiming Shirogane—whose vessel was rocketed forward like a crimson blade—registered a chaotic cascade of distorted narrative memories flashing through his cerebral cortex. Every single visual frame detailed his own knuckles unrefinedly butchering and dissecting piles of rotting corpses.
Jiming Shirogane's twin irises instantaneously flushed a deep, unblemished crimson, twin trails of bloody light vibrating violently from his eyes.
Clang! Pfft!
Solar Flare lowered her eyelids to evaluate a crisp, bleeding laceration that had completed its deployment across her forearm. Smoothly spinning her frame around, her eyes verified an exceptional mutation: the target before her had forcefully split his biological framework into two completely separate, independent bodies.
The first Jiming Shirogane firmly locked his palms onto a heavy katana, his face contorting violently before smoothly settling into a mask of pure, uninhibited cruelty, the thick network of veins bulging across his face as his dermal layers turned a deep, blood-red hue.
His skeletal alignment and combat posture were layout-wise, thoroughly warped, entirely refusing to mirror the archetype of a standard human organism.
Conversely, the second body—the sub-personality representing Temür—remained flawlessly calm and clinical, wrapped within a heavy, howling storm of dust and sand. He slammed a heavy fist straight down into the dirt, forcing the frantic sandstorm to expand into a colossal, absolute spatial prison that completely blanketed the bamboo forest parameter.
"Solar Flare! Are you pathetic parasites genuinely suggesting that because your collective sustained a head-on rout against Mercenary Tao, your agency holds the priority to barter my sovereign life force to clear your debt?!"
"By what logical right?!"
Solar Flare had initially registered a wisp of professional curiosity regarding the bizarre nature of Jiming Shirogane's specialized hidden Talent, but listening to his jaw unhinge to voice that query, her features involuntarily broke into a light, mocking chuckle.
"By what right?"
"Is an un-indexed question of that classification genuinely requiring a line of clinical reasoning from my mouth?..."
She lowered her eyelids, her entire physical framework entering a state of total, relaxed composure. The unmapped variables and mechanical uncertainties anchoring this Scarlet Mortal Sin asset had completely vanished from her tracking arrays; her mind had successfully mapped his absolute limits.
He was undeniably an elite practitioner, comfortably out-scaling a standard, low-tier title-grade Reincarnator. He had highly likely engineered this entire shadow-veiled profile to purposefully hide his true metrics, biding his time to launch a sudden surprise campaign during the Title Tournament.
But...
"Simply because your vessel is pathetically, layout-wise, weak~"
Solar Flare's vocal register carried a distinct, melodic tremor. She methodically raised the demonic katana high over her shoulder plates, before casually driving the edge to slice straight through the skin of her own arm.
An immense, high-priority curse wave instantaneously flooded Solar Flare's internal tracks. A succession of distinct, stygian curse seals webbed furiously across her skin, the markers aggressively expanding out from her flesh to manually infect the spatial parameters of the void.
Within Temür's sandstorm barrier, the dark script of her curse and the raw weight of her conceptual Authority began to systematically compile an entirely fresh, unmapped pocket of reality.
While Kaito Shirogane was aggressively throttling his engine to scale his evolution, the remaining elite Reincarnators across the Space were by no means choosing to freeze their progression tracks. Solar Flare's proprietary Authority Adaptability metric had successfully cleared the 90% threshold, allowing her cells to actively radiate the initial indicators of true divine force.
Hum!
A column of pristine white luminescence cascaded down from the upper stratosphere. Su Qingqiu cleanly materialized atop the perimeter of the spatial barrier. Knitting his brow as he evaluated Solar Flare—whose psychological baseline had drifted into an unstable, maniacal register following her demonic sword transformation—he dropped a flat warning down the line:
"Maintain your focus. The directive hardcodes that this freak's vital lines must remain intact. He must be delivered alive for that Demon to manually finalize the execution with his own knuckles..."
The primary personality governing Temür's sand-wielding body turned intensely stygian, yet his secondary, inner sub-personality broke into an exceptionally malevolent sneer. Disregarding the calculations of his primary mind, his frame violently dissolved into a buzzing, crimson mist of pure kinetic sword strikes.
Whosh~ Boom!
An invisible, physics-defying shockwave punched across a localized coordinate of several dozen meters, violently shooting a young man whose body flamed with bright crimson fire backward through the air.
The amber-haired youth's eyes rolled back into his skull as his cognitive processing completely blacked out mid-flight, the red flames and flashing light frequencies coating his skin instantaneously snuffed off the board.
Bang!
[GAME OVER!]
As the youth's limp spine slammed hard against a metal rolling shutter door, a row of bright, fluorescent green text completed its automated compilation to hover directly over his chest plates.
The surreal spectacle forced the surrounding civilian crowds to stall their movements, their minds flooded with a wave of intense curiosity.
[Skylark] knit his brow in deep frustration as he monitored the parameters. Both of his forearms were tightly wrapped in traditional martial arts bandages, his frame clad in a loose, comfortable tracksuit as he stood directly at the center of a massive urban intersection.
Throughout the past few days, incidents of this specific profile had been experiencing an exponential, runaway surge. His networks had completely failed to verify exactly which high-tier asset had released this memetic strain known as [The Game], but its wider saturation metrics were layout-wise, expanding past all predictable bounds.
The variable cede his internal balance a wisp of profound anxiety.
Tracking a team of municipal emergency personnel as they advanced to transfer the unconscious youth toward a medical vehicle, Skylark smoothly adjusted the strap of his single-shoulder gear bag, preparing to shift his coordinates to his next designation.
Yet right at that micro-frame, a lone individual stepped out from the street corner directly across the traffic signal line. It was a young man wearing casual beach shorts; though his face was exceptionally fair, his underlying aura and carriage were completely distinct from the native citizens of East Asia.
Furthermore, the exact frame his boots anchor-dropped onto the concrete, Skylark's sensors verified that the stranger's focus was entirely, unshakeably locked onto his own vitals.
Was the mastermind behind that global memetic strain manually deploying his subordinate vanguard to launch an execution campaign against his coordinates?
Or had an independent enemy from a past world cycle mobilized a blade to settle an outstanding line of friction?
Skylark was layout-wise, far from a hyper-complex tactical strategist. He scanned the immediate parameter; the local intersection was densely packed with a non-stop stream of civilian pedestrians and commercial transport. Launching a high-intensity combat exchange at these coordinates would highly, statistically likely inflict a massive wave of collateral damage onto ordinary mortal cattle.
He smoothly pivoted his heels, preparing to guide his displacement toward the rear alleyways to safely draw the threat clear of the populace. But before his boots could track the path, a fresh team of individuals methodically stepped out from a black sedan blockading his rear vector.
One among them casually threw his palm open, a dense fireball violently condensing and spinning within the center of his hand as an immense wave of thermal heat rushed forward to hit Skylark's face. This was layout-wise, blatantly far from a conventional fire-element spell; it was a specialized, high-explosive ordnance designed to trigger a catastrophic, wide-area blast wave the exact frame it touched a street block.
"Skylark-kun, there is absolutely zero programmatic reason to accelerate your departure!"
"If your boots choose to clear the perimeter, my knuckles will be left with no tactical choice but to launch a non-discriminatory, wide-area saturation bombardment across these commercial blocks. Your psychological baseline highly likely lacks the interest to witness a visual frame of that classification..."
An elite practitioner of righteousness was consistently, thoroughly shackled by an infinite web of external moral constraints, while a predatory demon could march across the grid with absolute, uninhibited freedom.
The grander layout of the cosmos was almost universally hardcoded under a framework of this nature.
[Mai] executed a short-range spatial transmission, skipping past the traffic line to re-anchor his stance. He carefully maintained a calculated distance from Skylark's frame, completely refraining from closing the physical gap; according to the data logs compiled by Jin Yuean, this Skylark asset commanded an exceptionally horrific, world-shattering threshold of power.
Fortunately, their primary tactical directive merely dictated forcing a full operational delay to lock his coordinates down.
And when it came down to systematically stalling a specialized "bleeding-heart good guy" of this classification, his capability files commanded an supreme tier of confidence.
The smile cutting across Mai's features turned immensely bright and clear.
High within the upper atmosphere over the Tokyo grid, Kaito Shirogane kept his vacant, grayish-white eyes completely level, staring straight at that colossal Sword of Damocles as it vibrated with an infinite spectrum of color-shifting light frequencies, a succession of appreciative clicks emitting from his tongue.
In the very next fraction of a second, his right fist violently chambered back into an extreme alignment, before hammering a single, unrefined strike straight forward into the empty air.
BOOM!
(End of Chapter)
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