Pagoda of floral essence, containing the nine triads of truth, meant nothing in the face of the creation of a body of the original triad. Diagrams of the written rule set in stone formulated understanding. The world is a conscript of numbers, four wheels interwoven on the ninth plain. Color neither exists, for sight is unnecessary, the truth can not be seen. It stands at the precipice of understanding. The concept of numbers, its ruler stands before Rad, his body no longer of physical shape, rather of numerical assertation. Fragments previously attached took to the squall. His light was squashed by the temple's might.
Without his tenacity Rad had no chance to hold up the reality warping oppression. Droplets of numerical value fizzled from his face, arms shook as he pushed from getting juiced. An overly ripened grape was his resemblance, weak and feeble. Blood squirted from burst veins, eyes bulging, nails cracking. Biting into a shattered jaw, loose molars swirled in his filled throat, a tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. The flaring of his broken nose was like a needle to the frontal lobe.
Rad knew through his giving body, escape was impossible, death inevitable. Finally caving, he had become a swatted fly flattened by a mighty boot. Tak sniffed for the satisfaction of victory, for he knew his death was just as inevitable in the moments to come.
Oh, but let it be that I have slain evil…
"Unfortunate, like the serendipity of romantic affection, so too is like the end of fruitful life," said a chilling voice. With the swipe of his sword Tak-Tak's head was sent flying in the stormy air. Collapsed chest, scarred but healed left a rather skinny appearance to the newly awoken Kojiro.
"How?" Tak said whilst rolling along the dust.
"You speak even without air, fascinating, the curse of not talking. Must be your sin. Similar to the compatriot you had just compressed, I too am skilled at copying others. Once I knew it could be done, I simply thought what path could I take to produce the same result. For that is my sin."
"I see. Daler wasn't the only danger, you too are a being not right for this world."
Kojiro's slimy grin couldn't run away, "cute, very cute little auto racer." Dicing up the head into a uniform pillar of jam. Kojiro would sit to look upon the blooming of a small translucent rose bud; with a porous rag, he wipes his sullied sword. Transformed from the recent events into a newly crafted nodachi, Lemonmann. "What a silly name…
Dancing clouds, roaring thunder, slapping rain, slicing wind; the crux of the battle belating the end. Numbers threw an encroachment to infinite weapons at light speed. The forces would most certainly have destroyed the planet long ago if not for the pagoda launched from the stairs of the Layered Summit. In an array of time-space reality is warped into a superficial junction of non-conformation. Dante could understand in the most practical sense as physics were simply not being applied in their proper relations. A fallacy of cosmic proportion. Dante complained little, for he also had no time too.
Swirling through a bright display of impending death overlapping every move made. Clouds scattered too quickly for him to gather stable footing, blades too sharp for him to tough out. Scales scratched and chipped. His azure blood played with the raging torrents, sending poisonous droplets of hot buzzing liquid into Numbers's amalgamating mass. They will have to take it all, shrouds of calamity, four dejected petals clad in the seasons. Digitigrade legs, ocean scales across barren talons. Four arms of sparking thunder, in each hand a different tool. Vajra, Mjölnir, Green Dragon Crescent Blade, and Tyrfing. In his hands were the deadly treasures housed in the being known as Numbers. Five eyes, two sets, one at the temple containing two full optic organs within a single socket. Crazed horns of a qilin and the stature of a burly general. Dante had awakened to the dragoon inside, Hash-En manifested. A third of his being enlightened. A path open.
Light split the sky into skies, once more the world they knew shook. Splinters of destruction plummeted as the land dried in the culling radiation. Death's door was being knocked, disturbance was not a flattering reminder of their job. Numbers had risen, the Zeroes final number bled into their collective. Eclipsing darkness crystalised, its spindles of sharpened bone shaped to the figure of a seven mouthed devil. Limbs longer than roads, eyes deeper than any trench, an emaciated line, tails for legs, or legs for tails. Teeth too big to hide, with hearts that never stopped crying. Cracking pain was gargled by the overstretching caterwaul of souls trying to burst from its thin stomach.
Zero was born, wherever it walked would reset to zero, becoming nothing. Returning to the starting line. Nothing could advance, neither life or death could enter its presence. A complete null. Waving his blade, Kojiro tried to slice through cause and effect, and although successful was inevitably left with nothing.
"Impossible… How, I cut directly into the stream of reality," Kojiro was beginning to shake. His lip trembled as he tried to think up a way out of the current situation. Bolts of lightning dissipated, using the newly acquired treasures Dante could possibly harm Zero. In each attempt damage would occur, but the inevitability of its lack would shoot itself in front of Dante. Zero simply walked, leaving a trail of nothingness. "Now explain how I am 'not right for this world,' when that exists," Kojiro commented as he ran towards the two large doors forbidden from entry.
"Kojiro! Don't!" Rad shouted.
"We must!" Kojiro slashed at the door hoping to open a hole through space. "Huh…" Nothing occurred.
"Kojiro…"
"Damn, my ki, I suppose my innate mah wasn't enough. Dante's lackey. Looks like we will die here."
"No, we won't."
"Hope won't save us from what is slowly approaching. Dante can only distract it for so long."
"Exactly, so we swoop in and stop it. How bout it Grease?"
"He's pretending to be unconscious."
Kojiro and Rad began to slap Grease silly, "Aye, aye, aye! Enough, I'm drained, there ain't nothin' in the nine seas I can do to help. So don't bother with me… Hopefully if I pretend I'm a rock, that thing will just ignore me."
"The grease in your hair must be poisoning your brain if you think playing toad will keep you alive. Better hope to transform into a roach and scurry off into waste than whatever idiocy you have developed."
"A tad harsh, but I agree with the sentiment," Rad added.
"Fine, fine. What do you propose we do?"
"It's no longer a last gambit, it's succeed or die. No risk at all, just success." The wind took Rad's back as if he had called upon it. Valor was blossoming, a shimmering hue danced around his figure. That glow brought an odd comfort to Kojiro and Grease, a boundless energy that neither could comprehend was leading them. A last resort, success was their only option.
Vajra was fizzling out, its power methodically countered, as though Zero were perhaps adapting in a manner of ways. The speed in which all things returned quickened, a flower to a seed, a seed to a fruit, the long line reversing in seconds. In mere minutes atoms. Everything around Zero vanished, a blizzard of shifting shapes, organic to inorganic, all everchanging, reverting to what was. Mjölnir's inertia defying effects may have increased Dante's speed, but its physical prowess as a weapon was more akin to a pebble when used to strike Zero. Zero would be split, cut, and severed, in every instance they would come back faster than before. Dante's blades would surely harm the creature, but just as similarly Zero would recover. A repeated cycle that Dante could only continue for so long. The exchange's inevitable end would have to come.
Corners of isolated destruction sliced the weak connectors of gravity, settling Zero's bones to the maw of levitation. Seven entities strike at one point simultaneously, severance occurs. Heavenly sparks shatter lacquer clad arms, Nishant's ghost rumbles, affected by Zero's inevitability. Referencing the realm of Singularity, toughness, to the maximum. An unbreaking clash of force that brought all things back to nothingness. Daler began to lose his light. Rad strangled the reference of the realm, his valor sparking a tranquility. Two pistol quakes exploded, Zero flew along the newly formed caving canyon path. Hands flowed, space cracked and crumbled, layers of reality ruptured into a thousand pieces. Rad dove swifter than time had to recite his actions. He knew the exact points to strike, his hands guided by a force unbeknownst. Atlas Sween smiled graciously as Grease and Kojiro tried to distract Zero's reversion. Allowing Rad to enact his encore of death upon the "confused" being.
Dante reverted to his original state, his skin flaring red, wings of steam rolled off his figure as he fell to his knees. Grease tripped over his feet, no longer able to keep up, arms torn with lips dryer than a blazing furnace. Kojiro tried to hold his own, but just as he saw his compatriots fall, he too knew that there was nothing more he could do. Rad ran after the leaping black mass. Rad sent wave after wave of expanding force, shattering the realms between. Closing his eyes, he could finally see, the prints were taking shape.
"Found them…"
The White Void, less a physical phenomena as some conclude, but rather the state of mind. The aimless point to where one imagines a strike that hits before light as the chance to respond. A light boom akin to a sonic boom. In essence the after effect of speed so fast it can not be registered. A movement that creates a white hole for only its creation, never its sustained existence.
Rad entered this state, leaving a cavity upon the nation's coast that will never be filled, for no body of water has enough of itself to fill its void. Rad's first recorded achievement known by large, marked onto his tomb of the warrior in a time farther than sooner: First human to unleash the White Void.