The night sky stretching above the barren wasteland had long since lost its tranquility. Black clouds churned into a colossal vortex that tore through the atmosphere, while crimson lightning flashed endlessly between fractures in space that hung open like gaping wounds in reality itself. Mountains in the distance collapsed one after another beneath the crushing pressure of the aura saturating the world.
Amid the devastation stood a man in an immaculate Victorian-style black suit, untouched by the dimensional storm raging around him.
Valt Nacht stood motionless.
A half-black, half-white smiling mask concealed his face. His black hair swayed in the wind. Faint crimson light glimmered from his eyes through the narrow gaps in the mask. Between his fingers, several black cards engraved with silver symbols spun lazily, radiating an enigmatic glow.
Opposite him towered a dragon so immense that it eclipsed the sky.
This was no ordinary dragon.
Its scales were forged from the shattered remnants of dead stars. Its eyes blazed like twin crimson suns. Its breath could erase oceans. The beat of its wings shook entire continents.
Its name was Abyssal Dragon Kaiser, one of the greatest apex predators ever to walk the mortal world.
The dragon slowly opened its jaws, revealing thousands of colossal fangs that gleamed like heavenly blades.
"Human..." it growled, its voice shaking heaven and earth alike as an overwhelming pressure radiated from its body, cracking the ground for dozens of kilometers in every direction. "I do not understand your courage in standing before me alone. Even the gods choose to avoid my wrath. Yet you, a tiny mortal creature, come without an army, without divine artifacts, and without even the slightest fear. Have you grown tired of living?"
Valt did not answer immediately.
He simply raised a card.
Then another.
Then another.
Dozens of black cards began floating around him.
The atmosphere changed.
Space trembled.
It was as though the world itself was holding its breath.
"An interesting question," Valt finally replied, his voice calm enough to sound almost casual as he tilted his head slightly and rolled a card between his fingers. "However, there is one flaw in your analysis. You assume that you are the predator and I am the prey."
The smile on his mask somehow seemed even more unsettling as darkness slowly enveloped his body.
"...when in reality, I came here to hunt."
The dragon roared.
A torrent of black fire erupted from its maw.
It was not ordinary fire.
It burned the very concept of matter.
It erased existence.
It reduced all things to nothingness.
The wave of destruction streaked across the heavens at a terrifying speed.
Yet Valt vanished.
No.
Even vanished was not an accurate description.
He moved.
Faster than sound.
Faster than explosions.
Faster than perception itself.
The dragon's eyes widened.
For the first time, it lost track of its opponent.
"Where—"
Valt appeared beside its neck for a split second before disappearing again.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The world shook with every impact.
Each thunderous detonation was accompanied by a fresh wound appearing across the dragon's body. Valt moved so quickly that even space itself struggled to keep up with his existence.
The black cards orbited him like satellites of death.
Every card he released transformed into a blade of energy capable of splitting mountains apart.
The dragon roared in fury.
Hundreds of colossal magic circles appeared across the sky.
Meteors.
Lightning.
Oceans of plasma.
Every conceivable form of destruction descended at once.
The heavens became a living hell.
Yet Valt kept moving.
His mind operated like an infinite simulation engine.
Every possibility.
Every path.
Every outcome.
All analyzed within fractions of a second.
To him, the dragon's attacks were not threats.
They were patterns.
And patterns could always be broken.
"Interesting," he murmured while leaping through a plasma storm capable of annihilating a city in an instant. Twisting through the air, he flicked three cards at once.
"Your destructive capacity is certainly impressive. Unfortunately, your energy efficiency is terrible. You're wasting power like a child who just discovered a new toy."
The dragon growled so violently that clouds shattered.
"Silence! A human has no right to judge me!"
"Really?"
Valt's tone remained flat as he shot through a rain of meteors and appeared directly before one of the dragon's colossal eyes.
"Then why do you seem so irritated by a simple fact?"
His fist struck.
The dragon's head snapped backward.
The mountain range beneath them collapsed instantly.
The dragon's massive body was launched thousands of meters away.
The plains fractured.
The seas split apart.
The atmosphere trembled.
But Valt was not finished.
Hundreds of black cards formed a gigantic circle behind him.
Each one radiated a mysterious symbol.
"Checkmate."
The dragon's scream echoed throughout the world.
Its scales shattered.
Its wings were torn apart.
Its colossal body crashed into the earth.
A crater large enough to be seen from beyond the planet formed upon impact.
Silence descended.
Dust slowly settled.
Abyssal Dragon Kaiser lay motionless.
Defeated.
Yet just as the world began to calm, the sky shattered.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
A gigantic crack spread across reality itself.
Something was watching.
Something far older than time.
Something vastly greater than the very concept of divinity.
From beyond the fracture came a voice that made all existence tremble.
"Abyssal Dragon Kaiser... defeated?"
The voice was filled with fury.
Filled with absolute authority.
Filled with legitimacy that transcended the laws of the universe.
Within a realm unreachable to mortal beings, in Hexacomb, sat a colossal figure known as the Dragon God.
A being whose name even the gods dared not speak lightly.
Its eyes opened.
And millions of galaxies collapsed simultaneously.
"The presence of a mortal has exceeded its limits."
The Dragon God's aura spread outward.
Dimension after dimension fractured.
The mortal world began to crumble.
The seas boiled.
The heavens split apart.
The concept of gravity lost its meaning.
It was as though reality itself would be erased by its anger alone.
Valt looked up.
For the first time since the battle had begun, his crimson eyes shone brightly.
So brightly that the night itself turned blood-red.
The wind stopped.
Time slowed.
The entire world seemed to wait.
"The Nacht Family..." he murmured.
Crimson energy began emerging from his eyes.
It was not magic.
Not mana.
Not divine power.
It was something far more fundamental.
Something inherited through the Nacht bloodline for generations.
A power that even the world itself could not define.
A long black odachi materialized in his hand.
Its sheath was dark as the void.
Its hilt was wrapped in crimson symbols.
The moment his fingers closed around the weapon, reality screamed.
The Dragon God narrowed its eyes.
For the first time, it encountered something it could not comprehend.
"Mortal..." its voice thundered from Hexacomb, carrying pressure that crushed entire layers of existence. "What exactly are you planning to do?"
Valt slowly drew the odachi.
The sound itself was simple.
Yet at that very moment, billions of dimensions cracked.
Every law of physics lost stability.
The narrative of the world began to tremble.
Then Valt's crimson eyes changed.
Crimson became violet.
Absolute silence descended.
No sound.
No time.
No space.
Only Valt remained, standing alone.
"I've met far too many beings who believe themselves to stand above everything else," he said quietly. His voice was so calm that it sounded more terrifying than a battle cry. His violet eyes gazed directly toward Hexacomb—a place that should have been beyond all reach.
"They all share one thing in common. They believe their position places them beyond consequence."
The Dragon God rose from its throne.
Infinite power erupted.
"I am the end of all dragons! I transcend dimensions! I transcend laws! I transcend narrative itself!"
Valt raised his odachi.
"Then transcend this."
A single slash was unleashed.
There was no explosion.
No blinding light.
No dramatic spectacle.
Just one slash.
Yet it crossed the earth.
Pierced the heavens.
Pierced dimensions.
Pierced the concept of distance.
Pierced space.
Pierced time.
Pierced causality.
Pierced reality.
Pierced everything.
The slash continued onward.
Passing through countless layers of existence.
Passing through worlds.
Passing through the realms of the gods.
Passing through Hexacomb.
Passing beyond the boundary of narrative.
It even surpassed the very concept of story itself.
The Dragon God's eyes widened.
For the first time, it felt fear.
In a panicked motion it had never displayed throughout billions of years, it raised a colossal golden tome.
Codex Veritas.
An artifact capable of altering narratives.
Editing plots.
Rewriting reality.
"Then I shall erase your attack from the story!" it roared, opening the tome with an expression that was rapidly losing its divine dignity. "If that slash was never written, then it never existed!"
The slash did not stop.
It did not slow.
It did not fade.
It passed through narrative erasure.
Passed through story revisions.
Passed through plot alterations.
Passed through Codex Veritas itself.
As though every effort made by the Dragon God were nothing more than an irrelevant illusion.
The Dragon God stared in absolute shock.
"W-What..."
Its voice trembled violently as its face turned pale.
"What is this...?"
Valt's violet eyes remained emotionless.
"The answer is simple."
The slash reached its destination.
The Dragon God's body split apart.
From head to toe.
From soul to existence.
From concept to being.
Perfectly divided into two.
Silence filled Hexacomb.
Codex Veritas continued writing.
Its pages turned endlessly on their own, rewriting narratives, revising plots, and altering reality in a relentless attempt to erase the slash from the story.
But none of it achieved anything.
Valt's slash had already surpassed every revision, every correction, every form of narrative manipulation performed by Codex Veritas, as though the reality-rewriting tome possessed no authority over it whatsoever.
The Dragon God stared at its own body slowly separating.
Its expression was filled with disbelief.
The being who believed itself beyond all things had finally understood a simple truth.
There existed something that narrative could not control.
Something that plot could not revise.
Even the still-intact Codex Veritas, tirelessly continuing its work, could not affect it.
And that something stood alone in the mortal world.
Valt Nacht slowly returned the odachi to its sheath.
The violet glow in his eyes faded.
Returning to crimson.
The sky began to heal.
The fractures in reality closed.
The storm ceased.
The world was saved.
Far beyond every dimension that had ever existed, the remnants of the Dragon God finally dissolved into nothingness.
Valt stood silently amid the ruined battlefield.
The half-black, half-white mask still bore the same smile.
There was no celebration.
No pride.
No euphoria.
To him, this outcome had been predicted from the very beginning.
He spun a black card between his fingers.
Then turned and walked away.
Leaving behind a world that had yet to realize it had just been saved from absolute destruction.
And behind that ever-smiling mask, the crimson eyes of Valt Nacht gazed toward the sky as it slowly returned to calm.
As though he were waiting for the next enemy.
As though a battle against a dragon and a god that transcended dimensions had been nothing more than the beginning of something far greater.