The silence of the pitch-black universe was an oppressive, physical weight, a vacuum of sound and light that seemed to stretch into the infinite reaches of the 100 trillion universes we had traversed. Behind us lay the wreckage of countless realities, and before us stood nothing but the absolute dark. The only illumination came from the jagged, pale fissures I had torn into the fabric of space, white cracks that pulsed with a cold, dying light, reflecting off the ruins of the "nothingness" we had shredded.
Our exchange of blasts had become a rhythmic, almost meditative cycle of destruction. I would unleash a torrent of light-swallowing grey anti-matter, and Sagha—the God Breaker—would meet it with the crushing, indigo-black gravity of his black hole beams. The forces would collide in the center of the void, creating a blinding flash of conceptual static that cleared a light-year of space in a single, terrifying pulse. Then, the cycle would repeat. We were two mirrors facing each other, reflecting the same intent, the same power, and the same absolute refusal to yield.
My vision, unburdened by the need for light, tracked the flow of Sagha's mana with clinical precision. I could see the way his energy coiled around his fingers like a nest of violet serpents, and I could feel the way my own power responded to every micro-shiver in the vacuum. We were moving at speeds that made the concept of time irrelevant, our auras clashing and recoiling in a dance that had no audience and no end.
I lowered my hand, the grey energy of my last anti-matter pulse flickering out like a dying ember. The void went still, the only sound the high-pitched hum of the spatial cracks settling into the silence. I looked across the expanse at Sagha, who stood as a silhouette of deeper darkness against the black.
I said to Sagha, "You do realize that we're going to get no progress on this fight."
My voice didn't travel through the air; it vibrated directly through the fabric of the 100 trillion universes, a cold, logical observation that hung in the vacuum. We were perfectly matched. Every time I deleted the concept of an attack, he adapted. Every time he launched a vortex of fire and gravity, I neutralized it. We were two equations that cancelled each other out, leaving only a zero in the heart of the void.
Suddenly Sagha laughed.
The sound was a deep, resonant rumble that shook the white cracks in the distance. It wasn't a laugh of frustration, but one of hidden knowledge—the laugh of a man who had been playing a game with rules that I was only just beginning to see. He stood tall, his posture relaxing even as his mana began to shift into a new, more jagged frequency.
And he said, "Yeah, sure, but only by normal conditions..."
The word "normal" felt heavy in the vacuum, a dismissal of everything we had done up to this point. As the last echo of his voice died away, the atmosphere of the void began to change. The indigo-black shadows around him started to bleed, the dark energy swirling toward the center of his right hand.
Suddenly his sword became crimson red.
The dark blade he had materialized earlier—that sliver of absolute night—underwent a terrifying transformation. The obsidian-like matter didn't just glow; it turned into a substance that looked like crystallized blood. The crimson was so intense it seemed to pulse with a life of its own, casting a visceral, red light across the nearby cracks in space. The blade hissed against the vacuum, the sound like a thousand whispers screaming in unison. It was no longer a hole in the universe; it was a beacon of slaughter.
My vision flared, attempting to analyze the new frequency of the sword, but before the data could even resolve in my mind, the space in front of me was empty.
Suddenly he teleported to my back.
There was no ripple in the mana, no flicker in the dimensions. He simply bypassed the transition, appearing in the blind spot of my perception with an immediacy that defied the logic of my concept deletion. I felt the sudden, searing heat of the crimson blade before I could even turn my head.
And he sliced my left arm.
The crimson edge cut through my defensive aura as if the protection didn't exist. It wasn't a physical resistance; the sword moved through my mana and my flesh with a terrifying, liquid ease. I felt the cold bite of the steel followed by a blinding, white-hot shock of pain. The blade severed the bone and muscle just below the shoulder, the crimson light of the sword cauterizing the air as it passed through.
The force of the strike sent a jolt of energy through my entire frame. I felt the weight of my limb shifting, the connection between my mind and my arm flickering as the physical tie was nearly destroyed.
I held my left arm as it was about to fall.
I reached across with my right hand, my fingers digging into the scorched fabric of my sleeve to steady the severed limb. The pain was a sharp, demanding roar in my mind, but I forced it down into a cold compartment of my focus. I looked down at the jagged, glowing red line that now separated my arm from my body, the crimson energy of Sagha's sword still sizzling against the edges of the wound. The concept of "not being hit" had been utterly bypassed.
I didn't panic. I channeled my power directly into the injury.
And I regenerated.
The surge of energy manifested as a golden-grey light that flooded the wound. I could feel the microscopic reconstruction of the tissue, the bone knitting back together with a sharp, magnetic snap, and the nerves reconnecting in a flash of static. The grey, smoke-like essence of my mana pulled the limb back into its proper place, erasing the red line of the strike until the skin was once again whole and unmarred.
I turned to face Sagha, my breathing steady despite the shock. I looked at the crimson sword he held, the blade still dripping with a light that looked like molten rubies. My vision struggled to categorize what had just happened. My conceptual defense should have made the hit impossible.
I asked, "How?"
The question was short, a demand for the logic behind the failure of my rules. Sagha stood ten yards away, the crimson sword held loosely at his side. He didn't look tired; he looked invigorated, the red light reflecting off the surface of his mask in a series of jagged glares.
Sagha just laughed.
It was a sharp, triumphant sound. He stepped forward, the crimson blade carving a glowing arc through the vacuum as he moved.
And he said, "This sword is forged by a god, and I enchant it with rule-nullifying properties... But since you are the strongest otherworlder, I don't expect you to go down that easily, even if we are both at 50% currently."
The mention of the "strongest otherworlder" carried a weight that I didn't have time to process. My power had climbed to 50%—a massive surge that felt like an ocean of energy trying to burst through my skin. It seemed Sagha had matched that increase exactly. We were still in a state of perfect, symmetrical escalation. Even with his god-forged, rule-nullifying blade, the gap between us remained a razor-thin margin of error.
The time for conversation was over. The air between us—though there was no air—began to vibrate with the sheer intensity of our mutual intent. The crimson light of his sword and the golden-grey glow of my aura turned the pitch-black universe into a theater of red and ash.
We both attacked each other.
The collision was a cataclysm. I didn't rely solely on concept deletion anymore; I merged my 50% power into my physical movements, turning my body into a weapon of high-velocity mass. I lunged forward, my right hand manifesting a blade of pure, grey anti-matter that hummed with a frequency meant to counter the crimson heat.
Sagha met me in the center of the void. The crimson sword clashed against my anti-matter blade with a sound that shattered the nearby cracks in space. The shockwave was a physical wall of force that sent ripples through the 100 trillion universes.
CLANG.
The sound was a metallic scream that refused to die. We were a blur of motion, two entities trapped in a high-speed exchange that surpassed the limits of mortal comprehension. I swung my blade in a vertical arc, aiming to bisect the God Breaker, but he parried with the crimson sword, the rule-nullifying edge sliding against my grey energy in a spray of sparks.
He countered with a horizontal slash that I dodged by a hair's breadth, the crimson light singeing my hair. I pivoted, launching a barrage of anti-matter pulses at point-blank range. Sagha didn't teleport away; he used the crimson sword to bat the pulses aside, the blade acting as a physical shield that ignored the destructive nature of the annihilation.
He fired a black hole beam from his free hand, the indigo singularity seeking to crush my chest. I countered by deleting the concept of the gravity affecting me, while simultaneously striking at his neck with a surge of my mana. He tilted his head, the grey energy carving a shallow furrow across his shoulder, and then he was back in my personal space, the crimson sword coming down in a crushing overhead strike.
I caught the blade with a polarized palm, the rule-nullifying property of the sword clashing with the 50% output of my essence. The pressure was immense, a weight that threatened to drive me through the invisible floor of the universe. I could feel the crimson heat trying to eat through my skin, and he could likely feel the cold negation of my anti-matter trying to dissolve his weapon.
We were locked in a clinch of absolute power, our auras flaring until the void was as bright as the heart of a supernova. I stared into the darkness of his mask, and I knew he was staring back, his violet eyes glowing with a feral, predatory joy.
And we can't win nor lose.
The symmetry was unbreakable. For every strike I landed, he landed one in return. For every rule he nullified, I created a new one or bypassed his defense with raw power. Our regeneration kept pace with our injuries; the jagged rents in his garment closed as quickly as the scorched marks on my skin.
We moved across the 100 trillion-universe-away void like twin stars destined to orbit each other forever. I launched a wave of anti-matter that turned into a million needles of grey light; he spun his crimson sword into a vortex of red fire that incinerated the needles before they could reach him. He summoned a cluster of black holes to trap my movements; I used my 50% power to shatter the singularities into harmless dust before they could achieve critical mass.
We were a closed loop of violence.
The crimson sword was a terrifying variable, a weapon that forced me to be more than just a manipulator of concepts. I had to be a warrior, a creature of reflex and raw energy. Every time the red steel whistled through the vacuum, I had to meet it with the full weight of my existence. And yet, no matter how hard I pushed, no matter how much I optimized my 50%, Sagha was there—laughing, striking, and matching me beat for beat.
The white cracks in the sky were now massive, yawning chasms that dripped the pale light of a dying reality onto the battlefield. The pitch-black universe was being systematically dismantled by our struggle, the "nothingness" being replaced by the debris of our clashing wills. Fragments of crimson light and grey anti-matter drifted through the void like radioactive snow.
I fired a concentrated beam of my power, a pillar of golden-grey energy that should have leveled a galaxy. Sagha met it head-on, his crimson sword held vertically, the blade splitting my beam in two like a rock splitting a river. He roared, a sound of pure, unadulterated combat-lust, and lunged through the split in my energy to deliver a kick to my ribs.
I took the hit, the force sending me tumbling back through the void, but I used the momentum to launch a counter-attack of spatial fissures that sought to trap his limbs. He teleported, appearing above me with the crimson sword raised for another strike, and I deleted the space between us to appear behind him.
We were a storm of red and grey, a hurricane of annihilation that had no center and no exit. The 100 trillion universes around us trembled, the sheer pressure of two entities at 50% output being more than the vacuum was designed to contain.
I swung my hand in a wide arc, a blade of anti-matter manifesting in the palm of my hand. Sagha met it with his crimson red sword. The impact sent a pulse of energy through the void that temporarily blinded the light of the fissures. We stayed there, pressed against each other, the rule-nullifying red and the conceptual-deleting grey locked in a stalemate that defined the very heart of the universe.
We both attacked each other, our movements becoming a blur of lethal perfection, a cycle of violence where the winner was as distant as the first universe we had left behind. In the silence of the black void, we were the only things that remained, two titans who could neither achieve victory nor accept defeat. The crimson sword hissed, my aura flared, and the battle continued into the infinite dark.