The silence in the crater weighed like lead.
The fine, scorched dust still drifted lazily, gleaming beneath the last rays of sunlight piercing through a rift in the clouds, and the molten rock floor hissed dryly as it cooled, fracturing into a web of pitch-black lines.
There, at the bottom of that torn hole in the earth, only the furnace-like heat and the mounting tension between two bodies refusing to fall remained.
Arthur rolled his shoulder slowly.
The flesh that had been burned away to the bone just seconds ago was now smooth and flawless, devoid of a single scar or speck of blood.
He cracked his neck from side to side, the sharp pop cutting through the air, and his pitch-black eyes—hollow of both light and warmth—locked onto Vanki.
"You are a plague, Vanki," Arthur murmured, his voice as cold as high-mountain winds, heavy with a boredom that was rapidly bleeding into irritation.
He took a step forward, his boot sinking into the cooling, molten rock, crushing glowing gravel into fine dust.
"The plan is already proceeding as it should, and I do not have an eternity to waste here, playing with a dog that doesn't know it's already dead."
Meters away, Vanki tilted his head back.
Every vertebra popped with a heavy thud, like massive boulders grinding together deep within a cavern.
His broad chest heaved in ragged gasps. The deep fissures carved into his thick skin still leaked that dark, smoldering blood, dripping onto the stone with muffled hisses.
The general smiled.
"Think you can kill me just because you can bounce back from any wound?" his voice echoed against the crater walls, making the loose stones rattle on the ground.
"I was born in the middle of an execution ground. I watched my brothers fall one by one before I even learned how to hold a sword."
"Since then, I haven't stopped fighting. I'll rip your head off so many times, immortal, that your body will forget how to regenerate."
His feet dug into the ground with enough force to splinter the earth, sending rings of cracks spiderwebbing to the edges of the crater and launching chunks of hot rock in every direction like shrapnel from a blast.
Vanki opened his mouth and unleashed a roar that wasn't just sound—it was an earthquake trapped in his throat.
The muscles in his right arm bulged until they threatened to tear through his skin, and he hurled the flaming axe.
The weapon didn't fly; it vanished.
It left behind only a trail of superheated air, moving so fast that the very sound of its trajectory lagged behind before reaching Arthur's ears.
The immortal didn't even have time to raise a hand, frown, or comprehend what he was seeing.
A blinding orange flash cleaved the space between them in the blink of an eye.
A thin line of pale blood bloomed across Arthur's neck.
His head spun slowly, as if gravity had momentarily forgotten to pull, and tumbled from his shoulders.
The cut was so flawless that the edges of flesh and bone were instantly sealed, scorched and cauterized by the blade's extreme heat, preventing a single drop of blood from spurting prematurely.
The headless body stood for a foolish, empty moment before it began to topple.
But Vanki didn't wait.
He launched himself off the crater walls, shooting upward like an arrow, already airborne before Arthur's head even hit the ground.
Gripping the black axe in his left hand, he hoisted it with all the strength left in his shattered bones.
He brought it down in a wide, devastating crescent swing. The blade split Arthur's torso squarely down the middle, from sternum to groin, as though carving through hot butter.
The two halves of the body slid apart, falling to either side in silence.
Vanki's heels touched the earth, his body pivoting in a single fluid motion, and the flaming axe answered his call.
Describing a brilliant arc across the sky, the weapon snapped perfectly into his right hand, its burning haft still vibrating from the impact.
"EXECUTIONER'S CROSS!" he roared.
He swung his arms in opposite directions.
The black blade and the incandescent blade crossed in the air over Arthur's remains, tracing a perfect, lethal X.
The slash tore through the ground along with it, slicing dirt, stone, and whatever was left of the immortal's body into four distinct chunks.
Sparks showered in every direction, and the air reeked of charred flesh and pulverized rock.
Arthur's severed pieces stopped falling.
They hovered, motionless, as if gravity were too ashamed to claim them.
Then, they began to move sluggishly, drawn together by some invisible force. Torso halves, severed arms, and bisected legs glided through the void, reattaching with surgical precision, the scorched edges melding together without leaving a single trace.
And where his head should have been, a pale, shapeless mass sprouted from nothingness. It grew, molded itself, and defined features, hair, and hollow eyes until he was completely whole, standing and floating in mid-air as if he had never been butchered.
Before Vanki could even grit his teeth, Arthur lunged.
Bending his knee with sudden, explosive violence, he snapped his leg upward. His kneecap slammed into the dead center of Draekmor's black blade with the force of an anvil dropping from the sky.
The impact rattled the haft in Vanki's grip, sparks exploding from the metal. Yet the general didn't yield a single millimeter. He dug his boots into the cracked earth, the tendons in his arm popping as they absorbed the sheer weight of the blow.
Seizing the moment while the kick was still pinned against the blade, Vanki twisted his wrist and slashed downward.
The axe's edge tore through the back of Arthur's foot, severing his heel from his ankle.
The immortal finally fell, spinning through the air and crashing into the ground, tumbling for meters before coming to a halt.
But before the dust could even settle, the severed foot was already regenerating, and he rose back up, fully restored in a single, fluid motion.
Vanki wasted no time.
He raised both axes and brought the Executioner's Cross down once more, the blades carving an X of death through the space where his enemy had just stood.
Arthur ducked at the absolute last fraction of a second. The strike passed so close that the wind from the flames singed the tips of his hair.
Escaping by a hair's breadth, his eyes glinted with an even crueler detachment, as though every piece he lost only made him deadlier.
*I have to destroy those axes,* he thought.
Arthur didn't waste a second. He surged forward like an arrow fired at point-blank range, every movement calculated with absolute, chilling precision. He wasn't fighting to survive; he was fighting to eradicate the only obstacle delaying his grand design.
His gaze was locked exclusively on the haft and the black blade in Vanki's grip. Everything else was just background noise—collateral he was fully willing to pay for in blood.
"This won't delay me any longer," he snarled, unleashing a flurry of short, sharp punches, each one as heavy as a sledgehammer.
Vanki took the first blow on his forearm, twisted his body, and countered with the flaming blade, slicing Arthur's chest wide open from side to side.
The immortal didn't even blink. The flesh parted, exposing ribs that glowed crimson, but the wound was already knitting itself shut as he launched another strike, aiming directly at the axe's haft.
Vanki raised the weapon to block.
CLANG!
White sparks erupted into the air, and the general used the collision's momentum to spin both axes into a whirlwind of death.
The black blade shredded Arthur's left shoulder, and the flaming blade cleaved through his right thigh.
A swift kick caught Arthur in the face, snapping his head back. Yet, before his body could even fall, he was upright and pressing the assault again, his injuries stitching together as if they had never happened.
Every cut Vanki landed only pushed him deeper into a battle-crazed frenzy. He wanted to see Arthur's limits. He wanted to butcher that body a thousand times over until it finally gave up putting itself back together.
"DIE, DIE, DIE, YOU WORM!!!" he roared with every swing.
The strikes chained together at a speed that would have blurred the vision of any mortal onlooker.
Arthur used his own body as both shield and weapon. He let his arm be severed just to grab the flaming haft; he took a crippling blow to the ribs to inch closer to the black blade; he swallowed a slash that bifurcated him from collarbone to hip just to take one step forward.
With every slice Vanki dealt, Arthur's noose tightened around the axe.
He felt no pain. He only felt the burning urgency of his plan nearing completion, fueled by the absolute certainty that this weapon was the only variable that could derail everything.
Vanki hacked him to pieces three consecutive times.
He amputated his legs, tore off his arms, and shredded his torso into ribbons. And every single time, the bloody chunks snapped back together in mid-air—faster, tougher, as if the sheer act of destruction was feeding him.
The general was breathing raggedly, sweat and blood stinging his eyes, but he refused to stop. He spun the axes in a dual flurry, crossed them, slammed them into the ground, and swung them upward. And Arthur waded through it all, accepting every agonizing wound as a necessary toll.
Vanki hoisted both arms to deliver a strike capable of cleaving the distant mountains in twain. But Arthur ducked under his guard, anchored his feet into the bedrock, and gathered every ounce of his strength.
Emerald auras flared around his fists.
*Morokian Technique: Seismic Quake.*
"This ends now."
He thrust his left fist upward with maximum output, aiming not at Vanki, but at the exact dead center of Draekmor's blade.
The impact didn't make the sound of metal striking metal.
It produced a sound that seemed to echo from the very bowels of the earth, as if time itself had cracked.
The black blade, which had survived countless eras and blood-soaked wars, could not withstand it.
A web of fractures exploded from the point of contact, racing toward the tip and down the haft.
For a fleeting instant, it shimmered with the memories of every warrior who had ever wielded it—and then it shattered into thousands of shards, turning to ash before they even touched the ground.
Vanki stood frozen, left holding nothing but a splintered wooden handle.
The silence returned, crushing and absolute.
The symbol of his unwavering loyalty, the literal extension of his arm, his final link to the one he had sworn to protect—everything vanished in a single, devastating blow born of Arthur's lineage.
And there, amidst the ruins, Arthur smiled.
A cold, totally satisfied smile, as if he had finally uprooted the last remaining weed choking his grand plan.
"Finally."
Before the echo of that final syllable could fade, he twisted both fists in a short, crisp motion, like cranking an ancient, rusted gear.
Space itself shuddered around his right hand as he fired a straight punch, burying his knuckles perfectly into the pit of Vanki's stomach.
It was a concentrated wave of kinetic pressure that drove into the giant like a wedge.
*Morokian Technique: Bone Breaker.*
The sheer force penetrated, rippled outward, and expanded from within.
A muffled, sickening crunch followed, as if the general's entire skeletal structure had been compressed and violently wrung out all at once.
His abdominal muscles caved in. His lower ribs splintered in a dozen places, and the air was violently ripped from his lungs in a sharp hiss, leaving him entirely hollowed out.
His boots lost contact with the ground, as if gravity had simply been switched off.
His massive frame seized, suddenly limp, before he was launched backward. He slammed into the solid rock wall with a deafening thud and slumped to the bottom, utterly paralyzed, unable to muster even a groan.
"You can use everything you have. You can awaken the most ancient powers in this world."
"In the end, there is no weapon, no fury, no miracle capable of defeating me."
Vanki dragged himself up, driving the haft of his flaming axe into the shattered rock.
The weapon's intense heat melted the stone beneath him, reducing it to incandescent puddles where he stubbornly anchored his weight.
The general refused to look at Arthur. Instead, he turned his battered face toward the distant horizon, where the sky violently trembled and tore itself apart from the clash between Tsukumo and Suki, feeling the shockwaves of their battle reverberating through the entire mountain.
And then, a slow, silent smile—heavy with a dark promise—crept across his bloodied lips.
"Admitting this wounds every ounce of my warrior's pride," he rasped quietly but clearly, his eyes still locked on the jagged line where the mountain met the heavens.
"It's true. I really can't kill you, immortal."
He turned his head at an agonizingly slow pace toward Arthur, his smile widening until it was as sharp as a razor.
"But I can definitely kill your plan."
Arthur's expression shifted in the blink of an eye.
The suffocating arrogance gave way to a razor-thin coldness, and all of his attention, previously dismissive, snapped onto Vanki like an invisible shackle.
Vanki let out a hoarse, grating laugh that echoed against the crater walls.
"See that?" he mocked, thumping his fist against his ruined chest.
"I can still beat you, brat. Even while I'm dying."
He pointed up at the sky, toward the direction where something vastly greater than the two of them lay hidden.
"If I make it to Lavinsk and spill everything you're plotting to do with Silver... this whole perfect plan of yours, this decades-long game you've been playing, goes down the drain before it even starts."
Before Arthur could even clench his fist, Vanki stomped his heel into the dirt.
A geyser of orange flames erupted around him, propelling his massive frame upward like a ballistic missile.
The air shattered with the sheer force of his launch, and he rocketed into the sky, tearing upward like a flaming shooting star.
He didn't look back.
He knew Arthur would be right on his heels, but it didn't matter. He had a target, and he would reach it no matter the cost.
He was heading straight for Lavinsk.