Beneath a chaotic sky that radiated an ominous presence, where light and darkness churned together and burst apart in a vortex that filled anyone who saw it with unease, stood the rooftop of a ruined building. Debris was scattered everywhere, and the structure looked as if it might collapse at any moment.
Facing the enormous machine, a man in a black overcoat and an eerie mask, his entire body giving off a cold, ruthless aura, looked up at the sky and lightly tapped his outstretched fingers against empty air.
"Boom!"
A thunderclap rang out. The massive vortex in the sky, already tangled with light and darkness, expanded even further. Dense darkness surfaced across the white half of the half-black, half-white vortex like ink dropped into clear water, then spread outward, deepening the aura of calamity.
After being swept through one major crisis after another in such a short span of time, the planet's disintegration had finally stopped, as if everything had settled. Yet, brilliant flashes of light still streaked across the distant sky from time to time. In the end, Natsuki Minamiya and the others decided to head for the Fallen Angel base based on the information they had uncovered, and this was the scene that greeted them.
"Shadow, what are you trying to do?!"
Even though she still did not know what role Shadow had played in all this, Natsuki Minamiya shouted almost on instinct, trying to stop whatever he was doing. After all, no matter how she looked at it, this was exactly the kind of scene where some villain's plan was about to succeed.
"Witch of the Void. I didn't expect you to find this place."
Turning toward the dozen or so people before him, Cid blinked in confusion beneath his mask. What were those numbers above their heads?
He did not know whether his eyes were playing tricks on him, but he could clearly see numbers above the heads of girls like Rias, Natsuki Minamiya, and Xenovia, and each number was a different color.
Cid was baffled. To Serafall and the others, however, Shadow's tone carried not the slightest hint of surprise. If anything, the indifferent eyes staring at them looked like they were looking at corpses, as if there was no need for him to be surprised at all.
Someone could not help swallowing. Last time, they had paid an enormous price just to deal with Delta, a simple-minded brute who possessed only part of Shadow's power. Now that they were facing Shadow himself, the pressure was almost enough to crush Rias and the others outright.
For a moment, not a single person present dared to speak first or meet Cid's gaze.
"That terrifying strength. You really are strong. Hey, are you Shadow, the legendary figure acknowledged as one of the strongest in the world?"
The first to break the silence was Vali's group, who had never come into contact with Shadow before, directly or otherwise.
"The strongest? Heh. I don't even know whether I deserve that title myself. Young White Dragon Emperor, perhaps that position will belong to you in the future."
Speaking as if he were chanting, Cid ignored the numbers above Natsuki Minamiya and the others' heads and withdrew the pressure radiating from his body. The expanding vortex in the sky came to a stop along with it.
"Wow, I didn't expect the legendary Shadow to actually know a nobody like me."
When Cid accurately named his identity, Vali pointed at himself in visible surprise.
"Mm. Thank you for looking after my dog."
He offered his thanks with perfectly proper etiquette, and as the two exchanged a few words, the relationship and atmosphere between both sides seemed to ease.
"Ah, you don't need to thank me for that. Kuroka Toujou and Le Fay are usually the ones who take care of Delta. If you want to thank anyone, thank them."
Vali casually pointed toward the two members of his team and waved it off without much concern.
"I know. It must have been hard for all of you to put up with Delta's temper too. If there's anything you want, feel free to say it."
"Oh? Anything?"
"Mm. Anything."
Cid gave Vali a slight nod. The teammates behind Vali all turned pale with horror at the same time, but Vali broke into an excited grin and said,
"I want to fight you, and find out just how big the gap between us really is!"
"Very well. After I'm finished here. And what about the rest of you? Especially Miss Le Fay and Miss Kuroka Toujou."
After making that promise to Vali with ease, Cid turned his gaze to the teammates behind him.
"Ah, well…"
When they heard Cid's voice, hesitation appeared on all their faces.
"Stop fooling around, all of you.
Shadow-san, may I ask what you are doing?"
After speaking to Vali's group, Natsuki Minamiya turned back to Cid, took a deep breath, and cautiously tested him with the utmost respect.
"Hmm. Just as Natsuki-chan can see."
With a mysterious chuckle, Cid spread both arms beneath the dim light pouring down from the sky and let out a low, contemplative hum. He wanted to tell them he was saving the world in a way that sounded incredibly cool.
"When light and darkness are completely blended together, the world shall undergo a great transformation. The birth of the future and the destruction of the present…"
"I understand. So, Shadow, you're the mastermind behind this incident, aren't you?"
Cutting Cid off, Natsuki Minamiya let out a breath and stated her suspicion with an ugly expression.
It was the expected answer, wasn't it? From the beginning, it had been suspicious that Shadow had inexplicably sent Delta out to kill all of them, and that he had even descended personally at the end, intending to wipe them all out.
When Delta had been on their side earlier, questioning her had cleared her of suspicion, but that had also made Shadow even more suspicious. In fact, if not for Vali and the others, they would have already subjected Delta to harsh interrogation.
Now, after finally defeating Kokabiel, they had failed to get any information from him. It was only through Sayaka Kirasaka of the Lion King Organization that they obtained the location of the Fallen Angels' base. Then, the moment they arrived, they saw this scene. Combined with what he had just said, it could no longer be described as mere evidence. It was practically a confession.
Her earlier deference could only be called a lingering hope that they would not have to make an enemy of Shadow.
"Uh… hahaha…"
After a few seconds of silence, Cid covered his face and burst into laughter. He had known something felt off. So what he had been missing was an audience.
Although Natsuki-chan's imagination had gone a little off course, it did not matter. He would accept it. An Eminence in Shadow who bore the infamy of destroying the world while secretly possessing the merit of saving it. Wasn't that incredibly cool?
Only, he could not say it outright. He could not state too plainly that he wanted to destroy the world. What he needed to do was deliver a string of cryptic riddles, preferably using ambiguous words to act as if he had some unspeakable reason and guide them into making a move. Honestly, wasn't that far too easy?
Good, good, good. As the director, he now declared a change to the script. He was going to arrange even more reasonable scenes.
"If that is how you wish to think of it, Natsuki-chan, then let it be so.
I do not mind telling you that I do bear some responsibility and had my own calculations in this matter.
But even if you know that, what use is it?"
"Can you tell me why you did this?"
Stopping the people around her, who had heard those almost irrefutable words and were on the verge of losing their tempers, Natsuki Minamiya asked in a low voice.
At most, the others had only fought Delta, so it was inevitable that thoughts like "Maybe we can win" would arise in their minds.
But she was different. She knew better than anyone just how wide the gap was between them and Shadow, because she was the only person present who had ever fought Shadow's true form.
"Why? Because it's more interesting that way, I guess."
He said something completely unreasonable as if it were only natural, and Natsuki Minamiya clenched her fan so hard she nearly snapped it in half.
"Are you kidding me?! Do you have any idea what will happen if that thing behind you explodes? Most of the people in the world will die in this disaster!"
"Exactly! Doing something like this just because it's interesting is far too much!"
Rias was the first to lose her patience and shout back, and the others followed with their own accusations. None of them could understand how a disaster of this scale could be nothing more than "interesting" to the man before them.
"Silence!"
With one furious shout, the pressure that had made Rias and the others suffer earlier descended again, forcibly sealing their mouths.
Cid's cold gaze shifted to Natsuki Minamiya. Having experienced this pressure once already, she was clearly handling it much better than the others and could still meet his eyes without lowering her head.
"It seems you know quite a lot. You even found this place... Let me guess. You brought them here, didn't you, beautiful lady?"
Sayaka Kirasaka, pinned beneath Shadow's gaze, forced a smile that looked like she was about to cry. She suspected she simply clashed with Shadow Garden by nature. All she had done was investigate a Fallen Angel base, yet somehow she had been dragged here to face Shadow himself. The pressure was honestly crushing.
"Never mind..."
Fortunately, Cid soon looked away, stepping back and sitting on the machine while easing the pressure he had released.
"If it's only for fun, Shadow-san, then you really don't need to go this far. I'm sure this world as it is can offer you plenty of interesting things."
Natsuki Minamiya still wanted to try persuading him, but Cid had no intention of listening. He merely gave a bright smile and lightly snapped his fingers.
"Am I not doing something interesting right now...?"
For example, regulating light and darkness to save the world!
A strange ripple spread from Cid toward the sky. At the same time...
"Attack!"
"Divide!"
"Spear of Light!"
...
Ice, the power of Divide, Spear of Light, Holy Sword, and other attacks broke through their restraints at once. Every strike carried astonishing power as it rushed toward the black figure.
Even if they could sense the overwhelming gap in strength, now that reconciliation was impossible, standing there and waiting to die was not their style. Serafall and the others threw everything they had into a full-power attack against Cid.
Facing those terrifying attacks, Cid stood frozen in place as if frightened senseless, letting them land on him.
"Boom, boom, boom..."
Terrifying explosions rang out, and the already crumbling building collapsed. Caught off guard by Serafall and the others' sudden move, Natsuki Minamiya could only use spatial teleportation first, taking everyone out of the blast radius.
"Clap, clap, clap... Your courage in attacking me is worthy of praise, but that is the only thing worth praising."
Almost the very next instant after the smoke rose, another snap rang out. A powerful gravity instantly bound Serafall and the others, including Natsuki Minamiya, who had instinctively tried to put distance between them.
As the dust cleared, an unscathed Cid slowly walked out of the black mist. In the sky, the pollution that had gained nourishment began to erupt, and darkness spread across the globe at an unprecedented speed.
Looking at Rias and the others, whom he had felled in a single blow, Cid stood in the sky and raised both hands high. Light that made people feel uncomfortable simply by existing scattered in every direction.
"It seems... more powerful figures have arrived."
His gaze turned toward the horizon. Through the edge of his vision, Cid could clearly see more than twenty super-powerful beings rushing over.
Unfortunately, under normal circumstances, Cid would not have minded fighting them for a few hours. But compared to another version of himself who was a little too absurdly strong, these super-powerful beings felt tasteless to eat yet too wasteful to throw away. Besides...
Because Natsuki Minamiya and the others had interrupted him, the progress he had accidentally added to the imbalance, combined with the increase caused by the passage of time, had brought the world's balance of light and darkness only one step away from collapse. The remaining time was barely enough for him to say a few lines and take the blame. He definitely did not dare start another fight.
"So, all of you can fall as well."
He passed judgment carelessly, and a boundless, invisible ripple spread out, striking the group of rapidly approaching powerhouses with perfect accuracy and sending them plunging into the bottomless deep sea.
In the gloomy sky, black and white light intertwined. People all over the world looked up at that sky. Their bodies felt no pain, yet the pressure coming from deep within their hearts drove them to the verge of collapse in just a few dozen seconds.
It was the fear buried in the depths of every intelligent creature's soul, the collapse of the fundamental laws that represented the world's absolute and stable order, and the despair of species extinction brought on by environmental upheaval.
"Tiny humans, struggle. Fight with all you have..."
A vast, cold male voice came from the sky, interrupting the process of people being swallowed by instinct. Invisible pressure spread along that strange sky and wrapped around the entire world.
"This is a survival trial for all living beings of the world. Let me see where your limits lie..."
They wanted to argue, to beg, to curse. All kinds of negative emotions surged across the world, but Cid ignored them and continued reciting his lines.
"If you survive, and if you have enough courage, then come and find me..."
Plants, animals, microorganisms, whether they were hunting or reproducing, every sentient life-form on this blue planet involuntarily knelt to the ground at that moment. Their bodies lost the ability to move, and boundless divine might sealed the mouths that wanted to curse.
"I, Shadow, take responsibility for the calamity I have brought upon you!"
"Crack!"
Following that judgment, which seemed to come from a god, every life in the world heard the sound of the world's laws breaking apart.
It was like a reenactment of the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs who ruled the ancient world. A drastic environmental shift that hundreds of millions of years could never have produced arrived in just a few seconds. In the void, the Grim Reaper's scythe had already been raised. This was the mighty power of heaven and earth.
Although people knew nothing, their tears flowed uncontrollably. The instincts carved deep into their genes were crying.
"Stop!"
Another sacred voice rang out. Endless radiance surged forth, and the extinction came to a halt.