Sebas had manifested a popcorn bucket. An UNLIMITED popcorn bucket. A bottomless, physics-defying container of buttered perfection that refilled itself every time a handful was taken. It had "BOTTOMLESS" written on the side in gold letters, and underneath that, in smaller text, "Seriously. It doesn't stop."
Duke Fishron had one too.
They sat shoulder-to-fin on the beach, legs out, drinks in the sand, watching the carnage unfold like it was pay-per-view.
"Right," Sebas said, shoving popcorn into his mouth. "Recap for the audience at home. We've got three sorcerers — the blonde one with the tie who fights like an accountant who's had enough—"
"Nanami," Duke Fishron said.
"How do you know his name?"
"I don't. He just LOOKS like a Nanami."
"...Fair. Then we've got the girl with the glasses who's been kicked through four trees and is still standing—"
"Hard."
"Incredibly hard. Respect. And then the old man who's missing an arm and is STILL faster than everyone here."
"How old is he?"
"Seventy-one."
Duke Fishron slowly turned his massive head toward Sebas. "Seventy-one and he's BOXING an eldritch squid?"
"This anime is insane, mate."
"Fr"
On the battlefield, Dagon was cooking. Not getting cooked. Doing the cooking. His Death Swarm was relentless — shikigami appearing out of thin air, biting into flesh the moment they existed. Nanami was bleeding from six different places. Naobito was down to one arm and running on pure old-man spite. Maki had been kicked through enough palm trees to qualify as deforestation.
"The octopus is winning," Duke Fishron observed, reaching into his bucket. Popcorn appeared. It always appeared. The bucket did not care about the laws of thermodynamics.
"He's not an octopus."
"He's got eight things on his face."
"Those are tentacles."
"What do octopuses have?"
"...Tentacles."
"Case closed."
"True"
Dagon launched another wave of shikigami. Nanami slashed three. Four more appeared. Maki dodged two, got hit by a third. Naobito weaved through six at seventy-one years old with one arm, which was genuinely the most impressive thing either of them had ever seen.
"YO," Duke Fishron said, pointing a fin. "THE OLD MAN JUST DODGED SIX FISH WITH ONE ARM."
"He's SEVENTY-ONE."
"THAT MAN IS SEVENTY-ONE AND HE'S MOVING LIKE THAT?!"
"What are they feeding these sorcerers bro?!"
"WHATEVER IT IS I WANT SOME."
Then the ocean rippled.
Not from Dagon. Not from a shikigami. From something else. Shadows — liquid, dark, unnatural — erupted from the water like ink spilling upward. They twisted. They spiralled. They formed a column that stretched toward the sky of the domain.
"Oh?" Sebas sat up straighter.
A figure burst through the shadows. A kid. Teenager. Dark hair. Exhausted face. Barely standing but radiating cursed energy like a man with absolutely nothing left to lose.
Megumi Fushiguro had entered the domain.
"NEW CHARACTER JUST DROPPED," Duke Fishron announced through a mouthful of popcorn.
Megumi extended his shadow toward Maki. From it, she pulled out a weapon — three connected segments, a staff that could be split apart. The special grade cursed tool: Playful Cloud.
"He brought ACCESSORIES," Sebas said approvingly.
Maki gripped Playful Cloud and immediately cracked Dagon across the face so hard the cursed spirit flew sideways through his own beach. Sand exploded. Water splashed. A palm tree fell over.
"OHHHHHH!" Both Sebas and Duke Fishron stood up simultaneously. Duke Fishron's popcorn went everywhere. The bucket refilled instantly.
"SHE HIT HIM WITH THE STICK!"
"WITH THE FANCY STICK!"
"DID YOU SEE THAT OCTOPUS FLY?!"
"HE WENT SIDEWAYS!"
"HE WENT DIAGONAL!"
They high-fived. A man with one shoe and a giant pig-fish-dragon slapping appendages together on a cursed beach while a teenage boy struggled to maintain a domain expansion. This was fine. Everything was fine.
Megumi's domain clashed with Dagon's. The guaranteed-hit was neutralised. The shikigami still came, but they could be seen now. Blocked. Dodged. It was no longer a slaughter — it was a fight.
But Dagon was still winning. Four sorcerers against one special grade inside his own domain and he was STILL winning. Nanami was protecting Megumi. Naobito was running interference on one arm. Maki was swinging Playful Cloud like a woman possessed. Megumi was burning through everything he had just to keep his domain from collapsing.
"They can't win this," Duke Fishron said, suddenly serious. A piece of popcorn hung from his tusk. "The kid's running out of gas. The old man's got one arm. Blonde guy's bleeding from everywhere. Stick girl's tough but she can't solo the octopus."
"No," Sebas agreed. "They can't."
"So what happens?"
"Dunno. Let's find out."
Megumi was at his limit. His domain was crumbling. But instead of trying to overpower Dagon's domain — because that was never the plan — he did something smarter. He started opening a hole. A gap in the barrier. An exit.
"Smart kid," Sebas muttered. "He's not trying to win. He's trying to get everyone out."
"Respect," Duke Fishron said.
Nanami yelled at the others to assemble. They gathered around Megumi. The hole in the barrier flickered — unstable, fragile, barely holding.
Dagon saw the opening. He surged forward to stop them—
And then someone came THROUGH the hole.
Not out. IN.
A hand gripped the edge of the barrier gap. Then an arm. Then a body hauled itself through with the casual ease of a man climbing over a garden fence.
He stood up.
The beach went quiet.
Even the waves seemed to shut up.
The man was tall. Built like someone had designed a human specifically for violence and then forgot to add the off switch. Dark hair. Dead eyes. Scars that told stories nobody wanted to hear. He radiated nothing. No cursed energy. Not a drop. He was a blank space in the cursed world — a void shaped like a man.
But the PRESSURE. The physical, raw, animalistic pressure that came off him made every single person on that beach — sorcerer and curse alike — take an involuntary step backward.
Toji Fushiguro had entered the domain.
Sebas's popcorn hand froze halfway to his mouth.
Duke Fishron's jaw dropped. A piece of popcorn fell out.
"...Who," Duke Fishron whispered, "is THAT?"
Sebas didn't answer immediately. He was staring. With the pure, primal recognition of one unserious being acknowledging that someone VERY serious had just walked in.
"I don't know," Sebas said slowly. "But that man has NEVER paid taxes and I respect it."
Toji moved.
He simply WASN'T somewhere and then WAS somewhere else. One second he was at the barrier gap. The next second he was in front of Maki, ripping Playful Cloud out of her hands with a grip so strong she couldn't have held on if she'd welded herself to it.
"HE STOLE HER STICK," Duke Fishron yelled.
"HE TOOK THE WOMAN'S STICK!"
Dagon didn't even get time to react. He summoned a shikigami — one single eel — to deal with this cursed-energy-less nobody.
Toji deleted it.
One swing of Playful Cloud and the shikigami ceased to exist so hard it probably got removed from Dagon's memory.
Then Toji closed the distance.
He hit Dagon.
With pure, raw, old-fashioned VIOLENCE. Playful Cloud connected with Dagon's face like a freight train hitting a watermelon. The cursed spirit rocketed through his own domain, bounced off the water twice, and cratered into the sand fifty metres away.
"OHHHHHHH—"
"HE'S GETTING PACKED UP—"
Toji was already there. Standing over Dagon. Swinging again. And again. Each hit sounded like a car crash. The sand cracked. The water split. Dagon's body bounced off the beach like a ragdoll being used as a basketball.
The sorcerers watched in stunned silence. Nanami — beaten, bleeding, barely alive — lowered his blade and stared at this man who had appeared from nowhere and was doing what four of them couldn't.
Megumi stared at Toji. Something in the back of his brain flickered. He didn't know why.
Maki stared at her empty hands where Playful Cloud used to be.
Naobito, with one arm, sighed. "Showoff."
"Okay hold on," Sebas said, sitting back down. "This is getting way too one-sided."
Duke Fishron looked at him. "What do you mean one-sided? The scary guy is DEMOLISHING the octopus. This is peak."
"Exactly. It's TOO peak. Where's the drama? Where's the tension? Every good fight needs a bit of back and forth, y'know? Can't just be one bloke beating the stuffing out of a seafood platter for five minutes."
Duke Fishron squinted. "What are you about to do?"
Sebas grinned.
He snapped his fingers.
A tiny glass bottle — shimmering, translucent, filled with grey liquid — materialised in his hand. He flicked it across the beach like a man tossing a coin into a fountain. It arced through the air, spinning end over end, and shattered against Dagon's back mid-beating.
Resistance IV. Duration: 4 minutes and 11 seconds.
Toji's next hit landed.
And Dagon barely moved.
Toji blinked. That wasn't right. That hit should've sent the cursed spirit through the sand and into whatever was underneath the sand. Instead, Dagon skidded back about two feet and... stood up.
Dagon looked at his own hands. Then at his body. Then at Toji's weapon.
"...What?" Dagon said.
He didn't know why, but every hit suddenly felt like it was coming through a mattress. Like someone had wrapped his entire body in bubble wrap made of divine intervention. The pain was there — technically — but reduced to roughly a fifth of what it should've been.
Toji swung again. Full power. A hit that should crack mountains.
It connected. Dagon's head snapped to the side.
He tanked it.
"DID HE JUST TANK THAT?!" Duke Fishron was on his feet. Popcorn flying everywhere. The bucket refilling instantly. "HE JUST ATE THAT HIT! HE ATE THAT LIKE BREAKFAST!"
"Resistance IV, baby," Sebas said, leaning back. "Every hit reduced to twenty percent of original damage. My man Dagon's built different now. Temporarily. For exactly four minutes and eleven seconds."
"YOU BUFFED THE OCTOPUS?!"
"I buffed the octopus."
"WHY?!"
"Why not?"
"And"
"Entertainment value."
Toji hit Dagon again. And again. And AGAIN. Playful Cloud was a blur — each swing fast enough to create sonic booms, each impact strong enough to shatter concrete. But Dagon was STANDING. Taking every single hit. Getting rocked, getting pushed, getting ragdolled — but NOT going down.
Toji's eyes narrowed. Something was wrong. This curse should be dead three times over. Instead it was eating hits like snacks and asking for seconds.
"Aight," Sebas said, watching Toji speed-blitz Dagon across the beach for the fourth time in ten seconds. "Scary man's fast. But what if he was FASTER?"
"No."
"What if—"
"You're going to buff him too aren't you."
"I'm going to buff him too."
Sebas snapped his fingers again. A second bottle — this one pale blue, glowing softly — arced across the beach and shattered against Toji's back mid-swing.
Speed I. Haste I. Duration: until Sebas gets bored.
Toji had already been fast. Toji had been "can't see him move" fast. Toji had been "blink and you miss three attacks" fast.
Toji with Speed I and Haste I was something else entirely.
He hit Dagon twenty-three times in one second.
Not an exaggeration. Twenty-three distinct impacts. Playful Cloud became a streak of light. Each swing was 20% faster than it should've been. Each movement covered 20% more ground. It wasn't a fight anymore. It was a BLENDER. Toji was moving so fast he left afterimages. Three of them. At one point there appeared to be FOUR Tojis all hitting Dagon simultaneously.
But Dagon was TANKING.
Every. Single. Hit.
Twenty percent damage per swing meant Toji was doing roughly four-and-a-half times less damage than he should've been. And Toji was hitting so fast that the individual damage per hit didn't matter — what mattered was the VOLUME. It was like being hit with a thousand airsoft pellets. Each one? Nothing. All of them? You're going to have a bad time. But you're not going to DIE.
Dagon flew across the beach. Bounced. Got hit again. Flew the other direction. Bounced. Got hit AGAIN. He was a pinball in his own domain. A punching bag in his own house. Getting absolutely MOPPED across every square inch of sand — but staying alive.
"HE'S TANKING! HE'S TANKING THE SCARY GUY!" Duke Fishron was standing on the beach screaming, popcorn spilling from his bucket, which refilled before the popcorn hit the sand. "THE OCTOPUS IS EATING HITS FROM A MAN WITH NO CURSED ENERGY AND HE'S STILL STANDING!"
"That buff is CRAZY," Duke Fishron said, shovelling popcorn into his mouth.
Toji smashed Dagon into the water. The ocean split. Dagon skipped across the surface like a stone, bounced seven times, and crashed into the shallows. Toji was already there — somehow, impossibly — standing on the water, Playful Cloud raised.
He brought it down.
BOOM.
Dagon cratered into the ocean floor. Water exploded outward in a ring. A mini-tsunami washed across the beach.
Duke Fishron didn't move. The wave passed through him.
Sebas raised his popcorn bucket above his head to keep it dry.
Dagon pulled himself up. Battered. Cracked. Leaking cursed energy from a dozen fractures. But ALIVE.
"How..." Nanami whispered from the shoreline, barely conscious. "How is that curse still standing?"
"Plot armour," Sebas called out.
"WHAT?"
Sebas turned his head and began to whistle. "Nothing."
Toji didn't understand it. And Toji was not a man who NEEDED to understand things. He was a man who hit things until they stopped moving. That was his whole deal.
But this curse was not stopping.
So Toji hit harder.
BOOM. Dagon flew.
BOOM. Dagon bounced.
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM. Dagon ragdolled across the domain like a wet sock in a tumble dryer.
But every time — EVERY time — Dagon got back up. Slower each time. More damaged. More cracked. But the Resistance IV was doing its job. Twenty percent damage meant Toji needed five times the hits to do what he'd normally do in one.
And Toji was FAST now. So he was getting those hits in. But it turned a ten-second beatdown into a four-minute war.
"This is the greatest fight I've ever seen," Duke Fishron said, tears forming in his massive eyes. Not sad tears. ENTERTAINMENT tears. "He's mopping the floor with him but the floor WON'T BREAK."
"Unstoppable force meets an immovable object," Sebas said.
"Unstoppable force meets an immovable OCTOPUS," Duke Fishron corrected.
"...Yeah. Sure. Octopus."
Duke Fishron shoved an impossible amount of popcorn into his mouth. The bucket refilled. He shoved more. The bucket refilled again. It was an ouroboros of snacking. An infinite loop of butter and salt.
Three minutes and forty-seven seconds into the Resistance IV buff, Toji had hit Dagon roughly four thousand three hundred and twelve times.
Dagon was somehow still alive.
Barely. He looked like a chewed-up stress toy. His body was cracked everywhere. His shikigami had stopped spawning because he literally did not have the cursed energy left to make them. He was standing — technically — in the sense that his legs were beneath him and gravity hadn't fully won yet.
But he was standing.
"Twenty-four seconds left on the buff," Sebas said, checking an imaginary watch.
"Is the octopus going to make it?"
"Absolutely not."
Four minutes and eleven seconds.
The Resistance IV wore off.
Dagon felt it immediately. The invisible bubble wrap around his body vanished. The world got sharp again. Every crack, every fracture, every hit he'd tanked for the last four minutes suddenly REPORTED FOR DUTY.
Toji — still buffed with Speed I and Haste I — noticed instantly. His next hit landed and Dagon went flying twice as far as before.
"Ah," Dagon said, mid-air. "That's worse."
Toji stacked Playful Cloud's sections together. Sharpened the ends by grinding them against each other. Launched himself into the air.
Dagon tried to guard.
Toji drove the sharpened staff clean through Dagon's face.
"OHHHHH!" Duke Fishron spilled his entire bucket.
Toji wasn't done. He ripped the other end free, sharpened it, and stabbed Dagon again. And again. And again. Rapid-fire. Each stab faster than the last thanks to the Haste buff. It wasn't a fight anymore. It was a man aggressively deconstructing a fish with a pointy stick.
Dagon's body flickered.
His domain cracked.
The beach shattered. The ocean froze. The palm trees dissolved. The sky split apart like broken glass.
"Oh that's the domain breaking," Sebas said casually, standing up and brushing sand off his one remaining trouser leg. "Time to go."
Duke Fishron stood up too. Stretched his wings.
The domain collapsed. Reality rushed back in. The beach disappeared and they were back in Shibuya Station — dark, broken, underground. Dagon was gone. Exorcised. Erased.
Toji stood in the middle of the destruction, Playful Cloud dripping, eyes empty, already looking for the next thing to kill.
The sorcerers stood around him in various states of "what just happened." Nanami was bleeding. Naobito was missing an arm. Maki was staring at Toji like she'd just seen something she couldn't explain. Megumi was on the ground, drained, staring at the man who'd just soloed a special grade — and feeling something he couldn't name.
Nobody noticed Sebas.
Nobody noticed the pig-fish-dragon standing next to him.
Because Sebas didn't want them to. And when you had every power in existence, "not being noticed" was as easy as breathing.
"Right," Sebas whispered to Duke Fishron. "Good show. Solid eight out of ten."
"Only eight?"
"The octopus went down too fast at the end. Buff ran out. Nothing I could do."
"You LITERALLY could've extended it."
"Yeah but the scary man deserved his moment. Can't steal a man's highlight reel."
Duke Fishron nodded slowly. Fist bumping Sebas. "Respect."
Sebas opened a portal. Small. Quiet. Just big enough for a large aquatic Terraria boss.
"This goes back to your ocean," Sebas said.
Duke Fishron looked at the portal. Then at Sebas. Then at the chaos of Shibuya Station.
"This was fun," Duke Fishron said.
"Yeah it was."
"If you ever fish me out again, bring better snacks."
"The popcorn was unlimited."
"The BUTTER wasn't enough."
"...Noted."
Duke Fishron flew through the portal. It closed behind him. Gone. Back to Terraria. Back to normal. As if he'd never been there.
Sebas stood alone in the wreckage of Shibuya Station, one shoe on, invisible, holding an empty popcorn bucket that was no longer refilling because the fun was over.
He looked around.
Somewhere above him, Jogo was still being tapped by a zombie.
Somewhere nearby, Kenjaku was guarding a cube.
Somewhere else, Yuji was about to have the worst night of his life.
"Right," Sebas said, tossing the bucket over his shoulder. "What's next?"