"Why are you so filled with vengeance for Miss Anastasia?" Xavier's voice cracked, the air splitting with a trembling tone. His small frame heaved from exhaustion, his wounds bleeding through tattered cloth and bruised skin.
Haruki blinked, caught off guard by the question. "What kind of idiotic question is that?" he spat. "You've been fighting me all this time—without even fully knowing why I want her dead?"
His expression darkened, voice cutting sharp. "Did that witch not tell you what she did to me?"
"She did," Xavier replied softly.
"Then why ask me something so… stupid?"
The boy stood still. For a moment, he looked almost fragile. But his eyes—dim but unwavering—slowly rose to meet Haruki's glare.
"Because…" Xavier began, "even with what she did to you… she's not that person anymore. She's changed."
Haruki scoffed. "Changed?" His fingers twitched as if gripping invisible pain. "You expect me to forget the trauma she carved into me? The permanent scar etched into my face?"
"You just want me to forgive and forget?" His eyes narrowed. "Because you said so?"
He ran a hand through his disheveled hair, stepping forward with the weight of his words. "Tell me, child… if someone shattered you, tore your life apart, left you bleeding and broken… would you forgive them just because they said they were sorry? Or because they claim they've changed?"
His voice lowered—dangerously calm now. "Would you forgive them, Xavier?"
"...Would you?"
Xavier couldn't respond.
His fists curled. But his lips remained sealed.
Because in his heart, he saw a face—a twisted grin, a broken family, and the name that haunted him more than death ever could.
Percival.
Haruki caught the silence and unsheathed his blade slowly, the metallic whisper of steel ringing clear.
"If she truly wishes to make amends…" he said coldly, "then she can atone—with her life."
"Only then will my thirst for vengeance be satisfied."
Xavier's throat tightened. Words wouldn't solve this. Not anymore. So he raised his blade—Excalibur—burning with fading light, and prepared to meet the storm.
In an instant, Xavier launched forward—his feet thrumming with a surge of raw vectors. The air around him exploded as he compressed directional force into his legs, creating a temporary slipstream around his body. He shot like a missile, blade forward.
Haruki tilted his head, unimpressed. He dodged with minimal movement and whispered, "You disgusting ant."
Then retaliated.
A blazing kick ignited with searing aura crashed into Xavier's chest, sending shockwaves through his ribcage. The force cracked the earth beneath them and launched Xavier across the arena.
Before he could recover, Haruki was already in front of him.
Xavier was too slow. The world blurred around him as Haruki's blade pierced from every angle—shoulder, thigh, side, hip. Every strike a blur of perfect precision.
Tsk... my body's too heavy.
His thoughts raced. Vector acceleration drains me with every burst. I need something smarter… something cleaner.
He tried to break free, hurling himself back using an internalized vector burst—a technique where he reversed the directional force in his own joints to sling himself backwards.
But Haruki reappeared instantly, as if space bent to his will.
A single gut punch collapsed Xavier's core.
Excalibur fell.
Another kick to the leg, and Xavier was off balance. Haruki followed with a flurry of strikes, each faster than Xavier could perceive, ending in a brutal uppercut that launched the boy skyward.
When he crashed back to the ground, his entire body trembled from the internal damage.
"Get up," Haruki said, sheathing his blade slowly. His voice was terrifyingly calm. "I won't repeat myself."
Xavier forced himself up on shaking limbs. His vision swam. Blood dripped freely. He didn't even raise Excalibur this time. Just his fists.
Haruki vanished.
Then appeared behind him.
Xavier turned to strike, but Haruki vanished again—then struck from behind. A blow to the ribs dropped him instantly.
"Get out," Haruki said again.
Xavier coughed blood, smirking. "You just repeated yourself... haha."
Annoyed, Haruki kicked him sharply in the shin, hands still in his pockets.
What followed wasn't a fight.
It was a lesson.
Every punch Xavier threw was effortlessly blocked. Every tactic was countered. Every burst of acceleration was predicted.
Haruki didn't even look like he was trying.
Then finally, as Xavier was caught mid-punch, Haruki spoke. "Are you all out of tricks now?"
Xavier grinned, blood on his teeth.
"Not yet."
From all sides, four glowing Vortex Spheres surged in. They bent air slightly as they spiraled.
Haruki released Xavier's fist and instinctively weaved between them.
Xavier followed up with a hailstorm of vector bullets. Each shot compressed the air before release, letting them travel at near-sonic speeds.
But Haruki deflected them with ease, his body flowing like water between their paths.
Then Xavier closed the gap.
He threw fast, sharp strikes, every move layered with intent. Some were real punches. Others were misdirects—each feint designed to slip a Vortex Sphere into close range without warning.
One kick. Feint.
Spin. Strike. Feint.
Vortex.
Each close-range detonation disrupted Haruki's flow slightly—forcing him to weave tighter and stay alert.
That was Xavier's plan.
Keep him tense. Keep him reactive. Make him question every hit.
It wouldn't win him the battle.
But it bought him time.
And in Xavier's condition, that was all he could ask for.
I need to keep him focused on my hands, Xavier strategized to himself. Just need to keep his attention away from everything else.
His mind raced even faster than his fading heartbeat. Haruki may have been toying with him, but Xavier was plotting every second like a general in a collapsing war.
The exchange of blows continued—Haruki delivering calm, crushing strikes, Xavier responding with increasingly sharper punches and faster movements. The boy wasn't just getting desperate.
He was building something.
Haruki noticed it too late. Xavier's attacks weren't just wild lashes—they were growing stronger, unnaturally so. And yet, the boy wasn't using aura. Not a flicker.
That's when Haruki's eyes narrowed.
Xavier wasn't accelerating with aura.
But through vector manipulation, Xavier had begun to "stitch" the leftover directional momentum from each of his failed or blocked attacks—seamlessly feeding them into the next.
A regular punch loses force after impact. Wind-up—Strike—Release. The energy dissipates either into the target or vanishes into air.
But Xavier interrupted that chain. At the point of contact—or miss—he trapped the remaining vectors of that movement: leftover kinetic energy, inertial push, directional pull. And like threading a needle, he sewed those into the motion of the next attack.
Momentum Stitch.
Each move became a carrier of previous momentum. Each blow carried more baggage than the last. And instead of decaying, the chain reaction accelerated.
Punch.
Stitch.
Kick.
Stitch.
Spin.
Stitch.
Xavier's body blurred in motion, punches now sharp enough to whistle through the air.
The brilliance of the technique wasn't just in the raw physics—it was in the improvisation. Xavier had never trained this. It was a desperate invention of genius and instinct. His cosmic eyes tracked micro-movements, calculating the ideal angle and timing down to the fraction of a second.
Then came the finale.
All the momentum gathered. Every ounce of recycled kinetic energy—from dozens of prior strikes—converged into a single flashing blow aimed directly at Haruki's face.
The punch cracked with such speed and weight that the atmosphere split, causing a low-pressure shockwave around them. Haruki took a half-step back from the impact.
In the same breath, Xavier vanished and reappeared behind him, using vector acceleration once more. But this time his hands weren't attacking.
They were placed flat against Haruki's back.
He condensed hundreds of directional vectors: upward force, rotational push, internal kinetic energy, and spatial pressure—all into a singular microscopic point on Haruki's body.
Then detonated it.
The result was internal, but devastating. Haruki flinched. His organs twisted. Blood vessels constricted. Even he couldn't fully nullify the blow.
"You damn bastard," he growled.
He spun around instantly. Aura surged.
WHUMPH!
A scorching wave of heat erupted from his palm, slamming Xavier like a storm of white-hot wind.
Xavier screamed in agony, his body lit with blisters and burns, skin reddened like it had been boiled alive.
Haruki wasted no time. He seized Xavier by the throat and slammed him into the ground, the shock of it quaking the earth.
"You're one annoying pest, you know that?" he muttered coldly.
Then his aura spiked again.
Haruki began rapidly increasing the molecular kinetic energy in the air above and around Xavier. The molecules vibrated violently, unseen but felt—a silent collapse of thermal stability.
And then it dropped.
A pulse of invisible, concentrated heat fell from the sky.
Infra Rupture.
Everything around them flash-boiled.
The ground hissed, stone melted, the radius of the blast charring trees, soil, and air into lifeless ash.
When the dust settled, Xavier lay at the center of a scorched crater. Smoke drifted from his skin. His lips parted, gasping for breath, his consciousness slipping away.
His body refused to move. Every nerve was seared. Every thought fogged by pain.
Haruki stood above, untouched by his own destruction.
He turned without a glance.
"All your efforts... gone to waste."
His voice echoed.
"Your maid is next, Xavier. She will share your fate."
------
Xavier, whose mind drifted into the depths of his subconscious, found himself falling into silence. Distant, weightless, sinking.
A void beneath the waves.
Thoughts swirled like whirlpools.
"Why did I question that man and his motives to kill Miss Anastasia?"
"Why did I think it was a good idea...? I couldn't even answer his question."
"I'm no better..."
Guilt anchored him. Heavy. Cold.
He floated deeper into the ocean of his mind, shadows clinging to his thoughts like weeds. Memories twisted around him, suffocating and sharp.
He saw Percival.
The man who took everything from him.
Who was he to look Haruki in the eye and call him wrong?
Haruki had his reasons.
And Xavier—he wasn't even sure he had a right to call himself kind anymore.
Father would have forgiven...
He wasn't his father. He wasn't the light others claimed him to be.
Bitterness had begun to fester in his heart. Weariness crept into his soul.
And now he feared he was just a child with a sword and a cracked heart.
"Would I forgive Percival if he changed...? If he wanted forgiveness...?"
He kept asking it.
Over and over.
But we knew the truth.
That version of reality could never exist.
Percival was like asking water to hold its shape in the void of space. A dream too impossible for even hope to touch.
"I'm no different..." Xavier whispered to himself. "I'm no different from the man who wants revenge..."
Then.
A voice.
It pierced the silence like sunlight cutting through storm clouds.
Soft.
Gentle.
A woman's voice. Calm and warm like spring rain. It wrapped around him.
"But you are different from him, Master."
Xavier blinked.
There, through the waves and shadows, a light descended. Soft, radiant, holy.
A figure took form.
A woman.
Long, white-blond hair floated like silk. Her body draped in robes of pure white, glowing with divine energy. Her face was obscured—not by distance, but by brilliance.
Her presence wasn't just light. It was memory. Like he'd known her forever.
And yet... he didn't know her name.
"Who... who are you?" Xavier asked, his voice echoing underwater.
The woman stepped forward, descending until she hovered before him in the darkness.
"That doesn't matter right now," she said with a loving smile. "What matters is that you don't lose sight of who you are."
She reached toward him. Her hand radiated with warmth even in the cold depth of his mind.
"You've come this far, not because you were perfect. But because you never gave up. Because you refused to let darkness define you. That's what makes you worthy, Master."
"Worthy...?" Xavier repeated.
"Yes," she said, kneeling to meet his gaze. "You doubt yourself. That's normal. That means your heart still beats with conscience. But don't let that doubt drown you. Your light—your goodness—has always been your strength. Even now, even when you can't see it."
Her voice trembled, like a song sung across eternity.
"You were chosen for a reason."
She placed her hand gently on his chest, over his heart.
"And whatever path you choose—so long as your heart remains in the light—I will walk beside you. I always have. I always will. But should you stray into true darkness… you will no longer be able to hear my voice, nor wield my strength."
Xavier felt her pull him upward, hand in hand. The waters around him began to brighten.
Her final words echoed through the rising tide of light:
"So for now... take my hand, Master. And let your blade lend you its strength."
Their hands touched.
A pulse of divine energy lit the deep.
The entire ocean of his mind shimmered, then erupted in radiant light.
And Xavier began to rise.