The earth seemed to obey a different logic here: magic flowed back to his fingers like an old friend. Around him, everything was oversized — trees with millennial trunks whose leaves formed the shade of a roof, flowers whose scent pounded against his temples, and insects as big as dogs buzzing in the dense air. He felt tiny, and for the first time since the Pit, alive.
With a mechanical gesture, Sakolomi brought his hand to his stomach, where the creature's blade had pierced him. His palm met skin: nothing. No wound, no scar — as if the piercing had been only a dream.
"Strange," he muttered, perplexed.
The ground vibrated beneath his feet. In a breath, the lushness around them withered: leaves blackened, petals faded to ashes, the meadow cracked and turned into a scorched desert. Sakolomi raised his eyes, weary:
"It's not over, huh?"
A low voice, weak but sharp, burst out behind him:
"Hey, you."
He turned around. The creature from the shower — now perfectly visible — stood there. Skin nearly lunar pale, black hair floating like ink, eyes too vividly red. Its upper body was naked to the waist, where black fur began, then a long dark tail undulated behind it.
Sakolomi scrutinized it, wary.
"Alright. You're going to tell me who you are, now?"
The creature tilted its head, and its gaze hardened, defiant.
"You don't need to be told. You already know."
Sakolomi frowned.
"What?"
Without further warning, the creature lunged. He responded reflexively — their fists collided and the shock carved the air. A titanic wave surged, shattering rock monoliths, blasting hills on the horizon. The impact threw them in opposite directions.
Sakolomi stood up, panting.
"I don't know who you are, but I won't let you beat me," he spat.
The creature did not reply with words. It came back, springing like a coil, and the exchange of blows restarted — fast, precise, no frills. It anticipated his moves: every feint, every hook, every opening Sakolomi used seemed already known to it. It countered, adapted, returned with mechanical fluidity. It was like fighting a trained reflection.
Yet Sakolomi found a flaw — a moment, a breath, a slight lag — and struck. The creature immediately annulled this gap, imposing a new constraint; Sakolomi replied, and the other dissolved it just as quickly. Each attempt was met by strategy opposing and neutralizing: their duel was a contest of cancellations where techniques and counter-techniques were born and died in a heartbeat.
Sakolomi stepped back briefly, a defiant smile on his lips:
"Let's see what you can do against this."
He snapped his fingers. Saiko's Chaos emerged beneath his feet: a distortion of impossible colors, conscious hues trying to engulf logic. The domain pulsed, a matrix where laws tore apart to give way to organized chaos.
The creature did the same. The same domain, but… inverted? Perfectly symmetrical. The two realities clashed, overlapped and, instead of merging, annihilated each other in a wave of resonance. The shades drained, forms disintegrated, then everything became clear again.
The creature sneered — or rather, a brief sound that could be mistaken for a laugh, icy and sure:
"Everything you can do, I know too. And better still."
Sakolomi felt, for the first time, that this fight was not just physical: it was a confrontation of essences, memory, and identity.
And before this mirror that copied and surpassed, he understood he did not just face an enemy — he faced an overly perfect reflection, an echo forged from the same truths as himself, but with the cruelty of a counterbalance.
The creature vanished into the air.
A breath, and it was already behind him.
Sakolomi pivoted immediately, fist ready to strike — but an icy pressure seized his arm. A black, smooth and supple tail had just coiled around it like a living serpent. He had no time to react: a violent blow shattered his jaw, followed by another to his belly, then a last to his rib. The shock spun him before he crashed to the ground with a dull crash.
Dust rose around him. He remained motionless for a moment, breathing wheezy, bones vibrating under the impact.
Then he slowly lifted his head.
The creature, meanwhile, remained still. Its red gaze fixed on his, devoid of anger, but heavy with calm menace. It could do everything he knew — and worse, it could guess before he even tried.
Sakolomi stood up, mind boiling.
Magic? Useless: it would replicate it instantly.
Close combat? A perfect mirror. Every angle, every impulse, every reflex was known to it.
So how to defeat what was, in a sense, himself — without limits or hesitation?
He took a deep breath, seeking the flaw in this flawless equation.
"I don't know who you are… nor what you want," he whispered. "But I refuse to bend."
He vanished in a flash of light, reappearing in front of the creature, so close their breaths mingled.
It simply looked up at him, unsurprised — as if it had been waiting.
"You will disappear!" shouted Sakolomi.
Divine Killer Man Punch!
The fist fell.
The impact tore the air.
An explosion of light burst, swallowing the world around them. The ground cracked, continents broke apart; mountains floated before collapsing into nascent abysses.
A gigantic scar split the planet in two.
Then, slowly, silence returned.
Dust cleared, revealing the creature — standing, intact. Not even a burn mark. It watched Sakolomi's still extended fist, looking bored.
"Is that all you're capable of?" it said calmly.
Its tone was not mocking, just… tired.
"Let me show you what a real attack is."
Sakolomi then felt a terrible shiver run through his being. His body refused to move — his entire essence had just been paralyzed. It was as if the creature had frozen the very notion of movement inside him.
The mana around it ignited: midnight-blue flames, thick, dense, seeming to howl without sound.
"Myophoric Barrage."
In an instant, it vanished. Then came the blows. Millions, everywhere at once.
Each strike touched not only his flesh, but his very existence: the body shattered, the mind split, the soul tore apart.
Even his story — that invisible thread linking all he had been — was ripped.
All that made Sakolomi shattered into pieces, dispersed in a silent scream, swallowed by nothingness.
When silence fell, nothing remained.
No echo, no trace.
As if he had never existed.
The silence.
A silence so deep it seemed to absorb the light itself.
The creature remained motionless, suspended in this mute void where Sakolomi had been erased.
Then, without warning, a crack streaked reality. A black light burst from it, twisted, trembling — and from that tear, Sakolomi reappeared.
His existence screamed.
Every fragment of what he was — his name, memory, soul, image — fought to become real again.
His body was only chaos of incomplete forms: open muscles, visible bones, flesh trying to regrow over a cracked skeleton. Shreds of skin hastily reformed under burning steam.
He screamed, but that scream had no sound: it vibrated directly in the air, in the foundations of space.
He forced himself to exist against the very law of the creature that had denied him.
Finally, he fell heavily to the ground, on all fours.
The creature simply watched him — without hate, without pity — like a judge contemplating an inevitable sentence.
Sakolomi gasped, forehead drenched with sweat, fingers digging into the earth.
Then, slowly, his skin reformed, his breath stabilized. He had resisted erasure.
But at what cost? His soul itself seemed wavering, his identity flickered weakly like a flame ready to go out.
His eyes lifted toward the creature.
He no longer saw in it a mere opponent, but something fundamentally superior.
This entity did not attack the body — it struck the identity.
Its blows pierced the physical shell to reach what defines us:
the ego, the name, the notion, the concept, the law — all the "I am" of an individual.
This was the work of a meta-conceptual creature, perhaps even beyond the gods and the basic Great Mythical Beings.
A Deviant? Not just a Deviant… something worse.
An entity whose nature rested on the denial itself of existential limits.
Sakolomi stumbled, then stood.
Each movement was a challenge to the very logic of his erasure.
Coming back from such an attack meant forcing his essence to reappear in a world that had ceased to recognize it.
And this resistance consumed everything he was.
"You are too weak…" said the creature in a calm, almost weary voice.
Sakolomi growled.
A red, burning breath burst from him. His mana rose like a solar storm, twisting the air, cracking the ground, piercing the skies.
Clouds split beneath the discharge.
"Shut up!!!"
His roar echoed through the layers of reality.
Then he charged.
A burst of pure rage: punches, energy throws, explosive Killer Punches — Sakolomi struck everywhere at once, like a raging hurricane, a beast made storm.
But the creature, impassive, deflected all.
Its moves were supernaturally precise. It dodged before the blow even existed, countered before the will to hit was born.
Each counterstrike made Sakolomi's structure vibrate, threatening his identity again, as if with every impact a part of him disappeared once more.
Their fight was no longer a physical battle.
It was a war between definitions.
And Sakolomi, despite his unshakable will, felt his essence crumble with each moment — his entire being spent just to remain there.