The silence between them shattered once again.
Karma moved first finishing the drama. Blurring into a streak of crimson and shadow. His coat split the air with a crack, the ground beneath him splintering as he vanished and reappeared right in front of Tom.
Tom barely lifted his arms before Karma's knee drove into his gut, sending him sliding across the sand. The ground burned beneath his boots, his ribs screaming. But before he could breathe again, Karma was already there. Palms glowing brightly, energy pulsing and ready to burst.
Tom ducked, the blast grazing his face and carving a deep trench in the battlefield behind him.
Their eyes met mid-motion.
Karma unleashed a flurry. Slashes of red lightning, fangs of blood tearing from his arms, whips snapping out from his coat like sentient serpents. Each move flowed into the next with inhuman precision, too fast for even a trained Hunter to read.
Tom blocked with his spiral blades, invisible energy grinding against Karma's crimson aura. Sparks danced in the darkness. Their movements blurred into every strike, deflect, counter, retreat.
Tom parried one blow, ducked another but Karma didn't stop. His combos were fluid, merciless. A kick to the ribs, an elbow to the jaw, followed by a claw that tore through Tom's shoulder like it was paper. Blood splattered across the ground.
Karma grabbed him by the collar and threw him, slamming him into a pile of broken skeleton armor. "You fight well," he said darkly, "but fighting well means nothing if your heart is already losing."
Tom coughed, forcing himself up. His arm shook, but his eyes burned hotter. "Wait, once I rip your heart off."
He spun his spiral blades, two invisible discs forming around his hands. "Let's see how much blood you've got left to waste."
Karma smiled and vanished.
Tom turned, but too late. A punch from behind sent him crashing into a wall of dust. Karma followed with an uppercut of condensed blood energy, sending Tom spiraling upward. Midair, Karma formed a sphere of red light in his palm and hurled it.
Tom crossed his arms to block—impact exploded like thunder. He was thrown back, crashing into the bodies of vampires and skeletons.
Tom grits his terth wiping the blood from his lip. Around him, the undead began to stir. Those same skeletons and vampires Karma had summoned now twitching like broken puppets. Tom extended his hand and thin, spiraling threads of force wrapped around them.
"I don't need an army," Tom said, his voice low and sharp. "I just need a bait."
He snapped his fingers.
The undead lunged forward not at him but at Karma. The vampire lord turned his head in brief surprise as his own soldiers clawed and tore at him, screeching with madness.
Tom dashed in, weaving through the chaos, spinning invisible blades slicing through anything in reach. Skeletons shattered, vampires exploded into dust. Every kill tightened the spiral's power around his arms.
Tom used the recoil to flip behind him, kicking him into the mob of undead. The battlefield turned into a blur of black and red. Tom's spiral blades cut through them all, creating a raij of fragmented bone and shredded wings.
Karma burst out of the mess, furious as his crimson aura igniting again, brighter, stronger.
Karma smiled cruelly. "Good," he said, voice vibrating through the battlefield. "Now fight me for real."
Tom raised his head slowly, smirking despite his pain. "Was planning to."
Karma didn't rush this time. He walked toward Tom in wrath, his boots leaving a trail of scorched sand. His crimson aura pulsed, the ground fracturing beneath every step.
Tom took a low and defensive stance. His mind worked fast, counting timing, patterns, distances. He knew brute force wouldn't win. Karma was faster, stronger, sharper. He needed to outthink him.
Karma reappeaed behind. Tom sidestepped, then twisted to counter. His blade grazed Karma's cheek. For a second, it looked like a clean move but Karma's smile proved it unclear.
He had baited him.
Karma vanished again and reappeared behind him with a elbow crashing into Tom's spine. The force lifted Tom off his feet, sending him tumbling through air before slamming into the dirt.
Tom groaned, trying to rise. Karma was already above him, bringing his heel down. Tom rolled aside barely in time, the ground explode beside him.
"Smart," Karma mocked, "but predictable."
Tom clenched his jaw, scanning for an opening. He feigned a stumble, then hurled his spiral blades in opposite directions. One straight, one curved from behind.
Karma blocked the front one effortlessly, but the back one whirled from his blind spot until he turned, caught it with his bare hand, and crushed it into shards.
Tom's eyes was shocked seeing this.
Karma slammed his knee into Tom's ribs again, cutting him off. Tom's breath burst out in pain.
Karma grabbed him by the throat and lifted him effortlessly. "You're clever, Hunter. Cleverness only works on equals." His grip tightened. "You are not."
Tom jammed a dagger into Karma's arm. The vampire hissed but didn't flinch, just threw Tom like a rag doll.
Tom crashed on a floor, breaking it in half. He tried to rise again, muscles trembling. His mind thought hard for strategy, anything but Karma gave him no room to breathe.
The vampire lord dashed in again, a red streak slicing through the darkness. Tom swung desperately, but Karma caught his wrist mid-swing, twisted it, and kneed his gut again. Blood sprayed from Tom's nose.
Karma's follow-up combo was merciless. A spinning kick, a palm strike, a claw slash across his chest. All hitting in perfect way. Tom barely blocked any of them, his body was lifeless with pain.
Tom ducked, tried to roll out, summoned an illusion of himself to distract but Karma cut through the fake instantly, already predicting it.
"You think cheap tricks will save you?" Karma said coldly. "I've fought minds sharper than yours, hearts harder than yours. You're not special, lad."
Tom barely heard it, his body barely responding. He used the remains of a broken vampire as a shield but Karma's next punch shattered both corpse and defense, hitting him full in the face.
Tom stumbled back, vision blurring, taste of iron flooding his tongue.
He tried one last move using the spiral energy to pull debris and corpses toward Karma, then detonated it. The explosion lit up the field but when the smoke cleared, Karma stood untouched, his aura having devoured the blast.
Tom fell to one knee, panting, drenched in blood and sweat.
Karma appeared before him, unscathed, expression dark but almost pitying. "A fight can't be won by rage, lad." he said, voice calm again.
Tom lifted his head slowly, eyes still burning through pain.
"Then I'll die fighting it."
Karma smiled faintly, then blurred forward for one last strike, a crimson comet crashed down.
The ground quaked, dust erupted, and Tom's body hit the floor hard.
Tom didn't move, but his hand still twitched, reaching for his broken blade.
Even beaten, he hadn't given up.
He saw his death, it was near....
Tom's eyes slowly faded, his mind spinnined harder.
Out of nowhere,
He was standing barefoot on something flat, white, and endless. The horizon was nowhere, the sky both black and white at once, melting into itself. It was… silent, yet alive.
He looked around, turning slowly. "What the hell.…?"
He felt his surroundings popping up like a balloon.
A man, a quite man was sitting calmly on a chair that looked like it belonged in a professor's office rather than in this void. He had silver hair, thin spectacles, and a white dress shirt with sleeves rolled up. A faint smile rested on his face
It was his own Face.
The realization hit like lightning, it was Hawking's Trojan Chair.
The version of him that represented the power buried inside, the consciousness of his "Face."
The one he'd only ever felt in battle, never seen.
The seated figure adjusted his spectacles and said with calm authority, "Took you long enough."
Tom blinked again, still holding his side as if he could feel phantom pain. "Where.… am I?"
The man didn't look at him right away. He was flipping through a book that had no pages. "Ah, the usual question. You are," he said, closing the empty book, "between thought and death."
Tom frowned. "....Cool, I think so. Very comforting."
He took a step forward. "So, uh.… why are you on a chair?"
The man smiled faintly. "Because standing for long periods damages posture. Unlike you, I care about efficiency."
Tom squinted. "Right. You're me and you're talking about posture. This is officially insane."
"Insanity," the Face said, leaning forward slightly, "is just logic you're not advanced enough to understand."
Tom crossed his arms. "You sound like my high school math teacher. Don't tell me there's homework here too."
The man chuckled softly, the sound was oddly through the empty domain. Then he looked directly into Tom's eyes, his own eyes and the humor vanished.
"Thomas," he said slowly, voice suddenly heavy, "you've unlocked your Transparent Realm."
Tom tilted his head. "My what now?"
"The point where you can see yourself. The real you without any interference from flesh or anything."
Tom blinked again. "So… I just unlocked a philosophical achievement?"
His Face smirked. "Call it that if you want but in simpler terms."
He leaned back, the chair creaking faintly in the nothingness.
"You've reached the place between existence and awareness. The Transparent Realm is where your soul communicates directly with me. Your next evolution begins here."
Tom frowned, still processing. "What am I supposed to do in this…. realm of minimalism?"
The Face chuckled again. "Learn and remember."
Tom's brows furrowed. "Remember what?"
The man's smile faded slightly. He adjusted his spectacle, the lenses flashing white.
"What you've forgotten is about yourself, about why you fight."
The world around them shimmered faintly, and Tom suddenly felt something pulling at him, like invisible strings tightening.
"Wait," he said, stepping forward, "you're being cryptic again!"
The Figure only gave a faint, knowing smile.
"Don't worry," it said softly. "You'll understand when you wake up."
Before Tom could respond, the world folded in on itself white and black melt into one and the chair, the man, and everything else vanished.