Tom's world was silent, not the calm, but the kind that came before something unholy. His breath was ragged, his hands still trembled from the truth Azmaik had dropped like a cosmic dagger into his chest.
The Fifth Vessel…. the cause of everything.…
He stood paralyzed in the wasteland, snow melting under his body heat. The air itself seemed to pulse with the revelation.
"No," Tom muttered, shaking his head hard enough to sting his neck. "He's lying. He has to be lying."
But the thought lingered like venom, crawling through his mind.
What if he's not? .…I've been the venom everyone was drinking, thinking its a curry all along?
Azmaik, standing across the shattered field, watched him with a eerie serenity. "You can keep denying it," he said, his voice low, almost compassionate, "but the eagle knows its destination."
His left side began to twist grotesquely, skin bubbling like boiling tar. The transformation spread from his shoulder to his leg, until half his body was no longer human but a writhing, pulsating mass of translucent worms, each one glowing faintly under his skin. They slithered, hissed, and fused together, reshaping into muscles that flexed with nauseating life. His left eye split into six smaller ones, rolling independently, each glowing with a different shade of cold blue.
Then came the hand.
Where his left arm should have been was now a monstrous shape, like a hammer made of living flesh.
The edges shimmered with an anti-existence glow, reality warped around it. Snow, sand, even light itself bent away from that thing as if refusing to exist near it.
Azmaik smiled, and his teeth weren't human anymore. "This.… is one percent of the gift my god has given me."
He swung the arm once. The hammer hit the ground and the very idea of matter vanished. Sand, ice, rock, everything in a ten-meter radius was erased from reality, leaving a perfect, black, depthless void.
Tom stumbled back, heart hammering. He wanted to move, to fight, but his body refused. His mind was stuck in a maze of mess.
You're the Vessel…. you're the cause.…
Azmaik began walking toward him, the hammer dragging behind, leaving trails of absence in the ground.
"Come now, puppet. Let me return you to your master."
A flash of blue and white burst between them. Azmaik's gross hammer hand shifted midair, its trajectory bending away at the last second as though an invisible force redirected it. The ground split, but Tom was untouched.
He blinked. His hands were shaking, not from fear this time, but from something else.
A soft voice spoke in his head.
You're not alone.
Tom's eyes widened. "....You?"
Before him, his Face appeared.
Hawking's Trojan Chair, floating serenely above the shattered ice. The professor-like figure adjusted his spectacles, his tone dry but reassuring.
You think too much, Thomas, his Face said. Existence bends with thought, stop doubting it, or it bends against you.
Tom exhaled, eyes trembling. "He said I'm…. the Vessel of that thing...."
Then make it your strength, the Face interrupted sharply. If fate calls you the weapon, then you choose how to aim.
Tom gritted his teeth, feeling the energy in his veins start to pulse again. That same rotation of his Transparent Realm humming under his skin. He sighed, "We'll fight together then."
The Face smiled faintly, like a proud mentor. As we should.
Azmaik looked at him, mildly amused. "Talking to your reflection again?"
Tom straightened, aura rose, a faint transparent glow spiraling around him. The air began to vibrate under his rotation. His fear turned into focus.
"Yeah," Tom said softly, gripping his weapon tight. "This time.… it's a conversation you'll regret interrupting."
Azmaik's grin widened. "Oh my, come, Vessel of the Sun. Let's see if your light can freeze before mine."
A white void stretched endlessly.
The battlefield between divinity and defiance.
Tom stood with his left hand glowing faintly blue, air swirling around him like invisible blades. Across him, Azmaik's half-worm body squirmed and hissed, every twitch releasing frost and static into the air.
His face was calm, almost smug, the same smile that had haunted Tom's memory since Arlong's death.
The ground shattered under Azmaik's feet, snow exploding upward. The massive hammer-arm came down, distorting the air as gravity itself folded. Tom rotated his hand and a Rotation Field spawned. Space shimmered around him like rippling glass, barely redirecting the erasure field. The hammer missed, but everything behind Tom vanished in a flash of silent black.
The impact didn't make sound. It simply deleted it.
Tom countered bending his knees, he spun, channeling energy through his arm, creating a transparent spiral in the air that shot forward like a turbine made of distortion. Azmaik side-stepped effortlessly, mockingly slow. The spiral tore through the horizon behind him, carving an endless trench through ice and cloud alike.
Azmaik smirked. "Predictable."
He slammed the ground again, this time, his worm-side erupted into tendrils of crystalline ice, forming neural webs across the floor that pulsed with blue electricity. "Do you know what this is, Vessel?" he muttered. "Frozen nerve lines, I can feel your movements before you make them."
Tom didn't respond. His eyes locked, calculating, his body shimmering between solid and translucent.
Azmaik's hammer swung again. The neural ice responded to every little movement Tom made. Azmaik countered him before each movement even began, his strikes landed faster, heavier, erasing pillars of land. Tom dodged barely, each impact annihilating everything in ten meters.
He was on defense, his rotation couldn't block those erasures fully. The pressure was beyond anything he'd fought. He had to think.
Azmaik disappeared. He re-appeared behind Tom instantly, hammer raised high. "You can't rotate what doesn't exist!"
Tom ducked, spun with impossible speed, using the Absorption technique. The hammer connected with his chest but instead of erasing him, it froze. Blue lines glowed along Tom's torso, absorbing the energy like a whirlpool devouring light. The frozen lines cracked, humming violently.
Tom whispered, "Your power…. it's mine now."
He redirected the energy instantly, swinging his arm and firing the absorbed force back. A blast of frozen aurora exploded outward, erasing Azmaik's worms on contact. For a moment, the field was clear, silence.
Then the worms reformed, writhing faster.
Azmaik chuckled. "You are a tough one."
He pressed two fingers to his temple. The neural ice across the battlefield shimmered, rearranging into a perfect geometric grid. A network of translucent strings connected Azmaik's mind to the entire landscape.
He raised his hammer all at once, every line surged. Ice structures rose from the ground. Towers, spikes, beasts made of crystalline minds roaring, their bodies wired directly to Azmaik's thoughts.
Tom dashed forward as each beast lunged. He rotated his steps, shifting midair with teleport-like precision, slicing with raw rotation energy, cutting through limbs and torsos. Each beast he destroyed reformed, smarter, faster, reacting to his rhythm.
Azmaik stood behind them, his voice heard,
"Every swing you make, breath you take, I store it in my neural lattice. You're teaching me how to kill you."
Tom's teeth clenched. "Then let's see how much you can learn."
He created five rotational clones. Translucent echoes that mimicked his movements milliseconds apart. Together, they rushed forward, surrounding the beasts, spinning, spiraling. A storm of rotating energy. The battlefield turned into chaos.
Azmaik smirked, "Predictable again." His hammer pulsed, releasing a burst of erasure waves. All clones vanished instantly, including the real Tom.
Azmaik blinked, sensing for energy. The neural grid still pulsed but there was…. static interference. A trick.
He turned. Behind him, the ground cracked open. Tom erupted from underground, body rotating like a drill, absorbing heat, energy, and frost simultaneously. His fist connected to Azmaik's jaw, sending him spinning across the ice.
For the first time, Azmaik's composure cracked.
He slid to a stop, half his worm body vaporized, crystallizing the ground beneath. "Clever," he muttered, spitting ice shards. "You used your absorption to dig beneath my lattice."
Tom didn't reply. He was already moving faster, sharper, rotation flaring white-hot.
They clashed.
Hammer met the fist.
Each blow broke the world apart by editing it. Each time Azmaik struck, reality erased; each time Tom struck, it rewound. The two forces overlapped.
Erasure versus absorption.
Cold versus motion.
Azmaik tried to crush him from above.
Tom leapt, spun midair and caught the hammer-arm, absorbing its kinetic energy, then redirected it back downward. The impact cratered the land, throwing frost and shattered matter in every direction.
Azmaik roared, losing part of his torso. The worms screamed, reforming, but slower now. His human side was panting. "You're not supposed to do this!"
Tom appeared before him instantly, hand glowing with transparent aura. "Neither were you."
Azmaik attacked but Tom shoved aside, grabbed the worm-hand, rotated it, reversing its molecular spin. The hammer-arm twisted, imploding in a silent burst. Azmaik screamed as half of his power was gone.
Tom landed, one knee down, breathing heavy but steady.
Azmaik stumbled, frost leaking from his mouth. His smirk was gone. Only fury remained. He raised his remaining hand. Shards of crystal hovered above, each glowing with erased data of existence. "I will end you with nothingness."
He was gone from sight.
A whisper came from behind Azmaik's ear "You talk too much."
A rotation punch to the back of his neck. The energy didn't just impact — it collapsed. Azmaik's worm form dissolved into blue dust, scattering into the wind.
Azmaik fell to one knee, gasping. His body tried to regenerate, but Tom had already absorbed the rotation field around him, locking his molecules in stasis.
Tom stood above him, silent, eyes burning with exhaustion and grief.
Azmaik looked up, chuckling weakly. "You.… think this is victory?"
Tom's breathing was ragged. "It's not victory," he muttered. "It's survival."
Azmaik's grin returned faintly, a smear of blood on his lip. "So that's it? I challenge you to survive.… till the sun rises."