Nero returned to the battlefield alone, just as she'd promised back at the apartment. Ayane had been visibly worried, but after Nero's reassurances and Sosei's gentle nudging, she'd reluctantly left with the others.
Looking up, Nero saw the pitch-black expanse where Dante and Mundus clashed, pulsing like a beating heart. The fight was still raging—wild surges of demonic energy rippled out from the void.
Getting the girls to leave had been almost too easy, and Nero couldn't help but second-guess herself. Would Aes really use them as a backup plan? Or was its scheme to wait for Nero and Dante to wear themselves out fighting Nanna, hoping for a mutual KO? Honestly, Nero half-hoped that was the case, but deep down, she knew it was unlikely.
Under the blood-red moon, Nero couldn't spot the figure masquerading as Shoko Toyokawa. But this dream-city existed within Nanna's very being, and Nero knew it was watching.
If it wanted, it could appear at any moment.
Dressed for battle, Nero slowly drew her blade. The polished steel reflected the crimson moonlight. She took a deep breath, raised the sword to her brow in a ready stance, and closed her eyes.
If Nanna wouldn't show itself, Nero would make it. Simple as that.
This dream was a piece of Nanna—did it really think Nero couldn't hurt it? All she had to do was "sever the world." Last time, she'd failed. But a week had passed, and with Dante here kicking ass for so long, if Nanna thought she hadn't grown, it was in for a rude awakening.
Red Queen greedily drank in Nero's demonic energy, its blade glowing brighter with each pulse.
In that moment, Dante's advice echoed in her ears:
"Focus."
"Absolute focus. I don't know the specifics of that move, but even he had to hold his breath and zero in at a moment like this."
"Remember how it felt when you cut through space—not the air your blade touched, but what lies deeper. Let the edge reach beneath the surface. That's space."
"But that's not the endgame…"
A tangible "aura" began to form around Nero, her surging demonic energy crashing like ocean waves, only to slam against an invisible wall. The trapped power carried her senses, seeping into the world's surface.
But it wasn't enough. In her mind, the "world" morphed into a grid of coordinates—a sensation she'd first grasped when she'd carved open a spatial rift. The "grid" her mind's eye saw was her understanding of "space."
She needed to go deeper, focus harder.
Her energy permeated the grid, weaving through each square, tearing them apart thread by thread. The grid dissolved, and before her closed eyes, the world became a void.
No—wrong.
Clarity struck Nero. This was the "world." She could see it but couldn't comprehend it, so it appeared as nothing.
Just as she'd visualized space as coordinates to cut it, she needed to understand the "world" to sever it.
So, what was the world?
Her aura tightened around her.
Silently, she answered herself: "Everything that flows through time."
The aura contracted further.
A faint, trembling thread appeared in the void—directionless, dimensionless, without beginning or end. It was the thread that pierced the world, binding all things together.
It was "time."
"So, the world runs on time."
Nero's voice echoed in her heart as her aura shrank smaller than her own body. In her perception, her legs vanished.
A distant memory surfaced from her soul—a lesson from school.
"Trace the path of a point on a circle moving through time, and you get a fluctuating wave function."
Her lower body faded.
If time was a straight line and a circle rolled along it, a point on that circle would trace a wavy curve.
Curves were waves; waves were strings; strings were the essence of the world.
If everything in the world was that circle, and every point on it became a curve through time, the countless overlapping strings would form the entire world.
And if it got more complex? A single circle couldn't capture the whole world, so its waves weren't that simple. Reverse the world's "strings" into circles, and you'd get a galactic structure—countless smaller circles orbiting a larger one, nested and spinning.
Finally, Nero lost all sense of herself. In her mind, only a gleaming blade remained.
But she saw it—a tiny "circle" moving along the cosmic orbit.
Then that circle unraveled through intricate equations, transforming into countless tangled "threads" stretching forward through time.
Nero couldn't comprehend the entire world, nor did she need to.
All she had to do was "cut." Red Queen would handle the rest.
In a state where even "self" ceased to exist, the cold blade fell silently.
It severed the knotted threads without a sound.
In the stillness, Nero awoke.
She stood frozen, mid-step, her blade extended in a slashing pose. Where her sword pointed, a festering black wound tore open in the air, its edges like shattered glass, oozing decay. Moments later, blood gushed forth.
This was "Dimension Slash: Absolute."
"—!!!"
A scream—inhuman, anguished, and piercing—erupted from the blood moon. Before Nero could swing again, the wound sealed shut under a surge of demonic energy. But a dark bloodstain lingered in the air, dripping crimson at her feet.
The air warped, and Nanna appeared, clutching its side. Blood seeped through its lace-gloved fingers, staining its black gown with a rust-red blotch.
"How dare you!" it snarled, its bloodshot eyes flickering with rage.
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