As they walked deeper into the facility, they eventually reached a single massive door at the end of the corridor.
When they pushed it open, the space beyond expanded into a vast hollow chamber.
At the far end stood Lucius, and beside him Riley sat restrained to a chair, tightly bound with ropes and unable to move.
"Welcome!" Lucius exclaimed, his smile stretched unnaturally wide. "You should be grateful, because you are about to witness perfection itself!" His eyes gleamed with a manic excitement.
To his left stood a gigantic vertical transparent tube filled with a strange glowing liquid. Inside it floated a distorted humanoid figure.
"Look!" Lucius shouted, pointing at it with trembling enthusiasm. "Witness your demise—the absolute being of perfection!" He began laughing, barely containing his madness.
The three were shaken by his unhinged excitement, but Adrian did not hesitate. He rushed straight toward Lucius in an attempt to free Riley.
Before he could reach him, the figure inside the tube shattered the glass with a single flashing kick and vanished. In the next instant it reappeared in front of Adrian, delivering what seemed like a light tap to his chest. The impact was anything but light—Adrian was smashed into the ground with such force that the floor cratered beneath him, cracks racing across the chamber like lightning.
"This being is fused with thousands of clones," Lucius declared gleefully. "From weaklings… to monsters like Ren!" His laughter echoed violently through the hollow space.
Adrian forced himself back to his feet, blood trailing from his lip. The ultimate being calmly raised its hand and formed a gravity sphere far denser than anything they had ever faced. The pressure alone shook the entire facility, triggering tremors that split the floor. When the sphere launched, it tore through the air faster than Adrian could react, striking his shoulder and ripping away flesh as it detonated behind him.
Before he could recover, thousands of gravitational chains materialized throughout the chamber, filling the space like a metallic storm. They lashed toward Adrian from every direction, twisting and snapping with lethal precision. Luca leapt in and sliced through most of them in a blur of steel, but the severed fragments detonated instantly, engulfing both him and Adrian in violent explosions that hurled them across the room.
As the being turned its attention toward the two of them, Anthony saw his chance. He charged directly at Lucius, determined to free Riley no matter the cost. Yet before he could close the distance, the perfected being appeared in his path and drew Cosmic's sword in one seamless motion. A single slash cut across Anthony's torso, the strike so clean and sudden that he staggered back in disbelief before the pain even registered.
Luca roared and lunged at the being, thrusting his blade forward with everything he had left. The being caught the sword effortlessly between two fingers and shattered Luca's momentum with a brutal punch to the abdomen, launching him across the chamber. In the blink of an eye it teleported in front of him midair and kicked him upward, smashing him into the ceiling hard enough to embed his body into the concrete.
It turned calmly, preparing to finish Luca, but Anthony intervened. He unleashed a relentless barrage of strikes, each punch faster and heavier than the last, the air cracking under the pressure of his assault. The being met the onslaught with its palm and delivered a precise one-inch counterpunch that detonated like a cannon blast, sending Anthony crashing violently into the far wall.
Without pause, the being shifted its focus to Adrian. Using Adrian's own portal ability, it created a swirling gateway beneath him, attempting to swallow him whole. Adrian barely managed to teleport away at the last second, reappearing across the chamber in a desperate gasp for breath.
Throughout the entire battle, the perfected being had not suffered even the slightest damage. The three of them, however, were battered, bleeding, and struggling to remain standing.
The being summoned a blade from thin air and vanished again. It reappeared before Adrian and unleashed a series of merciless slashes that carved through him before he could defend himself. A final kick sent Adrian flying through the middle section of the facility, smashing through multiple walls before collapsing into the debris.
Then it faced Anthony. Teleporting directly in front of him, it raised the sword and unleashed Kenji's ultimate technique—Universe-Ending Slash. The attack tore through the chamber in a blinding arc of destruction, and Anthony could not evade it. The strike cleaved through him with catastrophic force, nearly killing him instantly.
The being repeated the technique again and again, each slash tearing apart the structure of the room itself. Walls crumbled, the ceiling split, and the chamber began to collapse under the overwhelming power.
When the dust finally settled, Anthony lay completely still.