The Curator's smile was a slit in the fabric of reality. "Begin."
The word was a guillotine's drop.
Jade exploded forward, his scythe a silver crescent seeking Zero's throat. It was a testing strike, fast and fluid. Zero didn't block. He leaned, letting the wind of the blade's passage whisper past his cheek. His silver-green eyes, already active with perceptive energy, didn't track the scythe, but the micro-tremors in Jade's wrists, the shift of his weight.
"You are all tell," Zero stated, his voice flat.
He used no system skill, only the foundational footwork of the Tenbatsu Ryūdan. He flowed inside the arc of the scythe, Gesshilla still sheathed, and drove a palm heel into Jade's chest. It wasn't meant to maim, but to educate. Jade grunted, skidding back, his eyes wide. The speed was inhuman.
"First lesson," Zero intoned. "A weapon's reach is a liability if you cannot control the space within it."
Enraged, Jade flourished his scythe, God Essence flaring. The air around the blade shimmered. He wasn't just swinging metal; he was swinging a concept, the idea of a cut. He used [Observer's Eye], his crimson irises glowing as they mapped Zero's stance, searching for a flaw.
He found none. Zero was a closed system.
Jade unleashed a combination, each swing faster than the last, a whirlwind of gleaming death. Zero finally drew Gesshilla. The shriek of steel leaving the scabbard was the only sound he made. He met the onslaught not with brute force, but with the principles of Chinmoku. He was the unmoving peak. Gesshilla became a blur of perfect parries, each deflection a resonant clang that sent sparks of divine energy flying into the sand. The crowd, a mosaic of mighty races, fell silent, mesmerized by the defensive perfection.
"You defend well!" Jade shouted, sweat beading on his brow. "But you only react!"
"A mountain does not need to act," Zero replied, his breath even. "It exists. And you are exhausting yourself against it."
Frustration boiled over. Jade feinted high and channeled his essence. The scythe's blade glowed white-hot, and he thrust, unleashing a lance of concentrated solar fire. It was a brilliant, unexpected move.
Zero's eyes narrowed. [Joker].
He didn't dodge. He accepted the fire. As the heat washed over him, his blade glowed with a volatile, neon-orange light. He didn't mimic the fire; he usurped its concept. His counter-strike was a horizontal slash that released a wave of annihilating void-fire that erased Jade's solar lance and sent the reaper stumbling back, his clothes smoldering.
A gasp rippled through the colosseum. The Dragon-folk, who had been lounging with arrogant disinterest, now leaned forward, their slitted eyes wide. A beautiful Titan female, her skin like polished marble and hair like flowing magma, watched with fierce intensity, her gaze dipping appreciatively between the two combatants.
"He didn't counter it… he consumed it," muttered a Titan elder.
Seeing an opening, Jade pushed forward, using [Observer's Eye] to predict Zero's recovery. He was learning, adapting. He faked a stumble, and as Zero took the bait with a thrust, Jade twisted, the scythe's haft hooking Gesshilla's blade. For a glorious second, he had him locked.
"Now I have you!" Jade roared, pouring his will into a point-blank blast of God Essence from his free hand.
Zero didn't struggle. He activated [Implacable Stillness].
The moment he rooted himself, the world changed. A gravitational vortex seized Jade's unleashed energy, twisting and consuming it. The force of his own attack was siphoned, fueling the neon hum of Zero's blade. The backlash of stolen energy slammed into Jade, breaking the lock and sending him flying to crash against the arena wall.
The crowd was on its feet. This was not a fight; it was a clinic.
In the stands, a female from the Divine Realm, her form shimmering with constellations, pointed a delicate finger at Zero. "That one," she declared, her voice like chiming bells. "His soul is a perfect, empty vessel. I claim him for our studies."
Across the arena, an ominous Vampire noblewoman with blood-red eyes and pale, flawless skin watched Jade push himself to his feet, his body bruised but his spirit still burning. A faint, uncharacteristic blush touched her cheeks. "Such delicious, stubborn vitality," she purred to her attendant. "Mark him. I wish to be the one to… convert him when the time is right. His blood will sing."
And in the human section, the girl from the Armory of Beginnings watched Jade with white-knuckled fists, her heart in her throat.
Jade was battered, but not broken. He stood, his chest heaving. "You talk of emptiness… of nothingness," he spat, blood on his lips. "But my resolve isn't based on emptiness! It's based on everything I want to protect! Everything I want to become! That's not a weakness!"
"It is the only weakness that matters," Zero said, beginning his advance. The hunter now. "It is a chain. And chains break."
He launched his final assault. It was Ikazuchi's principle—overwhelming force. Not the single draw-cut, but a relentless, terrifying barrage of slashes, each one carrying the [God-Stealing Edge]. With every clash, Jade felt a part of his own essence being siphoned away, fueling his opponent. His movements grew slower, his scythe heavier.
Despair began to creep in, cold and insidious. He was losing. Badly. Then, a voice, cold and familiar, slithered into the back of his mind.
"Is this all?" whispered Alter Jade. "This is the strength you boasted of? Pathetic."
"No..." Jade muttered, shaking his head, parrying a blow that nearly disarmed him.
"He is right. You are chains. Chains of sentiment. Of hope. Break them. Or be broken."
The words were venom, but they were also a spark. A terrible, dark spark. If sentiment was a chain... then he would break it. He would use the very despair itself as fuel.
He stopped retreating. He planted his feet, his body screaming in protest. His crimson eyes bled to a chaotic, violent purple. "YOU WANT TO SEE RESOLVE?!" he screamed, not just at Zero, but at the voice in his head, at the uncaring Tower, at everything. "I'LL SHOW YOU RESOLVE! OBLITERATE!"
The first wave was a torrent of pure, unrefined annihilation, a storm of dark and light that screeched towards Zero. It was power that dwarfed his previous attempts.
Zero met it with a perfected [Joker], his blade flashing to create a void-maw that consumed the chaos, but it strained him. He was pushed back a step.
Jade didn't stop. He was burning up, his life force kindling. "AGAIN! OBLITERATE!"
The second wave coalesced, denser, hotter, a spiraling drill of nothingness aimed to pierce Zero's core. The air itself screamed as it was unmade. Zero's eyes widened. He couldn't usurp this twice. He crossed his arms, channeling [Implacable Stillness] to its absolute limit, becoming a fortress. The impact was a deafening roar of conflicting energies. The shield held, but cracks of light spiderwebbed around Zero's form. He grunted, the first sound of effort he'd made.
Jade was a conduit of ruinous power, his skin cracking, blood leaking from his eyes. He was destroying himself to win. He saw Zero's strained posture. This was it. He gathered the last dregs of his soul, the final embers of his hope, his fear, his rage, and his love, and forged them into a final, absolute command.
"FOR EVERYTHING! OBLITERATE!"
The third Obliterate was not a wave or a drill. It was a singularity. A black star of absolute finality that swallowed sound, light, and hope. It didn't move towards Zero; it simply began to consume the arena, the space around it ceasing to exist.
The Curator leaned forward, his deadly smile now one of rapturous awe. The Divine Realmling's hand flew to her mouth. The Vampire Countess watched, her blush deepened by a thrill of horrific fascination.
Zero stood before the expanding nothingness. He could not stop it. He could not absorb it. There was only one path left.
He closed his eyes. Emptied his heart. Not of fear, for he felt none. Not of anger, for he held none. He emptied it of the very concept of this conflict. He became the void that existed before the Big Bang, after the heat death of the universe.
He performed the severance. It was the nascent, unconscious manifestation of Mu.
Gesshilla moved. It was not a swing or a thrust. It was a phenomenon. A line of absolute negation intersected the expanding singularity.
The magnificent, terrifying black star did not explode. It did not implode.
It unraveled.
It simply ceased to be, as if the concept of its existence had been edited out of reality. There was no sound, no blast of wind. Just... silence. The threefold Obliterate was gone, leaving behind only the pristine sand and a broken boy.
Jade collapsed. His body was a burnt-out husk, his spirit in absolute ruins. He had given everything—his power, his hope, his very soul—and it had been erased. As the world swam in a haze of ultimate despair, the voice returned, not as a whisper, but as a deafening verdict.
"I told you," Alter Jade's voice echoed in the cathedral of his shattered mind. He stood there in the mental landscape, amidst the ruins of Jade's pride, his expression one of cold, final disappointment. "You are weak. You will always be weak. Because you still believe in something."
The vision vanished, leaving only the crushing, absolute truth of his failure.
Zero stood over him, Gesshilla's tip resting gently on Jade's chest. The arena was a tomb.
"The first and final truth," Zero said, his voice the only sound in the universe. "Is that there is no truth but the edge. Your resolve, your hope, your despair… they were all just stories. My void is the page they were written on."
He looked up, his chilling gaze sweeping the stunned crowd, the powerful beings who now looked upon him not with curiosity, but with a newfound, deep-seated wariness. He had not just won a fight. He had demonstrated an axiom of the cosmos.
The Curator's smile was a thing of pure, deadly beauty. The forge had not just revealed its steel; it had revealed a new law of physics.
One was tempered in absolute victory. The other was shattered into absolute despair.
And the true drama had only just begun.