What most surprised the spectators was that Rey hadn't even needed to summon a book, a casting circle, or recite a chant for more than five minutes. The black-haired youth had relied only on a shortened pronunciation and, without suffering consequences, had been able to gather the amount of energy necessary to perform a summoning.
A cold sweat broke out across the foreheads of those who witnessed that casting technique with their own eyes. It was something they should be worried about—especially when the pack of wolves shot straight toward Gengér, which still hadn't even fallen through the air to crash onto its enemy.
Rey understood it was dangerous to summon beasts that weren't under total control to fight an enemy surrounded by targets that had to be protected—especially when his body and inner chakras weren't in the best condition. But following the advice of his previous master, he cast the most precise spell he knew, using the angle of the beast's leap. If something went wrong, he could survive the curse of the conjuration if it came with side effects, and the five individuals would have a chance not to be intercepted directly.
The pack of black beasts launched like bullets into Gengér, slamming into it one after another until they finally vanished in a violent explosion that quickly tore apart the giant creature's entire lower half and legs—before it even managed to touch the ground.
Akai and the other four shielded their bodies from the violent lashes of wind caused by the shockwaves of that fantastical event. Though they tried to keep their eyes open, the sand and dust rising from the ground made it impossible.
With no legs or foothold, the creature struck the wall and ricocheted the other way, finally crashing down like a massive rock onto the floor.
Standing on the battlefield, the radiation poison did its work and forced the "fallen from the sky" to cancel the conjuration so he could cover his mouth, trying to hold back—or swallow—what wanted to surge up from his stomach. He drew a deep breath, locked his abdomen in place, and lifted his hand again, aware he couldn't show he was at a disadvantage.
Through the smoke filling the air, even from outside the coliseum they could see the beast regenerating quickly, because it was still using the reserves of hatred and bad feelings generated by the three individuals it had devoured earlier. In a matter of seconds, the armored creature regrew the legs that had been torn away, increased its size by a portion, and its pincers sharpened even more.
Even so, the words rang out again and the limits of reality shattered into pieces for the second time under another spell.
"Dark dragon attack," Rey announced, then thought, This is the moment. It can't move properly and I don't have to worry about hitting Akai's group anymore… if I keep dragging this out, I'll only wear myself down more in the fight.
From the palm of his hand, a great black bolt materialized with a dragon's head—daggers buried in its eyes, several teeth missing, and a tongue-less mouth. The black-scaled creature screamed with all its strength, sounding like hatred set ablaze by pain, and shot forward like a violent, throbbing bolt of vengeance toward where he had aimed it.
The armored monster, mid-recovery, sensed a threatening energy rushing at it. With only four of its legs regenerated, it managed to leap aside.
The dragon kept advancing with its mouth open and slammed into the wall, then climbed up it, intent on leaving that place and attacking the humans sitting in the stands—but a barrier stopped it.
Unable to go any farther, it thrashed as if its life depended on it. The summoned beast loosed screams of hatred and detonated right there, directly in front of the spectators, unable to fulfill the personal purpose for which it had been invoked.
They hadn't just witnessed one conjuration, but two in a row. The spectators felt a bitter taste in their mouths, spilled the contents of their cups onto the ground, and stood. Their bones trembled and their hearts stopped—afraid to accept as reality the idea that had flashed through their minds.
This time, as a consequence of using his energy, Rey couldn't avoid spitting blood that hit the ground as he used his senses to locate his vanished opponent. Without needing to turn around, he lifted his head as high as he could until his gaze met Gengér's.
With its pincers, the monster blocked the young man's exits while striking from above with its tail. The sharp stinger, even larger than before, threatened to skewer Rey—but it was only a distraction, because the beast's left pincer ended up pinning his small neck against the ground until it severed it in two.
"You may be small, but before my pincers you'll die like a giant," the beast declared in the ancient language. "My actions are shameful, but if I attacked you head-on, I'm sure you'd end my life. I was clever, and even though you aren't my natural target, you're blocking the path to reach it—and for that reason, your life is sentenced. Don't worry, I'll profit from your pitiful loss."
"Does it surprise me that you stoop to speaking to me?" Rey said, leaving Gengér thoroughly baffled—so much so that the beast leaned forward to see whether the head it had decapitated belonged to the one still speaking. "Like me, there was a time you walked on two feet, when skin covered your bones. Yes—about beings like you I've read countless legends and many stories."
Using its pincers, the beast picked up the small one's head and, as soon as it could, devoured it along with his body. It couldn't waste time; if the decapitated body was still alive, then the best option was to digest it.
"You were once an inhabitant of the nine heavens," Rey continued, a little uncomfortable at having forgotten the contents of many books. "Now you're nothing but an enormous mass of hatred—the lost shadow of a being tired of life, resigned to watching people do evil."
"I'm not sorry for my life," Gengér replied as it tried to hide its fear and looked everywhere for the one speaking to it. "I know that someday my end will come, when I die—or when I'll dwell in darkness alongside others like me."
Rey, trying to help it, said, "In my hands could be the solution to your problem."
"I don't need you to help me. I'm on my path—the one I consider correct—and it is my destiny to die before reaching the end." As it spoke, the beast thought: To the sides? No. In my blind spot? Neither. Underground? Impossible. Up there!!!
"Who am I to take it upon myself to act and decide what would be best for others?" Rey said as he spread his immense black wings. "But one thing is certain: doing nothing will never be the solution."
The beast's sharp stinger—having just located its enemy's position—pulled back and struck again with ferocity.
Rey dodged the stinger and guided it with his hands so it drove straight into the beast's head. When the stinger's attack force was greater than the shell's defense, the result was obvious. Followed by a hard kick, the "fallen from the sky" snapped the tail, then turned his hands into the heads of black wolves. The summoned animals manifested and bit down hard on the beast's pincer and legs—then exploded.
After it stopped hearing its unsettling roar, and as it shakily rose from the ground once more, Gengér tried to launch its last attack—but Rey raised a hand toward the scorpion with no legs and no tail and announced his move:
"Elemental mark, wind explosion," and he snapped his fingers. Then it could be said that all the air in the place, along with the sand, smoke, and dust, was compressed inside Gengér through the cracks in its shell, until that concentration could no longer remain stable and finally detonated.
The enormous beast felt its insides being blasted apart to the outside. Its eyes shot out; its liquefied brain seeped through the almost tiny hole left by the blow of its stinger; its intestines spilled out through its rectal opening; while muscle, flesh, and blood escaped through where its missing limbs had been. Stripped of anything that could have filled that shell, Gengér collapsed to the ground as what it was: an empty, lifeless husk.
Rey frowned at the explosion of viscera, fluids, and the remnants of devoured bodies. It's important to mention that if the spell had gone wrong, what he had just seen could have happened to him. Spattered with guts and blood, he stepped in front of his fallen enemy and extended his hand until he touched it with the tips of his fingers.
As if that weren't enough, no one dared to speak anymore. The announcer couldn't even say what was happening during the few minutes the fight had lasted.
From his throne, Gilgamesh leaned forward, understood the purpose behind the "fallen from the sky"'s inexplicable behavior, smiled, and exclaimed:
"Incredible. How is it possible? Could it be there's still more for me to discover about you, my precious friend?"
Before the spectators' eyes, the one standing over the husk—who looked far too calm to be called furious—stripped away with the tips of his fingers the color that had been part of the beast.
"When you don't know how to make a decision, you have the right to do what you believe is correct," Rey whispered, after being stained by a substance that seemed to shrink between his hands.
The exposed essence consumed itself, because it didn't belong in that environment. As soon as the monster's shell was left without what made it what it was, a strange petrification process began.
Piece by piece, the body was overtaken by a solid, lifeless color that resembled stone. With little delay, that solidity brought with it the chaotic spread of cracks—fissures that began to open pathways through the hardened stone—after which a splitting sound was heard. One by one, loose fragments fell to the ground as if expelled by that petrified body. Crumbled, with Gengér's pieces scattered across the floor, an angel was now reborn before human eyes—eyes that couldn't remain in their seats.
"Now I'm confused!" said the angel, whose voice echoed through the entire place as he looked at hands he barely remembered having. "You who have returned me to my original form must take responsibility for me, because I don't know what to do from now on, my lord."
"Fight. That was always the answer," Rey said. "Seek to impose yourself on the world with strength—fight, and keep being that tireless warrior you always were. In a sense, everything around you kills you little by little, and fighting is more lethal—even though it makes you feel more alive. I want you, using this as an instrument, to show the way to those who are mistaken until death finds you—or you become a Gengér again."
The angel, faced with the incoherence of continuing to do something that didn't work, understood what the proposition implied and added:
"My lord, I will serve you now that I live again because of you. In your name I intend to fight and show the path to those who are lost. That will be my task."
"But not in this world. I hope we meet again."
As soon as Rey finished his words, the celestial entity slowly faded into the air, leaving only a ray of warm light that seemed to burn the souls of many of the humans present.
"It can't be him," some commented. "He really looks like him, but it's impossible that one of the three judges of hell is in Belldewar," others said. "Didn't you see him summoning the same dragon that almost killed Yacer?" At that question, a sepulchral silence fell. "It's like he set that monster free."
"Is that true? Are the Gengér fallen angels? Is that boy real or not? Maybe the end of all this is a spectacle created by Gilgamesh."
Despite the spectators' comments, Rey lifted his gaze and headed toward the five surviving youths. When he was close enough, he extended his hand to show peaceful intent, but those present backed away and shook their heads.
Rey stopped to take in the scene and saw that Yicel had died. Akai clenched his teeth. Elhoy furrowed his brow. Merlot tightened his fists hard, and Pisínoe wept in lamentation.
"I'm glad I didn't swear loyalty to a heartless demon—thank you for letting us live a little longer… especially her, because without your blessing I never would've heard her last words," Akai said with a broken smile, almost dragging himself across the ground, from all the broken bones he had in his body.
"That thing was much stronger than we thought," Elhoy said.
"I don't think we can keep following at your side—especially if it makes us slow your progress. Gilgamesh was right…" Merlot said.
"I hope they rot in hell!" Pisínoe screamed, crying as she held Yicel's body. Then she stared toward where the traitors' dismembered bodies lay. "Damn you, cowards. That's why humans are such a rotten race."
"Fallen from the sky, maybe this is selfish of me," Akai said, "but please—never stop helping any human who needs you and promises you their loyalty."
Rey didn't want to understand the bad omens that were rising inside him, triggered by the words of Akai's group. The moment he stepped forward, he had to cover himself, because the five heads of the people there burst into a violent explosion of bone, flesh, and blood. The collars around their necks were responsible for the detonation.
With his entire body smeared in even more blood, Rey looked at his outstretched hands and could see between his fingers the image of the decapitated bodies and the whole arena bathed red by the human remains strewn across the place.
The host, who reappeared on all the screens, added, "We already have the winner of the match. Usually, the chosen one doesn't defend the Gengér's food—he kills it first, to prevent this endemic monster from growing stronger in a world full of wandering cities. But it seems our champion, besides having great power in his hands, also fancies himself a hero."
"Shut up, you reckless idiot!" someone in the crowd shouted at the host, who hadn't said a word the entire time and, at the worst possible moment, was saying something that wouldn't lead to anything good.
Still not moving, as if trying to process what had truly happened, Rey closed his eyes and felt tears of blood run beneath his lids. From his nose, ears, and mouth, the red liquid—evidence of his body's deterioration as a lethal illness advanced—also showed itself to the world.
"Yes, I'm a sorcerer," Rey told himself, trying to contain what he felt inside. "My opponent knows that—he always has. By disturbing my feelings he makes me unable to cast. Every time, I fall deeper and deeper into this trap, so deep that maybe I can't escape."
From outside the coliseum, the spectators could clearly see how the contender who had just performed a series of miracles was making energy surge through his entire body—preparing his muscles and increasing the size of his physical build. The fallen from the sky made two long blades appear as his forearms, very familiar to humanity, mounted on a mechanism that made them extend and rotate one hundred eighty degrees.
The crowd did nothing but shake their heads and cover their mouths. If it had been up to them, in that moment every last one of them would have thrown themselves to the ground to beg forgiveness for their lives. Some were already losing their hair, others were urinating in their seats, and the rest looked as if they'd lost their souls. The one thing they all shared was fear. As they denied it with their gestures, Rey's face appeared on the screens—he opened his eyes and revealed that his contact lenses had melted and no longer covered his eyes' original color.
Bloodshot eyes flashed with two yellow gleams, and panic spread through the spectators watching the spectacle live.
"Damn madman—low, vile bastard!" some members of the crowd screamed at Gilgamesh, who clapped, amused. "How dare you do this to us!" Most of them tried to evacuate the facility as fast as possible, because they knew how dangerous the situation had become.
It was so critical it would drive anyone insane just thinking through the implications. Just the thought that the young man might be the very "apocalypse" and "hero-slayer," the former judge and creator of hell—a vampire-and-werewolf hybrid, a sorcerer capable of cursing the planet and everyone present—pushed a few to take their own lives.
Like thunder, in an instant the stadium alarms blared and declared a state of emergency. From within the walls along the sides of the arena, hundreds of guards trained to handle that emergency poured out. In seconds, the declared threat was surrounded—prompting two more yellow flashes.
The subjugators, aggressively aiming their weapons and shouting commands to follow, paid no attention to the two sparks. And when the target didn't comply, they pulled their triggers and opened fire point-blank. Every shotgun blast resulted in the bearer and the weapon turning into a mere explosion of dust and blood. Even those who didn't pull the trigger out of fear realized there was nothing they could do to save themselves. Terrified, they looked at their hands and felt a cold sensation like a sandcastle collapsing across their skin.
"What's happening? I feel cold," were the last words someone said.
Death was inevitable for the rest, who within seconds succumbed to what the blessing represented: walking in darkness through pain in order to reach the bliss of temporary rest.
Rey breathed to better settle the energy flowing through his body, and as soon as he managed to clear around his chakras, he generated a current of wind strong enough that the entire place—previously yellow with gray walls—turned blood-red.
"My lord, I fear to say such power exceeds my calculations. The target is still under the control of his feelings and is able to cast without suffering side effects," Mikk said loudly, loud enough not to tremble or show fear.
"This doesn't look like it's going down a good path," Paul added nervously after watching an elite unit of subjugators under his command get wiped out in a matter of seconds.
In contrast, Gilgamesh—reckless and arrogant as never before—rose from the throne where he'd been seated and stripped off all his clothes.
"Everything is simply perfect, and if having feelings for inferior beings means I have to hold back, it wouldn't be fun."
The one who, with the mere flicker of two sparks, had changed the place's color and annihilated a great number of subjugators lifted his gaze to where Gilgamesh stood and said:
"It's not that you're evil—but you are reckless," Rey asserted, surrendering to the emotions he felt. Then angry words spilled into the air and he pronounced, "Swords of a thousand legions."
Though the conjuration manifested successfully for a third time, Rey's body received numerous cuts across his skin. The damage came from the side effect of letting his emotions influence the pronunciation—more precisely, his body suffered one cut for every sword invoked in the present. However, he had calculated the consequences of making that mistake while casting. As he bled from everywhere, nearly flayed, his regenerative abilities surged to their maximum and ensured a near-instant recovery, while tripling the toughness of the layers of his new skin.
As the small body's metamorphosis took place, the walls surrounding the arena finally lost all the red that had painted them and gave way to the most chilling sound human ears had ever heard: the rising screech of sharp metals grinding against a wall solid enough to withstand most of the assault without collapsing, climbing upward until it struck the invisible barrier separating the audience from the fighters inside the arena.
Rey heard White scream in pain—she had transformed into the sharp eyes to protect her partner's body from a lethal cut, but the thousands of blows began to break her edge and weaken her.
Among the audience were those who became trapped and were forced to curl up on the floor with their hands over their ears, their eardrums having burst from the noise until they bled. Some managed to lift their heads and watch the defensive barrier begin to give way, just as the walls did, until it finally shattered.
Gilgamesh and his subordinates watched as hundreds of human bodies ended up dismembered by an explosion of glass fragments propelled at high speed. Hundreds dead, triple that number wounded, and thousands of desperate individuals—those were the figures that began to climb across the entire place.
After showing murderous intent and a burning fire in his sharp, bloodshot eyes, the "fallen from the sky" sheathed his weapons, crouched, and after packing all his strength into his legs like a powerful spring, leapt toward the throne with the intention of striking the one still smiling as if he had everything under control.
Suddenly, an unknown force made itself present in the middle of the arena. The dust particles and the thick blood mist were pinned to the ground in a single second. That same force acted on the attacker's body with the sole intention of preventing him from jumping so high—or at least slowing his actions.
Gilgamesh, euphoric at seeing the look in his long-awaited soulmate, felt as if life itself had possessed him once again. As the champion of so many undefeated fights, he leapt toward the young man and was caught in the effects of Paul's elemental control, as Paul raised his hands to manipulate the area's gravity.
Compared to the fallen from the sky, even under the same circumstances, the sovereign of all humans surpassed the white-eyed youth in speed and power, the latter seeming suspended in the air.
At the perfect distance, Gilgamesh didn't even consider measuring his strength, and with all his energy concentrated, he drove a punch into the young man's face—one the young man couldn't do anything to avoid.
Rey suffered incalculable damage to his skull and spine. Then he was hurled at great speed into the ground, and the impact caused considerable injuries as well.
The difference in power had already been decided. Rey wasn't only writhing on the ground from the pain—he was also confused because his body wouldn't respond.
"First round!" Gilgamesh shouted, waiting for the cameras to keep rolling, because his intention was to broadcast to the entire galaxy what was happening.
"Control your energy and you'll control your body, but as a sorcerer you must never use more than the exact amount to win." Heroclades's words thundered in Rey's head, in a situation that felt like a dead-end alley.
With a blow of his hands, Gilgamesh landed on Rey. He hit him as hard as he could in the stomach, with enough force to split a ship in two—no matter how large and robust it was.
Anticipating a second attack from his enemy, Rey had created a copy of himself just before impacting the ground, in order to move within the dust kicked up by the blow he'd received.
Despite the gravity that permanently reigned over the area, Gilgamesh rose from the ground and, cracking the bones in his neck, began to do small hops in place—agile and fast like a well-trained boxer, ready to fight.
Rey managed to further adjust his energy use and body size based on the force he estimated was necessary to win. Realizing he was slow, he decided to stand before his enemy and made himself visible amid the fast-falling rain of sand. It wasn't enough—he didn't even have time to react to the next blow.
Gilgamesh moved with the speed of lightning and delivered two devastating strikes to his opponent. With a hook from his right hand, he tore Rey's jaw off, and with the second blow he destroyed his opponent's chest cavity.
Then, lifting his hands into the air and letting out an intimidating roar, the sovereign of all humans shouted:
"Second round!"
Rey slammed into the wall on the opposite side of the coliseum, leaving him embedded in the structure.
"My tongue," Rey told himself, a little disappointed. "No matter how hard I try, I can't feel my jaw. After that last hit, all my bones sound like shattered glass. I'm glad I can't feel pain… Mm? I can't forget these are the limits of the invulnerability I was granted after bathing in the River Styx. My skin doesn't give so easily, but my bones don't react the same way. I have to bury my feelings deeper and not worry about the past or the future. The fight is barely beginning, and with this illness poisoning my body I have to find the most efficient way to win, because if I don't, I'll only speed up the countdown on the time I have left. I still don't fully know what my enemy is capable of, even if my calculations about his strength are correct. He wraps himself in a familiar strength… but that isn't what matters. Since I jumped, someone has been making my movements impossible."
Rey's eyes looked upward, and though his gaze was clouded by blood and partly gone, he managed to make someone out—an imposing man with his hand extended, arms thrust forward as if concentrating on something, lips repeating a kind of mantra.
"After all," Rey thought as he watched one of his shadows appear behind the man, locking his movements, "among the subjugators there are those who can invoke elemental sorcery—but it seems they still don't know what a true spell of space and time is."
Irritated to see that his long-awaited soulmate's gaze didn't share the happiness he felt and had turned toward someone else, Gilgamesh clenched his fist until it cracked. The god and sovereign of humans made the veins in his arm bulge with fury. Needing attention and harboring no regard for others' lives, Gilgamesh unleashed an attack even more powerful and destructive than the combination of the previous three.
In a thousandth of a second—just before taking Gilgamesh's blow—Rey performed a conditional casting with a snap of his fingers. That art had been invented by him, combining aura and sorcery. Because his advanced control of Black Aura allowed him to create as many copies of himself as he wanted, along with whatever energy he wished to generate, Rey could swap places with his other halves. Beyond that, if he added a "Special Forces Control" spell, he could swap places with something he or one of his copies was touching without needing to verbalize—he only had to fulfill the conditions he'd set beforehand.
After the punch he threw, Gilgamesh managed to shatter the thick column, even though it was made of a material only gods could work. He could even have made his subordinate Paul's body crash through the structure and reach the other side where the dungeons were.
When he appeared on the dais, half of Rey's body was missing. His legs had paid the price, because the snap of his fingers hadn't had the required frequency when he performed the conditional casting. Even so, fangs bared and overflowing with energy, the fallen from the sky backhanded with his hand and tore Mikk's head off. The decapitated human body, still standing, released a powerful jet of blood that reached the mouth of the white-eyed youth.
After fully recovering his missing limbs—along with every fracture and tear in his body—Rey let his third enemy's body fall to the ground.
Gilgamesh knew that after throwing his powerful punch, the gravity pressing down on the area had disappeared. In his knuckles he'd felt himself crushing a weak body. He noticed his most cherished friend was looking elsewhere, and it dawned on him that perhaps Paul was the one who had died to the blow of his fist.
The sovereign of humans was annoyed, brow deeply furrowed. He turned and saw how the young vampire had recovered by taking blood from his subordinate. Paul and Mikk were dead—something that would undoubtedly bring him problems in the future regarding the administration of his empire—but what mattered most to him was that his soulmate was resorting to tricks and stratagems to fight.
Gilgamesh felt as though he were living an epic story again. No matter what world he was in, as a hero he had the ability to overcome any problem as long as he could survive what fate had in store. People—followers and subordinates—weren't worth worrying about, because they always proved weak: secondary characters in a poorly told tale.
Those people were there for the sole purpose of teaching a lesson. But a friend was different. To Gilgamesh, a friend was like a guide—someone who would accompany him through eternity without giving up or dying along the way. Both sides had suffered losses, which meant there was no reason to keep talking, because no one was right, and the opponent wouldn't be willing to listen—at least, not yet.
"Let the bell ring!" the sovereign of humans shouted.
Throwing himself into the middle of the arena, Rey decided to attack with all his strength, intending to measure his power again. This time, Gilgamesh deflected the strike with a forearm and then threw a kick. Rey was confident enough that he placed his hand between his opponent's foot and his own body, blocking the blow efficiently.
The situation shifted under the young man's control—he had astonishing superhuman abilities to learn and adapt to his enemies—while Gilgamesh tried to maintain his advantage. That made him hop and cross his legs into a kick, seeing if any blow could connect.
The man's right foot met the fallen from the sky's stomach, and Rey shoved him violently, trying to create distance.
"To a lesser degree than before," Rey thought as he used the ground to reduce the speed at which he'd been flung by the last blow. "His power and destructive strength are still increasing, but that's all it is. He doesn't have much technique or grace in his movements, though every time he makes contact, the threads that break the logic of creation feel stronger. That's why I need to buy time."
Rey reset into an attacking stance and noticed his opponent didn't keep pressing; he stayed where he was. That made Rey say out loud:
"Your aggressiveness is dropping, even though the fight has started. Are you tired already—or are you still holding back?"
Finally, the moment came when Gilgamesh's soulmate spoke to him—delivering the magnificent line he'd dreamed of so often. Recovering his happiness, Gilgamesh burst into laughter, then touched the right side of his neck with his hand. Without giving much importance to the warm liquid of his own blood, he stepped back, intending to buy the time he needed to warm up and fight at full potential.
"No!" Gilgamesh replied, thrilled. "I'm giving my best—without holding back. I think you're not using all your power, because humanity's disease is a curse that isn't easy to face… Aww! Here I come!"
Before Rey's eyes, the natural logics of creation tightened with greater visibility as Gilgamesh detonated a greater amount of power, resuming the battle with far more aggression than at the start.
Like a violent beast throwing punches, Gilgamesh rushed his opponent with the intention of killing him in a single blow. Rey, on the other hand, used every limb of his body in the art of fighting. Even if his hands and legs broke under the impacts, he regenerated and healed them to a higher level of toughness than before—until they no longer broke. This wasn't the moment to worry about speeding up or delaying the illness that contaminated him and disrupted the division process of every cell in his body.
At times, Gilgamesh lost the advantage; at other moments, he regained it. That happened because of his opponent's adaptability—who clearly refused to use all his strength or rely on his best fighting moves, choosing instead to learn and evolve in the areas where he was still weak.
"Aww! The longer the fight lasts, the greater his adaptability becomes," Gilgamesh told himself after feeling his punches become incapable of fracturing the young man's bones—bones now nearly matching his own speed and strength. "I'm fighting even if my bones break; I hold my ground no matter if death comes, leaving flesh exposed, always striking forward, chest open… epic! Simply, epic!"
After abandoning evasive maneuvers, Rey planted his right foot on the ground and held his territory with his guard up until the moment he used precise movements and counterattacked his opponent with a monstrous blow.
Faced with the ferocity of that counterattack, Gilgamesh did everything he could to dodge the brutal strike aimed at his face, but no matter how he shifted aside he couldn't remain unscathed—the burst of energy his opponent unleashed was enough to cause him considerable internal damage.
One counterattack followed another until they were enough to weaken the sovereign of humans and make him move with less and less agility and strength. Not to mention, his right foot and left arm eventually fractured from blocking just two consecutive blows. Regenerative abilities couldn't compete with those of a vampire-and-werewolf hybrid.
Gilgamesh kept moving—dodging blows and trying to strike—when he felt a thread of blood roll from his forehead to the tip of his nose. It turned into droplets, and the red liquid fell to the ground. For the first time in hundreds of years, he was forced to retreat. Drunk on the ecstasy of combat, after lifting his face and dropping his guard, he tried to locate his opponent, but he couldn't. Having lost his field of vision beyond a single meter, he was happy just to be able to see his hands while everything else was blurred.
After laughing out loud, Gilgamesh quickly repositioned and took a defensive stance, intending—again, for the first time—to withstand a direct attack, because he had no other choice. Not knowing where the blow would come from or how powerful it would be nearly made him die of excitement. With only his right arm raised defensively and balancing on his other leg, he told himself:
"Oh, my dear friend, this is the delight only you can give me in a direct fight… I fear to tell you that I was afraid to play all my cards in this battle… now I hope I don't turn you into a sheep, trembling before my true power and greatness."
Rey took distance, and though he had the situation under control, his opponent's eyes said otherwise.
Gilgamesh announced three magic words: "Shamash! Marduk! An!"
After that, the sovereign of humans underwent monstrous changes. At a glance, they made him cease to be what he was and take on three enhancements characteristic of the gods themselves. The first word summoned an immense golden armor as bright as the sun, equipped with a helmet, wings, and a sword. The second word made Gilgamesh's skin, muscles, and bones indestructible, improving his abilities enough to use the armor he wore without suffering any loss of movement or speed. The last word brought forth a protective barrier that radiated divine light saturated with superiority and forces capable of controlling the natural laws of creation.
Rey kept his eyes wide open at the pronunciation of the three words. In a world where there were humans who could wield the arts of sorcery, how could their sovereign not be the best and most renowned at that art? But Gilgamesh wasn't a sorcerer—he didn't even have his chakras open or a power core of his own—though he had used magic words and possessed seven borrowed cores.
Any normal person could use magic words and pseudo-cores, as long as they gathered the right conditions. After all, Rey himself had used this trick to swap places with one of his copies, which also had a pseudo-core. Among those conditions, Rey knew that in his opponent's life there had been a sorcerer capable of granting him unimaginable powers, along with keys to use them. Among those keys were the three words Gilgamesh had spoken.
The moment Rey blinked, Gilgamesh's fist was already right in front of him, rushing in at tremendous speed. Then Rey felt the protective barrier of divine light burn his body and shove him backward, while his opponent's armored fist struck him with the violence of a bomb that blew his head off.
Where was the headless body that didn't bleed and disintegrated into shadow? Gilgamesh vanished from where he'd been and destroyed yet another figure that matched his opponent's traits. Again and again, with every blow from Gilgamesh, one of Rey's copies died horribly, and then the explosion of a black wolf followed.
"He's as strong as I expected," Rey told himself from a safe distance, watching his opponent move back and forth like a wild beast injected with fury and wrath. "He's no longer as intelligent as he used to be, and he definitely stopped being immortal—his other three cores closed."
"You think the superspecies don't specialize in one-on-one combat?! Come out and fight me," Gilgamesh said, then announced loudly, "Enki!"
Before Rey's eyes, the pronunciation of the magic word—serving as a key—made Gilgamesh lose the protective barrier, though he kept the armor and the altered skin. The king of humans stopped where he was, stopped being fooled by false copies, used his opponent's logical patterns, and looked straight to where Rey was hiding, his hand prepared to throw something.
Rey tried to move, but he saw a short sword had been hurled with such monstrous force that it pierced his chest and his heart. Unlike the many shadow-copies, Rey bled from the irreparable damage the sword caused him.
Before Rey's eyes, time stopped. Gilgamesh stopped moving, and everything around seemed frozen.
"I didn't just set the conditions to accelerate my perception of time in response to my heartbeats speeding up—this is also my condition to create a pseudo-stoppage of time," Rey told himself without much surprise. "In a few seconds I'll be dead and I'll leave my opponent behind. I wonder if now I'll be able to touch the flame inside me and reach the pinnacle of sorcery. After all, to win the battle I have to surpass my limits once again."
To see the darkness inside him, Rey closed his eyes. He arrived in the world of dreams, right between life and death, where the shadows faded before a flame that seemed more reachable than the last time. As a final chance not to die, he stretched his hand out slowly. It felt hard to reach—as if the pain in his chest wouldn't let him enter or keep moving forward. It grew stronger and stronger, and unlike the previous time, the flame wanted to pull him back into reality. With a confident smile, Rey kept moving, because he wasn't leaving without first reaching what he had set out to achieve.
With resolve, before the void, the darkness, and the pain tugging him down, the young man lunged forward and stretched his hand like never before. He grabbed the flame, and that made everything that had been black turn into many colors.
"Even after creating the micro-world within the core, right beside the heart chakra, and reaching a higher level as a sorcerer, you mustn't think you're anything," Melody whispered to Rey. "Within you still exist past consciousnesses and wills. Remember you are occupying what was stolen from you."
History appeared and announced:
"Right in front of you you may have the previous occupant, without even knowing it."
As soon as they spoke into Rey's ears, the two sisters withdrew the hands that had been covering the young man's eyes, and with his gaze he became witness to a world fragmented and composed of complex memories.
A curious male voice tossed a question into the air:
"You may be wondering: what is this place?" Rey looked at the speaker—someone familiar who resembled him, only older, eyes kept closed. "This is a micro-world you have created inside yourself. For now, I can be your host."
"Host?" Rey asked, trying to find logic in the behavior of the one addressing him.
"Because I may still have time left before I disappear, I can give you my knowledge—like this: the flame you have in your hands is the representation of your willpower. From now on, only the extinguishing of that flame will represent your true death. Look at this world slowly and tell me: what do you see?"
"I see a city where the buildings are covered in plants. The streets have trees down the middle and vegetation along the sides. It's a world in ruins, and there's a dark door in the sky."
"If that door were ever to be opened, you could unleash a beast that, like me, also lives inside you—an emotionless being held together only by instinct."
"Rey… where are we?" a very familiar voice asked beside the white-eyed youth's ear.
White—the feline beast—appeared there. She floated in the air, afraid of falling.
"White?!" Rey asked.
"Since I became your Youse, I've always remained within your perception. I feel what you feel, I see what you see. For the first time I didn't feel anything you're capable of perceiving, and your presence led me to this place." That was what the beautiful beast said, her tone angry because she believed Rey had died—since he had a sword lodged in his chest.
With a clap into the air, the third individual present drew the speakers' attention.
"Rey, you can't win this fight if you don't use your weapons. The disease is advancing through your body while your opponent grows stronger. I'm telling you this as a Youse—White Renacio—with your own characteristics." Both the feline and the young man looked at the speaker attentively. "The moment you gave me your blood in the ritual, it means I can also strengthen myself and recover energy through it. You only have to offer me a little, and I promise I could do anything without it breaking. Without blood, life doesn't exist. Even though you can use your sorcerer powers, I suggest you take this information as thanks for the affection I have for you. By the way, you can call me Ranger. I knew Gilgamesh, and I'm the reason he's never lost a battle…"
In the outside world, where time was no longer frozen or moving slowly, the champion of humanity prepared to deliver the finishing blow to his opponent, just before the vampire could recover.
Rey opened his eyes, spat blood through his teeth, and said:
"De-Shamash, De-Marduk, De-Enki… An!"