The sky holds its breath. Black clouds churn above the ruins like waiting beasts.
Dark and Astaroth stand in stillness. One fractured, bleeding, but unshaken. The other untouched, eternal, the ground beneath him scorched in a perfect circle.
Their eyes meet.
Astaroth: I shall confess, child of will. Thy resolve is not without merit. Few have stood where thou now stand, with ribs cracked and soul fraying, yet still daring to glare upon an Emperor.
Dark: Like I told you. I don't care who you are, what you've done, or what kind of title you carry.
Dark: If you stand in my way, I'll crush you. That's all.
His voice doesn't rise. His breath doesn't falter. The corner of his mouth lifts—only slightly.
Astaroth studies him. Head tilted, eyes aglow with ancient knowing.
Astaroth: (thinking) What madness lies within this mortal? I flayed his essence, shattered his frame, drowned him in flame, yet... he stands.
A faint grin curls on Astaroth's face. It's not mockery. It's interest.
Astaroth: (thinking) Yet something is... shifted. He is no longer trembling like prey. His gaze is sharpened steel, his stillness unnatural.
The camera closes in on Dark's face. Cold. Focused. Unmoving.
Astaroth: (thinking) Khaahaa... how curious. I have waged war upon the backs of titans. Danced with creatures who swallowed dimensions whole. They bore power beyond imagination—this boy bears defiance. A poison far more persistent.
Astaroth reaches behind his back and draws a blade. The metal hisses like breath drawn from the lungs of the abyss. Its edge is jagged, the spine etched with glowing infernal glyphs. A long weapon, dark like dried blood, pulsing with faint red veins.
Astaroth: This blade is Valghros, the Woundmaker. Forged in the ninth kiln beneath the Maw of Wrath. Its thirst knows not water, but anguish.
He doesn't lift it. He lets it rest beside him like a waiting sentence.
Scene Shift
Far from the battlefield, tucked inside a hollowed rock canyon, a cavern tavern glows with firelight. The walls breathe with the heat of low flames. Cups clink. A waitress slides drinks to the back where old mercenaries play cards.
Up front, beside a crooked iron stove, two men sit across from each other. Dust coats their coats. Guns hang low at their sides. The older one shifts in his chair and spits toward the fire.
???: Bastard left me runnin'. Damn near got my coat torn off my back, and I ain't had that happen since the Rupture Plains.
He lifts his cup and lets it burn down his throat.
???: Thought I had 'im. Really did. Got the drop. Had the edge. But he looked at me... like time itself ain't meant nothin'.
The younger man leans back, hat low, one boot on the table.
???: You talkin' 'bout the Fourth?
The old one grunts.
???: Naw. Worse.
He taps his cup against the table once.
The fire snapped sharp, spitting sparks into the cave's dark belly.
Jebediah leaned forward, his voice low but edged like rusted steel.
Jebediah: I heard he pulled a whole fortress down with one hand. Just stood there while it screamed.
Across the table, the younger one—Rael—tilted his drink and didn't blink.
Rael: You still runnin' your mouth about that ghost story?
Jebediah: Ghosts don't leave scorch marks, boy. Whole valley's still burnin'.
Rael set his cup down slow. The sound of metal on wood echoed like a challenge.
Rael: Thought we were here to talk coin, not fairy tales.
Jebediah grinned, a flash of gold teeth and old sin.
Jebediah: Right. Coin.
He tapped a weathered ledger on the table between them.
Jebediah: South bank vault's gettin' moved next week. Three convoys. Twenty men. Light guard. Word is, they're haulin' obsidite.
Rael's brow twitched.
Rael: Obsidite?
Jebediah: Pure. Uncut. Enough to buy your own kingdom if you're quick.
Rael leaned back, boots scraping the stone floor. His hand drifted to his side, resting on the grip of a hybrid weapon—flintlock embedded in a crescent-forged axe head. Short handle. Close kill.
Rael: Kingdoms don't interest me. But silence does. No witnesses?
Jebediah: None that'll see the dawn.
A long pause hung between them. Just the fire breathing.
Rael: You sure this ain't tied to the north roads?
Jebediah: You worried about him?
Rael didn't answer. He just stared at the weapon in his hand. The metal was still stained from something divine.
Jebediah: He ain't comin' this far south.
Rael: No. But if he does...
He stood, cloak shifting off his shoulder to reveal light armor—black, scorched, scarred.
Rael: I'm not the boy I was last time.
Jebediah: (smirks) No. You're somethin' worse now.
Rael walked toward the cave mouth. The fire behind him hissed as if fearing his shadow.
Jebediah stayed seated, watching the weapon, not the man.
Jebediah: May the old gods weep for the fool who crosses your path.
Rael: Let 'em weep. I stopped listenin' when they let my brother burn.
The fire cracked again. Slow heat. No warmth.
Jebediah leaned forward, flicking ash off his coat.
Jebediah: Burned my cousin the same way. Called him a heretic 'cause he tried usin' healing magic without a sigil. Said it was "unnatural."
Rael: (grunts) Ain't nothin' natural 'bout sufferin'.
Jebediah: Ain't nothin' natural 'bout kings neither. Just men who got tired of bein' stepped on.
Rael reached for the weapon on his hip. Not a revolver. Not really. Looked like one. Held like one. But the cylinder was forged from hollow bone, and the barrel ran with an oil-black pulse—like something alive refused to sleep inside it.
Rael: You heard the story?
Jebediah: Which one?
Rael: About the shadow-eyed boy. The one who tore down the Celestials. Fought an emperor without blinkin'. Some say he don't even bleed.
Jebediah: (snorts) Some say he's already dead. That he walks 'cause Death gave him a reason to.
Rael tapped the table once. A code. Just habit.
Rael: They say he kneels to no one. Not gods, not emperors. Not even the one who made this cursed place.
Jebediah: They say he walks with beasts behind him. Shadows in armor. Dead things that speak only his name.
Rael smiled. Just a little.
Rael: You believe it?
Jebediah: I believe somethin' out there makes kings piss themselves at night. So yeah. I believe it.
The saloon creaked. Outside, wind swept through the canyon with a whisper, dragging dust and silence behind it.
Rael: If he's real, he ain't the villain they make him out to be. Men who fight monsters don't usually stay human. But they don't always become the monster either.
Jebediah: Maybe he's both.
Rael: Or maybe he's somethin' new.
He stood, holstering the weapon with a slow click.
Rael: Let's ride south.
The scene slams back into the core of the multiversal storm.
Dark and Astaroth were no longer trading blows—they were birthing collisions that defied the concept of speed itself. Fists, knees, elbows, blades, darkness, aura, energy, time, and even concepts clashed in every direction. In one instant, a single punch cracked the veil of a higher reality; in another, a sweep of Astaroth's wing collapsed three god realms layered atop one another. Their movements were so violently fast, not even light could register the spaces they occupied. Every strike came with the consequence of extinction. Every parry threatened to erase time in that direction.
Dark: COME ON, ASTAROTH!!! LET'S END THIS SHIT!!!
Astaroth: KHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAHHAAAAAHHHHHAAA.
The camera snaps into Astaroth's vision—first-person, raw, unfiltered.
Dark's form was glowing with unstable power, dark light erupting from his knuckles and knees like mini supernovas. But it wasn't just his physical strength that caught Astaroth's notice.
Astaroth: (thinking) This young man... he sees it. He sees the technique.
Within the hellish blur of motion, Astaroth could see it. Dark's eyes, sharp and unyielding, tracking a force that should've been impossible to perceive—an infernal aura that sapped the life of anything it touched, invisible to all.
Astaroth's pupils flared open.
Astaroth: YOU CAN SEE IT, DARK?!?
His voice thundered, delighted, enraged, and chaotic.
Astaroth: YOU CAN SEE... MY INFERNAL EYES TECHNIQUE?!?
Dark's fist slammed into Astaroth's mouth with the weight of his rage.
Dark: HAHAHAHA—SHUT THE HELL UP, YOU TALK TOO DAMN MUCH!!!
But just as Dark surged forward, riot-blows flying like a thousand compressed suns, Astaroth halted. He didn't move a muscle. Just a half-step. One half-step back—and the entire flow of the fight died.
Dark's eyes widened.
Dark: Huh?—
CRACK
By the time he blinked, Astaroth's foot was already buried into his face.
Dark was launched across the horizon at lightspeed, spiraling through the void, smashing through heavenly planes, storm worlds, and mortal veils. He struck the surface of a continental road with such force the entire country ruptured, tectonic lines bursting apart beneath the weight of his broken body.
Smoke. Fire. Blood.
Dark lay twisted in the ruins, gasping. Blood dripped from his eyes, his ears, his mouth.
Dark: (in pain) Damn it...
Dark: (thinking) Move... come on... move... BODY... MOVE!!
Astaroth's arrival was not an entrance—it was a revelation. He appeared in front of Dark without motion, without sound, yet the air screamed. Hellfire coiled in his footsteps, reality warping under his pressure. His walk was not that of a man—it was of a sentence being carried out.
Dark: (thinking) Vorax... heal me...
Vorax: (thinking) I cannot... I used everything to shield your organs. You're alive... only barely.
Dark: (thinking) Shit...
Astaroth raised his right hand slowly.
Above it, a black flame circle appeared, small at first—no larger than a ring. But then it expanded, rapidly, hungrily, growing until it became a hovering apocalypse, stretching past mountains, swallowing skies, eclipsing the sun itself.
Astaroth: You fought well, Dark. Emperor of the Multiverse.
Astaroth: But this... this is your curtain fall.
Dark: No...
Dark's teeth grit. His fingers curled into the shattered soil.
Dark: THIS IS WHERE YOU'RE WRONG!!!
His roar tore through dimensions.
Dark: GRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!
He slammed his fist downward, and a swirling black void erupted beneath Astaroth.
Dark: Dark Magic – Impactful Blackhole.
The gravitational pulse howled with rage, aiming to erase Astaroth completely. But the demon did not dodge.
He inhaled.
One breath.
The entire blackhole collapsed into his lungs.
His sclera turned white. His pupils turned black. Then his eyes reverted to normal.
Astaroth: I appreciate your gift. Though it was... impotent.
Astaroth: Now—
He lowered his hand, the massive fire ring responding, beginning its descent toward Dark.
A blur. A flicker. A scream of divine resistance.
Leona, Tier, Gilmuar, Cron, Shinryu, Agami, and Ace—all appeared in a wide circle, weapons drawn, power ignited to full. A protective formation against a cosmic monster.
Agami: ENOUGH, ASTAROTH!!
Astaroth smiled with amusement.
Astaroth: Return to your shadows.
With a mere whisper of thought, his aura pulsed, and all seven were hurled backward through the air like broken dolls.
Astaroth: This warrior has earned his honor. But his time is at its end.
A silent shift.
A breeze turned to void.
And behind Dark, a figure sat—cross-legged, calm, one hand resting on his knee. He didn't radiate power. He devoured it. The very air around him wilted. Grass curled into dust. Clouds vanished. Animals within a thousand miles collapsed, rotted. Rivers boiled.
Sukojo had arrived.
Not a remnant. Not a shadow.
The real one.
Sukojo: Oh no, you won't.
Astaroth: (thinking) That presence...
Astaroth's fingers curled. Fists formed. Teeth clenched.
Sukojo: (smiling) Again?
They vanished.
Then, like twin apocalypse stars, they collided above the crater. No words. No weapons. Just speed. Fist to flesh. Pulse to pulse. Cracks spread across the fabric of the battlefield. Everything began to shudder.
They clashed again.
And again.
And again.
Each impact echoed like the scream of dying worlds. The sky no longer resembled a sky—it had shattered into drifting islands of color, fragments of stormclouds frozen mid-eruption. Below them, the earth had inverted. Mountains floated upward, rivers coiled like serpents through the vacuum, and gravity itself bent in fear.
Astaroth snarled, thrusting a blazing knee into Sukojo's stomach—only for it to pass through afterimage. Sukojo had already moved, shadow-stepping around the attack like time itself had hesitated on his command. His heel slammed into Astaroth's jaw with such ferocity that the demon's head snapped sideways and dislocated with a crunch.
But Astaroth grinned through it.
Astaroth: (cracking it back into place) So... you've evolved.
Sukojo: (coldly) While you were slumbering, I was devouring worlds. Reconstructing my dominion. Learning new ways to hurt you.
Astaroth didn't even flinch.
He raised his arm—and hellfire erupted from every pore of his skin. A screaming column of cursed flame, wide enough to swallow a solar system, launched forward in an instant. The sheer heat distorted reality into a spiraling wormhole behind it.
But Sukojo didn't dodge.
He extended one finger, drawing a vertical slash in the air. The moment the line connected—everything in front of him collapsed into silence. The flame vanished. The blast imploded into nothing. Even the sound of Astaroth's breath was stolen.
Sukojo: New technique. Silent Fold.
Astaroth's smile widened. He lunged again, this time dragging behind him a trail of warped space—his body blinking in and out of different planes as he approached. He struck Sukojo from seventeen angles simultaneously, every punch aiming for vitals, pressure points, dimensional locks.
But Sukojo—ever more sinister, ever more refined—parried with one hand behind his back. His fingers danced like a puppeteer disassembling a god. Sparks flew. Flames curled. Void poison dripped from the air like ink.
Then came the first shift in the heavens.
Sukojo raised his hand and snapped.
The sky turned black.
Not dark.
Not night.
Black.
Black so deep it stripped color from Astaroth's skin, black so thick it made time feel stuck, breathless. From this void, glowing lines began forming—a spell circle, but ancient, abyssal, wide enough to wrap around a moon's orbit.
Sukojo: Yamiryu: Forbidden Binding Hexagram.
From the ring, a dozen arms made of dark silk and blood shot forward, wrapping around Astaroth's limbs, neck, and waist. A crushing force took hold, pulsing with anti-magic.
Astaroth grunted, struggling for a moment as his aura dimmed—but then he roared.
Astaroth: HHRRRRRAAAHHH—OBLIVION FORM: FIRST FLAME!!
A brilliant eruption burst from his body, incinerating the arms instantly. The black hex shattered. Flames that burned through magic itself spiraled outward. The blast split a continent below.
He charged in again.
Sukojo met him.
Their fists collided in the center of the sky—once.
Twice.
A third time—and the sky bled.
A massive rip opened above them, tearing into the Higher Layer—a realm of gods and ancient truths—and yet neither paid it any mind. They had no need for heavens. They were writing their own.
Sukojo vanished again, and when he reappeared, he was upside down above Astaroth, two fingers extended toward the demon's back.
Sukojo: Black Vein Injection.
The strike landed. A thin line of darkness pulsed into Astaroth's spine. At first, nothing happened—but then his wing twitched. His vision blurred. His next punch missed.
Astaroth: (gritting teeth) What... was that?!
Sukojo: A virus made from me. Eat it.
Astaroth screamed, his muscles twitching out of sync. His flame aura exploded again in all directions, purging the corruption, but Sukojo had already created distance, landing calmly atop a shattered pillar of floating obsidian.
Sukojo: (smiling darkly) You still burn hot. But your inferno is predictable.
Astaroth: (panting) I am... the Apex Flame of the Ancient Depths.
Astaroth: I am fire that should not exist.
Sukojo: And I am the hunger that shouldn't have been born.
They clashed again.
This time, with techniques laced into every movement. Shadow seals detonated with each impact. Time loops fractured mid-spin. Reality bent sideways when their knees collided. One punch from Astaroth created a spiraling nova that devoured a quarter of the shattered battlefield. One elbow from Sukojo created an inverted gravity spike that pulled the nova into itself, erasing it.
Astaroth hurled a spiral of blazing sigils forward—each one a manifestation of ancient Infernal Scripture, forbidden even in the oldest hells. They split like serpent tongues mid-flight, curling through fractured air and locking onto Sukojo's pressure points. Each glyph sang in dead languages, vibrating with the power to melt organs and undo rebirth itself.
But Sukojo raised his hand, fingers twitching in unnatural rhythms.
The symbols stopped mid-air.
Paused.
Frozen.
Then—inverted.
Each sigil reversed, flickering black with corrupted light, before turning on Astaroth like blades forged from his own marrow.
Astaroth: (thinking) He countered my scripture with... anti-script.
Sukojo: (coldly) I learned it from watching your failures.
Astaroth roared, his voice cracking through several layers of dimension, and burst into his second layer—his body distorting into a more primal form. Horns curved back, laced in infernal ore. His arms doubled in density, skin armored with runes that burned through reality just by existing.
Astaroth: Oblivion Form: Second Seal—Diabran Prime.
The name alone echoed across galaxies.
He lunged, striking with a dozen limbs at once—some real, others projections of rage so concentrated they manifested as physical force. Sukojo weaved backward, tilting his body at impossible angles—dodging fists that shattered dimensional boundaries behind him.
Sukojo: (thinking) He's adapted.
With no hesitation, Sukojo lowered his stance and opened his palm, drawing a long breath through his nose. A black circle of markings formed beneath him. His eyes flashed once with golden light.
Sukojo: Tokeijiku: Memory Reversal Field.
The next instant, time snapped.
The entire battlefield shifted one second backward. Then forward. Then sideways. Then looped.
Astaroth blinked—and Sukojo was gone. Then behind him. Then inside him.
A shadow of Sukojo pierced Astaroth's chest from within, emerging with jagged claws of lightless essence. Blood erupted—liquid fire, a scream of old sins—and Astaroth coughed, staggering for the first time.
But he laughed through it.
Astaroth: HAHAHAHA—THIS... THIS IS WHAT I WANTED.
He flung his hand out, and dozens of burning corpses from extinct realms appeared in the air around them. Each one a soul he'd slain and preserved—now weaponized, shaped into spiritual bombs and flung toward Sukojo at light-breaking speed.
Sukojo didn't dodge.
He drew a circle in the air with his finger—thin, elegant, cruel.
The corpses stopped.
They twitched. Then turned toward Astaroth.
Astaroth: ...What?
Sukojo: (flatly) I reversed their allegiance.
The corpses screamed, converging back on Astaroth, igniting in a sphere of apocalyptic implosion that erased their suffering—and tore half of Astaroth's armor away with it. His right shoulder vanished in a pulse of white and black flame.
He dropped, crashing into a floating spire of broken land.
Sukojo landed across from him—floating a few feet above the ground. Not standing. Just hovering, hands at his side.
His voice cut through the chaos like a guillotine.
Sukojo: You slept for too long, flame demon.
Sukojo: And you have no idea how far I've fallen since then.
Astaroth: (rising, blood dripping from his mouth) Good.
His smile stretched wider, blood-stained teeth gritting behind cracked lips as smoke rose from the gaping wound in his shoulder. One eye twitched from the pain—but the fire behind it only grew.
Astaroth: Then suffer with me, Sukojo.
He snapped his neck once to the side—bones cracking like thunder—and clenched both fists. Infernal runes burned across his forearms, glowing with sacrificial energy. The sky above them ruptured as his aura erupted again, forming a dome of pulsating heat that melted the air itself.
He didn't wait.
Astaroth blurred forward with speed that shattered his own form—limbs breaking, healing, breaking again as he pushed beyond physical limits. Each step tore through the ruined battlefield like a meteor storm. He came low—feinting a strike to Sukojo's ribs—then snapped upward with a rising knee that split the wind like a god's whip.
But Sukojo caught it.
One hand. Calm.
The impact blasted the entire horizon sideways. The planet tilted.
Sukojo didn't flinch.
Sukojo: You're wild, Astaroth. But you're still readable.
With his other hand, he struck a pressure point in Astaroth's leg—an ancient technique stolen from a lost martial scripture—and twisted. Bones snapped. Astaroth howled, reeling backward, landing hard across a cliff of fractured debris.
He spun once in midair, using his tail—yes, now a tail, long and horned—to regain control. His foot cracked the earth as he landed in a crouch.
Astaroth: (breathing hard) You're quicker than before...
Sukojo walked forward, calm and untouched, hands loose at his sides.
Sukojo: And you're slower than I expected. Sleep rots even the strong.
Astaroth screamed. A sonic boom followed—pure rage given form—and his aura changed. From red to ashen black.
Astaroth: Infernal Remnant Mode—Lethe Spiral.
The ground buckled beneath him. His horns curled inward, now bleeding mist. Every movement left echoes of his soul behind—like delayed shadows. Time itself lagged behind his footsteps. His hands ignited, not with fire—but oblivion. Magic that erased—not burned.
He rushed in again.
This time, fists didn't clash.
They tore.
Astaroth's punch grazed Sukojo's cheek, and the air around it disintegrated. That one blow carried enough force to rupture a timeline. Sukojo reeled—not in pain, but interest.
Then he retaliated.
A single elbow to the sternum.
Astaroth folded inward, vomiting black ichor. But he grabbed Sukojo mid-collapse and dragged him downward—smashing him through spire after spire of crumbling stone. The earth cracked. The sky bled. Sukojo flipped mid-fall, spun, and kicked Astaroth through the crust—sending him plunging into the planet's molten core.
The next moment, lava erupted miles high.
And Astaroth exploded out of it—laughing, charred and mangled but unstoppable. He hurled one of the molten tectonic plates straight toward Sukojo. The air screamed as the landmass soared.
Sukojo raised one hand and snapped his fingers.
Time skipped.
The plate was behind him now, split into fine dust.
Astaroth halted mid-sprint.
Astaroth: (panting) You used... ChronoSkip...? That's supposed to be sealed.
Sukojo: It was. I broke it.
Astaroth blinked. Rage flickered behind his cracked pupils.
Sukojo: You want to see how far I've fallen?
He closed his eyes.
His aura shifted.
For a moment, Astaroth froze.
The presence changed—not just in pressure, not just in mana—but in philosophy. Something deeper, primal. The smell of endless winter. The taste of void. Something beneath all things.
Sukojo: Kheaahee.
And then the ground vanished.
Not shattered. Not broken.
It stopped existing.
A single step from Sukojo erased the field below them. Astaroth blinked in midair, hovering above nothing. The world had been punched out of existence, as though Sukojo had refused to let it exist beneath their battle anymore.
To Be Continued.
End Of Arc 6 Chapter 16.