CHAPTER 85 — REJECTION
Crimson Six didn't hesitate.
The moment Leylin stilled, she moved. No testing. No probing. Her intent sharpened into something absolute.
End it.
Her foot drove into the ground. The chamber fractured beneath her step as she crossed the distance in a single burst. Her strike came down not for precision but for certainty. Overwhelming force meant to erase everything in its path.
Leylin saw it.
His body didn't move. He couldn't.
The strike descended.
At the last second, his body shifted.
A narrow turn. Barely enough. The force missed him and slammed into the ground behind, detonating the chamber. Steel tore apart. Stone folded inward. The entire structure buckled as dust surged outward, swallowing everything.
Leylin staggered.
He tried to follow the movement and failed.
Crimson Six was already there.
Her second strike came faster. Heavier.
"For someone who deciphered my plans," she said, voice low, "your main body is oddly weak."
Her kick drove into his spine, sending him forward. She followed instantly, her fist cutting toward his center.
Leylin forced himself to move, to evade that strike and counter as his battle instincts warned him to… but, as if deliberately ignoring him, his body remained still, and just at the last moment, it stepped aside, evading the blow by a hair's breadth as Leylin heaved a sigh of relief internally.
Got you… he heard the cold voice of Crimson Six behind him as he realized it was a feint… then..impact.
The blow crushed into his ribs, sending him skidding across broken metal. He slammed into the far end of the chamber, debris collapsing around him.
He forced himself up, breath sharp, body unsteady.
Why am I slower?
Leylin wondered as no answer came.
Crimson Six stepped through the settling dust, her gaze fixed on him.
"I must say," she continued, "I'm disappointed in what you did with my experiment."
Leylin steadied himself. The world around him dragged like it was lagging behind itself.
She moved again, faster. Harder.
Her attacks came in succession: feints, angles, pressure. Each strike closed space. Each movement denied escape.
Leylin reacted on instinct, weaving, guarding, barely holding form.
Then a hook. Clean. Direct.
He saw it, but his body didn't move.
For the first time, it failed.
Boom, crack!
The force drove him into the ground. Stone ruptured outward. The chamber groaned under the strain.
Crimson Six stood over him, breathing steady, gaze unwavering.
"Whatever this is," she said quietly, "it's incomplete."
Her hand rose.
"And I don't let incomplete things live."
Leylin's vision blurred.
His body didn't respond.
At first it felt like exhaustion. Then pain. But neither fit.
Because the moment he tried to move, nothing followed. Not resistance. Not delay. Just absence.
As if the command had been issued but never reached him.
Too much interference. Too much delay.
Her strike began to fall. Slow. Then faster.
The air bent around it, unable to withstand the force driving it down. The ground beneath cracked further, unable to bear the pressure gathering in that single point.
Leylin saw everything. Every fraction of motion.
And still, his body remained still.
Then something changed. It wasn't outside. It didn't come from her. It surfaced from somewhere deeper. A quiet calm cut through the distortion. Not force. Not power. Something simpler. Something certain.
The world didn't slow. It fell out of alignment. Sound faded first. Then motion. Then the weight behind her strike itself seemed to lose cohesion.
It was still descending. But it no longer felt inevitable.
Leylin's hand rose. Not with effort. Not with urgency. It moved because there was nothing left preventing it from already being there.
His fingers met her strike. And in that instant, everything stopped. No impact. No resistance. The motion simply ended.
Crimson Six's eyes sharpened.
"H-how…"
The air around them warped, not visibly but in structure, like the space between cause and effect had been removed entirely.
Then,Phhaaah.
The sound broke the silence. Not of motion. Not of contact. But of something concluding.
Crimson Six's body was already gone, sent flying backward. She crashed through the ruined structure behind her as debris erupted outward, the delayed destruction catching up to a moment that had already passed.
Crimson Six groaned as she pushed herself out of the rubble, blood trailing from the corner of her mouth. Every breath was a struggle, every movement a battle against pain that seared through broken ribs and a fractured jaw. Her armor was shredded in places, missing plates lost beneath the debris she had just crawled from.
Yet despite the injuries, her crimson gaze locked on Leylin. It was no longer filled with rage, no longer the sharp, cutting edge of anger. There was recognition. Hesitation. Something within her reevaluating the being before her.
Leylin stood still, his body trembling ever so slightly, gaze fixed on his hands. That faint, incomprehensible energy..the one that had stopped her strike ,still lingered. It hadn't clashed with her force. It hadn't resisted. It had simply bypassed everything in between and delivered its result without interference.
He raised his hand again.
Crimson Six's body tensed as she reacted instantly, tightening her stance.
Leylin said nothing as he simply took a step forward… appearing before Crimson Six as he repeated the same gesture… a slap!
Phhaaah.
The space between them folded, transmitting the result in real time.
Crimson Six's body jerked. A sharp, clean impact snapped her head to the side as her feet carved lines across the ground. She caught herself but staggered slightly.
"How!" she screamed internally as there was no evidence of Leylin moving. He had simply appeared in front of her, smacking her cheeks as the pain still stung quietly.
"Phhaaah, phhaaaw, phhaaah."
Sounds of palms meeting cheeks reverberated across the battlefield as the figure of Leylin appeared at distinct locations, exactly at the point Crimson Six was meant to be, as if anticipating her movements, delivering strikes that made the surrounding space grow quiet in silent humiliation.
Panting, Crimson Six managed to raise her swollen eyes as she gazed at Leylin preparing to deliver another smack on her cheeks… the thought causing her slight embarrassment as her face blushed in something between shame and… enjoyment.
Shaking the thoughts off, she steadied herself as her body ached strangely due to exhaustion.
But just as he was about to take a step forward, just as he was about to deliver some more slaps
The air thickened. Dust hung in place as lightning split the sky… clouds gathering above as the ground trembled beneath them.
Crimson Six's eyes widened.
"What… is going on?" she growled, as the space above them constricted like something heavy was awakening.
The fractures in the ground split outward like veins, separating them both, as Leylin was forced to lift his head toward the sky at the descending pressure. The pressure gathered as the surrounding space compressed into something tangible…
Then, as if locking unto the reason for this disturbance, gravity bent around him from all sides as his body was locked in place.
Then..painful, dreadfully,a tiny obsidian crack opened behind him, growing wider with each passing second as Leylin was pulled violently, sucked into it, as everything within the nearest kilometer vanished within the crack. Mountains and entire cities were pulled in… then, as if satisfied by the erasure of whatever had triggered it, the crack sealed shut as the world regained silence.
High above, the world looked barren, as a planet that had once teemed with life now lay empty.
And Leylin..or whatever remained of him..was gone. Far below the ruined facility, at the edge of the collapsed chamber, the obsidian coffin pulsed once, faint and low. Then it went silent, as whatever lay within still had not fully awakened.
END OF VOLUME ONE