The silence after Ignis's stellar judgment was deafening, thick with the ozone stench of vaporized rock and the fading heat of annihilation. Kuro's grim smile of victory froze on his face. Netsudo sagged, the volcanic fury draining away to reveal the exhausted Pyrasian beneath. Merus, pinned to the far wall, managed a weak, bloodied sigh of relief. In the center of the colossal, smoldering crater, where only cosmic ash should remain, the air crackled.
Not with residual energy. With potential.
A low, resonant thrum vibrated through the dimensional bedrock, growing louder, deeper, shaking loose shards of obsidian. The thinning smoke wasn't dissipating; it was parted by an invisible force, shoved aside like unwanted curtains. And rising from the epicenter of the solar fury, unhurried, terrifyingly composed, stood Daganu.
But not the Daganu they knew. The stark white hair was gone, replaced by a shock of brilliant, electrified blue, each strand standing rigid as if charged by a captive lightning storm. His eyes, no longer cold obsidian voids, blazed with captured thunder – pupils of actinic white lightning set in irises of swirling, furious storm clouds. Dark energy, laced with crackling blue arcs of raw electricity, writhed around his form like a living tesla coil. His event-horizon armor seemed darker, sleeker, humming with a terrifying, contained power that made the air itself ionize, tasting metallic and sharp. He hovered, not with effortless speed, but with the coiled, devastating potential of a lightning bolt held at the precipice of release.
Kuro's analytical mind, usually a fortress of logic, cracked. "Impossible...!" he breathed, his voice raw. "The HeartDeath effect... his hair totally changed... he bypassed the negation completely! Even though he pretty much did that already, remnants were left. The fact that none are left is..." The Rod's power was supposed to lock spiritual expression, manifesting as hair color change. Even though his hair was gradually back to normal throughout the battle due to the continuous augmentation of his spiritual energy. This time it totally changed with no residue; electrifyingly fast. The Monarch hadn't evolved under pressure; he had simply removed the limiter.
Netsudo felt the heat of his own fading power, the exhaustion of Ignis, the terror of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd personas cowering within his fractured psyche. They didn't know this 4th one – the one forged not in fear or rage, but in absolute, desperate resolve. I'm the only ember left, the 4th Netsudo thought, the core of Pyrasian stubbornness hardening into diamond. *The others... they never faced this. They hid. I won't. Even if I burn out... this ends NOW.*
Lava, not summoned from the environment but willed from the deepest, untapped reserves of his planetary core, surged over Netsudo's form. It wasn't the chaotic fury of Ignis; it was focused, incandescent, white-hot purpose. His right fist became a crucible, drawing in the surrounding heat, the lingering stellar radiation, compressing it into a singularity of solar fury – the Absolute Sun Magma Fist. "Sun Magma Fist" The declaration wasn't a roar; it was a death knell.
He moved. Not with speed, but with the unstoppable momentum of a dying star's last collapse. The fist, radiating heat that warped vision, lanced towards Daganu's chest. Netsudo saw the impact point, felt the energy focus... and then felt a wet, tearing agony blossom across his own torso. He looked down. Dark blood, his blood, was already welling from a deep gash across his chest. Daganu stood behind him, having moved not just faster than Netsudo's strike, but faster than his perception of time itself. The Monarch hadn't dodged; he had simply been elsewhere when the attack passed through the space he occupied.
Daganu turned, his lightning eyes holding a spark of genuine, chilling respect. "I admit it. Your power... your resolve... is formidable. Truly." The electric blue hair crackled. "But acknowledgment isn't concession. Did you truly believe revealing my true self meant revealing my limit?" A cruel smile touched his lips. "This... is Absolute Infinite Speed Mode. The frictionless state. Movement divorced from causality. I traverse distance not by crossing it, but by erasing the concept of 'between'." His gaze locked on Netsudo's shocked, pain-filled eyes. "I may well be faster than Lord Saganbo himself within this domain of pure velocity."
YOU ARE READING
Trascender : The Fourth Gust
FantasíaWhat happens when death becomes impossible? Nineteen-year-old Shinji Kazuhiko's life shattered the night a masked killer invaded his home. Left for dead, he made a horrifying discovery: he cannot die. And with each death, something inside him grows...
