Both of them moved at the same time and met in the middle.
Threo swung her greatsword downward, a clean vertical strike aimed to split him in half.
Rei's eyes locked onto her arms and shoulders. He watched the tension in her muscles, the shift in her hips, the exact moment her weight transferred forward.
"Dawnfly Stance…" he murmured.
The instant the blade descended, Rei moved.
His katana dipped low and then sliced upward in one smooth motion.
CTANG!
"Ugh!?"
He parried her greatsword with an upward cut, the four dark wings behind him flared slightly, stabilizing his stance as he redirected the force upward rather than absorbing it fully. The impact thundered through the crater and forced Threo's blade slightly off course, making her flinch as her sword was knocked backward.
Rei didn't stop.
Using the momentum, he pivoted left and spun, his katana carving a full arc from right to left toward her torso.
"Not so fast!" Threo shouted.
KRAAANG!
Rei's eyes widened filled with surprise.
Threo manage to intercepted it with the handle of her greatsword, catching his katana near the guard.
She had turned the rebound into defense.
When his counter failed Rei immediately jumped back to gain some distance, landing lightly while keeping his eyes on Threo. But Threo had no intention of letting him reset the pace. She immediately chased after him, closing the distance quickly. This time she didn't swing her greatsword in wide arcs like before. Instead, she thrust it straight forward toward him, the tip aiming precisely at his chest.
Of course Rei dodged to the side.
But that was exactly what Threo wanted.
The moment he shifted his body to evade, she stepped in and swung her leg in a powerful kick toward him. Rei reacted instantly and jumped to avoid the kick, but while still in the air he twisted his body and swung his katana downward toward her head.
Threo tilted her body and barely avoided the slash, the blade passing close enough to cut a few strands of her hair. She immediately followed with another strike, but as usual Rei had already moved away.
Dawnfly Stance was a style focused on evasion and counterattacks. It was extremely effective against brute-force fighters like Threo, allowing him to control the rhythm and avoid taking direct hits.
"Stop dodging!" Threo shouted in frustration as another one of her attacks cut through empty air.
"If I don't dodge, your attack will send me flying," Rei replied calmly while slipping past another heavy swing.
But even with all the evasive ability of Dawnfly Stance, it was not a style meant for overwhelming offense. His counters were clean and precise, yet they weren't enough to truly damage Threo's body.
"Vorpal Rage!"
Threo finally snapped. Her greatsword began glowing as she poured more and more power into it. The energy around the blade intensified, and without hesitation she slammed the greatsword into the ground.
The entire crater shook violently, cracks spreading outward from the impact.
"Woah—!"
Rei lost his balance as the ground beneath him shifted suddenly.
Threo immediately took advantage of the opening and rushed forward, swinging her greatsword again.
CTANG!
Their weapons clashed head-on, but this time Rei couldn't stabilize himself properly. The sheer force behind her swing overwhelmed him, and he was sent flying backward once more.
Instead of chasing him this time, Threo stopped and planted her feet firmly. She held her greatsword with both hands and began pouring even more power into it. The glow changed from intense light to a blinding white, distorting the air around the blade.
The ground beneath her feet cracked deeper.
Veins faintly surfaced along her arms as the energy inside her body surged violently, traveling from her shoulders down toward her hands. It wasn't calm magic flow — it was forced, compressed, dragged out from every corner of her body and pushed into the greatsword.
The blade began glowing white.
Not bright like fire.
But dense.
Heavy.
The space around it distorted slightly, like heat haze, yet colder and sharper.
"Ground Zero!"
She stabbed the greatsword into the ground before swinging it forward in one powerful motion.
Instead of a normal shockwave, the energy didn't explode outward — it tore forward.
When she swung the greatsword, multiple white crescent slashes burst from it, but they were not ordinary energy waves. The air in front of them bent unnaturally as they moved, the edges of the crescents cracking the ground before even making contact.
Rei had just managed to steady himself midair when he felt the overwhelming danger approaching. Looking forward, he saw countless white crescent slashes heading straight at him.
Multiple white crescent slashes that burst from the blade, they did not travel like normal energy attacks. As they surged ahead, the air in front of them twisted and compressed, bending unnaturally as if pushed aside by something far heavier than light. The space along their path rippled violently, cracks spreading across the ground before the crescents even reached it.
Where the crescents passed, the ground didn't simply split — it collapsed inward, pulverized by the overwhelming pressure. The air shrieked as though being torn apart, the distortion lingering behind the attack for a fraction of a second before snapping back into place.
"Ground Zero?? What the hell!"
He recognized that attack immediately.
Ground Zero — it could be said to be Threo's ace card. In the game it was a technique that sacrificed nearly everything to unleash an unavoidable strike that dealt pure, plain damage.
And now Rei understood why it could not be dodged.
Because he was the target.
The crescent waves did not simply travel toward him. As they advanced, everything along their path began to bend unnaturally. The air twisted, compressing inward. The floating island's surface warped, cracks spreading before the attack even reached it.
Even the space where Rei stood began to distort.
"This is bad!" Rei flared his wings and tried to fly away.
But the space around him was already bending. The distance he tried to create felt wrong, as if stretched and compressed at the same time. Even though his wings beat violently, he barely moved from his position.
The gap between him and the attack wasn't closing—
It was disappearing.
"I can't dodge!"
There was no time to hesitate.
The only option left was to face it head-on.
He tightened his grip on his katana as the white crescent waves grew larger in his vision, warping the air and swallowing the sky behind them.
From the moment he tried to fly away to the instant he chose to confront it, everything happened within a single second.
He didn't have enough time to teleport like before.
He didn't have enough time to deploy his first shield.
"Kyokasuigetsu."
He shifted his stance instantly, the flow of Dawnfly changing. His breathing stabilized as he focused entirely on the collapsing space in front of him.
As Ground Zero reached him—
He swung.
"Transient!"
His katana met the distorted crescent—
—and the world violently compressed around him.
The moment the blade made contact, the air around them collapsed inward violently.
There was no explosion.
Instead, everything compressed.
The crescent wave did not clash against his katana like a normal attack. It bent around it, curving along the edge of the steel as if the blade were nothing more than a ripple in its path. The space in front of Rei twisted unnaturally, the distance between him and the attack forcefully shortened.
His stance was correct.
His timing was perfect.
But Ground Zero was not something that traveled in a straight line.
It erased the gap.
"—Tch!"
Rei forced more strength into his arms, attempting to redirect it. The Dawnfly Stance flowed smoothly, his movement precise as he tried to sever the distortion itself rather than meet the crescent head-on.
For a split second, the wave flickered.
Then the distortion intensified.
The space around Rei fractured like invisible glass. His katana trembled as overwhelming pressure pressed in from every direction, not just from the front but from the sides, from behind, from the very air around him.
He wasn't being overpowered.
He was being swallowed by collapsing distance.
The crescent slipped past his blade by the smallest fraction.
A diagonal line of distortion carved across his side—
—and the floating island's rocky surface behind him split apart.
Silently at first.
Then a delayed shockwave burst outward, scattering shattered stone into the open sky.
Rei was thrown backward, wings snapping open as he forcefully stabilized himself midair.
Blood scattered through the air.
He skidded across the sky before finally forcing himself to stop.
A clean, diagonal cut ran across his torso, not deep enough to cleave him in two — but deep enough to prove one thing.
He couldn't completely nullify it.
"…So this is Ground Zero."
It wasn't unavoidable because he was too slow.
It was unavoidable because it denied space itself.
Across from him, Threo's breathing grew rough, her body trembling after sacrificing nearly everything to unleash it.
But she was still standing.
And Rei… was injured.
Rei's wound should have closed instantly.
It always did.
The primal core within him reacted on instinct, flooding the injury with restorative force. Torn flesh began to knit together, muscle fibers writhing as they sought to reconnect—
—and then stopped.
The edges of the cut flickered.
The skin tried to seal, only to distort and peel apart again, as if space itself rejected the repair.
"…?"
Rei's eyes narrowed.
This wasn't ordinary damage.
It wasn't a slash.
The space along the wound had been displaced.
His body was attempting to regenerate flesh that no longer aligned with its original coordinates. The primal energy surged again, thicker and denser, saturating the air around him as the Avatar primal beast core pushed his regeneration to its limits.
This time, the distortion resisted.
Not denying his recovery—
but delaying it.
Below him, on the fractured ground, Threo's chest rose and fell heavily.
She lifted her gaze toward him, still hovering in the air after being blown back earlier.
Dirt clung to her skin, her grip on her weapon trembling from exhaustion.
Her eyes were locked onto him.
"You… managed to survive… that…?" she tried to say, each word dragged out by labored breathing.
Rei slowly descended from the air and landed in front of her.
His regeneration was already working at maximum output. Even with the overwhelming reserves from the multiple primal beast core within him, the wound refused to disappear cleanly. Flesh knit together only to misalign again, distortion grinding against primal force as if resisting the correction.
A faint crease formed between his brows.
In the game, when Threo fought Djeeta, she had never used this kind of attack against her.
Not once.
But now—
It seemed she was taking him more seriously than she ever had with Djeeta.
"Reeiiii! Are you okay?! You're injured really bad!" Djeeta screamed from the edge of the crater they were fighting in, her voice echoing across the broken terrain.
Rei kept his eyes on Threo.
"I'm fine, Djeeta. It hurts, but I can manage," he answered calmly, lifting a hand slightly to stop her from rushing forward. "Don't come any closer."
---
---
---
Both Threo and Rei were no longer in condition to continue as they had before.
Threo's body was completely exhausted after unleashing Ground Zero. Her greatsword lay on the fractured surface beside her, the massive blade embedded slightly into the ground because she no longer had the strength to keep holding it. Even standing seemed to require effort.
Rei, on the other hand, wasn't exhausted.
But his condition was worse.
His left arm barely responded when he tried to move it, fingers twitching weakly at his side. The deep diagonal cut across his torso still hadn't fully closed, distorted flesh resisting his regeneration as blood continued to flow down his body and drip onto the broken ground beneath him.
"Maybe we should stop for now, Threo?" Rei said calmly, though his breathing was slightly heavier than before. "You're already that tired. I don't think we can continue this fight properly."
"No," Threo answered immediately, struggling to steady herself. "Until one of us can't stand anymore — or dies — we're not stopping until we decide who's at the top of the food chain."
Rei frowned faintly. "That's way too extreme, isn't it? You're already like that. We should stop."
"What do you mean?" she shot back, her lips curling despite her exhaustion. "I'm just tired. But you… you're more injured than me. So maybe you're the one who wants to stop because you can't fight anymore?"
Hearing that, Rei glanced down at his left shoulder and then at the wound across his torso. The distortion along the cut still flickered faintly as his regeneration worked to realign the displaced flesh.
With his natural regeneration alone, it would take time to fully restore the damage caused by Ground Zero.
But that was only with his own power.
He had other methods.
If he chose to, he could use the restorative authority of the archangels power he got from Gabriel or Lucifer and force the wound to close far faster than normal.
"That's not a problem for me," Rei said lightly. "Even with one hand, I can still fight, you know."
"Heh… then me too. I can still fight," Threo replied, bending down slowly to grasp the handle of her greatsword.
She pulled it free from the stone, though her body wobbled the moment she lifted it. The sheer weight of the weapon looked heavier than before.
"Are you sure?" Rei asked, watching the instability in her stance.
He could clearly see the tremor in her legs and the strain in her grip.
"Don't underestimate me," Threo said, tightening her hold on the greatsword despite the way her arms shook.
Threo's grip on her greatsword tightened, the tremor in her arms growing more pronounced for a brief moment. Her breathing was still heavy, her body clearly at its limit after unleashing Ground Zero. For a second, it looked as if she might actually collapse where she stood.
Then she smiled.
"You really think I only have one trump card?" she muttered, her voice low but steady despite the exhaustion.
Rei's eyes narrowed slightly. He could feel it — a shift in the atmosphere, subtle at first, like pressure building before a storm breaks.
"Threo… what are you—"
"Berserk Forge."
The moment the words left her lips, the air around her erupted.
A violent surge of energy exploded outward from her body, generating a powerful gust of wind that tore across the fractured surface of the floating island. Loose debris lifted into the air, dust and shattered stone spiraling outward as if caught in the eye of a forming cyclone. The shockwave expanded in all directions, forcing Rei to brace himself despite his injuries.
A deep purple aura burst forth, threaded with streaks of blue that flickered like lightning within a storm cloud. It wrapped around Threo's body in spiraling currents, crackling and surging with raw intensity. The energy did not feel calm or natural — it felt forced, as though her body was being pushed beyond its natural threshold.
Her head tilted back slightly as the aura intensified, veins along her arms and neck faintly glowing beneath her skin. The exhaustion that had weighed down her posture began to fade. Her breathing steadied. The trembling in her legs disappeared entirely.
The energy did not simply refill her stamina — it restored it violently.
The purple-and-blue aura compressed closer to her frame, growing denser instead of spreading outward. The wind around her howled louder, tugging at Rei's wings and clothing as the pressure in the air climbed steadily.
Rei could feel the difference immediately.
The drained presence from moments ago was gone.
Her energy had snapped back to its peak.
Not gradually.
Instantly.
The greatsword in her hand no longer wavered. Her stance straightened, firm and grounded, eyes burning with renewed intensity. If anything, she looked even more dangerous than before, as if the forced restoration had sharpened her focus instead of dulling it.
Rei understood what this meant. He knew exactly what Threo had used — a self-enhancement technique from the game, one that pushed her body beyond its natural limits.
"Berserk Forge…" he muttered under his breath.
It wasn't truly a healing technique that restored someone to perfect condition. It was closer to forcing the body back into peak performance, overriding exhaustion through sheer will and power. The cost would not show now — but it would come later.
Threo lowered her blade slightly, aura still raging around her as the wind continued to whip violently across the broken island.
"This ends here," she declared, her voice no longer strained. "Even if I can't move for a week after this… I'll settle it now."
The storm of purple and blue energy swirled between them.
And the fight, which had seemed ready to collapse under mutual exhaustion, ignited once more.
"Fine then… if you still want to keep going."
Rei slowly raised his arm to the side.
A ripple of distorted light gathered around his palm, and the Katana of Repudiation manifested once more in his hand, its blade reflecting the violent purple-blue aura swirling around Threo.
But this time, he did not return to the Dawnfly stance.
Instead, Rei closed his eyes.
The wind howled between them, tugging at his clothes, brushing against the wound that still resisted full regeneration. Yet he stood still, unmoving, as if the storm did not exist.
He began to breathe slowly.
In.
Out.
He pushed away unnecessary thoughts.
The pain.
The blood loss.
The calculation of distance.
The evaluation of Threo's restored power.
Even the layered strategies forming instinctively in his mind — he discarded them all.
No plans.
No prediction.
No overthinking.
Everything was stripped away, one by one, until even his own internal calculations faded into silence.
"Butterfly Dance…" he murmured softly.
His mind became quiet.
Clear.
Like still water undisturbed by wind.
The noise of the battlefield dulled. The pressure in the air, the distortion lingering from Ground Zero, even Threo's overwhelming aura — all of it felt distant, as though he were standing in the center of an empty, tranquil lake.
Then—
"Dragonsbane Stance."
His eyes opened.
The hesitation from earlier was gone. The faint confusion about Ground Zero, the irritation at his slowed regeneration — none of it remained.
There was no doubt in his gaze.
No arrogance.
No recklessness.
Only the calm of a swordsman who had chosen his path.
The wind continued to roar between them, purple and blue energy clashing against invisible currents around Rei's still figure.
And this time—
He did not look like someone merely responding to Threo's challenge.
He looked like someone ready to end their fight.