Chapter 18 — The Nothing ArenaKazuki didn't bother with theatrics. The morning sky still wore the faint bruise of dawn, but a new absence swallowed it quickly—black, patient, absolute. He drew a breath that tasted of static and memory, and with one effortless motion the world folded away.
Where earth had been, a dimension of nothingness opened: a flat field of perfect void, like a soccer pitch drained of everything that could be named. At its center a black pool of water sat like an eye—mirror-silk with no reflection. Sound sank into the surface as if the pool swallowed meaning itself.
"How about we do it here?" Kazuki said, voice calm as wind. The air did not answer; it only leaned in.
Ash—red hair like a live coal and eyes spitting heat—smirked. "If we fought there, we could have ended the world." Flame licked his palms in agreement.
Luo Sterling—the silver-haired one, the colder cut of shadow—tilted his head, dark-purple eyes patient. "We don't care," he said. His voice tasted like the last sentence of a book.
Kazuki put a hand on the hilt at his back but didn't draw. "Then hand-to-hand first. No weapons."
They glanced at each other, then set their weapons down. A line was crossed: intent made visible. Ash rolled his shoulders; Luo's meteor-hammer rested like an accusation on the void. They spoke very politely as they stepped into the black field.
"Before we begin—introductions?" Ash called, grin bright and excessive.
Kazuki nodded. Seraphina shimmered at his side—slime molded into humanoid grace, golden eyes cold and amused. She stepped forward, letting the void lick her hem. Her voice was light, but every word cut.
"Name: Seraphina. Age: Unknown. Alignment: ? Occupation: Transcendent." She offered a small bow. The profile hung in the air like a declaration, precise and dangerous.
Ash laughed. "Ash." He planted his feet like a man claiming territory.
Luo's silver hair fell like a curtain. "Luo Sterling," he said, expression flat as a blade. "Nice to meet strangers who play with nothing."
Kazuki tilted his head and smiled. "Kazuki. Let's get it started."
Seraphina's eyes flicked to Kazuki—warning and thrill in equal measure. "Alert: don't engage, Master. I can take one, but the other…" She didn't finish. She didn't need to.
Wind—thin as a breath—moved across the void. (wind air blow)
Round One — Bare FistsThe red man, Ash, exploded first—heat and motion in a single, furious arc. He moved like a flare, every strike an attempt to rewrite physics with flame. SWISH—CLANG—THUD. His fist was a hammer; the void took the sound and offered nothing back.
Seraphina smiled and danced. Her form flowed with the memory of every fighting style she had stolen, every punch she had practiced a dozen lifetimes over. She mirrored Ash's fire with liquid motion: block, slip, counter. Where Ash expected a head-on collision, she gave him the elegant theft of an artful parry. Each strike Seraphina returned was a library of stolen technique—boxing stabs, a Muay Thai clinch unwound into a torrent of elbows, a Lethwei headbutt that never quite landed but always left its intent behind.
KRAK—WHISH—CLAP.
Ash staggered as her elbow met the exact place bone met tendon. His flame spasmed; his confidence flickered. Seraphina's hands, silk and iron, twisted him through a sequence of holds until the red glow in his eyes dimmed. The void watched, indifferent and hungry.
She finished with a precise THUD—Ash hit the black pool's rim and slid, wind-blown, rattling with the aftershock of being unmade methodically. He spat blood and laughed, shocked and delighted.
Seraphina half-kneel, breathing like an animal that'd enjoyed the chase. "You were fun," she said. "But you get sloppy when you think you're unstoppable."
Ash pushed himself up, fury already hot in his chest. "Again," he snarled.
Seraphina's smile was small and private as she stepped back to Kazuki's side. She had handled Ash's blaze and left him smoldering, bewildered at how fast his fire could be read and returned.
Round Two — Kazuki vs. Luo (Weapons Aftermath)Luo waited—patient as a tomb. When he moved, it was to study rather than strike: a meteor-hammer spin that made even the void shiver, a spear ready at his back. He had the air of someone who moved in long arcs and measured endings. Where Ash had been a comet, Luo was a slow eclipse.
Kazuki let him breathe, then stepped forward. The brass knuckles over his fists flared—red and black coils humming—a counterweight to the thing at his back: Abyssbreaker set against his spine, its weight a ceremonial promise.
They started hand-to-hand. Luo's reach was monstrous, his strikes aiming for balance and removal—take away a limb's meaning and the rest follows. Kazuki answered with Void Step Slash slippage: motion that wasn't teleportation but felt like the world cut and then healed around him. He moved like a man who'd trained his body to pre-empt thought. WHISH—CLANG—CRACK.
But Luo's strikes hit deeper. One blow snapped into Kazuki's ribs with the predatory precision of a spear. Pain exploded—bright and animal. Kazuki tasted iron and resolve. He bled—thin red ribbon along his lip—and the world narrowed to wind and motion. He smiled.
The silver man didn't smile. He measured the grin as an effrontery and tightened his grip. A meteor-hammer arc collapsed into a knee that sought to fold Kazuki in half.
KA-THOOM!
Abyssbreaker sang once in response—an undertone of black. Kazuki slid through the impact and countered with Hell Fang Barrage—fists like pistons, elbows like nails. The red-black knuckles slammed and Chop-chop-chop, each strike calculated, a child learning a brutal alphabet. He made spaces with his body and filled them with fury.
They exchanged blows until both breathed ragged and hot. Luo's spear-snap grazed Kazuki's side, tearing shallow but deep enough. Blood lacquered the void. Kazuki nearly staggered—vision smudging on the edges. The reader should see it: there was no magic plot-armor cushioning him. He could fall. He could break.
KRA-CRACK—THUD.
Luo hammered at his defenses like a theorem to be disproven. Kazuki's endurance was not infinite; his breath came quick, fear and excitement braided. Pain sang to him in high, bright notes. He enjoyed it—not from masochism so much as the pure clarity pain brought: the present in cutting focus.
He tasted something else, too: Luo's slight arrogance in how he assumed a spinal motion would be enough. Kazuki used it. At the edge of fatigue, he shifted posture as if surrendering an inch and then snapped into Demon Crash—a head-first skull strike that closed the distance and buckled Luo's balance.
SMACK—GROAN—WHUMP.
Luo reeled. His meteor-hammer spun, tried to regain purchase. Kazuki slapped the Abyssbreaker free in a blur—an instant Demon Fang Draw that grazed Luo's collar, drawing a thin line of shadowed blood. Luo's eyes flashed the first unguarded alarm.
They grappled. Kazuki clinched, his training manifest as crushing knees and bone-rattling elbows. The God-Killer Clinch took hold. For a moment it seemed the world might tilt entirely toward Kazuki—then the silver man reached back to reserves.
Luo exploded out of the clinch with a psychic shove that felt like gravity changed. He drew the meteor-hammer, a single arc that opened a groove in the void. He had one final push. Kazuki staggered—blood on his lip, a leak at his side, a mountain of exhaustion under his ribs.
He could have fallen then.
He kept grinning.
Pain and blood sharpened his logic. He used a falsified weakness—feigned limp, baited breath—and Luo committed to a strike that would have split him. Kazuki slid through with Void Step Slash, spun, and let Abyssbreaker sing.
RIFT EXECUTION.
A black seam opened; the swaggering arc of the meteor-hammer intersected the rift and was cut thin. Not just the weapon but the conceptual space around it was given a new edge. Luo felt it—a statistical wrongness in his swing—and the hammer's momentum betrayed him. Kazuki's follow-through was simple and terrible: Starbreaker launched as a single jag of red-black sun, smacking into Luo's chest like a verdict.
BOOOOM—CRACK—SILENT SHRIEK.
The star erupted into a million blade-shards that lanced the void clean. Luo collided with the pool-edge and slid, breathing like something ripped open. He was down. He was not dead. This was not triumph wrapped in invincibility; it was exhaustion, smarts, and a willingness to accept pain to win.
Kazuki collapsed to one knee. Blood slicked his hand. Seraphina landed and folded around him like a living cloak, cool hands gentle and precise.
Luo looked up at him and for a heartbeat there was something like respect—grudging and cold. "You're… dangerous," he said, voice a rasp.
Kazuki laughed, mixing agony and glee. "Not immortal. Not invincible. Just… annoying."
Ash pushed himself up across the void. He spat blood and smiled at Kazuki and Seraphina with the bloom of a man who'd learned humility by burning. "You two… not bad," he said.
Seraphina extended a hand to Ash; he took it, a nod between predators. The three of them — battered, bleeding, grinning—stood in the nothing-field, a tableau that did not lean toward pity or irony. The fight had been even. Seraphina had the edge in hand-to-hand and made a spectacle of it; the weapons match had been a knife's balance. Kazuki had nearly lost. He had bled and laughed and learned.
The sound of the void settled. (wind air blow)
Kazuki wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tasted the tang of victory and the salt of consequence. He had not fought the end of everything; he had fought men from outside the world and returned carrying new scars. That was the point.
He grinned into the beaten light. "That was fun," he said, blood on his smile.
Seraphina's golden eyes glowed, amused and wary in the same breath. "You enjoy this too much."
"No," Kazuki said, chest heaving. "I just… prefer honest fights."
Ash spat, wiped a cut, and laughed—a sound that tasted like burning sugar. Luo, still seated at the rim of the black pool, ran a hand through silver hair and said nothing. The two watchers from the fragments had met a realm and been entertained.
The nothing-field shivered; the black pool reflected no faces. No one had been erased. None had died. Everyone had been shown the truth: Kazuki could be hurt. He could be matched. He could be bested on any given morning if luck or cunning or will broke against him. But he endured. He laughed. He learned.
And the sky, scarred but patient, closed its tear as if noting down the day's small lesson in the margin of a book it might someday burn.
CLANG. CHBOOM. SWOOOOSH.