Elsewhere, Ren ran like lightning carved into flesh.
Each step tore through concrete, every heartbeat a countdown. The world blurred around him—shattered storefronts, overturned vehicles, the warped remnants of what was once Shibuya's skyline. He zigzagged through alleys, side streets, shattered buildings, leading Trickstarr on a controlled chase—no civilians in sight.
He was steering the chaos.
Behind him, Trickstarr flew like a bullet from a cursed barrel, his laughter carried by the wind.
"You're making me work for this, Ren Kurose!" he howled.
Explosions rang out as card after card flew from his coat, slicing buildings in half and igniting the air with streaks of red and gold. Entire walls folded in on themselves, telephone poles crashed in sparks, and glass rained down like glitter from the heavens.
But Ren didn't stop.
He felt it—faint, buried beneath rubble, calling to him.
His sword.
He dove past a collapsing pedestrian bridge, skidded through a shallow crater, and then—there. Half-buried in the earth, cracked but whole. The resonance in his soul surged as his fingers reached toward it.
Ren dropped to one knee and yanked the weapon free in one clean pull. The blade gleamed with faint Essence lines, responding to his touch like it had been waiting for him.
A few seconds later, Trickstarr descended behind him, slow, deliberate. The ground smoked under his boots. He gave a low, theatrical clap.
"Wow…so you learned to control your Essence that well already?" he said, tilting his head with something like genuine admiration. "Even led me away from all those sweet people in the process. I am very impressed."
Ren rose, blade steady in his one remaining hand, eyes locked.
"It's over for you," he said.
Trickstarr chuckled. "Don't get cocky. Or did you hit your head and forget the part where I leveled half a city?"
Ren's eyes narrowed. "Nah. Just figured I'd return the favor."
Trickstarr's grin flickered.
Without another word, Ren ran.
So did Trickstarr.
Their final dash.
Two blurs—one red, one silver—streaking through the ruins of Tokyo with sonic booms in their wake. Ground cracked underfoot, windows shattered as they passed. They moved faster than sound, faster than thought.
And then—
Clash.
Steel met cards, fists met ribs, kicks shattered air. Sparks and blood flew. Trickstarr twisted midair and launched a spiral of jagged diamonds, Ren parried, countered, slashed upward in a perfect arc. Every motion was practiced desperation—one-armed precision, burning rage.
They exchanged fifty blows in a second.
And neither held back.
This was it.
The final act.
Steel flashed—then vanished into the blur of limbs, cloth, and sparks.
Trickstarr whipped a back-heel across Ren's jaw; Ren snapped his head aside, letting the boot skim past, and answered with a thrust that shaved buttons from Trickstarr's lapel. Cards peeled from the magician's sleeves like feathers, ricocheting off walls, spinning back into his grip. He punched with one, slashed with another, every strike a razor's edge.
"He's keeping up with my speed," Trickstarr noted, eyes flickering with calculating light as he pivot-ducked a crescent slash. "But I can't feel his immense Essence reserves like before anymore…"
Ren's silence was its own drumbeat. Sword in his left hand, he flowed through footwork drilled a thousand nights on dojo floors: high guard—inside cut—rolling parry. Sparks flared each time steel met edge-hardened card.
"He's hiding something."
Trickstarr obliged, grin widening. He drove a knee toward Ren's ribs, spun, and sent a fan of diamonds outward—an eruption meant to blind. Ren raised his blade, deflecting three, letting two rake his shoulder for show. Blood splattered across cracked asphalt. Trickstarr's grin grew teeth.
Momentum shifted—on purpose. Ren's heels scraped back, posture narrowing as though strain finally told. Trickstarr pressed, coat swirling, body a crimson comet. A scything elbow, a whip-fast palm, a card-edge uppercut that nearly split Ren's cheek—each landed or grazed, selling the illusion that the swordsman's defenses were crumbling.
Then Trickstarr over-reached.
A half-step too deep. Weight on the front foot, torso twisted.
Ren's eye flickered.
Now.
His sword vanished in a blur of white arc—not toward Trickstarr's heart or throat, but low, into the space Trickstarr's guard had just abandoned. The magician caught the motion and laughed, snapping his braced forearm into the blade's path.
Steel rang on bone-reinforced muscle.
Stopped cold.
"Nice try," Trickstarr sneered, eyes blazing victory—
—and then the sword's etched channels ignited.
Ren had stored every drop of hidden Essence inside the steel itself, masking it until contact. It detonated through the blade like a bell struck by lightning, a pulse that ignored Trickstarr's block and registered deep.
Shockwave.
Trickstarr's grin froze; the impact caved the air, blew dust from the street, and hammered straight through his guard into marrow. The sleeve of his crimson coat atomized, forearm bones spider-cracking under invisible pressure. His body lifted, hurled backward—five, ten meters—skidding through ruined pavement, gouging a trench before slamming against a toppled transport truck with a metallic boom.
Silence snapped taut.
Ren straightened, blood dripping from his jaw, sword humming with residual light. He rolled his aching shoulder once, eyes fixed on the settling dust where Trickstarr lay.
The critical hit had landed.
Trickstarr's body twitched where it lay crumpled against the ruined truck, blood spilling in slow, deliberate streams from the cracks running through his card-formed skin. His arm—once pristine crimson silk—was torn open to the layered underside, edges curling like burnt paper. Where his face had once worn its trademark theatrical grin, the playing card markings—heart for the right eye, diamond for the mouth—had dulled, no longer gleaming with mischief.
And for once… Trickstarr wasn't smiling.
"Fuck," he thought, throat tight. "He learned to propagate his Essence through a medium…"
He tried to rise, breathing harsh.
"If he lands any more critical hits like that—"
A blur of silver.
Ren appeared.
Right in front of him.
A sonic crack followed just a second later.
Trickstarr's eyes widened. Instinct overrode pain. He kicked off the transport truck, flipping skyward, his body fragmenting into a storm of cards as he launched into a reverse spiral. Mid-air, he pulled a cluster of razor-edged cards into his hands and flung them in layered waves.
Fffsshhhk—shhk—shhhk!
The air screamed.
Ren weaved through the storm—bending, sliding, tilting his body between slashes so narrow they trimmed his jacket without touching skin. His sword deflected three in a single sweep; his feet never stopped moving.
Trickstarr landed hard on a rooftop edge, teeth gritted, sweat beading at his temple. He leapt again, landing behind Ren and lashing out in a spinning combo of slashes and kicks, cards flaring around his limbs like glowing wings.
Ren pivoted, sword up. Sparks exploded as steel met card once more, followed by a series of dodges—just shy, just enough—his body reacting with pinpoint instinct, letting Trickstarr's fury spend itself.
But this time, Ren pressed back.
Each strike now came faster, heavier. Trickstarr blocked a downward swing only for Ren to vanish and reappear behind him with a near-lethal thrust. Trickstarr twisted aside, gasping, his coat shredded down the side. Blood flung from his shoulder. Panic flickered beneath his eyes.
"He's faster now," Trickstarr thought, "and more precise."
He backstepped violently, flipping mid-air and reaching into his sleeve.
"Let's turn up the crowd!" he hissed—and flung the Jack of Spades into the air.
The card flared black and violet.
From alleyways, sewers, rooftops—monsters came.
Drawn to the call like vultures to blood, they poured in: half-formed, growling, twisted silhouettes of humanity corrupted by Essence. They screamed and lunged in blind fury.
Ren didn't even slow.
In a blur, he slashed through the first, ducked under a lashing claw from the second, and used the third's back as a springboard to vault forward, the monsters falling apart behind him in delayed, silent pieces. His trail was a silver wound through the battlefield.
But Trickstarr was already moving again—eyes wild, mouth bloodied, the card already flicked into the sky—
Jack of Hearts.
It pulsed crimson once.
And detonated.
The monsters near it exploded like bombs, twisted bodies unleashing volatile stored Essence in a chain reaction. The street was engulfed—cars lifted, glass vaporized, a towering column of smoke and debris spiraled upward like a volcanic eruption.
BOOOOOM!
Everything disappeared in light and sound.
Flames licked the edge of buildings. Rubble crashed down like thunder.
Trickstarr stood across the blast zone, coat shredded, one eye twitching. His crimson hat was long gone, tossed somewhere into the inferno. Blood trailed from the corner of his mouth in a steady drip, dyeing his teeth red.
His breathing was shallow, ragged.
Still standing.
He smiled—
A silver slash tore through the smoke.
Ren appeared in front of him—no flash step, no warning, just raw velocity compressed into a moment—and brought the sword down.
CRACK—
The blade connected. Another critical hit.
A pulse of Essence exploded from the point of contact, sending Trickstarr hurtling back like a meteor. He smashed through the leveled asphalt, bouncing—skidding—before crashing hard into the cratered ground with a final, sickening thud.
Silence swallowed the world.
A piece of his mask broke away, clattering to the ground.
Half of Trickstarr's real face—his human face—was now visible. Pale skin, bloodied cheek. His eye, no longer a glowing shape, stared wide and uncomprehending. A weak cough tore from his lungs, followed by a splash of crimson.
"Howwwwww?" he thought in disbelief. "How is he landing these hits one after the other?"
"That should be impossible!"
Ren advanced slowly now, blade in one hand, his face shadowed by smoke and streaked with ash and blood. His coat flared behind him with the last gust of the blast. The city around them was ruined, leveled, a blackened ruin.
And he was still walking.
Still coming.
Trickstarr screamed, snapping. Pain and fury and desperation all spiraling out of control.
His coat shredded further as he summoned everything left in him.