Chapter 69: It had begun
The sky above the final floor of the Moon Cell tower crackled with divine static.
Light twisted unnaturally, as if recoiling from the presence that stood at its center.
Buddha, serene yet impossibly vast, floated inches above the cracked marble.
Rings of golden energy spun behind him, each pulse heavy with boundless pressure.
Time slowed.
The world itself seemed to brace for what was to come.
Four stood against him.
Cú Chulainn stepped forward, Gáe Bolg spinning in his hand like a red comet on a leash.
His smirk was thin, sharp. "I've had bad matchups before," he muttered.
"but this one?"
"This might be the worst."
Beside him, Gawain's eyes burned like a furnace under a midday sun.
His sword—Excalibur Galatine—gleamed with golden arcs of solar fire, the faint outline of a miniature sun already beginning to rise above his shoulders.
"This battlefield is saturated in divinity," he said grimly.
"And still, we shall fight."
Richard Lionheart was silent for once.
His smile was gone.
Now it was time to be serious.
"In order to grant my master victory," he whispered.
"I'm afraid I'm about to go all out."
And behind them—Riya.
His gaze, steady and sharp, showed he was ready.
His eyes flashed green—as Atalanta's power surged in his veins.
The wind around him howled as spectral vines coiled around his arms, bow forming in his grasp.
He nocked an arrow, enchanted with divine speed and precision, and fired it into the sky.
Another followed.
Then another.
He wasn't here to lead.
He was here to back them up.
"Go!" he shouted through clenched teeth, his mana flaring with every shot.
"I'll cover you!"
Cú shot forward in a blue blur, leaping high and spinning Gáe Bolg over his head, the curse-etched spear howling like a banshee.
Buddha's eyes didn't follow him.
They didn't need to.
Gawain roared, magic circle blooming beneath him.
Flames licked his boots as he charged alongside the Hound of Ulster, cloak fluttering like a battle flag.
The sun above him rose higher, hotter.
And Richard—he didn't run.
He walked.
Every step forward, lions of flame burst from his sword and prowled at his heels.
The battlefield rippled under the purging fire of the lionheart.
Buddha raised one palm.
Rings spun.
Atalanta's arrows rained from above—sharp, divine, and fast.
They didn't aim to kill.
They aimed to open a path.
They struck the rings, briefly halting their spin.
That was all the opening the three needed.
Cú thrust from the left—Gáe Bolg turning to light.
Gawain came from the right, slashing at the ground to carve a trench of fire.
Richard raised his sword overhead, lions howling into the heavens as they leapt forward.
Three legendary heroes.
Vs one immovable god.
And behind them, bow in hand, Riya fed arrow after arrow into the storm—his heartbeat syncing with Atalanta's, his soul catching flame.
It had begun.
The opening assault should have shattered mountains.
Cú's cursed thrust found its mark in the center of Buddha's chest.
Gawain's wave of sunfire tore apart the floor beneath them, turning sacred marble to molten slag.
Richard's lions exploded in a pillar of purgatorial flame that devoured the air itself.
And yet—
When the dust cleared, Buddha remind unscratched.
The golden rings behind him spun lazily, not a scratch marring their perfection.
And something in his gaze had changed.
It was heavier now.
Like the gaze of someone who had finally decided you were worth killing.
The next moment, he moved.
Not fast.
Not violent.
Just inevitable.
Cú's spear lashed again, but a single raised hand caught it—not by the shaft, but by the curse itself.
The divine energy evaporated into motes of gold.
Cú stumbled, eyes wide.
A second ring bloomed from Buddha's palm, spinning outward like the ripple of a stone dropped in an endless pond.
It slammed into Gawain's chest before the Knight of the Sun could raise his sword, hurling him back across the battlefield.
Richard's lions roared and pounced—Buddha simply stepped forward, each motion accompanied by a pulse from his rings.
The lions burst apart like dust in the wind.
Riya's breath hitched.
Even Atalanta's divine arrows barely slowed him now—their shafts
disintegrating in midair before they could touch him.
"Damn it…" Riya muttered, nocking another.
His mana reserves burned like dry wood in a furnace.
Buddha's eyes flicked to him.
Just for a moment.
It was like being seen through every lifetime you had ever lived.
And then—he moved for Riya.
The floor between them collapsed into nothingness as he crossed the distance in a single step.
Cú threw himself in the way, spear spinning desperately to deflect the crushing ring of light forming around Buddha's hand.
The impact rang like a temple bell.
Cú staggered back, blood trailing from his mouth.
"Don't—let—him—"
But Buddha was already turning to face all three again, rings pulsing brighter, movements no longer reserved.
His next attack wasn't to repel—it was to end.
For the first time since the battle began, the god was fighting in earnest.
Buddha's rings pulsed like twin suns, each beat promising the erasure of everything in their path.
Cú wiped the blood from his lips.
Gawain pushed himself upright, his armor scorched but his grip steady.
Richard's breathing was heavy, his blade already wreathed in the crimson blaze of purgatory.
Riya felt the pressure crushing down on them—like the air itself was being forced to kneel.
If they didn't strike now, there wouldn't be another chance.
Cú glanced at the others. "One shot."
"All in."
Gawain gave a sharp nod. "For the light of the sun."
Richard's lips curled into a grin that didn't reach his eyes.
"And for our master."
Riya's hands trembled as he reached into the depths of his soul, calling on Atalanta.
Her presence flared—swift, focused, merciless.
He felt the phantom weight of her bow settle in his grip.
No more hesitation.
The battlefield felt like the center of the world—heat shimmering in the air, the ground trembling under the pressure of Buddha's presence.
His golden rings spun faster, their hum rising toward a sound that felt like it could split the soul.
Cú wiped blood from his chin and leveled his crimson spear.
"This is it," he said, eyes never leaving the target.
Gawain tightened his grip on Galatine, sunlight already beginning to gather above him.
Richard gave a sharp grin, his sword trembling with restrained fire.
Riya inhaled and reached deep—Atalanta's spirit answering in kind, bowstring already drawn in his mind.
They didn't need another word.
It was all or nothing.
"Your heart is pierced, the target hit as I declare—"
"GÁE BOLG!"
The spear lunged forward—red light twisting through space itself.
The tip didn't simply aim; it decided.
Reality bent to ensure the strike, curving through the air in an impossible line toward Buddha's heart.
Every step it took cracked the earth, each heartbeat echoing the curse that bound the attack.
"Before this brilliance that sets aside the night—"
"Pay your ostentation to the holy sword of the stars!"
"EXCALIBUR GALATINE!"
The miniature sun above him erupted, flooding the world in searing gold.
Gawain's blade became a conduit for that star, unleashing a tidal wave of burning light.
The heat peeled the skin from stone, melted steel in an instant, and rolled forward like a living, unstoppable wall of fire.
"O' lion that bites from within my body—"
"O' lion that crunches the world through my will—"
"Hunger, pray, decay, roar and carve my path in the horizon of the ravine!"
"UTOPIE PURGATOIRE!!"
Flaming lions burst from his blade, each as large as a war chariot.
Their manes were pure fire, their roars a furnace blast.
Wherever they stepped, the ground split and bled molten rock.
They charged in a hunting pack, their open jaws vomiting beams of purgatory flame that carved molten scars into the earth.
"With my bow and arrows, I pray for the protection of the God Apollo and Goddess Artemis—"
"I offer thee this calamity—"
"PHOEBUS CATASTROPHE!!"
Twin arrows of light streaked into the heavens, splitting the clouds with a sound like tearing silk.
A heartbeat later, the sky wept fire—tens of thousands of luminous arrows screaming down like a divine execution.
Each impact was a spear of light that shattered rock and splashed molten debris in all directions, until the very rain itself was fire.
The Four Noble Phantasms struck together.
The collision was an apocalypse—sound, heat, and light detonating in a single cataclysmic heartbeat.
The earth ripped open in great jagged wounds; shockwaves toppled what little was left of the battlefield's ruins.
The sky itself was ablaze, every cloud stripped away in a howling storm of fire and divine radiance.
When the brilliance began to fade, the air was thick with ash and the smell of scorched stone.
And standing in the center, smoke curling from his body, was Buddha.
Burned.
Cracked.
Bleeding light.
But alive.
"Impressive," he said, his calm voice cutting through the ruin.
"Now… allow me to return the favor."
His hands came together.
A colossal ring of gold materialized between them, spinning faster and faster until it howled like a storm.
At its center—light so intense it felt like the birth of a star.
Riya's instincts screamed—this was death incarnate.
The four Noble Phantasms' combined blast had left the battlefield a smoking ruin — but Buddha still stood, the golden aura around him now burning brighter, hotter, heavier.
He raised his hands slowly, as if in prayer.
Twelve golden rings bloomed from his palms, spinning until they became a single blazing halo.
The air turned molten.
Riya felt his lungs sear with every breath.
"This is not vengeance," Buddha said softly.
"This is liberation."
The halo's center condensed into a blazing core.
Then the world erupted.
A torrent of golden annihilation roared forth, a beam wide enough to engulf armies.
The blast swept over the ground, turning stone to liquid, air to fire, and sound itself to nothing.
Gawain leapt into its path, Galatine raised high.
"Before this brilliance—EXCALIBUR GALATINE!"
His miniature sun met Buddha's.
For a moment, they fought in equal blaze—
—and then Galatine's light was snuffed out.
Gawain vanished in a flash, body and blade reduced to dust.
"RIYA! MOVE!" Cú Chulainn's voice cut through the roar.
Gáe Bolg spun in his grip one last time, its crimson light stabbing forward—only to be caught between Buddha's fingers.
The next wave consumed him.
The beam was coming for Riya next.
He froze for a fraction of a second—too long.
Then Richard's voice rang out:
"ROUNDS OF LIONHEART — COME TO ME, MY COMRADES!"
Shadows surged from beneath his feet, stretching out like gates to another world.
From them emerged familiar warriors — that riya knew all too well.
Leonidas, shield planted in front of Riya, spears broken but stance unshaken.
Fergus mac Róich, grinning like a madman as he swung Caladbolg in a wide guard.
Robin Hood, loosing arrows into the heart of the golden light, each bursting into smoke to scatter its force.
Fūma Kotarō, vanishing into the glare and reappearing to strike phantom blows against it.
Darius III, roaring as he anchored the line, his massive axe planted in the molten ground.
And finally — Muramasa, silent and cold, blades drawn, standing directly before Riya like a final gate.
They all moved as one, forming a wall of flesh, steel, and spirit.
The golden beam crashed into them.
Leonidas's shield split in half.
Fergus's sword cracked down the middle.
Robin's bowstring snapped.
Fūma's outline flickered.
Darius's roar was swallowed.
Muramasa's blades glowed white before shattering.
One by one, they dissolved into motes of light — but the beam had lost its killing edge.
When the glare faded, Riya was still standing.
The warriors were gone.
And Richard was on one knee, armor smoking, smiling faintly through scorched lips.
"I'm sorry master..." he rasped.
Then he, too, was gone.
Silence.
Too much silence.
The battlefield was littered with the wreckage of men and gods — the places where Cú Chulainn had fallen, where Gawain's light had burned out, where Richard's fire had been smothered.
The air still stank of their deaths.
Riya staggered forward, numb.
The world felt smaller somehow — not because it had changed, but because everyone in it who mattered was gone.
And then, in the quiet between heartbeats… Rin's voice was missing.
Not just absent — erased.
Her last smile surfaced in his mind, flickering like a dying candle.
He reached for it, desperate for warmth.
But it slipped away.
All that was left was cold.
Buddha's calm, pitying voice rolled across the field.
"You are alone now."
"It is time to Let go."
Something inside Riya broke — not slowly.
All at once.
At first it was a tremor in his mana, small enough to ignore.
Then it became a flood.
Riya's teeth clenched.
"Nero…"
He slammed his palm into the ground, dragging on her power.
The golden light answered — faint trumpets, the scent of roses and imperial glory.
For a breath, hope returned.
But the light warped.
Gold bled into black.
The trumpets deepened into a bass moan, drawn-out, almost sensual.
The warmth curdled into heat that burned not flesh, but thought.
A voice laughed softly in his skull, warm breath against the back of his mind.
"Oh, sweet boy… that's not her touching you."
"That's me."
A violent, jagged surge of power ripped through his veins like molten iron.
Breaths grew ragged, each one carrying a sound that wasn't quite human.
The whites of his eyes drowned in black.
His pupils narrowed to predatory slits.
Then the voice came back.
Low.
Velvet.
Dangerously close.
"Poor little Riya… stripped bare."
"Everything you love, gone."
"Tell me… how does it feel to be nothing?"
It slid around his thoughts like a lover's hands, slow and deliberate.
"But you're not nothing, are you?"
"I can make you more."
"Stronger than them… stronger than him."
"Just say the word, and I'll fill you… every inch of you."
"Let me in… and I'll never leave you empty again."
The Beast was taken control of him...
It wasn't a shift of body, but of essence.
Shadows curled around him like they belonged to him.
Every heartbeat echoed like war drums under the earth.
The ground cracked outward, pulsing with black glyphs.
His voice came out layered, distorted — human overlaid with something deeper.
"You want me… to let go?"
"No I wont..."
"...But you will"
He opened his hand.
Fire that wasn't fire bled from his palm — violet-black, alive, hungrily tasting the air.
It didn't burn.
It consumed.
Buddha raised a hand to block.
Riya was already there.
His grip closed around the god's wrist — a perfect trap.
The sky shook.
Clouds shredded like paper.
A single backhand slammed Buddha across the battlefield, his heels carving molten trenches.
He appeared behind Buddha — drove a fist into the god's spine hard enough to make his divine aura scream like breaking glass.
A follow-up kick drove him into the earth, birthing a crater wide enough to swallow temples.
Buddha rose, serene mask faltering.
Riya smiled — sharp, hungry.
"Your liberation means nothing."
Inside, the voice coiled tighter.
"Yes… hate him."
"Hate the god who took them from you."
"Tear him down."
"Bite."
"Rip."
"Drink deep of his divinity — taste how sweet it is."
"You're not a man anymore, little dragon… you're mine."
The battlefield was silent once more.
No wind.
No sound.
Only the heat — thick and choking — bleeding from the thing that had been Riya.
The corrupted sword materialized in his hand, molten from within, its once-regal gold plating warped into jagged obsidian.
The hilt gleamed with an inner crimson pulse, like a heart beating in his grip.
Veins of red lightning crawled up the blade, spilling into the air as raw, violent arcs.
The ground at his feet blackened, not from flame but from his aura — a suffocating wave of crimson and shadow that rippled like heat haze, bending light, distorting form.
"Riya," he said, voice calm but heavy, "this path leads only to ruin."
Riya's smile was slow, feral, and wrong.
"You ruined me first."
He moved.
No — he appeared.
One step was all it took to cross the distance, his sword a streak of bleeding light.
Buddha caught the strike with his hands, but the ground still exploded outward, earth and stone flung high like fleeing birds.
The corrupted blade screamed — a note of hunger — and crimson energy surged down its length.
The impact flung Buddha into the sky, golden fragments peeling off his aura like shrapnel.
Riya followed.
Midair, his corrupted aura swelled into a visible storm, whirling around him in a cyclone of red-black energy.
The air cracked with the sound of tearing cloth, reality bending at the edges.
Buddha descended in a controlled fall — only to find Riya already beneath him, blade poised upward.
A thrust of crimson light lanced toward his chest.
The god twisted away — barely — the tip grazing his robe, the fabric instantly blackening, curling like paper touched by flame.
The crimson aura flared again, shrouding Riya in a demonic silhouette.
His voice was layered, carrying both his own and her tone — deep, resonant, dripping with malicious satisfaction.
"You're too slow for me now."
He chained attacks at a speed no human could follow — slashes that bent in midair, thrusts that phased through Buddha's guard, phantom afterimages striking in sync.
Every step Riya took, the ground caved, crimson cracks racing outward like veins.
Buddha blocked.
Parried.
Redirected.
But for every defense, another strike waited.
And somewhere, under the roar of clashing divinity, her voice purred in his skull:
"Feel it, Riya."
"This is what it means to be alive."
"To take."
"To own."
"Every god bleeds."
"Every god dies"
"Kill him"
Riya feinted high, then slammed the corrupted blade into the earth.
Crimson energy burst upward in a geyser, engulfing Buddha in a storm of molten crimson and shadow.
The god emerged, aura flickering, golden skin marred by black scorch marks.
Buddha staggered back, his calm breathing now a ragged rasp.
His ring of light flickered as if sensing the tide had turned.
Riya advanced—no, something wearing Riya's body advanced.
His eyes were no longer the soft brown of a man fighting for home, but pits of molten crimson.
The corrupted sword in his grip bled heat and malice, its edge seeming to shimmer between steel and flame.
The air itself recoiled from the aura that rolled off him in choking waves.
Her voice coiled through his mind like smoke, wrapping around every thought.
"Yes… closer."
"Let him feel it."
"Let them all feel it."
"Seven tongues of flame… seven heads to feast… a theater of agony for our grand performance."
Riya's lips parted, but the voice that emerged was no longer his alone.
"The flame blooms."
"Its roar echoes across the land."
Her whisper slithered over his ear, "Bloom brighter—burn everything."
"O seven dragons, become my wings and take flight!"
"Fly, my pets."
"Wrap around his soul and crush it until it sings."
"Embrace, melt, and yearn for me!"
"Take him."
"Take all of him."
"Leave nothing but ash."
"Babalon Domus Aurea!!"
The world twisted.
Around them, a golden theater materialized from nothing, its radiant walls laced with veins of black corruption.
Marble pillars split and reformed as obsidian spires, their surfaces alive with writhing flame.
The sky above dimmed until it was only the glow of the burning stage.
Buddha stood at its center, trapped.
From every corner of the theater, seven colossal dragons emerged—wings molten gold, eyes searing crimson, their roars shaking the realm itself.
They spiraled above, then dove as one, their bodies collapsing into a single, cataclysmic beam of destructive fire.
The blast consumed the stage.
When the light faded, there was nothing left of Buddha—no body, no trace—only drifting embers falling into the void.
The theater crumbled, its beauty fading into black smoke, leaving Riya standing alone, the crimson aura dissipating like a dying heartbeat.
The last ember of the Golden Theater winked out, leaving only the broken sky and the silence of a battlefield where no one else drew breath.
Riya swayed, chest heaving.
His corrupted blade dripped faint light, its heat fading in uneven pulses.
For a moment, he almost dropped to his knees.
That was when her voice—sultry, smooth, and soaked in poison—slid into his mind.
"My, my… what a performance, my little dragon."
The air seemed to thicken.
Heat traced the side of his neck like invisible fingers.
"You nearly broke.
"But I couldn't allow that… not yet."
"So I borrowed Her name."
"Her Saint Graph."
"You felt it, didn't you?"
"That rush, that perfection…"
Her laugh was soft, almost tender—until it wasn't.
A shiver ran through him.
Somewhere deep in his gut, something snarled—something that wasn't his own voice.
"I need you alive, Riya."
"Alive long enough for you to tear this world open for me."
"And if I must wrap my hands around your heart to keep it beating, I will."
Her tone shifted—warm, coaxing, dripping with unspoken promise.
"You and I will burn brighter than any god or king."
"When the time comes, you'll beg me to never let go… and I'll reward you."
The phantom touch lingered for one last heartbeat, then pulled away like smoke in the wind.
Riya blinked.
The fog in his head cleared.
He remembered only heat, a woman's power, and...was it Nero?
I did it…I killed him.
But how?
His breathing steadied.
He raised his eyes.
Across the shattered ground, Twice stood—unmoving, unafraid, his silhouette framed by the jagged tear in the sky.
The two locked eyes.
The last step.
The last master to kill.
The end of everything.