*Pages 25-30*
Torn out.
*Pages 30-35*
Torn out.
Lastnine finished reading and felt a deep unease at the missing pages. Something was deliberately hidden from him, but powerless to change it, he shrugged it off, stowed the book in his pocket dimension, and stepped into another world—a place crawling with grotesque monsters devouring each other. The stench of rot hit him so hard he nearly retched. One creature locked its crimson eyes on him. Disgusted, Lastnine gunned them all down with his pistol, but chunks of flesh splattered across his body, reeking worse than death. Enraged, he unleashed a wave of annihilation that erased everything within thousands of kilometers—not a single cell remained.
He pressed on, world after world, until he encountered a general serving some unknown Emperor. The general studied him cautiously before hurling a spear. Lastnine raised a conceptual shield, but the weapon shattered it and pierced his shoulder—an unstoppable lance moving at incalculable speed. The general stood 30 kilometers away, beyond his gun's auto-target range. Lastnine yanked the spear free, snapped it in half, and fired. The bullet punched through the general's chest, hurling him into a mountain range. As the general clawed at the round lodged in his flesh, a crimson blade from Lastnine's dagger descended, erasing the man's energy and life in one stroke. The slash carved downward through infinite layers of nested fiction.
-Meanwhile, in some nameless world-
Seven beings—embodiments of the deadly sins crafted by God, now escaped and threatening all existence—gathered in a chamber. Two women, five men. Pride, the first to speak, radiated arrogance:
"How far have you progressed?"
Gluttony kept eating. Wrath was too furious to talk. Lust was absent. Sloth slept. Envy grumbled:
"As you can see, nothing."
He shot Gluttony a sour glance, then Pride remembered:
"Where's Greed? Lost in some corner of this damned multiverse?"
Envy kicked his feet onto the table:
"How should I know? This place is infinite. Layers upon layers of fiction—each containing infinite sub-layers, treated as mere stories by the ones above. Higher narratives view lower ones as scripted tales; lower ones can't perceive, touch, or ascend. It's an endless regression of containment, all following the same structure, trapped inside yet another layer—"
Pride cut him off:
"I know the drill. Higher layers see lower ones as dreams—obvious. It's all just a bubble among infinite bubbles in this world, which itself sits above the fictional stacks. But that doesn't answer where Greed is."
Envy snapped:
"I told you, I don't know!"
Pride's eyes narrowed:
"I demand respect."
Envy sneered:
"We're equals, remember?"
Pride refused to yield:
"Still, find him. He's one of us."
Envy frowned:
"You do it. I don't care."
Pride's fist cracked across Envy's face, sending him flying. Envy rose, eyes blazing red with jealousy, and unleashed an explosion. Pride dodged effortlessly. Sloth and Gluttony teleported away. Wrath, seeing the chaos, punched both Pride and Envy, hurling them into walls.
"Are you insane? You're wrecking my space!"
Envy roared:
"Shut your useless mouth, you rage-addicted trash!"
Wrath's blood boiled. He drove a corrosion-laced fist into Envy's mouth, distorting half his face and blasting him backward. Envy retaliated with a kick that sent Wrath tumbling. As they charged to kill each other, three iron coins streaked down, forming energy shields that halted their blows. Greed had returned, using the third coin to teleport between them, smiling.
"My friends, why fight?"
Pride glared:
"Where have you been?"
Greed grinned:
"Just a quick errand in the Omega Layer. Where's Lust?"
Pride folded his arms:
"No idea. But she's the strongest here—nothing we can do about her."
Silence fell. Footsteps echoed. A figure in a plague-doctor mask entered—long black coat with white fur collar, black turtleneck beneath, leaning on a cane. His voice glitched:
"H-hello. I-I am the scholar, Trigun William, and I come to—"
Greed interrupted, smiling:
"How'd you get in? Only allies or us should be able to enter. Unless…"
Two coins shot toward William, stopped by an invisible barrier. He continued:
"—to make a request of you mortals."
Pride and Wrath materialized before him, power surging. Pride's face darkened:
"I don't like insects calling a being of my magnitude 'mortal.'"
William tapped his cane:
"Mortal. Yes. Puppets thinking severed strings mean freedom—only jumping cages. You still feel, hurt, desire. To me, that's Omega Layer garbage."
Pride's veins bulged like cables, yet his face stayed calm—a contradiction. One step cracked reality around his foot into black voids.
"You called it garbage? You—beaked clown in a cosmic circus coat—dare judge me? I am Pride, making gods tremble. I make fictional layers, worlds, the Omega Layer itself quiver at a thought. And you call me mortal?"
William tilted his head, voice flat:
"Yes. You need validation, fear, remembrance. True freedom requires none. You perform, Pride. Your stage is a grain of sand in the Omega desert."
Wrath growled:
"You said I… perform?"
William turned:
"No. I said you live for the show. Every punch, roar, flame proves you exist. You don't strike from anger—you anger to strike. You need audience, blood, cracking bone. Without them, who are you? Sins born of humanity, claiming godhood through vice, yet daring to challenge me?"
Wrath roared. Walls of spatial steel fractured, revealing abyssal voids and torn pages of nested worlds beneath. He charged, fist capable of annihilating galaxies. William raised one finger. The punch halted one centimeter from the mask—not blocked, simply unable to cross a higher dimensional gap.
William sighed. Pride and Wrath lunged, eyes blazing. Greed hurled countless coins—they phased through harmlessly. William lightly tapped his cane. Space-time warped, reality disassembled. He strolled to the center, looked down at the sins, snapped his fingers, and vanished. Everything normalized.
The six sins stared in silence. Pride straightened his clothes:
"Meeting adjourned…"
They teleported away.
-In Cryzar's world-
The realm had no name—Cryzar needed none to rule. An eternal ice monolith, its sky forever ash-gray from snow melted by subterranean volcanic breath. The ground: plateaus of ice thousands of kilometers thick, fissured by vents exhaling cold that could freeze the concept of time. At the center, Cryzar's palace rose like an inverted mountain of ice, spires piercing clouds—each a core imprisoning devoured worlds' souls. The air reeked of cold metal and ozone, reality forcibly congealed.
On a vast arena of black ice—each shard reflecting infinite self-images, creating illusions of endless fictional layers—Frost, the dwarf penguin with ragged white-gray feathers like snow on basalt, trained Jasmine, Lastnine's apprentice. Frost barely reached Jasmine's knee, yet every step fractured the ice into fractal blooms spanning hundreds of meters. Its eyes: sapphire gems glowing like a frozen star's heart.
Jasmine fought in combat form. His left wing: a solid mass of darkness, not feathers but living smoke. His left arm: wrapped in black chains, each link etched with ancient runes that warped space just by existing. Right hand normal, fingers trembling under left-side pressure. Hair, grown long over harsh months, silver-white. Frost watched expectantly.
Jasmine roared. His left wing swept out—darkness and blood erupting into thousands of black scythes slicing space. The ice cracked, revealing a lower layer where ice creatures melted into black water. Frost dodged with a short hop, body blurring like a mirage, then landed on Jasmine's shoulder, beak tapping his head. Finally, it spoke:
"You still think in Lastnine's terms—guns, bullets, destruction. Here, we don't shoot. We freeze. Freeze even the idea of motion."
Jasmine panted, chains tightening as if alive:
"The old man… Lastnine… wouldn't like this."
Frost replied:
"Lastnine isn't here."
From a transparent ice balcony overlooking the arena, Cryzar leaned on the railing. Beside him: his gaunt attendant in gray robes, face hidden under a hood, bony hands clutching an ice-bound ledger. Cryzar gazed down:
"The plans of the Emperors of Fire, Light, and Crimson—they think I crave conquest. Territory, resources, souls. Naïve. Every step they take is a heartbeat in my design. Conquest? No. I will manipulate time itself—not crude travel, but ownership of the concept. Past, present, future—ice chains in my grasp."
The attendant scribbled with an ice-quill, glowing trails left behind, then asked:
"You speak of the Anomaly: Endpoint of Time?"
Cryzar nodded, black eyes staring far beyond the arena:
"Exactly. It is a place. A state. Where every concept ends. Scripts shatter. Information becomes void. Laws freeze eternally. Imagine: a point where even the notion of 'beginning' ceases. Time does not flow—it congeals."
Below, Jasmine screamed, eyes flaring like stars. His left wing exploded into a storm of darkness laced with blood. Frost evaded, slower this time. A drop of frozen blood from Jasmine's wing touched its feathers, encasing part of its body. Frost smirked, beak shattering the ice:
"Better. But not enough. Think of the Endpoint my master seeks. There, even your motion will halt."
Jasmine paused, gasping:
"The Endpoint… what is it?"
Frost glanced at the balcony where Cryzar observed:
"A place no one running will ever reach. Fleeing the past, chasing the future—but at the Endpoint, there is no running. Only stopping."
In the arena, Jasmine stared at his left wing. The black chains vibrated, whispering of a frozen future. Frost stood beside him, feathers rimed with frost:
"Keep training, apprentice. When the Endpoint opens, only those who comprehend stillness will survive."
-In Cryzar's world- The world had no name, for Cryzar needed none to rule. It was an eternal monolith of ice, sky forever ash-gray from snow melted by the breath of buried volcanoes. The ground was plateaus of ice thousands of kilometers thick, riven by fissures that exhaled cold capable of freezing the very concept of time. At the center rose Cryzar's palace—an inverted mountain of ice, its spires stabbing through cloud layers, each tower a core imprisoning the souls of devoured worlds. The air reeked of cold metal and ozone, reality itself forced to congeal.
On a vast arena of black ice—each shard reflecting infinite images of itself, weaving the illusion of endless nested fictions—Frost, the dwarf penguin with ragged white-gray feathers like snow on basalt, trained Jasmine. Frost stood no higher than Jasmine's knee, yet every footfall cracked the ice into fractal blooms spreading hundreds of meters. Its eyes were twin sapphires glowing like the heart of a frozen star.
Jasmine, Lastnine's apprentice, fought in combat form. His left wing was a solid mass of darkness—not feathers, but living smoke. His left arm was wrapped in black chains, every link etched with ancient runes that warped space merely by existing. His right hand remained flesh, fingers trembling under the pressure from the left. His hair, grown long over harsh months, was silver-white. Frost watched as if expecting something decisive.
Jasmine roared. His left wing swept out. Darkness and blood erupted, becoming thousands of black scythes that sliced space itself. The ice shattered, revealing the void below—a lower layer where ice creatures melted into black water. Frost dodged with a short hop, body blurring like a mirage, then landed on Jasmine's shoulder, beak tapping his skull. Finally it spoke:
"You still think in Lastnine's terms. Guns, bullets, destruction. Here, we do not shoot. We freeze. We freeze even the notion of motion."
Jasmine panted, the chains on his left arm tightening as if alive, and said: "The old man… Lastnine… that old man would not like this." Frost replied: "Lastnine is not here."
A short distance away, on a transparent ice balcony overlooking the arena, Cryzar leaned on the railing. Beside him stood his attendant—a gaunt figure in gray robes, face hidden beneath a hood, bony hands clutching an ice-bound ledger. Cryzar gazed down and said:
"The plans of the Emperors of Fire, Light, and Crimson—they think I crave conquest of worlds. They think I hunger for territory, resources, souls. Naïve. Every step they take is a heartbeat in my design. Conquest? No. I will manipulate all of time. Not crude time-travel—that is beneath me. I will own the concept of time itself. Let past, present, and future become chains of ice in my grasp."
The attendant scribbled with an ice-quill, leaving glowing trails on the page, and asked: "You speak of the Anomaly: Endpoint of Time?"
Cryzar nodded, his black eyes staring far beyond the arena, and said:
"Precisely. The Endpoint is a place. It is a state. Where every concept ends. Every script shatters. Every piece of information becomes void. Every law is frozen forever. Imagine: a point where even the idea of 'beginning' no longer exists. There, time does not flow. It congeals."
Below in the arena, Jasmine screamed and his eyes blazed like dying stars. His left wing exploded, unleashing a storm of darkness laced with blood. Frost evaded, but slower this time. A drop of frozen blood from Jasmine's wing touched its feathers, encasing part of its body in ice. Frost smirked, shattering the ice with its beak, and said:
"Better. But still not enough. Think of the Endpoint my master pursues. There, even your motion will stop."
Jasmine paused, breathing hard, and asked: "The Endpoint… what is it?"
Frost glanced up at the balcony where Cryzar watched, and said: "It is a place no one who is still running will ever reach. Because they run from the past, they run toward the future. But at the Endpoint, there is no running. There is only stopping."
In the arena, Jasmine stared at his left wing. The black chains vibrated, as though whispering of a future locked in ice. Frost stood beside him, feathers rimed with frost, and said: "Continue training, apprentice. Because when the Endpoint opens, only those who understand stopping will survive."
Cryzar turned from the balcony, his cloak trailing behind him like a glacier's shadow. The attendant closed the ledger with a soft crack of ice. Frost cracked the arena floor beneath Jasmine's feet with a single step. it commanded
"Again, until your heartbeat forgets how to beat."
Jasmine raised his wing. The void answered, hungry and absolute and they keep train, frost attack jasmine with his small left leg and jasmine, the one create a blood spear throw into frost force frost absorb the blood spear and jasmine use that small time use his speed behind frost and punch into frost send him to a big iceberg, frost grab the iceberg and throw into jasmine, the one who dodge it and create a void slash into frost but frost keep absorb all the attack, even it can erase to the level fundamental itself, frost can still absorb, eat all, eating everything put jasmine in a difficult position, jasmine slowly smiled, that smile surprised frost because… it was strangely similar to lastnine's, and the human and penguin looked at each other and rushed at each other again…
-continued next chapter-