An unprecedentedly intense emotion, like a bursting dam, instantly washed away Accelerator's inner defenses—it was boundless, bone-deep fear!
Facing the man whose eyes held only naked mockery, Accelerator's brain seemed to freeze, his thoughts sinking into a muddy blank.
Each breath was as heavy as pulling bellows, and a strong, rusty sweetness surged in his throat. How long had it been? No, perhaps from the day he Awakened this power, he had never experienced such pure, Soul-crushing pain!
However, as fear climbed to its Peak, Accelerator's blood-stained mouth suddenly stretched upward, pulling into a twisted, utterly maniacal grin!
"Hahahahahahaha—!!!!!!!"
A piercing, sharp, metallic-sounding cackle tore through the dead silence! His eyes, which had been dazed and unfocused from fear, were now soaked in blood, turning crimson and insane!
Fear, anger, humiliation, unwillingness, and the most primal desire for destruction... countless negative emotions, like the lava of Hell, erupted and boiled wildly deep within his collapsing heart!
Rumble—!!!
Responding to his mad laughter was an even more violent, more out-of-control hurricane than before! The tyrannical airflow, like an awakened ancient beast, exploded outward with him at its center!
The already crumbling building, reduced to a mere skeleton, instantly disintegrated like a sandcastle under the sweep of this power, turning into dust that filled the sky!
A huge mushroom cloud of smoke and debris shot into the sky, completely revealing the two tiny figures, yet containing world-destroying power, at the center of the storm.
Rhode's eyes gleamed with interest, as if he were admiring a work of art about to be completed. He casually tossed Accelerator, who was limp like a rag doll, to the ground, then lightly stepped back, gracefully floating dozens of meters away to maintain a safe distance.
He stood with his hands behind his back, a constant, chilling, mocking smile on his lips, as if to say, 'Let me see, what other tricks can you pull?'
"The thing that can kill this beast... isn't it right here?" Accelerator lay prostrate on the scorching earth, his voice hoarse like sandpaper rubbing, more like a demon's whisper.
That brain, hailed as Academy City's strongest, operated wildly under overload, stimulated by the dual threats of death and extreme madness! The Vector Manipulation calculation mode was pushed to an unprecedented limit, even Breaking through some invisible shackles!
Om—!
An invisible force field spread out from him! Throughout Academy City, all flowing air—breezes, currents, even high-altitude gales—seemed to be summoned by some supreme will!
They were forcibly snatched and guided by an invisible giant hand, converging madly towards a single point at a speed beyond physical limits!
That point was 100 meters in the Void Realm, directly above Accelerator's head!
Hiss—!
The air was compressed to its extreme, emitting a teeth-grating shriek!
Space itself seemed to twist and groan under the high temperature!
When the torrents of storm from all directions were compressed to their critical point—
Sizzle—!!!
A white light, more dazzling and purer than the midday sun, suddenly erupted!
It was like the first ray of light at the birth of the Universe, or the scorching core at the tip of a welding torch, capable of melting stars!
The air wailed in the inferno of compression, atoms were brutally torn apart and stripped away!
Plasma!
Super-compressed air generated terrifying heat, instantly exceeding ten thousand degrees Celsius!
The surrounding air was instantly ionized and consumed by this extreme heat, forming a wildly expanding, over twenty-meter-diameter—Plasma Sun—composed of pure destructive energy!
It floated in the night sky, emitting light and heat capable of incinerating all things, illuminating the ground below with a ghastly white glow!
"Ha... hahaha... Look! This world... there's nothing that can stop me now!" Accelerator, with trembling, almost ungraspable hands, pointed fiercely at the artificial sun he had created, his face a mixture of pain and twisted, ferocious ecstasy. "World... tremble in my hands!!"
Accelerator stared fixedly at Rhode, hoping to see discomfiture, fear, or even a hint of wavering on that hateful face!
However, there was nothing.
Nothing at all.
It was still that arrogant posture, looking down on the world, still that bone-deep sneering smile! As if the world-destroying sun he had summoned with all his might was merely a slightly brighter light bulb in the night sky!
"Don't look at me like that—!! Beast!!!!" Intense self-esteem, like a poisoned blade, wildly stirred in Accelerator's already tattered heart!
That bone-deep sting could only be appeased by utterly crushing the man before him, along with his arrogance, into dust!
"Good, good." Rhode's deep laughter, like a nightmare's murmur, clearly pierced through the roar of the Plasma Sun, echoing in Accelerator's ears. "Finally, you've produced something decent. Well then... let us decide the victor with the purest 'firepower.'"
He slowly raised his right hand, fingers spread open.
Whoosh!
A ball of intensely condensed, seemingly living, Chi Hong flame spontaneously leaped into existence in his palm!
It wasn't ordinary flame; it was more like a miniature stellar core, forcibly restrained and compressed!
The flame burned, flowed, and shaped silently, emitting terrifying high temperatures that warped space itself!
The concrete ground beneath his feet instantly softened and melted, turning into Chi Hong lava that flowed outward, its blinding light illuminating Rhode's figure like a god of flame!
"Get ready, brace yourself." Rhode's voice carried a chilling sense of declaration.
He extended his left hand forward, index and middle fingers together like a sword, pointing steadily forward, like the arm of an invisible divine bow.
His right hand also joined its index and middle fingers, slowly resting on his left hand's "bow arm," forming the posture of drawing a bow to full moon!
Zheng—!
The air seemed to hum with the tension of a taut bowstring!
As he pulled with his right hand, the terrifying Chi Hong flame in his palm was rapidly compressed, shaped, and extended! A flaming arrow, burning, flowing, as if forged from a liquid solar core, condensed into form on the bowstring!
The tip of the arrow pulsed with dazzling golden-red light, and a long, hot tail flame, composed of pure energy, trailed and burned in the Void Realm, emitting terrifying fluctuations that threatened to destroy everything!
"Die—die, die, die, die!!!!" Accelerator roared, completely consumed by madness! Using his last remaining spirit and power, he controlled the twenty-meter-diameter, world-destroying Plasma Sun floating above his head, like throwing a real star, bringing with it the destructive aura of incinerating all directions, and slammed it fiercely towards Rhode—!
At the same instant, Rhode's finger, holding the "bowstring," gently released.
Whoosh—!!!!
That Chi Hong flame arrow, transforming into a stream of death that tore through the eternal night, silently left the string!
Time, at this moment, was infinitely stretched and frozen.
On one side was the ultimate destruction spawned by Academy City's scientific power—a ten-thousand-degree Plasma Sun!
On the other side was the world-destroying fire condensed by an existence like an otherworldly demon god—a flame arrow capable of incinerating all things!
Two ultimate violences, representing the Peak of different worlds and different power systems, collided with a roar high above the core of the Seventeenth School District, like two destructive stars hurtling towards each other!
Om— — — — — — — — — —!!!
There was no deafening explosion.
At the moment of impact, the first sound was a low, terrifying hum that pierced the Soul, as if the Universe itself was wailing!
Immediately after—
Boom!!!!!!!!!!
A light beyond description suddenly erupted!
That was not light; it was a torrent of energy more dazzling and purer than ten thousand suns exploding simultaneously!
A sphere of absolute light, of immeasurable diameter, devouring everything, instantly formed at the point of impact! Its expansion speed surpassed thought, like the recreation of the Big Bang's origin, mercilessly consuming the Seventeenth School District, consuming the night sky, consuming everything within sight!
Extreme light! Extreme heat!
Academy City trembled! The entire Japanese archipelago trembled! Tens of thousands of kilometers away, countless people looked up in terror, only to see two "suns" emitting destructive white light rising in the pitch-black night sky! That magnificent and terrifying spectacle was like the trumpet of doomsday judgment!
Whoosh—!!!!!!
A destructive shockwave followed the light sphere, like an invisible, world-destroying tsunami, sweeping out at a terrifying supersonic speed! Wherever it passed, whether it was Misaka Mikoto and the Misaka Sisters who had fled to the edge, or the Item four-person team who had already gotten into their car, they were all violently flung into the air like fallen leaves in a gale!
"Ah ah ah! My eyes! My eyes ah ah ah—!!!" Frenda's scream was incomparably shrill.
Having been holding a telescope moments before, she had no time to avoid the destructive glare, and her eyes were instantly burned. She writhed on the ground in pain, covering her eyes and rolling wildly.
However, no one had time to pay attention to her comical state.
Mugino Shizuri, Kinuhata Saiai, and Takitsubo Rikou clung desperately to nearby fixed objects, looking with utter horror towards the direction where the two "suns" had risen! Their bodies trembled violently uncontrollably, their Souls gripped by pure fear!
Just thinking that if they had retreated one second later, they would have been instantly vaporized by that terrifying light and heat, leaving no ashes behind, an boundless chill instantly froze their limbs and bones!
Misaka Mikoto was knocked to the ground by the shockwave. She struggled to get up, staring blankly at the center of destruction, tears silently falling like broken strings of pearls.
Her knees gave out, and she knelt powerlessly on the cold ground, immense pain tearing at her heart.
"It's all my fault... if not for that plan... if not for me..." She choked, self-blame gnawing at her like a venomous snake. "Uncle... he's doing all this to stop that plan... that's why..." (She automatically attributed Rhode's involvement to stopping the experiment)
The Misaka Sisters, not yet implanted with emotional programs, could not understand their older sister's heartbreaking sorrow at this moment, and could only stand silently beside her, their empty eyes reflecting the destructive scene.
Time, in the face of absolute destruction, seemed to lose its meaning.
After an unknown period, the light and heat that consumed everything finally began to slowly dissipate. Like a receding tide, it revealed the completely ravaged, charred earth.
The Seventeenth School District—had vanished.
In its place was a charred, vitrified wasteland tens of kilometers in diameter, emitting high-temperature blue smoke, like a massive meteorite impact crater! The earth was melted and reshaped, shimmering with an eerie, cooled, glazed luster.
At the very center of this infernal wasteland, two figures stood like tombstones.
Accelerator, like a broken puppet drained of all vitality, was covered in blood, his skin charred and cracked, most of his white hair burned away.
He lay prostrate, his body supported only by instinct, his eyes rolled back, emitting unconscious gurgling sounds, already on the brink of death.
Rhode, on the other hand, was like a demon god emerged from the Hell furnace, his body still wreathed in the lingering scorching aura, stepping on the melted and then solidified glazed ground, one step at a time, steadily and slowly, walking towards the dying Accelerator.
Tap... tap... tap...
The clear footsteps, like the drumbeats of the God of Death, struck the edge of Accelerator's Chaotic consciousness. The cold touch of death enveloped Accelerator, and a kaleidoscope of images flashed uncontrollably through his mind.
"I originally... also had an ordinary name... a two-character surname... a three-character given name..."
"Ordinary... boring..."
"So boring... this Item... will sooner or later become an enemy of the world..." The young Accelerator coldly watched the steel torrents converging on him.
To avoid "destruction," he froze his "emotions."
Rejecting all intimacy, building high walls around his heart.
Because even a hint of annoyance could lead to death.
Only by becoming "ice" without emotions could he control this terrifying power.
"Strongest" is not "invincible." "Invincible" requires no battle, while "strongest" needs to be proven with blood.
"Strongest" is merely a curse that invites challenges. To surpass "Strongest" and achieve "Invincible," he threw himself into the "Absolute Item User Evolution Project"...
The faces of ten thousand Misaka Sisters!
Their empty eyes, their falling bodies, their splashing blood... like the clearest nightmare, instantly filled his soon-to-be-silent consciousness!
Fear of death, bewilderment over past killings, regret and rage over childish innocent thoughts... countless emotions, like boiling venom, wildly intertwined and collided within his shattered Soul!
The last image fixed in his mind was that black-haired face with its eternal mockery and contempt!
"I don't care anymore... I don't care about anything—!!!!"
Abandoning all positions, tearing apart all rationality! The dying Accelerator's heart held only one most primal, most insane thought—kill him! Use all his power, even if it meant mutual destruction, to tear apart this man who brought despair!
Pfft!
His pale eyes were instantly completely drenched in an intensely thick, unmixable crimson!
Even the whites of his eyes turned scarlet! A killing intent, purer and more tyrannical than at any previous moment, like a volcano suppressed for ten thousand years, erupted from his dying body!
Accelerator, with his shattered arm, abruptly propped up his charred body!
Om—!!!
An indescribable aura of despair, as if from the deepest abyss, permeated outward from him! The surrounding light seemed to be forcibly swallowed, becoming dim! Extreme despair, beyond human comprehension, wildly intertwined, converged, and condensed behind Accelerator...
Whoosh—!!!
A pair of jet-black wings, purely condensed from the deepest darkness and despair, with an ominous faint glow flowing along their edges, erupted from his back like wounds tearing through reality! They were not physical, yet they exuded a terrifying pressure that froze the Soul, as if connected to the endless Void Realm!
"Yosh." A relaxed, almost inappropriately casual voice, tinged with playful satisfaction, suddenly sounded on the dead, charred ground.
Just as those despairing black wings fully spread, and Accelerator was on the verge of completely falling into the abyss of destruction—
Rhode's figure, like a ghost, had already appeared silently behind him.
They stood back to back.
Rhode's voice came clearly, with a hint of pleasure at achieving his goal:
"The black wings are out... Hmm, lucky for you. Since that's the case..."
He paused, his tone understated, yet like cold chains, instantly binding the wild beast about to erupt,
"Then I'll just have to spare your life."
Accelerator, who should have been completely consumed by madness, intent on destroying everything regardless of the cost, heard this voice and his crimson pupils, filled with boundless killing intent and despair, suddenly constricted!
A cold drop of sweat, mixed with blood, silently trickled down his charred forehead.