The night still tasted of ozone and cooking smoke—Karveth's ruined arteries pumping hot air into the sky. The ten Kings and Queens stood among the cracked stones and smoldering ruin, chests heaving, masks scorched, circuits still thrumming with the afterpulse of evolution. They had bled and laughed and pushed their bodies beyond what any honest man should be asked to endure. For a moment it felt as if the world itself might bend to their whims.
Then the messenger came running, face white beneath the city's lamps. He bowed once, the breath knocked out of him.
"They're coming," he said. "Five… the five strongest on the continent. The Association pulled the best they had—personally requested. They'll be here in minutes."
A cold, small sound—like amusement—escaped from beneath the mask of John Merciless, high above them, watching from the tower. He had already made the calculation when he chose the duels: push the Kings and Queens to the edge, force evolution, then keep the real theatre for himself. He flicked one wrist in a small, regal dismissal.
"Enough," he told his lieutenants through the link in their sigils. "Withdraw. The base. Secure the child. Oversee the aftermath. I'll entertain our guests."
Reiji's jaw tightened, but he bowed once, respectful. "As you command," he said. The rest dispersed with the same lazy arrogance they'd worn into battle—walking shadows slipping into the web of alleys that led back to the Kurogami stronghold.
Within minutes they were gone. The battlefield grew suddenly quieter—an emptiness that tasted dangerous.
Below the tower, five figures materialized like thunderclouds descending to a feast. Each was draped not merely in power but in doctrine: the sort of righteousness that moves armies. They were the continent's counters, called when the Association needed them to remind the world that some lines still existed.
They came with names that made children tremble and politicians pray.
Kentarō Hasegawa — "The Judicator." A pillar of moral resolve, circuit lines of pale silver tracing his arms like prayer beads. He believed in law, order, and the sanctity of life. He carried a blade that shone with the reflection of banners he'd never lower.
Miyako Usui — "Sanctum." A healer whose barrier circuits could cradle a city and whose voice had stopped wars. Calm, luminous, her aura warmed the wounded even as it sharpened the mind of her allies.
Sorae Hōjō — "Skywarden." An aerial battle master who wore a wind of devotion; his circuits let him become the storm and the shield for the innocent alike.
Genzō Omi — "Iron Sermon." A veteran enforcer whose anti-matter fists had disarmed whole regiments. Stoic, heavy, a man who would carry the world's guilt and call it redemption.
Ayame Kurotori — "The Veil." An investigator turned champion; illusions, truth-sifting circuits, a woman who could uncover lies like a blade cuts silk—mercilessly precise.
They landed in formation, dust and magic whipping around them like worshippers to a god. For a long second no one moved. Even the air seemed embarrassed to make sound.
John Merciless stepped down from the tower then, descending as a shadow should—no flourish, but the weight of a storm. He moved with deliberate grace, one hand on his slime blade, the suit curling to him like a second skin. Where the Kings had been an orchestra of personalities, John was the conductor who preferred silence before the crescendo.
The five formed a living pentagon around him, each person holding a different, iron opinion of justice. They had come to stop him. He had come to be seen.
Kentarō's voice cleaved the silence like an old sermon. "John Merciless," he said, and it was a name measured with contempt. "You hide behind masks and terrorize innocents. You end lives. You create chaos under the pretense of revelation. Surrender the child. Return what you took. We will not let you make martyrs of the helpless."
John's mask tilted, a mock-curtsy beneath the lamp glow. "You speak of innocence," he said. His voice was honey draped over steel. "You preach righteousness while you commit experiments in the dark. You harvest life and call it research. You poison children and call it progress." His words were quiet but they landed like stones.
Miyako's fingers twitched, gentle, the faint glow of protective sigils wreathing her palms. "We do what we must to prevent greater harms. The world is harsh—sometimes the medicine is bitter."
"So you poison seven-year-olds?" John asked. Nothing had the edge of a question sharper than a blade. "You call it medicine because you do not want to admit you enjoy the godhood the experiments gave you. You call yourself Gardener of Lives, and then you prune them without a second thought." He stepped forward one breath, then another, a movement so small an observer might miss it.
His left eye, Koketsu, thinned to a pinprick. For a heartbeat the world tasted metallic, like the first inhale before a plunge. He was not yet using it—this was theater, after all—but he let the faint crimson glow tell them he could.
Genzō grunted, his fists folding into cannon-ready shapes. "You talk of sins, yet you killed whole districts in your previous outrage. You're a destroyer masked as a savior. You—" His voice broke into something guttering and hot. He drove forward.
The five moved as one: Miyako raising a dome of shimmering light, Sorae diving into wind-borne slashes, Ayame weaving truth-cutting threads to unravel illusions, Kentarō sweeping for openings, Genzō the hammer to any crack.
John smiled. A thin thing. "Then entertain me," he said softly. "I am a villain. But I am not a slacker."
What followed was a lesson in presence. John did not clash in the same way the Kings and Queens had—he toyed. He moved with a cadence that was not motion but collapse and reappearance: a step-and-vanish that was almost instantaneous, a fraction of displacement, a near-teleport. Opponents would turn to strike a recoil of air and find him already somewhere else, watching the attempt like a man watching falling leaves.
Sorae lunged, wind like shrapnel in his wake. John stepped—one foot, a hair's breadth—and the air tore; Sorae's blade met nothing but the echo of a body. John had been behind him. He tapped the man's shoulder with the flat of his blade. Sorae's knees softened; his circuits hiccuped—confusion seeded like a weed.
Kentarō's blade whistled; John met it with a smear of regenerative steel that absorbed and redirected. He tasted each strike like spice; the movements were fast, excessively so, but not impossible. Each displacement was a step—a slide through space the way a dancer uses a floorboard. It was instantaneous, but for a moment longer than blink: a registered choreography that made the five gasp.
It's important—John did not want them dead. He wanted the glow of struggle. He wanted the honorable speeches and the hands that would try to uphold righteousness to be forced to feel the fragility in their doctrines.
"You speak of saving," Kentarō said between strikes, breath a hymn. "Of duty. Of law. Then explain the labs. Explain the children. Explain the bodies hidden under your councils." He pushed forward, righteous fury guiding his arm.
John laughed then. It was short; it was brittle. "You—they experimented on her," he said, voice soft enough for only them. "You did that. A seven-year-old little girl left in your care. I saved her. Have I ever killed an innocent? Tell me. Be exact. What exactly have I taken? What exactly have I ended that you could not absolve?"
Ayame's eyes flashed—calculation then contempt. "You parade your crimes as mercy," she said. "You hide behind spectacle to justify your chaos. You have killed innocents—people who tried to stop you—"
"Have I?" John cut in, a blade pressing under the tide. He rose slightly, light in his step—flight, a slow levitation that made him a figure suspended between heaven and earth. His left eye bloomed hard crimson, storing energy in silent, bright beats. The air stilled as if the city itself inhaled. His left hand clutched the slime-sword's hilt and pointed—mechanical, cold—off at an obtuse angle, down into the ruined streets. His right hand rose flat, open, a conductor about to bring the orchestra down.
"You call yourselves righteous," John said, voice now a deep, resonant thing. "You talk of saving people, while you harvest them like crop. You created monsters in your labs, then blamed the world when it bled. Your sanctimony is a coat you wear over hands that have killed. You should be killed." The last words were not a question; they were a verdict.
Miyako's face fell—hurt and anger braided into one movement. "We do what we must—"
"You do murder," John replied, and the world narrowed to the bright pit in his palm.
He spoke the word and the air screamed back: "NOVA."
Light appeared as if a second sun had been carved into the dark. White so pure it erased color rushed outward like a tidal breath. The first sound was not an explosion—it was a silence that had weight, a vacuum pulling at the ears. Then the noise arrived: a pressure-wave so low and immense it felt like the planet itself had been re-birthed. Buildings folded like paper. Wards bit the dust and failed. Flesh and stone separated, not with blood and fire that movies sell you, but with a clean, unnameable force that chewed reality and spat a crater where once a street had been.
Koketsu's glow flared, blooming across the ruined scene. When the light collapsed and the ears bled back into hearing, there was a hole—horrifying and perfect—a sink where the five had stood. Stone and ward-iron dripped into it like wet clay. The world smelled of ozone and old rain.
Silence claimed the space for a trembling heartbeat. Entire blocks had gone; the map had been redrawn with a single, calm stroke.
From his perch in the tower, miles away in the Northern Continent stronghold, Arata watched the result in the reflective map and allowed himself the smallest, satisfied vocalization. He had not killed without purpose—he had not taken what he could not justify to himself—but he had shown the proof of concept. A meaning drilled into the world's memory.
When the smoke thinned and the Association's skilled responders crawled toward the sinkhole's edge, Ayame and Kentarō and the others were alive—collapsed into the earth's rim, bodies stunned and bleeding from the force, eyes glazed by shock. They would live to speak; they would carry their defeat and their doctrine like a brand. That was intentional. John had wanted them humbled, not erased. He had wanted the spectacle, the humiliation, the complete undermining of their certainty.
Miyako screamed into the night—part sorrow, part rage—and the city heard the note of a woman who had been struck through her convictions.
John landed lightly at the crater's rim, mask tilted up to the faint moon, his suit flickering with the dust. He did not gloat; he observed. He had shown a law, a lesson, and the lesson was now a wound the Association would spend months explaining away.
"Righteousness," he murmured, almost to himself. "Is a convenient blindfold for men who want to be gods." Then he turned, and with a motion as elegant and casual as a curtain sweep, he vanished into the urban thicket.
The Kings and Queens arrived at the crater's edge minutes later, breathless from their redeployment, their masks soaked in soot and the aftertaste of battle. They looked at the ruin, at the five lying stunned, and the world tilted again.
"You did exactly what I asked," Reiji said quietly as they regrouped. His voice was flat, satisfied. "You evolved. You fought. You survived. Good."
Selara's smile was small and sharp. "He wanted spectacle. He got it."
Kael laughed, the sound crude and animal. "That was art."
In the ruined city, the Circuit Guardians would reorganize. The Association's pride had been cut with a blade of theater and logic. Their best had been humbled; their sanctity exposed. They would rally, they would plan, and soon they would come again—harder, more secretive, and more dangerous.
But for tonight, the crater shone under the dead moon like an accusation.
Arata—far away in the North—closed the map. He had done what he meant to do. He had removed the comfortable illusion that the Association could hide behind its righteousness forever. He had sent a message in white fire and a hole in the earth.
And somewhere, in the quiet of the Kurogami fortress, a seven-year-old girl clutched the charm John had given her and slept like a child who had been granted a small and terrifying miracle.