Seven did not draw his blade immediately.
He stood still.
Not relaxed. Not tense.
Still—like a variable being recalculated.
Serpent Locking Moon Blade hung at his side, its crescent edge angled toward the ground. The metal caught no dramatic light. There was no flourish, no deliberate display of killing intent. The weapon existed the way a theorem exists on paper—silent, precise, waiting for application.
Across from him, Daolf's frame dominated the open space.
Muscle layered over muscle, not bloated, not excessive—disciplined mass shaped by repetition and load. His shoulders were broad enough to cast shadow over the fractured flooring. Veins lay thick beneath taut skin, coiling faintly with each slow breath. He did not look like a sprinter. He looked like pressure incarnate.
The air between them felt compressed.
"Since I can't defeat you," Seven said at last, voice even, unhurried, "then I'll just keep you here."
There was no hostility in the sentence.
No rise in tone.
No theatrical provocation.
It sounded like someone finishing a calculation and stating the result.
Daolf's brow tightened.
Not because of the words.
Because of the certainty behind them.
That tone was not defiance. Not bluff.
It was evaluation.
He did not answer.
His body moved.
No visible wind-up.
No exaggerated shift of stance.
The forward step was subtle—but the moment his foot pressed into the ground, the floor responded with a low, compacted thud. Force traveled upward instantly. An entire kinetic chain activated in perfect synchronization—ankle, knee, hip, torso, shoulder. The coordination was not wild power. It was refined transmission.
His fist drove forward in a straight line.
Clean.
Efficient.
Absolute.
And then—
It stopped.
Mid-flight.
No hesitation. No misjudgment.
Impact.
The air in front of his knuckles warped visibly, compressing into something that did not belong to normal space. A transparent distortion formed—a plane with no color, no edge, yet undeniable presence. The collision sent a sharp rebound through his arm. His biceps tightened reflexively in reverse contraction.
"Oh?"
One eyebrow lifted.
"An invisible wall?"
Seven did not respond.
The barrier had no defined outline. It did not glow. It did not hum. It simply existed—like a rule imposed on the environment.
Daolf stepped in again.
Second punch.
The sound was different this time. Not the crack of bone or metal, but a low, dense reverberation—like striking compacted glass submerged underwater.
Third punch.
He adjusted angle by less than a degree.
Fourth.
Fifth.
The rhythm accelerated. Fist, elbow, shoulder—each strike landing on the exact same coordinate in space. There was no wasted motion. No emotional flare. Only repetition applied with increasing load.
The air began to answer.
Hairline fractures appeared across the invisible surface. At first they were nearly imperceptible—faint distortions like ripples trapped beneath transparent ice. Then they sharpened, branching outward in irregular patterns.
Stress lines.
Internal pressure mapping itself onto reality.
High above, a puppet spider clung to the ceiling structure, its small camera lens tilted downward in perfect stillness. It made no sound. It emitted no signal detectable by those below. It simply recorded.
From her remote vantage point, Lucy watched.
The cracks grew clearer.
A web of invisible glass emerging from nothing.
She leaned closer to the screen without realizing it.
"No wonder," she murmured under her breath, unseen, unheard. "He really is a gorilla."
Below, Daolf drove one more strike.
The impact landed with surgical precision.
Crack—
The fractures exploded outward.
For a split second, the barrier became visible—not through light, but through collapse. The compressed air shattered into countless translucent fragments, scattering like pulverized crystal before dissolving midair.
The first barrier was gone.
Daolf rolled his wrist once.
Calm.
Assessing.
"Pretty solid," he said evenly. "Still brittle."
Seven's gaze did not waver. The absence where the barrier had been held no meaning for him.
"As expected," he replied. "An ordinary barrier can't hold you."
He lifted his hand.
The motion was small.
But intentional.
Space shifted again.
This time the formation was different. No rigid plane. No compressed wall.
The air stretched.
Thinned.
A semi-transparent membrane formed in front of Daolf, its surface trembling faintly, like a film of water suspended in vacuum.
Daolf stepped in.
His fist entered.
Not through.
Into.
The membrane dented deeply around his knuckles, wrapping the force in a concave distortion. The impact did not rebound sharply. Instead, the energy dispersed outward in slow waves, traveling across the surface before fading.
His fist was pushed back gently.
No crack.
No rupture.
"Oh?"
Interest sharpened in his eyes.
"This one bends?"
He did not hesitate.
Punch.
Elbow.
Knee.
Shoulder.
The membrane warped repeatedly, absorbing each collision. The surface rippled, stretched, redistributed force along unseen vectors. Energy did not accumulate at a single point—it dissolved.
Seven observed carefully.
"Highly effective against blunt force," he stated.
It was not pride.
It was confirmation.
The puppet spider remained fixed in its position above, capturing every deformation of space. No one below glanced upward. No one sensed observation. The camera had no voice. No mechanical hum.
Only sight.
Lucy studied the interaction closely.
This barrier did not resist strength.
It erased direction.
Each strike lost identity the moment it made contact.
"Of course," she muttered softly. "When it comes to fighting, he doesn't experiment blindly."
Below, Daolf paused.
He tilted his head slightly.
The membrane shimmered faintly before him, intact.
"Who said," he asked quietly, "that a body is only meant to strike?"
His posture changed.
Palms came together—not in prayer, but in compression.
His shoulders lowered. Elbows tightened inward. His torso compacted as if condensing mass toward a single vector. His entire upper body reshaped into a wedge.
Then—
Both palms thrust forward.
Not smashing.
Piercing.
The motion was narrower. More focused. Less surface area. Greater pressure.
He repeated the thrust precisely at the same point.
Again.
Again.
The membrane deformed differently now. Instead of dispersing evenly, its structure began to strain inward under concentrated force. The distribution pattern collapsed toward a singular axis.
It did not take long.
With a sudden collapse, the membrane imploded. Air rushed violently to reclaim volume, producing a short, compressed burst.
Daolf seized the moment.
Both hands tore outward.
Rip—
The barrier split.
It did not shatter like glass.
It parted like fabric forced beyond tensile limit.
Silence returned.
Seven nodded once.
"Good," he said.
No irritation.
No frustration.
"But I still have something else."
Daolf looked up.
Seven extended his hand again.
This time, the gesture was slower.
Deliberate.
His fingers traced a shape in midair—not visible, yet structured. The movement resembled drafting rather than summoning. As if outlining an internal lattice before manifesting it.
The air stilled.
Not heavy.
Not charged.
Still—like a sealed chamber.
A new barrier formed.
There were no ripples.
No distortion.
No sign of elasticity.
It did not resemble air compressed or membrane stretched.
It resembled mass.
A block of absolute stillness embedded into space.
Daolf stepped forward immediately.
His fist drove into it.
Stopped.
There was no dent.
No vibration.
No rebound.
The contact felt final.
He shifted angle.
Thrusted with fingers aligned.
Nothing.
Elbow strike.
No movement.
Shoulder ram.
The barrier did not even acknowledge the collision.
For the first time, a flicker of confusion crossed his expression.
"…What is this?"
Seven met his gaze calmly.
"The hardest mineral in the world," he answered.
"A barrier modeled after diamond's structure."
The words settled into the air.
Around them, fragments of earlier destruction remained scattered across the ground—shattered metal, cracked flooring, invisible boundaries now dissolved.
But this—
This was different.
There was no visible strain.
No accumulating fracture.
Only stillness.
The contest had shifted.
Not strength against resistance.
Not force against flexibility.
But structure against structure.
Daolf stood before it, muscle coiled beneath skin, breath steady.
Seven remained unmoving behind it, blade still lowered, eyes clear.
Between them—
A lattice of invisible hardness.
The real measure of limits had only just begun.