After the metallic echoes of the battle with Robot-Zero faded into the desert silence, Zero stood alone, his breath ragged but his spirit restored. He had survived the mechanical nightmare, but the desert wasn't finished with him.
A figure appeared on the horizon. Zero squinted, his heart skipping a beat. "Another one?" he whispered to himself.
This was no machine. The man approached with an imposing, majestic bearing—tall, perfectly proportioned, moving with the grace of a god and the aura of a tyrant. The very air around him felt dense, saturated with a pressure that made Zero's skin crawl. This was a warrior who didn't play games.
The man stopped, leaning on a massive sword that seemed to pull at the gravity of the desert. "You are Zero," he declared, his voice cold and absolute.
Zero didn't take him lightly for a second. Even from a distance, he could sense it—the cold touch of impending demise. It felt as if death itself was walking toward him in leather and steel. But instead of fear, a wild, jagged grin spread across Zero's face.
"A swordsman? Now that is exciting!" Zero shouted, his voice echoing off the dunes.
"That's the reaction I expected," the warrior replied calmly. "I am one of the Twenty. I won't tell you my rank; I'll let you figure out your own insignificance during the fight."
"I don't care about your rank," Zero retorted, his eyes glowing with defiance. "You're strong, but I'll defeat you for one simple reason: I'm stronger!"
"Begin," the swordsman whispered.
The Rift of Infinite Strikes
The swordsman vanished. His speed was beyond "insane"—it was a glitch in reality. Even with the Red Frequency surging through his veins, Zero barely saw the flash of the blade. He twisted his body at the last millisecond, feeling the heat of the friction as the sword passed his chest.
The warrior didn't stop. He raised his sword and carved a jagged hole directly into the air. Zero instinctively retreated, his instincts screaming. Then, Zero understood the terrifying mechanic. It wasn't just a hole; it was a Dimensional Anchor.
"He's marking space..." Zero realized, sweat pouring down his face.
The mechanic was absolute: once that "hole" was established in the air, the range of the swordsman's strike became infinite. As long as he aimed through that specific rift, the power of his sword would travel through a folded dimension. If you were within the range of that hole, you were caught in a loop of infinite strikes. Even if you fled to the furthest point on Earth, the blade would ignore the distance and erase you. It was a strike that ignored the laws of physics—a death sentence that bypassed the concept of "away."
Zero moved like a blur, dodging the "aerial drills" the swordsman created. The warrior was faster, carving rift after rift, turning the desert into a graveyard of folded space. Zero activated the Red Frequency to its maximum, his body becoming a streak of crimson as he avoided the range of each dimensional drill.
"Enough!" the swordsman muttered.
Zero rushed in, trying to engage in direct combat to stop the man from "digging" the air. He threw a punch backed by the full weight of his momentum, but the swordsman stood motionless. With a subtle tilt, he dodged Zero's fist and swung his massive blade. Zero barely evaded it, his speed pushed to its absolute limits.
The warrior looked bored. He hadn't even broken a sweat, while Zero was gasping for air, his body half-exhausted from the sheer strain of dodging dimensional erasures.
BOOM!
A punch caught Zero in the stomach—not a sword strike, but a physical blow that felt like a mountain hit him. Zero skidded back hundreds of feet, coughing.
"This guy is making it a fight of endurance," Zero thought, struggling to stand. "I can't even touch him. He stands there so confident... if I stop for even a heartbeat, it's over."
The Ultimate Expansion
The executioner then drew a second blade—a very small sword. But within a second, reality warped. The small sword began to expand, growing at a terrifying rate. Its length became so immense that it covered every dimension Zero could flee to.
It was a skyscraper-sized blade, yet the executioner held it as if it were a feather. Because of its gargantuan size, he couldn't carve a hole while standing. In a display of terrifying athleticism, the warrior threw the massive sword into the sky and leaped after it.
Mid-air, he performed an acrobatic maneuver, catching the hilt and slashing through the atmosphere. He completed the "hole"—a massive rift large enough to erase the entire region.
Zero looked up. The sky was gone, replaced by the shimmering steel of a blade that covered every possible escape route. He was no longer in a desert; he was in the executioner's domain.