The silence lasted exactly three heartbeats.
Kaito Fujisaki stood motionless, his tired eyes scanning the target. He saw not just a man — he saw a picture drawn by the "Eye of Dissection." He saw barely perceptible muscle tremors, residual glows of Scars on the ribs, the slow, almost apathetic rhythm of breathing. He saw cracks — and not just physical ones.
Reiden Kagetori hadn't moved. His golden pupils, clouded by an internal storm, looked through the mercenary as if he were a ghost. His mind, still remembering the humiliation from Magoro and the psychological torture from whoever occupied Sorato's body, was an empty shell controlled by ancient reflexes.
It was into this emptiness that Fujisaki struck.
He didn't vanish. He closed the distance. Without a flash, without the sound of tearing air — simply the space between them ceased to exist. In his right hand materialized a katana with a simple, utilitarian guard. The strike was aimed not at the heart or throat. The tip was heading for a point just below the collarbone — a nerve cluster that, if hit precisely, should paralyze the entire right side.
Reiden reacted on autopilot. His body, trained by thousands of sparring sessions, flinched. A golden glow, dull and ragged, enveloped his forearm. He didn't parry — he met the blade with a fist wrapped in a clump of compressed thunder.
BA-BOOM!
A roar like a close lightning strike tore through the silence of the ruins. Sparks, golden and steely, shot up in a fountain. The ground under Kagetori's feet sank half a meter, but he held. Fujisaki's katana, meeting not steel but condensed will, was knocked aside with a piercing ring.
But the mercenary was no longer there. He was on the left, and in his left hand flashed a wakizashi — a short sword, perfect for close combat. The movement wasn't slashing but cutting, in an arc aimed at the hamstring. Again — not a kill, but immobilization.
Kagetori, still not looking directly at his opponent, pivoted on his heel. His leg, wrapped in a whirlwind of energy, swept up to meet the blade. A kick against a blade — madness for anyone else. For him — a normal parrying block. The wakizashi was knocked away, but this time Kaito didn't retreat. He blended into the opponent's momentum like a shadow.
And the dance began.
This wasn't a battle in the usual sense. It was dissection. Kaito Fujisaki moved with economical, deadly grace. Every step, every swing, every shift of weight was calculated to the micron. He didn't waste energy on flashes or bursts. He used pure physics, enhanced by his cursed body to impossible limits.
He didn't attack vital organs. He aimed at the wrist tendons when Kagetori raised his arm for a strike. At the armpit, trying to disrupt nerve signals. At the Achilles tendon to upset balance. His weapon was an extension of his will — cold, precise, emotionless.
Reiden responded with power. Raw, unrestrained, furious. His fists, legs, elbows lashed out like the heads of an enraged hydra, each strike accompanied by a roar and a shower of golden sparks. He caught blades on his forearms, on his shins, deflected them with crushing counterattacks that made the air tremble. In pure physical might, he had the advantage — every successful block by Fujisaki sent him flying back several meters, forcing him to regroup.
But the advantage was illusory.
Kaito wasn't trying to overpower. He was circumventing. He read Kagetori's intentions from micro-contractions of muscles, shifts in center of gravity, the slightest changes in the glow of his energy. Reiden's lightning was mighty but predictable — it struck where he intended to be, not where he ended up. Fujisaki moved between the discharges like an eel between stones, his burgundy lining flashing in the golden blaze like blood in flame.
It was after another powerful but empty strike, which turned an already ruined roulette wheel to dust, that Kaito stopped. He wasn't out of breath. Only his tired eyes grew colder. He discarded the slightly bent wakizashi blade — it had served its purpose.
"You fight like a hurricane," he uttered, his voice even as the surface of a lake before a storm. "Lots of noise. Lots of light. Lots of... unnecessary things. A hurricane can be weathered. It can't be focused on a single point." He straightened up, and his posture held no challenge, no contempt. Just a statement of fact. "And I am a scalpel. And now I'll show you the difference."
He moved again. But this time, not to wear down.
Reiden, instinctively sensing the change in tactics, tried to meet him with a crushing straight punch. His fist, pulsating with a clump of energy, shot forward. But Kaito didn't dodge or block. He accepted the blow.
Rather, he met it with his palm, folded in a special way, and at the moment of contact made a barely noticeable rotational movement. The impulse of monstrous force wasn't reflected but redirected — sideways, into emptiness. Kagetori's balance faltered. His defense opened for a fraction of a second.
And that was enough.
With his right hand, folded into a "clawed" palm, Kaito delivered a penetrating strike. Not a wide swing, but short, sharp, like a viper's strike. It landed precisely on Reiden's ribcage, slightly left of center, where the ribs, not fully healed after the fight with Narikawari, formed a zone of increased fragility.
A quiet, wet crunch sounded.
Reiden gasped — didn't cry out, but gasped, like a man suddenly deprived of air. The golden glow around him extinguished, replaced by a spasm of pain. He flew back several meters, crashing heavily onto his back among the debris. A bubble of scarlet blood escaped his lips. His eyes finally gained focus — but they held not anger, but shock. Shock from physical pain breaching the dam of his apathy.
Kaito didn't finish him off. He took a step back, observing. His work was done. At least two ribs fractured, probable lung damage. The target immobilized and seriously wounded. He could move to the finale. But first — check the second target.
Elsewhere in the Ruins
In another corner of the collapsing realm of madness, survival was no better.
Jintarō Kobayashi sat on a chunk of a giant die, shaking with laughter that held more hysteria than mirth.
"Ha-ha-ha! Look! Look at that!" he pointed a finger at the sky where the crimson shroud of the Colony was slowly but surely darkening, cracking at the seams. "The house is falling! The party's over! And you know what? No one won! Absolutely no one! That's genius! Organizer, you're a genius of failure!"
"Shut up," Ryūnosuke hissed through his teeth, leaning against a stone and clutching his side where a dark stain spread under the fabric of his haori. "Your amusement became tedious back in your stupid casino."
"And did you win?" Jintarō parried, his eyes gleaming with feverish light. "No. You just lost less spectacularly."
Shiori, pale as a sheet, was on her knees, her fingers trembling over an unfurled scroll — one of the few she'd managed to grab in the panic. She moved her hand over the faded symbols, her lips moving soundlessly.
"Here..." she whispered. "Nearby. An anomaly... but not chaotic. A stable point. Like... an oasis in the desert. But it doesn't lead outside. It just... exists."
"And what's there?" asked Kaede. Her crimson training gi was stained with dust and soot, her face showing extreme concentration. She wasn't wasting energy on emotions. She was analyzing.
"I don't know," Shiori admitted honestly. "But the energy... it's calm. Stagnant. Like in a deep archive. Maybe it's a former storage... for what they used here as stakes or keys."
Akira said nothing. He sat cross-legged in the center of their small circle. His "Zone" — the bubble of absolute silence and stability about three meters in diameter — trembled like a soap bubble in the wind. Sweat streamed down his temples, his breathing heavy and ragged. Holding an island of order in a sea of disintegrating reality was akin to trying to hold a mountain on his shoulders.
"Can't... hold it much longer," he forced out, eyes closed.
"We need to move," Kaede decided. "To that point. It's our only hope for a breather. Jintarō," she turned to him, her gaze sharp as a blade. "Do you know the way in this chaos?"
Jintarō stopped laughing. His face became serious, almost human.
"Know? No. But I can... feel it. Luck is like a current. Right now, it's flowing... that way." He waved a hand in the direction opposite to where the muffled rolls of thunder came from. "But it's unreliable. Like the wind."
"Better than nothing," Ryūnosuke said, struggling to his feet. "Lead. But if it's a trap — I'll break your neck first."
"Promises, promises," Jintarō smirked, but stood and took a step in the indicated direction. Staggering as if drunk, but with some inner confidence.
Their small, wounded group moved through the ruins of absurdity, leaving behind a world slowly dying, unaware that another, more personal apocalypse was already moving towards them.
Back at Ground Zero
Reiden Kagetori lay on his back, staring at the crimson, cracking sky. The pain in his chest was fiery, all-consuming. With every breath, he felt the sharp shard of rib digging deeper. Blood, warm and sticky, flooded his throat.
But what was worse than the pain was clarity.
The fog of apathy, fear, self-torment had cleared, burned away by the hellish flame of physical suffering. He no longer saw ghosts of the past. He only saw the cold, tired eyes of the mercenary who was methodically, without malice, almost with professional curiosity, preparing to finish him off.
A scalpel, — flashed through his consciousness.
He had always been a hurricane. A force of nature. He'd never been taught to fence like Shiori or Kaede. He was taught to dominate. To knock blades aside with force, to break technique with raw power. And it worked. Until he met one who couldn't simply be swept away.
And then, lying in a puddle of his own blood, Reiden Kagetori made a choice.
He didn't choose rage. Rage is blind. He chose resolve. Cold, iron, joyless resolve to survive, because dying here, at the hands of a mercenary, after all he'd seen, would be too stupid. Too... petty.
He stopped fighting the pain. He accepted it. Made it a part of himself. Fuel.
The golden glow, which had been flickering around him with impotent flashes, began to change. It didn't grow brighter. It grew denser. It didn't radiate outward but began to draw inward, condensing around his bones, muscles, his very heart. Living, pulsating patterns, like blueprints of unfathomable machines, crawled across his skin.
He slowly, with a quiet crunch of breaking bone, rose to one knee.
Kaito Fujisaki, standing ten paces away and having already drawn another, heavier weapon — a tetsubo with fragments of suppression Scars permanently forged into it — froze. His "Eye of Dissection" registered the change. This wasn't a flash of desperation. It was... a shift. The quality of the energy had changed fundamentally. From chaotic and noisy, it had become purposeful, focused, like a beam of light passing through a lens.
"Interesting," the mercenary muttered, and for the first time in the entire fight, his tired face expressed something beyond professional interest. A faint, almost imperceptible respect.
Reiden raised his head. His golden eyes now burned not with madness or despair, but with cold, bottomless understanding. He looked straight at Kaito. And soundlessly, with his lips alone, uttered four words:
"Kokurō: Storm of the Torn Sky."
The air around him froze. Not figuratively. Molecules slowed their movement. Sound died. Light bent, flowing towards him like water into a vortex. All the energy, all the chaos, all the pain — all of it was drawn inward and compressed into a single point, into his clenched fist.
And that point began to glow. Not gold, but a blinding white, almost blue light, swirling with veins of violet. This wasn't a summoning of thunder. This was a proclamation of thunder. An announcement of the birth of inevitable force.
Kaito Fujisaki, who always relied on calculation and speed, instinctively leaped twenty meters back. His "Eye of Dissection" choked, trying to read the Scar of this technique, and found neither beginning nor end. Only absolute, all-consuming inevitability.
He crouched into a low stance, his body tensed to the limit. His face held no fear. It held the concentration of a surgeon seeing a sudden complication.
Reiden Kagetori, bleeding out but now standing on both feet, slowly began to raise his fist, within which pulsed a nascent universe of pure annihilation.
The chapter ended on this frame — on two warriors frozen in a silent duel amidst the ruins of a finished game, ready to unleash upon each other all they had left: one — his lethal calculation, the other — his newly found, reckless will.