Nasition looks at the monster before him, the monster who calls himself Avalel. The monster who refuses to be killed, to stay dead even after his body is cut in half. The monster he has indirectly created from his obsession with eliminating the royal line.

He is all alone, the Izatur, the pride of the entire Confederation military destroyed before his eyes. The army is likely collapsing at this moment, the power he used to hold slipping away from his hands. The Confederation’s domination of the East has been toppled, the dream of a free world led by his faction dashed to pieces. Twenty one years of war, of suffering, of struggle… for a complete failure.

In some twisted form of fate, Stasibel’s only son has come to take everything from him, for a goal so similar to his own.

Are you happy now, Stasibel? Your empire, destroyed by my hand, now revived with the son you held in your arms for no longer than a month?

His yellow eyes have long lost their luster, his body aged far beyond his age from the war. He cannot even hold his own against Avalel, his magic long since waned from his younger days. That display of power, of domination, of invincibility from his initial rebellion… He has long lost it. His control of magic is more advanced compared to two decades ago, but the quantity is no longer there. Before that arrogant, immortal display of supremacy, he is but an average mage, his tricks humbled, overshadowed by a boy who claims to be a god.

If it is just himself, he might as well have already died.

But that mysterious Black Maiden holds far more potential and determination than any enemy of the New Rule. She has killed so many of his subordinates, but he has no room to condemn her for her crimes now. That extreme hatred she harbors against Avalel is a powerful weapon. Her movement of her weapons, frequently striking in explosive bursts to not let her or Avalel rest, reminds him of a certain subordinate, removed by his own paranoia. Despite their different builds, the Maiden far taller and physically adept, Nasition finds himself comparing the two, perhaps giving him a sense of comfort in this otherwise chaotic, hopeless end.

Perhaps the monster might be able to be defeated with the two of them allied as one. Just perhaps.

He won’t allow Stasibel to have the last laugh.

As Avalel rises to his feet, he launches the storm of crystals again, stretching them until they become like long, thin needles, racing toward their target with incredible speed. As expected, Avalel dodges, the eight blades coming together to shield him from the attacks. The crystals disintegrate on impact, leaving puffs of smoke and dust in its wake. Electronics crackle with pain as they are hit, the wiring exposed and damaged. His hands conduct the crystals, waving them as they dance around Avalel, striking exposed chinks in his armor. Yet he leaves a side particularly thin of crystals: the side leading to the Black Maiden.

As Avalel charges through the thinnest part, allowing his body to be stung by several crystals, the Maiden meets him with her blade, colliding with his blade-arm as the two of them become locked in another melee. The monster is once again pinned.

Nasition directs the crystals to Avalel’s back, gathering more dust from the surroundings until the storm becomes almost like a spiked wall, leaving no gap for Avalel to dodge. Of course, it’ll likely hit the Maiden as well, but she is only a temporary ally. She will have to endure.

The needle-like crystals pierce Avalel’s legs. His blades respond, spinning and slashing madly at the crystals, yet for every one destroyed, two more take its place. The power of quantity, overwhelming the enemy’s otherwise superior power. Many graze past his armor, chipping the metal off with every strike. Soon, the monster’s feet are nailed to the ground, unable to move as freely as he might desire. He has lost his agility. The Maiden swings her blade, opening up Avalel’s guard as the latter parries from above. His now weakly-armored chest is wide open. All the Maiden has to do is to put in a clean stab into his torso, and the fight will be over. She pulls back her arm before snapping her elbow, launching the entire forearm forward in a stab. One blow. That’s all they need to kill him again.

Except she doesn’t. Her stab strays, hitting his shoulder. The knife ricochets off the plate of armor, lacking even the power to make a dent. It seems like an accident, but Nasition sees it: the lack of conviction in that last blow.

What—

Avalel forcefully lifts his legs, allowing the crystals to rip open his flesh. Blood spurts out from his many wounds, but he pays no attention to them, instead focusing his attention on the Maiden, pushing her away with one strike before he retreats several steps behind. Before Nasition can even send the next wave of crystals, Avalel’s feet have already regenerated.

The Maiden charges in again, yet her blade is met by three of the eight blades, blocking her attack as Avalel swings to the side, his blade-arm poised for her waist. She retreats, jumping away from the quick slash before counterattacking with her knife. All the while, Nasition can only send more and more crystals, hoping to distract Avalel enough for the Maiden to find a second opening.

And a second opening indeed presents itself. As Avalel darts to the side, just avoiding a dozen or so crystals raining to the floor, he finds himself cleanly in the path of the Maiden’s incoming slash.

“Huh—” the monster realizes.

His chest is immediately carved open. Blood sprays out from the wound, and with it, a burst of energy in the form of a great light. Both Nasition and the Maiden are temporarily blinded by such a flash, stunning them in place.

And then, an explosion. Nasition feels a strong wind punch his chest, knocking him back. The heat thrashes against his skin, his face as if licked by flames. His back hits a wall, his spine screeching in pain. He coughs, saliva and blood spit out from his mouth. The mass of crystals all disintegrate, forming a thick dust cloud around Avalel.

A slash. The cloud is sliced in half before it is blown away, revealing Avalel’s open chest, light still permeating from the wound as it closes. Nearby, the Maiden pushes herself back up, her mask visibly scratched and dirtied from the explosion earlier.

“For mortals to take a peek at a deity’s core… That’s quite blasphemous, isn’t it?” Avalel says with a tint of annoyance, even when he is bearing a smile. “But consider it a generous gift before death inevitably comes to the two of you.”

“The…core?” Nasition finds himself muttering, his shaking legs bringing him back up to a standing position.

“It is but a mirrored representation, a limited perspective on the unlimited,” Avalel explains. “This is what it means to be a vessel, Nasition—”

A shot rings across the entire room. A scorched hole appears on Avalel’s forehead. His eight blades are conspicuously unmoving, only hovering awkwardly midair.

The sound of boots echo around Nasition, soldiers quickly surrounding their vulnerable leader. They point their rifles at Avalel, some aiming theirs at the Black Maiden, their positions firm, hiding the fear within.

“Common Leader, we apologize for being far too late to the scene,” a soldier says. “We’ve been trying to reach you since the communications from the Izatur were cut off, but there were many enemy units in our path.”

“Is that… the leader of the New Rule?” another soldier realizes, staring at Avalel.

“And we just killed him… just like that,” a third adds. “Did we just win?”

Nasition does not answer. It had been far too easy to land that shot at Avalel. It’s almost as if… he allowed it to hit him.

Avalel is still as a statue, unmoving, frozen in place. His eyes glare strongly at Nasition, the pupils shrunken and focused.

“That was rude,” he says.

To the soldiers’ horror, the hole quickly regenerates, leaving not even a scar in its place. In a panic, they fire, the hail of blasts ripping open Avalel’s body. The Black Maiden scurries to the side as her face is hit by a stray blast, taking shelter behind some debris. To their surprise, Avalel does not even move, his weapons all held on standby, just being there as he is shredded with rapid fire. Smoke emanates from the area, until all Nasition can see is a silhouette in the distance.

“To think that little pawns believe they can take down the embodiment of Fate with their mass-produced rifles… A bit arrogant, don’t you think?”

The smoke suddenly parts as a gust of wind blows at Nasition and the troops. Avalel is completely unscathed, with even his armor regenerated in full. And on his face is a proud, complacent smile, his blades still in their same positions except pointed at Nasition. On their edges are traces of blood.

Silence.

“I allowed you all to hit me. Don’t ask for more gifts when I have already bestowed upon you a fine privilege.”

The soldiers around Nasition begin to shift, their upper bodies sliding forward. A soldier falls forward, their legs still in the same position as before. Then a second. A third. A fourth… Until all of them collapse into heaps of corpses, sliced cleanly in half.

Nasition didn’t even notice a thing.

“I allowed you to imagine you had a chance because it’d be entertaining, Nasition,” Avalel says, the blades now surrounding him in a ring. “If I so desired, you and the Maiden would’ve already been dead. Fate has already determined me to be the hero, the final victor. No, it had always been the victor. I am simply the vessel to deliver the victory upon this world, to truly save the world from all this strife.”

He points upwards with his blade-arm, firing a blast into the ceiling. It collapses, immediately exposing the three of them to the full noise of the battlefield. Above in the sky, hundreds of aircraft engage each other in dangerous dogfights and duels while anti-aircraft guns fire at them from below, illuminating the sky with streaks of energy blasts.

“What if I told you ten of those aircraft will fall down at this moment?”

To Nasition’s horror, ten specks in the sky begin to move erratically, smoke coming out from their tails. They fall, spiraling faster and faster as the surface pulls them in. The Confederation’s emblem is emblazoned on their wings. Soon, they disappear, and with it, an explosion in the far distance.

“Fate decides it is time for the aircraft and pilots to end their mission, it seems,” Avalel says nonchalantly. “But it’s not very entertaining for this to happen, is it? I didn’t strike them down with my blades. They just fell because I said so. To see the struggle on your faces, the desperation in your attacks, the anger and hatred in your words… That’s what makes it entertaining. When the end is all but decided, the process naturally becomes the place for entertainment.”

“You monster…” Nasition growls, raising his hand once more to create a cloud of crystals. In the face of this incomprehensible being, he should be feeling defeat. It is practically impossible to defeat Avalel. A crushed skull, a slash to the chest, dozens of shots to the entire body, and he still acts as if nothing has happened. Whatever monstrosity was in the Anapadeia, it is in Avalel, the two of them acting as one. The young boy has become insane, drunk on power, but that insanity is unstoppable.

Yet somehow, Nasition still finds himself stubbornly resisting, all in hatred for Stasibel, Avalel, and the Achien Empire as a whole.

“So you still want to offer more entertainment for me?” Avalel smiles.

The Black Maiden appears behind him, her blade reaching just short of his back before it is parried by Avalel’s blades. A chunk of her mask has broken, revealing one of her eyes, gray and sharp. There is only a single emotion emanating from that eye: hatred.

At a flick of Nasition’s hand, the crystals converge towards Avalel. Thousands of them rush in with extremely tight proximity, some even scratching each others’ edges as they travel. His mind is straining, the energy sapped away from his body as he controls the crystals’ direction. It is impossible for him to block or dodge at this close of a distance.

But Avalel at this stage is already the definition of impossible.

With the eight blades still preoccupied with the Black Maiden, Avalel points his blade-arm at Nasition.

“Disperse,” the monster commands.

The crystals disappear, reverted back to dust as they settle harmlessly on Avalel’s body. “Unfortunately, I have had enough of your repetitive entertainment, Nasition. You bore me.”

A slash. Nasition suddenly feels his legs have weakened significantly. Looking down, he sees two thin cuts on his thighs, blood slowly trickling from the wound. He has no energy to even naturally allow the wound to clot up, only helplessly watching as his trousers are gradually dyed red.

“May you slowly bleed to death, Common Leader,” Avalel smirks as he turns around to face the Black Maiden. “Now, dear Maiden, shall we begin the last dance?”

In the end, Nasition really is a failure.