'Mesarthim: Orange: Burned Ally.'

'False Gravity Authority: Weighted Impact!'

Jamie's fist, now ten times heavier and wrapped in Mesarthim's Orange flames, slammed into Bewússtsein's side, sending a destructive pulse tearing through his ribs.

As Bewússtsein's body was hurled away, Jamie turned to the two boys who had buffed him at the last second and saw they were already charging toward the fallen Bewússtsein.

Gravity condensed in Arthur's palm into a miniature singularity, which he slammed into Bewússtsein's stomach, nearly ripping through him before the impact hurled him away. Even so, a hole was left clean through his torso, and as his body convulsed, Arthur thrust his sword forward, activating his Extreme Nothingness technique.

Violet energy erupted from the tip of his sword into a beam that blasted through Bewússtsein's chest, the explosion sending him skidding across the ground in a trail of blood and ruin.

'Beschädigte Wiederherstellung!'

Staggering upright, Bewússtsein's healing fought to mend his injuries, but the trio pressed their advantage, not giving him a moment of rest.

Evan fired a bolt of lightning, Jamie unleashed azure flames, and Arthur dashed in from behind with a slash, forcing Bewússtsein to move to avoid the attacks despite his injuries.

He ducked under Arthur's swing and countered with an upward fist, but Arthur, already anticipating it, wrapped himself in a gravity barrier that stopped the blow from reaching him.

He then froze time for all but himself and his allies, and within that frozen world, Jamie and Evan closed in, their swords crackling with blue lightning and shimmering with prismatic flames.

Bewússtsein broke the time stop with a burst of destructive energy, raising earthen barriers to block Jamie's lightning and unleashing pressurised water torrents to counter Evan's flames.

However, the two abruptly switched their elements, Jamie's lightning changing into azure flames while Evan's fire turned into crimson-gold ice.

The azure flames burned straight through the earth, while the crimson-gold ice froze the torrents solid, spreading up Bewússtsein's arm.

'These fuckers!'

Knowing they'd switched elements just to mess with him, Bewússtsein cursed inwardly and unleashed an omnidirectional storm of destruction energy constructs, but the trio teleported clear and attacked from above with coordinated long-range attacks.

Their attacks never let up, each strike landing before Bewússtsein could recover, blow after blow tearing at his defences.

Arthur landed a 200x gravity punch, and while Bewússtsein was still reeling, Jamie slashed at his chest, forcing him to raise a hand to block, only for Jamie to feint and drive his blade straight through the man's left knee, severing it with a crunch before splitting the fallen limb into pieces with a spatial slash.

Staggering, Bewússtsein barely held his balance before Arthur appeared behind him, his sword blazing with a deadly silver glow.

|Extreme Nothingness: Chaos!|

Arthur's blade cut down from his collarbone, nearly cleaving his torso in half as blood erupted into the air.

[GRaUGH!!!]

Bewússtsein's roar shook the ground, but there was no time for reprieve as Evan was already in front of him, flames spiralling around his sword.

|Prismatic Vortex!|

The swirling flames crashed into his chest, shredding flesh and sending his torn body flying, his nearly bisected torso flailing mid-air.

Even as his body was torn apart, Bewússtsein's will didn't give in. Forcing himself into the air with cosmic energy, he clutched his dangling right side with his left hand, pressing it against his body as life-law energy began weaving flesh and muscle back together.

'I need more mass!'

He summoned a corpse from his stock, intending to consume its flesh to restore his leg, but Jamie swung his sword faster than Bewússtsein could act. A single slash projected a cutting field into the air, slicing the corpse apart before it could be absorbed, the pieces dissolving into nothingness.

Evan took advantage of the opening, his sword radiating a blinding crimson light.

|World Sunder!|

His descending blade carved through Bewússtsein's shoulder, severing his left arm cleanly.

Fury darkened Bewússtsein's face, but before he could even think of countering, Arthur appeared behind him.

|Extreme Nothingness!|

The violet fusion of time and destruction law energies pierced his back, blasting him skyward as blood poured from his wounds.

[Todesnova-Sperrfeuer!]

The airborne Bewússtsein roared, unleashing a storm of death and destruction law energies that shaped into arrows of black light erupting from his body, forcing Jamie, Arthur, and Evan to scatter.

Even kilometres away, the barrage reached them, Jamie countering with his 'Void' technique and Arthur with a gravitational singularity that consumed several arrows.

The rest struck the ground, carving immense craters and detonating in violent bursts of energy that would have annihilated millions of miles if not for the Core Dimension's durability.

Taking advantage of Jamie's brief distraction, Bewússtsein teleported to the far end of the Core Dimension, and by the time the trio locked onto his position and closed in with the intent to attack, his body was almost completely restored, his leg fully regenerated, though the silver wound left by Arthur's 'Chaos' still refused to heal.

His aura exploded outward, mixed with death energy that contaminated the ground at relativistic speed, reaching the trio before they could react.

'What the—!? Why did his attack speed suddenly spike?' Arthur thought, throwing up a gravity barrier, only to realise Bewússtsein's true intention a second later.

'He infused the ground with energy?'

"A Bounded Field?!" Arthur shouted, and Bewússtsein's brow twitched at the words.

Jamie reacted instantly, flooding the battlefield with spatial power, locking down the terrain and nullifying the deployment of any topographic-type techniques, Bounded Fields included.

Evan activated Hydra immediately after, sending dozens of serpentine dragons unleashing breaths of flames, lightning, and ice that raced toward Bewússtsein, but before they could reach him, the man punched the ground and roared.

[Ruf des Todes!]

The Core Dimension quaked violently as fissures split open across the ground, spewing forth walking corpses like the ones that had attacked them on the surface.

But unlike those ones—

"Those guys don't look like Transcendent corpses…" Evan muttered.

"That's because they're not!" Jamie barked, waving his hand to carve out space and delete swathes of the undead occupying said space.

However, the corpses—Deity Realm inhabitants of Cruotis Prime that Bewússtsein had absorbed—spawned without end.

The Fallen Deities advanced together, forcing the trio to leap back and prepare wide-range attacks.

Evan raised a blazing wall of yellow flames that incinerated several corpses, but their overwhelming numbers pushed him further back.

"They die easily since they don't have their original power, but there're just too many of them. I'd rather fight Triffid's Vanguards than deal with this!"

"Oy! Evan, don't jinx us!"

Arthur snapped his head toward Evan at the ominous-sounding words, and in that instant, a corpse closed in.

'Ah, shit…'

He barely crossed his arms to block the Fallen Deity's punch, the impact hurling him into another wave that swarmed him immediately.

|Annihilation Pulse!|

Cosmic destruction energy burst from him like crackling lightning, spreading in a sphere that erased everything around him.

But Bewússtsein still had billions of corpses left in reserve.

For every corpse Arthur erased, two more replaced it. One eventually broke through his defences and slammed into his side, sending him skidding across the shattered ground, but he quickly flipped back to his feet, silver blood on his lip, and rewound time to erase the damage.

Jamie fared worse, buried under what felt like a million corpses, cutting them down in waves but seeing no end to their numbers.

Evan's Prismatic Flames tore through the swarm, but the undead kept coming, his Danger Sense's alarm blaring constantly until it suddenly spiked to a deafening roar.

'?!'

His head whipped around just in time to see Bewússtsein materialise only a few feet behind him.

Instantly, Evan activated Elemental Shield, a sphere of swirling flames and crackling lightning expanding outward, forcing the undead behind him to recoil.

His left hand rose to summon his Gazebind Aegis shield, a motion that made Bewússtsein smile internally.

'Exactly what I wanted!'

Having seen Evan use the shield multiple times, he knew that when confronted at such close range, Evan's instinct would be to defend with it.

As the shield materialised, Bewússtsein's left hand lashed out at hypersonic speed, slamming onto the shield's top edge with overwhelming force. The impact jolted through Evan's arm, driving the shield downward and leaving his chest exposed.

[Blitzzerstörung.]

His right hand, cloaked in destructive cosmic energy, shot forward with that same speed. A shockwave ripped through the air as his hand tore into the left side of Evan's chest—the default location of a humanoid's heart.

Flesh, bone, and fragments of his human heart burst outward as the cosmic energy seared through his body.

[You're dead.]

Bewússtsein declared calmly as his hand jutted from Evan's back, dripping with blood and fragments of shattered ribs.

Evan staggered, blood spilling from his mouth. His vision blurred for a moment, but then…he grinned.

It wasn't a grimace of pain, but a wild, vicious grin that bared blood-stained teeth.

"Destroying my heart isn't enough to kill me, bitch!"

[!]

Bewússtsein's eyes widened as his instincts screamed danger. He tried to pull his arm free, but Evan's hands clamped down like steel traps, gripping his forearm with unyielding force.

'Technique Number 6!'

The Rogue Hero's body erupted with a fierce burst of magic power, his aura blazing brighter and hotter than ever before.

|MESARTHIM: WORLD FLAME!|

The battlefield vanished in fire as Evan's Prismatic Flames erupted, a maelstrom of bright colours that scorched the air and consumed everything for kilometres.

The undead were vaporised instantly, turned to ashes before they could even make a sound, the ground split and shattered, and shockwaves flattened the terrain.

Bewússtsein was blasted back, his right arm incinerated and his body seared with smoking burns as he crashed into a crater.

Evan, on the other hand, collapsed to his knees, clutching the gaping hole in his chest, blood pouring freely.

But it wasn't the damage to his body that had him trembling.

'Fucking destruction energy...I took... soul damage...!'

As Jamie had pointed out earlier, a single solid hit from Bewússtsein was enough to push any of them into the danger zone, and now Evan had taken one.

Time Difference slowed his perception as he rapidly assessed his recovery options.

'Verdant Flame? No…! Paladin's Limited Healing is useless. Damn it, I should really find a regeneration skill!'

With no option seeming fast enough to heal the damage before the destructive energy spread through his body, Evan unhesitatingly activated his trump card.

'Fuck it!

Mesarthim: VIOL—"

|EVAN!!!|

Arthur's voice roared through the flames, his figure cutting across the blaze faster than the sound could reach Evan's ears.

By the time Evan heard him, Arthur's palms were already pressed to his back, temporal law flooding into his body.

|False Time Authority: Temporal Reset!|

The blood spilling from Evan's chest froze mid-air, the droplets glinting like floating rubies.

Then, the flow reversed, the blood streaming back into his body as flesh knitted, bones reformed, and the hole in his chest vanished as the 'time' that had passed since his wound had been 'reset'.

Evan gasped, clutching his chest as the excruciating pain faded into an unreal calm. He blinked at Arthur, a mixture of relief and awe in his eyes.

'That was close…!'

For the third time across both Incarnations, Evan had been unable to use VIOLET because of third-party interference.

'Not that I want to anyway…'

Just as the thought crossed his mind, Arthur began to speak, but his left eye flashed and he spun, Lostvayne materialising in his grip as he swung upward with full force.

|Co-Moon Split!|

The crimson-silver arc met Bewússtsein as he lunged from the flames, deflecting his clawed hand and nearly severing it, the impact driving him back as a ripple of power shook the battlefield.

Arthur clenched his fist, pushing the power of his Gravity Ultimate Seed to its peak.

|Weighted Impact!|

His punch smashed into Bewússtsein's chest, the shockwave blasting him across the battlefield, carving a trench in the ground.

Arthur immediately gave chase, Lostvayne raised for the finishing strike, but before he could close the gap, the ground split open, spewing corpses that clawed toward him like something from a nightmare.

Acting on instinct, Arthur raised his left hand and commanded.

|Fall.|

Gravity pressed down, cracking the earth as the crushing weight began to flatten the undead.

But in the same second Arthur commanded Gravity, Bewússtsein commanded Slaughter.

[Opfer der Schlachtung!]

Bewússtsein's slaughter law energy engulfed the corpses, compressing them into a pulsating mass that radiated destruction energy so dense Arthur's instincts screamed danger.

'Shit!'

Arthur realised Bewússtsein's trap too late to stop his own attack, and the moment his gravity law energy met the monstrous creation, the collision triggered a cataclysmic explosion.

***KAAADOOOMMM!!!!

The blast thundered across the battlefield, destruction energy ripping outward with force twice as devastating as Evan's earlier explosion. From its core, tendrils of flesh and bone lashed in every direction at hypersonic speed, aiming to pierce Arthur through.

But Arthur burst out of the onslaught completely unharmed, a sight that made Bewússtsein's eye widen in disbelief.

[?!]

'How is he not dead!? That should have killed him!'

He wasn't wrong, but he had no idea about the Stellar Guard on Arthur's left forearm, which had shielded him completely.

Trusting its protection, Arthur hadn't slowed, charging straight through the onslaught with Lostvayne raised high.

His full-powered slash tore down, but the ground caved beneath Bewússtsein, dragging him into the depths before the strike could land. The fissure sealed instantly, and Arthur's slash tore into empty ground, ripping open a massive crater across the battlefield.

A moment later, Bewússtsein surfaced from a distant magma pool, only for a blood-soaked sword to come crashing down toward his skull.

[?! Echobarriere]

His favourite cosmic energy barrier appeared, but it held for only a second before being cleaved apart by Jamie's Galaxy Sword. That brief moment, however, was enough for Bewússtsein to roll aside, the life law energy on his left arm gradually losing its intensity.

As Jamie charged at him, forcing him to pour more cosmic energy into his Destruction Sigil, Evan summoned the Gazebind Aegis and bellowed.

|Hey, Bewússtsein! Look over here, you dumbfuck!|

[?!]

The Gazebind Aegis's ability to forcefully shift the awareness of designated targets to the user's eyes grabbed Bewússtsein's attention, forcing him to face Evan, a fatal mistake with Jamie right in front of him.

In that instant, Jamie's blade came crashing down, carving a twelve-column grid of slashes across his chest.

'What did he do!? Why did my awareness shift to him?! Was it the shield?!'

Confused and furious, Bewússtsein was knocked into the air. He clenched his teeth as a burst of death energy exploded from his body, deterring any follow-up attacks.

He tried to reactivate his life law powers to heal his wounds, but Evan's mocking voice rang out again.

|I said, Look over here, you idiot!|

Once more, Bewússtsein's focus was yanked from recovery to glaring at Evan, who wore an impish grin, barely holding back laughter.

His rage instantly gave way to shock as Arthur appeared in his sight, his sword wrapped in a haunting purple blend of energies.

|Extreme Nothingness!|

Arthur's unavoidable strike hit his head, tearing half of Bewússtsein's face apart. Flesh and skin ripped, bones shattered, and one of his eyes crumbled into dust.

Bewússtsein bellowed in rage, unleashing countless skinless arms from ground, ceiling, and air, each coated in death and destruction energy, racing toward the trio faster than sound.

|False Destruction Authority: Shattered Horizon.|

Arthur released a wave of law energy, sending crimson-silver laser beams shooting in every direction and erasing the advancing arms into nothingness.

The sight made Jamie laugh lightly.

|Oh, I think I can do that too! Void Beam: Purgatory.|

Void energy gathered into a sphere before him, detonating into torrents of dark blue beams ripping through space at relativistic speed.

The sight of their attacks left Evan's jaw hanging.

|Wait, am I the only one without a scattershot attack?!|

Barely a second after he spoke, his expression changed as he recalled a skill he'd stolen from a certain future Demon of Envy.

|Oh, wait—I actually have one. Hydra x100.|

The space behind him split open, and over three hundred serpentine dragons emerged, each releasing a different elemental breath as they charged outward.

Seeing it, both Arthur and Jamie turned toward him and shouted.

""Dude?! Too much!!!""

"Excuse me?!"

The two laughed at Evan's incredulous reaction as they spun and hurled their swords at Bewússtsein, their blades shooting through the air faster than he could react.

He managed to deflect Lostvayne with a burst of cosmic energy, but the Galaxy Sword grazed his neck, slicing through his arteries. Before he could register the pain, spatial energy rippled behind him, signalling an inbound teleportation.

In an instant, Jamie swapped places with his sword, appearing at Bewússtsein's back with one hand clamped down on his shoulder and the other gripping his head. His jaw stretched unnaturally as he sank elongated fangs into Bewússtsein's neck.

|Blood Poison.|

The words echoed as Bewússtsein's blood turned inky black, his veins flushing red before blackening completely as the poison coursed through his body.

Bewússtsein growled in rage as he grabbed Jamie by the back of his neck, ripping him away with such force that his fangs tore free from his flesh.

He hurled Jamie down and smashed him into the ground, the impact fracturing the surface beneath them. Without hesitation, he gathered cosmic energy in his palm and thrust it into Jamie's chest, the attack phasing through his skin and crushing his heart outright.

Breathing hard from the exertion, Bewússtsein tried to steady himself, only to realise Jamie's fist was still moving.

[?—BAAMM!!!

Jamie landed an uppercut that sent Bewússtsein staggering back. The Hybrid then rose to his feet, casually brushing dust from his shirt as the Galaxy Sword flew back into his hand.

With black blood dripping from his nose, Bewússtsein glowered as he roared in frustration.

[Can all of you survive without your hearts or something?!]

Jamie tilted his head, an amused expression on his face.

|Oh no, I can survive without my head as well. Here, see.|

Then, right before Bewússtsein's eyes, Jamie swung the Galaxy Sword—

—and beheaded himself.

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