He slowed down.
Not enough to save me. Not yet. But enough to notice. A fracture. A breath. A slip.
He killed me again.
[YOU HAVE DIED]
Reviving...
The light returned. My eyes snapped open.
This time, I didn't gasp. I didn't flinch. I moved. I welcomed the spear. Let it come close—close enough to feel the heat of its aura tearing at my skin. Then I slid under it. Pushed forward. Palm to chestplate.
The impact rattled my bones, but I didn't care. I saw it. Again. That stutter. That infinitesimal pause between moves.
The Seraph was slowing down.
Not from fatigue. Not from damage. From reaction.
He was reacting to me.
He had to calculate now. Account for something. A ripple in the pattern.
Me.
I grinned through the blood in my teeth.
He struck again. I died.
[YOU HAVE DIED]
Reviving...
Again.
Kick. Counter. Elbow to jaw. I shattered my arm doing it, but the helmet tilted. Just slightly.
He caught me through the ribs and tore me in half.
[YOU HAVE DIED]
Reviving...
Again.
Every death was a question. Every breath a demand. How far can I push you?
I wasn't the only one adapting anymore.
You feel it, don't you?
Even if you are eternal. Even if you are divine. Even if you were forged in light and agony—
You are not beyond consequence.
Not here. Not now. Not against me.
...
Over a hundred million times.
And the Seraph was hurt.
Barely. But it was there.
A fracture in the helm. A chip of gold at the edge of its mask. A faint flicker in the third wing.
The accumulated damage, no matter how weak, hurt him. It persisted. It didn't heal. It didn't reset like I did.
"You filthy voices, do you see that?" I spat, my voice raw with rage and triumph. "Your lapdog is hurt."
Silence.
But I knew they were watching.
I could feel them. A presence just beyond the veil, silent and vast. Like eyes behind a two-way mirror.
The Seraph hovered. Still, as if processing. Its wings pulsed—once, sharply—as if in agitation.
Good.
I wanted it to feel something. Anything.
I raised my hand. Blood dripping from my fingertips. Bones splintered. Fingers bent wrong.
And I smiled.
"How many more times, angel?" I whispered. "How many more before you fall?"
The spear snapped up again. Clean. Precise. But slower.
Milliseconds. But they mattered now.
I didn't die this time.
Not immediately.
I weaved past the thrust, leapt off its knee, and drove my elbow into the exposed fracture of the helm.
It cracked further. A shimmer of light leaked out—bright, pulsing like a heartbeat.
The Seraph reacted.
Too late.
It smashed me into the ground a second later.
[YOU HAVE DIED]
Reviving...
I exhaled.
I was grinning when I came back.
...
I stopped having any ideas. I stopped having any thoughts.
All I knew was the fight.
The rhythm. The flow. The pain.
The deaths did not matter anymore. I didn't care how many times I died.
Counting them was not important.
Only the momentum. Only the cracks. Only the pressure.
I was going to kill this creature.
I was going to ravage it.
It knew that now.
I could taste the fear—faint, bitter, unfamiliar—bleeding through its sacred stillness as it slowly realized it was going to die.
The Seraph was no longer untouched. No longer divine. It bled now. Not blood. But something worse.
Light.
Corrupted, flickering, unstable light.
I had taken the infinite—and made it finite.
Every movement it made was cleaner than mine. Sharper. But I knew them. I had died to them. Adapted to them.
Its blade sang through the air again, but I wasn't there.
I had moved before it struck.
Instinct.
Not foresight. Not power.
Just pure, brutal adaptation.
I ducked low, slammed my shoulder into its hip joint, and heard something grind beneath the plates.
It retaliated with a crushing backhand—caved my skull in.
[YOU HAVE DIED]
Reviving...
I laughed when I came back.
Not a manic laugh. Not a scream. Just something deep. Cold. Steady.
Because I had seen it.
The way its balance shifted. The way its stance had changed.
The Seraph was compensating now.
It was losing control of the dance.
This time, it released a skill that shattered the terrain completely.
The entire hall—no, the entire dimension we were in—was shaking.
I died.
[YOU HAVE DIED]
Reviving...
When I came back, he fell to the knee.
He fell.
The Seraph—the unchanging, the unyielding, the divine blade of judgment—had dropped.
One knee against fractured marble. Wings faltering. The spear lowered, trembling.
For the first time since this Trial began, I saw something that I thought impossible.
Strain.
It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't loud. But it was there. In the way his wings flickered out of sync. In the fractured light leaking from his helm like blood from a cracked skull.
He was breaking.
I stepped forward.
Slow. Measured. The ground beneath me still splintered from the cataclysmic skill that killed me seconds ago. My ears rang with echoes of a dimension undone. My muscles burned. My bones creaked.
But I was standing. And he was not.
"I told you," I muttered, voice low. "You're not untouchable."
No response. Only silence.
And breath—his breath. Labored. Dissonant.
The spear rose again, but not cleanly. It shook at the edges. The blade's resonance wavered.
He was trying. Trying to keep going. Trying to fulfill his role. Trying to kill me.
But he knew.
He had no chance.
He struck again—desperate, wide, uncalculated.
I caught the shaft. Twisted. Drove my knee into the center of his chestplate.
The runes dimmed.
He retaliated, but slower. Sloppy.
I ducked. Spun. Slammed my elbow into the crack on his helm again and again and again until the golden facade caved inward with a sickening crunch.
The mask of the saint broke apart.
And behind it—was not a face. Only light.
Panicked. Shifting. Bleeding.
[YOU HAVE DIED]
Reviving...
I didn't smile this time.
I bared my teeth.
...
It was not fighting standing up anymore.
It was on the ground. Flailing. Grasping.
Doing whatever it could to kill me.
There was no form. No grace. No divine timing.
It looked like a child trying to hit me with his toy.
Swinging wild. Screaming silent.
Wings twitching in spasms, no longer instruments of majesty—just broken limbs clawing for relevance.
This… was the Seraph.
The eternal judge. The blade of the higher ones.
Brought to its knees. Drenched in leaking light. Lashing out like it could still win.
...
I stopped counting long ago. Could've been a billion deaths by now. Maybe more.
Didn't matter.
The Seraph no longer stood.
It didn't crawl. It didn't strike. It lay there.
Wings torn. Light dim. Chest rising in shallow, flickering pulses.
Its helm was gone. Shattered. The radiant core beneath it exposed—cracked and pulsing like a dying star.
It didn't even look at me anymore.
It couldn't. It was done.
Whatever divinity once guided its form had long since bled out onto the shattered marble.
I stood above it.
Breathing steady. Body whole. Hands clenched.
No smile. Just silence.
And then—
I started beating its face in.
Or whatever that ugly light was.