You ever have one of those days where the universe just straight-up decides you don't get to exist anymore? Yeah, this was one of those.
I'd barely moved.
And the moment I did, the world shattered like cheap glass.
New Order Rule: "The moment I move, all other motion within 20 meters freezes for 3 seconds."
The second the rule triggered, Void Chain's quirk stuttered. His black hole field froze mid-flicker, the distorted air around him crystallized like an invisible explosion caught in pause, and even the loose rubble in midair became suspended in a perfect still-frame.
It felt like I was walking through a photograph. My muscles surged as Fa Jin unloaded years' worth of stored kinetic fury. My limbs snapped forward, spring-coiled and precise, as I blitzed past the floating debris. My mind was hyper-clear, Overclock filtering every millisecond like it was an eternity.
Void Chain didn't blink. Couldn't.
But I did.
Mid-strike, I locked eyes with his frozen silhouette. The guy looked untouchable even when he was locked in time, wrapped in blackhole energy and that deadpan glare. If this didn't work, I was gonna be cosmic roadkill.
I cocked my fist back, Jet quirk roaring, muscles cranked to the limit with Fierce Gains and Muscle Augmentation, and punched like the universe owed me change.
Contact.
For the first time since this mess started, I felt resistance give way like wet paper.
Void Chain's body rocketed backward, a black blur against the frozen backdrop. My punch must've hit harder than I thought, because even as the time-freeze rule wore off, he didn't stabilize. His black hole aura flickered violently, compressing in and out like a broken star.
The moment the world re-booted, the air snapped back into motion with a soundless boom. Rubble crashed to the ground around me, gravity reasserted itself, and the wave of concussive feedback hit like a slap from God.
I skidded backward, planting both feet in the cracked asphalt to avoid getting flung into the next city block.
Void Chain coughed, his composure cracked for the first time. "Impressive," he muttered, his voice hoarse. "You've done what most can't. You landed a hit."
I rolled my shoulder, the bones knitting back together courtesy of Super Regeneration. "You sound surprised. You shouldn't be. I'm built for this."
He straightened, black hole quirk surging to life again, darker and denser than before. His shadow stretched unnaturally long behind him, almost sentient in how it bent and clawed across the broken concrete.
"But you won't do it twice," he said.
Challenge accepted.
Overclock pulsed to the max, the world sliding back into slow-motion as my brain processed possibilities. Gearshift flipped my momentum, Jet prepped another airburst, and Fa Jin coiled fresh kinetic power into my legs.
One shot wasn't enough. I'd need an entire symphony of strikes to break him.
And I was more than ready to play.
My body blurred through the air, momentum snapping like whipcracks every time Gearshift rewrote my velocity on the fly. Each burst from Jet turned the streets into a blur, the environment folding around me in waves of distorted wind pressure.
Void Chain didn't dodge. He didn't have to.
His black hole field swallowed space itself, warping distances into something meaningless. Left became right, forward became stuck, and my approach twisted sideways like reality glitched out.
But New Order was still active. Rule: "My momentum is absolute until I stop."
And I wasn't planning on stopping.
The warped space folded in on me, gravity stacked up like an ocean pressing against my chest, and the world's colors bled into monochrome under the sheer force. My bones groaned, muscles screamed, but the stored Fa Jin in my joints detonated in reverse, flipping me back into motion, and Jet kicked in with enough power to send me hurtling back toward Void Chain.
I threaded the needle through collapsing space, ducked under the swirl of gravity, and aimed square at his chest.
This time, he met me head-on.
His palm extended, and space folded around it like he was holding the void itself in his hand. One touch would end me, that much I knew.
But my fist got there first.
Jet-boosted, Fa Jin-enhanced, and packed with enough stored energy to crack a mountain.
And for the first time... he blocked. Not erased. Not absorbed. Blocked.
That told me one thing: even monsters have limits.
But so did I.
The clash detonated, sound falling away as a shockwave rippled out in dead silence. Buildings buckled. Asphalt lifted like paper. Air itself shivered.
And both of us were still standing.
Our standoff lasted maybe two seconds. Felt like an eternity.
"You're strong," Void Chain admitted, black hole aura flickering unstable at the edges. "But strength isn't enough. You're still bound by the same end I control. Entropy. Decay."
I wiped a trickle of blood from my lip, healing already knitting skin back into place. "Cute speech. Wanna try it again once I'm done rearranging your face?"
He tilted his head, expression unreadable. "You don't understand, Kael. You're fighting gravity. I'm wielding inevitability."
A chunk of space collapsed behind him, flattening a ten-story building into a singular point. Just like that.
My heartbeat stayed steady, thanks to Overclock and sheer spite.
I snapped my knuckles, storing more Fa Jin tension. "Good thing I specialize in rewriting inevitability."
I launched forward again.
But this time, he didn't wait. The void bent toward me, claws of pure vacuum reaching. I ducked, rolled, spring-launched off a twisted lamppost, and skated along the edge of the black hole's event horizon, feet gliding inches from oblivion.
One misstep and I was gone. Atomized. Forgotten.
But I'd already decided. This wasn't the day I died.
This was the day the void met its match.
And I was gonna make sure it remembered me.
I hit top speed, the world vanishing behind me in streaks of neon and distortion. My body was a missile. My mind was a scalpel.
Void Chain moved, barely, adjusting the black hole field mid-fight like a conductor guiding a symphony of destruction.
But I'd already calculated the outcome. Overclock didn't just make me fast — it made me inevitable.
New Order Rule: "All opponents within 20 meters lose the ability to perceive my movements."
Void Chain's head snapped around, too late.
I was already behind him.
Fa Jin unloaded. Jet roared. Muscle Augmentation peaked. And every ounce of stored Impact Recoil from the hits I'd tanked earlier got funneled into one single, beautiful, physics-breaking punch.
I whispered into his ear before the hit landed: "Your void? Consider it broken."
Impact.
The sky shattered. The ground caved in. And as the world spiraled into light and shadow, one thing was clear:
This fight was only getting started.