He whispered, "She might actually do it,"
Paliv rolled her eyes and gave a flat response, "She will do it," "That is precisely the reason she is restrained like a savage firehog throughout eclipse season."
Valkhara thrashed once more, her golden eyes blazing and her muscles bulging. "COLWARDS, UNLEASH ME!"
Fa Git raised an eyebrow. "You do know she likes being called feral, right?"
"She named her own fists 'Law' and 'Disorder,'" Paliv snapped. "You think anything we say's going to stop her?"
Shotaro & Penetrator were moving at a speed that others couldn't perceive, causing them to ask questions in awe about what kind of creatures they were witnessing going at each other, wondering how the sheer shockwave of their strikes wasn't constantly causing annihilations.
The earth trembled beneath her fury.
Valkhara thrashed against the glowing mantra-chains, her golden eyes aflame, pupils narrow as razors. Every muscle in her towering frame surged with untamed rage, veins like molten cords coiled beneath skin hardened by a lifetime of war.
"COWARDS," she roared, her voice a force of nature, loud enough to shake birds from the sky. "UNLEASH ME!"
Dust lifted from the cracked ground. Her bindings screamed with strain, glowing glyphs flickering violently as her wrath warped their structure.
Fa Git didn't even flinch. He just raised one eyebrow, dry as parchment.
"You do realize she likes being called feral, right?"
Paliv's response was immediate, sharp as a knife, and twice as tired. "She named her own fists Law and Disorder. You think anything we say is going to stop her?"
Fa Git exhaled through his nose, the faint glow of his Ganesh Chakra dimming as he turned his gaze back toward the battlefield.
And there—where the world refused to remain stable—Shotaro and the Penetrator were locked in motion.
No.
Not motion.
War without time.
Their movements blurred across the terrain, too fast for mortal perception. The few onlookers in the nearby ridge camp—imperial scouts, mantra archers, even a weathered warpriest—could only stare, mouths agape, unable to process what they were seeing. Not men. Not even monsters.
Something else.
Something divine. Or demonic.
Where their blades met, space folded, and light broke into fractals. The Penetrator's lance, spiraling with mantra, struck like the declaration of a god rewriting fate—its every spin carving alternate futures into existence. The very air cracked around it, as if it were dragging reality's skeleton across stone.
And yet, Shotaro stood.
He didn't just survive.
He answered.
With Alakshmi in hand—a blade forged not only of steel but of secrets—he parried with movements that shouldn't exist. Every block happened not a second before impact, but a nanosecond after, as if the universe had granted him a delay in consequence. A delay he alone knew how to wield.
The ground beneath them remained somehow intact, yet the tremor of each exchange sent invisible pressure waves through the valley, unsettling the bedrock. Trees wept leaves in silence. Birds no longer flew.
It wasn't that they were moving too fast to be seen.
It was that the concept of watching failed to keep up.
Fa Git's voice came quiet, reverent. "How is he still fighting that thing...?"
Even his mystical perception struggled to keep pace. And yet Shotaro wasn't just holding his own—he was weaving between impossible deaths like it was second nature.
"His body isn't reacting," Fa Git said. "It's... remembering. Like every strike, every angle, every deflection—was already lived once before. This isn't reflex. It's recursion."
Paliv's mantra bindings glowed brighter as Valkhara surged again, snarling like a beast. The chains strained, fracturing with hairline cracks as golden light oozed from her skin like wildfire.
"There's so much he never taught us," Paliv muttered, almost to herself.
Fa Git nodded slowly. "So many things he chose not to."
"HEY!!!"
Valkhara's voice ripped through their thoughts like a blade through silk.
"DID YOU FORGET ABOUT ME OR SOMETHING, YOU SPIRITUAL PAPERCLIPS?!"
Her foot slammed into the ground again, sending a shock through the mantra glyphs that caused Paliv's fingers to tremble. The bindings flickered, unstable.
"YOU THINK I'M JUST BACKGROUND DECOR!? I'LL RIP THESE DAMN CHAINS APART WITH MY TEETH!"
Fa Git didn't even blink. "She really will do it."
"Which is why," Paliv muttered with grim resignation, "she's currently tied down like a feral Fayahog during eclipse season."
The chains pulsed again. One of the links sparked, then snapped.
Valkhara's grin spread wide.
"Five seconds," Fa Git said. "Maybe six."
"Too late," Paliv said, eyes narrowing. "The avalanche's already started."
And in the distance, as the Penetrator's lance spun once more—an engine of destiny grinding against causality, forging a future where its victory had already occurred—
Shotaro smiled.
It wasn't the grin of arrogance.
It was the calm, measured curve of a man who had stared directly into fate's eyes.
And stabbed it in the throat.
He raised one hand. Alakshmi pulsed in his grip, its edge whispering ancient verses that couldn't be translated—only felt. A ripple of mantra coiled around his palm like a storm drawing breath.
With a flick of his wrist, he released it.
A focused mantra blast burst from his core, hitting the Penetrator square in the chest with a flash of light that cracked the sky itself. The explosion launched the walking siege engine skyward, spinning through the air like a dying comet of steel and shrieking inevitability.
The impact didn't kill it.
But it made it shut up for a moment.
Shotaro turned toward his allies, eyes glowing faintly red, steam rising from his shoulders like wrath escaping form.
"Okay," he said, his voice even but heavy. "I've figured out the true nature of his powers."
He slid Alakshmi back into a reverse stance, exhaling as his aura tightened like coiled gravity.
"It's the same as mine."
Fa Git and Paliv exchanged glances. Paliv stepped forward.
"…Somehow?"
Shotaro's crimson gaze flicked toward the sky.
"He's generating a manifold."
Paliv frowned. "What the hell does that even mean?"
Before Shotaro could answer, the Penetrator crashed back to the earth in a thunderous blast, rising once more with that same guttural, hate-soaked screech:
"KAAAAAAALKIIIIIIII!!!"
Unbothered, Shotaro stepped sideways, avoiding a follow-up strike without even looking.
"A manifold is a mathematical construct," he began, tone steady despite the incoming death machine, "designed to contain infinity within a finite space. It allows boundless possibilities to coexist inside a controlled framework."
He ducked under another swing, pivoted, and backstepped into midair—a platform of mantra forming beneath his heel as if the world adjusted itself around him.
"You ever wonder," he continued, "why, despite all our speed, strength, and power… we don't accidentally destroy moons with our duels?"
Paliv's expression shifted, realization creeping into the edge of her voice. "You… contain it?"
Shotaro nodded.
"I create a manifold. A faux reality. A space governed by my own axioms."
He carved the Penetrator's next thrust off-course with a glancing strike from Alakshmi. The sound was like a scream inside a cathedral—high, sacred, and obscene.
"The ability to manifest a manifold is… absurdly versatile. It's a way to filter chaos. You decide the rules. Cause and effect. Even logic."
He parried again. The lance missed by inches—again.
Shotaro didn't flinch.
"This bastard's not just generating one." His voice darkened. "He's building a recursive manifold. A structure that generates another manifold inside itself—a timeline within a timeline, and another beneath that."
Fa Git's breath caught.
"An infinite regression," he whispered. "Like… like he's nesting realities like dolls."
"Exactly," Shotaro said, his blade flashing in a crescent arc that detonated another layer of the Penetrator's armor. "That's how he builds impossible timelines—each one reinforcing the next. If you destroy the top layer, another takes its place, already loaded with the conditions for your failure."
Paliv looked stricken. "So how the hell do you kill that?"
Shotaro stepped forward, Alakshmi pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.
"You destroy every layer."
Another strike. Another clash. Another timeline shattered.
"I have to reach the foundation—the root manifold. Break it. Rewrite it. And then overwrite him."
He looked up, crimson eyes burning through the chaos.
"No more reruns."
The words left Shotaro's lips like a verdict.
"No more inevitability."
The Penetrator roared, lance spinning once more with an echo that tore through layers of existence like paper in a storm.
"Just now."
The air quivered.
"Just me."
Shotaro was already inside the guard before the sound had finished leaving his mouth.
A flicker.
A blur.
And then—stillness.
His blade poised at the Penetrator's exposed side, just beneath the twisted lattice of mantra-forged armor, where its timeline-weaving core thrummed like a second heart. Not a strike. Not yet.
A statement.
"You build manifolds," Shotaro said, voice calm, not out of arrogance—but certainty.
"Pseudo-realities where the rules bend to your will. Faux timelines constructed from mantra and madness—each one embedded with axioms you created to guarantee that your lance never misses. Not in probability. Not in inevitability. Not even in the impossible."
The Penetrator snarled, its body twitching—fracturing between temporal layers, its silhouette briefly multiplying into dozens of afterimages, each one pulsing with predestined violence.
Shotaro didn't move.
"You think that recursion—nesting timelines within timelines—makes you untouchable. But you made one mistake."
He exhaled.
"I'm not fighting the manifolds. I'm fighting you."
And then, like a flame igniting along the edge of a divine blade, his will surged.
Not mantra.
Not magic.
Willpower.
Raw. Unfiltered. Elemental.
"I rewrite your impossibility," Shotaro said, voice like a whisper carved into bedrock.
The ground beneath them cracked—not from the clash of force, but from the pressure of competing realities. His aura expanded, spiraling outward in threads of crimson light, and in its wake the laws of the Penetrator's false timelines began to unravel.
Axioms turned brittle.
Predetermined strikes lost their anchors.
Impossibilities—carefully crafted like clockwork miracles—collapsed under the sheer force of Shotaro's refusal to believe in them.
"You create recursion," he said, stepping forward.
"I create resistance."
He raised Alakshmi.
"Your lance was made to never miss."
He swung once—clean, wide, final.
"But I was born to break that rule."
The sound that followed was not a clash.
It was the death of a certainty.
A single manifold—then two, then five—shattered like glass, collapsing inward as the Penetrator stumbled back, its armor flickering, its timelines bleeding into each other with no anchor to hold them steady.
And for the first time—
It didn't roar.
It hesitated.
And Shotaro?
He didn't.
His blade hung low now, humming with the residual friction of fractured realities. Crimson light coiled around him like living scripture. The Penetrator's form—shimmering with recursive echoes—wavered, uncertain for the first time since it had returned from the null.
Shotaro stepped forward, voice like thunder whispered through the soul.
"There are types of manifolds."
He didn't raise his tone. He didn't need to.
"Chessboard manifolds—realities built with strict laws. Structured. Tactical. Like yours." He nodded toward the Penetrator, eyes never blinking. "You built one where the ultimate impossibility… is your lance missing. The rules of your little world cannot allow it."
A pause.
A beat of breath.
"But it's not the only kind."
He moved as he spoke—slow, deliberate, circling the hulking construct as if teaching a lesson in a war-forged lecture hall.
"There are Dream Manifolds—realities drawn from the mind. They take the contents of imagination—fantasy, memory, madness—and give it shape. Not logical. Not consistent. But alive. Dangerous in the hands of the visionary. Or the mad."
Another step.
"And then—there are Negative Manifolds."
He stopped. Turned.
The Penetrator's lance trembled in its grip, spinning slower now. Each rotation pulled less certainty, its manifold crumbling like wet stone.
"These aren't built by logic. Or faith. Or design."
Shotaro raised Alakshmi, its edge glinting with a clarity that could split fate itself.
"They are born in defiance."
A single flash of mantra rippled from his feet, spreading outward like a heartbeat.
"Negative manifolds form when the soul says no. When every part of the body is overwhelmed, when every law has been written against you, when every thread of causality insists you've lost…"
He took one final step forward, blade aimed straight at the Penetrator's heart.
"…and you refuse to obey."
His voice dropped to a whisper:
"Only willpower can create a negative manifold. They appear for a single instant—long enough to snap the laws. Long enough to break what was 'unchangeable.' Long enough to erase the effect from its master and burn the axiom to ash."
The wind howled through the silent valley.
Shotaro's eyes locked onto the Penetrator, whose form had stopped vibrating—no recursion, no manifold, no override.
Only a hollow frame, caught in hesitation.
"Your lance made a world where you never miss."
Shotaro tilted his head, just slightly.
There was no arrogance in the gesture.
Only something quieter.
Almost mournful.
Like he pitied what came next.
"I made a world," he said softly, "where you will—"
He paused.
Then finished the sentence like a guillotine drop:
"—cancel yourself out."
And then—he lunged.
The Penetrator roared, that same fractured scream that had echoed through burning fields and broken timelines:
"KAAAALKIIIIII!!!"
Its lance surged with spiraling mantra, desperate to collapse one last probability, one last world where it still won.
But Shotaro had already moved.
He stepped through space.
Reality folded like silk as his left arm shimmered with spatial runes. A Spatial Step, executed mid-sprint—effortless, ruthless. The two of them vanished in a flicker of curved light, and reappeared mid-sky, suspended above the world like twin gods fated to collide.
For one breathless moment, they hovered.
Then gravity pulled the Penetrator downward—its form beginning to glitch, reality tearing behind it as the recursive manifolds beneath its frame began to fracture.
Shotaro stayed aloft.
Suspended by will alone.
He inhaled slowly.
Deep.
Final.
Then his right hand ignited.
No chant. No incantation.
Just will.
Flames burst from his palm—not wild, not chaotic—but shaped. Refined. Controlled. A spiral of crimson fire woven with black script, mantra glyphs pulsing with the pressure of ancient destruction.
The sky dimmed.
The wind stilled.
And Shotaro's voice rose—not loud, but absolute.
"Bhramāstra."
Not a word.
A declaration.
And the flame left his hand like a comet loosed from the breath of creation itself.
The world tilted.
The burning strike carved through the atmosphere like a blade drawn across the throat of causality. It struck the Penetrator mid-fall—no clash, no resistance—just obliteration. Each manifold collapsed on contact, folding inward with a shattering scream as if reality itself had begun to weep.
Recursive timelines cracked like mirrors.
The core shattered. The frame imploded.
And the scream of "KALKI!!" was silenced—not by death, but by erasure.
When the light faded, only silence remained.
Shotaro descended slowly, the wind parting around him as if it dared not touch what he had become. His fingers still glowed, faint embers trailing from his palm like the last breath of a dying star.
He exhaled.
The sky remembered how to breathe.