Chương 111: 110: 2v1 III

Butter slipped through his guard, fully regenerated before the exchange had even finished. Her next movement should have been impossible. She forced it through anyway. The lower half of her face burned to the bone from the speed before regenerating almost instantly. They attacked together. His left hand shot toward Butter's face while his right carved a blazing arc of lightning toward Korhess. Korhess twisted beneath it. Butter didn't. She accepted the punch. THOOOOM. Her jaw exploded from her face.

The impact almost launched her backwards.

"BUTTER!" Korhess roared, already moving.

"Forget thy wound! Finish him! Let not pain steal thy strike!" She bounded beside Butter, hooves gouging trenches through the stone, and drove her shoulder into Butter's back. Butter became the projectile. She vibrated. Every muscle, tendon and bone aligned into a single trembling frequency as she lurched forward as fast as physics would allow, pouring every fragment of momentum into one impossible burst. She rocketed straight into the Commander. He slipped aside. Butter adjusted with him.

Both palms came together and crashed into the centre of his chest. FWOOOM – PAH! The impact cratered his armour inward. The force erupted through him, ripping from his sternum into his ribs, then tearing through organs refined beyond humanity into something that should never have known pain. Under logic, it was impossible to knock a soul out of a physical body. The impossible resonance settled for destroying everything else. It sounded like China collapsing into the floor.

The Commander was hurled across the chamber. His back struck the far wall. Stone cratered. Steel screamed beneath the impact. He landed on his feet. One arm hung at an impossible angle. His ribs had become a question his lungs could no longer answer. Broken bone pierced his heart. His organs were no longer where they belonged. The scent of blood spread quietly through the chamber. He gargled blood. Yet he was already healing. Butter watched in silence. That regeneration still made no sense. Korhess understood.

Only one gadget could produce healing like that. A biological regeneration kit. Cultivated enzymes and aggressive growth factors that forced the body's natural regeneration into overdrive. It was extraordinarily rare, ruinously expensive, and infamous for one reason. Cancer. Anyone who relied on it accepted that risk. He had accepted it. Korhess gave him no time to recover. She lunged. Both hooves slammed into his chest, punching through armour and bone alike before she seized his right wrist and ripped.

The electrified gauntlet tore free with the hand still inside it. His left arm answered instantly. It flicked harder than ever before. The compressed air no longer resembled a cannon. It was a needle. Korhess twisted at the last possible instant. The invisible projectile sheared away one emerald antler earring, sliced clean through an ear, and snapped one antler from her head. He hadn't aimed for her horn. He'd aimed for her eye. Another inch...... and it would've erased her brain.

She groaned, hopping backwards twice before opening the distance. Her hands dug into the fractured marble. With a violent heave she hurled a boulder. BOOM. It exploded against his armour, knocking him back. Another followed. Then another. Stone after stone hammered into him until the Commander finally stopped moving beneath the barrage. Korhess reached for her spear. Then...... she paused. Butter's jaw had already regenerated. She was already closing the distance.

Already raising her fist for the blow that would end this. That would... Korhess's hand clamped around her arm. Her grip was iron. Blood streamed from the broken stump of her antler, tracing crimson paths down her face, yet her eyes never left the Commander. His lenses still blazed. The right remained white. The left had turned blue. The colour of Apis that had lived inside someone for so long it had forgotten it was ever meant to exist outside a body.

The colour of a man who had consumed too much, survived the poisoning...... and been remade by the very thing that should have killed him. The Logic Nuke had only ever been a prototype, technology that rejected Apis altogether. Its single minute of absolute logic finally expired beneath the relentless madness of the very people it had been designed to contain. Physics reclaimed the room. The Commander coughed, blood spilling from his lips as his pierced lungs knitted themselves back together.

His reserves hadn't yet run dry. Muscle reformed. Bone sealed. Flesh closed. Within moments, he was almost whole again. A quiet laugh escaped him.

"Korhess... I expected no less from the Final Obstacle herself. The First Antler." His burning lenses settled upon Butter.

"And you... you truly are your father's daughter." His voice deepened.

"But prove to me you're your mother's daughter."

"Show me you're Crook's daughter!" Butter moved. Her arm blazed white. She had felt something. Her body had already reacted. Arpeggio. One hundred punches. Crescendo. Still asleep, her body performed every calculation automatically. One hundred strikes was the precise threshold. Folded together through Crescendo, they would arrive as a single blow carrying enough accumulated force to erase a solar system. There was a reason her body had chosen that number.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. The universe looked away. When it looked back...... Butter was gone. She hadn't crossed the distance. She simply existed where she needed to be. Inside his defence. Inside his guard. Inside the future he'd already seen...... and dismissed. RESET. He had already activated it.

The instant the Logic Nuke failed, before either of them had even sensed reality changing, he'd thrown himself one second into the past. He had anticipated this exact exchange and begun charging the Shroud Punch before he'd even spoken. Now, even as the last words left his mouth, his right fist was already hurtling toward her. The Shroud Punch. He hadn't expected Butter to appear there. He was delighted that she had. Their fists met. No sound followed. Only light. Only force.

Only the sudden, terrible understanding of what it meant to stand at the centre of something that should never have existed. The mathematics were simple. The physics were not. Arpeggio was the Gloom making an impossibility real, a law masquerading as a punch, a relocation of consequence written in a language the universe had never learned to refuse. The Shroud Punch was the same. Two impossibilities met between heartbeats. Two laws argued over which one reality would obey.

The collision should have boiled the oceans, split the planet apart, and scattered its remains across the Solar System. It did not. Arpeggio allowed Butter to choose any speed and any force the Gloom could persuade reality to accept. There was no fixed limit. It was never infinite defence. The Shroud Punch existed for one purpose: overwhelming force. Even its weakest form could erase a solar system.

Stronger cores pushed it into galactic territory, while a fully contained Prism Core approached hundreds of millions of solar systems. Butter's hundred-strike Crescendo wasn't even close. It wasn't enough. Melody screamed. The black bandages flared white as the recoil surged back through Butter's arm. Force that should've erased her sought the weakest path. The Shroud Punch had been designed to bypass defences. Melody was ignored. The force reached for Butter herself.

In the infinitesimal instant they remained locked together, Korhess's spear flashed forward and pierced straight through the Commander's mask and skull, absence carving through the human mind. The clash had created the smallest opening. Butter took it. Sforzando. She opened the door. She shoved the force through it. The false dimension swallowed the recoil whole. Korhess cried out, but the sound vanished beneath the collision. Butter landed lightly. Her arm was still attached. Her heart still beat.

Melody clung to her forearms, its song reduced to a faint whisper, black bandages smoking at the edges. She had survived by opening a door to nowhere and throwing a star through it. The Commander collapsed with the spear buried in his head. A moment later, he staggered upright, tore it free with his left hand, and drove it into the floor. No Magpie except a Talon could survive a wound like that. Whatever gadget sustained him was absolute. His right arm was gone. Ribs remained fractured.

Blood soaked his jacket and pooled beneath his boots. Yet he stood, his regenerating hand slowly reforming. The device was running low, drained by repeated healing. Too much of its restorative compound invited incurable cancer, forcing even it to respect a limit. He looked at Butter. Then, slowly...... he began to applaud. Slow. Deliberate. The Commander applauded like a man delivering his verdict after a long performance. Each clap sent a dull tremor through the blood-soaked chamber. There was no mockery in it.

Only measurement. Korhess never took her eyes off his left arm. The applause stopped. The silence that followed was worse. His exposed blue eye burned. The remaining white lens glowed just as fiercely. One hand lowered while the prosthetic continued to spark softly at his side. His gaze settled on Korhess first.

"A remarkable display," he said quietly.

"Korhess... the First Antler. You have surpassed every expectation I held for you." A small nod followed.

"You have my respect." Only then did he turn to Butter.

"Elizabeth Paris Moon." The name struck harder than any punch. No one called her that. She had been Butter since she was eight, since her father died fighting Cahindra.

"How much you've grown." Solfège expired. Butter woke. — For nearly a minute, none of them moved. They simply recovered. Korhess's shattered horn slowly regrew. Butter reattached her prosthetic. Across the chamber, the Commander rolled his shoulders as battered muscles settled back into place. He reached for his mask. The seals hissed. The clasps released. He looked old enough to have known her father. Old enough to have fought him.

"I enjoyed this battle," he said quietly.

"It has been many years since I encountered such skill." Butter's expression hardened.

"You sent Thornburg to kill me."

"I know." He raised a hand.

"I did all of those things. And I would do them again." A pause.

"Your father asked me to." Silence swallowed the chamber.

"You're lying." Her voice sharpened.

"My father loved me. He taught me to fight. He taught me to survive."

"He taught you to become strong enough for what was coming." There was no malice in his voice. Only the exhaustion of a man who had carried the same secret for fifteen years.

"He came to me long ago. He knew what the Syndicate was building. He knew what they would need to power it. And he knew the only thing capable of stopping them... would be something they could never predict, never control... and never contain." He took a step toward her. Butter didn't move.

"He asked me to make you into this," Zeinai said quietly.

"To hunt you. To hurt you. To push you until you either broke... or became something that could never be broken." His voice caught. Barely.

"He told me that if I didn't kill you... something worse would. That the Syndicate would find you, take you, and turn you into fuel for a machine capable of burning worlds." His eyes never left hers.

"He said the only way to save you... was to make you strong enough to survive them. And the only way to make you strong enough... was to make you fight." Butter's hands trembled. She hadn't realised they were shaking until then.

"You're lying."

"I am not." He reached into his jacket. Butter tensed instinctively. Instead of a weapon, he withdrew a faded photograph. Its edges were worn soft from years of being unfolded and folded again. He held it out.

"Your father gave me this the day he asked me to kill his daughter." His expression grew distant.

"He told me that whenever I doubted what I was doing... I should look at it and remember that I wasn't the one who had to live with the cost." Korhess remained silent. Her antlers caught the dim light. Her ears stayed forward, following every word exchanged between the Commander and the girl with pink eyes. This wasn't her moment to speak. Yet her chest tightened all the same. Butter said nothing either. Questions crowded her mind. If this had only been an assessment......

then why had he fought her like he truly intended to kill her? Why had every blow carried the weight of a death match? Why had he smiled while trying to crush her? She wanted to ask. She didn't. Another thought silenced the first. She had betrayed the Syndicate. By every law she knew, that crime carried a fate far worse than death. If the Commander had truly wanted her gone, he could have called in Operatives at any moment. Talons, even.

The fight would have ended beneath overwhelming numbers before she had time to understand what was happening. He never did. That unsettled her far more than anything he had said. Elizabeth Paris Moon. The name settled heavily inside her, rippling through thoughts that had only just begun to form. Hours. She had known this girl for only hours. She had watched her refuse death in a world that seemed to desire nothing more than her extinction.

She had fought beside her, fled beside her, watched her bleed from eyes and nose alike, watched impossible beasts answer the stroke of her pencil, watched her rise from injuries that should have ended anyone else. Yet she'd never known her name. Elizabeth. The sound felt unfamiliar. It didn't belong to the reckless girl who had kicked Warpfluff's head from its shoulders, laughed through blood-soaked lips, or opened a sketchbook and poured dreams into reality. Korhess's grip tightened around her spear.

The blade of solidified absence hummed softly against her palm, its rhythm matching her heartbeat. The photograph passed from the Commander's hand into Butter's. Korhess saw the girl's fingers close around it. Saw the colour drain from her face. Saw the fierce pink eyes that had burned with fury only moments ago become wide... young... and terribly lost. Butter looked down. Her father. Younger than she had ever known him.

His arm rested around a little girl with white hair and bright pink eyes, grinning at the camera as though she had uncovered one of the universe's greatest secrets. Four years old, perhaps five. She clutched a stuffed sloth missing one button eye and wore a dress several sizes too large. She looked happy. Butter remembered none of it. Yet she recognised the way her father looked at her. As though she were the only thing in existence worth protecting.

As though he would gladly set the heavens ablaze to keep her warm. As though...... even then...... he already knew he would one day have to let her go. Korhess stepped closer. Her hooves made no sound. Her spear remained lowered. She didn't speak. There were no words for someone staring into a ghost.

"Why...?" Butter whispered.

"Why would he...?"

"I don't know," Zeinai answered quietly.

"He never explained. Only that it had to happen." His gaze lingered on the photograph.

"And when the time finally came... when everything he had been preparing reached its conclusion... you would know what to do." Butter continued staring. The little girl still smiled. Her father still looked at her as though nothing else in the universe mattered. Deep within the forgotten corners of her mind...... she heard his voice. You are going to become something they cannot predict, Elizabeth. Something they cannot control. Something they cannot break.

I am going to forge you into the weapon the world never sees coming. She had always believed he meant the Gloom. The countless techniques he had drilled into her until they became instinct. He hadn't. He had meant...... this.

"According to his calculations," Zeinai continued.

"This faction was always destined to fall today. Something has begun. Something that requires your involvement." Butter finally looked up. Her pink eyes glistened with unshed tears. Her lips trembled. She struggled to steady her breathing, but her voice still shook when she spoke.

"Maybe... it's the galaxy beast." She still held the photograph. Zeinai's lip curled into the expression of a man who had spent too many years measuring monsters.

"No matter how powerful that creature may be... no matter how many stars are compressed within its core... it remains a physical organism." He glanced toward the ceiling, toward the tremors echoing from deep below.

"How many Shroud Punches do you suppose it could withstand?" A dry laugh escaped him.

"Ten? A hundred?" He slowly shook his head.

"It would never reach the top floor."

"The Talons beneath us would eviscerate it long before it climbed the first shaft." A pillar of light erupted through the floor. Korhess instantly lowered her stance, spear rising as the stone beneath her hooves split apart. It wasn't light. It was everything except fire stripped away. The beam punched through steel, concrete, floor after floor, tore through the roof and vanished into the heavens, hotter and brighter than the sun itself.

It ended as suddenly as it had begun, leaving behind a smoking shaft of molten stone. Then the beast roared. The entire facility shook. Walls cracked. Dust rained from the ceiling. Butter felt the crushing presence of something that had dreamed of destruction for longer than she'd been alive.... The Commander simply watched the ruined ceiling. His expression never changed.

"For a dozen Magpies..." he murmured.

"지옥이지. Jiogiji. Hell." His gaze shifted to Butter.

"For a hundred?" A faint chuckle escaped him.

"Training." He gave a small shrug.

"For more..."

"식은 죽 먹기." Sigeun juk meokgi.

"A piece of cake." Korhess's ears flattened. She had heard that phrase before. A piece of cake. The men who had created her had said it too. Before calling her a donkey with antlers. Before laughing as she hid in the dark to eat grass where no one could see. Everything they built was always easy...... until it woke. Until it remembered it had teeth. Her eyes drifted to Butter. The girl still clutched the photograph. Her hands trembled.

Her gaze remained fixed upon the face of the father who had loved her enough to plan her death. Korhess quietly stepped beside her and rested a hand on her shoulder. Butter didn't react. She simply stood there. Korhess slowly lifted her gaze to the smoking wound in the ceiling. Her breathing stilled. Her mismatched eyes drifted far beyond the chamber, fixed on something neither of them could see, as though she were watching tomorrow unfold before it had arrived. Her breath caught.

"Katherine..." she whispered.

"It's Katherine."

"She's what he meant."

"She's the thing that's going to happen." Silence. Butter slowly turned to Zeinai. Zeinai looked back at her. Neither of them seemed particularly startled by what Korhess had said. What unsettled them...... was that she had said it in perfect English. Korhess hadn't even noticed. Her eyes remained distant, following something invisible far beyond the shattered ceiling. Something only she seemed able to see.