Zero’s blade came straight for Nicholas’ neck, and Nicholas met the attack head-on, bringing his weapon up at the last possible moment. The two attacks should have collided directly, but neither weapon actually reached flesh.
An unseen force erupted between them at the instant they clashed, stopping Zero’s blade barely an inch from Nicholas’ throat before the pressure exploded outward and threw both of them backwards.
Zero skidded across the wet asphalt. Nicholas folded through space to catch his own balance, boots tearing furrows in the road.
They came together again in the centre, and again neither blade found its target.
The force between them collided again, producing a thunderous shockwave that rattled the windows of the surrounding buildings. The air warped around the point of impact, twisting into a violent spiral before tearing sideways into a row of nearby houses, shredding brick and timber as though a hurricane had slammed into them without warning.
Roofs peeled away, walls folded inward, and a parked car was thrown end over end before crashing into the street several buildings away. Neither of them had even managed to land a proper hit on the other, yet the street around them was already being torn apart simply because their attacks were colliding.
Neither of them had thrown a punch. The street was already coming apart around a fight that hadn’t technically begun.
A third clash. A fourth. Each time the two of them surged forward, blade and fist arcing toward flesh that never met, and each time something unseen caught the strike between them and threw it back outward as raw destructive force, tearing gutters loose, splitting the road into jagged plates, hurling debris in every direction like the street itself was flinching from what stood on it.
Zero staggered back a step after the fourth exchange, and for the first time since he’d introduced himself, something other than amusement crossed his scarred face.
"...How?"
He looked at his own blade, then at Nicholas, genuine confusion bleeding into his voice.
"That force wasn’t my blade’s aura, and it wasn’t your spatial ability either." His grip tightened around the weapon as he studied Nicholas carefully. "Don’t tell me... you can use Qi." His grip tightened. "Where did you learn it?"
Nicholas rolled his shoulder, feeling the ghost of the impact still humming through his bones, and let a thin, humourless smile touch his mouth.
"I learned from you," Nicholas said, his gaze fixed on the dark energy curling around his fingers. "You told me yourself back at the van. Desire is the root of the Plague. The stronger the desire, the stronger the power it produces. I’ve spent this entire fight watching how you use that desire through your blade, and I finally understood what I was missing."
His fingers curled slowly.
"I stopped trying to spread it everywhere and focused it on one thing."
His eye locked onto Zero.
His eye locked on Zero, with a cold certainty.
"Killing you."
Zero’s brow lifted, and slowly, the confusion gave way to something closer to interest.
"So it’s true... others can use it." Zero’s smile widened as he studied the energy around Nicholas’s hand.
"Where I travelled, they had different names for it. Ki. Qi. Willpower given form. I always thought it was nothing more than old folklore used to explain the Plague, but you just proved otherwise." He tilted the blade.
"Interesting. It seems the Plague isn’t the source of desire. It’s merely one way of using it."
’So that’s the shape of it,’ Nicholas thought, watching the threads of dark energy gutter weakly around his own knuckles. ’Desire isn’t just what feeds a Plague ability into existence. It’s a raw current underneath everything. Ki. Qi. Whatever name you give it, it’s there in everyone, and most people never learn to touch it directly. Zero channels his through the blade. Channeling is difficult.’ His jaw tightened. ’But that’s perhaps the only way I can win.’
The problem was obvious to both of them at the same time.
"You only just discovered this," Zero said, almost gently, as though delivering a kindness. "Which means your control is sloppy. Raw. You’re throwing desire the way a child throws a punch, all force and no shape." He rolled the blade once in his grip, and the miasma pulsing along its edge deepened, thickened, drawing inward like a held breath. "Watch how it’s actually done."
Zero closed his eyes.
And began to absorb his own desire back into himself.
The dark energy pouring off the blade reversed, no longer radiating outward but folding back in, feeding through the hilt and up his arm, and Nicholas felt the change in the air before he saw it, a pressure building that made his own thin threads of ki feel like a candle beside a furnace.
’His control is refined. Mine isn’t. If that force clashes with mine again at full output, I don’t win the exchange. I don’t even survive it.’ Nicholas’ gaze hardened as he studied Zero’s stance. He couldn’t beat Zero by trying to imitate him. Not yet. But that didn’t mean he had to fight on Zero’s terms.
Nicholas didn’t wait to find out. He folded backward through space, putting thirty metres between them in an instant, landing low and already calculating his next move.
’If I can’t match him head-on, I’ll use something he hasn’t seen.’ His hand curled, space bending faintly around his fingers as the plan assembled itself.
He’d seen Vixen use it back at the tournament, using the fuel from her desires.
’The second awakening... it’s basically a massive surge of desire that the body can’t properly control.’ Nicholas’ eyes narrowed as the idea formed. ’If that’s what Vixen was doing, then maybe I don’t need to understand Zero’s level of control yet. I just need to reproduce the energy itself.’
Nicholas raised his hand and began gathering the energy, his attention focused entirely on the technique forming inside his body. He didn’t notice the movement above him until something thin and impossibly strong wrapped around his wrist. His head snapped upward, but the rope had already coiled around his forearm and shoulder, dragging his arm down and disrupting the technique before he could complete it.
"Got him!" a bright, clipped voice called from a rooftop above. A woman in a form-fitting suit stood balanced on the ledge, both hands weaving through the air, spooling out an impossible length of glowing cord that moved like it had a mind of its own. "Hold still, Phantom, this’ll only hurt a little!"
"Good rope girl," someone else shouted from the street.
"Fall back to formation, we’ve got him pinned!"
More figures emerged from the rain around him, each taking a position before Nicholas could find an opening. One landed in heavy armour to his left while another descended with lightning crackling between his palms, and somewhere behind him, a third hero emerged from the manhole with water spilling from his armoured gauntlets. More followed, five, six, seven in total, until ropes were tightening around his arms and legs from different directions and the entire area had become a carefully constructed trap.
Nicholas tried to fold away, and the rope yanked, dragging the attempt apart before it could complete.
By the time the formation was complete, nine heroes surrounded him alongside Zero.
Nicholas smiled coldly. ’This reminds me a lot of the pass.’
"I feel honoured, I was beginning to think I wasn’t feared enough around here," Nicholas said with a grin.
"We don’t fear you, and we don’t underestimate you either! We’ve seen what you’re capable of doing. That’s exactly why we decided to come together and stop you!" A lady walked to the front, her cape fluttering behind her as she walked to Zero’s side.
The ring of heroes tightened around Nicholas, weapons raised and abilities ready, leaving him with no obvious path of retreat. Julie’s viewers immediately reacted to the scene, the comments flooding across the stream as they watched nine heroes surround Phantom alongside Zero.
[Haeh: Valid, I wouldn’t take the chance either]
[Leemiller: Is the end of Phantom?]
[Soel: I guess this is the end]
"You don’t underestimate me? How come I see only ten heroes here?" Nicholas asked with a cold smile as he raised his head to look them all deep in their eyes.
They could instantly feel something was wrong.
Nicholas looked at the system screen.
[Charm points: 5900]
’There’s no point saving it anymore. If I want to catch the culprit, I’ll have to survive long enough to deal with these brats.’
And with almost no plans for restraints.
{Gravity Push}
[A/N: Please pardon the terrible release rate, my headaches are back. So it might be like this for a bit, but once I’m okay I’ll do what I can to pay for the Chapters we’ve missed! Thank y’all for reading I appreciate the love and the support. Remember to drop your powerstones, Goldentickets and gifts! Author needs a massage chair literally 😭 I heard a rumour, if you sent a castle you get to customise your own hero!] 👀
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