"Arrgh!!"
The black and red shadow staggered back two full steps under the force of Robin's Soul Shard's punch. Its voice, sharp with disbelief and fury, rang out through the battlefield.
"Did you just… lay your hand on ?!" It trembled with barely restrained rage. "You dare?! You dare lay your filthy hand on ?!"
"Watch do it again!" The colossal Soul Shard, mirroring Robin's will, raised its other hand, preparing for a second strike without hesitation.
Helen, still in a state of shock, struggled to process what she had just witnessed. The golden cloak— what was it? How had it neutralized her destruction law so easily? She had fought countless battles across the ages, faced beings of incomprehensible power, and yet… nothing had ever nullified her abilities like this.
But experience, honed through centuries of combat, forced her to suppress the initial shock and act. Shoo! Shoo! Several more beams of concentrated destruction force tore through the fabric of space, piercing the Soul Shard's body once more.
Hooom! Hooom! Again, the golden cloak absorbed most of the attack, dispersing it harmlessly. The remaining force managed to punch holes through the Shard's form, void-like wounds scattered across its colossal fra.
"...!!"
Helen's initial satisfaction was short-lived. Those wounds—dozens of them— should have continued to expand, devouring the Shard's body until nothing remained. That was the very nature of destruction. It consud. It erased.
And yet, her eyes widened as she realized the first wound had already… stopped growing?!
The destruction energy within it had been completely extinguished!
The golden cloak—no, whatever law was woven into it—had not only neutralized most of the initial attack but was actively purging the remaining destruction energy from the other wounds as well.
"What IS this thing?!" Helen hissed, frustration bleeding into her voice.
Robin, standing far behind, his real body completely motionless, rely smirked. "It's the Master Law of Truth, you arrogant wretch!!"
With that declaration, the Soul Shard lunged forward. THWACK! A second punch crashed into Helen's face, sending a shockwave rippling outward.
Then a third.
Then a fourth.
Each impact rang through the battlefield like the tolling of a death knell.
BOOM! BOOM!
Each collision sent violent tremors through the air, distorting reality itself.
Had the City of Hope still been standing, even a fraction of these shockwaves would have been enough to reduce it to dust, grinding it into oblivion with sheer force alone.
The battlefield itself was a paradox, a spectacle of both awe and horror.
Helen was not even physically present here. Her true body remained light-years away, seated safely within a different planetary belt. Yet through the cursed artifact— the Cataclysm Sealing Cube—her shadow fought in her place, manifesting her will across unimaginable distances.
Robin, too, was not truly here. His body remained in place, unmoving, distant, trying not to go unconscious out of pain. While fighting only through his Soul Shard, a separate existence infused with more than sixty thousand units of raw Soul Force.
Neither combatant had lifted a single finger.
Yet both commanded giants capable of obliterating planets.
BAAAAM!
Helen's shadow suddenly leaped backward, her movents a blur as she clapped her hands together with force. A massive pulse of gray energy erupted outward, expanding in all directions like an unstoppable tide.
Everything it touched turned to dust.
Even the air itself disintegrated, reduced to nothingness before vanishing altogether.
"Urgh…!"
Robin's Soul Shard instinctively raised an arm to shield itself. The destruction wave stripped away a large portion of its golden cloak, exposing the dense soul force beneath. A deep, gaping hole was blasted into its chest, the wound cavernous and raw.
Shoo! Shoo!
Without hesitation, Helen followed up with several concentrated beams of destruction aid directly at the Soul Shard's left leg.
CRACK!
The knee shattered.
The entire leg below it was vaporized, leaving the massive figure lopsided, unbalanced.
"Die, you insect," Helen sneered, her voice dripping with disdain. "You've irritated more than anyone in centuries. Die knowing you've doubled my annoyance—take that as your last accomplishnt!"
"Still acting arrogant?!" But Robin's response was instant, seething with defiance. "Then I'll make sure you rember as the insect who BROKE YOUR NOSE!!"
With that, the Soul Shard slamd its remaining foot down.
BOOM!
The ground beneath it split apart in a massive fissure, the force of the impact triggering a localized earthquake. Using the montum, Robin's Shard propelled itself forward with reckless abandon, hurtling toward Helen like a teor, fist raised high.
"Hmph!"
Helen sidestepped, her form a blur. This was pathetic. A clumsy, desperate charge? And with only one leg? The mont he fell, he'd be vulnerable, unable to rise quickly. She had already mapped out her counterattack—she'd land a decisive strike to the back of his head the mont he collapsed, ending this absurdity once and for all.
But then…
CLANK! CLANK!
The very battlefield turned against her.
The sea of magma surged violently, as if answering Robin's will. Chains—hundreds of them—erupted from below, slithering through the air like living serpents before latching onto Helen's legs.
"What?!"
WOOSH!
Without hesitation, Helen unleashed a surge of destruction energy downward, incinerating every last chain into ash.
She lifted her head, preparing to continue her counterattack.
But what she saw—what awaited her above—made her eyes widen in shock.
A fist.
A massive, unstoppable fist barreling toward her face.
"Oh…"
BAAAAAAAAAANG!
The Soul Shard's massive fist collided with Helen's shadow, sending it staggering backward, nearly toppling over from the sheer force of impact.
But it wasn't over.
CLUTCH!
Before Robin's form could lose balance from its missing leg, he made a split-second decision.
With both arms, his Soul Shard grabbed Helen's shadow under the arms—like a parent lifting a misbehaving child.
"Let go!"
For the first ti, Helen punched back directly. No more gestures. No more beams. No more commands.
BOOM!
Her fist, wreathed in destruction energy, slamd into the Soul Shard's chest, punching through the golden cloak, through the condensed Soul Force—bursting out from the other side!
But then…
"...What?"
Sothing was wrong.
Instead of the gray energy expanding, instead of the destruction law consuming the Soul Shard from within, sothing entirely unexpected happened.
GROWTH.
The condensed Soul Force inside the Shard flared violently, forcefully locking Helen's arm inside its massive torso.
GRIP! GRIP!
The Soul Shard tightened its hold on her shoulders, locking her in place.
And then…
It reared its head back.
Helen's eyes widened in realization.
"You wouldn't dare—"
THWACK!!
Robin's Soul Shard headbutted her directly in the face.
"...!!"
For a brief mont, Helen lost control of her shadow. That headbutt had created a rupture between her Soul Fragnt and the Cataclysmic Seal Shadow. When she finally regained her senses and movent returned to her crimson eyes, she locked gazes with Robin's Soul Fragnt, filled with disdain and seething hatred.
"You dare, you filthy rodent? You dare challenge ?! Do you even comprehend who I am?! Do you have the slightest idea what I am capable of?!"
BANG! Robin didn't bother responding. Instead, he yanked her face toward him again— CRACK! Another brutal headbutt.
Then he lifted his gaze to the heavens, eyes burning with intensity.
"Now, Neri! NOW!!"
The sky, which had remained eerily silent throughout the battle, had been steadily accumulating energy, growing heavier with each passing second. Now, at last, it moved.
KRRRRA-KOOM!
A lightning bolt, thicker than a dozen trees combined, ca crashing down from the heavens, striking Helen's shadow like a divine pillar of judgnt.
BOOOOOOM!!
"AGH!!" The shadow's eyes flickered in and out of existence, its form distorting violently.
"AAHHH!!" anwhile, Robin himself let out a guttural scream, clutching his head as pain lanced through his consciousness.
The bolt hadn't just hit Helen's shadow—it had struck both of them. In those precious seconds, Neri had infused the lightning with a unique property that specifically targeted the soul itself.
Had Helen's shadow not possessed an extrely refined soul structure, reinforced by the Cataclysmic Seal, and had Robin's Soul Fragnt not been shrouded in the golden mantle, both of them would have been obliterated instantly.
"..."
Robin forced his eyes open, gritting his teeth against the searing pain. Then, he roared at his Soul Shard.
"AGAIN!!"
His Shard obeyed without hesitation— BANG! Another headbutt, this ti with even greater force. Their massive forms trembled under the impact.
CLANK! CLANK!
Dozens of colossal chains surged upward from the lava sea once more, coiling around Helen's legs, completely binding her in place.
"..?!"
With Robin's Soul Fragnt clutching her torso in an iron grip, one of her hands stuck deep inside its form, and her legs now fully restrained, her mobility was reduced to almost nothing. Every ti she tried to use her free hand, Robin's Soul Fragnt responded like a maddened beast—
BANG! another headbutt, unrelenting!
KRRRRA-KOOM!
The sky roared again.
BANG!
KRA-KOOM!
CLANK!
Headbutts from a lunatic. Lightning downpours from a wretched planet in the young belt. Shackles of filthy, fourth-stage laws binding her movents!
BANG!
KRA-KOOM!
CLANK!
Over and over again…
BANG!
KRA-KOOM!
CLANK!
And again!
BANG!
KRA-KOOM!
CLANK!
"AAAAAAAAAARGH!!!"
The shadow threw its head back and unleashed a shriek of pure, primal rage.
WHHHHHHHRRRRR!!
In that instant, the remnants of the destructive energy stored within the Cataclysmic Cube and the vast soul power within her fragnt erupted simultaneously!
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
"Oh no!"
Robin instinctively tried to tear open space and escape, but the shockwave reached him first— BAAAANG!! It hurled him backward like a ragdoll, sending him flying for dozens of kiloters.
"Ughh, this is bad!"
Just before he crashed into the lava sea, he activated the golden cloak around his body— SHRRRAAAASH!!
"...BLURRGH—COUGH!"
After several agonizing seconds subrged in molten fire, he finally surfaced, golden robes gleaming as if he were swimming through the inferno.
His eyes imdiately locked on the explosion site.
His Soul Shard… was gone. Completely annihilated.
The storm had dispersed. Sunlight pierced through once more. The lava ocean beneath the battlefield had vanished, leaving behind an abyss so deep, that its bottom was nowhere to be seen.
Then— a sound shook the heavens and the earth.
"Celebrate your little victory over this fragnt while you can, you mongrel. I swear upon my na… I will not let your celebrations last long."
The voice gradually faded, growing weaker and weaker, until it finally disappeared altogether.
And then, Robin heard sothing he never thought he'd hear again...
The sweet sweet sound of silence.
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