Chapter 360: The Clash Of Absolutes
".....?!"
Absolutely everyone in the grand stadium froze in their seats, their breaths caught in their throats as they stared at Nirvana in profound disbelief. They watched in sheer horror and awe as her two glowing mythic eyes moved together across the flesh of her forehead, and violently merged into one, singular, hyper-dense golden eye.
".....?!"
Hitachi blinked in pure disbelief, as her bloody, severed stumps began bubbling with dark matter. Her hand started rapidly regenerating, flesh and bone knitting together at an impossible, visible speed, and in seconds, both her limbs were flawlessly restored, all by sacrificing the energy of one mythic eye.
"You will rather sacrifice your eye instead to surrender?" Hitachi asked, a little speechless. Even as the heir to the Azul clan, this was the very first time he met such a genuinely crazed, desperate person.
"My goal is to show the world and my mother that I am not a waste... I am not inferior to anyone." She said, her voice finally steady, completely devoid of the demonic distortion from earlier. She slowly stretched her newly regenerated hand towards Hitachi, a bizarre calmness washing over her:
"Thank you... If not for you, I won’t have been able to control my powers." She added, fully acknowledging that his brutal, agonizing counter-attacks had forcefully shocked her fractured psyche back into a unified state.
Hitachi grimaced. His celestial eyes didn’t lie; he could clearly tell she could now fully control her vast, unsealed powers, no longer lashing out blindly not like a crazed lunatic.
"Thank you again."
BOOOOM!
The thick, viscous Black energy lingering around her instantly moved towards her outstretched palm, condensing and forcefully forming a huge, localized energy ball of dark matter, which started spinning violently, tearing at the atmospheric fabric.
Hitachi finally exhaled a long, heavy breath, lowering his guard for a fraction of a second as a dark, twisted smile formed on his face:
"Hahahahaha!!"
He suddenly burst out laughing, his booming, unhinged laughter echoing across the shattered arena, completely catching everyone off-guard. The polite young master they had seen throughout the tournament was completely gone.
"Hahahahaha!!" He continued laughing, the raw, aggressive sound sending shivers down the spines of the competitors.
"What is wrong with Hitachi?" Rose asked in deep confusion.
"He finally let go." Mirabella said flatly, casually crossing her arms on her chest, and added to her bewildered team:
"Let me ask you guys a question; since this global competition started, has anyone noticed Hitachi is more... well... friendly to everyone?"
Rose, Austin, Carl, Aurelia, and the rest of the group were stunned. They blinked, completely lost in thought as they analyzed his recent behavior:
"Yes, that wasn’t the cold, ruthless Hitachi I know." Austin said, distinctly remembering the terrifying, unapproachable prodigy from their early academy days.
"Now that you said it, he wasn’t that nice." Aurelia muttered, her eyes narrowing as she remembered the apocalyptic time on Earth:
’He would never naturally care about us or our survival, but he deliberately hid me from the monsters... is it purely because of the competition?’ she thought, her logic struggling to process his actions, and turned her gaze to Mirabella.
"You think he’s doing this because of the Competition?" She asked.
"What will he actively gain? The best rewards belong to the top Three, he won’t get that rank, at least, he will only be top 5." Mirabella said, instantly shooting down the theory of material greed.
"Then why?" Grace asked softly.
"His singular goal in joining this competition is to violently test his absolute limit... Nirvana just formally qualified." Mirabella calmly answered, her gaze fixed unyieldingly on Hitachi’s laughing form. He had been suppressing his true nature, waiting for an opponent worthy of his absolute malice.
"So, Who will win?" Carl asked, deeply lost in thought.
"With their current baseline strength, and overall combat Mastery... Well, I will definitively say Hitachi." She raised two slender fingers at them:
"There are two fundamental reasons behind my prediction. First; Nirvana is actively going all out strictly because she wants to defensively prove herself to her mother, and maybe the people. While Hitachi is going all out because of pure, unadulterated revenge. Two; Nirvana simply doesn’t know what it feels like losing absolutely everything and everyone she loved. Hitachi..." She paused, the air growing cold around her as she remembered the bloody, tragic memories she saw in his life:
"Hitachi intimately knows this..."
The group blinked in solemn silence, and turned their attention back to the ruined stage, where Hitachi finally stopped his manic laughing. His gray eyes locked onto Nirvana with lethal intent.
"Come on! Nirvana! Show me exactly how good you really are!!"
He shot forward like a bolt of red lightning, fluidly drawing his sword from the blade sheath, as dense, scalding red energy entirely surrounded his razor-sharp blade.
"Attacking me head-on!" Nirvana gritted her teeth in frustration, and violently sent the highly compressed, black energy ball directly towards Hitachi’s chest.
"Is that all?!!" Hitachi kept on moving without slowing down a fraction, and smoothly stretched his left, empty hand forward, as a massive, glowing red rune instantly appeared in the air, completely swallowing the cataclysmic attack into the void.
"A defensive rune?" Nirvana was profoundly stunned.
"As a All-bloodlines inheritor, you still can’t seamlessly master all your bloodlines, what’s the use?!" Hitachi yelled mockingly:
"Assassin steps."
"This?" Nirvana was stunned, her danger sense flaring violently; she quickly turned around, as a high-density, transparent magical shield instantly appeared before her back.
"Knight and warrior blade!!"
Hitachi perfectly appeared right before her newly formed shield, fully utilizing the heavy impact techniques of the Warrior bloodline combined with the piercing focus of the Knight bloodline, and violently smashed his glowing sword right into her shield:
BOOOOM!!
The multi-layered shield instantly and catastrophically shattered under the blow, the force violently throwing Nirvana backwards through the air.
BAM!
She smashed heavily into the cratered ground, violently vomiting a massive mouthful of dark blood, then looked up at the hovering Hitachi in profound, unadulterated shock:
"You?! How many bloodlines have you completely mastered?!" She asked in shock, slowly getting back to her trembling feet. To master even three classes was a lifelong endeavor for normal prodigies.
"All!"
Hitachi firmly gripped his sword hilt with both hands, staring coldly down at her bleeding form:
"I truly hope you are physically strong enough to block this! Don’t disappoint me." He stated coldly, shedding the last remnants of his competition persona.
BOOOOM!!
A gigantic, blinding red runic circle violently appeared in the sky behind him, spinning rapidly anti-clockwise and aggressively gathering the world’s energy. Then, five massive, phantom swords materialized out of the ether, spinning in perfect synchronization with the grand circle.
"This is one of my strongest lethal abilities." Hitachi said, his gray eyes staring dead into her soul:
"Runic sword formation!!"
"You arrogant bastard!! I will go all out then!!"
Nirvana violently spread both her hands to the side, pushing her core past its absolute limit. Her three eyes—the two human and the central mythic—violently turned a glowing, apocalyptic blood-red. Behind her, the very fabric of space cracked and violently opened, and a gigantic, eye materialized behind her, staring down at the world with ancient hatred.
’I would have placed a soul curse on him, but with his celestial eyes, he will surely remove it... So I logically have to go all out with pure destruction.’ She thought rapidly, and aggressively clapped her bloody palms together to complete the incantation:
"Mythic Annihilation!!"
BOOOOM!!!
A catastrophic, black eerie beam of pure, concentrated dark energy shot out violently from the massive floating eye, tearing through the atmosphere and heading straight towards Hitachi:
"Good, I actually like your stubborn resistance." Hitachi muttered with a dark smirk, as the whole spinning runic formation shot violently forward, moving flawlessly through him, and smashed right into the center of the dark energy blast, aggressively forcing it backward.
