Chapter 203: Chapter 203 - Climax
"ARRRGH!!!! EVERETT! KURT!" Emelie let out an agonizing scream as the backlash of her brother’s suicidal blast slammed into her telekinetic barrier.
Inside the broadcasting booth and the rest of the stands, Commentator Ken and the hundreds of spectators were forced to violently clamp their eyes shut against the blinding silver glare that filled the entire space.
Ayako stood perfectly still with her hands resting flat against the stone railing. Behind the dark lenses of her sunglasses, she watched the cascading silver fire devour the center of the ring with an unreadable expression.
.
..
...
Inside the Rossana-Valentine estate, the previously rowdy living room fell into a suffocating silence. The holographic projection screen flickered violently, distorted by the magical static of the explosion before settling into a sickening display of white dust and crackling silver lightning streaks.
Hope dropped her teddy bear and buried her face into the fabric of Isabel’s dress. Sadie was nervously biting her thumb nail as she stared at the screen in worry. Yuna sat rigidly in her seat. Her flat, usually apathetic expression had been warped into a terrified stare.
Diana, who had been sitting on her mother’s lap while Julianne herself held her waist, suddenly snapped up.
"I’ve had enough. I’m putting an end to this right now."
"Diana–"
SHWOOSH
A split second later, she appeared at the exact stone row of seats where she had sat with Kurt earlier that afternoon.
In front of her, the entire arena pit was completely obscured by a dense fog of pulverized stone and smoking ash. Almost nothing was visible inside the ring. She could see the faint translucent green shimmer of Emelie’s telekinetic barrier, but the field itself was a dead zone.
"Principal Diana Valentine..."
Standing a few paces behind her, perfectly composed despite the chaos, was Ayako. The Izumi Heiress offered a respectful bow of her head.
"... Izumi Ayako. Please head up to the announcer’s booth and find Ken. Tell him to announce that the show is over and order every spectator to vacate the coliseum grounds immediately."
"Certainly,"
With another distortion in the air, Diana teleported into the obscured ruins of the arena pit.
Left alone, Ayako slowly lowered her sunglasses. A deeply solemn, and melancholic sigh escaped her lips as she stared at the ground.
"I wished we could have had a proper fight... Kurt," she whispered quietly to herself in a tone of unspoken grief. "This is goodbye..."
...
Inside the cratered arena.
"Rosie!" Diana called out in a desperate panic. "Rosie! Where are you?! Say something!"
No answer.
As the silence hit her, suddenly, a traumatic memory flashed through her mind – the image of the frozen and of Kurt lying bloodied on the ground.
"Rosie! Please answer me!" she screamed louder, blindly rushing through the dust until her shoulder violently bumped into another figure.
Thud!
Diana recoiled and froze when the smoke parted slightly to reveal Emelie who was standing entirely still with her hands dangling limply at her sides.
She was staring blankly down into the dirt and moved her lips in a continuous low-pitched murmur. Diana couldn’t make out the words at first, but as she stepped closer, the phrases became clear.
"...you liar. You liar... you promised... you promised me you wouldn’t... you promised you’d be there..."
"Emelie...? Emelie! Look at me! Where is Rosie?! What happened?!"
Slowly, almost mechanically, Emelie slowly turned her head toward Diana. Her green eyes were completely hollow, looking right through her principal as if she weren’t even there.
"Maybe... maybe cycle 101 will be different..."
"What...? What are you talking about? What cycles?!" Diana yelled as tears finally spilled over her eyelids. "Where is he, Emelie?! Where is Rosie?!"
Emelie’s head drifted slightly to the side. And with a trembling movement, she raised a single, limp finger, pointing directly into the thickest layer of fog ahead.
Diana didn’t wait another second. She let go of Emelie’s shoulders and hurried in the direction she pointed.
Behind her, Emelie’s legs completely gave out. She fell to her knees in the dirt and clutched her hands over her chest as a single tear traced down her cheek.
She caved inward, curling her body into a tight ball as she began to sob into the dust. "As I thought... it’s better to work alone... I shouldn’t have... I shouldn’t have gotten so attached to you... You liar..."
...
Diana ran blindly through the fog. Suddenly, her boot caught on something heavy, causing her to trip and stumble. As she steadied herself, she looked down at what had tripped her.
It was a pair of black-trouser legs.
And only legs.
"... W-What?" Her crimson eyes, wide with horror, followed the thick, steaming trail of dark blood that painted the ground.
A few feet away, lying beside an exploded, horrifying puddle of blood, was the other half of the missing body.
The upper torso of Kurt Rossana.
"No... Nonononono..."
Diana’s heart rate skyrocketed past the point of safety, her vision blurring as her entire world collapsed into absolute ruin.
She forced her trembling limbs to move across the blood-slicked path until she fell to her knees right beside his torso.
She could see a faint, incredibly weak layer of Mana Coating still desperately trying to flicker across the exposed, severed area of his waist, and his innate adaptation frantically attempting to knit together flesh that was already gone.
But it was a losing battle.
"Rosie... Rosie, please... look at me..." she sobbed softly as she reached out to gently turn his face. "Please don’t do this to me... H-Hey..."
Feeling a presence around him, Kurt’s eye fluttered open.
The vibrant blue light that usually burned within his iris was nearly extinct, replaced by a dull haze of fading consciousness. Through the veil of his dying sight, he saw the blurry, beautiful outline of her platinum hair and her crimson eyes.
"H-Hey... Ana..." he smiled and whispered weakly. "Look at that... I didn’t let him... I won..."
"Mhm.. You did.. *sniff*."
"I guess... next.. is... y-your.. Dad... right? D-Don’t... worry. I’ll take *cough* c-care of... him... O-Oh yeah... we still need to... go.. on our... d-date– *cough*."
"Rosie... stop talking... Please, just stop talking. I’m sorry I left everything to you. We should’ve tackled this problem together... So let’s face him together, okay? Please, I-I’m right here! I’m holding you! Don’t leave me, Rosie! I love you! Please, I can’t lose you! I need you!"
"Ana? Where’d... where’d you go?" Kurt’s raspy voice spoke again as his only eye drifted aimlessly, staring right through her.
The light in his iris was completely gone. He couldn’t hear her voice anymore; the cold embrace of death had already severed his senses from the material world.
"It’s... it’s getting really dark... I can’t see your face... Are you... still there?"
"I’m still here! I’m right here!" Diana desperately screamed at the top of her lungs.
Her heart completely broke as she leaned down and pressed her lips against his cold, bloody mouth in a determined kiss, trying to pour her very soul into his lips.
Kurt’s body gave a slight, final shudder. Through the void of his fading consciousness, he felt the familiar, warm touch of her lips against his.
"Ah... there you are..." he whispered.
His final breath passed through his lips in a soft, peaceful sigh. "I.. love.. you... A..na..."
His head rolled to the side as his chest went completely still. The faint, flickering blue mana coating across his waist extinguished, leaving nothing but a cold, unmoving shell in her arms.
"........"
"Rosie?" Diana’s hands shook violently as she cupped his cheeks. "Rosie, wake up. Wake up! Please! This isn’t funny! Open your eye! Look at me! If you don’t, I swear I’ll kill myself! Rosie! Rosie!! *Sob* ROSIE!"
She buried her face into his bloody chest, and she let out a guttural scream of heartbreak. The agonizing sound of her crying echoed fiercely through the shattered columns of the coliseum, carrying a grief so profound, several people still evacuating turned around to look for the sound through the haze.
A few yards away, still on her knees in the dirt, Emelie buried her face in her hands as she cried in unison with her principal.
.....
.
..
...
"One more thing before you go off. It is ok to fail on your first attempt. Just make sure... that you do not fail more than once."
SHATTER!
Kurt’s eye snapped open.
He let out a violent gasp of air, expanding his lungs as his heart hammered against his ribs with an explosive velocity. He instantly looked down at his torso. His blazer was torn, but his body was still whole. His legs were attached. There was no blood, no crater, and no crying Diana.
Looking around, he realised he was standing perfectly in the arena. His stardust coated black sword was drawn and raised high above his head. Even his body was locked in the exact same stance he had assumed right before Everett unleashed his attack.
’What the hell... what the hell just happened? I died. I know I damn well died. I felt the blast. But I’m back?’
When he looked up and saw the airborne figure of Everett, something caught him by surprise.
The glowing shroud of sparkling blue stardust glitters that he had painstakingly beaten into Everett’s body during their scrappy brawl... they were still there. Completely untouched whatever temporal reset that had just happened.
"Kurt. Say the word... Release." A gentle and beautiful feminine voice suddenly whispered directly into Kurt’s right ear.
"Who’s there?!"
No one was there. The space beside and behind him was completely empty.
Turning his attention back up toward the dark skies, Kurt had a strange understanding of what was requested of him. He didn’t know whose voice it was, but he and he didn’t care. No for now, at least.
He focused his mana directly into his vocal cords, coating his throat in the weight of his personal domain.
Up in the clouds, Everett bared his teeth as he prepared to launch the cataclysm. "DIE, KURT ROSSANA–!"
"RELEASE!"
Before he could even tilt his rapier downward, the stardust dancing around Everett’s body disappeared.
SLASH!!!!
A massive vertical cut suddenly manifested directly across his chest out of absolutely nowhere, slicing through his flesh and ripping him open.
"WHAT–?!"
Then, the truck hit him.
Every single ounce of bone-shattering damage that Kurt had personally inflicted upon him previously – the cuts, the battering, the crushing elbow strikes on his nose and jaw – all of it detonated across Everett’s body simultaneously in a single and without mercy.
"GAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
Everett let out a blood-curdling shriek of pure agony as fresh blood violently gushed out from his entire body.
His face instantly bruised into a horrific mask of purple, his nose breaking and his jaw audibly cracking out of its socket under the unknown force.
The S-rank silver lightning storm in the sky instantly dissolved into nothingness as his mana had died out from the sudden, immense trauma.
And like a sack of wet bricks, Everett’s broken, bloody body plummeted straight out of the sky, crashing heavily onto the fractured stone floor of the ring. There, he laid in a sprawled-out pool of his own noble blood.
Everyone inside in the coliseum stood in deadpan silence. At that moment, no one had seen Kurt move. No one had seen an attack. The one-eyed man had simply spoken a single word, and the S-rank noble had exploded in mid-air.
["I... I DO NOT BELIEVE MY EYES, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!"] Commentator Ken’s voice echoing through the stunned silence.
["THE STORM HAS VANISHED AND EVERETT HERST HAS COLLAPSED! THE WINNER... BY A DEVASTATING – POSSIBLY DEATH INDUCING KNOCKOUT – IS KURT ROSSANA!"]
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