Back to the present fight...

After being flung around from multiple directions, my body barely stabilizing each time I hit something or forced myself back into position, I came to a pretty simple conclusion. Holding back right now would just be stupid. There wasn’t any pride in it and no strategy behind it either. It would just be dumb. So I stopped hesitating and used my transformation.

The moment I did, something surged through me.

Power.

Raw, overwhelming power.

It didn’t feel like something that had always been there waiting to be unlocked. It felt foreign, like something new had been forced into me, filling every part of my body all at once. My muscles tightened instinctively, my breathing hitched for just a second, and there was this heavy pressure settling deep inside me, like my body was trying to catch up to what I had just activated.

It wasn’t just strong. It was suffocating.

Even I felt overwhelmed by it, and that wasn’t something I’d admit lightly.

Would I consider this my peak? I didn’t know. The thought crossed my mind for a second, but it didn’t stick. There was still this feeling that I could go further, that this wasn’t the end of it. Still, having access to this kind of power already felt like cheating. Like I had skipped a few steps that other people had to crawl through.

Then again, considering the Prince and Moriarty had already taken their own shortcuts to power, I didn’t really have much of a choice. Playing fair wasn’t exactly an option anymore.

"Guh... What the heck are you doing, Moriarty!? We could’ve killed him easily back then! Why did you stop me?!" Julius shouted, his voice filled with frustration.

"It’s not going to be easy, Prince Julius. Right now, we’re in a much more vulnerable position than him," Moriarty answered, his tone calm as ever, almost annoyingly so. "He has assimilated himself with the Great Black. At this point, he could overwhelm us with ease, even if we attack him together."

"The Great Black? Why even mention that fraud?! She’s the weakest of the Great Ones in history!" Julius snapped back without hesitation.

"That might be true, but she is still strong. And you are not a complete vessel of the Great Red either. Meanwhile, he is a Great Black Vessel. With him assimilating with her, this turns into a one-sided fight, even if we both engage him at the same time."

Hearing that, I couldn’t help but narrow my eyes a bit. I had no idea how much Moriarty actually knew about me, but the way he spoke made it clear he had done his homework. It wasn’t just guesswork. He knew enough to make accurate calls, and that alone made him more dangerous than he looked.

"Looks like I don’t have much of a choice..." Moriarty muttered quietly.

Then it happened.

Darkness spread.

It started from the ground beneath us, thin at first, almost like a shadow stretching too far. Then it thickened, spreading outward in all directions. It didn’t stop. It crawled across the streets, climbed the walls, swallowed the surroundings, and before long, it stretched across the entire capital. Everything looked like it had been dipped into black, like the light itself had been pushed out of the way.

It wasn’t just dark. It felt heavy.

Just how many abilities did he even have? It was getting ridiculous at this point. He felt like a mirror of me in that sense, someone who had gathered too many tools and knew how to use all of them. The difference was that I understood how I got mine.

Him? That part didn’t add up yet.

Then his body changed.

The shift wasn’t slow. It was immediate. One second he stood there as himself, and the next, something about him felt completely different. My eyes widened slightly when I noticed the details.

Those scales.

They looked way too familiar.

Weren’t those from the Great Darkness?

How did he even manage to get something like that?

The realization settled in quickly. Moriarty had something similar to me. Maybe not identical, but close enough. He could take abilities from others, absorb them, and make them his own. And somehow, he had managed to take in the Great Darkness as well.

I remembered killing it.

Seeing its power now wrapped around someone like him felt off in a way I couldn’t fully explain.

Even then, there was a clear difference.

Just like Julius, Moriarty’s transformation wasn’t complete. His assimilation hovered around twenty percent. Mine was at fifty, and that gap alone made a huge difference. Julius was even lower, barely touching ten percent.

Even combined, they weren’t matching me.

Moriarty steadied himself, his stance tightening as he prepared to move. Julius followed, his earlier frustration now replaced with focus.

Then we moved.

The three of us clashed midair almost instantly. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

They came at me together, their timing nearly perfect, and within milliseconds, our attacks collided. There was a brief pause, a tiny delay where everything seemed to hold still for just a fraction of a second.

Then the impact landed.

A shockwave burst outward from where we met, rippling through the air and pushing everything away from the center. The force of it echoed, like the sky itself had been struck.

And then we kept moving.

At first, they still tried.

They pushed, attacked, adjusted, and tried to find some kind of opening.

But it didn’t take long before it started to sink in.

This wasn’t winnable for them.

Even with the power of the Great Ones flowing through their bodies, it wasn’t enough to close the gap.

At that point, I wasn’t even attacking.

I was just blocking.

Every strike they threw at me was stopped with minimal effort. A slight shift of my body, a small movement of my arm, just enough to shut them down completely. It wasn’t flashy, and honestly, that probably made it worse for them.

However, there was no point dragging it out forever.

It was time to move.

I stepped in and slammed the hilt of Ayuru straight into Julius’s side.

The impact was solid and clean.

He was sent flying immediately, his body shooting downward before crashing into the ground. The force carved out a deep crater, the kind that made it look like something massive had fallen from the sky and hit the earth without warning.

That left Moriarty alone with me in the air.

He held his position, blocking where he could, adjusting quickly, trying to keep up. Credit where it’s due, he didn’t fall apart instantly. He managed to stay airborne, forcing himself to hold his ground.

But it wasn’t enough.

I struck from different angles, one after another, faster than he could fully react to. Each hit pushed him just a little more, chipped away at whatever stability he was holding onto. He tried to resist getting thrown back, but it was obvious he wouldn’t last much longer like this.

Take a good look, Moriarty.

This is what a real gap in power looks like.

And I’m still getting stronger.

His eyes widened the moment that realization hit him.

For the first time, his calm expression cracked.

That might’ve been the first genuine human reaction I had ever seen from him.