After telling Sarandel to create a path and force distance between everyone and the Beast using her arrows, X moved, vanishing from the battlefield and cutting across the city in search of something large enough to actually move the Beast. He scanned streets, structures, wreckage, dismissing each option in seconds until—
"Well hello."
He stopped.
There, intact among the damage, was something that made him grin beneath his skull mask. He climbed into it without hesitation, hands moving across unfamiliar controls, testing, adjusting, learning through quick trial and error. It took a few seconds, but he got it moving. Once he did, he expanded his localized time field, stretching it to encompass the entire vehicle so it would move with him, unaffected by the frozen world outside.
Then he drove.
He cut back toward the center of the city, the vehicle rumbling forward as he lined up his approach, and when he arrived, he saw that Sarandel had done exactly as asked. The battlefield had been split cleanly apart. There was distance. There was space.
There was a clear shot.
"I know this won't kill you, but…" he muttered, tightening his grip as he braced himself. "It'll get you away from everyone else."
With time still stopped around him, he accelerated.
The vehicle surged forward and slammed into the Beast, the impact connecting in frozen silence as X kept driving, pushing it back, carrying it with him as he forced it further and further away from the center of the city. Only once he had created enough distance did he release his hold on time.
Reality snapped back.
Sound returned in an instant as the Beast let out a shocked, pain-filled growl, its many eyes snapping toward X, burning with Extreme Bestial Hatred, before the momentum fully caught up and it was driven straight into a tower. The impact blasted through the wall, stone and debris exploding outward as it was carried inside.
X brought the vehicle to a halt and exhaled, stepping out onto the ground. He turned and gave the machine a brief pat along its side. "Steamstrider huh? It's pretty nice," he said, almost casually, before shifting his attention forward.
The Beast was already moving.
It burst out of the rubble and launched itself toward him without hesitation.
*Let's get this started,* he thought—
—and his head was punched off.
—
X ducked under the punch.
And the next.
And the next.
Claws, fists, kicks, blades, tails, all of it came at him in a relentless storm, and he moved through it with perfect precision, each motion measured, each adjustment exact. He had already died to these attacks. Dozens of times. More. He stepped where he needed to step, leaned where he needed to lean, slipping through the assault as if he already knew every angle.
The Beast slowed for a fraction of a moment, something like confusion flickering beneath that Extreme Bestial Hatred.
X didn't hesitate.
He stepped in and drove a punch into its temple, snapping its head sideways, then followed with a sharp kick to its stomach that folded it slightly. Its tails shot toward him in retaliation, aiming to skewer him from multiple angles, but he caught them mid-thrust, twisted his body, and redirected them, forcing the tips to stab back into the Beast's own neck.
He slipped past a snapping bite, pivoted behind it, and instead of the expected kick, drove his knee hard into its spine, disrupting its balance.
"Can't change to match what I am doing right?" X asked as he dipped under a far more refined spinning elbow than before, the Beast's movements already evolving. A steam-pistol appeared in his hand in the same motion, and he fired point-blank into its head, the shot snapping it backward and sending it crashing to the ground.
"What is the point of this hopeless fight? You just want to get that Hatred out? Is that it? Are you throwing a tantrum because you were locked in some sort of box in Xain?" he continued, stepping forward as the Beast rose again.
This time, it had weapons.
Two black steam-pistols formed in its hands, and it fired immediately. X moved through the barrage with practiced ease, weaving between shots as if walking a memorized path, and in the gaps, dozens of daggers manifested around him. With a flick of motion, they drove forward, stabbing into the Beast from multiple angles, pinning and tearing through it.
"A boy just got confessed to, and instead of letting him feel those emotions, letting him just be himself, despite the target he had directed his Hatred towards being gone, you just cling onto your own freedom? How selfish can you be?" he pressed.
The Beast answered with a Mana Blast.
The beam roared out from its mouth, but X was already moving. He stepped past it, pivoted on his heel, dropped one hand to the ground to anchor himself, and drove his leg upward in a sharp arc, his heel slamming into the Beast's stomach. It doubled over mid-beam, the attack still firing wildly, and X followed immediately, snapping an uppercut into its jaw that forced its mouth shut.
The Mana Blast had nowhere to go.
It detonated inside.
The Beast's head burst apart, and its body collapsed.
"Look at you, you're pathetic," X said, almost coldly, as he straightened. "While freedom is a right, it losses that factor when you have to cut someone else's freedom just to live your own, and you're going to kill his friends as well?" He shook his head, then casually dropped a few firebombs onto the fallen body. The flames ignited immediately, burning across it. It had adapted to resist magical fire, not fire in general, and the distinction held it down longer.
"If you can hear me Xain, why are you letting it do this huh? You're a hero aren't you? Zee called you that and you were about to let her die in this things hands! If you want to live up to the expectations others have for you! You gotta fight back against this thing darn it! If you can't do that you might lose them you know?" he added, watching closely.
The Beast began to change.
The flames died out as its body adapted again, and it pushed itself back to its feet with a low growl, preparing to attack—
Then it stopped.
Its hands trembled.
It looked down at them, at its own form, and saw it beginning to recede, the monstrous structure pulling back in places.
"No… No! I… will… kill… you! I… will… break… him… and… make… him… never… hold… me… again!" it roared, forcing itself forward again as it charged X.
This time, X didn't dodge.
He leaned into the punch.
He angled his body just enough that the blow connected with his mask first, the impact shattering the skull-like surface and sending fragments flying away from his face.
"Okay, time to play this trump card," he said.
And when the Beast saw what was under the mask—
Even its eyes widened.