"So, you've realized," Thanos said. "I promised you pain, and I intend on keeping that promise."
Fuck.
"Ah, well," I muttered, summoning Yamato in my left hand and unsheathing Kurogiri with my right. "You went down too easily anyway."
I activated Angelic Ascension, exploding in a corona of time, space, and dimensional energy that made Thanos narrow his eyes.
"Time magic," he said telepathically. "That is rare. You've come across the Time Stone."
"And what if I have?"
I twirled the katanas in my hands, mostly for effect, as Aquila materialized above my head. I drew on my amplification and precision enchantments and began funneling so much power into Aquila and Kurogiri that the katana started to vibrate in my grip. I prepared to activate the complex enchantment inscribed on the blade.
I called it Dimensional Storm.
It was a series of ten dimensional slashes layered on top of each other, delivered in a single breath.
Surprisingly, Thanos didn't seem shaken by the buildup.
"I will enjoy prying the location from your fragile mind," he snarled.
I laughed.
"Don't blink, big guy, or you'll miss it."
The stones on Thanos's chest shone briefly before I attacked, triggering TIME STOP.
Reality simply stopped.
I lashed out, carving into Thanos with a Dimensional Storm. I followed up with a swarm of teal-blue blades flung from Aquila at speeds I could barely follow. Finally, I swung Yamato, triggering the blade ability: Divide.
My targets were Thanos's body and soul.
The results were surprising.
My attacks landed in waves. The first cracked the skin-tight spell he'd woven with a flash of the Infinity Stones. The sea of shurikens stripped him of most of his armor before the final slash split him open, tearing out a chunk of body and soul.
He screamed, though time was frozen, and exploded like a supernova, bathing reality in pure soul energy.
I screamed as my Time Stop fractured and I was cooked from the inside out, but I didn't let something as insignificant as getting my soul flayed stop me.
I pulled back Yamato, holding it in front of me and jamming the Space Stone into its base, giving it an energy source worthy of its mythical pedigree. The blade split the avalanche of soul-rattling force bearing down on me, placing considerable strain on both my armor and myself.
But I'd trained for this.
Aquila whined above me like a helicopter rotor about to take off, sucking in heaps of spatial energy and spitting out hundreds of thousands of shurikens to split the sea of soul power. Somehow, even that wasn't enough.
The storm pressed down on me, peeling centimeters of my soul with each passing millisecond.
The agony was nearly all-consuming.
It was the worst I'd felt since the first time I'd used Anathema Flame.
Thanos roared as his body and armor repaired themselves.
"I have conquered hundreds of worlds, battled Demon Lords and ancient entities. Do you think your Infinity Stone levels the playing field, son of Sparda? Not nearly!"
"You're right!" I shot back through telepathy. "This is not nearly enough."
I activated all my genetic enhancements — superspeed, supers strength, enhanced adaptation, absorption — and shot forward, pumping even more energy into Yamato as I split the tide.
Thanos roared and exploded forward to meet me in the middle.
His blade sang as it swept down to meet mine.
At the last possible moment, I opened a finger-sized portal leading to another positioned at the slit between Thanos's helmet and throat. I flared all my Amplification and Precision runes and delivered a stab that might as well have been a bomb.
Reality cracked and immediately began disintegrating as the temperature soared to absurd levels, but I didn't stop.
I flowed into another slash that Thanos surprisingly blocked, just like the neck strike. I teleported away from a Soul beam, appearing at his flank and flaring my Time Warp ability.
Time practically froze. Every millisecond stretched into an eternity.
I swung with everything I had.
Thanos manifested a second blade, and we clashed again and again, blinking across the solar system. I launched myself backward with a kick that sent me through the moon of a nearby planet, and I split him in fifteen with a Judgement Cut that carved apart the planet itself.
But he kept coming back.
No matter how much I burned, cut, or battered.
As long as a fragment of his soul remained and the Mind Stone protected his consciousness, he seemed capable of rebuilding himself indefinitely.
As the battle dragged on, my armor grew denser. The constant influx of energy rapidly hardened and transformed it as it adapted to the strain of combat.
Eventually, my body followed suit, adjusting to the pressure of the Soul Stone.
The weight was no longer crippling. It no longer held me back.
I doubled my assault, traveling and striking with hundreds of thousands worth of energy attacks at a time. The stars lengthened. Reality was reduced to an infinite speed tunnel that I constantly travelled. My movements were instinctual: the dodges, parries, blocks, attacks. I started swapping weapons.
Eryx. Aquila. Osiris, Arbiter, and even plain old rebellion.
Somewhere during the fight, my weapon skill evolved.
It barely mattered.
Thanos weathered it all, improving, speeding up nearly as fast as I was. My second TIME STOP didn't even phase him. He simply shattered it by overwhelming the technique with Soul and Mind energy.
The fight lasted minutes, though it felt like hours. Thanos shifted tactics as rapidly as I did, battering my mind and forcing my rune arrays to shoulder part of the cognitive strain.
At some point, I summoned my entire arsenal: thousands of Anathema spears, gravity bombs, inscribed weapons, and more.
Thanos shattered them by the dozens, diverted them, turned them back on me, or retaliated for every wound I inflicted.
But I endured.
Teeth gritted.
Eventually, he began to falter.
Every Anathema Bomb, every soul-splitting slash, every Dimensional Cut chipped away at him. Until he slowed. His mind and Soul might've been beyond death, but they were not beyond fatigue.
Even the Mad Titan got tired eventually, but you'd never know it from the way he fought. He was more ruthless, his attacks sharper, and I was beginning to get tired myself.
In a final desperate gambit, I quadrupled down on my Anathema Fire.
During a brief lull, I flipped into Devil Trigger and pushed my affinity so hard something inside me twitched painfully.
Then I deployed every Anathema bomb I had and detonated them.
At the same moment, I opened Thanos up for the umpteenth time with Yamato, channeling all my runes and both Infinity Stones.
Thanos's eyes widened when he saw the Time Stone.
But by then it was too late.
Everything turned white.
Destruction washed over me.
My armor rapidly evolved to compensate, pushed further than it ever had before. It stores expanded rapidly, milking Rin's absorption enchantment for all it was worth, and the metal hardened and gained an almost Damascus-looking pattern, evolving to metal I'd never seen before.
But even that wasn't enough.
My enchantments began burning out.
I had to send the armor away and take the full brunt of the blast myself.
And it knocked me the fuck out.
It was a miracle I only died once, and I figured that was only because my body was already accustomed to Anathema Fire. The kinetic force alone should've liquified me immediately.
I resurrected and was immediately pushed to the brink again before my Devil Trigger flared and my body screamed in response.
My Angelic Ascension triggered without permission as my Promethean body evolved, and my comatose Shapeshifting affinity awakened.
Horns erupted from my head.
My skin turned red and black, leathery to the touch, and my strength exploded.
Power surged through me — far greater than anything I'd felt in either form before.
The closest comparison was when I'd channeled all my weapons simultaneously while wielding the Infinity Stones.
I was also taller.
Nearly a full foot taller.
Six purple ethereal wings spread from my back, while black claws extended from my hands and feet. A strange aura clung to me.
In my hands were Yamato and Rebellion. None of my other forged weapons had survived.
But my base weapon had changed.
It was rougher, broader. The hilt expanded into four flared points, and the blade was nearly as wide as my torso and longer than my entire body, even in this evolved form.
This was my Sin Devil Trigger.
I never thought it would happen now. I'd assumed it was months, if not years, away, given how focused I'd been on crafting.
A starry void stretched around me.
The former solar system was gone.
My explosion had scrubbed the system of any remaining matter our battle hadn't already destroyed.
Far beyond my usual range, I sensed energy building.
Several sources of it.
I surged forward, beating my wings once.
Seconds later, I arrived — no Time Warp necessary.
I braced myself for the sudden jump in power, only to freeze at the sight before me.
Thanos was dead.
Rin's hand was buried in his chest.
Four Infinity Stones orbited him.
Across from him stood Lauren, darkness pouring from her body in waves strong enough to blot out the stars.
Rin's skin had turned pure white, his hair floating despite the lack of wind, and thousands of energy fists lined up behind him like an army.
Fear flashed across Lauren's face when she saw me arrive.
I immediately teleported beside Rin, my lips curling into a sneer.
"I should've known you'd try something like this," I said.
She forced a smile.
"Can't blame a girl for trying."
"Oh, I absolutely can," I snarled.
Rebellion ignited, and thousands of Anathema blades split from it, joining the galaxy of fists behind Rin.
It was hard to contain my excitement.
Holy fucking shit.
I hadn't even meant to do that.
"I don't know about you, but I sure like my odds," I said.
Finally, she frowned and huffed.
"You win this round."
Then she was gone.
Several seconds passed before either of us looked at the other.
Oddly, the first words out of our mouths were the same.
"Holy shit."
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