"Do you care about your sister? I thought there wasn't a trace of the original Dipper left."
"That brat? There's nothing left" Bipper replied with disdain. "There's just nothing fun to do in this place, so I keep her alive."
After saying that, Bipper stopped, and the attacks finally ceased, allowing Kaito to stand still at last.
But it only lasted a second. In a single millisecond, and at a speed only Kaito could perceive, millions of similar rocks appeared all around him.
They not only filled the air around him, they even overlapped each other, looking like a completely solid wall occupying every bit of space. Even so, when they moved, none of them collided with one another, as if they existed on different planes.
But Kaito was certain that if they touched him, they would still hit him despite being on different planes.
Faced with such a move, Kaito could no longer dodge, because there was nowhere left to move.
Brrrrrrr.
His only option was to vibrate, avoiding the rocks not by dodging, but because they simply could not touch him.
Bipper was only surprised for a second before smiling.
"Vibration? Just a simple speed trick" he mocked. "You have no idea what an incomparable power direct reality manipulation is. You vibrate? So what? They can vibrate too. I just have to find your frequency, and I'll kill you."
Just as he said, every stone began vibrating at different frequencies, trying unsuccessfully to hit Kaito.
It did not take long before Bipper noticed that Kaito was avoiding certain specific rocks. With a thought, every stone stopped, then all began vibrating at the same frequency before moving toward Kaito.
Kaito could have switched to another frequency himself, but that would only force Bill to find it again before repeating the current situation.
So instead of delaying the inevitable, he chose another path.
With a thought, a feeling of power spread through Kaito's body, while outside, the domain of Motion surrounding him expanded to about two meters in diameter, with him at its center.
Inside it, every stone began falling to the ground like ordinary rocks.
"Within my domain, motion only works naturally" he declared out loud.
He could have frozen the stones in place or stripped them of their Motion entirely, but that would have cost much more. Instead, he simply reinforced the rules of natural movement, preventing Bipper's manipulation from functioning inside the area.
As a result, a stone that had literally only appeared a few centimeters or meters away, without ever receiving any propelling force, could not possibly possess such acceleration. Therefore, following those same rules, the stones fell to the ground with no more force than if a baby had thrown them.
Bipper, with his near omnipotence over almost all reality there, immediately understood what was happening. For the first time since he had started trying to kill Kaito, he frowned in annoyance, showing something other than amusement.
"You're becoming more and more annoying" Bipper said while thinking about what to do.
At this point, it was obvious this strategy no longer worked. The best he could do was repeat the tactic of creating meteors that fell from the atmosphere and naturally gained acceleration, but Kaito had already proven he could dodge them, making it useless.
As for other forms of attack, Bipper did not even bother trying.
Even though he manipulated reality, he could not simply do anything. His reality manipulation was based on editing things that already existed. He could not simply kill Kaito for no apparent reason, that was not how it worked.
As for controlling things like air, water, earth, and so on to kill him, Bipper considered those methods too weak. From the very beginning he had deprived the area of oxygen and increased gravity several times over, only to discover that Kaito's body was incredibly durable. Since then, he had stopped attempting such useless methods.
That was exactly why he had ultimately settled on meteor attacks, then turning those meteors into tiny stones with absurd acceleration. After all, there was a reason humanity's ultimate weapons were firearms. If something worked, there was no need to change it.
But even though his only method had failed, Bipper was not anxious. He knew that Motion domain would not last long. If Kaito could use it whenever he wanted, he would have done so from the beginning.
Besides, he could always repeat his previous tactic of overlapping projectiles in different spaces so they could not be dodged, and at different frequencies to locate Kaito's, only this time dropping them from the atmosphere as before, though it would cost considerably more than his current methods.
However, that was something Kaito knew as well.
"You don't think I'll just wait for your time limit to run out, do you? You had your turn, now it's my turn to counterattack" Kaito smiled.
"You think you can defeat me? Maybe I can't kill you, but you can't kill me either" Bipper said fearlessly.
"I know. I have quite a variety of abilities, but none that can truly defeat you.
At first I thought purification magic might work, but then I remembered you're not actually a possession because you're not a ghost.
Maybe if I managed to touch you, I could force you out of his body with my Motion domain, but since I have no experience doing that, it would take me a while, time I doubt you'd give me" Kaito sighed in disappointment as he explained. "But I don't need to defeat you. I just have to bring someone who can."
'And to make sure it works.'
Kaito repeated the same process as last time, activating his Luck at 5000% once again before activating the ability "Nemesis."
"Someone stronger than me?" Bipper almost laughed upon hearing that. His expression showed just how absurd he found the idea. "You think someone capable of defeating me exists?"
"Of course," Kaito nodded with a confident smile. "Someone capable of defeating a weakened Bill... is naturally a complete Bill."
Suddenly, something changed in the sky.
One of the suns overhead turned completely white while two lines like eyelids closed from above and below. When they opened again, a thin black iris occupied its center. It had become a giant eye.
The eye began spinning as it descended, transforming into a yellow triangular figure with a single eye, a small bow tie at its bottom, and a top hat on its upper tip.
"Oh wow! Oh wow!" he said excitedly while looking around with interest. "What is this weird place? It has absolutely no connection to the space outside.
Oh my gosh, is that another me? Oh, look how tiny he is. He even stuffed himself inside Dipper."
"How did you bring someone from outside in here? That should be impossible!" Bipper roared, equally terrified and incredulous, his carefree attitude from moments ago completely gone. After all, if anyone knew how terrifying Bill was, it was Bill himself.
"No idea" Kaito shrugged casually.
He truly did not know. He had trusted his Luck to handle that part, and fortunately, it had.
This time there was no notification as usual when summoning someone, but if there had been one, based purely on instinct, it would probably have said something like:
'Warning! You have summoned the nemesis of your current enemy. This being holds no loyalty toward the host, so caution is advised.
In case of danger, the host may dismiss the summon at any time.'
'Hey, hey, the deal! I'll do it! Just get rid of that thing before it kills me and everyone else.'
Because Kaito unconsciously allowed it, Bipper was able to speak directly into Kaito's mind.
"Deal? What deal?" Unfortunately for Bipper, Bill could read his thoughts as easily as if they had been spoken aloud.
"Hey!" Bipper ignored the gigantic extradimensional pyramid and hurried Kaito.
"How do I know you'll keep your word once I dismiss him?"
Bipper never got to answer, because Bill was already beside him, now in a smaller, semi flat form. His mouth was wide open as Bill's soul inside Dipper, the one that formed Bipper, began to be absorbed.
Bill kept absorbing him without paying attention. Instead, he returned to his three dimensional form, while his two dimensional self appeared on another face of the pyramid, speaking to Kaito.
"Oh, aren't you interesting? I can't absorb your soul. More than that, it's as if your body can't be altered in any way."
"T-the... d-deal..." Bipper, barely conscious, stretched one hand toward him.
"Can you stop talking already? I'll see what you've done once I've absorbed you, so I really don't need you to say anything."
In that tiny moment of distraction, Kaito deactivated his Motion domain and moved, heading straight toward Bipper's outstretched hand.
But even at his full speed, a speed at which everything around him appeared frozen, Kaito watched Bill extend hundreds of eyes from his head, surrounding him from every direction.
"You're pretty fast for an ant, aren't you? Then again, I can still see you perfectly" Bill transformed some of those eyes into mouths, speaking through all of them at once as he mocked Kaito.
Kaito paid no attention. Instead, he activated the Motion Domain at full power.
Bill's body began moving backward slowly, very slowly. It retreated barely three centimeters, and it only lasted three hundredths of a second even from Kaito's almost frozen perception of time.
Even so, it was enough.
CRASHHH!
Space itself shattered like glass as Bill replaced the version that had been moving backward, escaping Kaito's domain with only a little effort.
But in the instant it took him to do so, Kaito had already grabbed Bipper's hand.
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+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
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(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)