What he saw before his eyes could only be described as a storm of destruction.
The scene was also a bit blurry and had some graininess, like a movie with low image processing quality.
It reminded the viewer of watching a movie on a box TV instead of a VR movie like before.
However, the realistic feeling and tense atmosphere that the scene brought still made the simulated Yumeji shiver as he watched.
*****
Boom! Boom! Boom! BOOMMM!!
Countless explosions erupted as the entire forest went up in raging flames.
The battle had essentially surpassed the bounds of human comprehension, with rifts of darkness continuously tearing through the air.
Space twisted and warped ominously as a certain young girl knelt to the ground, eyes vacant and dazed.
No—more accurately, one of her eyes rolled uncontrollably, wildly scanning as if it were observing something unspeakable.
And the moment that eye locked onto its target, space began to ripple like waves. Where her gaze landed, the surroundings twisted unnaturally, as if the very air was being choked—and everything within was crushed into fine dust.
This left a crater ten meters deep.
And the moment her eyes flicked upward, she snatched hold of the thing that had shot into the air in an attempt to avoid her earlier attack.
Without a moment of hesitation, the girl spread her fingers, raised her hand high, and brought it down in a powerful chop.
That chop was so heavy it split and shredded the space in front of her, as if she had sliced her own field of vision in two. Everything within the range of that swing was torn mercilessly apart.
And the range of that attack extended for several kilometers—cutting through clouds and even slicing the atmosphere in two like a knife through cake.
However, her attack missed the target. The moment the man—specifically, the white-haired man with his hair lazily tied behind his head—sensed the deadly blow heading his way, he quickly aimed his gun to the side and fired into the air. Using the overwhelming recoil of the shot, he just barely evaded the edge of her onslaught.
But he didn't have a second to catch his breath, because during his descent, he was attacked again. The girl raised her other hand and twisted her wrist clockwise.
Immediately, space in every direction quivered and shifted, opening up twelve dark energy disks in twelve separate positions.
These were spinning disks of energy that churned and warped the surrounding space with dense dark power, resembling vortexes in the fabric of reality.
And the dense dark energy within them condensed into black energy spikes, which pierced the man from all directions.
Even after pushing his output to the maximum, the man wielding the twin pistols was only able to destroy two of the disks in time—and narrowly avoided death from a spike descending from above by violently twisting his head to the side, though it caused another spike to burrow even deeper into his body.
After breaking free from the encirclement, the man was left gravely wounded, his body riddled with puncture wounds, making him look not unlike a human-shaped beehive.
Gasping for breath, the man struggled to drag his broken body across the snow-covered field within the blazing forest.
Knowing full well he wouldn't last much longer, the man, while sprinting at full speed toward the girl, brought his twin pistols together—ready to unleash his final attack.
This action unlocked another form of the weapon he held in his hands.
With a sudden flash of light, the twin pistols that had just been in his grasp transformed into a greatsword, its blade glowing a fiery orange-red, radiating an intense, scorching heat into the surroundings.
Even upon witnessing this, the girl showed no fear. She merely narrowed one of her eyes slightly.
It was the eye of golden hue—distinctly different from the blue of the other.
But it wasn't just the color that was strange. The pupil in that eye had turned an eerie, unnatural black, like a bottomless pit threatening to consume everything in its gaze.
Anyone who looked into it would immediately sense that something was terribly wrong.
Of course, the girl herself was already in a disturbing, abnormal state—having clearly lost control, as though some cruel and merciless personality had taken over her—but this new condition was far more alarming than anything before.
The proof lay in her shadow, which flickered and wavered erratically, beginning to twist and contort like a living creature.
Right after that, the young girl raised one hand to clutch her head while the other flailed violently, as if trying to drive something away.
*BOOM!! BOOM!!! *BOOOMMM!! BANGGG!!!
The space in front of her exploded like a minefield, as if the very air had burst like a balloon—shredding everything caught within.
The man had to struggle to avoid the invisible explosions, which even a slight graze caused his bones to vibrate ominously while his flesh was torn apart by the shockwaves.
It was probably easier to get through a barrage of bombs in war than this.
-Crack!
With that sound, it was obvious that the invisible explosions had crushed some part of his body.
More specifically, his left shoulder blade and two ribs on his right side.
This was so painful that the man had to punch his chest to vomit blood to release the blocked trachea caused by the blood clot inside.
And when he looked up to continue moving, all that remained in his vision was white.
Yes, white. His vision was dyed in white but it was not because his vision was blurred by pain but because the invisible explosions that filled his vision had completely torn up the layers of snow on the ground, causing it to erupt and splash into the sky, forming a white patch, a wall of snow of unknown height and width that brought the man's vision into an indefinite white space with no clear up or down, left or right.
Even so, the man still did not hesitate to rush forward.
Needless to say, to do that, that man must have had a determination strong enough to fight against the primal fear of humans - the fear of death. Just being able to charge forward and charge into dozens of invisible explosions that could quickly crush a 50-story building into rubble and easily turn a human into a mangled mass of flesh was a feat great enough to earn the man a place in the Guinness Book of Records.
Therefore...
Therefore....
In order to avoid that horrifying end, the man raised the sword in his hand above his head and swung the blade down like a fan.
The surface of the sword hit the explosion and was pushed away like a wooden plank, which blew the body of the man holding the sword dozens of meters into the air.
And of course the man was not completely unharmed after performing this trick, even if it was just a little bit, but his body hit one of the invisible explosions completely to disperse the contact surface before being whipped into the air.
Accompanying that, a pain that felt like his chest had been shattered hit his mind, and then he coughed up blood violently while his body spun in the air like a kite with a broken string.
Despite the dull pain of his flesh being torn, his muscles being torn, and every bone in his body shaking like an earthquake and his internal organs being turned upside down, in the depths of his eyes, which were blurred by pain to the point of being rolled back into white cages, there was still a flame of determination that could not be erased.
The man let out a wide grin in a frenzy.
And then.
Something exploded before his eyes.
The space before him was shrinking and twisting fearfully as if it was going to swallow him and tear him apart like a black hole.
However, the man was not afraid at all, he tightly gripped the hilt of the sword with both hands and released the maximum heat inside the sword and swung it down.
The temperature released reached 4500 degrees Celsius, causing the air to expand violently, blocking and tearing apart the contraction and twisting of the air mass, the space in front of him.
And of course, to achieve that, the man had to pay a price.
As soon as he swung the sword down, he released one hand to use it to block the critical strike and protect his body, he used his left hand as a shield to push the impact elsewhere.
In the process, his left hand was brutally crushed and twisted like a rope.
-Guaaaaghhhhhh!!!
He changed the sound of screaming in pain into a battle cry to pass the final pass.
And then...
And then...
He threw the sword in his hand like a javelin.
Even though his mind was hazy, even though he wasn't smart enough to understand what was happening here, he could still rely on his extremely sharp warrior's intuition to know exactly which enemy he should be aiming for here.
And then...
-Thunk!!
The sword was accurately stabbed into the ground right in front of the girl.
No more precisely than piercing through her deformed shadow.
And then, something started writhing around there and a terrifying scream followed.
-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was a terrifying scream that seemed to echo from the abyss.
The man landed on the ground right after that and reached out to grab the hilt of his sword, putting more strength into it to firmly grip the blade of his sword against something that was hidden in the girl's shadow.
He could hear shrill noises and the shadow he had stabbed his sword into shook like a wave and then something burst out from there to kill the one who had hurt it.
A dark and distorted arm that seemed to belong to another space-time and was completely out of this world.
He called it an arm but in reality its shape was a solid black mass that could not be explained in ordinary language.
And of course it intended to kill him.
And just as it was about to charge and tear him apart like a beast. He nonchalantly dodged to the side and grinned while swinging his mangled left arm as bait for the monster as if he were a bullfighter.
And of course that arm was torn off along with his left shoulder, right now he could even hear the sound of something chewing on his arm in its mouth.
He just laughed sarcastically, releasing the maximum heat of the sword and then used his other hand to grip the hilt tightly and slashed off the head of something that was hiding in the girl's shadow while a part of it was busy gnawing on his left arm outside.
-GUAAAAAAAGHHHH!!!
After that cry, everything became silent, the man was completely exhausted and was supported by the girl.
"You've done quite well in your role as a brave father, mortal. I give you credit for that."
"Kiana?"
"Sorry, but I'm not that brat. I'll switch places with her later, so don't get too disappointed."
Yes, the man and the girl who had been fighting all this time were Siegfried Kaslana and Kiana Kaslana.
But given the situation, it was more accurate to say this battle was between Siegfried and the dark force that had driven the fight far beyond its original scope.
Of course, even after destroying that thing, what remained wasn't his daughter—it was a malevolent personality of hers, a girl with a name: Sirin, or the Herrscher of the Void.
"How... damn it!!"
Siegfried collapsed helplessly into the arms of his mortal enemy, still unable to save his daughter, his face contorted in anguish.
"Don't ask me why, human. And you don't need to make that scrunched-up pig face either. This was bound to happen, no matter what you did."
"What the hell are you talking about!?"
As he roared in confusion, Sirin simply shrugged.
"Even if I told you, you'd forget soon enough. But still, I'll say it anyway. Just think of it as my little act of rebellion in this boring-ass play."
"...?"
"Everything was predetermined. You, me, all of it. So I don't hate you anymore, human. I've killed you enough times for it to get boring. Of course, I still find you disgusting and annoying, hahahaha. Anyway, this world is ■■■■■■■, made by ■■■■■■, and now it's already ■■■■■. Sigh, I knew they'd censor it—the damn filter."
As soon as she finished speaking, something abnormal began happening in the sky.
Something was writhing in the infinite void beyond the planet.
And then...
And then...
Countless colossal, twisted eyes burst open across the sky, carrying a soul-crushing pressure, blooming like a thousand flowers.
No—saying the sky opened its eyes wouldn't be accurate. It was as if the universe itself had awakened.
In that pitch-black, infinitely vast space, the eyes opened wide, covering the sky and blotting out every single star as they swiveled—all just to gaze down upon the tiny planet called Earth.
Anyone standing on Earth and witnessing this would feel as if the entire cosmos were descending upon the blue planet.
And all living beings would tremble in fear upon realizing that, because fear drives us to turn back and check if we're still safe.
But in truth, doing so is a grave mistake—because that's when one falls into the trap known as "gazing into the Abyss."
Once that happens, you're stuck—frozen in place, with no way to escape.
The moment she noticed the man trembling in her arms, Sirin sighed and forcefully pushed his head down.
"Don't look up. There's nothing up there worth seeing."
While holding back the man being driven by a primal urge to look into the Abyss, Sirin spoke again.
"You're dragging your feet—deal with this already, ■■■■■■■■. Before ■■■■■■■■."
As soon as she finished speaking, the universe rippled once again, and someone opened their eyes after a long slumber beyond the stars. The terrifying eyes that had emerged from the darkness vanished, and a meteor shower streaked across the night sky—as if someone had merely peeked in for a moment before returning to their work.
"I suppose this is it for now. Let this damn play continue."
With those words, Sirin's will flickered out—and a blue-white spark struck Siegfried's temple.
*****
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While we were raising opinions and complaining about all sorts of things because the quality of the movie being shown wasn't as good as expected even though the movie was good.
Then the movie screen returned to normal but without looking I knew that the movie had been cut because it skipped the climax and went straight to the ending.