The moon was covered by clouds, and the sky was gray and gloomy.

The odor of blood and flesh filled the air.

Dead bodies were littered everywhere. They were all in various forms of disfigurement. Some had their eyes destroyed, while others had their skulls punctured. The rest either had their skulls caved in, penetrated by an arrow, or were lucky enough to have barely damaged corpses. They were scattered in a radius around Ayame.

Blood coated the ground as if someone had thrown buckets of red paint around the bodies.

Ayame and the golden-haired man faced each other.

The golden-haired man was about to speak when Ayame suddenly attacked, performing the Deathblow Knee, which had the highest firepower targeted right at his face.

She felt something wrong and took a quick glance at the golden-haired man, noticing that he blocked her attack with his own face. He didn't receive any damage, and he didn't even flinch.

Ayame tried to return to her stance, but she was suddenly punched in the gut by the golden-haired man. She couldn't evade the punch in time, even with her supersonic reaction speed, due to being in midair and having minimal momentum. She was like an arrow at the end of its flight or an arrow that had hit a rock-solid target.

Her body flew off several feet away like a rag doll. She felt as if she was hit by an air shotgun. The contents of her stomach begin to rise to her mouth, puking blood and water into the ground. The taste and stench of blood and vomit were overpowering her senses.

Ayame's vision was shaky and blurry, and she could only see the golden-haired man's blurry body. The trees and sky turned into a mosaic of black and gray. The wind felt cold and icy against her skin.

Her nose was congested, and she could smell nothing but the iron from her blood.

Ayame was quickly losing consciousness, but before she fell unconscious, the golden-haired man rushed at her, stepping over her body.

He kicked Ayame, flipping over her body to face her face to face. He was grinning ear to ear.

"Don't think you're death will be this easy." He mockingly said at her while stomping her abdomen, causing her face to swell instantly.

She gasped. Her chest heaved in pain.

The golden-haired man released the black smoke-like objects.

They hovered over Ayame's skin. It started from the leg as it slowly moved upwards.

Ayame's skin began to disintegrate. The smoke hissed and evaporated her skin the instant it made contact.

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" Ayame cried out in agony. She screamed as the skin in her legs and abdomen was removed. It felt as if it was burning and melting like wax that surrounded a lit candle wick.

She could hear the man laughing.

"How does it feel?" he mockingly said again, "This is the martial art developed by the forefathers to kill the Untermensch, the subhuman trashes, in the society during the Endlösung der Judenfrage." The golden-haired man laughed maniacally. His laugh was filled with sadism and enjoyment.

"So that's why you're holding-" Ayame uttered before being interrupted by blood rising from her throat. She vomited the blood and continued speaking, "those women in cages?" Ayame asked a rhetorical question. "You're a disgusting Germanophile Neo-Nazi."

"What did you call me?" The golden-haired man glared at her with an angry expression, his face red with fury.

"I said you're a disgusting Germanophile Neo-Nazi," Ayame muttered.

"Shut up!" The golden-haired man roared as he jumped toward her. He slammed his fist down on her face, breaking her nose, and sank her body to the ground.

Ayame's face was bleeding, and her cheekbone was broken and bruised.

Her face was swollen. The golden-haired man kept attacking Ayame, punching her face over and over. Her blood flowed continuously from her broken nose, and she felt as if she couldn't breathe.

After hitting her face, the golden man looked at the broken nose, smirked, and lifted his foot above Ayame, ready to crush her face with his big steel boot.

Ayame thought she was going to die. She felt despair and hopelessness.

She felt helpless. She had no energy left to fight, her head was spinning, and everything blurred together.

She closed her eyes and waited for the kick to land on her face.

"What are you doing?" A voice filled with rage. It sounded familiar.

The person spoke again, "Stand up."

Ayame opened her eyes.

The golden-haired man in front of her had disappeared as if he had been taken away by the wind.

She noticed that she was no longer in the forest. She was on some farmland.

"Your enemy is right in front of you. Why are you just lying there?" The same person's voice came once again. His footsteps came closer and closer to where she lay.

"Stand up, Ayame." The person said as his head looked down from the back of where she lay, staring right at her eyes without blinking.

"Yuu...to," she whispered as the tears fell uncontrollably from her eyelids. She finally recognized who it was that urged her to move.

Ayame didn't know why she cried. She was a madwoman who killed billions of lives without shedding a single tear of sympathy or regret.

The rage of being ravaged by multiple people created a meteorite in her heart, crashing down as she burned their bodies and committed their screams into her memories.

The sadness of being abandoned by her family, the rage, regret, and defiance that led her to commit acts of violence, and the number of atrocities she had committed, rained down on her heart, filling the once-empty crater and creating a pond of resentment.

With every kill, her resentment and mental stamina increased side by side.

But now, here she was, in an empty yet peaceful world, with no one else except the man she once loved. The pond of resentment had disappeared. It had been replaced by the despair of losing against an insurmountable opponent and the strange happiness of reuniting with a loved one.

"If you have the time to cry, stand up and fight," Yuuto said in response. His tone sounded like thunder. He was angry.

She looked up at Yuuto. "I can't win against him. I can't even stand right now."

"Remember this, Ayame. If you can't run and you can't hide, you have to fight. You don't know that you won't survive," Yuuto said with a serious expression.

"And let me make something clear. You're never useless. You have a new power now, right? So why aren't you using it?" Yuuto stared at her.

"But...but..." Ayame struggled and said weakly.

Ayame tried to get up, but she fell back onto the ground due to weakness. She knew she couldn't stand up anymore. It wasn't because she was injured or because she got hurt physically. It was because she had given up.

Yuuto sighed and crouched down next to Ayame as he held her hand. He looked into her eyes and said.

"People like us only have two options. One is to give up. To ride the wave and accept our fate, death. And the other choice is to go against the wave, live, struggle, and fight! Become stronger, stronger, so much stronger than what we were. That's the only way to survive. Now you must learn how to stand up again. Stand up! You need to fight!" Yuuto spoke firmly.

"I won't win," Ayame murmured weakly.

"Fine. If you don't want to fight-" Yuuto said before he stopped talking abruptly.

He punched her in the gut. His fists were like a spear, and they pierced her skin, flesh, and bones, "-then you can die in peace, knowing you won't have to suffer for another day." He growled with a vicious tone of voice.

He narrowed his eyes and looked at her, noticing she was bleeding profusely. Blood trickled down her gut to the soil. Her face no longer had the hopeless expression she had held earlier. It was now replaced with determination and resolve.

Ayame coughed up blood and spurted everywhere, splashing all over Yuuto's clothes and hands. She grabbed Yuuto's arm and slowly stood up.

She raised her head and stared right at Yuuto, her eyes with a feverish gaze and a look of madness within them. "Thank you, Yuuto." She smiled widely and weakly as she hugged him, "I love you," she whispered.

Yuuto and the surroundings began to crumble. They disintegrated and scattered.

He smiled at her, "Don't get yourself killed before we meet again."

"Because I do not need a damsel in distress, a woman who cannot stand beside me in battle," He whispered his parting words.

Ayame's smile faded as she watched him disappear.

The golden-haired man noticed something wrong with the girl.

Her blood vessels had begun to turn red. It was visible to the naked eye.

The reddening of blood vessels spread like tentacles slithering inside her skin.

The golden-haired man jumped back from the body. His expression was filled with fright and disgust.