The technique had no name. Such a reality was natural since Rem hadn’t completed it yet.

Making a trick was easy; Hakeem and him had already created several miscellaneous tricks. Giving those tricks a name, on the other hand, would set a nasty precedent. One of the lessons taught by Symphony was having pride and standard in one accomplishment and giving every shallow move a name ran counter to that value.

A technique should be something the creator wants to pass on. It must be complete and complex, requiring practice and being endlessly flexible.

Let's take Hakeem’s [Dimension Slicing] as an example. As simple as the concept may seem, the technique requires vast amounts of practice. Hakeem needed to learn how to isolate a volume of space, fix the content inside to a spatial coordinate, and divide the volume by sliding it against each other. Unless the opponent had incredibly powerful [Resonance] or anti-space manipulation ability, the [Dimension Slicing] was a guaranteed kill. More importantly, Hakeem could elevate the technique by improving on any of the procedures, anything from increasing the speed and size of the isolated volume to the number of sliced planes.

[Dimension Slicing] was worthy of a name and its creator’s pride. The current technique Rem used was the exact opposite. It was embarrassingly half-complete, with no growth potential. Calling it a Hail Mary would be forgivable. If a competition were held tomorrow, Rem would rather be fighting a war clothed in nothing but the flag of Slovakia than put this on the stage.

Alas, a beggar couldn’t be a chooser, so here Rem was, pulling out a move he would never imagine using outside of his wildest dream.

And what was the half-baked technique? What power was so complicated that Rem could never perfect it, even when his best friend formulated the method of sawing reality itself in half?

Simple. It was the counter for [Resonance].

[Resonance] was the universal check for all. It was the mystical school available to the vilest of RB and the holiest of the divine. Thus, Rem, without any viable high-output method of his own, searched for a way to circumvent the gatekeeper of absurd shenanigans to compensate.

Rem would soon discover why nobody had done it before.

Sure, the theoretical part was straightforward. The principle of waves could be learned from physics. Rem knew he must first find the counter-wavelength. [Resonance] was based on the existential oscillation in the Astral Sea. Under such principles, [Resonance] could be canceled by an equal but out-of-phase wavelength. It was after then that the problem began.

Finding the frequency of the opponent's [Resonance] required a delicate observation. Something that Rem thankfully had. However, producing the opposite wavelength using your own [Resonance] was the exercise of patience against heaven and earth. Rem only discovered the trick to such a feat after an agonizingly long time of intense meditation.

Then Rem’s grand project slammed into an even bigger brick wall.

Yes, he could trace the opposing frequency. He also produced the counter. However, the major unmovable roadblock was the uncomfortable reality that his own [Resonance] was also neutralized after destroying his opponent’s. Rem’s prize project amounted to nothing more than punching the target’s unprotected body with a fist infused with [Sage: Body].

Sure, turning off the opponents’ [Resonance] was a game changer, but it would do Rem’s no good if his punch hit like a noodle—a dilemma further amplified by his heavy reliance on [Resonance] to amplify his blow to compensate for his pitiful ceiling with [Sage Body].

Rem knew using this half-bake technique couldn’t end well for him. Alas, what could the man scraping the bottom of the barrel under a pile of empty barrels do?

Unlike the normal crash of the [Resonance] technique, Rem’s counter-[Resonance] produced a red glow instead of indigo. Usual clashes of [Resonance] produced massive agitation in the electromagnetic spectrum, producing indigo light. Meanwhile, destructive cancellation of [Resonance] was less energy-emissive, releasing a lower-wavelength red light.

Equally red-hot was the intense pain of broken fingers spiking into Rem’s brain. He wasn’t surprised about breaking bones. What else could be the result of punching a metaphorical sack of bricks?

Tezca was not amused, and he made this lack of amusement clear by retaliating against Rem’s failed attack with a kick. Malrort’s energy swelled with Tezca’s thunderous motion, leaving Rem with nothing he could do but grit his teeth and toughen himself against the pain of a lifetime.

Crack!

[Resonance] or not, the attack smarted. The malevolence-infused kick sent Rem shooting across the snow as a human missile, plowing through several mountainsides and ripping apart every piece of rock and landform in his way. The knight’s stop only came after crashing into a mountain range so hard that he caused a catastrophic avalanche.

Seeing his enemy buried beneath the rumble of rock and snow, Tezca’s annoyance soon transformed into ridicule.

“All those preparations, and you have accomplished exactly nothing,” Tezca said, spitting his disdain into the ground. “What a pathetic piece of trash?”

As if proving the monster wrong, the snow marking Rem’s supposed grave moved an iota before transforming into a torrent. The funnel of snowy content clashed down on Tezca with a sweeping force, declaring the True’s representative wasn’t going down. Snow slushed around Tezca's feet, and rock pelted his skins as manifested willpower hosed the monster down with the content of a natural disaster.

The attack did as much damage as an annoying fly, but it got Tezca to focus on the man, who slowly made his way back to the arena.

Rem limped toward Tezca, paying no attention to the damage he had taken. His shirt—gifted by Symphony—was savaged by the battle and barely clung to his shoulder. His teeth gritted as he ignored the pain of his broken ribs. Rem tore out a portion of his shirt and tied it around his broken fingers, biting back the agonizing fire in his brain. He ignored the stream of blood flowing from the cut in his forehead and came to a stop before the monster he couldn’t defeat.

Tezca digested the tattered state of his opponent and the blinding light of determination that sent a shiver down his spine.

“You would never win,” Tezca said. It was a pathetic attempt to douse the sun with pure, unadulterated spite.

“I already have,” Rem said. “You have quite a formidable defense. As an engineering marvel, it is grossly beautiful—muscle built like shock-absorbing kevlar to dissipate pressure across the entire body. Those fibers—stacked on top of each other—were separated by the lining of the spatial diffraction mechanism. Your body is built like walls of indestructible bricks, literally sandwiched by space magic. This, on top of [Resonance], allowed you to tank even the entire world being chopped in half.”

Tezca was stunned. “How did…”

A spark flashed through the RB’s mind.

“That whiffed punch was never meant to do damage,” Tezca said. “You removed my [Resonance] to analyze me.”

“Correct,” Rem replied, tapping at his eyes. “I wanted to do that from the start, but your [Resonance] kept interfering with the input.”

Tezca knew what Rem had done, but he didn’t know why.

“You know very well that you cannot use that information,” Tezca said. “Knowing how I shrugged off attacks doesn’t mean you have a way around it.”

“I cannot,” Rem admitted. “In the same vein as how an old man who plants an apple seed for others never thinks to enjoy the fruit of his labor twenty years down the line.”

For this, Tezca had only one thing to say.

“You are insane.”

“And you have no faith,” Rem retorted, shifting into his battle stance.

The battle resumed. Rem landed the punch on Tezca’s abdomen with his broken hand but did nothing but send a sharp pain up to his brain.

Tezca seized the opponent and hit Rem in the head, sending him flying.

The difference in their power had gotten so far apart that it was transparent. Tezca came down at the dazed Rem with a powerful hammering fist and buried the knight in rock and snow.

Dazed from the punch but still conscious out of pure determination, Rem attempted to roll back to the fight, only to be lifted by his leg and slammed back to the ground. Winds and pain choked out of his lungs; Rem registered nothing but agony as he was being flung around like a wet towel.

Yet, he didn’t give up. Grabbing a fistful of pebbles during his tenure as human landscaping equipment, he flung dirt into Tezca’s eyes.

More irritated than hurt, Tezca got his revenge by flinging Rem into the other mountainside of the day. The crunch was sickening. Rem’s back left a crack on the snowy rock as his body flopped on the snowy floor.

Blood gushed from Rem’s mouth as he looked up, meeting Tezca in the eyes with undying resolve.

It was the terrifying gaze of a corner predator. Feeling his heart missing a few beats, Tezca went all out to crush this anomaly. He threw out a wave of blood-red power, embedding Rem further into the mountain. Knowing it wasn’t enough, Tezca leaped to a nearby mountain, wrangling a sizable portion of the peak into a boulder to throw at Rem. 

The blast of raw malevolent power wallpapered Rem into the stone, leaving him to glare powerlessly at the sheer mass of rock falling on top of him.

After the thunderous crunch, there was silence.

Tezca observed the small mountain he put on top of Remus Breaker, breathing harshly, and left without looking back, determined to put as much distance between him and this formidable threat as possible.

…

In the darkness—pressed under several tons of stones and dirt barely halted by manifest willpower—Rem coughed blood and blindly reached for his phone.

The knight hoped for dear might that he still had a reception. It wouldn’t be funny if all his brutal suffering equated to nothing because the phone broke.

Rem winced from the sharp pain.

With cracked ribs, a fractured hip, multiple contusions, torn ligaments, and probably some nasty ruptured organs, it was impossible for him to get up anytime soon.

Rem groaned even harder.

From his calculation, Hakeem also wasn’t back at full power, which meant if Tezca returned early, the hope of this planet was now shared on the shoulders of the three mega bitches.

Unlike Hakeem, a devout Catholic, Rem wasn’t a religious man, but in times like these, he reconsidered his opinion about praying for miracles.