Far from the epicenter of the cosmic street fight, Lin Nova watched the savagery.

As Tai had guessed, Lin immediately packed her bag and fled using a teleportation array the moment things went south.

Many would call her a coward. Against such accusations, Lin would retort about the number of people mentally impaired enough to stay in the middle of the worst galactic free-for-all in the history of the Four Seasons Realm.

This begs the question: What about her two foster sisters, who actually remained to watch said free-for-all?

…

Tai witnessed the battered carcass of a house develop an ability to fly away in disintegrated pieces. She was far from amused.

“Is there anyone who can fight like that in the Ancient Era?”

Tai turned and glared at her crimson-haired foster sister beside her.

“You heard that?”

“You mean hearing that you are a reincarnation of an Ancient? Of course, with how loud they said that, it would be strange if I hadn’t heard.”

Tai growled. “If anyone else discovers this, I will…"

"Relax; I have a bigger problem,” Chandra said. “Your secret isn’t a priority.”

Normally, Chandra’s reassuring statement would be nothing short of a big, fat lie. Tai’s secret as the inheritor of the Ancients would paint a target on her back. It was a sad fact that, in the greed-fueled culture of the Astral Sea, having such an enormous treasure trove at her disposal would only make Tai a gold mine to be plundered. Under such a framework, Chandra possessed the power to immediately end her rival’s career by leaking the information.

There was no doubt Tai was strong, but she couldn’t fight every single greedy grandmaster and faction vying to milk the inheritance for its worth.

However, Chandra was truly sincere.

The reason for this sudden surge of integrity was simple: she had peaked at the future.

Ancient’s secret manuals were valuable, but those weren’t doing shit against the overpowered version of Rem she saw. That man’s scathing criticism made it perfectly clear that his opinion of those grandmasters was low.

Assuming she leaked that secret out and destroyed Tai, would she get anything that put her in the clear with that ‘Rem’? Of course not. The only thing that would result at the end of that perilous path was a fist suffused with [Resonance].

Future Rem’s nigh-incomprehensible power and skill were so convincing that Chandra believed giving her grandfather every technique and weapon in Tai’s arsenal would not change how the battle ended. Who were they to argue with when Allphort itself reached the same conclusion and demanded they not piss him off?

In the long run, the best way to profit without Jay-walking into a truck called Remus Breaker was to have Tai owe her a favor. Moreover, given the innate tendency for pettiness and evil ever present in Tai and Lin, chances were that Rem would likely go after them first rather than come down on her like a falling anvil.

Unable to see what Chandra’s intention was but still feeling her sincerity, Tai answered honestly with a question of her own.

“Do you think we would lose if those two are around back then?”

…

Inside the whirlwind of violence, Tezca narrowly dodged the high knee from Rem, only to lose his footing after stumbling into one of Hakeem’s portals.

The chain of teamwork and combination between the two warriors kept raining on Tezca like musical notes in a grand orchestra. The duo from True simply refused to let their opponent take a breath.

It was a cycle of Rem hitting Tezca and diving into Hakeem's portal to smack him in the blind spot. Meanwhile, Hakeem acted as a support by quickly repositioning his friend and throwing any spatial construct to distract Tezca.

It should be noted that these crushing combinations didn’t drill through Tezca’s layer of defense at all. Rem and Hakeem would have a more productive time trying to explain the narrative of Macbeth to a class of social media-addicted high schoolers than swinging fists at Malrort's primary minion.

That didn’t change the fact that Tezca became annoyed at being repeatedly pounded from all sides. In an eruption of force and anger, the monster pulsated with a scarlet coil of destructive current, plowing through everything in its path.

Rem, knowing a direct hit would spell disaster, skipped back into a portal. He was deposited behind Hakeem, who quickly created a spatial fortification of amber light to defend against the destructive forces that would surely rip apart other mundane cover.

Tezca’s volatile energy, enchanted with [Resonance] obliterated everything in its vicinity. It turned every piece of debris and stone remaining in their vicinity into ashes.

Against such destructive power, Hakeem’s endured. Even though the thin layers of isolated space threatened to contort from the attack’s reality-fixing property, courtesy of [Resonance], the young man held on until the volatile eruption faded.

Seeing his enemies still alive, Tezca convulsed in anger.

“I am bloody done!” the monster declared. “Why do you fight so hard for a lost cause?”

“We haven’t lost yet,” Rem sang, hoping to get ahead in the mental game.

Rem wasn’t disappointed.

“You have, moron!” Tezca screamed. “For time immemorial, from those Ancients from eons ago to today's set of Neatherals, we have won time and time again. This time, it will be no different."

“Excuse me?” Rem interrupted, scattering his power across the flatland where this once prosperous block of civilization was. “If you did win, why are we still fighting?”

That barbed sentence stuck inside Tezca’s mouth. His unarticulated mind simply couldn’t come up with an answer for this simple statement of truth.

Rem wasn’t done scrubbing the floor with Tezca’s philosophy.

“And what exactly are you fighting for?” Rem said, landing another intellectual hit. “Yes, we fight for whiners who will never give us credit and a group of hypochondriac hamsters under the direction of a gigantic snake that is ignorant of the basic idea of spawn-camping. But my buddy and I accepted that glorious undertaking. What about you? Who exactly are you getting punched for?”

Tezca’s mouth opened, but nothing tangible emerged.

“Face it, Tezca,” Rem said, putting another bow on top of the mind games sandwich. “We might be cringed, but you are fighting out of nothing but self-propagation. From then till now—now till the end of time—your kind existence fed on misery and degradation, and you love company.” Rem spread his hand at the devastation. “All this effort to drag people down to your level. Do you have any more productive things to do? Oh, right, you are conceptually allergic to being productive. My condolences.”

Tezca's response to Rem’s provocation was clear and fast. He flickered in front of Rem and delivered a high knee to smash Rem’s face like a watermelon. Instead of blood, the only thing emerging from Rem’s obliterated skull was a cloud of petals.

“F*ck!” Tezca cursed, knowing he had fallen for the doppelgänger again.

The transient image of Hakeem and Rem scattered to reveal the reality of an amber portal beneath him and the real Rem falling down on him with an elbow-drop. 

In a blunted crunch, Rem rammed the aggrieved monster into the portal.

Tezca was unconcerned despite falling for the same trick twice in one day. He still had a spatial connection to the Four Seasons Court. Even if Hakeem used [Cosmos] to deposit him in the vacuum of space, Tezca was confident he could still return to bash the skulls of those idiots once he exited this portal.

The monster waited and frowned. He should have exited by now.

Why is he still falling?

…

Outside the portal, Hakeem conjured a ball of warped space to seal the locked portal.

“The portal loop is not going to hold him for long.”

“It will be long enough for Symphony to finish,” Rem said, cracking his fist. “Prepare to hit him with our full force. He is going to burst out.”

Right on cue, the ball of amber light cracked and shattered, revealing the angry monster cloaked in raging steam.

“You tried slicing the world in half, and you dare believe for a second that trapping me inside a never-ending portal will end this battle?” Tezca screeched.

“It does tick you off enough to make you slip.” Rem said, slamming Tezca from behind faster than the monster could reposition.

It was the blow that shouldn’t hurt, and it didn’t. No, it was the crimson flash emerging from the collision that represented the real damage.

Tezca sneered. “Removing the protection of my [Resonance] for the second time? What do you hope…”

Tezca’s voice immediately faded as the scythe of death nicked him in the spine. His reaction was immediate. He dove low, obeying every drop of survival instinct his vein could provide. He didn’t know Hakeem was making the finger gun, nor did he know his dimensional coordinates were getting cordoned as a chopping board. All Tezca knew was that he was closer to the oblivion of death than any second in the eons of life.

“[Dimension Slicing]” Hakeem cast.

Space warped. Time flowed, and two objects landed with a thump on the ground. The combos displayed by both fighters were superb. Rem used his technique to dispel the [Resonance] protecting the monster, leaving no shield left to stop Hakeem’s [Dimension Slicing] from cutting Tezca in half.

Everything was executed to the precise rhythm that would leave Tezca in two dead pieces most of the time.

Alas, Lady Luck decided that this time wasn’t one of those times.

Tezca was still upright, looking sadly at the leg and left arm laying in the pool of black blood on the floor. In a stroke of blind luck and survival instinct, he managed to duck out of the [Dimension Slicing] before the space lock activated, saving himself from the killing blow.

“Nice move,” Tezca said, unperturbed by having his arm and leg amputated, standing despite losing his balance. "Shame, you guys missed.”

To close that doured statement, Hakeem fell to the floor, spewing blood from his mouth after pushing himself over the edge with the day’s second maximum output of [Dimension Slicing].

“It is unfortunate,” Rem admitted, paying no heed to his broken hand. His eyes shone with assurance of victory. “But I will gladly take the consolation prize.”

As if waiting for Rem’s signal, the aura of life swept across the Four Seasons Court.