"Ladies and gentlemen, direct your eyes, if you may, toward the center of the ring where an incredibly unlikely meeting is taking place and peerless monsters in a class of their own are about to exchange blows! This is a meeting you'd have seen nowhere else but in a fighting fiesta such as this Sun Disc grand event!" the announcer worked his magic at getting the audience heated for some miracle-making.
A blinding plate-thin ring of light flashed in an instant from the direction of the one and only Heavenly Sword. The entire arena held their breaths stunned as they all experienced a matching shift in the fabric of reality, feeling themselves becoming flat and one-sided as if they were all just characters penned on a sheet of paper while the swordsman swinging his great sword in the arena was a pair of industrial conveyor blades effortlessly sliding clean through the paper they understood as reality.
Snickering, King Wulithmes threw a jab of his oversized hand. In a world of paper cutouts, he alone remained a man of profound muscular bulk that ignored the friction of a heavenly-class sword attempting to cut him in two. His golden skin emitted a flock of sparks, like a row of Bengal lights, with the cuts merely amusing the great conqueror king. The heavenly swordsman dashed aside, fleeing imminent demise as a pressurized airwave flew off from the punch of the main character of the stories recorded in the Emperor's Valley and flew off into the stars, plucking them from the sky like grapes.
Wulithmes chased after his opponent with a flying roundhouse, but it only met the vertical block of the odachi. The tremendous airwave emitted from the resonating forces appeared to be entirely absorbed into the blade's edge and contained, while only a meek breeze ruffled the ghastly and hovering blond hair of the heavenly swordsman opposing him.
"C'mere!" Wulithmes barked, grabbing hold of the swordsman's shoulders with both hands. This recklessness appeared to shock the arrogant samurai as the conqueror king completely ignored the fact that his opponent was armed and within close distance. Just like he did before, the swordsman slashed upward with his sword, manipulating the reality around him to become flat and two-dimensional, but the golden-skinned titan didn't as much as flinch from the spark-inducing rising slash.
Ignoring the rising slash, King Wulithmes flung his opponent like a rag doll upward before punting him into the air. The force of the impact had been so significant that the rag-dolled heavenly swordsman seemed to instantaneously pop up in open space. Clenching his fist with so much force that the whole of the Land of Wind began experiencing landmass-shifting quakes, Wulithmes turned to the trembling might of his own fist with a full-teeth smile.
"You thought that just because you can demote everything around you to a scale of smaller dimensions, you could draw my royal blood? I'll have you know, King Wulithmes reigns supreme in any dimensional space!" the terrifying humanoid behemoth proclaimed while producing a bright, blinking light of chakra around his hand. Drawing his fist back and winding him up as the desert monarch leaned down, he thrust it back out, expelling the pent-up force in a wave of erupting light that tunneled upward from the Earth and shot off into space where it engulfed the floating swordsman whole.
Wulithmes cupped his hand over his eyes and looked over his head. He had never met a foe that his Fusion Flame couldn't obliterate. Caught by surprise, the conqueror froze in place with a flinch of his entire body. It wasn't just his body that bent backward like a sheet of paper bent in half; it was the entire fabric of reality while his faraway foe now stood directly behind him with his sword wound up for a mighty slash.
"You whelp, you got back into the ring!" Wulithmes hissed while the swordsman's sword lit up in a coating of black flame. A signifier of an Advanced Bloodline or even a Selected Bloodline.
"If you imagine the universe like a map on paper, you can make a shortcut from one point to another by bending that map in half," the heavenly swordsman calmly stated before slashing with his odachi of obsidian flame only to be stopped halfway by the bold hand of King Wulithmes that just caught the blade by the edge in his massive hand.
Shoving the blade aside, King Wulithmes exploded with a combination of punches and kicks before grabbing hold of his opponent's face and pointing it downward. "Unlike the Fire Release of any ordinary warrior, my Fusion Release is not produced because of the energy released in a combustion process, but a nuclear fusion. That renders my force limitless in potential and peerless amongst mere mortal men, making me the King of the Universe!"
As the dot that sealed away the end of that sentence, an orange blaze of light so intense that it shifted the color of the light itself for a single blink boomed downward in a pulsating, tunneling wave of blaze that left a round crash crater on the floor around its tremendous radius despite the notable effort of the desert monarch to contain all the burst of his limitless energy potential solely onto his opponent. With the dust settling, wings of black flames moved away from the protective embrace they surrounded their user with and sizzled away into meek cinders while the Heavenly Sword jumped out of the crater and adopted a sword-fighting stance once more.
The eyes of King Wulithmes turned up their focus, homing in on the devastated and fallen off shoulder pads and damaged dogi of his opponent, though, curiously to him, the rings with rubies, satelliting the swordsman like planet rings, remained completely unharmed. In fact, each ruby appeared to have a black spot in the middle and tomoe-shaped decorations glistening on its surface. Just like ordinary eyes, each ruby turned black for the duration of a single blink before lighting up with ruby-red glint again, though, to avoid going out all at once, each one of them "blinked" on its own time, separate from the rest.
"That is a curious artifact," King Wulithmes pointed at the decorated belts. "I will let you see the Emperor's Valley without oversight or control of my guards for these belts."
"Sorry, I must decline. Forging this artifact took my entire life to achieve and reading the slabs in the Emperor's Valley would kind of be pointless without them," the Heavenly Sword shook his head. Despite visibly having taken some damage from the offensive of his opponent, he remained stalwart in his belief in victory.
"The same way I can swing my fists imbued with my Fusion Release, the Fusion Release chakra produced inside my body can coat it and protect it from physical harm, rendering your finest sword swings fruitless. Not even your dimension demotion tricks will work on me. How exactly do you expect to win?" King Wulithmes questioned his opponent, who kept staring back at the conqueror with a stoic expression.
"Infinity is just a number," the heavenly swordsman proclaimed. "Just like with all numbers, there is a state of being in which any number becomes zero. The Zeroth Dimension."
"Zeroth Dimension?" the flabbergasted king pondered to himself just what exactly his opponent might have meant. Reality itself went out like a turned-off light. No values of length, width, or height existed, let alone higher concepts defining the more complex dimensional spaces. White streaks splintered the black-stained glass of the Zeroth Dimension, shattering it and revealing behind it the three-dimensional space of the world as ordinary humans could perceive it.
Breathing out a gasp of air, the Heavenly Sword clicked his blade while shoving the blade back in its sheathe, revealing white cuts that splintered reality while it was in the Zeroth Dimension and allowing the unrestricted rampage of swordplay he performed in the Zeroth Dimension, ignoring concepts like resistance, protection, toughness or defense and swinging a sword completely unresisted, lighter than even cutting thin-air, reality repaired itself into a fixed three-dimensional space in a snap while the stunned King Wulithmes flinched.
"Hmm?" the Heavenly Sword widened his eyes, showing an uncharacteristic amount of wonder at the fact that thousands of slashes delivered in the Zeroth Dimensions did not reduce King Wulithmes to a thousand meaty chunks upon resolving his swordplay and returning from the Zeroth Dimension.
"Didn't I tell you already, whelp? King Wulithmes reigns supreme in any dimension, even the Zeroth one!" Wulithmes flexed his chiseled musculature while emitting a boisterous shout and tensing up his entire body. "True king reigns supreme over meaningless things like toughness and power. It is not reality that grants him these things, a true king takes them in as vast quantities as he pleases, and they leave him only when the true king allows them to leave him! You have mocked my title of the King of the Universe, and now you will pay the ultimate price of being reduced to nothing by my boundless power! Fusion Flame!"
The desert monarch drew his right hand back, generating an orb of Fusion Release energy that he extended in a tunneling and pulsating blast that electrified the atmosphere and engulfed the heavenly swordsman whole, drowning him out in its orange blaze light. The audience covered themselves, struggling to withstand the domineering pressure and radiance of King Wulithmes' light even if the King of the Universe so graciously allowed the spectators to bask in its radiance without melting or being blinded by it and directing his punishment solely on the misguided soul challenging him to a fight.
As the smoke and crumbling debris settled, only a burrowed ridge remained where King Wulithmes had used his Fusion Flame, with the Heavenly Sword having been eliminated.
"And just like this, the Heavenly Sword, Soseki Kabalon, has been eliminated by the kissed by the Sun, the King of the Universe, King Wulithmes!" the announcer made it official. The audience remained stunned, postponing their cheering until they could comprehend the cruel proclamation that there were Gods walking amongst men and that the laws of physics only beat according to the beat of their drums because these exalted men and women allowed them to do so.
"Well, what are you waiting for? Aren't you going to smite me with your boundless power, Lord Wulithmes?" Soseki taunted his opponent, standing before him in a completely unburnt patch of arena ground as if King Wulithmes' calamitous Fusion Flame technique had never been executed.
"Wh… What in the world?" King Wulithmes staggered back in awe. "What is the meaning of this? I obliterated you thoroughly, not a single trace of your existence remained. That jester even proclaimed your elimination!"
"Wh-What!?" the announcer shrieked out. "This is slander! I did no such thing! I'll have you know I possess a keen eye and decades of experience doing this job! I would not make the elementary mistake of counting out a contestant too early!"
Stunned by reality itself playing tricks on him, King Wulithmes stood hunched over and staring at his shaking hands while sunflower oil-colored sweat poured down his forehead and seeped from down under his flamboyant headdress.
"Hmm… I wondered if you would be aware of the world before my technique - Gabriod - kicked in. It is something else entirely to remain unaffected by Gabriod and remain tethered to a reality that no longer exists. Then again, perhaps your immunity to reality warping is as much of a weakness as it is a strength–after all, not being able to trust the reality you now inhabit, one where I was never obliterated by your Fusion Flame and never eliminated, left you in quite the emotional whiplash, hasn't it?" Soseki taunted his opponent with an inviting gesture with his hand to attack again.
"That gem…" Wulithmes pointed his finger which was as thick as the arms of most people at a cracked ruby on Soseki's belt that had shattered and spilled its shards outside. A basic visual inspection revealed the gem to be hollow, like a gemstone-shaped glass construct, yet these glass gems withstood blows that would end even the strongest warriors alive. "It's completely shattered. It wasn't that way before."
"Ah, I see the shift in reality hasn't left you completely broken. Good to see, I'd like for you to accompany me in the Emperor's Valley as a guide," Soseki acknowledged a well-aimed observation made by his opponent. The blond samurai stood bare-chested, with his dogi being completely blown away and bruised by the last attack, despite it not having been registered in the ongoing current of reality.
There was no doubt in Wulithmes' mind that what he had done was no dream or hallucination. The King of the Universe truly obliterated his foe with Fusion Flame, however, somehow, for whatever reason, he transcended his own demise and denied the reality in which he was undone, substituting it with his own version–in which he was very much alive and not eliminated from this tournament. It was no ordinary young man that King Wulithmes has met here in this tournament.
Wings of the obsidian Fire Release version lit up behind Soseki's back and drowned out his odachi, expanding the heavenly weapon in thickness and in length. With a flap of these dark wings, Soseki rushed at his opponent, dashing across the entire arena, slashing wildly to build up speed and momentum to his slashes while sending rending black crescent flames from his blade. While the slashes themselves only grazed the titanic conqueror, the crescent-shaped slashing projectiles sent him sliding back and left him flinched temporarily and grunting in discomfort. The goliath thrashed about, trying to get his hands on his opponent but failed as Soseki was too swift to grasp.
The immovable conqueror found his moment when Soseki's winged visage halted at the opposite side of the ring and drew his sword behind his back, pumping it full of a pulsing obsidian blaze that super-sized the sword with each pulse as the Heavenly Sword built-up power for the ultimate slash. Sneering with a cocky grin, King Wulithmes took a bountiful leap toward his opponent with his arms drawn back, like a jumping gorilla ready to smash an unworthy challenger in his territory. The two peerless warriors took off at one another, colliding at the center and engulfing the arena in a blinding white shockwave that flung the surrounding competitors around like rags.
King Wulithmes recovered with a stumble, having belly-flopped the reality and dimension-warping swordsman aside with the brute force of his flawless, golden pecks. Black flames began surging back into the Soseki's odachi, forming a sword long and wide enough to be wielded by some colossal statue. As King Wulithmes charged at his opponent mindlessly, basking in his own glory and clamoring with maniacal laughter, Soseki slashed down and expelled another focused ranged slash projectile that split into a thousand needle-thin, more precise slashes.
"Be overwhelmed by my glory!" King Wulithmes dismissed his opponent's overwhelming power with his own fearsome might, drawing his arm back and preparing a Fusion Flame wave he drowned out the thousand black crescent slashes with and washed Soseki away with. This time, that scoundrel shouldn't have escaped. He had no more gemstones like that one, each one had a slightly different shape, a different tint of red and different angles. King Wulithmes knew it–this Fusion Flame would prove ultimate and almighty, like all those before it.
Much to the shock of the titanic conqueror, Soseki stood completely unfazed by the Fusion Flame that had thoroughly obliterated him before. Each atom comprising the fuel for the Fusion Flame bursts with a nuclear fusion reaction, creating a chemical reaction of boundless energy and creating more fuel for more fissions. Fusion Flame was a technique of unlimited, ever-expanding power that made all warriors bend their knees or face obliteration. Even Soseki himself had succumbed to the technique before, so… What gives?
Grazed and bare-chested, yet with all nine gemstones still intact, Soseki swung his sword up, engulfing him not in the earlier black flames, but in the usual Fire Release coating. Thinking that his foe was making fun of him with this downgrade, King Wulithmes clenched his fists together and prepared to wreak untold havoc like never. Before he could do this, however, a raging tornado of wildfire swallowed him up whole. Soseki raised his sword up, drawing jets of blazing heat from the flaming ground underneath and the infernal vortex that had sealed King Wulithmes raging before him.
All that power converged in a supermassive flaming bomb over Soseki's head. A ball of wildfire the size of which wildly surpassed that of the earlier version which obliterated the forest of dead trees. Whereas Soseki's earlier blast was like a meteor, this one was like a moon. Absolutely massive, relentless with its heat that turned all grains of sand into brilliant and reflective specks of glass and ate up the sandstorm ravaging the region, opening the skies up for a beautiful smile of the desert sun and a clear cerulean sky. Just a roar of tunneling Fusion Flame, emitted from both King Wulithmes' eyes, and his mouth blasted away the fiery whirlwind around him, Soseki finished channeling his technique and lowered his sword.
"Gehinoma!" Soseki chanted out with utmost confidence as he lowered his blade and sent the moon of raging hellfire to slam against and do away with King Wulithmes. The sheer, unimaginable size of the fireball raining down upon him didn't appear to intimidate the charging behemoth whatsoever. Instead, King Wulithmes tensed his right hand and drew it to the left side. As if his hand was a sword, he slashed sideways, parting the fireball in half horizontally and leaving it to burn away while King Wulithmes found his opening.
His golden fists clenched together, King Wulithmes channeled a shimmering aura of Fusion Release from both his hands as he thrust one point-blank into Soseki's face, flinging the Heavenly Sword away with unimaginable destructive power while extending the other hand and unleashing another Fusion Flame wave to chase after the flying foe. Much to King Wulithmes' surprise, Soseki slashed the Fusion Flame in half with a single stroke of his long blade.
"Your Fusion Flame can no longer harm me. That is the power of Gabriod," Soseki performed a warm-up dance with his long sword before swiping it aside and adopting a sword-fighting stance.
"Amusing, you are the first person in history to survive Fusion Flame, now you tell me you not only survived it, but you've actually defeated my ultimate technique? I'm willing to entertain you, swordsman, explain your mysterious gemstone power to me and I will let you into my Emperor's Valley and accompany you myself, I'll carry you on my shoulder and hand-feed you, if you desire it," King Wulithmes laughed out, crossing his arms. Despite the prolonged and unbelievable battle, the golden-skinned king merely had dirt grazes on his whole body. Even a battle of such unimaginable scale transcending dimensions and reality itself barely made the self-proclaimed King of the Universe break a sweat.
"Very well, I will tell you the secret of the Kabala Rings. However, I am a proud soul. For the sake of serenity, I must settle this fight," Soseki barked out, dropping his façade of coolness. "I did not come to this tournament for this land. I came here seeking warriors who could guide me to my next desired destination. Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine it would push me this far. Even amongst the God Swords, I am in a class of my own and I consider only them my equals. I will not accept any warrior standing above me."
"Your pride will be your undoing, whelp," King Wulithmes clenched his fist and turned to admire the awe-inspiring power that he had packed within.
Wings of black fire ignited behind the bare-chested swordsman, making his hovering blond hair flow over his head as if a tremendous draft of energy was washing from directly underneath him. Ordinary Fire Release and the black flames of Soseki's Advanced Bloodline surged coiling together around the blade's edge in a DNA-like form. The two warriors took off to collide against one another and the resulting shockwave from their charge made the entire tournament arena freeze up and wait until these two have finished brawling it out, just so the conditions for the fighting stabilized somewhat.
"No one can defeat Keter Release, not when bound by the handicap of the Zeroth Dimension! Just make sure you survive this to relay your word to your subjects, Lord Wulithmes!" Soseki swung his black and blazing flame sword in an upward slash but a mere straight from King Wulithmes blew past the surging flames and shattered the tempered and coated steel like a rod of glass. The blow smacked into the center of Soseki's face, indenting it and making it spray blood.
The deep-blue lips and twisted in gleeful mania face of King Wulithmes chilled the observers to the core. With his enemy walloped aside, Wulithmes became encased in a tunneling ray of Fusion Release as he beamed onward like a ray of blazing light, positioning himself above his crushed opponent to finish him off with a swing of a hammering fist that grounded Soseki in a crater in the desert. In a blink, King Wulithmes returned to the fighting stage with his arms crossed and laughed out, still feeling jitters by the fight he had just enjoyed to its peak.
"You forgot one thing, whelp, just because you have bent reality around the infinite power of my Fusion Flame, doesn't mean I can't still break your face with a good old walloping!" King Wulithmes declared before turning around and menacingly approaching the terrified ranks of the other competitors.
"King Wulithmes, the sun-kissed conqueror of the southwest, has utterly crushed the Heavenly Sword of the samurai–Soseki Kabalon! This leaves it at just 136 contestants left in the arena!" the announcer was the first to regain his breath after what he had just seen. A party of staffers clad in white departed into the desert to retrieve the crumbled and battered body of the man who seemed to have tamed the dimensions and reality itself, yet still collapsed against King Wulithmes' fists.