MMORPG : Ancient WORLD

There was a moment of silence. The world seemed to hold its breath as Zarach and Alex silently stared at each other, the words they exchanged merely a way to buy a moment to process what had just transpired.
Their exchange just now, though it didn’t end with one of them dying, came as close to that as possible, and it was only made possible by the skills both of them had used.
They both expected the other person to hold an ace of his own, and now they knew what they were up against.
The stakes of the battle had just reached their absolute peak; the slightest slip-up, and death was all that awaited either of them.
Even Zarach, as prideful as he was, understood this truth well.
The domain of nothingness around Alex made it so that any fate string was erased before it could anchor and infect his fate, but clearly, the string that affected him was not ordinary.
It was not just fast; more than anything, the fate string was unaffected by the domain of nothingness or its erasing grip, even when Alex had raised the intensity of the darkness and focused on eliminating it.
It wasn’t that the fate string carrying the plaguing touch of the soul was completely unaffected by his attack, for lack of a better phrase, the string seemed to be there, yet not there at all.
Alex didn’t get a good enough look, but from what he gleaned, he reached two conclusions.
There was no doubt that the string bore its own fate, but it was either a fate borrowed directly from Zarach, allowing it to exist for the few precious moments it needed to infect Alex.
Or, it possessed two fates, mirroring two mutually exclusive outcomes: ’I exist’ and ’I do not exist.’ These opposing natures nullified each other, placing the string in a state of simultaneous presence and absence.
And since the darkness could erase only what was, this paradoxical nature allowed the string to endure, existing precisely because of its strange composition.
The reason Alex even considered this second possibility was that it was the only conclusion he could reach as to why he couldn’t affect something using darkness when he could clearly see it.
There were also distinct shadows acting as the base of the string, which could simply mean it had three distinct effects. But then again, Alex had not felt his fate being affected, only a soul attack that froze his mind.
The more he thought about it, the more Alex experienced that he was right on the mark.
As for what Alex had done to not only escape the fatal situation but also counter and nearly kill Zarach, it was all accomplished using Error, both by planting Error directly onto the soul.
He dealt with the mind freeze using Error while simultaneously planting an Error onto Zarach’s very soul, making him suffer a soul shock of unknown quality.
Alex had expected Zarach to have tricks up his sleeve to stop him in close combat, so he had already split his mind, ready to take action. When the freezing dread invaded his soul, he used Error on it.
But that alone would have been foreseen by Zarach, and unlike last time, the body-switching trick wouldn’t have worked. And as he expected, instead of going for the killing blow and losing his chance, Zarach had imprisoned Alex in a string cage.
However, Zarach could not have expected Alex to plant Error even in his soul when he came to attack, or maybe he did and simply didn’t care.
The only reason Zarach was not dead after being cleaved in two was that Alex’s sword had lost its edge of severance, and he had attacked only using darkness.
So, although Zarach had suffered great damage, it was not to the point of being crippling. It had merely depleted his reserve of mana.
Similarly, though Alex had come out unscathed, he too had used a great deal of mana to accomplish it.
So, while bearing no visible wounds, both of them were standing on thin ice. Alex could plant Soul Error four, maybe five times, and he believed that even if Zarach had a slightly larger mana reserve than he did, thanks to his Empress Spirit, it wouldn’t matter much.
’I have to end this while I still have enough mana to take risks,’ Alex thought.
He didn’t wish to reach his limit and then rely on Reverie to regain his mana, because Zarach could use that against him.
As their short exchange came to an end, Zarach hurled all four of the spears he had created one after another, each one exploding at a different angle around Alex, unraveling into twisting strings that lashed out with a shock of soul essence.
It crafted a smokescreen of death.
The darkness around Alex lashed out, meeting the mist and strings like a devouring maw, and within seconds the thrashing strings and soul haze vanished into its silent embrace.
Alex looked ahead, then up, and saw thousands of strings stretched across the sky, weaving into a colossal web that thickened with every passing heartbeat.
At its center, Zarach loomed, looking down.
A smile stretched across his face as he spoke. "Never thought you could push me this far... to use Fate Singularity."
Alex felt the shift before his eyes could even process it, subtle tremors rippled through existence itself. The fates of everything, air, stone, and space, were drawn toward Zarach, threading into him as if the entire world were backing him.
Nothing was spared, as even the unseen forces, the laws that governed cause and effect, began to anchor themselves to his will, empowering him with the weight of destiny itself.
"Guess you’re better than I gave you credit for." The smile vanished, leaving a face of expressionless anger. "But I’m done with you, and it’s time you reach your fate."
Alex looked up and smiled. "Are all your kind so in love with their own voice that they keep blabbering on and on?"
"As for what my fate is, it will be decided by my own hand, not by your pretty spider sorcery." Alex’s voice faded, drowned in the darkness as he used Void Walk to bridge the distance.
The Fate Singularity made Zarach the most fated being on the battlefield. The world itself conspired in his favor, every law, every thread, every unseen will ensuring his strikes would land true while none dared touch him.
Zarach had chosen to unleash his full strength, and Alex, seeing no path but forward, cast aside all hesitation and decided to unleash everything he had, uncaring of what would happen if he failed.
He appeared mere meters from Zarach, his movement silent and near-instantaneous.
In response, countless threads of silver fate coalesced into fine spears cloaked in pure ethereal glow, two dozen in a flash and growing with each moment, circling Alex like the writhing limbs of some unknown horror.
Alex’s lips curled into a grim line as he clenched his jaw. The metallic tang of blood filled his mouth, while his mind burned as if pierced by a thousand invisible needles.
The pain grew unbearable by the moment, but he didn’t care. Such pain was the price to bend the world itself.
He unleashed Error, and unlike before, this time it was not a single thing that felt its baleful and insidious touch; it was the world itself.
The reaction was immediate and violent. The surroundings shattered like glass struck by stone.
Space wavered, its reflection splintering into warped fragments, and even the darkness ignited into smokeless flame, while the fate threads convulsed, some twisting into incomprehensible geometries, others rebelling against their very meaning.
The Fate Loom wailed in silent agony, its perfect rhythm fracturing as reality itself forgot how to breathe.
The Fate Singularity resisted, its presence like a burning heart of inevitability, but even it began to fray, threads unraveling under the plague on reality that Alex had unleashed.
Zarach had bent the world to obey him, and Alex made it question whether the world should exist at all.
Zarach didn’t so much as flinch as the world unraveled into chaos around him. His eight arms extended forward, fingers snapping and twisting in unnatural rhythm, each motion precise, yet disturbingly fluid.
From their dance, countless threads of shimmering fate wove together, condensing into a sphere of blinding silver light that thickened with every heartbeat, its mere presence sending ripples through space.
’As I expected,’ The detail of the paradoxical sphere registered in his mind, but Alex didn’t spend a second thinking deeply about it.
The time to think and plan was gone. Now, he would either succeed or fail.
Alex did not wait for even a moment. His expression remained calm, eyes locked forward, the reflection of the silver loom vanishing into their dark depths.
He raised his two blades high, and as power gathered upon them, the unraveling void stirred. Their edges gleamed with severance, a law that denied all laws. Error and silence intertwined, the blades trembling with barely contained destruction.
Alex’s dark eyes met Zarach’s pupil-less gray ones, cold, reflective, and utterly still. By now, Zarach had completed his creation: a sphere woven from tens of thousands of silken threads, each pattern layered over another in maddening precision.
The construct pulsed faintly, a miniature world of fate and soul, trembling on the edge of release. Then, in a phantom flash, Zarach spread his arms wide.
The sphere responded instantly, expanding outward like an exploding star, yet without unraveling. Its form held firm as it grew exponentially vast in the blink of an eye, swallowing distance and darkness alike within its blinding lattice of fate.
Alex, having poured every bit of will and mana into his two blades, swung.
The moment his blades descended, the world shuddered. A pulse of raw force erupted outward, darkness and reality unraveling beneath its touch, while the strings of silver parted as the severing force tore through the expanding sphere.