Utopian System

Elio's hand stopped. Not from mercy, but from the peculiar calm in his enemy's voice.

"When you kill me," Zahyla spoke through the blood, her voice strangely peaceful, "everything will start again. As it always does."

"What are you talking about?"

"The game," her eyes gleamed with amusement. "The 'eternal dance' between humans and artromus. Each time one side wins, everything returns to the beginning. Like a cycle of matches. Humans have won nine times, you know? Nine victories in a sea of defeats. I... I have won 9,999 times... One more and the final victory will belong to Nala. Not so eternal anymore, right?"

The metal prison tensed. "You're lying."

"Can't you see the reality yet? Well... I suppose you don't have as many clues from Dionz as they did since you finished the first ring early." Her smile was almost gentle. "Fathoran is the one who faces me most times. Lucien, a few times, Selene even less, and they all deduce it's true... Farbe... well, he was interesting but he's even rarer."

Elio tensed at hearing that name. Zahyla noticed the subtle change in his expression.

"Oh," her eyes lit up with understanding. "You know him?"

"It's my father's name." Elio said, tightening his hand a bit more.

"You must take after your mother then... because I certainly don't remember you from any other iteration."

"My father is..." Elio began, but stopped.

"Your father is dead I guess," Zahyla savored the words. "How fascinating that he almost always dies yet is the strongest one when fighting me. But do you understand what this means, right? You could win today. You could give humans their tenth victory. But they'll never reach 10,000 before I do."

Her voice softened, almost compassionate. "This is the first time you've appeared in the game, and it will be the last. Next time it will be Fathoran again, or Lucien, or perhaps someone new. But certainly not you. Never you again."

Elio's fingers tightened around his sword's hilt. "It doesn't matter. If I can kill you now..."

"For what?" Zahyla interrupted. "So everything starts over? So I win once more and reach ten thousand? It's inevitable. The final victory will be mine. Why not avoid all that suffering and surrender now?"

Elio released a sigh while the metal hand closed more firmly around Zahyla. Her words sounded like delirium, the ramblings of someone on death's edge.

"Do you really expect me to believe all that?" his voice was loaded with contempt. "A game that must be won 10,000 times? You're one victory away? I think you're just delirious...I can't believe that's true, not from your mouth."

"Your belief in the truth is irrelevant," Zahyla smiled despite the increasing pressure. "Truth simply IS. What matters is what comes after you try to kill me... And fail."

"I'll fail? You talk too much for someone about to be crushed."

The hand closed further. Blood no longer flowed from Zahyla's multiple wounds, her expression remaining serene, almost expectant.

"Just one warning," Zahyla found his eyes, and for a moment all pretense of weakness vanished from her face. "When you think you've won, when you think everything is over... that's when it's most dangerous. Remember I warned you."

Zahyla's smile widened, and for the first time, it reached her eyes.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Elio had had enough.

The metal hand closed with devastating force.

Zahyla's body shattered like glass, fragments of flesh and bone beginning to vanish in the air like all the defeated monsters before her.

But something was different.

Ten points of brilliant light emerged from her decomposing body, cores that pulsed with a power that made the air itself vibrate. One of them fragmented instantly, bursting into a shower of light that dissipated into nothingness.

Zahyla's last words echoed in Elio's mind: "When you think you've won, when you think everything is over... that's when it's most dangerous. Remember I warned you."

The other nine cores began to change. The glow transformed into a darkness so deep it seemed to absorb the light around it. The air grew heavy, charged with an ancient and malevolent presence.

Elio closed the metal hand over them, trying to crush them as he had done with Zahyla. The reinforced metal, capable of exerting devastating pressure, disintegrated upon contact with the dark cores as if it were made of wet paper.

The cores launched toward him like cannonballs.

Reflexes enhanced by his superhuman perception were the only thing that saved Elio. His body moved before his mind could process the danger, a desperate impulse that pulled him from the lethal trajectory.

But the relief lasted a fraction of a second. Explore more at empire

A heart-rending scream tore through the chamber. Elio turned, icy horror spreading through his veins as he understood what had happened.

Diana.

Still trapped in the other metal hand he had created to contain her.

The cores had reached her instead of him.

Diana's body arched impossibly as the dark cores sank into her flesh like molten iron through snow. Her eyes opened wide, her mouth frozen in a silent scream as darkness spread through her veins like ink spilled on paper.

The change began with her hair. Blue strands extended from the root, Zahyla's characteristic color replacing Diana's natural tone.

Diana's floating book flickered, the statistics rewriting themselves before Elio's eyes, visible through the crystal in his book.

The metal hand containing her disintegrated like dust in the wind.

Diana, or what was now Diana, floated with unnatural grace.

Her movements were fluid but strange, as if two different entities were trying to control the same body.

"How disappointing, I thought I had you... I shouldn't have warned you… Nah, this way is funnier. But, this body is... uncomfortable," the voice that emerged was a disconcerting mixture of Diana and Zahyla. "Your friend is fighting more than expected. Human minds normally submit to my huge consciousness fast, but she..." A grimace of pain crossed her face. "She's clinging to her memories, her identity."

Elio checked his own statistics with growing desperation. Only a bit more than 100 mana points remained. Against the renewed resistance of 1,900,000 points, even his most powerful attacks would be insufficient.

"It's fascinating, really," the dual voice continued as it stabilized.

"I can see her memories, feel her emotions. All that remorse for the betrayal, that twisted love for her mother..." She paused, as if listening to something. "Oh, and there's so much about you, Elio. So many complex feelings buried under layers of guilt and duty."