Limon stared in bewilderment. A sudden clamor had filled the air, followed by a bizarre sight. But Yu Na-gyeong, the very cause of his confusion, paid him no mind. With a concealed weapon resembling an iron rod clamped in her beak, she swung her head as hard as she could.

CLANG, CLANG CLANG!

The rod struck a throwing star on the floor, sending a piercing metallic ring through the air. And not just one throwing star. Rolling among the daggers, vajras, meteor hammers, and countless other metal weapons scattered across the floor, Yu Na-gyeong hammered away at them all.

"Has she lost her mind?"

Perhaps because the sight was so absurd, Limon dodged a hammer that nearly struck him, hooked his sword around its head, and deftly pulled it into the floor. Then he tried to put Yu Na-gyeong's lunacy out of his mind and focus on Bellows.

But the next moment left him dumbfounded all over again.

CLANG, THUD, BANG, CLAP!

The Ink Dragon Unit members some distance away were solemnly doing all manner of bizarre things—striking swords, clashing chakrams, slamming down horse-slaying blades, and clapping their hands. How was he supposed to concentrate on fighting? Even Yo U-in had joined them, stamping his feet.

'Did they all take something?'

Had they all suddenly gone mad? Or had some skill hit them? Watching them with wary unease, Limon's brow twitched. It wasn't merely that their chaotic ensemble, devoid of rhythm or beat, felt strangely familiar.

The moment that dissonance rang out, Bellows's movements began to falter as he prepared to swing his hammer at Limon again. It happened almost exactly when the melody of the Violin of Deepest Black, which had been playing itself in Bellows's hand, faltered for the first time.

'...No way.' Limon narrowed his eyes. The dissonance Yu Na-gyeong and the Ink Dragon Unit were creating was shaking the violin's melody—and Bellows's divinity along with it. Limon had thought of breaking the violin, but it had never occurred to him to disrupt its performance this way. He had to admire it.

Yet as he cut off Bellows's head, something else surprised him entirely. 'This... isn't just random noise.'

A Sword Master with Hypersenses, Limon knew music well and had even performed the trick of playing through dissonance himself. That was why he could tell how meticulously this seemingly haphazard noise had been composed.

At times it unsettled the melody with the same rhythm. At others, it drew the melody into an exquisite harmony, then confused it with a clashing tune. Like a master swordsman toying with a child wielding a real sword using nothing but chopsticks, that multitude of noises answered the violin's every note with a different sound, dismantling the melody itself.

More astonishing still, they never ruined the music itself. They made the faltering performance harmonize with their noise, so that the violin's curse, in its pursuit of a perfect performance, brought about its own collapse.

'Who? How?' Limon wondered. No matter how versatile the Seven Dragons Society's experts were, this was no simple feat. But when he glanced behind Yu Na-gyeong, he found his answer: Eugene, smiling faintly despite the gaping hole in her chest, and Li Qingyu beside her, gazing steadily at him.

'Those two...?' Eugene was instinctively composing a piece to counter the violin's performance, while Li Qingyu used telepathy to conduct Yu Na-gyeong and the Ink Dragon Unit according to her score.

Weapons hastily pressed into service as instruments. Warriors who had become musicians for a day. A conductor who had not rehearsed with them once. Everything about this orchestra was improvised and chaotic, yet through psionics and one genius, they were playing together perfectly at this moment.

'And here I thought I'd finally get a chance to put my sword to proper use.' He gave a brief, wry chuckle, shifted his sword back to one hand, and charged Bellows with movements far lighter than before.

Perhaps he sensed the danger instinctively. Though his body faltered as the violin's melody scattered, Bellows swung his hammer to strike Limon. But intent was all he had. His attack had grown sluggish with his divinity disrupted, and Limon avoided it with a slight dip of his head. He slipped inside Bellows's reach and, gripping his sword short, slashed at his side.

CLANG!

Perhaps because his shortened grip gave the blow too little force, the sword merely scored the armor before bouncing off. Limon wasn't disappointed. He spun clear of the hammer's shaft, ended up back-to-back with Bellows, and thrust his sword through the gap beside his own waist.

CLANG!

The sword rebounded again. A scratch appeared on the armor. A metallic note rang through the air. Smiling coldly at that messy three-beat refrain, Limon kept striking Bellows. With each new mark he carved into the armor, Bellows's movements grew duller.

[■, a puny ■■ dares ■■!]

An ordinary human would have gone mad just hearing that roar, but Limon smiled. He could hear uncertainty in the avatar's voice, which until now had only raged without restraint. The reason was clear. "How does it feel to have a puny human whittle away your divinity, you godly bastard?"

What Limon was cutting with his sword was neither Bellows's flesh nor his armor. It was the avatar's divinity itself. As that divinity wavered with the violin's melody, Limon scored the openings it exposed, severing the flow of the order of the world underlying it. Little by little, like boring holes in the bottom of a ship until it slowly sank. The scratches left on armor that had withstood every attack were proof that his divinity was breaking.

CLANG!

Limon had another aim. By weaving each faint metallic note from his strikes against the armor into the performance, he was hastening the violin's collapse. If Bellows tried to block him, his wavering divinity left him unable to fight properly. Each hit from Limon's sword severed more of the order of the world, making his divinity crumble faster.

[D■e■■!]

Perhaps sensing the danger of that endless vicious cycle, Bellows swung his hammer desperately and invoked the miracle of causality distortion. He sought to erase the past in which Limon had attacked him and create a reality in which his hammer crushed Limon's skull. Instead, Bellows's own head flew off. [?!?!?!]

He had erased the past in which his armor was cut. Why, then, was his head gone, with several more scratches on his armor? And why was the hammer that should have crushed Limon's head buried uselessly in the floor? Limon sneered at the bewildered avatar. "You stupid bastard. How many times did you think the same trick would work?"

[■ut u■!]

Whether enraged at being dismissed or unable to believe his miracle had been nullified, Bellows roared fiercely enough to swallow every note around him and distorted causality once more. Nothing changed. No matter how he rewrote the past or tried to change the present, he could not land a blow on Limon. Not once could he create a past in which the sword had missed him.

"It won't matter how many times you try." Ignoring his futile struggle, Limon continued quietly. "Whether you break cause and effect or create new ones, all I have to do is predict and prepare for every cause and effect you can bring about, past or present." [......!]

Bellows's face twisted at Limon's words. His causality distortion was a miracle that changed even past 'causes' to produce a desired 'result.' It could reverse time, albeit within limits, so the possibilities available to him numbered not merely in the tens of thousands, but in the hundreds of millions.

And Limon claimed to see through and prepare for every one of them, 'eliminating' in advance every cause that might put him at a disadvantage? Updating those predictions in real time, minute by minute, second by second, in response to Bellows's movements? Even a god couldn't do that. A mere human certainly couldn't. Convinced by that perfectly obvious logic, Bellows tried to keep attacking.

He faltered.

And that was why the step he took backward without thinking enraged him. The vessel's base fear was spoiling his pure madness, his desire to keep fighting. This would never have happened with the original vessel he had spent so long refining. A makeshift vessel that had never even formed a contract, one held together around him by the Star Spirit Machine and the violin, had its limits after all.

In his fury, he crushed the vessel's soul entirely and forced its body to move. The vessel hadn't been his to begin with; why should he care if it broke? "What are you standing there for, you bastard?" But it was too late. By the time he wrung out the last of his strength to fight Limon, Limon had already driven his sword forward like an arrow, piercing the untouched center of Bellows's armor.

The final mark appeared. It spread into cracks, and the armor shattered. [■■■■■■■!]

A horrifying scream rang out from Bellows—or rather, from the constellation dwelling in his body—as its connection to the order of the world was severed and it lost its divinity. But the collapse of its divinity was not the only cause. The moment it lost its standing as an avatar, the world's order, which had been forced to aid it under the constellation's power, began instead to distort its very existence.

It was inevitable. Now that the Star Spirit Machine had broken, the last barrier protecting its existence as a constellation was the vessel—and it had already destroyed that vessel itself. Like a human cast onto the ocean floor without even an oxygen tank, let alone a diving suit, it could only writhe beneath the terrible pressure.

CRACK, CRUNCH!

Perhaps even the boundaries of its existence had collapsed. The vessel's body began to burst apart, unable to contain the power inside it. Flesh squeezed through the ruptures, forming the shape of a giant before collapsing and mutating again. Black tumors covered its legs; dozens of small arms sprouted where the giant's arm had burst; tentacles erupted from a torn eyeball. Its body mutated into a wreck, while its mind twisted even further.

Even so, the constellation—no, what had once been a constellation—crawled desperately across the floor. It needed a new vessel. A proper one, not this piece of trash. Fortunately, it still had the vessel it had spent more than a decade refining with its power and madness, one capable of containing its existence in full.

[Eek!]

"Your Highness, look out!"

Now little more than a massive lump of flesh, it reached toward the vessel. A little farther. Just a little farther... After that desperate struggle, it pushed past the interference of those gnat-like creatures and was finally about to reclaim its vessel.

"Enough. Just die already, you bastard."

『Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword: Ultimate Technique

The demon falls like dew from a sword's tip』

The world split apart. The twisted, monstrous body crumbled, and the constellation's power that had filled it turned into fragments of starlight, wetting Limon's cheek.