Chương 108: 107: Logic Nuke

Cadenza transformed air into conceptual destruction, but it still travelled. Even amplified by Gloom, it remained bound to propagation. The Shaolin Whirlwind Split was different. It was pure technique, a razor-thin compression of force slipping through microscopic discontinuities in reality itself. Relativistic. Invisible. Beautiful. Its flaw was equally obvious. It could only cut matter, while conceptual armour ignored it completely. Cadenza destroyed concepts. Whirlwind Split ignored distance. Together...

Butter's breathing slowed as the answer assembled itself, only to collapse a heartbeat later. Impossible. Balancing both techniques simultaneously would be like preparing an entire banquet in a single heartbeat. Her waking mind simply couldn't perform that many calculations at once. Feet casually wandered onto the ceiling. Gravity politely accepted the decision, leaving Butter and Korhess seated comfortably upon its broad back while blood rushed toward Butter's head.

Korhess remained perfectly still, silently questioning every law the universe had ever persuaded her to believe. Butter suddenly looked up.

"If you really want to see my skill... wait." The Commander smiled beneath his mask.

"I can spare a moment." Feet appeared on the ground once more. Butter climbed down from Feet's back and closed her eyes. One slow breath became another as a whisper escaped her lips.

"Do... Re... Mi... Fa... Sol..." She wasn't gathering power. She was tuning herself. The rhythm aligned everything. Her pulse. Her breathing. Her Gloom. Every wandering thought settled into place like strings tightened to perfect pitch. The orchestra within her, so often unruly and discordant, flowed together as a single choir, each note finding the next until nothing remained out of harmony. Something inside her settled into perfect synchrony. Again.

"Do... Re... Mi... Fa... Sol... La... Ti... Do..." She entered the state she could never sustain for long: an awakened somnambulist. One hundred and fifty percent cognition. No backlash. No certainty of how long it would last. The blue lights running through her prosthetic leg began to shift. Blue bled into violet, violet into emerald, emerald into gold, until every colour flowed through the limb in an iridescent, ever-changing spectrum.

The rainbow flickered beneath Melody's black bandages like light through crystal, never settling on any single hue, as though her perfectly balanced mind could no longer be represented by one colour alone. Only absolute clarity. Korhess stared, ears slowly rising.

"…By every root and leaf…" Wonder softened her voice.

"… what fair blossom hast thou awakened?" Nearby, Feet stopped swaying altogether. Its tiny head tilted farther... and farther... until it seemed in genuine awe. Its enormous black eyes grew even wider, a quiet, breathless gawk fixed entirely upon Butter, as though even reality's happiest accident recognised it was witnessing something extraordinary. For a few precious moments, every corner of her mind awakened together.

Thoughts no longer arrived one after another but all at once, every calculation unfolding in flawless harmony. She moved. There was no conscious decision. No thought preceding action. Her body had already chosen for her, every motion flowing on its own as though she were sleepwalking through perfect instinct. Arpeggio silently threaded through the movement, collapsing the swing into the instant it began until the motion itself scarcely existed. Her muscles remained in flawless alignment.

Every fibre rested and attacked simultaneously, a contradiction made flesh. To any predictive system she was forever in motion and perfectly still, every possible action existing at once. No algorithm could determine where the strike truly began because, in this state, her body no longer waited for thought to give permission. Butter opened her eyes.

"Solfège." The instant she spoke the name, her prosthetic caught the rhythm like a metronome. The iridescent glow steadied as it maintained the cadence for her, preserving Solfège automatically. Butter released the focus at once, every corner of her mind now free while the prosthetic sustained the state on its own. One minute. That was all it could sustain before the harmony unraveled. Wonderful.... Butter finally understood. The Gloom hadn't stripped away her abilities to weaken her.

It had done so to force her to invent better ones. Sforzando. Cadenza. Arpeggio. A shield. A particle accelerator. An attack that landed the instant it was conceived. The perfect trinity against opponents faster than she could ever hope to become, against enemies whose perception was so absurd that trying to keep pace with them would only burn her mind and body to ash. The Gloom had never wanted her to keep up. It wanted her to stop playing their game.

If she'd still possessed her old abilities back then, she would've won those earlier battles. She would've died here. Only now did she understand. The Gloom had risked her life so she could survive the future. It had accepted temporary defeat to prevent a permanent one. Death had already been written into her story. The Gloom wasn't erasing that ending. It was simply reaching into the margins and writing:"… what if?" Butter stopped thinking. She simply swung her arm. Nothing appeared to happen.

The Commander's right hand quietly separated from his wrist and struck the marble with a soft metallic clink. There had been no projectile, no travelling slash, no visible attack. It was as though Butter had simply reached across the chamber and drawn an invisible blade directly through him. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. An invisible line had crossed reality so quickly that motion itself had become irrelevant. Miles meant nothing. Distance meant nothing.

Only the cut remained. Korhess's hand flew to her mouth. Her ears stood rigid. Her mismatched eyes widened as they darted from the severed hand... to Butter... then back to the Commander.

"…Sweet grove…" She scarcely breathed the words.

"She... she struck thee…" The Commander looked down at the severed gauntlet resting on the marble. Fresh flesh surged from the stump as bone, muscle, tendons, and skin rebuilt themselves in perfect sequence. A new arm finished regenerating before the severed hand had even stopped rolling across the floor. Only then did Apis stir, reweaving the missing section of his sleeve before flowing over the limb and forging a new silver gauntlet as though it had never been lost. Butter's eyes narrowed.

That wasn't Magpie regeneration. A Stepper's fiftyfold metabolism could mend bruises in minutes, broken bones in hours, and even catastrophic injuries overnight, but dismemberment, destroyed hearts or obliterated brains were still fatal. Operatives healed roughly four times faster, while Talons regenerated almost instantly because they were already dead, their bodies sustained directly by Apis. He wasn't a Talon. His heart still beat. Blood still flowed. He still felt. This...... was something else entirely.

A gadget. A system. Whatever it was, she'd figure it out. The Commander laughed, a deep, delighted sound that echoed through the chamber.

"역시... 호랑이 새끼는 호랑이군 - Yeoksi... horangi saekkineun horangigun." Just as I thought... the cub of a tiger is a tiger.

"As expected. The daughter of Paris Moon... and of the Lady herself." Butter caught the omission immediately. He hadn't mentioned Crook. A very wise decision.... Butter lowered her arm.

"…Well?" Her voice remained steady, though her heartbeat hadn't.

"Are you impressed now?" The Commander regarded the freshly regenerated hand before looking back at her.

"네. 아주." He gave a slow nod.

"Ne. Aju. Yes. Very." A quiet chuckle rumbled beneath the vox-grille.

"I saw nothing. I predicted nothing. I only realised I had been struck when I heard my hand fall upon the marble." His gaze drifted briefly to the severed gauntlet lying on the floor.

"There was no tell. You could have cut me a thousand times..." A brief pause.

"…or removed my head." Butter remained silent.

"You chose not to." His tone carried genuine approval.

"That restraint tells me more than your technique ever could." Another low chuckle followed.

"Paris Moon was a kind man." His burning lenses rested upon her.

"You have inherited that kindness." The warmth in his voice lasted only a heartbeat before fading back into quiet amusement.

"I suspect Clock inherited rather more from his mother than his father." He tilted his head.

"He would not have made such a hesitant mistake." His lenses glowed a little brighter.

"He would have taken my head." — Butter reached up and tugged her beanie down over her eyes. She no longer needed them. Her body would move before thought. Sight had become slower than instinct. A slow breath escaped her.

"Feet." The enormous bird gave a cheerful chirp before dissolving into drifting mist. Somewhere deep within the fortress, Sway continued wandering exactly as she'd instructed, dancing through distant corridors. Butter could still feel it faintly through the Gloom. Her reserves settled. 36. 2. Enough. Korhess stepped quietly behind her, spear lowered but ready. Butter scarcely noticed. Her thoughts were already racing. The invisible cut... It hadn't travelled. What else could she combine? Solfège wasn't power.

It was optimisation. Techniques that should never have coexisted suddenly became merely... difficult. Melody. Arpeggio.

"... Let's try." Her fists moved. THOOOOOOOOM! There was no sequence of punches. No blur of motion. Every strike landed at once. For a single heartbeat, Melody erased the distance between Butter's fists and the Commander. She never took a step. She remained on the far side of the chamber, but the moment her arms moved, her punches simply existed against his chest, as though space had forgotten it was meant to separate them. The Commander's dispersal systems roared. He staggered. Butter felt it. Not the impact.

The suit. Something inside it shifted. The RESET protocol. It was about to activate. There. That impossibly tiny interval. Moth-step. Her position in space was rewritten. The Commander lurched backward exactly one second as the reset took hold. Butter was already waiting. She intercepted him inside the transition. Melody reached forward...... through time itself. Butter's hand closed around his arm in the past while she remained firmly rooted in the present. CRAAAAACK! The air fractured like glass.

The Commander was torn forward through his own reset, dragged violently back into the future before the correction could complete. Even Korhess forgot to breathe. Butter had just reached into before...... and pulled someone into now. The Commander looked down at the hand gripping his arm. Then he laughed. A deep, delighted sound rolled beneath the vox-grille.

"... Remarkable." His white lenses burned a little brighter.

"I was under the impression I alone possessed that particular trick." Butter frowned beneath her beanie.

"... You can do that too?" He inclined his head.

"Indeed." There was no arrogance in his voice. Only genuine excitement. WHUMP. Something erupted inside her. Agony. A memory that hadn't happened yet. A future forcing itself backward through her mind. Butter felt something tear open beneath her ribs. She saw flashes she couldn't understand, pain she hadn't suffered, a moment that belonged to another version of herself racing toward her across time. She refused to let it arrive. Butter threw herself into a handspring.

Her palm struck the marble as Melody flared around her arm and she drove a single punch into empty space. Time cracked. For the briefest instant, she slipped between its broken edges and placed herself back where she had stood moments before, as though the last several seconds had simply been returned to their proper place. Her feet touched the marble. She stood exactly where she had begun.

Only the lingering sickness remained, the sensation of having been cut open from the inside by a future she had refused to experience. She drew a slow breath.

"... Korhess." The deer-woman glanced toward her.

"Stay alert." Korhess needed no further explanation. She lowered her stance and tightened her grip upon Harmony. The room became a killing floor. Butter raised her hands once more. Melody blazed around her fists, dark and furious, while the spear became a line of absence stretched between them and the Commander. No one spoke. There was nothing left to say. The Commander casually flicked a finger against the mechanism mounted on his left arm. An air cannon bloomed between them. It didn't travel.

It simply appeared, as though he had reached across the chamber and tapped that point in space with his fingertip. It wasn't aimed at either of them. It was a warning. A dismissal. The force flash-boiled the surrounding air. Steam exploded outward as the invisible impact carved a smoking trench through the marble, vaporised a steel support beam, and disappeared. Neither of them had sensed it. Butter and Korhess exchanged a glance. Even beneath her beanie, Butter could feel the understanding pass between them.

It wasn't the Commander. It was the arm. That attack couldn't be anticipated. It couldn't be dodged. It couldn't be intercepted. Something was fundamentally wrong with it. It didn't obey reality. It rewrote it. Butter slowly turned her head toward the silver gauntlet. She didn't need Thinkfast. She already knew what had to happen. The arm had to go. Something clicked inside the Commander's left forearm, and a hidden compartment unfolded with mechanical precision.

He reached inside and withdrew a small white sphere no larger than a tennis ball, its flawless surface etched with hundreds of tiny question marks. He rolled it lazily across his fingers.

"Do either of you know what this is?" Butter frowned beneath her beanie. Ice Eggs. Crimson Spheres. String Grenades. Desync Discs. Gravity Mines. Gravity Bombs. Singularity Bombs. Neurospikes. Flashbangs. Smoke canisters. Micro-mines. Needles. Incendiary Mines. Custom drones. Jumpers. Shakers. Disruptors. Magic Revokers. Even the expanding polymer foam that hardened according to impact velocity. She knew every one of them. She had never seen this.

"…No." The Commander nodded with quiet approval.

"I didn't expect you would. One of my engineers, Miss Nadia, submitted this prototype earlier today." A trace of pride entered his voice.

"She calls it a Logic Nuke." Butter blinked.

"…A what?"

"A Logic Nuke. Everything within its radius is compelled to obey coherent reality. Miracles, contradictions, and convenient exceptions cease to exist. If you wish to accomplish something impossible…" His glowing lenses settled upon Butter.

"… you must justify it. Magic, Apis, Gloom, gadgets, even my own equipment, everything becomes accountable to physics." A knot tightened in Butter's stomach. He let the sphere fall. It struck the marble. FLASH. White consumed everything. There was no explosion, no heat, no sound. Only impossible brightness. Then... Silence. Butter instinctively flicked a finger. Melody obeyed. Or tried to. She reached for time. Reality rejected the request. CRACK. Pain exploded through her hand.

Her finger bent violently backwards as the force rebounded into her own bones.

"…Ah." She quietly caught her injured hand.

"Oh my…" Korhess stared at her own palms, flexing her fingers one by one before a slow smile spread across her face.

"I have not felt this feeble in many a decade." Oddly...... she sounded delighted.

"At last. Mine own flesh remembereth the shape the Maker first bestowed upon it. Let me behold what remaineth when miracles depart." She lowered her spear, shifted her footing, and took a careful step.

"Sidewi—" Butter's hand shot out and caught her shoulder.

"No." A heartbeat later... SSSSSSSS. Smoke curled from Korhess' hooves. The smell of scorched flesh drifted through the chamber as angry burns spread across the soles of her feet. Butter spoke quietly, every word slower than the last, as though sleep itself had begun claiming her thoughts.

"… Nothing… with… mass… can… move… at… the speed… of light." Her head dipped forward. Solfège could no longer justify wakefulness inside a body that was, by every measurable standard, asleep. So it stopped trying. Butter fell asleep. She never fell over. Her breathing deepened, her muscles relaxed, yet her body remained standing as though someone else had quietly taken control. The Commander rolled his shoulders, then his neck, a satisfied crack echoing through the chamber.

He took one unhurried step forward, his voice carrying the quiet anticipation of a man who had finally reached the part he had been waiting for.

"Now…"

"…we begin."