Chương 109: 108: 2v1

Butter moved first. Strength and speed still existed. They simply had to obey reality now. Her body adjusted instantly. Even approaching Mach 1 would be suicidal. The sonic boom alone would tear through the chamber, and logic refused to believe Melody's bandages could somehow contain the shockwaves. It was a miracle she wasn't standing there half-naked already. Melody had been drawn into existence, and the logic field seemed willing to grant it that much. Everything else came with consequences. Aerodynamic heating.

Crushing drag. Shockwaves. Every speck of dust becoming a bullet. At those speeds, the air itself became a weapon. Half the speed of sound. That was the limit. Butter accepted it. She burst forward, flipped through the air, the immense weight of her prosthetic dragging at every muscle until each fibre strained beneath the load. She twisted. WHUMP. The Commander's punch buried itself in her stomach. Butter folded. He staggered instead. His boots scraped across the marble.

For one fleeting instant, reality could no longer justify why Butter wasn't carrying millions of tons on the end of her prosthetic. The momentum behind her charge only magnified the contradiction. The impact drove her into the floor. The Commander took three heavy steps backwards. By every ordinary measure, he was monstrously strong. Even before his armour, his body generated roughly two hundred times the strength of a powerlifter. His suit amplified that another fiftyfold.

Yet even ten thousand times that strength was nowhere near enough to halt millions of tons already in motion. A low chuckle escaped the vox-grille as he flexed his hand, his gaze settling upon the iridescent prosthetic.

"…I see." His burning lenses lingered on the limb.

"That thing is astonishingly heavy." A thoughtful silence followed before he gave a faint nod.

"Indeed… I believe I misunderstood." He raised his gaze to meet hers.

"You've been fighting me while carrying that burden all along." Another quiet laugh rumbled beneath the mask.

"That is… quite a surprise." He inclined his head, genuine admiration creeping into his voice.

"Indeed… considerably more impressive than I first gave you credit for." The Commander regarded her for a long, thoughtful moment.

"…No." He lowered his hands.

"I refuse." Butter remained asleep beneath her beanie, breathing slow and steady.

"You've been carrying that burden all this time." His gaze settled upon the prosthetic.

"I cannot, in good conscience, continue fighting someone under such a severe handicap." His voice remained calm.

"It would be an insult. Both to you… and to myself as Commander." For years, the prosthetic's impossible weight had been balanced across her body. Gloom had quietly distributed its inertia, softened the backlash, and carried much of the burden in silence. Now...... every ounce existed. All at once. Millions of tons settled upon her muscles, joints and bones with merciless honesty. Every breath grew heavier. Every heartbeat became labour. She already knew she had only minutes before exhaustion claimed her.

The prosthetic wasn't attached to her body. It was attached to her being. Removing it wouldn't end Solfège. The Commander turned away.

"It appears this match has concluded." Korhess moved. She slipped behind Butter, reached beneath the waistband of her trousers, and unclasped the prosthetic in one practised motion. The immense limb detached with a heavy metallic groan. Korhess caught it with both arms.

"… Hnnng!" Every muscle in her body stood out beneath her skin as she staggered under the impossible weight. One slow step became another, each dragging across the marble before she finally swung the prosthetic into the far corner of the chamber. BOOOOOOOM. The entire fortress shuddered. Even with perfected biology, and without relying upon Apis, she had barely managed the feat. Butter collapsed onto one knee. Then her hip burst open. Wet muscle surged outward like a river finally breaking through a dam.

Bone followed, knitting itself together as tendons laced around it and fresh flesh raced across the new limb. Skin sealed over the last strands of muscle. Within seconds...... she stood upon two natural legs once more. The Commander watched with open fascination.

"오... Oh..." His burning lenses studied her carefully. A slow nod followed.

"생각보다 훨씬 흥미롭군... Saenggakboda hwolssin heungmiropgun... Far more interesting than I expected..." His gaze remained fixed upon Butter.

"The biologically perfected regenerative type." He inclined his head thoughtfully.

"Your healing always appeared slower than expected." Another measured pause.

"The prosthetic has been tearing your muscles apart every moment you wore it." His gaze travelled across her impossibly sculpted physique.

"You have spent years exercising without respite. Every step was resistance training. Every movement created countless microscopic injuries, only for your body to repair them again a heartbeat later." A quiet laugh escaped the vox-grille.

"허... (Heo...)""… Indeed." He gave another small nod. Butter rose to her feet. She disappeared. This time...... the Commander actually moved. Butter became the only true blur within the chamber. Freed from the impossible burden of the prosthetic, she exploded across the battlefield with astonishing agility, flipping through impossible angles and attacking from trajectories no ordinary fighter could ever produce. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

The Logic Nuke still tolerated no absurdities. Neither she nor the Commander could approach their former speeds without tearing themselves apart. Sonic shockwaves, friction and aerodynamic heating punished every burst of acceleration. Butter's skin blistered. Her hair caught fire. Fresh flesh regenerated almost as quickly as it charred away, while Melody, having been drawn into existence rather than physically woven, remained untouched.

The Commander moved only as fast as physics allowed, yet every motion was perfectly efficient. His perception, predictive calculations and suit ensured that not a single movement was wasted. Korhess became the battering ram. Butter became the blade. The Commander looked genuinely entertained. Butter and Korhess moved as one.... Korhess flowed first. Asherah's Waltz transformed every step into surrender before it became defence.

Her hooves scarcely touched the marble as she drifted through impossible angles, her spear already striking toward places where the Commander's guard would arrive before his arms had finished moving. Every flick of his fingers, every shift of his shoulders, every breath he might choose to take had already been acknowledged and yielded to. She denied him space simply by existing within it first. An air cannon bloomed before her. Korhess crossed both forearms. BOOOM.

The compressed blast drove her backwards with a grunt, her hooves gouging trenches through the marble. A body capable of surviving a nuclear detonation still strained beneath the force. The next blast never found her. Butter was already there. She slipped through Korhess' wake like a ghost through mist, Shaolin adaptability flowing seamlessly into the direct brutality of Wing Chun and the fluid redirections of Taijiquan. Thought had long since disappeared. Her body simply knew.

Every opening Korhess created became Butter's strike. Every angle Korhess abandoned became Butter's arrival. The Commander met them effortlessly. He parried. Redirected. He caught Butter's wrist and folded her momentum toward Korhess' spear, forcing the deer-woman to abandon her attack before she impaled her ally. His fingers twitched. The air cannon appeared. Without Apis it was no longer impossible, merely an unimaginably violent compression of air. Butter slipped aside. Too late.

The edge of the blast clipped her shoulder. Her flesh burst apart beneath Melody as the shockwave screamed past, pulverising the wall and steel supports behind her as though they had never existed. Logic refused to accept her bandages simply absorbing such force, though they still spared her from the worst of it. The impact spun her through the air. Korhess caught her without looking. Then threw her straight back into the fight. The Commander paused. She had done that deliberately. Butter didn't land on two feet.

She dropped onto all fours. BOOOM. The marble burst apart beneath her hands as she launched herself across the chamber. She bounded from wall to wall like a maddened rabbit, every leap carrying enough force to crater stone. Her body folded through impossible angles as she ricocheted across pillars, ceilings and walls with wild, explosive grace. The long ears of her beanie whipped behind her, one still hanging half-severed from the previous battle, flapping frantically with every violent change in direction.

She looked less like a martial artist than some impossible hare that had escaped the laws of nature, every movement erratic, weightless and terrifyingly efficient. Kinetic silhouettes flooded the chamber. Afterimages scattered in every direction, each lingering just long enough to steal the eye before another replaced it. Butter's true position dissolved into the chaos, buried beneath a storm of impossible motion. The Commander's composure cracked.

"뭐야?! 저게 대체 무슨 움직임이지?! - Mwoya?! Jeoge daeche museun umjigimiji?!" What?! What kind of movement is that?! His head turned once. Then again. His burning lenses chased one silhouette after another, each proving false before the next appeared elsewhere. Without Apis, the visor had fallen back on pure technology. It no longer brushed against certainty, only predicted from posture, momentum, muscle tension and movement. Brilliant... but still only probability.

His impossible Apis poisoning had failed for the same reason. Logic rejected it. A dream could not exist physically, so his perception relied entirely on the Magpie serum, reducing him to mere microsecond cognition. Against almost anyone, that was overwhelming. Against Butter...... it wasn't enough. Solfège left nothing to predict. Her body moved before conscious intent could exist, making every action appear simultaneous with stillness.

To the visor, she was attacking and resting at once, an impossible contradiction. The countless false silhouettes stole away its remaining certainty until even Butter herself became impossible to track.

"…Remarkable." A quiet laugh escaped the vox-grille.

"You've abandoned elegance altogether." His gaze continued searching the chamber.

"… In exchange for something far more difficult to predict." She wasn't simply becoming faster. She was becoming unreadable. One clean hit now...... would be dangerous. He could no longer afford to rely upon the RESET protocol again. He raised one arm to intercept Korhess' overhead strike. Butter was already beneath him. She lay almost flat between his legs, one palm thrusting upward. FWOOOM. The air directly before him ceased to exist. He lurched backwards just enough.

Even without Gloom, Butter could still perform the fundamental form of Cadenza through nothing but flawless technique. His forearm intercepted the worst of it. Metal screamed. The armour plating covering his left arm sheared away in glittering fragments. Beneath it, there was no flesh at all. Only dark alloy threaded with pulsing circuitry. A prosthetic arm. Neither Butter nor Korhess reacted. It merely confirmed what they had already suspected.

They separated again, Butter and Korhess standing on opposite sides of him. They attacked in unison. Butter resumed her feral locomotion, bounding from wall to wall as Shaolin Kung Fu bled seamlessly into wild, unorthodox movements no conventional style could predict. Korhess closed from the opposite flank, each hoofstep planting her into angles that seemed not to exist until she occupied them. The Commander met them head-on.

His technique blended the animal grace of Kalaripayattu, the circular evasions of Baguazhang, and the ruthless efficiency of Muay Thai. He flowed like water seeking the easiest path downhill, like smoke slipping through a cracked window, like a man who had fought for so long he'd forgotten what it felt like to be touched. Despite his immense frame, his flexibility bordered on unnatural. Korhess intercepted an elbow across the shaft of her spear. Butter descended from above. Her palm struck the crown of his helmet.

THOOOOM! The impact reverberated through his entire frame, pulverising the marble beneath his boots and driving them deep into the floor. A low groan escaped him before Butter had even landed. His prosthetic arm lashed forward. The metal blurred, smoking as it tore through the air at impossible speed. Fingers closed around Butter's ankle. She vibrated free an instant later, slipping from his grasp and leaving him clutching empty air.

Without Apis, the arm remained monstrously fast and powerful, but its reality-locking mechanism, the force that pinned victims in place, no longer existed. Korhess slipped beneath another air cannon, allowing herself to fall into a roll. Her spear spun across one leg before she kicked it skyward, flipped sideways, and drove it toward the Commander. He sidestepped the thrust and glanced back at her. A boulder hurtled toward him from his right.

His prosthetic arm swatted it aside while his other hand blocked Butter's strike from the left. The spear ricocheted from the wall at a perfect angle and plunged back toward him from above. He stepped forward to evade it. Korhess was already there. Sidewind erupted. Instead of translating five feet, she reduced the displacement to a single centimetre. The distance changed. The momentum did not. Her velocity carried through.

Her hoof crashed into the side of his helmet before even his perception could finish processing the movement. BOOM! The Commander staggered as half his mask split apart, exposing a single sharp, hooded eye beneath a heavy brow. He applauded once. He disappeared.... Butter's foot found his ribs. His arm was already there. Her knee drove toward his chest. His palm was already there.

She spun, kicked, elbowed and struck, yet every blow met a leg, a shin, a knee or an open hand waiting precisely where the attack would arrive, as though he'd rehearsed the exchange long before it began. One leg held Butter at bay while his prosthetic arm caught Korhess's spear, redirected it, and sent it skidding across the marble. Korhess recovered without hesitation. Her hooves found purchase, the spear returned to her grasp before it had finished sliding, and she was already advancing again.

The Commander feinted. Butter read it. She caught the shift in his weight, the twitch of his shoulder, the opening he offered. She moved to exploit it. It disappeared. His fist wasn't where it should've been. His body wasn't where she'd aimed. His left arm moved faster than the rest of him. Almost instantaneous. Unlike flesh, the prosthetic bled away the impossible heat and friction through an intricate internal cooling system, allowing it to accelerate without destroying itself.

Its outer shell was coated in a thin layer of Hukan, an indestructible skin wrapped over an already impossibly durable frame. Butter could probably break it with Moth-step by relocating the arm along with her own body. She didn't dare. Editing her own position through space was already difficult enough for physics to tolerate. Taking someone else with her pushed that justification even further. Korhess moved. Her posture flowed into a technique she stood only a breath away from mastering.

She slipped beneath his guard, her hoof slicing across his kneecap just deeply enough to break his balance and create the opening she needed to land the— THOOOOOOM! The Commander struck first. It was the hardest blow he'd thrown since entering the chamber. He never allowed her to finish. Korhess crashed into the far wall, concrete bursting around her. Butter turned.

The deer-woman was already climbing back to her feet, reclaiming her spear and settling into another stance, but blood ran from the corner of her mouth, stained her chin, and spread across her jacket where the Commander's prosthetic fist had buried itself in her chest. The Commander slowly straightened, his damaged knee already knitting together. Through the broken half of his mask, his exposed eye regarded her with open incomprehension.

"Korhess... how did you learn that technique?" He'd recognised it instantly. Crook's One-Inch Punch. She hadn't aimed for him. She'd aimed for his prosthetic. Korhess didn't answer. One ear twitched as she quietly adjusted her footing. The Commander glanced down at his hands. His right gauntlet crackled. Blue-white lightning crawled across the armour, filling the chamber with violent flashes. Only Talons carried gauntlets like that. Apparently...... so did the Commander. Butter was already behind him.

She spun through the air, tiger claw extended, her fingers screaming fast enough to set the atmosphere ablaze. He caught her. The shockwave ripped through the chamber. His prosthetic hand closed around her wrist before the strike could land. Steel fingers crushed down with impossible force, dragging her straight into a punch from the sparking right gauntlet. Butter vibrated free an instant before impact. The electrified fist struck nothing. Korhess understood. There had been no arc to follow. He hadn't reacted.

The arm had. Automatic. It doesn't need to see. Artificial intelligence... Her gaze shifted. Butter was crouched sideways against the wall, toes buried into the concrete. Her wrist had already healed. She was still asleep. Mouth slightly open. Soft snores drifted across the chamber. Solfège was fading. They weren't finished yet. Korhess reached into her pocket, pulled out one of the gummy worms Butter had shared with her earlier, and flicked it across the room. Butter caught it without opening her eyes.

She chewed happily. Immediately, she perked up. One fluid motion carried her into a handstand before she rolled effortlessly onto her feet. She settled into a stance. It wasn't anything with a name. It was simply a body prepared to become whatever the next instant demanded. Every technique she'd ever learned rested within it, ready to answer the next attack before it was even thrown.