Chương 114: 113: DELETE

Clock's eyes snapped open.

"Bishop's Path." The words fell like a verdict. A chessboard unfurled across the clearing, not seen but felt. A lattice of Gloom descended over the forest, every square a constraint, every line a law. Reality became a board. Ankou froze for a moment. The darkness around his body rippled with disbelief.

"…Chess?" His voice carried the quiet offence of a king informed that reality had become a board game. Clock grinned.

"You talk like you're inevitable." He pointed two fingers toward the imprisoned monster.

"So I made you predictable." Ankou tested the boundary again. KRAAAANG. Invisible law rejected him without compromise. The Void Maw scraped against the edge of the diagonal, darkness spilling outward before snapping back into place.

"A conceptual prison…" Ankou murmured.

"You're assigning movement as identity."

"Congratulations," Clock said.

"You figured it out." The monster's head tilted.

"You truly believe geometry can cage hunger?"

"No." Clock shrugged.

"Only idiots try to stop hunger." His smile widened.

"I'm just deciding where it gets to eat." Ankou's silhouette quivered. For a heartbeat, the endless void surrounding him faltered as it struggled against a law that could not be consumed simply by touching it. Then the darkness settled.

"…Remarkable." The compliment sounded genuine.

"You've weaponised rules instead of force." Clock laughed.

"Force is expensive." He lifted his remaining hand.

"Making you look stupid is practically free." Ankou's body shifted sideways once more. KRAAAANG. The invisible wall refused him again. Silence lingered. Then Ankou smiled. A slow, elegant smile that somehow made the surrounding forest colder.

"So be it." His arms unfolded into vast ribbons of living darkness.

"If the bishop cannot move…" The shadows stretched far beyond the limits of the board.

"… its reach shall." Ankou adapted immediately. Its arms stretched into whips of living shadow, fingers elongating across impossible distances. The body remained trapped upon its diagonal, but the hands did not. They were extensions rather than movement, a loophole found in an instant. They lashed toward Clock. He fled. Trees disappeared with soft, wet SHPOOOOMS wherever the grasping fingers brushed them. Earth dissolved into perfectly circular voids that descended into darkness.

A deer caught mid-stride simply ceased to exist, as though it had never drawn its first breath. Clock winced.

"Butter's going to kill me if she sees that." He twisted aside as another grasping hand swept past his face, its wake unmaking bark, moss and stone alike. Violet Gloom gathered around his fingertips as he reached for the world's countless invisible clocks. Every living thing possessed one. He found the deer's. The empty space shimmered emerald green. Light condensed into translucent strands before weaving flesh, bone and breath back together.

The deer unfolded from nothingness, first as a ghostly green silhouette, then as a living creature, blinking in bewilderment as time remembered it had always existed. Clock flicked his wrist. A shimmering violet barrier wrapped gently around the frightened animal, carrying it through the air like a drifting bubble before setting it safely far beyond the battlefield.

Rabbits, possums, kiwi and every other terrified little creature still hiding nearby received the same treatment, each enclosed within softly glowing shields before gliding silently through the forest to safety.

"Go on," he muttered.

"This isn't your problem." Only after the last one disappeared into the distance did he glance down. The crescent-shaped cavity carved into his side by Ankou's opening punch still remained. Blood stained his torn clothes. His biological regeneration twitched uselessly around the wound. Flesh could heal damage. It couldn't comprehend absence. The missing portion of his body no longer existed as something that could be restored. He exhaled.

"I was trying to save this…" Violet light gathered once more. His own personal clock appeared before him, immense, luminous and impossibly intricate. Clock reached out and slowly turned its hands backwards. Time obeyed. The missing crescent shimmered into existence as transparent violet geometry before solidifying into muscle, bone and skin. Blood reversed through the air, returning to his veins as though it had never escaped. Every ache rewound. Every torn fibre remembered its proper place.

The effort made his vision swim. He had been conserving every scrap of Gloom. This cost far more than he could comfortably spare. Still… Better broke than dead. Clock dismissed the clock face with a flick of his fingers. The grasping hands crashed toward him again. He smiled.

"Missed." And plunged straight into the earth.... The hands followed. Bedrock parted beneath their passage as darkness swallowed them both. Stone disappeared without resistance, tunnels carved by absence itself. The fingers closed relentlessly behind him, so near he could almost feel them breathing. If absence could breathe.

"King's Gambit." Clock sacrificed himself. He severed a fragment of his own existence, shaping it into a colossal bull of translucent violet Gloom. Its muscles rippled with impossible force, its crescent horns gleaming like collapsed stars. It lowered its head. Steam smelling of ozone and burnt dreams poured from its nostrils as its hooves gouged trenches through solid rock. It possessed no thoughts. Only purpose. Destroy. Ankou regarded it in silence.

"…Another trick." His tone carried neither anger nor surprise, only weary certainty. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

"You continue carving pieces from yourself." The Void Maw tilted its head ever so slightly.

"Your ingenuity is admirable." A pause.

"Your reserves are not." The darkness surrounding him stirred.

"You are bleeding yourself dry, Clock. Every clever solution shortens the game." His smile returned, elegant and patient.

"You will exhaust your Gloom long before I exhaust my hunger." Clock smirked.

"That's funny." He cracked his neck.

"I was just thinking the same thing about your patience." The bull pawed at the earth. The ground beneath its hooves groaned. With a bellow that shook the mountains, it charged. KRA-KRA-KRA - BOOOOOM! The impact drove Ankou backwards through the forest. Trees exploded into splinters, the earth fractured beneath them, and the sky dimmed beneath the collision. They tore into one another. KRAAAANG! SHRRRK! BOOOOM! Horn met void. Void devoured horn.

The bull gored straight through Ankou's torso while the consuming hands ripped vast portions from its violet form with wet, sucking SHPOOOOMS. Neither yielded. The bull dragged Ankou across the clearing, carving a canyon through the earth as the Void Maw slowly consumed its horns. Clock was already elsewhere. He stood upon a distant ridge, trembling beneath the strain of sustaining both techniques. Bishop's Path held, barely. King's Gambit devoured his reserves faster than expected. Five minutes.

Any longer, and the cost would become permanent. His arm extended like a marksman taking aim. DELETE. He needed to know exactly how much erasure Ankou required. It was a dangerous technique. Strike the wrong thing and even Clockwork could not restore it. DELETE erased whatever concept it embodied, though its cost scaled with the strength of its target. Ankou's hunger had no ceiling. Neither could DELETE. Clock shifted position again, watching below as the Void Maw finally seized the bull by the throat.

Great chunks of violet Gloom disappeared into its maw while the construct fought to wrench itself free. Clock raised his palm. Power gathered within it. Ordinarily, Reverse Blast tripled its essence, speed and force with every metre travelled. He denied it the distance. Instead, he let it multiply inside his hand. Again. Again. Again. His arm shook violently as annihilation compressed into a sphere no larger than his palm. Light warped around it. Space bent. Sweat ran freely down his face. He calculated.

After long enough...... it possessed sufficient force to erase the known universe. He released it. FWOOOOOOSH. A violet-white beam lanced across the battlefield. At the final instant, Clock's telekinesis pinned Ankou in place for less than a heartbeat. Long enough. BOOOOOOOOOOM. The world turned violet. The blast engulfed Ankou entirely, its impossible light sinking into the Void Maw as even its endless consumption faltered. The bull struck again, driving the annihilation deeper. Ankou screamed. SKREEEEEEEEE!

SKRAAAANG! Its hunger swallowed the blast like water disappearing down a drain. Clock had expected as much. Ankou's consumption comfortably handled galactic levels of force, a threat comparable to Korhess. Beyond that threshold, the strain became visible. Its silhouette flickered. The consuming hands trembled. The void itself struggled to digest what had entered it. Clock gave it no opportunity to recover. The bull charged again and again, driving Ankou along its compulsory diagonal.

Every collision remained trapped within Bishop's Path, every explosion confined to that single corridor of destruction. Collateral no longer mattered. Clock slowly extended one arm. At his outstretched fingertip, telekinesis began unravelling the atomic bonds of reality itself. VRRRRMMMMM. It demanded impossible concentration. Energy screamed to be born, a miniature sun straining against its prison. His skin sizzled. The air around his finger frayed, reality thinning to threads.

Slowly, carefully, he fed raw Gloom into the singularity. SHHHRRRRRK. Telekinesis held it together before it could erupt. It felt like balancing worlds on the tip of a finger. The darkness condensed into a tiny black pearl of absolute negation, pulsing with a rhythm that did not belong to the universe. He activated the multiplication mechanism. VRRRRRRRRRR. Power escalated violently. His finger began to melt. Then his palm. Flesh liquefied and dripped to the ground with wet PLOPs.

Clock doubled over, a ragged groan tearing from his throat before he forced it back down. His remaining hand clamped around his ruined arm as every nerve screamed in protest.

"Hh..." He drew one slow breath. Held it. Released it. Again. Again. Measured breathing. Controlled. Each inhale steadied the trembling in his body. Each exhale forced the agony into neat little compartments, pain acknowledged but denied dominion. His lungs burned. His vision blurred. The smell of his own seared flesh filled the air. Sweat streamed from his face as another wave of torment crashed through him, hot enough to make his knees threaten to buckle.

"Come on..." he whispered through gritted teeth.

"One... more... second..." The darkness continued compressing inside his ruined hand. When it reached the threshold he wanted, he released it. KRRRAAAAK. The darkness tried to bloom outward. Telekinesis crushed it back into shape. The result resembled a flashlight made of absence, a beam that emitted darkness instead of light. Anything it touched simply ceased. His arm tore apart under the strain. CRAAAACK. Clock couldn't stop the sound that escaped him.

"Ghhh...!" His knees bent as pain flooded every nerve in his body. His breathing broke into sharp, ragged gasps while sweat poured from his face. His remaining hand locked around his ruined shoulder, desperately keeping the impossible construct stable. The darkness at his fingertips grew denser. Hungrier. Across the battlefield, Ankou's calm composure finally cracked. His eyes snapped toward the beam. The Void Maw recoiled half a step.

"…What?" For the first time since the battle began, panic entered his voice.

"What... is that?" The darkness surrounding him quivered.

"That is not Gloom." Clock raised his ruined arm. Blood dripped from what remained of it. His smile was exhausted.

"It isn't." Holding absolute erasure was like trying to grasp death itself. Ordinary matter couldn't contain such a concept, so he burned vast quantities of Gloom, forcing his telekinesis to grip ideas rather than objects. This technique had a single name.

"DELETE." PWISHHHHH. The beam engulfed Ankou. The Reverse Blast, the bull, everything disappeared beneath a torrent of absolute darkness.

"NO!" For the first time, Ankou screamed with unmistakable panic. The Void Maw erupted from every inch of his body, rivers of living erasure surging outward as he desperately tried to consume the attack before it reached him. It failed. DELETE wasn't something that could simply be eaten. The colossal bull drove its horns deeper into his chest, refusing to yield. Behind it, the accumulated force of Reverse Blast continued hammering him forwards, compressing him into the absolute darkness.

His own erasure fought back. Darkness collided with darker darkness. Reality shrieked beneath the strain. SKREEEEEEEEE!

"NO!" SKRAAAAAAANG! Ankou's hands clawed desperately at the beam, entire rivers of absence pouring from his fingers as he tried to carve a path through it. Every fragment he stripped away was immediately replaced by the relentless pressure of the bull and the impossible momentum of Reverse Blast. He couldn't retreat. Bishop's Path forbade it. He couldn't overpower it. The bull refused to stop. He couldn't consume it. DELETE simply kept coming. For the first time in countless ages… …

the embodiment of erasure discovered something that refused to disappear on its terms. Clock held the beam. His body shook. Sweat poured down his face. Blood streamed from his nose. His arm had been consumed to the bicep, the destruction creeping relentlessly toward his shoulder. Yet Ankou still endured. His silhouette quivered violently within the torrent of absolute darkness, fragments of him constantly erased only to drag themselves back into existence through sheer, impossible resolve.

"I…" His voice fractured beneath the pressure.

"…will not…" The bull drove him deeper. Reverse Blast hammered him again. DELETE refused to relent.

"…die here…" His remaining hand clawed forward through the darkness.

"…like…" His body began to come apart.

"…a dog!" Clock's vision blurred.

"No…" He gritted his teeth.

"You don't get to choose." His knees buckled. The beam flickered. He refused to let go. His lips trembled.

"…Father…" The whisper barely escaped him.

"If you're listening…" Another surge of agony ripped through his body.

"I know…"

"I never met you…"

"I never spoke to you…" His ruined arm split farther apart. CRAAAAACK! Bone separated. Muscle unravelled. His forearm began to tear completely away. Clock caught the disintegrating limb with telekinesis before it could separate, invisible force binding flesh and bone together through nothing but stubborn will.

"…but…"

"…if I'm truly your son…" His violet eyes burned.

"…then…"

"…give me your strength." Something answered. The beam multiplied violently. The darkness compressed upon itself again, its impossible force multiplying beyond everything Clock had prepared for. Ankou's scream became inhuman. Clock's arm exploded apart. CRAAAAAAACK! Only telekinesis held the ruined limb together, fragments of bone suspended in invisible force as blood sprayed into the air. He screamed with it.

"AAARRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!" The beam roared brighter than darkness had any right to roar. Only when the last drop of strength finally left him did his consciousness surrender. The beam ceased. Clock collapsed. THUD. For several breaths, he could do nothing except gasp. Silence settled over the forest. The bull was gone. Ankou was gone. Only scars remained. Split earth. Shattered trees. The lingering wrongness where something impossible had been erased. Where DELETE had passed, the forest had paid its own price.

The trees caught within its edge had not been burned or broken. They had been ungrown. Towering trunks shrank into saplings. Saplings became fragile shoots. Shoots curled back into seeds that split apart into dust before even that memory disappeared. Rings of centuries unwound in moments, roots retreating through the soil as though time itself had decided they had never deserved to grow. Patches of earth stood empty, untouched by stump or splinter. Nothing remained to suggest a forest had ever lived there.

A small price to pay. He forced himself upright. Gloom flowed through him, but answered weakly. DELETE had crippled him. That was its cost. Only then did he realise Transport had failed some time ago. The battle had pushed him past his limits. He couldn't rely on it anymore. He looked down at his right arm. What remained of it trembled uncontrollably. Bone hung together only because telekinesis had refused to let it fall apart.

Muscle and flesh slowly drew back toward one another, knitting together with agonising reluctance as his biological regeneration struggled against injuries that had never truly belonged to flesh in the first place. Clock released the telekinetic hold. Violet Gloom flowed around the ruined limb, weaving itself into a rigid cast that enclosed it from shoulder to fingertips. Inside the cast, the shattered arm finally coalesced into one piece again. Whole. But lifeless. He tried to move his fingers. Nothing.

Not even a twitch.

"…Yeah," he muttered hoarsely.

"You're taking the day off." For now, the arm belonged to the cast more than it belonged to him. Even his regeneration had slowed to a crawl. Clock leaned back against a broken slab of stone and looked up. The canopy had been torn open during the battle. Morning sunlight poured through the enormous gap, warm golden rays spilling across his face. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the heat wash over bruised skin as the breeze carried the scent of damp earth, pine needles and crushed grass. It felt… Peaceful.

Almost enough to make him forget what had happened. The forest was quiet. He drew a slow breath. Then another. Too quiet. No birds. No insects. Only the soft rustling of leaves beneath a gentle morning breeze. Clock drew another breath. Warm sunlight settled across his face. For the briefest moment, he let himself believe it was over. A cough drifted through the trees.

"…Khh…" Wet. Painful. Somewhere beyond the broken forest.

"…Khh… Hh…" Another followed, accompanied by ragged wheezing as ruined lungs forced themselves to breathe through nothing but stubborn defiance. Clock's eyes snapped open. His head turned toward the sound. Nothing. Only shattered trunks, drifting mist, and morning light spilling through broken branches. Silence settled over the forest once more. KRAAAAAK. A massive tree ripped free from the earth. Roots exploded upward, hurling soil and stone into the air. Clock's heart lurched.

"No…" THOOM. One footstep. Heavy. THOOM. Closer. Each impact rolled through the ground beneath him before the sound reached his ears. Clock planted his left hand against the earth and tried to push himself upright. His body wouldn't answer. The cast encasing his right arm felt impossibly heavy, and his legs reacted far too slowly. Something closed the distance. He never saw a silhouette. Never caught a glimpse of a shape.

Only the sickening certainty that something immense had crossed the space between one heartbeat and the next. Clock hadn't even finished turning. Something crashed into his jaw. BOOOOOOOOM! The air folded around his head before the sound could exist. His body vanished into the sky like a cannon shell.