Flashback: Three Days Ago...

  Glock Harbinger and Terror stood in front of an ice cream kiosk at the corner of the road.

  "Here you go!" the vendor said, handing two cones to Glock.

  "Thanks," Glock replied with a smile. He took them and groaned. "Man, what hot weather." He turned and passed one cone to Terror.

  Glock licked some of the cream and swallowed. "Arrgh, just what I needed," he exhaled. His eyes flicked to Terror, who stared at the ice cream as though it might bite him.

  A slight smile tugged at the corner of Glock's lips. "Something's been bothering me ever since you fought Van Ackerman and almost went extinct. Gosh... what would've happened if I wasn't there." His mind reeled with worst-case scenarios.

  Terror glanced at Glock, then back at the ice cream.

  Glock finished licking his cone and tossed it into a gutter. "Your sorcery allows you to generate a gravitational push effect, doesn't it?" he muttered, rubbing his palms together.

  "And pull," Terror added.

  "Uhn... I don't know about pull," Glock pondered. "I mean, it's not like push that you can use every time. I guess that's where your divine blessing—effective conservation—comes into play. Normally, the law of effects is that they can be created but will inevitably be destroyed or lost."

  Glock frowned. "It's quite a drag because that causes larger consumption of tenzen," he groaned. "But for you..." He looked at Terror.

  "With effective conservation, you can create an effect and it won't be destroyed or lost. That's how you create the pull: after releasing the push into the environment, you simply cause it to come back to you."

  "Even I don't understand it that well," Terror replied. He finally took a lick. Finding it sweet, he began devouring the cone.

  Glock continued. "It also helps in creating your sphere. By channeling your anti-tenzen energy into your Rubik's cube and making it spin at supersonic velocity, it blurs into a spherical structure. That structure forms the physical boundary or axis for your sphere, doesn't it?"

  "Correct," Terror replied, more focused on the ice cream than the explanation.

  "Hmm, you're quite a genius," Glock praised. "But don't you think there's a better way to wield your sphere's effect without even needing an axis?"

  "That'd only drain my life force," Terror replied indifferently.

  "Nah." Glock waved a hand. "You're not creating a sphere since a sphere's action is instant and lasts at most three seconds. Your sphere's effect allows you to use push and pull at the same time."

  "But that doesn't maximize the use of effective conservation."

  ...

  W.A.S. Headquarters, Hazen. Fifth Floor...

  In the center of the catastrophic scene—furniture splintered, floor scorched, air thick with ash and shroud—Nico, Sage, and Blaise stood before Terror. His white-and-black Rubik's cube pulsed and floated above his head.

  "What's that thing?" Nico asked, eyes wide.

  "It's a Rubik's cube," Sage replied, voice low. "But what's he using a Rubik's cube for?" Sweat slid down his cheeks.

  Then it began.

  Terror slowly raised his hand, pointing his forefinger toward the three. His mouth opened as the past echoed in his mind.

  "This time, you're creating a gradual singularity," Glock had said.

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  "Push," Terror spoke. A translucent field, like an air envelope, materialized before his finger.

  The overhead cube spun steadily and ominously.

  Terror raised his middle finger and chanted, "Pull." A black field slowly spread and coalesced with the white. The two colors mixed and churned into a spherical gray orb.

  Glock's voice returned. "What you form is a singularity with almost zero volume and near-infinite density. I call it a mini-black hole with bidirectional impulse. The true duality effect."

  "Whatever that thing is, it's giving me the chills," Sage whispered shakily, staggering as fear crept into his body.

  "It looks like he's planning to fire it," Nico said. She glanced at Blaise. "Think you can stop it with the gate?"

  Blaise's heart sank. "I'll try, but there's a high probability it can't," he replied. He dropped to the floor and placed his palms on the ground. 'We really should run,' he thought.

  A gust of wind flailed Terror's robe as he murmured, "Duality Effect..." His voice carried a chilly edge.

  He started to speak again, but a sudden yell interrupted him. "Stop chasing me, ugh! Go eat Peridot first!" Footsteps clacked louder and closer.

  "That voice," Nico said. Her gaze shifted toward the hallway a few meters away—closer to Terror than to them.

  "Get lost, ugh!" Alpha screamed and leapt out of the corridor. Several leeches sprang out behind her as Aghnis emerged, laughing maniacally.

  Still mid-air, Alpha looked around and spotted Terror with his floating orb. "Huh?" She gasped, mouth falling open in shock.

  "Alpha!!" Nico screamed, voice cracking.

  In a desperate attempt to save her, Blaise activated his shadow gate. Darkness ripped across the floor, condensing shadows from every dark corner.

  Alpha spun her head and spotted Nico rushing toward her. Nico leapt into the air, and then... reality froze.

  Terror looked down from Alpha to Nico, who was floating, to Blaise lunging forward, to Sage half-transformed. "Arrgh," he exhaled as his finger twitched.

  "EVENT HORIZON BLOOM."

  Darkness fell before anyone understood why. It collapsed inward, swallowing color and shape until the world became a smothered void. Sound dulled, air thinned, even the ground seemed to fade into nothing.

  At the center hovered a gray orb.

  It was small at first, its surface matte and depthless, emitting the faintest pallid glow—the only proof that something still existed.

  Then it began to pull. Dust lifted from the floor and streamed toward it. Shards of stone skipped and vanished into its surface without impact, as though passing through a tear in reality. The air warped, bending into spirals that fed the growing sphere.

  The orb swelled. Edges of walls peeled away in strips, devoured without debris. Shadows stretched and snapped inward. The faint gray glow deepened, thickening as it absorbed more, its pull intensifying until even matter struggled to resist.

  The darkness around it compressed, folding tighter as if the world were being wrung into that single point. The hum in the air reached a piercing pitch. Cracks webbed across the ground, racing toward the epicenter.

  For one suspended instant, everything stopped. Reality snapped back, but nothing remained—not Alpha, Nico, Sage, Blaise, or Aghnis.

  Terror stood alone in the middle of the absence.

  Outside the W.A.S. Headquarters, journalists murmured and chattered among themselves.

  The gray orb reached its limit.

  The faint light flared in a spark of white...

  And the singularity detonated, unleashing everything it had consumed in a cataclysmic burst that tore the darkness apart.

  The glass walls of the building shattered outward as debris poured out.

  "What's that?!" "A terrorist attack!!" "The headquarters is under attack!!" Screams rose as everyone scattered in a frenzy.

  In the explosion, Sage's body hurtled through the air toward a distant building. "What kind of power was that?!" he exclaimed before crashing into it, devastating the structure in a cloud of dust.

  "I didn't sign up for this shit!!" Alpha's scream ripped through the air next. The detonation sent her flying, with Aghnis in pursuit. "Hehehe! My food doesn't run!" His tongue slithered.

  The force smashed Nico into one of her cars with a catastrophic bang. "Ugh!" she grunted. The impact rammed the car into another, then the next, until all six spun in the air with Nico at the center. A sharp light sparked from one vehicle, triggering an explosion that chained through the remaining five.

  Shockwaves ripped through the soil, sending tremors as far as Sylva.

  "An earthquake?" a pedestrian in Sylva muttered, staring at the sky.

  By the time calm settled, the entire landmass in front of the headquarters—stretching over fifty meters—had been reduced to a barren plain.

  Terror lowered his hand, staring at the decimation from inside. Glock's words echoed: "Only setback is that you might not be able to use it again for a long while. But then, you still have your sphere to fall back to. Hahaha."

  A soft wind tugged at his hair, blowing through the gaping hole. "Damn, what a hellish view," a voice said from behind. Terror turned to see Glock Harbinger—his face back to normal—standing with his mouth open at the display.

  Terror's gaze lifted to Sir Zoldrak's body floating behind Glock. "So he's the key?" he asked indifferently.

  "Just his core," Glock replied, flashing a smile.

  Terror's fist clenched. "I wanted to be the one to kill him," he said coldly.

  "He killed Havock." Anger burned in his eyes.

  "Well, he's at heaven's doors now, so whatchu gonna do?" Glock scoffed.

  "Hah." Terror calmed himself.

  Glock passed by and tapped his shoulder. "Off to Blackthorn," he said, then stomped away with Sir Zoldrak's body floating behind him.