Hollow

"Meat, just die!"

Zero words filtered into Lucifer's ears.

They had been fighting for a few minutes, but Lucifer's broadsword had not once touched Zero .

"that's some amazing physical ability you've got there. You might even be proud of it, but—"

His expression turned into a predatory grin.

"—Are you stupid? You're just swinging your sword with raw strength and speed, wildly swiping around like a kid with a stick. You have a sword in your hand, but if you don't know how to use it, then sticking to a gun would be wiser. Aren't you taking the warrior business a little too lightly?"

"Come at me, then. Haven't you been doing nothing but dodging since just now? It won't be good for you if you drag this out for too long, no?"

Lucifer chuckled coldly as he replied to her.

Zero furrowed his shaved brows. He had him there — Zero had not attacked Lucifer.

Instead, he had been dodging his attacks, and that was because Lucifer's extraordinary physical attributes did not give him an opening to attack. Things were not as easy for Zero as he had claimed. He was beginning to feel angry at himself for not being able to take the initiative and strike.

"Tsk."

Even if he could not attack, he felt that he should be able to at least keep him at bay until one of them tired out. However, this was not turning out to be the case. Lucifer's attacks were precise, well-timed, and extremely dangerous. If he made even a slight mistake, it could be fatal.

"You said no warrior could beat you, right? Where's that confidence of yours

fled to?"

"……"

Zero finally went to his weapons after Lucifer taunted him. He had four of the piercing weapons called stilettos inside his left hand, a retractable cannon on his shoulder, as well as a machine gun on his back.

Right now, He pulled out one of those stilettos.

Lucifer glanced at the new weapon in his hand, but he didn't seem particularly alarmed. Instead, he just sneered.

Just as both sides were about to strike, the earth shook.

Lucifer could not take his eyes away from Zero, who had taken a fighting stance. He sneaked a glance to the side, and saw that there were two gigantic dragon-shaped monsters made of metal where Oxy was fighting.

"…Mechanical Dragons… huh?"

"He calls them doom dragons. Looks like you do know a thing or two."

"I see. So that's why Oxy can't win."

"Indeed." Zero replied in a mocking tone of voice. He seemed to have regained his composure after the Metal or Doom Dragons showed up. Lucifer furrowed his brows under his helmet.

It was true that Mechanical Dragons were going to be tricky, and now there were two of them. Oxy as he was now could not possibly beat them without the use of magic.

As though sensing the agitation in Lucifer's heart, Zero shifted slightly.

This was a move that was intended to seal off his movements, so there would probably be a follow-up to it. When one saw a weakness in a powerful opponent,

it would be natural to take the chance and attack.

Lucifer cast all thoughts of Oxy from his mind and thrust forth the broadsword in his right hand in an intimidating manner in preparation for a powerful strike.

Zero's weapons were a piercing type, and they could not execute complex attacks like slashing weapons could. They were weapons that were optimized for charges. In addition, stilettos were slender and were certainly not strong enough to survive a clash with broadswords.

Because of that, Lucifer used his left-hand to keep him at bay, waiting for Zero to close in. However, Zero knew what he was up to.

"Do you have any way to close this gap?"

"I wonder."

Zero had a smug, self-assured look on his face as he responded in his usual self-assured tone. All of this pointed to the fact that he had something up his sleeve.

The air between them grew thick with tension. Then—

Zero moved.

His body blurred as he pushed off the ground, closing the distance between them in less than a breath. The stiletto under his hand gleamed under the dim light as it aimed straight for Lucifer's throat—an attack designed to kill instantly. But Lucifer was faster.

With a fluid motion, his broadsword swept upward, intercepting Zero's thrust midair with a deafening CLANG! Sparks erupted from the clash of steel as Zero gritted his teeth, his weapon barely holding together against Lucifer's overwhelming strength. His footing wavered for just a fraction of a second… but that was all it took.

Lucifer twisted his wrist and forced Zero's blade downward, following up with an elbow aimed squarely at his ribs. But, Zero contorted himself mid-air to dodge it before landing on one knee several feet away again, panting slightly from exertion while gripping another stiletto tightly within palm-sized device embedded into forearm armor (likely some sort quick-draw mechanism). He wiped the sweat off his bare brow roughly before glaring back up at him:

"You're the best peice of meat I've ever met."

A faint smirk curled under Lucifer's helmet as he adjusted his grip on the broadsword.

"Meat? You're still calling me that?" He took a single step forward—deliberate, slow—the ground cracking slightly under his boot. "After seeing what I can do... you really think meat could move like this?"

Zero spat blood to the side but grinned back, undaunted despite his trembling fingers. "Everyone is meat eventually." He flicked one of his remaining stilettos between knuckles tauntingly before settling into another stance: knees bent, body coiled tight as wire about to snap. "Even angels bleed when their wings get clipped."

Lucifer exhaled through his nose, almost amused. Then he vanished in a burst of speed too fast for human eyes to track, reappearing mid-swing right above Zero's guard-raise position—

CLAAANG!

The shockwave from their colliding weapons sent tremors through earth below them both; nearby debris lifted briefly airborne before crashing back down in disarray around combatants locked in a dead-center collision course against each other once more…

Once again, Zero was knocked backward with a gasp and skidded across gravelly dirt ground before coming to a stop on opposite side where he had started.

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And then — Zero moved.

Before Lucifer's vigilant eyes, Zero shot out like a fully compressed spring.

He sprinted right at him.

It was a charge that even Lucifer, with his superhuman physical abilities, could hardly believe was possible.

Like a hurricane that devoured everything in its path, Zero closed the distance between them in an instant. He slid under the broadsword Lucifer was holding out, his physical dexterity allowing him to maintain his full speed as he moved.

Lucifer — who was shaken by Zero's serpentine movements — forcefully swung his sword. The powerful stroke ripped through the air as it surged toward Zero, promising unimaginable devastation if he connected.

And in that brief instant, Lucifer saw the face-splitting grin on his face get even wider.

The unbelievable sight took Lucifer aback.

The slender stiletto had actually blocked a hit from a broadsword that was more than ten times its mass.

The stiletto should have snapped under the grand strike it had just blocked head-on. Even if it had remained intact by some miracle, it would have been knocked flying. However, it was Lucifer's greatsword which bounced away, like it had struck some ridiculously strong castle wall.

As though throwing herself into a lover's embrace, Zero rushed toward Lucifer's unguarded chest. In that moment, half of Lucifer field of view was taken up by the smiling killer.

Lucifer retreated, but his opponent was faster. This attack, which combined a

full-tilt charge, all hia strength, and skillful use of momentum, could be described as "meteoric."

With each step, Zero's speed increased exponentially. He closed in like a living projectile, a human missile ready to explode on impact. The ground split in two as he approached, like an unstoppable tsunami of steel.

A human being should not be able to accelerate like that—or move at all— after being hit with a blow from a broadsword. Yet, he had just done both.

A fierce heat emanated from his body as he moved, like a bullet fired from a rifle, making it difficult to breathe. The force he was generating was immense.

There was a flash of light, and then the screeching of metal clashing with metal rang through the area.

Zero ducked the wild swing of Lucifer's sword and then sprang clear.

Lucifer knew the secret behind Zero's flashy moves.

"—Icetan, huh?"

He had learned about it recently, a military grade cyberware which slowed down the user's perception of time, allowing them to be much more faster and precise.

Lucifer exhaled sharply, the realization settling in like ice water in his veins. Icetan. Not just military-grade—experimental. Illegal. The kind of tech that rewired a human nervous system until they burned themselves out from the inside like overclocked machinery.

Zero's grin was savage as he rolled his shoulders, sweat glistening on his bare scalp under the dim battlefield lights. "Took you long enough to notice." His voice was a distorted hum, syllables bleeding together, another side effect of neural augmentation pushed past safe limits. "You aren't the only ones with tricks."

Just then, Although he did not feel pain, he felt that something sharp had pierced his left shoulder, near the place where he had heard the sound of scraping.

"Your frame is better than mine."

Lucifer's glanced to the shoulder from where the impact had come, but there was only a slight dent in the armor. Although the armor had no special magical properties, it was still the product of a level one hundred magic caster's pay to win habits.

"Ah well. If that's the case, next time, I'll hit you where it's thinner."

Lucifer realized that Zero had not been wildly attacking his shoulders, but aiming to disable his arms in order to render him incapable of attacking. For the first time, Lucifer felt something like respect toward Zero the warrior.

All Lucifer could do was simply swing his swords and deal damage to the enemy.

Of course, if he could hit at all, the enemy would assuredly be slain. However, against a skilled opponent, he had to carefully consider the flow of the battle.

"This has been good training for me…"

Just as Lucifer was admiring Zero, he took that strange stance he had assumed from just now. In response, Lucifer raised his broadsword to meet the attack. This time, however, he did not thrust forth.

Zero snorted at Lucifer's stance and sprinted. He was so fast that even Lucifer and his incredible dynamic vision could barely follow him. If he had not rushed straight at him, he might have lost track of his movements.

In the face of Zero's full-tilt charge, like an ominous arrow headed straight at him, Lucifer swung his broadsword, launching an attack of his own to intercept his—

"Die!."

— Lucifer absorbed the radiating impact — as though he had struck a wall — with the strength of his arm, and then he swung his broadsword. This time, Lucifer was fully confident that his foe could not block another full power hit.

Just then, Zero used his I.C.E.T.A.N. at full capacity, it felt as though someone had used time-controlling magic to slow time down.

Everything moved slowly, as though immersed in some highly viscous fluid. The speed of Lucifer's swing slowed to a crawl.

However Zero moved at the same speed in this decelerated world. He dodged Lucifer's counterattack and approached Lucifer from the front.

"Annoying bastar—"

Before he could finish speaking the name, his stiletto stabbed at him. It was aimed at one of Lucifer's eyes, through the narrow vision slit of his helmet.

Lucifer forcefully jerked his head to the side, and while he managed to evade the stiletto thrust, the sound of metal shrieking against metal echoed through his helmet. Before he could breathe a sigh of relief that he had avoided the worst of it, he glimpsed Zero readying his stiletto for another attack out of the corner of his eye.

"Cheh!"

A bitter smirk curled under Lucifer's helmet as Zero's stiletto flashed toward his vulnerable eye slit once more. He could already predict the trajectory—calculated, efficient, lethal.

"Too slow."

At the last possible instant, Lucifer tilted his head again, but this time, he pushed into the motion with unnatural speed. His armored gauntlet snapped up mid-movement and caught Zero's wrist mere centimeters from impact. The crunch of synthetic muscle buckling under Lucifer's grip was deafening in the sudden stillness between them.

Zero's widened eyes reflected sheer disbelief for half a second before instinct kicked in; he twisted violently to break free, but found himself locked in place like a fly caught in amber. His teeth ground together audibly as veins bulged along his temple from exertion… yet even augmented strength wasn't enough to wrench loose this time.

Lucifer leaned down slightly until they were eye-to-eye through that narrow visor slit:

"Thank to you, I've learned a lot about how to fight someone. First, about how those implants work in battle and also, the fact that I can't swing my swords around blindly during combat, and the importance of maintaining my balance while attacking."

"…Hah? If you've only learned that now… then you're a failure as a warrior—"

It took a moment for Lucifer words to register in Zero's brain, and then—

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

This bastard just said, what?

The words echoed in Zero's skull, warping reality itself into something utterly incomprehensible. His grip on the stiletto trembled not from pain (he barely registered the fractures spiderwebbing through his augmented wrist), but from sheer, undiluted disbelief—a sensation so foreign it might as well have been poison flooding his veins.

"First time learning how to fight?" That wasn't possible.

It couldn't be.

Not when this armored freak had traded blows with him—ZERO, THE TOKYO BUTCHER—for minutes straight without collapsing into a twitching pile of meat and synthetic muscle fibre like every other idiot who tried it before him! Not when he moved like that, with reflexes honed beyond human limits! Not when he swung that ridiculous fucking broadsword faster than most people could pull a trigger! And now… now he had the audacity to stand there and say this was some kind of training session?!

Zero's neural implant flickered warnings at him in jagged red text across his vision — STRESS LEVELS CRITICAL.

He ignored them because right now, there was only static in his brain where coherent thought should be an endless loop replaying that single sentence over and over again until even words lost meaning behind clenched teeth: "Failure? Failure?! FAILURE?!" The laugh tore out raw before he could stop it – high-pitched bordering delirious — because what else do you do when everything you are has just been reduced to someone else's fucking combat tutorial?

Every legend written about Zero boiled down to one truth: men died fast around him; faster if they underestimated him first...Yet here stood Sato wearing arrogance thicker than plate steel between them while casually admitting HE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO HOLD A SWORD PROPERLY UNTIL TODAY?! There weren't enough bullets left anywhere on earth for whatever cosmic joke this moment turned out being except maybe putting one through each knee then watching blood pool beneath cocky little helmet slits until the breathing stopped altogether–

"—You," His voice crackled, warped by the strain in his vocal modulators. "You're telling me... you've been fighting me without even knowing how to fight?!"

Lucifer tilted his helmet slightly, as if genuinely confused by the question. "Hm? Well... I mean, swinging a sword isn't hard."

Zero's remaining eye twitched violently. A vein pulsed along his temple like a live wire about to snap. Somewhere deep inside him, past the rage, past the disbelief, something broke irreparably. A man who had torn through armies of augmented mercenaries without breaking stride now stood face-to-face with an opponent who treated him like sparring practice. It wasn't just insulting; it was cosmically absurd.

"You..are lying, right?"

"No, you're right. I really am unskilled… you have my thanks. Although, since time is tight, playtime is now over."

Paying no heed to the doubt on Zero's face, Lucifer shouted at the top of his voice:

"Oxy Annerose! Display the power of the Angels Of Hell!"

He swiveled the sword's hilt in his hand and then stabbed the points of his broadsword into the ground. Lucifer extended his empty hands before him, and gently beckoned Zero over.

"Now then, come at me with the intent to die."