He had expected Taufik to block the attack. That wasn't the point. The attack was never meant to land.
It was the distance between them that mattered.
"...You're done for, O Defiant one," he said, voice dripping with malice.
A pulse of bloodlust surged from his massive form, shaking the cracked, scorched battlefield. The air rippled. His grin widened, splitting unnaturally across his face, revealing rows of jagged, uneven teeth like broken blades.
"Predator's Domain: Red Trail!"
The battlefield shattered like brittle glass...
No Lembuswana or Basukhi looming above.
Not peaceful silence, twisted silence.
Heavy. Suffocating. Like a tomb sealed for eternity.
The sky remained the same: burning orange, hellish, and warped. But the air had changed like they had dropped into another layer of reality.
Taufik's eyes narrowed. He took a cautious step forward...
In front of him stood… himself.
Another step, he glanced behind.
Another version of him.
He turned forward again. The copy moved exactly as he thought.
Not with delay. Not with mimicry.
Perfect synchronization.
"…Interesting," Taufik muttered, voice calm but sharp.
He lifted a hand, and so did the copy.
Breathed in, so did the other.
"...A mirror dimension?" he muttered.
Then came the whispers.
Like teeth grinding on bone.
Like wolves chewing through logic itself.
A line of blood flicked across Taufik's cheek.
But he felt it, like claws dragging across the edge of his soul.
"Don't bother looking," Gusion's voice echoed, playful and cruel. "This place doesn't follow your senses"
Taufik didn't flinch.
"Then I just need to break it"
Darkness, heavy and thick like black oil, slithered beneath his skin, responding to his will.
Another cut. His back this time.
Still no warning. No motion. No aura.
"No movement. No intent. He's striking between thought and action… Predator's Domain, huh?"
The illusions multiplied.
Hundreds of him now, mirroring every twitch, every impulse.
"I'm not just hunting your body, Defiant," Gusion whispered from nowhere. "I'm hunting your intent. Each thought you make… spawns prey. Here, dodging is impossible. No matter which copy I hit, it all leads back to you"
Taufik's lips curled into a faint smirk.
"If that's so… then it's simple"
He snapped his fingers.
A shockwave pulsed outward, no sound, no force, just Conceptual Darkness.
Every false copy froze.
Their shadows glitched, flickered unnaturally.
Because only one of them, only he, was truly chosen by the Concept.
"…I only need to acknowledge one version of me"
He took a breath. Then, he summoned the void beneath his feet and shattered the false floor.
Gusion's presence flickered, above, hanging upside down in the swirling black sky, like a grotesque spider. The chains of his daggers twisted around him like serpents, ready to strike.
Taufik launched upward, cutting through gravity like it didn't exist.
The moment he moved, every other copy vanished.
"Good," Gusion snarled, fangs bared. "Let's make this… interesting"
The battle erupted mid-air.
Chains lashed like snakes, shrieking through space.
Blades of void and silence formed from Taufik's will, from his very thoughts.
Gusion spun, twisted, attacked from all directions, his movements a blur of blood-red steel and ghost-like flickers.
Taufik fought without gravity, positioning himself through will alone, twisting the fabric of the realm to anchor his steps.
Their clash was not mere combat; it was two ideologies rewriting reality.
Void against instinct.
Concept against predation.
The air cracked. The crimson fog thickened.
Red trails shimmered in the void, tangled threads of fate stitched into space, marking Taufik's every movement, every intention.
"…So this is your Domain"
Behind him. Too fast. A whisper in the dark.
Taufik blocked, but the impact sent him reeling.
Gusion was already gone.
Above. Behind. Through the floor.
*SLASH! SLASH! SLASH!*
Shallow wounds across his ribs, arms, legs, each hit with precision, designed to accumulate.
Taufik gritted his teeth.
"…Time distortion. Path-prediction…"
His voice was low now.
"You're not hunting me…" He lifted his eyes, cold, calculating. "...You're trying to execute me"
And from within the crimson fog, Gusion laughed.
"You're in my hunting ground, O Defiant… Your future is already written in blood"
Suddenly, Gusion raised his head and howled, a bone-rattling, soul-piercing scream that cracked the silence and ruptured the very seams of space.
From the tear in the red fog, molten rifts split open like festering wounds in the world.
Crawling from the rift came beasts, Hounds of Hell, dozens at first, then hundreds. Their ember-flesh glowed with infernal heat, muscles stretched tight over burning bone, and their claws curved like scythes. Their jaws gnashed with fanglike blades, leaving trails of smoke as they moved.
They didn't charge blindly, they hunted, encircling Taufik with eerie coordination, forming concentric kill-packs. From every angle, they lunged.
Taufik stood at the center of the storm.
There was no escape. No opening.
But Taufik didn't need one.
Not just cloaked in it, not using it, he was the shadow itself. It embraced him like a second skin, no, like a lover, no, like his truest self.
The shadows swallowed his form, his body unraveling into misty silhouettes, intangible and untouchable.
Fangs tore, claws shredded, fire burned, but none touched flesh. They struck something, but it wasn't Taufik. It was an illusion. It was a shadow.
They howled in frustration, piling on him until his body was no longer visible, just a mound of seething hounds and black-red violence.
They thought they had pinned him.
They thought they could hold him off.
A sound like tearing silk.
From within the swarm, massive shadow needles exploded outward, impaling multiple beasts at once.
Again... another volley.
Again... the rhythm of death.
Over and over until the ground was littered with the bodies of the fallen, twitching and smoking.
Then the shadows slithered over the corpses, melting like tar and flowing back into a single shape.
Taufik stood among the dead, his clothes spotless, his skin unmarred, his expression... bored.
He gazed at Gusion with eyes of cold judgment.
"... Do you think trapping me here would let your forces win outside? That this was clever?" Taufik asked, voice low, sharp.
Gusion's silence was answer enough. That was exactly his plan. A gamble, and a desperate one.
"I gave you a chance," Taufik continued, voice devoid of malice, just disappointment. "And this... this is your answer? Summoning hellhounds like a cornered dog?"
He tilted his head slightly.
"... I don't even know your name"
Gusion snarled, his pride crumbling.
He'd never felt such powerlessness. He, a Duke of War, brought to the brink of despair by a mortal-turned-something-else.
The fury returned like wildfire.
"...C'mon," Taufik said, spreading his arms slightly, welcoming the attack. "Show me everything you've got"
He surged forward, consumed by rage, everything in his body screaming for destruction.
Gusion's body dissolved mid-air into black mist, and from that mist came a storm.
Shadows of Gusion, appearing in every direction, above, below, behind, beside, all moving at once, faster than thought.
Each blade stroke was a whisper in the wind.
Each motion carved death sigils across Taufik's body, marks in forgotten tongues, scarring the very idea of his life.
"This… is the Hound's Judgment: Relentless End!!"
It was a perfect assassination. An inescapable execution.
The red trails of Gusion's attacks began to stutter… glitch… fade.
Taufik reached out casually and grabbed one of the glowing red trails mid-air.
Like it was a string. Like it was nothing.
Then, the color began to fade, from crimson rage to void-black.
"Concept: Darkness - Override"
The domain shattered like stained glass struck by lightning, each fragment dissolving into oblivion.
All the Gusions evaporated into smoke.
Every blood mark vanished.
And the world bent, warped around him.
Taufik lowered his hand slowly, fingers still smoldering with the aftermath of absolute darkness.
"...I've seen enough," he muttered. "You're a disappointment. Demons at your level… are too weak for me"
The illusion peeled away. The battlefield returned.
Hell roared once more.
Lembuswana and Basukhi circled the sky above like divine sentinels.
Kl'lara stood firm, her Skeleton Army regathering behind her, row after row.
And Taufik stood alone at the heart of devastation, surrounded by the shattered threads of the Predator's Domain.
Before him, Gusion knelt, one hand pressed to the scorched ground. His breath was ragged. His body trembled, not from pain, but from the collapse of his pride.
There were no demon soldiers left.
Gusion lifted his head, red eyes bloodshot with disbelief.
Taufik's voice broke the stillness.
"...You fought a war you were destined to lose," he said quietly.
Gusion didn't respond.
"Sigh... It'll be a quick death..."
Taufik raised his hand, and from the void, a Shadow Blade materialized, wrought not of steel, but of something darker. Deeper.
It shimmered with impossibility.
A weapon carved from the void between stars.
Even Hell itself seemed to pause.
Taufik took a step forward.
Gusion's lips parted.
"...No," he rasped. "I am the hunter. I don't die on my knees-!"
With a final burst of defiance, Gusion lunged. Twin chained daggers lashed forward, crimson like blood-stained fangs.
But he never reached him.
The Shadow Blade passed cleanly through him, not cutting flesh…
…but severing essence.
Gusion's movement halted mid-lunge, suspended in eternity.
His eyes wide, caught between fury... and finality.
A silent inferno erupted from within.
Black flames devoured him.
Taufik stood still as the blade faded into dust.
Behind him, Kl'lara stepped forward, her bone-armored feet echoing against scorched stone.
The Skeleton Army reformed, stronger, more focused, ready.
Above them, Lembuswana and Basukhi landed atop a jagged obsidian cliff, casting down sacred fire and divine breath, bathing the battlefield in a dreadful glow.
The First Circle… was conquered.
Kl'lara's voice broke the silence.
"Are we done here, My lord?"
Taufik didn't answer at first.
His gaze lifted, beyond the haze, beyond the blood-red sky of this level, toward the darkness above.
"... That was only the first layer"
Kl'lara's eyes narrowed. Her hand went to her scythe.
Suddenly, the ground beneath them rumbled.
A deep groan echoed from the pit, and the land split open, revealing a yawning descent, spiraling downward into the Second Circle.
From the abyss… something ancient stirred.
Something that had been watching.