The Hollow Belly

Kazami exhaled sharply. 

"You know… what you said before. That a Leere isn't a weapon. It's a mirror. A reflection of who we are, what we crave—what we fear."

He finally spoke. "Back then, I didn't get it. I thought you were just talking down to us. But now… I understand."

He lifted his blade, watching as the dim light danced along its glass edges. Before there was no edge, no steel. Only a hilt, empty and weightless in his grip.

A Leere was supposed to be the manifestation of one's deepest self, yet up until now, whenever he looked deep inside of himself, he saw nothing.

That was the truth, wasn't it?

He had always held himself back.

His mind drifted, unbidden, to the past.

Back in the day, he had always been behind.

No matter how hard he tried, he could never catch up. When his friends ran, he trailed at the back, lungs burning, legs trembling. When they studied, he watched from the sidelines, stuck in a hospital bed, textbooks left untouched as days bled into weeks. His body was weak and fragile–a limitation that no amount of effort could overturn.

And the worst part? They never really noticed his existence.

They never had to slow down for him, to struggle just to keep up. He was the only one who had to reach, stretch, grasp for a place he could never quite reach.

So he learned.

If he couldn't keep up, then he'd copy them. Their movements, their mannerisms, the way they thought and acted amongst eachothers. If he mimicked them well enough, maybe—just maybe—he could trick himself into thinking he belonged.

But it had never been enough.

No matter how well he imitated them, he was never truly one of them. His body remained weak. His efforts remained insufficient. The gap never closed. He was always just a step too slow, a little too late, always falling behind.

That was the real reason his emotions was unstable.

He had spent his whole life trying to be someone else. Trying to become like the people he admired, instead of becoming something more.

And that was where he had been wrong.

"I've always wondered—if I ran a hundred yards with 'everything I had,' why would I still have strength left in the end? If I truly gave it my all, I wouldn't even be able to stand after that last step."

That was just how humans were. They clung to survival, whether they wanted to or not. No matter how much one swore to push themselves to the limit, the body would resist, hoarding a sliver of strength, an unconscious safeguard. The brain—selfish, calculating—would always hold something back. Call it instinct. Call it fear.

The fear of not knowing when his body would give out. He had to live with it throughout his childhood.

Kazami's Leere had always been an ever-changing blade because deep down, he had never been willing to break free from his own self-doubt. He was scared but it wasn't because of his weak body, but rather it was the fear of failure.

But now… now he understood.

If he wanted to surpass them, he couldn't just copy them. He needed to become something beyond them.

He needed to tear apart every restraint, strip himself of every hesitation. His body had always been weak—but if he could take their strengths, study them, break them down and fuse them into something new, then weakness wouldn't matter.

He would carve out a strength that was his and his alone.

"No way. Then you…" Esmeray stammered.

"Right." Kazami inhaled, slow and deep. His pulse pounded in his ears. "My power never changed—I just learned how to shatter the restraint holding its creativity back."

He had always known his limits better than anyone.

He wasn't like Decker, who had immense close combat strength.

He wasn't Ji-Soon, who gambled with fate itself, using whatever versatility it had to outsmart his opponent.

He wasn't Emiko, whose scars probably ran deeper than she let on.

Kazami was just Kazami—a boy who had never been meant to even live for as long as he did.

And yet, he was alive now.

The first time he had grasped his own heart, it felt unnatural, unwelcoming. He felt that the others around him had wielded their void within them as an extension of their will, but he felt as if his own soul had rejected him. As if it had been waiting—waiting for him to listen, to understand. Almost.

If he wanted to stand among them, to fight alongside them, to matter—he had to become something else.

For one minute—sixty fleeting seconds—Kazami would discard every safeguard, every ounce of self-preservation. He would tear through his own limits, not with talent but with will alone.

His body would break. His bones would strain. His nerves would scream. But in that single, burning minute, he would be unstoppable.

"This is my strongest technique... Perfect Mimicry."

That was Kazami's answer. Not genius. Not destiny. Just an unrelenting refusal to be left behind.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"You putrid imitation! The weak and undeserving are only good as corpses!" Esmeray roared.

The air around him writhed as the ashes of the meat dome curled upward, coiling around his arms like twin serpents. With a flex of his fingers, the cinders hardened into jagged, pulsing gauntlets, ember-veined and hungry.

"My Heart of Ash will beat you down to a bloody, pulpy puddle!" he spat, launching forward like a bullet.

Kazami met him head-on, matching his opponent's pace. Their clash sent out a shockwave, his blade screaming as it scraped against Esmeray's fist.

Sparks flew as the shifting ash grated against the glassy steel, but Kazami pressed in, gritting his teeth as his blade dug into the thick layer of meat shielding Esmeray's arm. For a split second, Kazami saw human flesh. He swung deeper.

But his blade was stopped. 

Not against bone, not against muscle—against something else. His bare hand? No. The moment stretched, a sickening heat radiating from where steel met skin. Then, a grin split Esmeray's face.

From behind, Junyo's voice rang out.

"Kazami! He's got a second layer of defence!"

A thick, dough-like layer coated his arms, splitting under the blade's edge but refusing to tear, stretch, reforming, hardening like old scars. Sparks sprayed, but they weren't from metal—they were from the friction of something abrasive and unnatural, flesh reshaped by sheer will.

Then, a flick of Esmeray's wrist—an explosion of ash, surging toward Kazami's stomach like a whip of serrated wind.

Kazami twisted away, but the same thought lodged itself in his mind, flashing over and over again.

'He's really different. The man in front of me is no longer the same man before.'

Esmeray wasn't defending—he was surviving. Like a child fighting for his life.

Like an animal, backed into a corner, biting, clawing, covered in the same rotting hide that had once shielded a starving boy from a hunter's grip.

Kazami knew he shouldn't be hesitating, yet it was as if he could feel his opponent's pain with every slash he inflicted on his body. He twisted, barely a breath between him and death.

He kicked off the cavern floor, the force of his retreat cracking the stone beneath his boots. The moment the ash cloud veered toward him, he slashed mid-air, redirecting the storm back at its master.

Esmeray tanked it. The razor-dust carved into his flesh, but he barely flinched. He grinned, lips curling over his teeth.

"Tch." He rolled his shoulder, blood darkening the soot coating his skin. "I promise you, this will be your grave. Your cheap imitation of power will only take you so far."

Then he was there.

Kazami barely registered the shift in weight before Esmeray's right hook came for his jaw, a comet of refinded power trailing a tail of blackened ash.

In that blink of time, a tear split open in the air.

A gaping wound in reality swallowed the attack whole.

From Kazami's peripheral stepped a figure, her silhouette sharp against the dark. Her eyes burned like embers, hair snapping in the wake of the rupture—as if the world itself exhaled around her.

"Kazami, move."

No hesitation. He sucked in a sharp breath. "Got it."

Esmeray staggered, a flicker of something—pain, surprise—crossing his face before twisting into a snarl. "More rats in my kitchen?!" he spat. "I'll exterminate you!"

He spun—left hook, then right. A twin storm of writhing ash, hungry and seething, spiralling toward them like swarms of gnawing locusts.

The blade slashed once.

The air caved inward.

A pocket of nothingness expanded—silent, effortless, final. Like a vacuum swallowing fire, the storm simply ceased to be. The ash twisted, caught in its pull, and then it was gone.

"Impossible." The starved tyrant murmured under his breath.

In an instant, Kazami closed the gap between him and his opponent, slashing him diagonally across his torso. The attack did not stop there, as Kazami butted an elbow into Esmeray's chest, knocking him backwards. 

However, the attack left no mark on his body, as the damage simply shed from his body like how a snake sheds off its skin. 

Suddenly, an explosion went off just as Esmeray started to find his footing. 

Boom.

A hidden charge detonated at his feet, a precise explosion at just the right angle to force him off balance. bombs were layered, unseen, a lattice of traps cutting off escape routes. 

"The invisible bastard," Esmeray grunted. 

Although he could not see him, Kazami was sure that Kompto was waving to him. Kazami turned to face Esmeray again before charging in once more. 

"You don't get to stand in front of me!" Bitterness clung to every word, thick and suffocating. "Not you. Not someone who—"

A bullet tore past his cheek.

Ji-Soon grinned, his revolver still smoking. "Didn't see that one coming, huh?"

"Cockroaches! They just don't stay dead!" Esmeray snarled, twisting just as Ji-Soon loaded another chamber, flicking in a different, heavier round. The cylinder spun—pure chance deciding the next shot.

Tang-Ji clicked the switch on her jade shears, causing Esmeray to rise slowly, but not of his own volition. "How do you like zero gravity?" she quipped. "Now! While he's immobilised!" 

"You call this strength?" Kazami exhaled, steadying his stance. His grip tightened on his glass blade. "You're alone, an animal being manipulated by its master. You always have been."

His brow furrowed fiercely. "Because I had to be!" The ashen beast growled as the black fog around everyone intensified, blurring reality as if they were trapped in a smoke chamber.

"I built myself from nothing! No one held my hand! No one gave me strength—I took it! I earned this and therefore, I will devour those that I deem unworthy!" 

His movements grew more erratic, desperation bleeding into fury.

Another bomb went off at his back.

Esmeray recoiled, Kompto's traps forcing him into predictable motion. Another gunshot rang out—Ji-Soon's bet landing true. The bullet hit hard, staggering Esmeray just enough for Kazami's next strike to slip through, carving another wound deep into his shoulder.

As Kazami closed in for another attack, Tang-Ji reset the gravity, cutting off his escape route again, and again, and again, allowing Kazami's sword to finally nick at his bare skin.

The health bar above Esmeray's head flickered erratically, plummeting to a dangerously low level before immediately shooting back up to full as though being manipulated by some unseen force.

It was a strange, mechanical rhythm—a continuous cycle of drop and restore, drop and restore, the speed almost unnatural, as if someone were tampering with the system in real-time.

Each time the bar dipped, it would pulse a sickly red, only to flash back to green, full and bright, but never for long. It felt like a glitch in the game, a cruel trick being played on the players' expectations.

Around him, the others weren't so lucky. Junyo's eyes darted between them, panic slowly creeping into his chest as their health bars dwindled steadily, little by little, under the toxic grip of the poison gas creeping through the air. Each second, their health steadily sank, but for Esmeray, the system had kept him suspended in a loop of fleeting recovery.

"I'm not going to be able to keep you guys up any longer," Junyo's voice cracked slightly, a raw edge creeping in as he glanced nervously at the ever-decreasing numbers above their heads. His fingers tightened around the controls of Leere, his face drawn with frustration and exhaustion. 

He wiped a hand across his face. "I'm running out of mana! You need to get out of there!" Desperation clung to his words, but there was no way to mask the truth–they were running out of time. 

"They're restricting my movements! Cunning little rats!" Esmeray agonised. "The copycat especially. He's no longer just a copycat. He's taking my skills and making them harder, better, faster… stronger." Esmeray's brow furrowed in anger.

Kazami grunted as he countered a physical strike, pushing back against Esmeray with ease thanks to his new ability and Tang-Ji's change in gravity. However, this song and dance could not last forever. He and every body else was on a strict timer. 

"Kompto!" Junyo's voice called from somewhere hidden. "Fall back! We need your help!"

Although he couldn't see him, Kazami could tell that Kompto was conflicted on leaving the beast for two exhausted hunter. "Go!" Tang-Ji yelled. "We've got this!"

Kompto nodded, although nobody would have noticed it. "If I get the chance, I'll come back," he said softly as his presence disappeared from the frontline. 

As Tang-Ji blocked more projectiles, Kazami considered whether letting him go was such a good idea anymore, as without Kompto's pressure, Esmeray once again had free reign to escape wherever he wanted. Kazami steadied himself. "Just means I'll just have to chase him down faster," he grimaced.

Esmeray grunted as he dodged another swing. "I don't know why you bother trying. I can sense you're both reaching your limits," he spat condescendingly. "Like I said, the weak have no place among the strong. I will show you what strength is."

On Kazami's next attack, Esmeray did nothing and took the full brunt of the attack. Esmeray looked down at him, sending a twang of panic into Kazami's soul. Kazami drew his sword from Esmeray's body and slashed him again as he stood idle. "What? Why is he letting me hit him?" Kazami's thoughts raced.

"No matter how much you cut me, I will simply regenerate," he said, stretching out his arms. "My power far outclasses yours."

Esmeray reached for Kazami's throat, just narrowly missing as Kazami hopped backwards. Esmeray clasped his hand over the empty air. 

"Just before, I hated you, for being a mockery. An… imitator," he pondered. "But now all I have for you is pity. Pity not just because all you're good for is stealing the ideas and techniques of others, but also because you are weak… in the realm of the strong."

Without warning, Esmeray began to float, but this time it was not because of Tang-Ji or any other influence. This was him. Energy vibrated and crackled throughout the cavern as the ground beneath their feet began to rumble with power. 

"This, is the end of all you weaklings," Esmeray shouted, rising higher and higher. "Ultimate Technique, level 10 deployment: 'Dessert: The Candle that Wept.'"

On his command, the raging pillar of fire billowed out brighter from behind him. In an instant, the once purple-bathed walls of the the cavern glowed a fiery gold. Bright, scorching light pooled outward, a luminous wave stretching across the cavern. It was beautiful—brilliant, but fearsome. 

As Esmeray raised his hands above his head, the flames of the pillar intensified, growing larger and hotter, taking on an evil tinge in their embers. From the pillar of flame exploded a hellfire of vicious fireballs. This was the final dish in Esmeray's menu, his magnum opus. 

Kazami turned to Tang-Ji. "I've got one final attack left. I'm gonna use it to hopefully get him in one shot. Or, in the event that it doesn't work, weaken him enough for whatever you're plan is." Kazami grabbed her shoulder gently. "I need you to keep the rocks away from me, okay?."

Tang-Ji nodded, her red eyes full of fire. "I've got your back."

Kazami turned back to face the incoming assault of fireballs. With a short, sharp breath, he leapt into action, pushing his body to its limits using his Leere's ability. As he beelined for Esmeray, Tang-Ji flung dimensional tears all around him, swallowing any fireball that would have hit Kazami. 

Esmeray met Kazami's distant gaze. "You are as crazy as you are insolent," he grumbled. 

As Kazami approached at terminal velocity he clutched his sword, focusing all his mental power into his next technique. "Amplification Technique, deployment level 9: Fleeting Twilight Zone."

Everything was black. 

Esmeray was still, frozen in place in the middle of some… void. It was lightless but not cold. Esmeray looked at his surroundings for any signs of anything, but he was met with silence, a far cry from the roaring pillar of fire that was behind him moments earlier. 

Without warning, the void shuddered. Esmeray's eyes darted around again for any sign of movement. His ears pricked up for any source of sound. His body panicked trying to find anything but himself within the deep, dark void.

The void shuddered. 

He could tell that it shuddered because he felt it in his subconscious. The air was becoming dense and suffocating. The gravity both free and crushing at the same time. He felt like he was both spinning and standing still. 

Once more, the void shuddered. 

Kazami stood tall in the abyss, his silhouette the only presence in the suffocating dark. Esmeray, by contrast, was sinking—slowly, steadily—his body weightless yet tethered by something unseen. A silent gravity pulled him downward, like a man slipping into a dreamless sea.

Kazami's voice cut through the void. "The whole time we've been fighting, I heard it." His fingers clenched around his sword. "Your soul is crying."

Esmeray didn't move. His expression was unreadable, neither anger nor surprise flickering across his face. But Kazami pressed on.

"I don't forgive you." His words were a quiet knife. "I understand your pain, but that doesn't give you the right to judge life. To decide who gets to live or die." His gaze darkened. "You call yourself free, but you're still a slave to your master."

A breath of silence. The abyss pulsed.

Then, a low chuckle. Barely there. Esmeray's lips curled—not in defiance, not in acceptance, but something in between.

"One day, you'll understand." His voice was quiet, calm, like a man stating the inevitable.

"This world is ugly, boy." His gaze lifted, the faintest glint of something—pity? Amusement?—in his eyes.

"Humans… they cannot exist without a master. A god, a ruler, an idea, even a lie. Something to kneel to. Something to shape their will to live."

He let the words settle, watching as Kazami's expression tensed.

Then, with a smirk almost lost in the void, he added, "You think you're different? You are no different to me... we both give into our desires."

The abyss shuddered before abruptly shattered like glass.