Inside the System Space

Razeal opened his eyes as world around him was silent. Currently standing at the very heart of world of zara, a space that never truly felt real, yet never failed to make his skin prickle with unease. The sky stretched infinitely in all directions, an ocean of black threaded with rivers of starlight. It was beautiful, but in the same way a bottomless pit is beautiful: overwhelming, unfathomable, and utterly hostile to the human heart.

Sometimes he just wondered if that space in system space was artificial too or just fake illusion. Still shaking his head from these unnecessary thoughts.

His gaze drifted upward, and there she was.

Zara. The Strongest mother...

She sat high above on her throne of obsidian stone, carved from the very metal in his bones itself, its surface smooth as a black mirror which he couldn't help but wonder if.. Her ass was so hard that.. well .. One long leg crossed over the other, her posture relaxed yet commanding. Her hair.. jet black, too dark for mortal eyes spilled down like liquid night, catching and reflecting the star-rivers around her so that it shimmered with faint constellations. With her eyes closed, she looked less like a being and more like a force.

Razeal drew a deep, low breath, steadying himself, though sweat already prickled at his temples already tired from what hard work it might take to convince her this time. He wasn't even sure she'd bother lifting a finger for him, let alone help him reattach the arm he'd lost.

[Don't worry, host. I am with you.] System's voice stirred in his head as if to motivate him.

"You don't help shit," Razeal muttered under his breath, rejecting the system outright. The words came out sharper than he intended, but he didn't regret them. He wasn't in the mood for hollow reassurances.

He stood in silence, trying to steady himself, when suddenly the atmosphere shifted.

A wind surged through the void. Fierce. Wild. It came from nowhere and everywhere at once, a storm birthed out of silence. His clothes whipped violently around him, the sleeves snapping like flags, his hair lashed against his forehead. The gale howled, pressing against him with the weight of a collapsing mountain.

And yet he did not move.

His feet dug into ground, his stance unyielding. He felt the force trying to shove him back, to knock him sprawling like a leaf in a storm. But he locked his knees as no expression on his face refusing to yield even an inch.

Above, Zara's eyelids fluttered. Slowly, deliberately, she opened her eyes. They gleamed with a darkness deeper than the nightness surrounding them, sharp enough to cut through his composure. She regarded him with mild curiosity, a faint smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

"Ohhh," she said softly, her voice carrying across the void like silk over steel. "You seem to have grown stronger in such a short time." She tilted her head, watching him withstand the storm. "Last time, you died just from this air flow."

Her tone was playful, mocking almost, as though she were speaking to a child who had finally managed to stand on wobbling legs. She raised her hand lazily, resting her chin against it while her elbow balanced on her crossed knee. Her gaze remained fixed on him, cool and uninterested, as if she were still deciding how someone this unworthy still got the guts to get back after what happened last to time.

Razeal exhaled slowly, the wind dying around him. "Strong bones, I guess," he muttered. His voice was dry, but steady. Without flinching or even shifted an inch. That was definitely some strong wind.

Zara's brow arched, her lips curving faintly. "Strong bones, indeed." Her gaze drifted to his right arm.. or what remained of it. The space where his arm had once been was empty, the sleeve torn and frayed. She studied it with the same expression a sculptor might wear when seeing their work chipped and shattered. "But I wonder… should I be more surprised at your sudden strength, or at the fact that you managed to get those bones cut off?"

"Umm… well, about that… I was just unlucky.. Maybe," Razeal said, not knowing the perfect answer. Of course, She'd be pissed she had put a lot of time into building that skeleton, and in just a week he had broken it.

For a moment, Razeal's thoughts tangled. Wait. What the hell am I even thinking? It wasn't hers.. it's my body, my skeleton. My boness. He shook his head slightly, snapping himself out of it. And honestly situation wasn't as bad as he had first imagined. She was surprisingly casual about it.. he was expecting her to kill him on repeat.. Just for apearing here

Zara, meanwhile, was quiet, her gaze still on him. When she spoke again, her voice was calm, almost casual. "Not so unlucky, I'd say. Perhaps I should be more impressed that you can live after fighting someone strong enough to cut Obsidian Agony itself." She leaned back slightly, her expression unreadable. "You're lucky. But then again…" her eyes narrowed ever so slightly, "dying is a usual thing for you."

Her words pierced deeper than he wanted to admit.

Razeal tried to keep his expression blank, his face unreadable. But a flicker..just a flicker betrayed him. Some small twitch of his eyes, some micro expression he couldn't fully suppress.

Zara caught it instantly.

Her gaze bored though still She leaned forward slightly, her voice dropping into little amusement. "I see. So outside this space… you can indeed die." Her lips curved upward, though there was no warmth in her smile. "And here I thought you were immortal."

Razeal's lips twitched.

"But then again," she continued, her voice light with amusement, "I had suspected as much. Afterall why else would you come crawling to me, begging for scraps of skills?"

"I thought you said this was one of the hardest and sharpest materials in the entire world," Razeal said, voice steady totally trying to cut off her comment, his dark eyes narrowing at her. "So how the hell did it get cut off?"

He didn't care if she had guessed his intent or not. He wasn't here to grovel. He wanted to press her arrogance, to force her to admit something.. anything. After all, she had boasted once that it had taken her eons to forge this obsidian agony metal, Harder than any natural substance? And yet here he stood, missing an arm, proof that someone out there had sliced through her so-called masterpiece like it was nothing.

Shouldn't that sting her pride? Shouldn't she be furious? Shouldn't she at least want to make them better?

And If she was angry, if her ego cracked even slightly, maybe he could use it.

But Zara didn't flinch.

Her answer came soft, measured, and dripping with disappointment. "Do you think becoming the hardest material makes something unbreakable?" Her voice slithered through the silence, cutting colder than any blade. "If that were true, I would have called it the unbreakable metal, not the hardest. Words mean what they mean. You can't twist them into promises they were never meant to keep."

She tilted her head, her eyes half-lidded as if lecturing a child too slow to grasp simple logic. "Don't complain to me, little one. This is not my fault. This is the fault of your illiterate, uneducated mind, incapable of comprehending the difference between hardness and invincibility."

The words hit sharper than steel. Each syllable laced with disdain.

"Huh?"

Razeal's breath caught as he instinctively took a step back. The voice hadn't come from the throne.

His eyes darted up.

The obsidian seat was empty.

Cold dread crept along his spine. He turned slowly, and there she was.. Zara standing right beside him. No sound, no ripple, no warning. She had crossed the entire space between them in less than a blink, and he hadn't noticed. His Flow sense.. always active hadn't stirred. His sharpened hearing hadn't caught a whisper. His instincts hadn't screamed. It was as if reality itself had shifted and decided she had always been there.

And in her hand

Razeal's eyes widened, pupils shrinking to pinpoints.

She was holding a severed arm. His arm.

Blood dripped lazily from it, spattering thick onto the floor of the void. The jet-black skeleton beneath the flesh was visible at the break, a clean, impossibly smooth cut through the bone. It was polished, seamless, like butter parted by a hot knife.

Zara turned the arm in her hand, studying it with idle curiosity. Her gaze lingered on the bone, blinking once, slowly, as though examining a piece of jewelry rather than a part of his body.

Razeal's heart slammed against his ribs. His gaze dropped to his side.

Empty.

His right shoulder was bare, ripped through completely. Not from the elbow. Not halfway. The entire arm.. from the shoulder down was gone. A bloody stump remained, black bone cracked, flesh torn, droplets of red dripping down his torso.

Just when?!

His pupils trembled violently. He could accept not seeing the movements of powerful enemies before. He could accept missing something when he was still weak. But now? After everything he had endured? After all his growth? After becoming something more than human?

And yet she had done it. She had taken his arm, without him even realizing his limb was gone.

His mind raced.

How fast was she?

He hadn't sensed it. Not through his Flow, not through sound, not through instinct. Did she move beyond sound itself? Did she sever the obsidian skeleton without producing so much as the whisper of impact? How had she even appeared beside him without the air itself trembling?

This wasn't just power. This was nonsensical. Impossible. Beyond the scale he could measure.

The distance between him and SS-rank was already massive. But this? This wasn't distance. This was a void. A canyon deeper than anything he could imagine.

Zara tilted the severed limb in her fingers, letting the blood slide off in droplets that splattered against the ground. Then she slowly turned her head toward him.

"What? You looked shocked?" she asked softly, mockery dripping from every syllable. "Did you thought you could resist me? Wait you thought you could fight back? Just because you didn't die a moment ago?"

A smile tugged at her lips, sharp and merciless.

Razeal didn't answer. He couldn't. His fists clenched, his remaining hand curling tight enough that nails dug into flesh. His pride.. it burned, cracked, twisted inside him. He was still too weak. Far, far too weak. It was making him disgusted.

Her smirk widened, delighted at his silence.

"Awww…" She tilted her head, swinging the severed arm lightly as if it were no heavier than a child's toy. "Did I break the little pride of this little boy?"

Blood splattered with every lazy swing. A spray of crimson droplets landed across his face, hot and wet. He didn't dodged or even resisted. Only closing his eyes, feeling the warmth run down his cheek, before opening them again, staring coldly back at her.

Her smile only widened further.

Still holding his arm by the shoulder joint, she lifted it higher, dangling it like a stick meant to humiliate him.

"So," she said at last, voice smooth and dripping with mock interest, "what did you come here for? Surely not to complain about your precious bones breaking? Surely not to cry that my masterpiece wasn't enough to save your pitiful self?"

She leaned closer, her breath ghosting across his face, her finger pressing to her own chin. Blood from the arm smeared across her jawline, but she didn't care. She looked radiant in cruelty, amused in his suffering.

"I thought you would never dare show your face to me again."

Her eyes narrowed slightly, dark gleam flickering. "Ohhh… what were your last words to me again?"

Her voice lowered into a sing-song whisper, dangerous and mocking, savoring each word.

"F. U. C. K. Y. O. U. C. R. A. Z. Y. B. I. T. C. H."

She spoke each letter slowly, carefully, relishing the memory. Every syllable dripped venom, her lips curling wider with each one.

And at the final word, her dangerous smile broke into a grin. A grin full of malice, delight, and dominance.

Razeal didn't move or blink. His fists trembled, not from fear, but from rage, from humiliation, from the weight of reality pressing on him again and again.

He said nothing. He only stared into her endless black eyes, blood dripping down his cheek, jaw locked, silent in defiance.

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