Super God Academy: Kabuto

The air in the Fraser battlefield—if a vacuum can be called air—is being torn apart by two forces.

On one side was a viscous, plague-like, eerie blue, within which the whispers of the triangular beings wove a web, each pulse sending morbid ripples through the space itself. On the other side were cold, silvery-white, sacred flames, where angels burned their wings and convictions, waging a near-self-destructive resistance within the framework of the Annihilation Protocol.

Just as this tragic balance at the two extremes of the spectrum was about to collapse—

"Oh dear."

A voice rang out.

It doesn't exist through sound waves, nor does it rely on dark communication, nor is it even a matter of mental transmission. It simply "exists," like a comment directly written into the very fabric of reality, clear, abrupt, and with a certain cynical accuracy, falling into the consciousness of everyone capable of perceiving the "abnormal" existence.

"Looks like I've stumbled upon a rather unpleasant 'bonfire party'."

On the edge of the battlefield, space itself seemed to groan in reluctance.

It felt as if someone had scribbled a stroke on a classic war painting with an oil pastel brush—a magenta, noisy ripple spread out of nowhere, brutally covering the originally ghastly background of interwoven dark blue and silver-white. From the center of the ripple, a figure "walked" out as easily as if stepping out of his own doorstep.

Tsukasa Kadoya.

His magenta suit was spotless, his black tie hung loosely around his neck, and he casually held an old-fashioned camera in his right hand. He stood still, his gaze sweeping across the battlefield. His posture was not like that of a warrior who had entered hell, but rather like that of a tourist who had lost his way on a film set, even carrying a hint of "this set is quite realistic."

His gaze slid over the taut wings of the angel array, swept over the fleshy, lumpy nozzles of the triangular mothership that were wriggling and spraying spores, and finally settled steadily on Lancang.

The Abyss Vanguard, which had just forced Angel Yan to activate the "Annihilation Protocol," was now hovering at the center of its biofield, its three pairs of compound eyes like six cold sapphire lenses, reflecting the uninvited guest who had suddenly intruded.

Lan's reaction was purely biological instinct—a condensed, almost invisible, azure spiritual spike was generated and launched within a fraction of a second. This was not an attack, but a probe, its way of understanding unfamiliar existence: analyzing, decomposing, archiving, or... erasing.

The mental spike struck Tsukasa Kadoya between the eyebrows.

Then, it slid open.

Like water flowing through glass, like light shooting into a black hole, not even a ripple was stirred. Tsukasa Kadoya didn't even blink. He merely tilted his head slightly, as if his vision had been disturbed by an insignificant flying insect. His gaze remained fixed on Lan Cang, and the ambiguous smile on his lips remained unchanged.

"That's a really unfriendly way to say hello." He spoke, his voice ringing out clearly in the vacuum through some kind of physics-defying mechanism. He raised his left hand, waving the magenta camera, the lens pointed at Lan's massive frame. "Look this way, everyone, give me a smile? After all..."

He pressed the shutter.

Click.

There were no flashes of light, no mechanical sounds, but a certain "concept" was captured.

"...A Kamen Rider who passes by should always be left with some souvenir."

For the first time, Lan's six compound eyes flashed synchronously at a high frequency. It wasn't anger, but a deeper confusion—its mental probes weren't reporting "unanalyzable," but rather a more bizarre "self-contradiction." The existence data of this tiny creature before it constantly contradicted itself in its perception: it was both a physical entity and a phantom, it had energy reactions yet seemed like an absolute vacuum, and even its timeline presented a strange closed loop.

Its biological instincts led it to choose the most direct response.

kill.

hum-

The platform beneath Lan, composed of living tissue, suddenly exploded! It wasn't an explosion, but a proliferation. Thousands of enormous tentacles, covered in eerie light and equipped with segmented barbs and suckers, surged forth like a swarm of predators erupting from the deep sea, simultaneously attacking Tsukasa Kadoya from all dimensions—up, down, left, right, past, and future (a kind of time-predictive attack)! The tips of each tentacle vibrated at a high frequency, tearing through space and scattering fine, eroding void spores.

At the same time, its three pairs of compound eyes blazed with light so intensely they were almost burning, and an unprecedented mental storm took shape—not attacking any individual, but creating a "logic dead zone" around Tsukasa Kadoya. Within this zone, cause and effect were reversed, senses were confused, and even the concept of "self" would rapidly dissolve. Several small triangular ships that had gotten too close were instantly engulfed in infighting and self-destruction after being swept away by the aftershocks.

Faced with this deadly net that could instantly destroy the fourth generation of divine bodies, Tsukasa Kadoya... yawned.

It's not a metaphor.

He actually raised his free hand, the one not holding the camera, covered his mouth, and let out a small yawn. Then, just as the first tentacle was about to touch the tip of his hair—

A magenta Decade Driver appeared out of thin air at his waist.

His movements were as casual as pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He picked up a card with a magenta background and dark gold patterns around the edges with two fingers, flipped it half a turn between his fingertips, and inserted it into the driver.

"Kamen Ride".

"Decade".

There were no exciting sound effects, no dazzling light and shadow bursts. Only a thin layer of magenta-colored light, like mercury, emanated from the center of the driver, instantly enveloping the entire body. When the light faded, Tsukasa Kadoya, dressed in a suit and tie, had disappeared, replaced by Kamen Rider Decade—Basic Form, with sharp features and compound eyes.

He stood still.

The first tentacle struck his chest.

clang!

The clang of metal clashing (though Decade's armor wasn't metal) exploded, and the violent shockwave blew away the floating wreckage of the nearby warships. Decade slid back half a step, leaving a white mark on his chest armor—that was all.

The second, the third… countless tentacles followed, weaving into an impenetrable web of death. The mental dead zone began to erode the armor's surface, and void spores attached themselves, emitting a sizzling sound of corrosion.

The Imperial Knight finally moved.

He simply took a step forward.

It's not dodging, it's not blocking, it's just the simplest and most direct thing... moving forward.

The moment the web of tentacles touched his body, it began to "collapse." It wasn't severed or evaporated, but rather the biological tissues that made up the tentacles, the energy circuits, and even the information structures that carried its attack intent, all spontaneously became disordered and chaotic, ultimately dissipating into a meaningless stream of particles the instant they touched that thin layer of magenta light.

He passed through the web of tentacles as if passing through a bluffing holographic projection.

Lan's compound eyes blinked at their peak frequency, an overload response to its biological logic's inability to handle the current situation. It finally gave up its probing and suppression, and its massive body began to shrink and solidify. The patterns on its dark blue scales seemed to come alive as they moved and converged on its chest—where a dark "core" that seemed to absorb all light was taking shape.

The Void Resonance Core. It is a weapon bestowed upon it by the will of the abyss, truly touching the level of rules. Once released, it is enough to drag the entire star field into a brief but deadly state of "reality dissociation".

The Imperial Cavalry stopped a hundred meters in front of Lancang—which, by that measure, was practically within arm's reach.

He raised his right hand, guiding the card-shaped sword into his palm. In his left hand, another card appeared. This card was different; instead of a knight silhouette, it depicted a simple, magenta slashing totem tearing through the darkness.

"Attack Ride".

"Slash".

As he pronounced the syllables, the card was inserted into the drive's side slot.

There was no charging up, no wind-up animation. The Imperial Knight simply swung his sword in an unremarkable manner.

A fine, hair-thin, magenta-colored slash, detached from the sword tip, extended forward.

It moved "slowly," so slowly that every eye on the battlefield could see its trajectory. But along its path, space itself experienced a "fault"—not a shattering, but rather like a scroll sliced ​​open by a paper cutter, with subtle misalignments and color differences appearing on either side. The tentacles attempting to block the slash, the bio-force field, and even the triangular warships that Lan had urgently mobilized, all vanished silently, like pencil marks erased by an eraser, the moment they touched this "line."

The void resonance core in front of Lan's chest has expanded to a critical point.

The cutting line has been reached.

contact.

There was no explosion.

There was no light.

There was only a soft "click," like the first crack appearing in glass.

Lan's massive body froze.

A thin, magenta crack appeared on the surface of the dark core on its chest, which was about to erupt. The crack spread rapidly, covering the entire surface of the core like the crackled glaze of porcelain. The violently surging void energy inside the core leaked out through these cracks, but no longer as destructive shockwaves; instead, it transformed into disordered, dissipating light dust.

Lan lowered her head and looked at her chest. For the first time, her compound eyes reflected an emotion that seemed to be "incomprehensible".

Then, the core shattered.

It wasn't an explosion, it shattered. Like a broken black crystal, it disintegrated into countless lifeless fragments, slowly drifting away in the void. At the core, a hollowed-out cavity with crimson embers burning at its edges remained, piercing straight through its body from front to back.

Lan opened its massive jaws, filled with sharp teeth, as if to roar or unleash a final mental attack.

But Decade didn't give it a chance.

At the same instant the core shattered, he appeared on the side of Lancang's head, wielding the tip of the Card Box Sword, and lightly touched the surface of the compound eye at its very center.

"Shhh."

A calm voice came from beneath the mask.

The sword tip was thrust forward.

puff.

A soft sound, like the puncture of a water sac.

The massive body of Lan came to an abrupt halt. The eerie blue light rapidly faded from its six compound eyes, and the flowing patterns on its body surface stiffened and dimmed. The biomass that made up its body began to lose its activity at a visible rate, turning grayish-white and brittle, and finally, under the pull of its own gravity and the disturbance of residual energy, it disintegrated into a drifting cloud of dust.

The Abyss Vanguard, who once commanded a fleet and forced the angels to activate the Annihilation Protocol, has fallen silently.

Imperial Knight sheathed his sword, turned around, and looked at the Triangular Fleet in the distance, which had fallen into chaos due to the sudden death of its commander, and further away, at the tense Angel Warriors who had not yet recovered from the shock.

His compound eyes swept across the battlefield, and finally, it seemed to gaze into the distance at the shadows of the Kuiper Belt at the edge of deep space—where, a more immense will seemed to stir slightly.

"Warm-up complete."

Decade (Tsukasa Kadoya)'s voice rang out again, clearly conveying this assessment to the senses of everyone involved. He raised his hand and lightly flicked away non-existent dust from the chest armor.

"So, next..." His gaze fell on the triangular fleet that was beginning to spiral out of control but whose numbers were still terrifying, and his tone became relaxed again, even with a hint of anticipation.

"It's time to clean up this rather unsanitary 'beach'."