Absolute Being: I Am Nothing Chapter 32

The punch wasn’t a flash of light or a wave of power. It was a solid, clean hit, knuckles to jaw, that sounded like a rock splitting. Lionhead’s head snapped to the side. He didn’t stumble. He just slowly turned it back, a thin line of blood at the corner of his mouth. He looked at Rebecca, then licked the blood away.

"Good," he said. "Anger’s a start."

Rebecca didn’t answer. She came at him again, a blur of motion. He caught her next punch in his palm, his hand swallowing her fist. He tried to twist, to throw her, but she was already gone, sliding out of his grip and driving her elbow toward his throat. He blocked with his forearm, the impact cracking the marble floor beneath their feet.

"Stop this!" roared Valen’s duke.

Neither looked at him.

Lionhead shoved forward, a simple, brutal push that should have sent Rebecca flying through the wall. Instead, the space around her seemed to die the moment his force touched it, dissipating the energy into nothing. She used the opening, her foot snapping up toward his temple.

He leaned back, grabbed her ankle, and slammed her down into the throne room floor. Stone erupted.

She didn’t stay down. The stone where she landed turned to grey dust. She rose from the crater, her eyes completely black. "You don’t get to hold me down."

"Fine," Lionhead grunted.

He didn’t use fancy energy attacks. He didn’t summon weapons. He just charged, a mountain of muscle and intent. He threw a straight punch. Rebecca dodged, but the air pressure from the missed blow blasted a column behind her to rubble.

She appeared behind him, a dagger of solidified void forming in her hand, stabbing for his kidney. His elbow shot back, deflecting the blade with a shower of sparks, and he spun, his other fist aimed at her chest.

She crossed her arms. The hit landed.

BOOM.

She skidded back, feet carving trenches in the floor, but didn’t fall. She lowered her arms, her expression colder. "You hit like a truck."

"You’re still standing," Lionhead noted. "Annoying."

He came again. This was a street fight scaled up to god-level. No beams of light. No shouting attacks. Just brutal, efficient violence. He grappled her, trying to use his size to crush her. She became fluid, slipping through his holds, her own strikes aimed at joints, pressure points, the eyes. Every time he landed a hit, the area around the impact withered and died, weakening the force. Every time she landed a hit, his body corrected itself, bones realigning, bruises vanishing as if they’d never been out of place.

They crashed through the throne room wall, out into the open sky above the capital. The dukes rushed to the gaping hole.

"Should we—" Ironcrest began.

Alex held up a hand. Silver-white hair flowing, his eyes glowed with a soft, steady light. "No. You’ll die." He focused, and a transparent, shimmering dome of solidified reality expanded from him, encasing the entire palace district below. "I’ll make sure the city doesn’t get erased. You all stay here."

Adam strolled to the edge of the hole, watching the two figures streak across the sky, trailing shockwaves. He cupped his hands around his mouth. "Hey, Becky! His left leg’s favoring the knee a bit! He’s old! Work it!"

In the sky, Rebecca heard him. She feinted high, then dropped, sweeping at Lionhead’s left knee with a leg wrapped in death-energy. He anticipated it, jumping over the sweep, but she was already rising, a fist aimed at his jaw. He blocked, but the sheer kinetic force, focused into a point by her will, cracked the air and sent him spinning backward.

He righted himself, hovering. A thin line was now bleeding on his forehead. "Pointers from the void. Cute."

"He’s not wrong, you’re slow!" Rebecca shot back, breathing harder now.

"Slow gets the job done."

He didn’t chase her. He pointed a finger at the space she occupied. "Anchor."

The very concept of ’movement’ in that area locked down. Rebecca froze in mid-air, trapped by an immutable law.

"Cheap trick!" Adam yelled from the palace. "That’s not a real fight!"

Lionhead ignored him, flying toward the immobilized Rebecca, fist pulled back for a finishing blow.

Rebecca’s black eyes blazed. "I am the end of all things," she whispered. "Including your rules."

The anchor holding her died. She dropped for a fraction of a second, then shot upward, meeting his charge head-on.

Their fists collided.

The sound wasn’t loud. It was a deep, terrible thud that vibrated in the bones of everyone in the capital. The sky above them fractured like glass, showing brief glimpses of swirling grey void.

They broke apart, both breathing heavily now, circling each other over the outer ring of the city, near the massive defensive walls.

"Getting tired, old man?" Rebecca taunted, a feral grin on her face. It was the first real emotion she’d shown since the fight started.

"Just warming up," Lionhead growled. He looked down at the city below, at the panicking citizens, at the soldiers forming up on the walls. His expression hardened. "Enough playing over the nursery."

He dove, not at her, but toward the open ground just outside the city walls—the massive training fields used for legion drills.

Rebecca followed without hesitation.

They hit the ground in simultaneous impacts that sent concentric rings of dirt and stone exploding outward. Alex, high above, grimaced and strengthened his dome, containing the blast to the field.

Now on solid ground, the fight changed. Lionhead used the terrain. He ripped a colossal stone pillar—a marker from the field’s edge—from the earth and swung it like a club. Rebecca didn’t dodge. She extended a hand, and the pillar crumbled to dust halfway through its arc.

He was already on her, using the dust cloud as cover. A grapple, a twist, and he hurled her through three consecutive stone barrack buildings. They exploded in clouds of debris.

She exploded out of the third building, covered in dust but unhurt, flying back toward him. He caught her, and they went down in a tangle of limbs, rolling across the field, each trying to get leverage, punching, kicking, elbowing. It was ugly, personal, and devastating. The ground around them churned into a crater.

"Kick his ribs!" Adam shouted, leaning out of the palace hole like he was watching a boxing match. "He’s open on the right! See it?"

Rebecca saw it. As they rolled, she drove her knee into Lionhead’s exposed side. There was a sickening crack. He grunted in pain, his grip slackening for a split second.

She used it. She got on top, pinning him, her hands wrapped around his throat. Not to choke. To inject death.

His eyes widened as the cold, final energy began to seep into him. His body fought it, his Order nature trying to reject the foreign ending, to re-establish the law of ’Lionhead lives.’

"It’s over," she hissed, her face inches from his.

He looked up at her, his expression unreadable. Then, he smiled. It was a tired, almost sad smile. "You still fight like you have something to prove."

He planted his feet and bucked, throwing her off with a surge of raw, physical strength that had nothing to do with concepts. As she flew back, he was on his feet, one hand pressed to his injured side. The wound was already sealing, the ribs snapping back into place with audible pops.

"You want me to hurt?" he said, his voice carrying across the shattered field. "You want me to feel what you felt? I can’t. I’m Order. Pain is just a system error. Grief is corrupted data. I deleted those files a long time ago."

Rebecca landed, skidding to a halt. Her rage, which had been white-hot, suddenly went cold. Ice cold. She understood now. He wasn’t taunting her. He was stating a fact.

"You’re not a person," she said, her voice flat.

"I’m a function," he agreed. "And my function is to protect this empire. Even from you."

He raised both hands toward the sky. The air above the training field began to warp, golden lines of energy—like the threads of a colossal tapestry—weaving together. "Enough. This disorder ends now."

He was going to impose his absolute Order on the entire area, to freeze her in a cage of unbreakable law.

Rebecca didn’t try to interrupt him. She just stood up straight, brushed the dust from her clothes, and looked at him with those endless, dark eyes.

"Adam," she said, her voice calm.

"Yeah?" Adam called from miles away.

"Can you break his concentration?"

Adam grinned. "Can I? Watch this."

Lionhead frowned, his weaving of Order continuing. Then, he blinked. The golden thread he was about to place... wasn’t there. He reached for another foundational law. It was missing. Like a word on the tip of his tongue that had vanished.

He looked down at his hands. The logic of the spell was unraveling. Not being destroyed. Being unmade. The very principles he was using were ceasing to be valid options.

He looked toward the palace, where Adam stood waving.

"Stop cheating!" Lionhead shouted, genuine frustration in his voice for the first time.

"Not cheating!" Adam yelled back. "Just editing the rules! It’s a public domain!"

The distraction was all Rebecca needed. While Lionhead was trying to reformulate his Order-weaving with laws that still existed, she closed the distance one last time.

This time, she didn’t punch or kick.

She simply placed her palm on his chest, right over his heart.

"Sleep," she said.

It wasn’t an attack. It wasn’t death.

It was a command, from Death itself. A gentle, irresistible suggestion to the very concept of ’Lionhead’ to... pause. To rest. To be still.

Lionhead’s eyes widened. He tried to resist, to assert his own law of being awake, of being active. But the command seeped in, a quiet, final whisper that bypassed his defenses because it wasn’t trying to break them. It was just offering an alternative.

His golden light flickered. His massive frame swayed. His eyes, filled with shock and a strange, dawning understanding, slowly closed.

General Lionhead, the Shield of the Empire, the Absolute Order, collapsed to his knees, then slumped forward onto the churned earth, unconscious.

Silence fell over the training field, broken only by the settling dust.

Rebecca stood over him, looking down at her oldest enemy, defeated not by overwhelming power, but by a single, perfect word.

From the palace, Alex let out a long sigh of relief, his glowing dome flickering out.

Adam clapped slowly, the sound echoing strangely across the distance. "Not bad, Becky. A little sentimental at the end, but not bad."

Rebecca didn’t smile. She just stared at Lionhead’s still form. The rage was gone. All that was left was a cold, hollow emptiness.

She had won.

It didn’t feel like she thought it would.