The air inside the room had gone still.
Not calm—stilled. In fact, Reoloy struggled to accept that he was still breathing at all. The only movement came in violent, intermittent bursts; flashes of impact that bent space with every collision.
He had come to realise that his opponent was holding him in place with each blow—controlling the battlefield so tightly that even destruction itself seemed filtered, as if the room was being preserved out of sheer discipline.
The perfect butler.
He barely had time to register each exchange.
A step forward—too slow. A breath—stolen. A counter—correct, but irrelevant.
The guardian moved like the idea of distance did not apply to him. Which it didn't. The bastard was using some kind of space attribute mana art.
And every time Reoloy tried to force meaning into the fight—timing, prediction, structure—the guardian responded by stripping those concepts away entirely.
The teen was searching for the perfect opening, a one-shot chance to use the best of his toolkit—but with his enemy seemingly controlling space itself, was that ever going to happen?
'Where's the limit on this?!' he thought, eyes bulging as he suffered yet another brutal gut check.
And as if that wasn't enough, the servant didn't stop there. While Reoloy was still pinned midair, he delivered six rapid, heavy punches to his face—each landing with a harsh crunch and crack—his head held rigidly in place, denying even the natural whiplash that would have followed each blow.
As soon as the spatial hold broke, Reoloy extended his claw, not really expecting it to connect—more to probe the guardian's limits than anything else.
What happened next hit him harder than any of the guardian's punches.
Instead of evading with that same impossible speed, the roomkeeper simply stopped it—dead in space.
He managed a half-step forward before he was swallowed by another onslaught. Fists crashed into him in a relentless barrage—too many to count, too precise to track—his vision fracturing as his eyes rolled back into his head.
Reoloy collapsed, and the dark, helmeted figure stood over him—unmoving, watching, as if asking a silent question: "Will you stand again?"
Fortunately—or unfortunately—the answer was yes for the reincarnator.
Blood spilled from his nose and lips, his face swelling viciously, but he forced himself to stay coherent.
'I'm pretty sure my ribs are broken...' he mused, half trying to downplay the situation. 'Nothing new, really.'
The artificial being had taken to observing first before making any moves.
Was it some kind of mercy?
Reoloy doubted it, but he would make sure to make him regret it.
Employing a strategy that should've become a trademark at this point, he pulled out several spheres, tapped the blinking glass embedded within them, and hurled them forward—triggering a sizeable explosion.
Just as expected, the guardian activated its ability, containing the damage so it couldn't spread beyond the point of impact.
And that distraction was all the boy needed.
"Now!" he yelled, a smile working its way onto his face. "Gaiskas!"
The jester appeared in mana-wreathed glory, hands already forming intricate seals for activation—its gaze sharper, more alert than ever before, as if even it understood this opponent required a different kind of seriousness than anything they had faced so far.
A plethora of red symbols grafted into the air, spiralling together into a sphere from which a great fireball manifested.
The guardian tilted his head slightly, the dark visor of his helmet reflecting the blaze without so much as a flicker of reaction.
And then, just as the fireball began its descent under Gaiskas's command—it vanished, along with the entity that had cast it.
Reoloy's expression dropped, his mouth slightly agape as he stared in disbelief at what had just happened.
"...Gaiskas?"
With no response from the mirror, it became evident that he was truly alone in this one.
He slammed his fist into the floor, letting out a raw roar as he surged forward. His claw was already flickering—unstable, on the verge of failing—meaning he didn't have long left with it either. He needed to end this before everything spiralled further into hell.
The guardian observed his futile charge for a brief moment, absently weaving aside his attacks as though they were little more than background noise. Then, as if coming to a decision, he bent his knees.
A single burst forward.
Space warped.
And Reoloy was seized by the face and dragged through what felt like a distortion in reality itself.
Colours surged past him as he slammed into what felt like panes of glass—but he quickly realised they were condensations of space itself, compressed densely enough to hurt, yet brittle enough to fracture on impact, leaving a sharp residue that dissolved almost instantly.
Before he could adapt, he hit something far harder. His back arched violently as the impact tore through him.
He didn't even get the chance to fall before he was kicked upward—caught by the leg mid-flight, then swung downward like a weapon.
Spit and blood spilled from his lips as he rebounded upward again, but the guardian still wasn't finished.
A kick drove into his stomach, launching him backwards through the shifting spatial layers. In an instant, the guardian appeared above him, grabbed his head, and drove him into the ground just as the central room snapped back into place—the distortion bursting like a bubble around them.
Reoloy's finger twitched, but he couldn't even muster the strength to lift his head—let alone bring his Regalia to life.
Despite the relentless assault that felt designed to end him entirely, the butler once again stood over him, watching in silence.
No matter how he looked at it, he should have died many times over by now.
But not only was the thing using its control to hold him in place, he was also regulating the sheer amount of damage inflicted with absurd precision.
It had taken him being taken around on that colourful trip to finally realise.
"It still hurts like crazy..."
He sat up clumsily, his ears ringing and his legs weak.
"What are you doing?"
Rather than an answer, he was met with a kick to the face.
Yet again, a blow that should have killed him—restrained and controlled down to a minute level.
"Can I at least heal first?"
Another kick.
"This isn't going anywher—"
A backhand.
"What's the point—?"
A two-piece punch crashed into his temples, followed by a toss and then another kick.
Reoloy scrambled helplessly across the floor, looking utterly pathetic beneath the guardian's gaze.
But the butler remained still.
Observing.
"Please..."
The guardian froze, then his head dipped ever so slightly, as if releasing a silent sigh.
Purple lightning arced around his fist, absolutely coating it in its entirety.
He swung.
And as the punch rapidly approached, Reoloy was sure of one thing—this one would not be held back.
The reincarnator couldn't blink before it was set before his face.
Then—
"That's a bummer."
Reoloy sat in a white room.
Black water filled the floor, and he found himself staring with the same fascination Lohan had for her weird little distractions.
"You've almost died more times in three weeks than I did in my entire life."
He turned to the source of the voice, though he had already vaguely recognised it.
"Treat my body gently, please," a doppelganger—or rather, the original—said lightly. "It mattered quite a lot to me, you know."
"What is this?" Reoloy asked dryly. "Mind realm shenanigans again, or am I actually done in this time?"
"Weren't you listening?" the original replied. "I said almost. You really have a one-of-a-kind lucky streak."
"Right... a lucky streak."
"I know what you want to say. 'All this in the tutorial... It's humiliating.' Am I correct?"
Reoloy didn't like that.
He pushed himself to his feet, water rippling around his ankles, frowned, and started walking away.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm not dead. There's no point to being here."
The original smirked following after him.
"But you don't even know the lesson you're meant to learn—"
"I got it already," Reoloy interrupted, glancing back with disinterest. "I've understood, so get lost."
The original Reoloy was taken aback, then burst into laughter that filled the entire space.
"You really are a different breed," he said, watching as Reoloy opened the room's sole door and walked out into darkness. "I'll be looking forward to what you show me."
"Eat shit."
And then, he was gone.
Floating in a very familiar place.
Just as he had left it last time, the space was brightly illuminated by countless stars—and right behind him, the white hole he had been drawn to previously.
Reoloy awoke to the fist suspended a hair's breadth away from his nose.
The guardian had seemingly noticed his lapse in awareness and held off on killing him.
'How nice...'
But he understood now.
This servant had been doing just that this entire time—serving. Not him, but his master.
The boy's gaze drifted to the second level of the room.
He took a deep breath. "The old must die for the new."
The claw relic flared as though new life had been breathed into it. Blood poured freely from Reoloy's nose, but he held firm.
"Come at me, you son of a bitch!"
The artificial being didn't delay, throwing a punch with his unextended arm, which the teen, despite his delirium, still managed to dodge—marking the first time he'd succeeded at the action in this entire exchange.
Seeing him attempt to rush past, the guardian froze him in space and, from the awkward position he had been forced into, drove an uppercut toward his jaw.
Reoloy grinned, laughter slipping past.
"Got you."
Slash
He had tried cutting his opponent's mana before.
But the butler commanded such absurdly fine-tuned control over his mana art that he could simply reactivate it in an instant. Reoloy had eventually given up on that approach altogether.
So this time...
He cut something else.
As the uppercut connected, it became apparent what he had done.
Using the glove's ability, he severed not the mana fueling the technique—but the very phenomenon the technique imposed.
The spatial suspension effect itself.
He shot backwards in a blur, crash-landing in the very second level he'd needed to reach all along.
Without pause, he forced himself upright and hobbled over to the pedestal positioned before the bannister.
Reoloy seized the object resting elegantly atop the white cushion and stared at it.
Then down at the guardian below.
For the first time since the battle had begun, uncertainty seemed to touch the roomkeeper.
His stance shifted.
Tiny, restrained movements.
Jitters.
"What's wrong?" he asked, his tone thick with mockery. "Can't come up here, can you?"
As the guardian clenched his fists, Reoloy lifted the object in his right hand to the back of his left hand and then paused, repositioning it over his heart.
Just as he was about to thrust it through, he stopped again, coldly staring at the room before smiling.
"This should work better."
Then drove it into his forehead.
The world suddenly froze, and his world went black.
Bzzzt
Bzzzzzztt
Ding
[System Notice]
[Ownership Registration Complete]
[Luvarne has been assigned to User: Reoloy Damser]