The five seconds felt like an hour.
One from All stood completely still. Goki's presence pressing against his back like a second gravity — personal, absolute, the kind of weight that didn't come from power alone.
Four seconds.
His void was empty. His King's Magic reduced to a pulse so faint it barely qualified as present. The sword was gone — back to wherever it lived when he wasn't accidentally summoning it. He had nothing. Not a technique, not a reserve, not a single viable option in the arsenal.
Three seconds.
He thought anyway. Cold, fast, the arithmetic that had kept him alive on roads and in kingdoms and in a previous life that ended badly — running the calculation with what was available rather than what he wished was available.
Two seconds.
What was available was the truth.
He forced three words out.
"I don't know."
The silence that followed was different from the silence before it. Goki's presence didn't lift — but something in its quality shifted..
"Draw your sword," Goki said.
"I don't have the Anym remaining for that."
Another silence. Shorter.
Then Hayato appeared.
"Good to see you doing well," he said. "How was it—" A pause. "Well I guess that isn't what I'm supposed to be saying right now."
He looked at Goki with the expression of someone who had known a person long enough to communicate entire conversations through tone alone.
"Goki. The kid has no Anym left to try an attack. Especially not something as high level as drawing a legendary sword." A beat. "Also — he could end up destroying our planet if he does that. Draw. Did you forget how powerful the sword is?"
Goki was quiet for a moment.
"Oh."
A pause that contained several things.
"I see. Anym problem."
His hand moved to One from All's neck.
One from All felt the grip — firm, present, the hand of someone whose casual physical contact carried the ambient weight of someone who had broken things significantly larger than a person without trying.
Then they were somewhere else.
The universe Goki had chosen was far.
Not far in the sense of distance — far in the sense of removed. No academy. No students. No Emperors watching from the top floor. Just space and the particular silence of somewhere that hadn't been visited in a long time.
Goki's hand was still on his neck.
The Anym that came through that contact wasn't gentle. It wasn't the warm careful transfer of someone being considerate about the process. It arrived the way Goki arrived — completely and immediately.
He had more Anym than he had ever had.
More than Kael.
He processed this information with the same cold arithmetic he applied to everything.
"Draw your sword," Goki said. His hand left One from All's neck.
One from All didn't hesitate.
The Infinite Vanguard opened — the arsenal spreading across the space above them, hundreds of weapons filling the old undisturbed air of the distant universe. His hand moved toward the specific position in the formation where the red blade lived when it was present.
"Stop."
He stopped.
"You don't just wield ancient swords," Goki said. Not a lecture — a correction. "You command them. If you don't — it keeps draining you. Every draw, every use, every second you hold it without commanding it — it takes."
One from All looked at the formation. At the space where the red blade would appear.
"Command it," Goki said. "How it strikes. How much it takes. Command the sword to come to your hand."
One from All closed his eyes.
Not reaching. Not pulling. Commanding — the specific distinction landing in the part of him that understood authority, that had spent fifteen years learning the difference between forcing something and owning it. His void had never forced anything. It simply claimed. The King's Magic had never demanded. It simply was.
He applied the same principle to the sword.
It appeared.
A crimson red katana — the color of something decided rather than something burning, deep and absolute and carrying in it the specific weight of age that didn't measure itself in years. Ancient symbols ran along the hardened part of the blade in patterns that weren't decorative — they were structural, load-bearing in the same way that the symbols on the Blade of the Chosen One were structural, except these symbols were older. Older than the academy. Older than most things that had names.
The handle was wrapped in a fabric-like material — soft to the grip, yielding in the way that things yield when they have been designed to be held for extended periods by someone who knows what they're doing. It fit his hand differently from the first time. Not because the sword had changed — because the relationship had.
His Anym was burning away.
He could feel it — the drain, real and constant, the sword consuming his reserves. But not instantly. Not the catastrophic total emptying of the first draw. A rate. Significant — he was losing Anym faster than most attacks cost — but manageable. Survivable.
For now.
"Good," Goki said. "You learn fast."
He looked at the sword. At the symbols. At the hand holding it.
"Now defend this."
His hands came down.
One from All brought the sword up.
The closest he had ever come to death in his current life wasn't the ravine. Wasn't Kael's arena. Wasn't the four way fight in Hayato's universe or the moment the sword drained him empty.
It was this.
Goki's attack didn't announce itself. Didn't build or charge or give the fraction of a second that most attacks gave between decision and arrival. It simply descended — hand coming down with the weight of someone who had mastered several different magic systems and four limitless Commandments and a martial arts practice that predated most of the institutions that taught martial arts.
The sword connected.
It held.
The ancient blade taking the impact — the symbols along the flat flaring once, brief and complete, as the force distributed itself through the blade rather than through the person holding it.
Then the force found the edge of what the blade would absorb and kept going.
One from All left the ground.
The planet received him — hard, complete. He felt the bone before he processed where — somewhere in the left side of his torso, a clean sharp report that his body filed under urgent.
His Anym was almost gone.
The drain from the sword combined with the impact absorption had taken most of what Goki had transferred. He was looking at the sky of the distant universe — old, thin, undisturbed — and doing the arithmetic on what was left and arriving at a number that didn't have much flexibility in it.
Then the darkness came.
He woke up with more Anym than before.
Goki crouching beside him. Hand on his shoulder — the same matter of fact efficiency as the neck grip, the transfer already complete before One from All had finished processing that he was conscious again.
"It really is the Sword of the End," Goki said.
He wasn't looking at One from All. Looking at the space where the blade had been — gone now, returned to wherever it returned to, leaving behind only the memory of crimson and ancient symbols and the specific weight of something that had existed before most things.
"Sorry I reacted like that."
A pause. Not uncomfortable — the pause of someone choosing words with more care than they usually applied to the process.
"Maybe you don't know how it feels to have been looking for something for decades. Only to find it in a fifteen year old boy who can't even control it." He looked at One from All then. Direct. The blindfold covering his eyes but something in the set of his face communicating what eyes would have communicated. "That was the test. We're good now."
He stood.
"But for now — I'll be your personal mentor. You got that?"
Not a question.
One from All looked up at him from the ground of the distant universe with one cracked rib and no useful response and the specific expression of someone who had survived something significant and was still running the report on what exactly had happened.
"Yes," he said.
They returned to the academy the way Goki went everywhere — completely and immediately, the distance between the distant universe and the academy's main floor ceasing to be relevant the moment Goki decided it should.
One from All landed on his feet. Barely.
Goki stood beside him. Looking at the students — at the Year 1 section, the Year 2 section, the Year 3 seniors who had straightened in their seats the moment his presence re-entered the building. His gaze moved across them — reading, filing, arriving at conclusions without performing the process.
"Some of you Year 1s are special," he said.
His voice in the academy was different from his voice in the distant universe. Not louder — more present. The specific quality of someone who had decided to address a room and found the room's size irrelevant to the task.
"I'll be giving some of you special training time. Once a week. Maybe twice a month. Depends." A pause. "It won't be easy."
He looked at One from All one final time. Then at the room.
"But you'll definitely be stronger."
"Now — we can continue the matches."
He vanished.
At the top of the academy Goki took his seat.
"Some of these Year 1 students aren't from our universe," he said. "They're giving Year 3 energy. Just not as strong."
Hayato nodded. "I ran a quick check. Turns out some of them are top ranking military personnel. Some are just here to get stronger." A pause. "But there are no threats here. No one is dumb enough to infiltrate a place guarded by the Emperors — even when we're absent. The Year 3 students are more than enough to handle minor threats until we arrive."
He looked at the screens.
"Let's see what kind of people we got this year."
"Yes," Goki said. "But the most rare might just be that boy with the legendary blade." A pause. "He even has Kageyama's—"
"As expected from Kageyama," Hayato said immediately. The tone of someone who had already arrived at this conclusion and was acknowledging Goki's speed in reaching it rather than the conclusion itself. "His closest friend. You know — when someone has his magic, even without seeing them display it—"
"I could sense it," Goki said. "Even though it was very faint. It's still there." Another pause. "This boy might just be our strongest asset yet."
The remaining Emperors spoke together.
"Yes."
At the bottom of the academy a teacher anounced.
"The next round of the Open Ring is now open. Any student wishing to declare—"
Riku walked in.
The Year 1 section noticed immediately — not because of his Anym, not because of anything visible, but because of the specific quality of the absence of everything that had defined Riku's presence since the first day. The shy deflection. The careful eye contact. The particular way he occupied space like someone who had decided not to take up too much of it.
Gone.
His face was serious. Still. The face of someone who had watched Elara grow a jungle in an arena and One from All split two universes with a sword he couldn't control and had arrived at a specific conclusion about what that meant for the person standing beside them.
He walked to the center of the ring.
Looked up.
"So," he said. His voice as cold as he could make it — and it turned out he could make it quite cold when he decided to. "Who's my opponent?"
The Year 1 section exchanged glances. The boy who had spent an entire combat season unable to maintain eye contact during a direct conversation was standing in the center of the Open Ring looking at all of them with an expression of someone who had stopped caring about the impression they were making and started caring about something else entirely.
Nobody moved.
Not from fear exactly — from the specific uncertainty of watching someone you thought you understood reveal that you hadn't understood them at all. Riku had been the quiet one. The careful one.
Nobody wanted to find out what Riku was when he stopped suppressing.
The silence stretched.
Then Valen walked in.
Tora behind him.
"Quite the entrance," Valen said. His voice carrying the particular tone of someone who had heard declarations before and had opinions about their relationship to outcomes. "Coming from this little boy."
Riku didn't look at him. Didn't respond. Looked at the teachers on the podium instead and said — louder this time, carrying across the hall —
"Could we get a bigger arena?"
A pause.
"I don't want to have fears of destroying this academy while fighting them."
At the top of the academy Goki leaned forward slightly.
"You better listen," he said quietly. To no one in particular — or to all of them, the distinction not mattering much. "His Anym keeps increasing and he isn't using magic." A pause. "What he's been displaying since he got here isn't magic."
Ren looked at the screen. At Riku standing in the center of the ring with his face still and his water moving between his fingers — faster now than they had been moving all season, the suppression releasing in increments that were no longer invisible to anyone paying attention.
"Understood," she said. She looked at Hayato. "They can make use of my universe."
"Hey." Hayato looked at her with the expression of a man who had just been assigned a task he had not volunteered for. "What am I now? Some mode of transport?"
Nobody answered.
"Well." He stood. "Never mind. I'm only doing this because I'm the fastest here." A pause that contained significant feeling. "But you've got to have more respect for me. I'm not doing it again."
He transported them.
Ren's universe arrived the way Ren herself arrived — completely and without ceremony, one reality replaced by another between one moment and the next. No flash. No transition. Simply — there.
The first thing they noticed was the gravity.
Not dramatically different — not the kind of difference that announced itself immediately. The kind that arrived in the legs first, then the shoulders, then the chest, the accumulated weight of a universe that had been constructed with ten times the gravitational pull of the planet they had come from pressing against every surface of every body simultaneously.
Valen's stance adjusted automatically. Tora's did the same.
Riku created a water loop around himself — a slow, continuous rotation of controlled water. His body straightened against the gravity with the ease of someone who had already reinforced himself against it before it finished arriving.
Valen and Tora looked at the water loop. At the Anym behind it — still increasing, still not magic, still doing whatever it had been doing since Riku arrived at this academy and decided to keep it quiet.
Riku looked at them.
"Shall we start."
End of chapter 32