I'll kill you after I finish this game!

"Don't even think about it!"

Fujii Ren gritted his teeth and struggled with Makina. On his left and right sides, Nanami and Skadi unleashed their respective skills: one released the Hollow Blade Style: Nightmare, and the other released the Guanyin Dance.

The burst of swirling blade energy and the Thousand-Hand Guanyin directly blasted Makina back.

However, Makina disregarded physical inertia and once again used his demonic martial arts to fight back.

"Bang bang bang bang..."

A series of massive explosions, Nanami and Skadi's deadly attacks, began to be shattered by Makina's counterattack.

The opponent's desire was growing, and their strength was increasing. Unwilling to admit defeat or back down, Fujii Ren accelerated once again, letting his ethereal mind disregard the limits!

Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom!

In their lightning-fast clash, each of Fujii Ren's and Makina's attacks sent them flying tens of thousands of meters in an instant, as if they were teleporting between the sky and the ground.

The Black Knight only wanted to fight and kill Fujii Ren.

He's clearly not on the same level as the guys I've met before.

There was neither pleasure nor madness there; her opponent seemed to be a machine that pursued only one thing and was bound by it.

Either you die or I die.

For either of them, victory would be a matter of moments.

Countless viewers are well aware that, despite Fujii Ren appearing to be evenly matched with his opponent Makina.

But in some people's eyes, the two are like fighting on a rope hanging on a high cliff.

It's like two opponents, each standing on a rope, with an abyss of certain death below them.

The slightest mistake could plunge Fujii Ren into utter ruin, so in the eyes of the audience, even though Fujii Ren has the advantage, the most dangerous one is still her opponent.

Isn't it just a very simple and easy-to-understand sentence?

I can make countless mistakes, but you can only make one.

The only thing that could rival Makina's ultimate iron fists was the blade of his own guillotine.

Even the Triple God of War had to be wary of Makina's End Transformation when attacking him.

The moment to effectively attack Makina is when the opponent attacks, and it is also necessary to calculate whether it is a decoy trap.

"pound----!"

With a sudden, earth-shattering roar, Fujii Ren, who was dealing with Makina's double punches, was attacked by Makina's iron fists, regardless of the risk of injury.

In any exchange of damage, it's always Fujii Ren who loses out. The other party might disregard the cost, but Fujii Ren clearly can't.

Therefore, War God Nanami unleashed the Phantom Blade Style: Higanbana, slamming it into the opponent's chest, and at the cost of half of his body collapsing, he blocked Makina's deadly punch.

"......"

Fujii Ren gritted his teeth as he watched Makina fly backward and crash into the pile of rubble, then looked at Nanami, who was no longer able to maintain her form and whose entire body was beginning to disintegrate into fragments.

【Take care of yourself】

Nanami's expression remained calm and composed. After nodding to Fujii Ren and Skadi, she vanished in pieces.

With one of the War Gods gone, it's clear that Fujii Ren can no longer replicate the feat, at least not in this life-or-death struggle, and he can no longer bring Nanami back.

Although it was only one personality, Fujii Ren truly felt the other person's death.

Fujii Ren can only use Nanami's martial arts, but not Nanami's true power. Otherwise, the opponent's destructive and domineering nature would not be afraid of Makina's End of the Path.

"Don't get up again."

Fujii Ren was slightly out of breath, taking this opportunity to catch her breath and adjust her physical condition.

She knew that Nanami's attack hadn't killed Makina, but she certainly didn't want him to get back up.

"Crack—BOOM!!!"

Like a fountain, the mountains of ruins in front of them spewed out large amounts of stones and dust into the sky.

In an instant, it vanished like a mountain of rubble being buried by the wind, turning into dust.

The black German SS uniform that appeared there, with its back to the damage, staring into the dark eyes of the person in this direction, gave Fujii Ren (Rhodes) a sense of déjà vu, and she couldn't help but think of the past.

Before, right before, after being resurrected in Reinhardt's Demon Castle, Fujii Ren (Rhodes) had witnessed the same scene...

Makina's face was half smashed, but what lay beneath the skin was not flesh and blood, but steel fused together with it, so it was definitely not a human body.

Skin that doesn't bleed a drop, muscle fibers and bones woven from steel.

It's practically a humanoid tank; physically speaking, this thing isn't human at all.

Although he looked disheveled, he wasn't exactly miserable.

"What's wrong, comrade? Do you remember the past?"

Makina didn't attack immediately. Seeing the complex expressions on Fujii Ren's and Rhodes's faces, a terrifying smile curved his lips, revealing a full row of teeth. He smiled at Fujii Ren and said in a low voice:

“We are the same. We should die together and rest in peace together, but instead we are fighting like demons and monsters. It’s outrageous.”

Makina was like a mechanical demon at this moment, but Fujii Ren was no better off. Her long, crimson hair fluttered in the wind, and her eyes, which seemed to dwell in the deepest hell, showed her to be a demon from another hell.

The demons of Avici Hell and the demons of the Asura Realm are gazing at each other.

“...I am different from you.” Fujii Ren and Rhodes behind him stared at Makina, and said in a complicated tone, “Many people besides me have said this about you, haven’t they? You lack the value of living, Makina.”

Well, Makina was Rhodes's brother, and they had a very strong bond of camaraderie.

Although I understand the other person's pursuit, I cannot fully accept that my brother's eyes are only focused on death.

"Ha, the value of living? We're all just Karl Craft's toys, born from poison, so what's the difference between you and me?!"

The hero of steel stared at Fujii Ren with a cold, stern gaze. Makina scoffed at the value of living that the other man spoke of, and refused to accept the reasoning of his comrade.

He had said before that they were supposed to die anyway, and since they were already dead, what value was there in living?

Living like him? That's the pursuit of a precipice demon, not the way a human should live.

“I can’t remember what I was like as a human being. I only react when you call out to Michel Wittmann. My death is with you, my comrade.”

"How exactly did I die? The battlefield... I see. I had that feeling too. Who killed me? How did they do it? I don't know, I can't remember."

"The intense heat of being hit by artillery fire, the despair of lying in a tank... and the indistinct voices of my comrades, did I ever find peace of mind before? I really don't know."

Makina's gaze quickly turned indifferent, as if he were looking at someone with pity or envy, giving Fujii Ren the feeling of looking in a mirror.

The other person's story gave Fujii Ren and countless viewers the feeling of a lost and confused person searching for the way home.

He believed that death was a beacon for returning home, and he did not pursue resurrection but only wanted to return to where he was meant to be.

Valhalla? You can go there, but definitely not to Heydrich's place; that's not where his glory lies.

Where exactly is his resting place? Those eyes, fixed on Fujii Ren, already held the answer that could not be wrong.

"One day, when I realized it, I was already in Heydrich's castle."

The Black Knight turned his gaze to the sky, looking up at the golden magic array in the heavens.

If Fujii Ren were to attack at this moment, it would be an excellent opportunity, but Fujii Ren did not take the first step.

"Although I don't know the past, the only thing I remember is that I'm dead! What else can I pursue besides that!?"

Makina, who had lowered his head again, roared and took a step toward Fujii Ren. He appeared in front of him in an instant, as if shrinking the distance between them, and threw a punch.

boom!

Fujii Ren retreated, forced back by the relentless, destructive punches of the emotionally charged Makina.

One punch from him could be fatal.

The guillotine kept clashing with the iron fist that brought the curtain down.

"To be honest, I sympathize with you, comrade. A person who is consumed by desire and can only think in a single way is not human. In that sense, you are stronger than me."

In the midst of the ongoing battle, each punch from Makina represented a word he spoke, transforming into consciousness and continuously bombarding Fujii Ren's mind, saying:

“I know you very well, comrade. You really want to repeat yourself, don’t you?”

"------!"

When Makina pointed out her desire, Fujii Ren's heart, which had been pounding, suddenly stopped, leaving her speechless.

In this world, in this era, anyone who can sense the existence of the unknown is filled with disgust, anger, collapse, and despair.

Only Fujii Ren, even though he was aware of it, became addicted to it.

Savoring those beautiful moments an endless number of times, in a sense, as Makina said, Fujii Ren is indeed less than human in his thinking.

Even Shirou, who was familiar with Fujii Ren, thought she was a weirdo for being able to enjoy this irritating sense of déjà vu.

"The future you want is the past, it's going back to the past, because you love every moment. It's contradictory to be moving forward but going backward. Even a child knows that this is unreasonable."

Makina's steel fist suddenly grabbed the guillotine blade, and he spun around at high speed, carrying Fujii Ren with him, before being hurled away. He then chased after the enemy, continuing to throw punches.

"So the horizon you yearn to walk on is not a straight line, but a circle! Like the stars and celestial bodies, a constantly rotating ring."

"You want to keep going around in circles there, to keep savoring, so you have to savor the sweet present quickly, even faster, extremely quickly, while longing for the lovely past, running through the future at super-fast speed, and then returning to the beginning."

"A fleeting moment of stillness, that's what you crave. Compared to you, it's not so strange that I pursue the instant of death, is it? If I'm broken, then you're even more thoroughly broken than me!"

The Black Knight Magina was right; demons are twisted, and seekers of the Way and tyrants are even more twisted.

There's no need to compare or determine whose desires are the most twisted.

As Makina said, both he and Fujii Ren were broken, and the battle at this moment was about who was more thoroughly broken (desired).

To be honest, Fujii Ren had no words of rebuttal to Makina's sharp words.

Even she herself didn't feel she could explain her desires well, while Makina expressed them very accurately in just a few words.

It's not simply a desire for time to stop; there are reasons that they believe are very logical.

Ren Fujii cherishes every moment, and even the moments that have passed are missed. So she wants to go back to the past and runs forward to achieve that.

In the era of eternal return on the fourth day, it's hard to say whether to call it irony or praise.

In order to repeat and savor life continuously, if life is a circle, then every place except Japan should shine brightly on the journey around the world.

If such a principle can be realized, it can also be described as a contradictory principle that remains in a fleeting moment.

"The warrior beside you, she really hates the so-called circle, so she has to keep surpassing and reaching new heights. A unique moment only needs to happen once, and I also believe that death only needs to happen once."