“Be careful, Ver.” The Kraken’s usual playful tone was nowhere to be found, “There is something strange about him that I cannot pinpoint...beyond the fact that he just countered Void Domain...”

“Everybody from PORA gotta have some tricks up their sleeve, huh?” Ver smirked, swirling the blade around as she felt the shells of the Kraken around her body slowly start to tighten up, “How is he stronger and faster than us with Perfect Synchrony though…”

“I…don’t know.” The Kraken replied honestly before a single one of its soft tendrils snaked out from between the layers of shells and started to provide a more complete feel of the local Wave fields.

Rote was clearly there and around them, and yet he was moving far too fast for Ver’s eyes to see as he became nothing more than stripes of shadows as each of his foot contacts started to become louder and louder like drum beats played by the gods themselves.

“Do you trust me?” The Kraken asked as Ver nodded quickly and closed her eyes. Then, she felt the presence of the Kraken expand even further within her body before the Wave in the environment completely opened up to her mind. It was as if someone had put a blue filter on the environments around her, and all that she saw are lines of Wave spread at regular intervals with outlines of humans traveling in between, crossing the lines and causing small ripples in the Wave.

There, she spotted the rapidly moving redness of Rote, and he had already circled back behind her before finally raising a fist as he got used to the speed he was moving at. However, as he moved through the Wave, it was as if time has slowed down for Ver also as she was able to track Rote's precise movements.

She swung the Sky Splitting Sword behind her, enlarging it as Rote’s attack came to hit. The impact sent her tumbling forward, and she used the momentum to roll around, facing Rote as he stepped back and dashed away again.

“This is cool…” Ver remarked when suddenly, this strange vision around her started to become blurred out.

“This is the first time I am introducing you to the Eye of the Beast.” The Kraken explained, “All legendary beasts see the world through the Wave, and thus it is a formidable skill. When your physical eyes fail you, the Eye of the Beast won’t. You, however, need to focus, while relaxing. Entrust your body to me, and allow me to see through for both of us. Nothing...absolutely nothing can escape our sight.”

Unless you are fighting against Wu. Ver and the Kraken both thought at the same time but brushed it off equally as quickly.

“How do I focus and relax at the same time?” Ver asked, when the Eye of the Beast started fading away once again alongside the slowing of subjective time. She learned to keep her mouth shut and simply commune with her thought as Rote came in with even greater speed, but she was able to parry the attack again as she noticed a shocked look on Rote's face too.

“Think about when you were swimming.” The Kraken reminded.

Feeling the coolness of water around her, feeling the gentle pushes of the current that guided them from one place to another, and feeling the endless pool of Wave surrounding her body.

Don’t fight it. Accept it.

Ver let out a slow breath before loosening the tension in her muscles. Suddenly, her body felt as if it’s gotten even lighter, and the Eye of the Beast presented far greater clarity and detail to her visions as she even spotted the wake that Rote left behind in the Wave.

She saw Rote as a burning ball of flame instead of just a cluster of red, the Cerberus as a trio of glowing yellow crystals, Lera as a grey and blue figure, and Wu…as a skeleton because that’s just how the Wave ran around his armor.

She looked down at the ethereal form of her body as her own physical self seemed to have faded in and out of existence with every rising and falling breath.

This is the next level of power. The next step in their Perfect Synchrony.

Ver tapped the ground like a dancer, and she slashed the Sky Splitting Sword through the air as it hissed loudly before clashing straight against Rote’s fist as he emerged from behind her once again. Then, Ver opened her eyes, and the outlines of his Wave remained around Rote’s body.

"You are still inefficient with this move...finish him quickly." The Kraken said, returning the world's colors to Ver as she took control once again.

His eyes popped out with shock and a burning frustration before he strained and tried to knock down Ver with a messy array of punches. However, from the moment he let go of Ver’s sword, she simply kept on driving it forward, slamming the sharp edge of the blade into Rote’s body as a cut opened up from his collar bone.

“ARGHHH!” Rote roared with anger before he separated himself from Ver’s sword, “You are really starting to piss me off!”

“Good.” Ver smiled, not realizing that both of her eyes were now glowing purple due to the activation of the Eye of the Beast.

Then, Rote raised both fists up to the side as his presence in the Wave suddenly became a frantic ball of chaos and started to obscure Ver's own regular eye sight. Red Wave lines surged in and out of his body as there seemed to be a strange frequency to its movement.

He sank down to his knees and compressed both hands inward as the ground crunched and crumbled underneath his feet with invisible flames burning up the air around him, white plasma suddenly surrounding his fist. With the unreasonable amount of Wave all condensed into such a small volume, everything within the bubble is starting to heat up as Ver and Wu started sweating profusely.

“Shit! Ver! You gotta stop him!” Lera said, sensing Rote’s ever-growing power as even the Cerberus looked at him with surprise, “If he broke through...”

“You don’t need to tell me that…” Ver swallowed nervously, the brief moment of confidence that came along with her newfound ability now nowhere to be found as the Eye of the Beast simply amplified her feeling of unease through a more visual means of an overlay of Rote's frantic Wave.

The representation of Rote's chaos of anger soon became larger and more irregular, slowly starting to corrupt the Wave lines around him and turning it red from the usual blue. In one instant, Rote's eyes locked onto Ver, and he had already appeared in front of Ver at the very next, his footsteps turning the sand into glass and his fist leaving behind trails of smoke through the air.

Ver aimlessly moved the Sky Splitting Sword in front of her when Rote's attack landed, and she saw the body of the Sword bend around their fist of Rote as the outlines of his knuckles became imprinted through the metal and right in front of her face.

Tentacles arms shot out from Ver’s shoulders and pressed up against the Sword to prevent it from slamming into Ver’s face, and the legendary weapon itself vibrated with heat as it struggled to maintain its own rigidity.

Then, a second fist found her way around Ver’s defensives before it slammed straight into a Kraken’s Whirlpool. However, Rote stopped his attack the moment it reached Ver’s body, thus preventing the Kraken to use his own attack against him for the second time.

“How the tide's turned~” Rote smirked as he sent forth a spinning side kick straight into Ver’s stomach when it also passed through her body through yet another set of Whirlpools. Ver tried to counter his attack but Rote slapped it aside with ease.

“Is this real?” Rote tilted his head to the side as Ver maintained her legendary weapon in front of her body with breaths rapid and sweat drenching her body, “You can’t stop me…Not like this...not like this...”

He looked up at the boundary of the Void Domain shield layer and looked back at Ver.

“She’s supposed to be your strongest fighter, and yet she couldn’t even touch me!” Rote declared, lowering his body like a bow being drawn and tension in his muscles reaching their maximum, “Your desire to win is no match for my anger, and soon, you will be bathed in the level of despair matching that of your insubordination!”

Then, he launched himself up, moving way faster than Ver's enhanced eye sights as he left behind a trail of blur through the Wave. The Kraken instantly created a pair of portals along the edge of the Void Domain shield layer when Rote suddenly punched through air, creating an explosive shockwave and rapidly changing his direction.

“WATCH OUT! LITTLE ONE!” The Kraken screamed, not able to shut down the large pair of portals and divert its attention towards protecting Ver as Rote kneed Ver straight into the ground. A crater immediately formed around her collapsed body before sand exploded out in all directions and the Kraken’s armor cracked all around Ver’s body.

Even with the Eye of the Beast, Ver was not able to properly put her Sky Splitting Sword into the guard position as it was knocked cleanly off her hands by Rote. As he stood above Ver’s body with his legs split and his white cloak barely clinging to his own body, he refocused his power as fist glowed again.

With the blood from her forehead flowed into her eyes, she saw Rote’s raised fists through her reddened vision before his burning fists slashed straight down.

“You thought?! You thought?!” Rote laughed maniacally as he slammed repeatedly into Ver’s body, pounding her into a ball of oblivious flesh as her facial features became completely disfigured and his fist became fully stained with a mix of green and red, “You thought you are any match for me?! You thought your decade of mercenary experience compare to my thousands of years of anguish?! You thought you could come in here and challenge my plan?!”

“NO!” Wu and Lera screamed, trying to come to help Ver when the Cerberus roared and kept them in place with yet another ferocious round of attacks which ended up with Wu barely making out alive thanks to Lera’s help with the Cast array.

“Hey! Cerberus!” Rote said, looking to the side before tossing a ball of meat in his direction, “Save them for me, and I will make them all into meatballs, just like this one!’

The blob of flesh rolled along the sand as the green blood slowly started to sink into the sand, and at that moment, Wu and Lera’s minds both turned blank.

Their journey is at an end here. Wu felt his heart slowly sinking into despair. They have failed, once again.

He has failed once again.

He had once again grossly underestimated the strength of PORA…in their first open conflict against their regional leaders, their boss battle for control over the Eastern continent…

It was a complete defeat, and there was nothing that he could have done.

“No…no…no…Ver…” With tears in his eyes, he looked at Rote and Rache, and he pointed his pistol straight at them as the flashes of what the Remnant showed him back at the cave came flooding back into his mind. Perhaps...this is the end for them.

“It’s over.” Rote said, leaping out from the crater of Ver’s doom before he walked towards the Cerberus and Rache, “Now that the trouble some Vaughan girl is out of the way, I am going to enjoy this.”