I answered with a grin.

"According to who?"

Caius went still for a moment, the reaction subtle but unmistakable, as if the question had caught him somewhere he didn’t have an immediate answer for.

His expression shifted, not quite disbelief, not quite denial, but something in between, like he was trying to reconcile what I was implying with what he had always accepted as fact.

He found it hard to believe there could be anything beyond S-rank.

For reasons I didn’t fully understand.

But to me, that way of thinking felt... limited.

I had already seen enough to know better.

After encountering beings like the Overseer, the idea that S-rank was some absolute ceiling didn’t hold weight anymore. If something like that existed, then it wasn’t a stretch to believe there were ranks beyond what we currently understood—beyond S, beyond even SSS.

My mindset had shifted a long time ago.

There was nothing impossible in this world.

No fixed norms.

And once you accepted that, it became easier to understand that some things would exist outside what you thought was the limit, not because they broke the rules, but because the rules themselves were never as complete as we assumed.

Caius exhaled slowly, his gaze still fixed on me.

"It doesn’t seem like you’re bluffing."

"Why would I?" I replied, meeting his gaze without hesitation.

"In that case," he continued after a brief pause, his voice steady again, "defeating you would carry more meaning. I’d only grow stronger from it."

"Hard to argue with that," I said, letting a faint smirk settle in. "But there’s a better option—surrendering and working under me."

Caius’ lips tightened, the reaction immediate. Once again, I had thrown his own words back at him, and this time, it landed.

"That will not happen," he said.

"I expected ’that will never happen,’" I answered, tilting my head slightly. "But you didn’t go that far. Sounds like you at least considered it."

"Don’t get confident," Caius shot back, his tone sharpening, the earlier uncertainty gone as his focus locked in again. "S-rank or not, you’re still trapped inside my domain, and the rules here favor me. This battle is mine to win."

"Show me, then."

I raised Gravefang slightly, the weight of it settling naturally in my grip as I steadied my stance. The difference in the battlefield was still there, still pressing against me, but it no longer felt overwhelming.

If anything—

I felt more certain now.

The ground surged with him.

Blocks tore free from the crimson terrain, rising and breaking apart before snapping forward in clusters, shooting toward me in jagged lines like something alive, their movement too coordinated to be random, too fast to ignore.

I couldn’t help it:

"What the hell?"

The scale of it hit me all at once, the sheer volume of mass rushing in from multiple angles, closing distance in a way that didn’t leave much room for hesitation.

But even then, I liked my chances.

And that was enough.

I drew in a deep breath, steadying myself as I poured energy into Gravefang, feeling the blade respond as void energy filled it, the faint hum building along its edge. I didn’t rush the motion; I let it settle, let the intent form clearly before I moved.

Then I swung.

Not wildly.

Not blindly.

I envisioned it—multiple slashes, clean and precise, cutting through the incoming mass before it could collapse in on me.

And it happened.

Rift slashes peeled away from the edge of my blade, not forced, but released, spreading outward in layered arcs as the ground beneath me cracked with a heavy thump from the pressure.

The attacks collided with the incoming blocks mid-flight, tearing through them on contact, and in the next instant, the entire swarm broke apart, rupturing into fragments as the force of the impact triggered a violent explosion that scattered everything away from my position.

But then Caius burst through it, completely unscathed.

The debris hadn’t even settled when he came out of it, already in motion, his blade cutting straight toward my head with no hesitation. I dropped into a roll to avoid it, letting the strike pass over me, but before I could fully recover, multiple slashes followed immediately, layered and overlapping, arriving before I had even gotten back to my feet.

I reacted as they came, twisting, shifting, adjusting just enough to avoid the worst of them, but there was no breathing room between each attack, no gap to reset.

And then Caius was already there.

He closed the distance in that same instant and began to swing again.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

Each strike carried more force than before, the impact heavier, sharper, and his speed had climbed with it, his blade moving faster than I had seen up until now, the rhythm tightening into something far more oppressive.

I kept up for a while.

Barely.

But the domain was still there, still working against me, the unstable terrain interfering with my footing, the constant adjustments slowing my transitions just enough to throw me off—

And that was all it took.

I got caught.

The blows landed, one after the other, their force driving through me despite my attempts to mitigate them, but even then, they didn’t go as far as they should have. [Fractured Existence] held, its distortion stronger now, cutting down the impact before it could fully settle, while black ink threaded through the damage almost immediately as [Cursed Regeneration] worked, sealing the wounds before they could become anything serious.

"Demon!" Caius roared, the word tearing out of him as his attacks failed to do any real damage, and without pause, the ground behind him surged again, breaking apart into massive blocks that rose and shot toward me in clusters, each one carrying enough weight to crush.

"Thanks for the compliment," I replied, a casual grin slipping through as I moved.

I didn’t wait for them to close in. I drew the motion cleanly through Gravefang, letting the intent settle before releasing it, and the rift slashes peeled away from the blade in controlled arcs, cutting through the incoming mass before it could reach me. The blocks split apart mid-flight, breaking down into fragments that scattered away from my position. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Caius dropped from above the next instant, descending with...