Eva stared down at Nier, eyes wide, still trying to wrap her head around what he'd just dropped on her.

  "Time… doesn't work the same for you as it does for me?"

  She repeat Niers words to herself, as if she needed to hear the words to believe them.

  Nier let out a low, zy chuckle.

  "Heh… yeah. Pretty much exactly what I said."

  He tilted his head a little, that faint smirk still hanging on his face.

  "Time doesn't really stick to me the way it does to most people. I'm kinda… outside it, you could say. Unbound even. But anyway—enough about my weird existential bullshit. Looks like you're itching for round two aren't you!?"

  Eva's expression sharpened.

  "I knew it. You're a lot like them."

  Nier's eyes narrowed just a fraction.

  "Them?"

  He said, a little puzzle by her choice of words.

  "The Fluxes."

  She said, almost spitting the word.

  He gave a small shrug, hands still buried in his pockets.

  "Well… I am a Corrupt User."

  "My scans say different... I can't sense a single Flux item on you, your powers are your own."

  Hearing this, Nier just snorted softly.

  "Sure. Keep telling yourself that if it helps you sleep at night."

  Eva went quiet for a second, just staring down at him. Then her voice hardened, as she said.

  "This would be the perfect moment to begin proper combat testing."

  "True."

  Nier replied, calm as ever.

  Casual even, as it was clear as day that he was unbothered.

  And after eating all those hits earlier, her body was already starting to adapt, rewiring itself bit by bit until his attacks would barely register. She could feel it happening. So she decided to stop talking and start moving.

  She unched forward, straight at him, air screaming around her as she closed the distance for the next strike.

  Nier didn't flinch. Much less even pull his hands out of his pockets.

  Instead he just smiled—small, knowing, almost fond—and murmured,

  "Yes, yes, come to daddy."

  Nier said, clearly taunting her as the energy around Eva detonated like a shockwave, ripping the air apart as she twisted mid-flight and snapped a brutal front kick straight at his head.

  But right then, something shifted under the shadow of Nier’s hood. His third eye cracked open slowly from the darkness, and burned with cold white light in the dark.

  And when it did, the future rolled out in front of him like an open book.

  He saw it all: the exact arc of her leg, the follow-through, the way she had pnt and spin into a whipping side kick with her left foot aimed at his ribs. He leaned right at the perfect heartbeat, smmed his boot down hard enough to punch a crater into the ground, and slipped the whole combo clean.

  Eva didn't hesitate.

  She came again, much faster this time around, as she hit even harder. Each strike building on the st, her body learning him in real time, artificial muscles and joints rewiring mid-swing to match his rhythm.

  As none of them touched him.

  She was accelerating, adapting, closing the gap, between and somehow he kept pulling ahead. Every time she thought she had matched his speed, he found another gear, going beyond himself in raw physical power.

  "Something is wrong here."

  She muttered under her breath, confusion flickering behind her eyes.

  'This isn't right… even while recalcuting, he continues to get stronger dodging my move almost like he knows them before I do, can he also seethe future as well.'

  Eva thought to herself, as she kept pressing, fists blurring, but Nier was weaving effortlessly, dodging tighter, faster, to the point he seems almost untouchable.

  Then her whole body fred a bright rainbow aura.

  "Ohhhh...

  Nier said out aloud, and in the next instance.

  She drove a straight punch at his face.

  He slipped right, except the fist didn't stay where it should have.

  A hyperspace gate tore open seemingly out of nowhere, a s behind him in the same instant, silent and surgical. Her knuckles reappeared at the back of his skull from the other side of the basket ball size gate, and smmed home with great force.

  The impact rang like a cannon shot, and Nier's head snapped forward; he ate dirt, skidding across the broken stone before he could catch himself.

  Before he could even rise she was on him again.

  "ORA! ORAA! ORAAAA!! ORAAAAA!!"

  The barrage came from everywhere at once, impossible angles, unpredictable rhythm, each punch carrying the momentum of a freight train at full tilt. She had cracked his future-sight advantage by folding space around her strikes, turning linear dodges into dead ends.

  Nier tried to slip through the storm anyway, but found out quickly that he couldn't, as her gates follow him in real time, even when he make spatial gates of his own, her gates just teleport right to him once more.

  "... So this is her adaption?"

  Nier question, as he began to harden his skin, and organs.

  Double reinforcing his body.

  Essentially he was adapting too—but hers was catching up fast.

  So he changed the game.

  Crimson psychic energy erupted around him like a second skin. He thrust one hand forward, palm out, and unleashed a raw telepetatic shockwave that sent her flying backwards at super-sonic speeds.

  BOOOOOM!

  The force itself hit Eva like a speeding bullet train, and she flew backward, boots scraping sparks off the ground before she flipped and stabilized.

  Her other arm was already up.

  A deep violet glow gathered at her barrel, and she took fire.

  Thick, searing beams nced toward him in a fan pattern.

  Nier's aura however fred brighter as his psychic energy spawn over each of Eva attack. The incoming light bent, twisted, then reversed—redirected straight back at her in a screaming counter-barrage.

  The air turned molten. Beams crisscrossed from every direction, converging on Eva in a blinding cage of purple fire.

  Smoke and heat distortion swallowed the battlefield.

  When it finally cleared, Nier's eyes widened.

  She was still standing.

  A dense, shimmering ttice of Gaian energy had wrapped her like living armor—yer after yer of translucent blue ptes, each one absorbing and dispersing the returned energy. Cracks spiderwebbed across a few outer shells, but the core held.

  She looked up at him through the fading haze, expression calm again. Almost curious.

  Nier exhaled once—sharp—and raised his hand again.

  A spatial gate tore open behind him, as he used his spell to close the distance.

  As he stepped through without a word.

  This time he emerged directly behind her. But before he could act, Eva's head began to split open. Wisps of smoke poured from the widening seams, and from within them a pair of crimson horns slowly manifested.

  What happened next stunned Nier.

  A searing red light fred from the horns, making them glow with unnatural intensity. In an instant, his own gates shattered apart like gss. Eva turned to face him and spoke a single word.

  "Stop."

  The horns asserted dominion over reality. That blood-red light surged outward, spreading rapidly until the entire sky above the isnd, and every inch of the world around it, was drenched in her crimson radiance.

  The moment she uttered the command, everything froze. Atoms halted mid-motion. Even Nier's body was locked in pce, completely immobile.

  'What the hell is this?'

  He thought, panic flickering through his mind. His limbs refused to respond; he was paralyzed down to the subatomic level.

  Then Kaly’s voice cut through the silence inside his head.

  'Darling, she is maniputing the atoms directly around her. Those horns… they somehow let her issue verbal commands to particles within twenty mile range, 360° radius.'

  'Wait—she can do that too? Just how ridiculously overpowered is Public Service?'

  'They’re clearly far more than some ordinary organization.'

  Kaly replied calmly.

  'So what now?'

  Nier asked, frustration mounting.

  Fortunately, Kaly already had an answer.

  'You could beacon-warp and dismiss logic itself, but that's overkill. You still have your Memory Magic—False Reality, remember?'

  '…I was thinking that but I don't think it will work on her... Wait, you don't mean!?'

  Kaly just smile as she was gd that Nier caught on to what she was saying.

  With the hint in mind, Nier began to weave the spell. He wasn't sure whether False Reality would work on an android like Eva, but it would damn well work on his own body and mind.

  [False Reality: Move]

  The mark on his chest pulsed with light. He cast the magic inward, convincing his own perception that movement was still possible despite the atomic lockdown.

  A lie became truth.

  Sensation flooded back into his limbs. His fingers twitched, then flexed. He could move again.

  "How… How are you moving?"

  Eva's voice cracked with genuine shock. No one inside her Red Court should have been able to defy that command.

  Seizing her moment of disbelief, Nier raised both hands in a mock gun stance. Bck fire condensed between his fingers, compressing into a searing point of dark light.

  In the next heartbeat, Bck Scorch erupted as a thin, blinding ser. The beam struck both horns dead-center. Matter simply ceased to exist, as it's insane natural durability meant nothing before this spell. The horns were erased in an instant.

  Bck fire immediately began to crawl across the rest of her body, devouring her from the point of impact.

  But Eva reacted instantly. Her form detonated outward in a controlled explosion, shedding every piece that had been touched by the fmes. The burning fragments were left behind as the unaffected parts rose, each one wreathed in a faint blue aura.

  They swiftly recombined, time itself seeming to rewind around the lost matter until she stood whole again—regenerated through sheer passive recovery and temporal manipution.

  Nier wasn't impressed.

  His entire body ignited in bck fme. The air itself caught fire. The sea of blood flooding the isnd began to boil and vanish. Trees vaporized into nothing—not even ash remained.

  Blood and bck fire swirled chaotically across the isnd as the dark bze continued to spread passively from Nier's form, creeping outward like ordinary fire—except that wherever it touched, physical matter was erased completely.

  A single graze was instant death. No resistance. No second chances.

  Eva watched, her sensors scrambling to analyze the impossible physics behind Bck Scorch. She couldn't break it down. She could only observe that if it struck her cleanly again, even she wouldn't survive.

  "Honestly, I don't enjoy using this."

  Nier said, floating higher as blood and fme spiraled around him.

  "But you seem strong enough to handle it. Don't disappoint me now Eva."

  Nier said as a low, amused ugh escaped him.

  The blood didn't burn away under his control—he could toggle the destructive nature of his power with terrifying precision, like flipping a switch.

  A sea of bck fire fused with the sea of blood below. From the crimson tide rose a colossal army of blood dragons, each one wreathed in Bck Scorch. The fmes served as an unbreakable, matter-annihiting armor over their liquid bodies.

  With no trace of mercy, Nier pointed toward the stunned Eva.

  "I don't have a name for this one yet. But since you're tough enough to survive the opening act, you make the perfect sparring partner. I've always wondered what would happen if I really combined my abilities. Gotta say… it's beautiful. Anyway, Eva—this has been fun. Time for me to take the win. No hard feelings."

  His words rang clear in her audio receptors. A top-tier Flux-sying android, toyed with so effortlessly.

  "This is… utterly unheard of… Why is something like him permitted to exist."

  She wondered, he was a human her Sensors said so, but her Flux Scanner said his true nature was a Flux.

  Yet she was confused if something like him was truly human, especially with the amount of power he has.

  As she had no time to think, she only wanted to fight Nier to see just how powerful he was, and it goes without saying he was stupidly overpowered.

  "I guess I have no choice but to actually take this serious and use my combat mode."

  Eva said to herself.

  But before the barrage could reach her, a voice suddenly spoke directly into her mind.

  [Eva, good work, but that is enough. We don't need to escate further. Admit defeat and stand down. If that attack nds on your base frame, you will be destroyed completely, however good work on finding an anomaly like this. Data from this battle has given me great deal of inspiration on how I can improve you even more]

  The voice said, and Eva replied back with.

  "As you wish, Professor."

  A split second before the fming dragons collided, Eva spoke clearly.

  "I surrender."

  BOOOOOM!!

  The moment the explosion erupted, the scorching blood dragons shattered outward in a violent cascade. What had been fming crimson twisted and hardened mid-air, transforming into a sprawling bed of fming thorns—bramble born from blood.

  Had Eva been caught in the bst, she would have been impaled from every angle by slim and thick, whip-fast vines of thorn, each one capable of driving through her frame with brutal momentum. At the same time, the bck fire would have devoured her, yer by yer: first scorching her surface with unrelenting heat, then corroding deeper with its tripled destructive properties—matter-erasing fmes that left nothing behind, not even ash.

  The tangled thicket of bramble unfurled across the sky above the isnd, stretching wide enough to blot out the horizon. Burning vines scorched the very air they passed through; even the clouds overhead ignited and disintegrated, repced by a writhing net of fming thorns. From that deadly canopy, spores drifted downward like dark snow. Each one burst on contact with the ground or sea, sprouting fresh clusters of corrosive purple thorns—new eruptions of Nier's blood-forged malice.

  Three spells had fused into one: Body Modification, Bck Scorch, and Blight Bloom. The result was an aerial area-of-effect cataclysm, a storm of thorns and fme designed to annihite everything it touched on a massive scale.

  Till eventually the vines made by Nier attack all burned away leaving nothing behind.

  And a he float in the air with telekinesis, he soon heard a familiar voice.

  [#77 has been eliminated by #69]

  [#69 is the sole remaining examinee on the Isnd]

  [#69 prepare for teleportation]

  Without another word Nier suddenly vanish from the Isnd where the exam was at as he was transported back to the Hero Association.