Chapter 237: Breaking Down

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattles publishment at threads/rwby-the-gamer-the-games-we-play-disk-five.341621/. Anyway on with the show...err read.

Breaking Down

In the course of planning for my fights with Malkuth, I'd considered every option I had available before boiling things down to just a few. The simple fact of the matter was that most of my skills wouldn't really work against someone whose power gave him such complete control of the world around him—even limited by Gilgamesh's body and unable to directly control the world beyond himself, Malkuth had proven that. I trap him with in the heat of a perfectly contained stellar explosions? He makes it so that heat doesn't flow from a hotter area to a colder one. I destroy his body completely? He recreates it with summoned matter. I could hit him as hard as I could, but he had countermeasures for just about everything I could do, up to and including changing basic parts of reality like the speed of light in a vacuum.

And that was all in direct stuff—essentially weapons he'd cobbled together by altering his physical mass and how parts of him interacted with the world. From removing matters ability to hold itself together, causing it to implode and fuse into a confined mass, or twisting probability into and actual physical things, the world was his bitch even while he was kneecapped in terms of power and versatility. How the hell was I supposed to beat a guy with source code hacks to the universe I lived in?

There weren't a lot of answers. Even with all the power I had and everything I could muster, we existed in the realm of Malkuth—his world. His playground, really. However many times I punched him in the face or destroyed his body or whatever else I happened to try, the fact remained that the game was rigged, the rules rewritten to ensure I couldn't win.

And yet, I had, in my past life. Not completely, of course, because whatever had happened, I hadn't walked away from it—but at the same time, Malkuth usually wasn't running around being a colossal douchebag and making my life a living hell. I'd stopped somehow, even though the most basic laws of physics were playthings in his hands. How?

I had no idea. I was willing to bet that was a big part of why Death had made sure to give me a good scrubbing, though the thousand years of experience and preparation probably hadn't helped my metaphorical case. And whatever I'd done, I was about a million percent sure Malkuth had dedicated a pretty significant portion of his time since ensuring it wouldn't work on him again, or else he wouldn't be so confident.

But, for all of that, for all his power, and for all his minions—including the Riders, who could theoretically infect and pull just about anyone to his side—he wasn't free to act. Not unless I did something to tamper with the connection that led back to him.

There were only a few possible explanations for that, the most likely of which was that I'd trapped him somehow. The only reason he'd be watching from a distance instead of constantly following me around, micromanaging and strong arming me at every moment, was because he had no other choice. If he did, he'd have reached out to me the moment he knew who I was, back before even I did, and might have presented a friendly face until he got what he'd wanted. Assuming he didn't do that, he'd at least be constantly threatening and hurting things I cared about, driving me whichever way he chose. But either way, he'd have done something and I'd have had no choice in the matter; I'd never have a moment's peace, a moment's escape, because he could even enter barriers like Naraka.

But instead, he'd been forced to work through clumsier means, using the tools he had—the Grimm—even though I'd known they were monsters from the get-go. He'd been forced to keep his distance, to watch and wait and nudge here and there. To hold thing back and play things safe. Not the actions of someone who had much choice in the matter.

No, if he could have been there, he would have been there—and since he hadn't, it was only because he couldn't. Something was stopping him from getting involved directly.

It might have been on my end—something I'd done to myself to protect against his involvement—but that was unlikely. If I had some secret weapon that could ward him off up my sleeve, I probably would have used it the first time around. While some kind of spiritual bomb in my head that was ready to explode if Malkuth came too close might keep him away, the risk to me was obvious and if something went wrong…well, I was fucked. I didn't want to screw myself over and I'd been planning for a reincarnation, even knowing how long it would take; been planning to do something save the world in round two, even though I knew it meant countless people could die before I could get back in the ring. I wouldn't have done that if I had any other choice and I sure as hell wouldn't risk making people suffer even more by causing there to be a round three. There might be, if I fucked up, but I was really hoping to avoid that.

Besides, if I'd left Malkuth free to run around, he'd have fucked up everything by now. My life, the geography, the world, everything. I'd have heard of some nightmarish god-king by now, at the very least, or he'd have sent other minions, controlling things from a distance. No, whatever I'd done, it had almost certainly been on his end. I'd caught him in a trap of some kind.

It couldn't have been a physical prison—or, at least, I couldn't think of one that I thought could hold him for very long. Given the amount of fucks he apparently gave for…pretty much anything, stone walls and iron bars seemed unlikely to be his weakness. In this world, Malkuth's power was absolute and even if I was far stronger then than I was now, I was pretty sure I'd have a bitch of a time physically locking up a guy who controlled the laws of physics. Anything grounded in this world was putty in Malkuth's hands.

So I must have used something he couldn't control, which could only mean one thing. Where I'd failed with Et in Arcadia Ego—my attempt to remove the fight from 'reality'—I'd figured out some way to succeed and I'd locked him in a box he couldn't touch with his powers. I'd imprisoned him in a place above Malkuth, above the physical. A place where his methods didn't apply, where the very concepts of fighting, resisting, and clashing, as we understood them here, were meaningless. What was a battle in a world where space, time, and distance held no value? He wouldn't be able to escape from such a thing while inside it. He might not even be able to try to escape the box I'd put him in.

Well, if it worked at all how I thought it might—and I could barely imagine the mechanics of such a thing—it was probably more of a hypercube than a box, as such. But still. He was cut off from the physical and unable to even reach out towards it… unless something reached out first. Unless something from the physical world interacted with him, allowing him a chance to affect something with his own power, to some extent or another. The metaphysical distance probably imposed restrictions upon that beyond the obvious ones, but it turned the impossible into the possible. The Sephirot were connected, after all, if in strange ways.

And the problem was, there were things doing that all the time. The Grimm were connected to their master in a way not dissimilar to my Elementals and I—separate and united, the 'people' and the Kingdom. They drew power from him, strength, and he remained connected to the world as a result. And when I reached out to tamper with that connection, like I'd done with both Conquest and Gilgamesh…it gave him a way in, however temporarily. He still had power here, after all, he just needed to be able to reach it.

But it was a reminder that there were some things that could work on him, some things that could still reach him. It had been a starting point, once I'd thought of things that way, a place to begin—and one of the places it had led me was here.

Ohr Ein Sof was more than just an attack in a case like this—it was a bridging of points.

And I used it to drag Malkuth kicking and screaming up the Tree of Life.

In the light of Ohr Ein Sof, all things came apart, regardless of their nature. That was because, at its most basic level, it wasn't a destructive technique—instead, it revealed the truth and sometimes that truth wasn't something people could survive learning. In Ohr Ein Sof, in the realms above, everything feel away. There was no flesh to conceal you, no material things to distract you, no natural law or permanence or anything else. There was no time, no space, no distance. You couldn't lie in that light, not even to yourself; couldn't hide or deny or deceive.

What you saw was you. Who you truly were, what you truly were, behind everything. As you rose through the Tree of Life, things simplified on a level that could be—that was—frightening. Even just a step above Malkuth was Yes—the Foundation, the connection between one thing and another, between an idea and an act. Image what that was like for a person, being reduced to the foundations of who you were, somewhere between the concepts above and the realities below. And then you continue to rise higher, seemingly shedding more and more of who and what you were, reduced to what most people would think of as a soul as early as Netzach and Hod, at least were the Aura was concerned. Above that, one could argue if you existed as a being in your own right, as something distinct and separate from everything else.

That was how you survived Ohr Ein Sof and it was far more difficult than it seemed. The question was, when there was nothing left but you…was that enough? The words 'I Am' were simple and easily spoken when you could think and talk, when the vibrations of air could generate sound and electrical impulses help form conscious ideas, when boundaries were made real in Malkuth, but what separates one entity from another above that? The mind? Perhaps that could sustain you for a time, but what about when you reach above the mind in the heights of the Sephirot? What of when you transcend them entirely in the Light? The Light was something that was, perhaps, infinite and all-encompassing. It existed in all things, in all states of things, divided and separated by the emanations of the Sephirot. If you remove all those, what separated one thing from another?

You. You did—and absolutely nothing else. Not your body, not your mind, not your memories or feelings or emotions, not your hopes or your dreams or desires, but just you. Who you were when, paradoxically, everything you were was gone.

But that perspective was, in and of itself, limited. Keter was 'that which laid above the mind' and things that existed within the state of Keter or even above it…needless to say, they were hard to conceptualize. In that state, we were less people than ideas, except even that gave too much weight to us. We were the moments before an idea, the instant before something clicked and seemingly meaningless and unconnected thoughts came together into something grand. The moment of inspiration, the moment of conceptualization, the first moments of existence. If the world had sprung forth with a bang, Keter was the silence that preceded it. Something impossible to truly nail down but undeniably existent; the beginning. Not where something was perceived as beginning, like the first word on a page or even the first idea of the story, but what came before that.

And instead of an idea, it was a person. Though calling it a idea and a person may not have been incorrect, on this level.

This was the prison I'd sentenced Malkuth to—the prison of Being and Almost Being, to the moments you lived before you were. Where there was nothing but who you were about to be, except perhaps one other thing. The 'soul', beyond all labels or expectations.

And this was the state I'd brought us to now.

Everything we were on the surface fell away, our physical forms dissolved and what remained—who we really were when all else was stripped away—flowed up the channels of the Sephirot. I felt it as we rose, each level stripping away more of who we were, peeling back the lies that hid the truth. Though the attack may have struck Gilgamesh, that body was nothing but Malkuth's puppet now, and it did nothing to hide him. Ohr Ein Sof peeled away the flesh and bared the soul, tracing the connection back to its source. For a moment, I could sense him in a way that was hard to describe, because 'sense' implied observation, the ability to distinguish the world outside from yourself, or at least distinguish different parts of yourself. I couldn't do that here, because most of it just didn't apply. I couldn't think and so I couldn't form thoughts into ideas and words.

But I was. And I knew I was. After all—and especially now—I was Metatron. I was Keter, the Crown and that which remains. And here, I had the advantage.

In many ways, this was nothing but a change in our battlefield—an exceedingly literal escalation. Just as Malkuth warped the laws of physics to shape the terms of our battle, I'd now removed us from those laws entirely to turn things to my advantage. Our power and control of the world didn't matter here, only we did, who we were. We didn't pit those things against each other, didn't come into conflict, because the mere idea of a fight on this level was laughable. Even thinking mean thoughts in each other's general directions was impossible, because we had no location, direction, or thoughts to do such things with.

Instead, we fought by existing. By continuing to exist, above and beyond the grasp of everything that implied we could or should exist. What could you hold onto when you had and were nothing and what would you let slip through your grasp? I had the advantage, by my very nature—my power, my Semblance, they all drew from this. In many ways, the Gamer's Body and Mind were tied back to this state and thus all of my power. More than that, I had Metatron on my side, both the skill and the name. I knew who I was.

Malkuth, I assumed, just had a lot of experience from being locked up here all this time. But even then, that wasn't entirely an advantage, because it was that much harder to cling to physical things and that was a major danger in Ohr Ein Sof. Perhaps you managed to cling to your mind—but do you still have a body to attach it to? What if your body remains, but not yourself? What if nothing remains? I had a similar issue because, if anything, this was my natural state, but I was better equipped to deal with it. And while in many ways, Malkuth felt as solid as the world itself and as steady as it's turnings, I could feel things on the edges beginning to fray.

Then the moment passed. Ideas initialized and renewed, pieces coming together and taking shape—inspiration became idea became action. We were again.

And I found myself somewhere besides Jericho Falls.

"So," Malkuth said, voice coming from behind me but sounding different, indistinct. Everything that had been in the voice before was gone. "It appears you won after all, Keter. How…annoying."

I turned around slowly and looked at him. He didn't look like Gilgamesh anymore; he was back in the form that I'd originally seen him in, a black hole with a person-shaped event horizon, and stood looking at me quietly. The world around us was a vague and indistinct plain, as if he couldn't be bothered to give it any definition, with nothing but the two of us within it.

"You don't sound too upset," I asked, looking around as I tried to figure out where we were.

"Oh, I'm furious," He replied, but his tone was dull. "It pisses me off that you managed to get this far, that I'm going to have to do this the hard way. You lost Keter and I watched you die—it just doesn't seem fair that I still have to fucking deal with you and your shit."

"Wait, are you talking about fairness?" I asked, looking at him, down, and back up. "Is that a thing you're doing right now?"

He ignored me.

"You should have lost," He continued. "But you did this and here we are again."

He gestured and I looked around, considering his words.

We were still somewhere in-between, I realized. Using Ohr Ein Sof, I'd dragged up to the top of the Tree of Life, but that was only half of the technique—the rise that was followed by a descent. But he'd stopped it at the border between Malkuth and Yesod, which was why nothing seemed quite finished or real.

No, perhaps 'stop' wasn't the right word. I could still feel the power of Ohr Ein Sof building, feel it gathering to destroy him—but he'd paused it just before the end, apparently to get a last word in.

Seriously, what an asshole. You lost, you worthless piece of shit—just up and die already so you can go back to your fucking box.

He started talking again before I had a chance to say any of that aloud, however.

"But…perhaps I'm not as surprised as I should be," He said. "I suppose it wouldn't be much of a game without proper competition. I would rather have won utterly, of course, but failing that…this takes me back. I'm going to enjoy ripping you to pieces—and this time I'll make sure you stay dead."

"You're assuming I have any intention of letting you out," I replied. "Personally, I'm pretty cool with you being stuck in Limbo until the end of time."

He snorted.

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"Nice bluff, but you and I both know how this ends," He answered. "Nothing's changed—you're still on the clock and I'm still the one who makes it tick. You're stronger than I expected you to be, but I can snap my fingers and unleash the full power of the Grimm, kill everyone and everything you love, and the only way you can stop that, the only way you can keep it from happening, is by killing me. This trump card of yours…it's not something that lasts forever, not something you can use all the time or even for very long. My greater children, my Riders…"

He chuckled.

"I can wipe Humanity from the face of the Earth in a night," He said. "Could bring up a host even greater than the one that destroyed you the first time. The only reason I gave you this much time was because I needed you to be ready—and you obviously are. So I have no reason to hold back anymore or show any mercy. So you're going to let me out, because you have no choice. Since the very beginning, the only way this was ever going to end was between you and me."

I looked at him silently for a long moment, pursing my lips.

"So to keep you from killing them, I should let you out so you can kill me and then murder all of them anyway?" I mused aloud. "Not the best sales pitch, I must say."

I couldn't see his lips, but I thought he was smiling.

"Aw, what's this?" He asked. "You still don't think you can win? All the cards are in your favor, your trump card is set up, and I'm betting that opened up a few new possibilities for you. Hell, you just smacked me around with barely any effort and you still too much of a pussy to come and have a go?"

"Seeing as you seem to really like the idea, I'm thinking no," I told him. "Doing what my archenemy wants me to do seems a tad foolish, no offense."

"You say that as though you have any room to negotiate," He replied.

This time, I chuckled, laughing quietly under my breath.

"While I could empathize if you found the idea of murdering countless people funny, I get the feeling that's not why you're laughing," He said, sighing slightly. "Which means I'm probably going to have to listen to you talk. Wonderful."

"It's only fair, seeing as you paused the game right before I killed your ass," I retorted. "Trying to put off the inevitable like that…what are you, five?"

He couldn't roll his eyes as a black hole, but I was pretty sure he was trying.

"I thought it was odd," I continued as if he hadn't interrupted. "When I first saw you, you didn't look anything like a person—you looked like you do now—and when you did take a shape, you based it off me. Not as good-looking, of course, and more of an asshole—"

"Bitch, please," He muttered. "Not only was I better looking, but you're a smug prick at least ninety percent of the time."

I ignored him outright.

"But it made me wonder why. At first, I thought you might be hiding your identity, but I couldn't figure out why you'd even bother. Would I recognize you, put the pieces together if I saw your face? I wasn't sure and I didn't have any way of knowing the truth at the time regardless. Later, it just didn't seem important so I brushed it off as you being an asshole and left it at that. But even when you possessed Gilgamesh, when I had most of the pieces and you knew it, you didn't change shape. Why is that? Why would you even bother hiding your face when I already know it?"

At that, Malkuth was silent, but I could all but feel his glower.

It made me smile.

"But that's not it, is it?" I asked, voice taunting. "You're not trying to hide anything—you just don't remember anymore, do you?"

His form fluctuated violently, as if he were about to shift, to prove me wrong just to spite me—but he hesitated at the last moment, as if afraid he'd just prove my point. In doing so, he did anyway, and I laughed at him.

"It's weird, the things my power pulls up sometimes," I said. "One of my titles referred to the Grimm as 'creatures of anonymity.' I didn't think much of it, because hey—they all where masks. They don't have souls, either, things beyond the physical to set them apart. But what if there's more to it than that? Trapped above the world in the realms beyond the physical…it can be so hard to hold on to the little things, to keep them from slipping through the cracks. Cut off from the world, tied only to the Grimm and even then only lightly, it must have been rough. But it's a little funny, isn't it? How even after everything you took from me, I still remember who I am…and you don't? Identity and Anonymity. Odd how things come together sometimes, isn't it?"

I tilted my head, still smiling at him broadly.

"I remember what you looked like, you know," I said, just to be a dick. "And trust me—you're not missing anything."

"If you have a point, get to it," He said, his voice—devoid now of anything like an accent, anything unique—a growl.

"I wonder if I planned this," I mused. "I mean, hell, maybe if you stay here long enough, you'll lose the parts of you that make you a fucking prick. Though if a few thousand years didn't do it, I guess it's probably impossible—I suppose it's just part of what makes you you."

"I'll kill them," He said, his voice almost frighteningly empty. It wasn't angry, wasn't loud—it was soft, distant, and entirely devoid of anything human. "I'll kill your mother. I'll kill your sisters and daughter and friends. I'll have my Grimm do it slowly, let my Riders have their fun. They'll enjoy that after all this time, you won't. And I'll make you watch. You're strong enough to kill Gilgamesh, but I have mightier children and there are so many. You'll fall, you'll fail, and I'll make you see what it means."

I let all traces of amusement slip from my face, bringing up only the power running through me.

"And how much will you lose in the process?" I asked. "How long will it take for me to be reborn? A thousand years? Five? Ten? The fact that you've managed to hold onto yourself this long is miraculous—but you've lost things. You'll lose more. Can you really afford to wait? If you mobilize your forces to kill the people I love, what's to stop me from hanging you out to dry? To say fuck it and just take as many Grimm as possible down with me? You can't torture me. You can beat me, but you don't have the power to strong-arm me anymore."

I must have done this intentionally as well—done something to keep him from just wiping me out if I got to dangerous. For a long time, I thought I was the only one with time against them, but Malkuth had just as much to lose from too long a wait. If I lost and died, countless people would suffer and die before I had another chance—but Malkuth's identity would continue to erode. Slowly, given that he apparently had enough strength of will to hold on this long, but what was it like to live like that? Cut off from everything, knowing each day might take some of your mind away from you?

Death had stripped me of my past life quickly, but I wasn't so kind.

"What would you propose, then?" He asked at last.

"A ceasefire," I said. "For a time. You have things in motion and so do I—let's allow things to play out just a bit more before we force each other's hands."

He hummed for a moment, as if in consideration.

"Let me see," He said. "So I give you, a guy who grows at an exponential rate, a significant amount of time to continue to grow. I leave you to run around and kill my dudes, growing in power and versatility all while crippling my own ability to threaten you. And in return, I stay locked up in here? Not the best sales pitch, I must say."

"That's not what I meant by a ceasefire," I replied. "You don't attack the Kingdoms, I don't attack the Grimm. Not in any major way, at least—you won't stop killing people and I won't stop killing monsters on the small scale, but I won't kill your Knights yet and you won't wipe everything out."

"So you use Naraka instead?" He asked. "I can feel the Grimm within it, you know—don't think I can't. We may have made that technique together, but they're still mine."

I filed that bit of information away and nodded slowly.

"Not even them, then," I said. "No loopholes, no tricks—we both just hold back for a while."

It wasn't a huge loss, all told—the amount of experience I got from most Grim was negligible at this point and while hunting the Knights would yield what I assumed were enormous quantities of experience, it seemed as though it would mean fighting Malkuth each and every time. It was still a loss because the points I gained from leveling were my easiest way to improve my stats, but…I had already reached the limit of Intelligence and Wisdom and I had other ways of improving my physical stats now.

Besides which, my true power had always been in my skills. I had a better feel for what I was up against, I just needed more time to learn and improve now. It wasn't as though I had much choice, anyway; it was this or throwing down now.

Malkuth was watching me, frowning—but I could see him considering it. Despite his threats, I had a feeling neither of us was in ideal condition for a real fight. I'd taken him by surprise with Metatron, the Red Rider was out of commission, Cinder was in the middle of doing whatever she was planning, and Death…I still needed to be sure of where he was. Conquest and the Knights were still lying in wait as well.

Beneath all of that, however, I knew what really concerned him—waiting for a while or waiting for thousands of years.

"How long would such a thing last?" He asked.

"Knowing you? Not long," I answered. "But you can attack any time you wish. You can kick things off any time you wish and I can't stop you—I just won't release you unless I think I have a chance of winning. Until then, the two of us just have to rig things as heavily in our favor as possible."

"And what guarantee do I have that you would ever let me out?" He asked.

"Neither of us have any guarantees," I told him. "But I want to kill you and you want to kill me. You already mentioned why I need to do the former; if you want to do the latter, you're just doing to have to play the game and time things right, same as me. We'll both be taking a risk, both be trying to win, and both doing everything in our power to make sure we do—and one wrong move would screw us both over."

He watched me silently and didn't answer.

"Now I call that fair," I said, emphasizing the word gently before clicking my tongue and smiling slightly, even as I crossed my fingers on the inside. "Or close enough."

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