The Extra's Rebellion
Chapter 75: I don’t care

Chapter 75: I don’t care

"Then step aside".

’what’s up with him?’. This Earl of a boy seems hellbent on fighting him. Frankly Zephyr didn’t even want to be here.

Merin just kept talking about honour, not letting them win. Honour— what the hell is that, apparently he had won a battle he didn’t even know he was fighting— Not letting them win, he couldn’t care less if they won or not.

He kind of zoned off mid way through he speech and when he regained awareness, he just nodded, not even knowing what he was nodding to and bam, he was here.

"Is that fine by you". Zephyr regained awareness to realize he had been staring at Earl all this while.

"Hmm I don’t really care". Zephyr replied with a shrug. His second art had given his confidence, confidence to walk out of this fight uncharted.

"Then here I co—

Earl barely finished his sentence before the podium beneath Zephyr’s feet exploded in a spiderweb of fractures.

Zephyr surged forward, scythe dragging behind him like a reaper’s oath made manifest.

Earl grinned.

The boy didn’t back down. Instead, he planted his feet, and with a sharp twist of his arms, brought his war fan forward. Massive, crescent-edged, and solid as stone—it was a relic forged in the style of the ancient clans. (A Madara-style gunbai.) A weapon meant not just to strike, but to command.

Destructive Pin—Death Thrust.

Earl blurred forward, not with elegance—but with force. His entire body leaned into the thrust, war fan raised not defensively, but to break whatever met it.

"Shit."

Zephyr hadn’t expected a head-on clash. He thought Earl would hide behind the fan, play noble defense. Instead—he charged. Clearly not everyone was like him.

BOOM!

The two collided.

Air folded inwards, a sonic shockwave warping the space around them as Zephyr’s scythe clanged against the massive gunbai.

The war fan held.

Marble slabs shattered beneath them. Dust and force rippled outward, crashing into the arena barrier in waves of jagged hail.

And then—flame.

Black fire screamed from the point of contact, screeching like a banshee being torn apart. It twisted up the shaft of Zephyr’s scythe and licked at the surface of the fan, but Zephyr held fast.

Limbo—Border Jail.

Zephyr locked down space in front of him, stepped on it and shot back.

Rip

The gunbai ripped through the space like a fabric as Earl shot at the still air Borne Zephyr.

Zephyr’s eyes sharpened.

The fan had just fallen. Lifting it again—immediately—would take effort. Strength Earl shouldn’t have in that moment.

A grin found its way onto Zephyr’s face before he knew it.

He locked space beneath his feet—and blasted forward like a bullet.

But he’d underestimated Earl.

Veins bulged across Earl’s arms as he roared and lifted the gunbai again. Despite the force, despite the timing—he blocked the overhead strike.

Earl was forced back, boots tearing shallow trenches in the stage, sparks screaming from the friction. But he didn’t lose his stance.

Zephyr, airborne, twisted mid-flight and landed with a backward skid. His boots bit into the ground, dragging a shallow crescent scar into the stone floor.

"He blocked it?" Earl murmured, eyes wide with joy, breath sharp.

He hadn’t held back. Death Thrust was the first Art of the Demios bloodline, not some flashy bluff—it destroyed. The pinpoint burst had enough concentrated force to rupture organs through reinforced shielding.

"What the hell are they feeding these kids?" Zephyr’s hands trembled as he steadied his scythe.

He had seen it—how Earl’s muscles screamed with each movement. ’He has to have torn something,’ Zephyr thought. And yet... Earl didn’t even flinch.

’He really hates me, huh.’ To bear that kind of pain just to fight him? That was hate.

And he realized something. ’Head-on confrontation clearly isn’t it.’

Before the smoke could even clear, Earl moved again, his body blurred in a zigzag—right, left, right again.

’Feint?’ Zephyr recognized it—but he didn’t dodge. Instead, he braced.

Earl appeared before him. War fan raised—coming down hard on Zephyr’s head.

Limbo—Border Jail.

Space tightened. Earl froze mid-swing, suspended like a fly in amber.

Zephyr had barely managed to exhale in relief— when something went wrong.

The air above the blackened face of the gunbai began to ripple.

The thin, ’purple’ spatial pillars—normally used to anchor the frozen space—twisted into spirals and surged into the mouth of the fan.

It barely took seconds, seconds that wasn’t enough for Zephyr to react.

And then the overhead slash continued— straight toward Zephyr’s head.

The slash descended— Fast. Heavy. Absolute.

Zephyr barely had time to shift. The purple spirals—remnants of his Limbo— Border Jail—hadn’t been broken. They had been devoured.

Swallowed whole— By the fan.

The space-lock meant to immobilize Earl had instead been absorbed into the weapon—fuel for the war fan’s next strike. Or deflection, or reversal. But the truth was that his Art had been offered up—and consumed.

And now it was too late.

CRACK!

The edge of the gunbai grazed Zephyr’s left shoulder as he twisted. It barely scratched him but before he could let out a sigh of relief.

Zephyr barely twisted out of the way and succeed but now he was open. Earl barely missed a beat as he swang the flat side of his war fan at Zephyr.

Like a mountain’s weight condensed into a moment, the force rammed onto his side and folded part of his frame sideward.

He was sent spiraling, his body skipping across the arena like a stone on water, as his body flew up again he gripped his scythe and Peirced it into the ground trying desperately to offset his momentum.

But it wasn’t enough, all he was able to achieve was loss his scythe as his body hit the ground with force a couple more times before rolling to a stop.

Zephyr wheezed as he struggled to even cough. The ground had hit like a hammer, even his reinforced body had clearly suffered injuries, although it wasn’t much he had two broken ribs.

’damn it! How is he so strong’. For a moment he felt his body fold inward, and space, space was so light that the tumbling was so exaggerated from anyone’s point of view.

For a moment he considered pretending to die, but then he remembered that they were under the effect of Magnus Domain.

With a grunt he raised his upper body upward and looked in the direction of Earl. Earl had a look of surprise that bothered on bewilderment.

But it wasn’t only him, everyone he could see, from the students to the instructors were all looking at him like they had seen a ghost.

’what’s wrong? Was I supposed to just die?’. But then he caught sight of something swaying in front of his eyes, something white.

Normally he would have ignored it, his hair always swayed in front of his vision and he had learnt to ignore it. But it wasn’t the usual red.

’oh! That’s what this is about’. When he woke up from his ’Rem sleep’, a lot had changed. And one of the change was that his hair had become white— stark white.

Before he headed to the tournament he asked Merin to help him with a disguise. It wasn’t that he was afraid of a few questions— he didn’t own anyone an explanation.

He was afraid that people would realize that something had changed about him and in a world like this, the sudden change usually spelt bad news.

She had given him an amulet telling him to not take it off or let it fall off, least his disguise wore off.

But it seems he had lost it during the moment he was hit senseless.

Zephyr didn’t bother with the situation again, he instead stared at the gunbai. The weapon was not strange, instead it was rather unassuming.

Apart from the fact that it was an unusual thing for fighting, it didn’t seem like something holding that much power.

It was shaped like a giant, oval fan, the kind ancient warriors once carried on their backs. Flat, wide-bodied, with a long handle, and a small metal ring chained through the base. The surface was black and white, etched on it were red dots that lined from the handle to the blade. It shimmered when it was moved, but no jagged spikes, no overly ornate design. Just that smooth, curving edge—like a mirror meant for war.

But what disturbed Zephyr most wasn’t the form. It was the feel, he could still sense the remnants of his Aether within it.

It didn’t just consume it... it somehow stored a portion of it.

Zephyr clenched his jaw, struggling upright. His ribs screamed. Every breath came with a stab of pain, but he pushed through. His white hair fluttered in the wind, exposed now. Revealed. He ignored the gasps that rippled through the crowd.

All his focus was on that war fan.

’What the hell kind of artifact is that?’ he wondered as he subtly edged towards his Scythe, lying a bit far from him.

’i have got to separate him and that Artifact’. He was going to separate it purely so that Earl’s fighting capabilities would go down a lot. And clearly not because he was attracted to it