Cameraman Never Dies-Chapter 255: A Portal to Nowhere: For When You’re in a Hurry

Satan stood at the periphery of the explosion, utterly unharmed and mildly offended that anyone might assume otherwise.

He had calculated the blast radius down to the inch (he didn't) — mostly because he didn't trust anyone else to do math correctly — and had no intention of being collateral damage in his own experiment.

A sense of fulfillment took over his mind for a brief second as he watched how well it had worked. He silently grieved at how he couldn't do it again.

The moment Percival began shaking off the flash like an irritated cat, the room decided to give up on structural integrity altogether.

Beams started to, walls decided that they were getting paid enough and quit living altogether, and massive chunks of debris fell in a fashion that would make any demolition expert weep with admiration.

Grandpa Gereon would have approved of the efficiency.

Satan, being a coward but a sensible one, sprinted for the nearest exit with the focus of a man who knew exactly how flammable his confidence was. He had to get out of these dark tunnels to actually have a good chance of... god forbid, winning.

It was clear that he was a coward, but being a sensible one had become a question.

Aldric, disoriented but functional, grabbed Alexis by the wrist and sank into the shadows like a guilty thought fleeing a sermon.

Satan reached what used to be a doorway but now resembled a very abstract suggestion of one. He pushed off, ready for that glorious sprint to freedom, when the air around his ankle abruptly decided to stop being air. It didn't harden, it didn't explode — it just refused to cooperate with the general concept of movement.

Percival, emerging from the newly redecorated wall with the enthusiasm of someone who considered property damage a love language, had apparently decided gravity was passé. If the floor wouldn't play nice, then reality itself would have to do.

Satan, whose first reaction to any crisis was usually "make it colder," reached for his borrowed principle of freezing. Which his dear coworker Gabriel had warned him of about its instability, prompting everyone to only use the ice manipulation of the principle until it is properly developed.

Luckily, he didn't freeze his ankle. But he did freeze the concept of immovability. Yeah, that was exactly what he did after all the warnings.

He made the concept of "can't move" subordinate to "the freezing of movement," which he could actually control.

And the result through the logic of conceptual combat ended in a sleek coating of black ice up his leg that let him slip free. Yes, he made the ice... and yes, he made the color black.

Trying to fight Percival was like trying to reason with a philosopher mid-existential crisis — everything you said somehow confirmed their point.

Percival's grin stretched wider, the kind of grin that made sane people consider early retirement. He swung his metallic arm, and a ripple of malice rippled forward — Temporal Erasure, a loop of pain so perfectly efficient it could've been patented.

Satan saw the distortion coming and, in a moment of pure desperation, tried to open a Spatial Warp. His nerves, however, were on strike. Instead of a clean fold, he ripped open a jagged hole in the floor that led precisely nowhere. It was less a portal and more a spatial shrug.

The Temporal Erasure clipped the space in front of him, producing a shriek that sounded like a violin being tortured by a newbie who plays metal. The floor beneath it aged a few billion years in a second, disintegrating into dust that probably remembered the Big Bang personally.

Satan, who'd long since learned not to question these things, vaulted the self-aged dust and ran. The corridor ahead was half rubble, half chaos — his favorite kind of terrain, where physics might actually take pity on him.

Percival didn't bother chasing. He simply raised his hand, and the ceiling decided it was tired of being solid. The entire stone structure liquefied into a slow-motion avalanche of conceptual sludge.

"Drown in the concept of stone!" Percival roared, because apparently, subtlety had taken the day off.

Satan didn't wait to discuss geological metaphors. He summoned Air Manipulation and unleashed a pure, desperate blast beneath his feet. The resulting explosion of force launched him upward like a bottle rocket fired by divine stupidity.

He activated the intangibility of his mask while retaining the velocity, bursting into the courtyard, and landing in a roll that looked heroic if you ignored the fact that he was screaming the whole way up.

He slowed to a shaky crouch, coughing, bruised, and faintly shimmering with temporal residue. He smelled like burnt jiffies and remorse. But alive. That was enough.

The silence that followed wasn't actually amicable. It was the kind of silence that hung around after reality had been messed with too much and was pretending everything was fine.

Up in a shattered window frame, deep purple eyes lingered on Satan for a moment. Their owner shifted, the smile never leaving his face. But anyone who had even a slight bit of ability to read people could tell the malice he let out so openly.

———

Floating just above a sheet of paper, a quill began to move. No hand guided it, but its motions were crisp and purposeful.

"The Recorder, through sheer, desperate audacity and a terrifying lack of control, escaped the conceptual concrete pool. His tactical retreat was successful, confirming his physical limitations under pressure."

The quill paused, gave what could only be described as an exhausted wiggle, then fell toward a hand. The parchment it had written on drifted down after it, blanking midair, as if embarrassed to be caught documenting such nonsense.

"I really hopw there is no other way," Judge murmured, twirling the quill once before setting its tip against the empty parchment. Crystalline ink flowed freely with nothing to source its origin.

The script glowed faintly. Things weren't going in his favor; Satan's opponent was too strong for Judge to make an appearance and steal the spotlight. He was going to make another way, though the price was steep.