"Whoa?! Wah!? Ah, nngh!! Th-This is bad!"
"Hah?"
It happened by pure chance—an outcome no one could have possibly foreseen.
Melt had been caught in the shockwave of an explosion, her body sent hurtling toward Abyss. In mid-air, she completely lost her footing. She had intended to launch a proper assault, but with her balance shattered, she couldn't drive her clenched fist into him. Instead, she began to spin uncontrollably.
Perhaps it was because she had just finished generating a massive amount of magic swords, but she had been attempting a physical strike rather than an attack fueled by magic power. Regardless, even as she flailed, her burning rebellious spirit refused to let her give up. She simply wouldn't allow herself to stop the attack.
With her back turned almost entirely toward Abyss and only a fraction of a second left to act, what could she possibly do?
Thinking with the frantic desperation of someone with nothing left to lose, she threw her body at him in one final, reckless motion.
"Melt-chan's... Desperate Butt Pu~nch!!"
"What!?"
The move Melt chose was neither a punch nor a kick. It was a hip attack.
At this stage, one might have questioned if it even counted as an offensive move, but it triggered a result that defied all logic.
"T-Tsk!"
"Eh...!?"
The hip attack—a desperate gamble that barely qualified as an attack at all—actually connected with Abyss.
Though he managed to bring his arms up to block, her posterior slammed into him with enough force to shove the man backward.
"I-It hit...? Melt's butt just hit Abyss, didn't it!?"
"Sessha saw it too! Melt-dono's posterior certainly struck Abyss, de gozaru!"
"Ngh, ugh...! To think I would be struck by such a... such a ridiculous maneuver...!!"
No one could believe their eyes. The battlefield fell into a stunned silence, then erupted into a roar of confusion. Neither Melt, who had landed the strike, nor Abyss, who had received it, had ever imagined such a turn of events.
"H-How did an attack like that land? Its power was far lower than anything we've tried before, and it wasn't even a surprise attack..."
Raiha was bewildered. Judging by Abyss's visible agitation, it wasn't as if he had allowed the hit to happen. But she couldn't fathom why only the hip attack had pierced his defense.
Watching the sequence unfold, Marcos gasped, his eyes widening in realization.
"I see...! So that's how it works...!"
"Marcos, did you find something!?"
"I did. The true nature of the [Word] ability—its principles, and its fatal flaw!"
As Marcos made his declaration, Yugo looked at him with a face full of disbelief. However, he knew that if his reliable rival was this confident, it had to be the truth. Yugo remained silent, waiting for Marcos to explain.
"Abyss! Every time you nullified our attacks until now, you went out of your way to name specific actions like [Punch] or [Kick]! That felt incredibly inconsistent to me. If your power was absolute, you wouldn't need to do that. You could have simply nullified the word [Attack] to negate all offensive actions at once! Or you could have just nullified the names of our Magic Items to render us powerless!"
"T-That’s true...! But Abyss didn't do that. Why...?"
"It's not that he didn't, Yugo. It's that he couldn't. Isn't that right, Abyss!?"
"Guh...!"
Abyss let out a sharp groan of agitation, confirming the theory. Marcos pointed a finger at him and shouted his conclusion for all to hear.
"We were so overwhelmed by the results that we forgot the basics, but [Word] is still a type of Clear Plate. And Clear Plates draw upon the user's mental imagery to manifest power. Everything depends on the image! The [Word] ability cannot activate against phenomena that fall outside the scope of your imagination! Am I right, Abyss!?"
"——!!"
Hearing Marcos's roar, Abyss's fists began to tremble with rage. Seeing that reaction, Yugo finally understood the mechanics behind the terrifying power.
"I get it now...! 'Attack' is too broad. It's not just physical or magical; it covers everything from mental assaults to indirect tactics like a siege. Because the definition of [Attack] is so vast, he can't form a solid enough image to negate it...!!"
"Exactly," Marcos added. "On the flip side, if he tries to be too specific, he has to grasp every single detail. The moment a phenomenon deviates even slightly from his preconceived notion, the [Word] ability fails. That's why he couldn't nullify our Magic Items by name."
"The [Word] ability only works once Abyss fits his imagination into the framework of a specific word! In other words, if he can't conceptualize it, his power is meaningless! The reason you've been speaking the names of the attacks you're nullifying was to help solidify the image in your own mind, wasn't it!?"
"I see! That's why my hip attack hit! Abyss couldn't even imagine the idea of someone attacking him with their butt!"
Words are the crystallization of images. They only hold power when the person using them understands their meaning and can picture exactly what they represent. Conversely, words lose their meaning in the face of things a person cannot imagine or understand. The [Word] ability could not be applied to events that existed outside the user's mental dictionary.
"Basically, if the information isn't in the 'Abyss Dictionary,' his power won't trigger! As long as it's an attack he doesn't know, it'll reach him!!"
The breakthrough was finally in sight. They just had to exceed Abyss's imagination.
It was a daunting task, but for the first time, they had found a crack in the man's absolute defense. As Yugo and his allies felt their morale soar, Abyss, his fists still shaking, suddenly threw his head back and burst into a fit of high-pitched, mocking laughter.