The old man reeled. He had expected release through death and a clean revival, only to find himself still trapped inside this uncanny world.
"What is this power of yours?"
Feeling that his body was whole again, he still could not shake the horror on his face. Rakuya had killed him with his own hands. After revival he should have awakened in the World Government's stronghold, so why had he resurrected here, outside his control?
The death had been real. He had felt the pain, raw and unmistakable, nothing like a dream.
Only two explanations fit.
First, he had truly been killed, and some restriction kept his Life Fruit revival locked to this place.
Second, he had not died at all. It only looked like death, while in truth he had been thrown into something like an endless dream.
At that thought, the Five Elder fell quiet. The wrinkles on his face looked a shade paler.
He glanced down at his uninjured body. The gruesome scene from moments earlier was gone. That did not ease his fear. Cold sweat trickled; the memory of dying was too vivid. If that had been a dream, was he now awake?
Or was this still the dream?
He had never faced a loop like this. Not even in sleep had his thoughts ever felt so clear.
"Brat, what did you do to me? How can I die and revive like this?" he snarled, fists clenched.
"Oh? You can remember what just happened?" Rakuya murmured, genuinely intrigued.
Ordinarily, victims inside Tsukuyomi lost the memory of a complete death. Yet this old man remembered being pierced through.
So he retained clarity and recall.
[System Notification] Perfect Tsukuyomi is in effect. The host may shape the target's fear by will. The sharpest fear is to make him relive the moment of death again and again. His shadow-of-the-heart will multiply and grind down his soul until he collapses.
"I see." Rakuya nodded lightly. He had not expected Tsukuyomi to be this versatile.
"Brat, where am I?" The Elder's face went iron blue. He glared up, teeth gritted.
"This is the world of Tsukuyomi."
Rakuya stood beside him and extended his right hand. A blade of cold light formed in his palm.
"Tsukuyomi…" The Elder's pupils tightened. An ill sense of doom crawled over his skin. He stared at the blade, heart pounding.
"In Tsukuyomi's world, time, space, weight, everything answers to me. Even your life and death are mine to decide. If I say you live, you cannot die. If I say you die, you cannot live."
"What?" The Elder was struck dumb. He had never seen a power that could seize another's fate like this.
"When did you cast it?" His face twitched. He raised his head, eyes shot with blood.
"When?" Rakuya's smile was cool. "That is not a question you get to ask."
The blade slid forward. Blood fountained.
This time Rakuya turned the pain up tenfold.
His Mangekyo Sharingan swelled large in the Elder's vision, a wicked pattern that seemed to breathe.
The Elder's features knotted. His body curled. The point drove through his heart again. The rending pain surged from chest to limbs.
"Aaaah!"
He screamed, then shuddered and forced himself to endure. Sweat sheeted down his brow. Eyes spiderwebbed with red locked onto Rakuya. "You… if I get out, I will never forgive you."
"Then I had better make sure you savor it."
Rakuya's smile was demonic. The Elder trembled from scalp to heel.
"Do not. Do not." For all his strength, he was still flesh. In this world, Rakuya was sovereign. No one could break this genjutsu unless Rakuya chose to end it. By then, the Elder would be begging for death.
Under the old man's hoarse protests, Rakuya eased another blade in.
The Elder coughed a mouthful of blood. His face went chalk white and his aura thinned in an instant.
Rakuya flipped his hand. A second blade pierced through from the back.
The Elder's eyes flew wide. His mouth worked soundlessly as agony shook him to the core.
"Coward. Kill me if you dare. Kill me!"
"Kill you? That would be a kindness." Rakuya's smile turned wicked. "I would rather make living feel worse than dying."
He struck again.
"Ten already?" Rakuya looked down at the corpse and spoke as if to himself.
Amplified dozens of times, the pain broke even a monster who had lived eight centuries.
Tsukuyomi was terrifying indeed.
The Elder's eyes crept open once more. Fear and shock flooded back, and this time something else had joined them, something hollow and broken. His spirit sagged into an abyss.
"The eighty-third time," he whispered, voice a thread of air.
"Eighty-three?" Rakuya blinked, surprised. A whim had carried him further than he had noticed.
He considered the old man, a faint smile playing at his lips. "To die eighty-three times inside Tsukuyomi and not shatter… you are the first. Also the first of my experiments. Lucky you, to taste the world's suffering so completely."
The look of faux envy made the Elder's face twitch.
"Pervert. You plan to torture me to death? Even if it cuts my soul, I will repay you a thousandfold."
"As you wish."
Rakuya's tone stayed mild in the face of the curse.
He was about to continue, curious how many more deaths it would take to break the man, when the sky of the pirate world outside rippled. Behind Rakuya, space itself opened like a door.
A hand slipped out, silent as night.
"Hm?"
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