[Chapter Header]
ARC: Back Attack Land
The sky over Sinish was no longer blue or black—it was a bruised, bleeding violet. Akos was falling, gravity dragging his battered body toward the shattered pavement, but Sakoura stood atop the ruins like a god of ruin.
Sakoura extended his palm, his eyes glowing with ancient malice.
JOKON FLAME."
A torrent of crimson fire erupted from his hand, shrieking through the air. It slammed into Akos, driving him into the asphalt with the force of a falling meteor. Akos hit the ground, the impact cratering the street. He struggled to rise, his lungs burning, but Sakoura was already there.
A fist cloaked in a dense, suffocating aura buried itself in Akos's gut, pinning him against a crumbling wall.
Akos coughed up a spray of crimson, the metallic taste of blood filling his mouth. Sakoura didn't give him a second to breathe. He joined his hands together, channeling a concentrated sphere of heat.
JOKON FLAME!
The blast was point-blank. At the last microsecond, Akos jerked his head to the right. The explosion leveled the remains of the wall behind him, sending a shockwave that tossed cars like autumn leaves into the distance.
Akos tightened his grip on his katana, teeth gritted as he prepared to lunge. But the air shimmered. Sakoura was gone.
"I'm so bored, little hero..." a voice whispered directly into Akos's ear.
Sakoura was standing behind him, his presence cold as the grave.
"Let's increase the chaos, shall we?"
Sakoura let out a manic, devilish laugh that echoed through the empty skyscrapers of the city center. He delivered a backhand slap that sent Akos reeling, then followed up with a punch coated in a sickening yellow aura.
The blow hit with the weight of a mountain. Akos felt his consciousness flicker; for a moment, he felt the cold touch of death.
He slumped to the ground, using his katana as a crutch, driving the blade into the concrete just to keep from collapsing entirely.
"Prepare for the next strike," Sakoura mocked.
He raised his right hand. He joined his thumb and index finger into a circle, leaving his other three fingers extended like jagged needles. Closing his left eye, he brought his hand to his right eye, sighting Akos through the finger circle like a sniper.
"The moonlight tonight... is made for blood."
In a nearby building, tucked away from the immediate carnage, the mysterious woman worked in silence. Jin lay on the floor, his breathing ragged and shallow. Soft, rhythmic energy pulsed from her hands, knitting his wounds together.
Jin's eyes snapped open. He gasped, his body convulsing with a pain so sharp it felt like his veins were filled with glass.
"Stay still," the woman commanded, her voice calm but firm. "The healing isn't finished."
"Who... who are you?" Jin stammered, his voice trembling. "Where is Akos? My friends? I have to find them!"
" They will be fine for now," she began to say, but the words died in her throat.
Suddenly, the room was bathed in a horrific, deep red light. The air became static, heavy with the scent of ozone and burning sulfur.
Both of them froze. It wasn't just the room—the entire city center had turned blood-red. Even the moon above had become a crimson eye staring down at the world.
Then, a voice boomed from the heavens, a sound that felt like the end of all things:
"JOKA NUKE."
The sky over Sinish ceased to exist. In its place was a ceiling of jagged, weeping crimson fire.
Akos stood at the center of the impact zone, his head tilted back. His pupils contracted into pinpricks as the reflection of his own annihilation filled his vision. The air around him began to hum, then scream, as the laws of physics buckled under the weight of Sakoura's malice.
Then, the world disappeared. "JOKA NUKE."
The descent was not a blast; it was an erasure. A GIANT VERTICAL PILLAR of supernatural, electrified purple flame hammered down from the heavens. It didn't just burn; it catalyzed matter, turning solid steel and reinforced concrete into a fine, glowing mist instantly.
The skyscrapers at the city center didn't collapse—they were simply deleted from the skyline. The earth itself was torn from its foundations, massive tectonic slabs of asphalt and dirt rising into the air only to be disintegrated by the purple heat.
Through the deafening roar of the explosion, one sound rose above the destruction: the manic, echoing laughter of Sakoura.
His voice seemed to coat every street and alleyway in Sinish, a haunting melody of triumph that swallowed the screams of the dying city.
The energy expanded in a terrifying tsunami of force. A shockwave of superheated air blasted outward in all directions, a tidal wave of pressure that flattened everything for miles.
What was once the bustling heart of Sinish was now a hollowed-out graveyard of glowing embers and broken ruins, bathed in a sickly, pulsating purple light.
Nothing moved. The silence that followed was heavier than the explosion itself.
Through the swirling, radioactive soot and the choking purple haze, Sakoura emerged. He walked down the center of what used to be a main boulevard, his boots crunching on glass that had been fused into jagged crystals by the heat.
"This world isn't for the weak," he mused, his voice cutting through the crackle of distant fires. "I don't even know why I bothered agreeing with Yugo.
I'll destroy this entire city and every pathetic gang in it. They talk about 'family' and 'loyalty'... ha! Their brains are in their backsides, and their heads are filled with nothing but filth."
He let out a sharp, mocking laugh that died in the still air.
He turned his head slightly, his yellow eyes locking onto two girls trembling behind the skeletal remains of a car. They had survived the blast, but their minds were shattered by terror.
Sakoura looked at them with pure, unadulterated disgust. He slowly raised his finger, pointing it toward them like a loaded gun, ready to erase them from existence.
Suddenly, a whistle cut through the air. A katana spun through the smoke, aimed directly at Sakoura's outstretched hand.
He tilted his head with supernatural grace, the blade narrowly missing his skin and clattering into the debris behind him.
Sakoura turned to face the source, but before he could even register the movement, a fist slammed into his stomach with the force of a falling building.
It was Akos.
Sakoura was sent skidding backward—not because of the pain, but from the sheer shock of it. Akos stood there, his body a map of gashes and burns, drenched in blood, yet his eyes were burning with a terrifying, new light.
He had somehow evaded the "Joka Nuke" at the absolute last microsecond.
Sakoura froze, his eyes widening. He wasn't afraid; he was mesmerized.
He could see it—the NATURE energy surrounding Akos was skyrocketing, expanding so violently that the air around the boy began to distort and crack. The aura was overflowing, drowning out the red glow of the fires.
Sakoura's face split into a wide, manic grin. He threw his head back and laughed, a sound of pure, twisted joy.
"This! This is what I wanted!" he roared. "I don't know how you survived, and frankly, I don't care. All that matters is that you've finally made things interesting. You've actually made me feel... excited!"
Akos opens his palm, and through the sheer force of his Nature energy, the katana flies back into his grip, the hilt snapping perfectly into his hand.
He glances at the two girls, his voice surprisingly soft amidst the wreckage. — "Sweet, beautiful things... get out of here. Now."
The girls don't need to be told twice. They vanish into the shadows of the ruins, fleeing the epicenter of the god-like clash. Akos turns back to Sakoura, his gaze steady. — "You said you could kill me. Yet, I am still standing."
Sakoura tilts his head, his yellow eyes pulsing. — "I haven't shown you anything yet. In this world, only two kinds of people can stand before me: the insane and those with absolute power. You... you are both."
"So," Akos says with a sharp, daring smile. "You finally admit that I am stronger than you."
"Not even close!" Sakoura roars.
He lunges. His fist, wrapped in a suffocating yellow aura, slams into Akos, sending him flying through the concrete walls of the adjacent building. Akos skids, driving his katana deep into the floorboards to halt his momentum. Before he can recover, Sakoura is there, launching a devastating kick. Akos catches the leg, gritting his teeth, and slams Sakoura into the nearest wall with a thunderous crack.
As Sakoura bounces back to attack, Akos unsheathes a strike of pure speed. "SLASH OF THE ABSOLUTE VOID!"
The building they are in is clean-cut in half. The upper floors slide off the foundation with a screech of twisting metal
Sakoura watches in shock, realizing the terrifying truth. — Internal Thought: "This boy... every second that passes, his power is doubling. It's growing out of control."
Akos leaps from the debris, aiming a decapitating strike as he lands on a crushed car. Sakoura blurs out of the way, and the slash continues past him, cleaving yet another distant skyscraper in two.
Sakoura lands and wipes a drop of blood from his lip. — "The Infinite Eyes... they are functioning on their own now, without your will.
Soon, you will realize why you have them." He grins wider. "And once you do, nothing in heaven or earth will be able to stop our dance."
Akos stares at him with eyes as cold as a winter grave. — "Is that all you have? Or are you hiding something else?"
"I have plenty," Sakoura retorts. Internal Thought: "Ninjitsu has countless techniques, but none can stop his energy from rising... except one."
Akos lunges again, but Sakoura delivers a lightning-fast kick that sends the katana flying from Akos's hand. The blade clatters into the ruins, out of reach.
"Do you know what's coming, Akos? Do your best to survive this."
Sakoura spreads his arms wide, his aura expanding until it touches the very clouds. His voice booms, vibrating through the fabric of reality itself.
"UNIVERSE ZONE: THE END OF SPREAD SPACE!"
In a heartbeat, the world is consumed. A radius of 200 meters—and growing—turns a visceral, pulsating RED. The air, the ruins, the very soil beneath their feet turns the color of fresh blood. The moon above bleeds, casting a crimson shadow over the carnage.
The word "END" echoes from the walls, from the wind, from the earth itself. It is a chorus of finality.
Sakoura stands at the center of this bloody domain, his silhouette terrifying against the red moon. "This... is the end."