The hall was a graveyard, but the predators were still hungry. While the nobles had been erased, the S-Rank hunters surrounding the gate had survived. Their instincts, honed through hundreds of life-and-death raids, had screamed a warning a split second before the blue beam struck. They had scattered like shadows, leaving only the scent of scorched marble behind.
Toji let out a dark, raspy chuckle, his eyes dancing with the reflection of his own red flames. He leaned slightly toward Soichiro.
"You go and take care of those insects," Toji said, his gaze fixed on Luke with predatory hunger. "I'll deal with these lovebirds."
Luke rose to his full height. His movements were slow, deliberate, and terrifying. He stepped in front of Zafira, his wide frame acting as a human fortress. Behind him, Zafira gripped his cloak, her body shaking so violently she could barely stand.
Luke didn't strike first. He couldn't. His Absolute Intuition told him that the moment he lunged at Toji, Zafira would be vulnerable. He was trapped in a defensive stalemate. The surviving hunters, despite their rank, stayed frozen. They looked at the charred remains of the throne and then at Soichiro; the fear of the Unknown held them back more than any physical chain.
Soichiro didn't wait for an invitation.
In a blur that defied the physics of the room, Soichiro vanished and reappeared. He was suddenly standing inches away from the lead hunter—a man who had survived a dozen S-rank raids.
A small, silver ring on Soichiro's finger emitted a faint, cold sparkle.
As the hunter's eyes met Soichiro's, the world around him died. His pupils dilated until they were nothing but pinpricks. His brain, flooded with an alien frequency, became dull and unresponsive. He stood there, mouth slightly agape, unable to even lift his sword as his nervous system locked into a state of total paralysis.
The other twenty hunters, seeing him turn into a living statue in a heartbeat, instinctively recoiled, scrambling backward to create distance.
"One," Soichiro whispered, his voice as thin as a razor.
Soichiro moved with the casual grace of a man walking through a garden, his hand snapping out to palm the lead hunter's face. The grip was vicelike, the man's muffled screams lost behind Soichiro's leather-clad fingers.
"Pathetically weak!!" Soichiro chuckled.
Without looking, he took a step forward. As his foot touched the marble, a concentrated Blue Phase Beam erupted directly from his palm into the hunter's skull. The result was instantaneous and gruesome: the hunter's head detonated in a spray of azure light and bone. The headless torso slumped forward, a smoking ruin that didn't even have time to bleed.
Soichiro didn't even glance down. He turned his mocking gaze toward the remaining nineteen hunters, his eyes dancing with a manic light.
One hunter, fueled by a mixture of terror and desperation, managed to slip into Soichiro's blind spot. He raised a massive two-handed claymore, ready to cleave the intruder in two. But the moment he stepped within a three-meter radius of Soichiro, his body betrayed him. His limbs turned to lead, his thoughts dissolved into static, and his mind went completely blank.
The silver ring on Soichiro's finger pulsed with a rhythmic, hypnotic glow.
In a singular, fluid motion, Soichiro spun 180 degrees. His sword left its sheath and returned to it so fast the air hissed. The frozen hunter's head slid from his shoulders, hitting the carpet with a dull thud before the body even realized it was dead.
The sight broke the hunters' discipline. Realizing they couldn't fight him one-on-one, they roared in unison and surged forward—a wave of S-Rank steel and shadow energy-reinforced armor all crashing toward a single man.
Soichiro stood his ground, his smile widening until it looked painful. "All at once... hahaha... good, good!!"
As the first blades were inches from his skin, Soichiro's expression shifted. He closed his eyes, a look of serene focus washing over his face. He thrust his palm forward, the air around his hand beginning to ripple and distort as he gathered a massive amount of energy.
The S-Rank hunters were finally showing why they held their titles. They weren't just attacking; they were coordinating. As Soichiro gathered his energy, a sword whistled through the air, aimed precisely at his throat. Without breaking his concentration or even opening his eyes, Soichiro tilted his head to the left, the blade grazing his ear as it hummed past.
But the sword was a distraction.
Above him, a massive hunter had leaped into the air, channeling a Gravity-type Shadow energy downward.
Soichiro felt the sudden, crushing weight—like a mountain had been dropped onto his shoulders. The marble beneath his boots spider-webbed, and with a grunt of physical strain, Soichiro was forced to one knee.
"Now! Take him!" the hunters roared.
One rushed in from the front, his boot reinforced with steel and shadow energy, aiming a skull-shattering kick. Simultaneously, the gravity-user dived from above, his dagger pointed directly at the gap in Soichiro's armor at the nape of his neck.
It was a perfect pincer. Death was inches away.
Then, the world turned cold.
As both hunters entered the three-meter Dead Zone around Soichiro, the physics of their movement simply... stopped. The kick froze mid-air; the diving hunter lost all momentum and tumbled awkwardly to the floor as Soichiro slid backward with ghostly fluidity.
The silence that followed was terrifying. Both hunters remained in their last positions—one standing awkwardly on one leg, the other slumped on the floor—their eyes wide and glassy. Their consciousness had been wiped clean, their neural pathways flooded by the rhythmic, blinding pulses of the Silver Ring.
Soichiro rose from his knee, dusting off his shoulder as if the gravity pressure had been nothing more than a minor annoyance. He looked at the two statues before him, his ring glowing with a hungry, ethereal light.
While the air behind them screamed with the sounds of Soichiro's clinical slaughter, a different kind of pressure began to build between Toji and Luke. The two men stood as pillars of heat and grief in the center of the ruined hall.
Toji began to walk. Each footfall sounded like a heavy hammer against the marble. For a brief second, the chaotic battlefield faded for him. The memory of Mahito's calm smile and Minako's laughter flashed behind his eyelids—a haunting reminder of what he had lost. He took a long, shivering breath, his hand tightening around the hilt of his sword until his leather glove creaked.
"Do you have any idea about how it feels to lose someone you love?" Toji asked. His voice wasn't a shout; it was a hollow, echoing whisper that felt colder than the vacuum of space.
Luke shifted his weight, his golden aura flickering violently. He could feel Zafira's terrified trembling against his back. Tears tracked through the dust on his face, burning with the rage of a man who had watched his mother and kin fall in a single breath.
"Shut up!!" Luke roared, his voice cracking. "You killed my family... and I'll make you regret that for the rest of your short life!"
Toji's eyes slid shut. He didn't look angry; he looked finished. He looked like a man who had decided the world had no more room for mercy.
"Is that so?" Toji whispered. "Then go ahead and try."
His eyes snapped open, glowing with a terrifying, molten orange light.
"ASHEN DOMINION!!"
The Marriage Hall didn't just shake; it began to tear itself apart. The gilded floor joists groaned as the earth beneath the fort buckled. Massive, jagged cracks ripped through the red carpet and marble, and from the depths of those fissures, glowing, incandescent magma began to bubble and hiss.
The temperature in the room skyrocketed. The air became thick with the smell of sulfur and charcoal. Toji stood at the center of the rising heat.
The Marriage Hall had transformed into a vision of the underworld. Behind the front line, the nine statues Soichiro had created began to melt where they stood, their paralyzed bodies sliding into the bubbling magma fissures. The remaining eleven hunters were losing their minds; they were trapped between a clinical killer and a volcanic god.
"Wa... What is this!" one hunter screamed, his boots smoking as the marble beneath him turned to liquid heat.
Soichiro simply stepped over a river of lava, his silver ring pulsing. He didn't even need to strike anymore; the hunters were so preoccupied with the disintegrating floor that they were walking straight into his neural dead zone.
At the center of the chaos, Luke's golden aura was being smothered by the oppressive heat of the Ashen Dominion.
"Luke! What is this? Please save me!" Zafira wailed, her fingers digging into his cloak. She was a royal, a jewel of the fort, but in this hellscape, she was just a girl terrified of the fire.
Luke never had the chance to answer.
Toji didn't run; he displaced. One moment he was ten meters away; the next, the smell of burning ozone filled Luke's nostrils. Toji's blade was a streak of orange light aimed directly at Luke's throat.
Luke's instincts saved his life. He snapped his hand up, catching Toji's wrist in a crushing grip, and drove his elbow with the force of a falling star into Toji's chest.
CLANG.
It felt like hitting a mountain of solid iron. Toji didn't even flinch. His eyes remained cold, fixed on Luke's face. Without a word, Toji's free hand curled into a fist, wreathed in dark flame. He drove a short, brutal punch into Luke's chin.
The impact sounded like a cannon blast. Luke, an Z-Rank powerhouse, was launched backward, his feet leaving the ground as he was hurled twenty meters across the room, crashing through a row of burning banquet tables.
burning banquet tables.
"LUKE!!" Zafira screamed, now standing completely exposed in the middle of the magma.
The remaining hunters tried to rush to their leader's aid, but the Ashen Dominion was an invisible weight. The air was so thick with volcanic ash and heat that their muscles felt like they were filled with lead. Every step was like wading through deep, boiling mud. They were moving in slow motion, while Toji and Soichiro moved like lightning through the smoke.
Toji turned his gaze slowly toward Zafira. The magma bubbled at her feet, and the heat began to singe the hem of her wedding dress.
The air in the Marriage Hall had become a thick soup of volcanic ash and death. The remaining hunters, desperate and sluggish under the weight of the Ashen Dominion, stood no chance.
Soichiro didn't even look at them as he closed his fingers around a hunter's throat. "Overdrive Barrage," he whispered.
In a fraction of a second, Soichiro's body became a blurred epicenter of steel. Tens of thousands of invisible slashes erupted outward in a 30-meter radius. The marble pillars, the burning tapestries, and all eleven S-Rank hunters were instantly reduced to red mist and ribbons of flesh. The room within that radius was literally minced into nothingness.
Across the hall, Luke struggled to his feet. His vision was swimming, and his jaw felt shattered. He tried to surge forward, but his legs felt like they were encased in cooling lead. The Dominion's heat was draining his shadow energy faster than he could replenish it.
Toji didn't even look back at the carnage Soichiro had caused. His eyes were locked on Luke, but then, with a chilling, mechanical slowness, he pivoted his head toward Zafira.
Zafira's breath hitched. She took a trembling step backward, her heels clicking against a fragment of unburnt marble. The heat from the nearby magma was curling her hair, but the look in Toji's eyes was far more terrifying than the fire.
Toji took a heavy, deliberate step toward her. His boots crunched on the bones of the fallen.
"No... No, NO! BASTARD!!" Luke screamed.
Seeing the man who murdered his family closing in on the woman he loved broke something inside Luke. He ignored the soul-crushing pressure of the domain. He ignored the fact that his muscles were tearing under the strain. He threw himself into a desperate, lunging sprint, his golden aura flickering like a dying candle as he tried to reach her before Toji could.
The chaos of the Marriage Hall reached a fever pitch. As Luke lunged for Zafira, a blur of silver and blue intercepted him. Soichiro, moving with the cold precision of a machine, drove a heavy fist into Luke's jaw. The impact forced Luke to his knees, the marble beneath him cracking under the force.
Toji didn't even turn around. He continued his slow, rhythmic march toward Zafira, his voice cutting through the roar of the magma like a serrated blade.
"You damn hunters kept killing us because of the mistakes our ancestors made," Toji said, his orange eyes reflecting the hellscape he had created. "A mistake we didn't even know about... but now, it's your turn to feel the weight of a dying lineage."
Zafira couldn't take it anymore. The heat, the smell of her family's charred remains, and the looming shadow of Toji broke her resolve. She turned and tried to sprint toward the distant gate, her wedding dress dragging through the ash.
"Luke! Luke!" she sobbed, her voice echoing off the high, cracked ceiling.
"STOP!!" Luke roared.
Fueled by a surge of Primal Resonance, Luke tapped into a reservoir of strength he didn't know he possessed. He swung a haymaker that caught Soichiro square in the solar plexus. The sound was like a sledgehammer hitting a drum; Soichiro's eyes bulged as he coughed up a spray of crimson.
Seeing an opening, Soichiro tried to activate his silver ring one last time. The air around Luke began to thicken, his movements turning sluggish as the neural dampening took hold—but Luke was too far gone in his rage.
With a guttural scream, Luke ignored the mental fog. He grabbed Soichiro's wrist in a grip that shattered bone. With a flash of his sword, he severed Soichiro's hand at the wrist. The silver ring, still attached to the pale fingers, spun away into a bubbling pool of magma, its light flickering out forever.
Luke didn't stop. He slammed Soichiro into the ground with enough force to crater the floor, then immediately hauled him back up by the throat, hoisting the one-handed assassin into the air.
"You... are... NOTHING!" Luke hissed, his eyes glowing with a terrifying, golden light.
The air in the Marriage Hall turned to ice despite the rising magma.
In a desperate, final attempt to free himself, Soichiro pointed his remaining stump at Luke. A thin, concentrated Phase Beam hissed through the air, piercing clean through the side of Luke's neck. Blood sprayed across the golden aura, but Luke didn't even flinch. His nervous system was running on pure, unadulterated hatred.
With a roar, Luke delivered a monstrous punch that sent Soichiro hurtling across the hall like a broken doll. Luke didn't check to see if he was dead. He spun around, his eyes wide with horror.
Toji was there.
Zafira was stumbling, her lungs burning, her eyes fixed on the heavy oak doors that promised escape. But the distance was too great. In a blur of orange sparks, Toji appeared directly in her path.
"Stopp!!" Luke's voice was a ragged scream, but he was too far away.
Toji's expression was unreadable—a mask of cold duty. He didn't hesitate. In one fluid, brutal motion, he drove his blade through Zafira's chest. The steel erupted from her back, painting her white dress in a sudden, violent crimson. Before her body could even fall, Toji grabbed the hilt, leaped with supernatural force, and pinned her to the vaulted stone ceiling.
The sword wedged deep into the masonry, leaving Zafira suspended high above the battlefield like a broken angel.
"Lu...L... Luke..." she whispered, her voice a wet rattle. A single drop of blood fell from her lips, landing on the scorched floor below. Then, her eyes started getting dull.
Toji plummeted back to the ground, landing silently amidst the embers. He stood still, his back to the hanging princess. Slowly, he reached up and touched his cheek. His fingers came away wet.
"What are these unknown tears?" Toji muttered, his voice trembling for the first time. He looked at his hand, confused by the salt and moisture. "Why the hell am I crying... for them?"
He looked up at the ceiling, then back at the approaching, broken Luke. The silence of the hall was now absolute, broken only by the crackle of the dying fires.
To Be Continued...