The sky tore like parchment as Saru no Tengoku plunged downward its black iron mass roaring through the upper atmosphere, dragging thunder and gravity behind it. The weight of a divine judgment came with it. It wasn't falling it was commanding descent.
Lord Arcade's eyes narrowed.
"Troublesome," he murmured.
Without hesitation, he flew down and slammed his palm to the earth.
"Grow God Tree Yggdrasil!"
A low hum echoed from beneath the battlefield. Then crack. Roots erupted upward like serpents through shattered soil, tearing the land apart as they forced themselves into the open air. And then
It rose.
A tree of incomprehensible scale, wider than towers, stretching skyward like a divine hand. Its bark glistened with crystal veins. Its leaves shimmered like forged emeralds. Yggdrasil, the legendary World Tree, screamed into the skyracing upward to intercept the falling Saru no Tengoku .
In the heavens, the two titans collided.
BOOOOOM.
The impact was cataclysmic.
Shockwaves split the sky and cracked the earth. Tremors radiated for miles, shattering already crumbled buildings, kicking up walls of dust and flame. The sky lit up with black and green lightning as energy clashed in pure, violent contradiction.
Inside the ruined Suha war room, consoles exploded. Walls shook loose from their frames.
Madagascar burst in through the trembling entryway, his cloak flaring behind him, expression fierce.
"What the hell happened?!"
Officers ducked behind consoles, one of them finally raising their head to look at the screen.
"The dome's gone!" one of them shouted. "That thing he destroyed the entire upper facility!"
Madagascar marched to the edge of the overlook, eyes narrowing as he looked through a fractured pane of glass. Far off, in the distance, where smoke and dust spiraled into the heavens two figures stood locked in impossible war.
"Who… are those two?"
One of the officers saluted weakly. "That's your fellow hunter from Seoul."
Madagascar's eyes widened. "That's Sakamoto?! Then the other one…"
"The other," the officer said grimly, "is Lord Arcade. Culprit. Leader of the Ten."
Madagascar's voice dropped. "Why aren't we helping him?"
Minister Alfred, standing behind a broken terminal, didn't answer immediately.
Finally, with tired weight in his voice, he said, "We've been ordered by the higher-ups. Government directives. Let the battle play out without interference."
Madagascar turned, incredulous. "What?! What higher-ups?! Aren't you people supposed to be the all-powerful?"
Alfred didn't reply.
But under his breath, barely audible, he muttered, "How did he ascend? That hat… that Staff… well… we can only hope he isn't what we fear he might be."
Outside, the battle of gods was only beginning.
High above the battlefield, the colossal staff pressed hard against the expanding branches of Yggdrasil. Their forces strained against one another divine weapon versus divine creation. The sky groaned. The land cracked beneath their silent war.
Lord Arcade floated below the growing chaos, watching as the tree's roots coiled skyward to brace its limbs. His gaze shifted upward.
"Boy," he called out. "It seems I may have underestimated you."
He folded his arms behind his back.
"To ascend without notice… to wield that ancient thing. But I shall still pull you from that little borrowed throne you sit on."
He smirked. "What should we call it? Ascension State: Monkey Majesty? Or shall I say… Sun Wukong?"
But Sakamoto didn't answer.
He stood still beneath the falling staff, eyes glowing like molten suns, shoulders loose with focused calm. He didn't respond to Arcade because he wasn't listening to him.
In the wind, only Jushin's voice reached him.
"Listen, boy," Jushin whispered through the crashing clouds. "That tree… it was made by gods, for gods. It cannot be broken. Not even by your current power."
Sakamoto's golden gaze didn't waver. He exhaled through his nose.
"Unbreakable, huh?"
He lifted his hand.
"I'll make it breakable."
He clenched his fist.
"Ascension State: Unlimited Weight Ruyi"
Above, the massive staff vibrated. A black shimmer rippled across its surface, and then—
it grew.
Its length expanded its girth widened. But more than that its weight increased. The sky around it warped. Light bent toward it. Space itself folded under its growing density.
And then
CRACK.
The first fracture split through Yggdrasil's highest branch.
Then—
BOOM.
The staff drove downward like a vengeful star. Wood and bark once hailed as eternal were splintered, devoured. Shards of divine timber exploded outward, falling like molten rain. Leaves the size of boulders incinerated midair.
Doomsday, coiled beneath the tree, lifted its head to intercept.
The staff hit it square between the eyes.
And split it in two.
The monstrous beast collapsed in a grotesque wave of steam and blood, its body flattened beneath the unstoppable fall of Sakamoto staff.
Arcade's head snapped up, eyes widening.
"He… broke through Yggdrasil?!"
He was still processing the moment when the full weight of the expanded staff finally reached the ground
and slammed into him.
CRAAAAASH
The sound was beyond thunder. The impact collapsed what little land remained beneath them. Craters formed beneath craters. Mountains turned to flatlands. Greenland's fractured core caved in, releasing gouts of molten rock and screams of pressure.
At the center, Arcade disappeared under the impossible weight.
Sakamoto stood alone, eyes shining like halos, his voice echoing with a power that wasn't his own:
"Shut the hell up, peasant."
But then
He winced.
Pain exploded behind his eyes. He grabbed his head, reeling. Voices hundreds of them spoke at once in a tongue older than time. They roared inside him.
And Sakamoto dropped to one knee in his subconscious while in reality he was standing tall.
Inside him, something was cracking.
The echoes of the impact still trembled across the ruined landscape. Fragments of shattered Yggdrasil smoldered in the distance, and the remains of Doomsday steamed where its body had been torn in two. Nothing moved except Sakamoto.
Meanwhile in his subconscious He staggered.
One knee slammed into the earth. His chest rose and fell in short, uneven bursts.
but his body shook not with exhaustion, but with something stranger, more unnatural. A tide of voices surged through him, speaking in a language that reverberated through bone instead of air.
Dozens at first.
Then hundreds.
Then thousands.
Their words braided into a storm. And Sakamoto eyes wide, hand to his head felt himself fracturing.
"What… what the hell is happening?"
The voice that emerged from his lips moments earlier the one that had declared judgment hadn't been his. He heard it, same as the others. Something ancient had spoken through him.
Not as him.
In his mind's eye, the world fractured like broken glass. Light flooded through the cracks and then darkness, deep and complete.
He found himself standing in a space not unlike the Shadow Plain, but quieter. Black water pooled beneath his feet. A pale wind stirred overhead. Jushin's voice came from behind him, closer now, clearer.
"Sakamoto."
He turned, breath shallow.
"What's wrong with my body?"
Jushin's form hovered in the stillness, a nebulous swirl of soft blue and black.
"You've entered a sacred threshold," Jushin said. "The State of Ascending."
Sakamoto stared. "The what?"
"A rare condition. A phenomenon of crossing blood, power, and will. Your rage, your loss, your legacy it all collided. It let you pierce the veil between mortal and god."
Jushin's voice darkened.
"But your mind isn't built for it yet or something more is needed,Your spirit isn't aligned. And right now your body is reacting without you."
Sakamoto clenched his fists. "I can't control anything. I'm speaking in voices I don't know. I'm not moving myself."
"I know," Jushin replied. "You're possessed by what you've awakened. Your rage made you a vessel."
"Then how do I stop it?!"
Jushin floated closer, tone firm.
"You must listen to the voices, not fight them. Let go of your anger. Accept them. Let the Shadow Plain bring you back to yourself."
Sakamoto swallowed.
He looked around the dark water beneath him beginning to ripple.
He had to find his way back before he became lost entirely.
Sakamoto exhaled sharply.
His body, though still crackling with residual Shen, began to steady. The storm of voices quieted just enough for a sliver of himself to return.
"Shrink," he whispered, lifting a single hand.
The staff, still faintly radiating seismic pressure, responded. With a pulse, it compressed into a human-length staff, humming softly with contained devastation.
It hovered to his side, and Sakamoto grabbed it without looking.
Dust and silence hung over the battlefield like the aftermath of divine judgment.
Sakamoto looked forward, breath low, voice deeper than before. "Humans who gain a little power… and think they can challenge the creation of gods."
He stepped forward.
"They must"
Then stopped.
His eyes twitched left, then right.
Arcade wasn't there.
The crater where the god tree had fallen was empty.
Sakamoto's eyes snapped upward.
Above, floating in the air like a messiah refusing death, was Lord Arcade.
Half of his body had been obliterated his left shoulder gone, his ribs visible, legs torn open. But a foamy white substance oozed from the wounds, swirling and folding like silk, rebuilding him moment by moment.
Sakamoto's pupils dilated.
"You survived?"
Arcade's laughter echoed like broken glass.
"Ichabod… ahaha… your son is remarkable."
He rotated his wrist once, joints snapping into place as skin wove itself over regenerated muscle.
"But I do not intend to be stopped this time. Not by you. Not by fate. Not by legacy."
He raised both hands,His gaze glinted toward the heavens.
"Tiger of the Sea: Sun Fire Lightning."
The sun flared.
Its light deepened. From within its radiant center, a spear of flame-glazed lightning spiraled downward, screaming through the atmosphere, trailing a comet's tail of solar plasma.
It hit before Sakamoto could even blink.
CRACKKKKOOOOOOOM.
The bolt engulfed him in flame and thunder. The world split in two.
But
At the last instant
Sakamoto had summoned an armor.
A glistening second skin woven of monkey fur, soaked in Shen, formed around his torso and shoulders. The bolt struck it dead on, burning through layers in an instant. Flames tore across him.
The armor shredded. Smoke rose from his back.
But he survived.
He leapt backward with monkey-like agility, twisting in mid-air to avoid the last burst of plasma. His feet landed on a broken spire of earth, crouched low, breathing fast.
Above, Arcade grinned.
"That armor saved you, huh?"
Sakamoto didn't answer.
He was already preparing something far more dangerous.
Steam hissed from Sakamoto's body as he crouched atop the scorched stone. His hair whipped in the rising updraft, smoke trailing from his shoulders. The shredded remnants of his monkey-skin armor peeled away in curled tatters, revealing burns across his side.
But he was alive.
His eyes narrowed, golden flames still pulsing in their depths. Just barely.
The fur had shielded him not from all the pain, but from instant death. It had absorbed the first second of sunfire… and that was enough.
High above, Lord Arcade floated, arms spread, the sun flickering behind him like his personal throne.
"That armor…" he said, almost admiringly, "is very old magic."
Sakamoto didn't respond. He rolled his shoulder once, testing the weight of his wounds. His breathing slowed.
Inside his mind, the Shadow Plain stirred.
He stood again in that ring of saluting warriors, the quiet beating of drums in the airless wind. All eyes were on him. None dared speak until he did.
"Prepare the Rainbow," he said flatly.
One of the monkey commanders a massive figure with a spear embedded in his shoulder stepped forward and saluted low. "Majesty… if you use the Rainbow at full scale…"
He hesitated.
"You could destroy the world."
Sakamoto's eyes didn't flicker.
"Prepare it anyway."
And in the world of men, standing on broken earth, surrounded by fire and divine wreckage, Sakamoto raised his hand.
Golden threads of lightning coiled between his fingers.
"Lightning for lightning," he said softly, voice low and focused. "Very well then."
Above, clouds churned.
Color bled into the sky.
The sky above Greenland was no longer blue.
It churned with color rolling shades of crimson, green, sapphire, and violet. A cyclone of unnatural hues swirled overhead, devouring light and air alike. Thunder rumbled not in peals, but in a continuous growl, low and ancient, as if the planet itself were groaning.
Lord Arcade's smile faltered.
"What… is this?"
Below, Sakamoto raised his hand higher, fingers outstretched,His golden eyes reflected the fracturing sky.
From within the clouds lightning began to rain.
Not white.
But rainbowed.
Bolts of red, blue, gold, and green cascaded downward in an unnatural sequence, each one hissing with a distinct tone, like a chorus of elemental voices. They twisted as they fell, overlapping in a spiraled descent that mirrored the colors of the storm above.
"Come—Rainbow Lightning."
The words were a verdict.
Lord Arcade didn't have time to counter.
The first bolt struck his shoulder, spinning him midair.
The second slammed into his chest, searing his armor to liquid.
The third and fourth struck together—one in the back, one across the jaw slamming him downward like a falling star.
The fifth…
It didn't strike.
It waited.
Then like a god's finger plunged into Arcade's abdomen and carried him to the ground with the force of collapsing time.
BOOOOOM.
The land shattered.
Stone became sand. The air turned to steam. Trees, already dying, vaporized instantly. The crater spread for miles in every direction.
And at the center of it
Lord Arcade lay in a trench of his own making, smoking, silent.
Above, the rainbow storm flickered… then began to fade, like a curtain closing on divine judgment.
Sakamoto lowered his hand slowly.
He said nothing.
But the war had just changed.