The tunnel leading to Level 3 did not seem part of the same hell that had swallowed them.
There were no screams.
No pulsing flesh.
No blood or organic walls.
Only a warm, almost celestial scent.
Lavender, incense, wet earth after the rain.
A fragrance forgotten by the fields of war.
For the first time in weeks…
they all breathed peace.
The wounds were still there.
The hunger, the fear, the doubt.
But for an instant…
the soul did not burn.
And in that calm, Donyoku closed his eyes.
---
He did not dream.
There were no voices.
No death.
No hell.
Only… emptiness.
He was there,
standing in nothingness.
A plain without ground.
A sky without sky.
A silence without end.
And before him—
a figure.
It did not speak.
It did not breathe.
It did not move.
It was him.
And it wasn't.
It had his face,
but not his eyes.
His form,
but not his essence.
It was his soul.
Or perhaps…
what was left of it.
---
Donyoku did not tremble.
He did not cry.
He understood.
"The form of the soul is not an image,
it is the manifestation of desire.
And mine…
is to save everything.
To possess the power…
to keep those I love from disappearing."
His soul was broken.
But not from fear.
It was broken for wanting more than it was meant to hold.
For desiring the impossible.
For carrying a hope so heavy…
his flesh could no longer sustain it.
---
His soul did not speak.
It did not embrace him.
It did not guide him.
It only watched…
as if waiting for the moment when,
finally,
it would have to replace him.
---
When he awoke—
Donyoku gasped sharply.
His eyes wide,
his breath trembling,
his body drenched in sweat,
his hands clenched.
And only one thought in his mind:
"My soul doesn't want to save me.
It wants to do everything for me."
---
Level 3 opened before them as though they had left hell behind… only to enter a false paradise.
It was a garden.
And not an ordinary one.
Perfectly symmetrical flowers.
Trees without a single misplaced leaf.
Freshly cut grass… though no one had cut it.
It was beautiful.
It was false.
Reiji knew it instantly.
Not because he understood botany,
but because he could not hear a single insect.
The garden wasn't alive.
It merely existed.
"This is…" murmured Seimei. "Unsettling."
And then, as if the heavens themselves answered in irony—
Rikuto appeared among the flowers.
Standing. Smiling.
Hands behind his back. Eyes empty.
"How's the view?"
Reiji's hand was already on his katana.
"Congratulations," Rikuto continued, his voice devoid of hostility. "You're the first humans to destroy one of Doctor Tsukimura's greater creations.
The first… to make it this far."
Reiji tensed. He was exhausted.
His previous Yuino had drained him to the brink of collapse.
Chisiki and Seita were barely standing.
Even Iwamaru was on his last breath.
"So what now?" Reiji asked coldly.
"Now," Rikuto replied, "you die."
Without another word, his arms shifted.
Blades—massive, black, humming with malignant energy.
They sliced through the air as though it begged for mercy.
Rikuto lunged without warning.
Reiji barely blocked.
A second slower, and his head would have rolled among the perfect flowers.
"If my katana weren't a Tsugumono, I'd be dead already."
But exhaustion showed no mercy.
His vision blurred.
His pulse trembled.
And just as Rikuto raised both blades for the final strike—
an aura surrounded him.
Calm. Gentle.
Healing.
Aika.
Awake. Standing.
Her Ketsuhō ablaze.
Her eyes were soaked with fear, yet her soul…
her soul stood firm.
"I won't lose them," she whispered softly, brokenly.
"Not again."
A white light engulfed Reiji.
Fatigue vanished.
Strength returned to his limbs.
His wounds closed.
And his heart… burned once more.
Rikuto stepped back.
Not in fear—
in fascination.
"Interesting…
Very, very interesting…
A healing Shinkon. A pure Ketsuhō.
As rare as true flowers in this false garden."
The blossoms began to wither, one by one,
as if Aika's light brought truth to a place that only knew how to lie.
Then, the battle resumed.
Reiji advanced.
Rikuto retreated, his smile unbroken.
Their blades clashed again and again.
Each impact shook the ground beneath their feet.
They were not two men.
They were two ideas.
Two realities colliding.
That of a human… who never stopped being one.
And that of a monster… who had long abandoned it.
Reiji tried to trap him in an illusion.
Failed.
Again.
And again.
"Why do you keep trying?" Rikuto laughed.
"I told you… I have no soul to deceive."
"I'm not trying to fool you," Reiji growled, thrusting forward.
"I'm trying to break it… even if it doesn't exist."
The battle raged on.
Faster. Harder. Wilder.
And though neither yielded—
both knew the truth:
Rikuto would have to kill Aika…
or lose.
He licked his lips, eyes gleaming with malice.
A healer.
A child.
An obstacle.
And Reiji knew—
the fight had only just begun.
---
Reiji struck.
And Rikuto… felt.
A gash across his chest.
A stab in his thigh.
A clean slice through his right arm.
Blood.
Pain.
Humiliation.
Everything a human would flee from,
Rikuto now experienced.
And for the first time in his existence—
he did not understand it.
His legs trembled.
His throat burned.
The sting of his wounds would not cease.
"Why… why does it hurt so much…?"
His thoughts blurred in a hot mist of nameless emotions.
Not data.
Not chemical reactions.
Not brain simulations.
Reality.
"You don't understand anything!" Rikuto screamed, collapsing to his knees, covering his face.
Reiji stood, panting, still wary—
not out of pity,
but because…
Rikuto was crying.
Not as one who imitates sorrow.
Not as a being conditioned to produce tears.
He wept as someone who did not understand
why the world hurt.
"I wasn't made for this…" Rikuto whispered, voice fractured like shattered glass.
"I'm an experiment.
A number.
An attempt."
The blades on his arms trembled.
His skin cracked like scorched porcelain.
"I was designed to help, not to feel.
Not to fear.
Not to wonder why no one ever told me what it means to be alive…"
Reiji swallowed hard.
Rikuto's agony wasn't rage.
It was something else—
an echo.
One he knew all too well.
"That scream… isn't from an enemy.
It's from someone who was born without ever asking to be."
Then it happened.
A spark.
A whisper.
A fracture.
Something inside Rikuto ignited.
"Maybe…" he said, standing again, tears running down his face.
"Maybe if I don't have a soul…
Tsukimura's was placed inside me."
And with that—
the change began.
Bones cracked.
Flesh hardened.
Blood stopped flowing, his wounds closing not by healing, but by mutation.
"I'm no god.
I'm no human.
I'm the mistake that refuses to die."
"Reiji! Watch out!" Aika screamed.
From Rikuto's back erupted over a hundred blades—thin as needles, long as spears—
curved like rotten branches, spinning like demonic propellers.
Rikuto was no longer an assistant.
He was a living creation that had just claimed its place in the world.
"I wasn't made to fight," he sobbed.
"But if pain makes me real…
then I'll make them suffer until someone tells me I'm human!"
Reiji stepped back, teeth clenched.
His katana blazed as if sharing their hatred.
"He's not just an experiment…
He's someone who chose to suffer in order to feel."
But battle waits for no understanding.
Rikuto raised his hundred blades.
And Reiji could no longer afford to hesitate.
The next battle… had begun.
---
In the still-living ruins of Sainokuni,
silence screamed.
Two destinies met at last.
Their swords collided in the air as if they had been seeking each other for another lifetime.
It wasn't a clash—
it was an embrace of steel.
One that brought not peace, but ruin.
Kenshiro Gai stepped back once—
just once—
and the ground cracked beneath him,
as though the world itself doubted its strength.
Shinsei Kōji did not wait.
He leapt.
And with a single strike, split a house in two.
The debris drifted in silence,
as even the wind dared not interrupt them.
The sky was gray.
But the battle burned with an ancient fire—
the kind that only awakens when two monsters recognize each other.
Kenshiro sighed.
Not from exhaustion,
but from certainty.
Then his Shinkon burst forth.
From afar, Captain Sazanami watched, whispering the name only a few dared speak:
"Seijū no Tate…
The Shield of the Sacred Beast."
A Shinkon divided into two wills:
Defensive Mode — It turned him into a living wall, capable of withstanding attacks that defied physics, logic… and the soul itself.
Divine blows, dimensional cuts, curses etched in hatred—nothing could break him.
Offensive Mode — His blade could sever what existed… and what did not.
Bodies, spirits, memories.
If something could be cut—Kenshiro would cut it.
Before that—
Shinsei Kōji, the God's Chosen, smiled with restrained fury.
His swings carved the air with strokes of holy light.
Each blow erased what it touched.
A roof.
A tree.
A fountain.
But not Kenshiro.
No matter how deep the wound,
Kenshiro remained standing—
a living curse,
a witness to all wars that should never have been.
Shinsei panted, teeth clenched in rage.
Fear crept in, silent as a thief in the night.
"Thank you…" he said hoarsely.
"Thank you for taking me seriously. For not underestimating me."
Kenshiro did not answer.
He only looked at him—
with eyes that needed no words.
Men like him did not speak with gods.
They spoke with war.
Shinsei screamed like a zealot.
He unleashed his power once more,
his sacred sword glowing with the fury of a thousand lost prayers.
But Kenshiro advanced.
Like a storm without thunder.
Like judgment without a judge.
Like the one wall that was never conquered.
The battle… had only begun.
---
The thunder of war above echoed like distant drums.
The central laboratory of Sainokuni, hidden deep within the earth, trembled softly.
Even that withered garden on Level 3, so serene in appearance, seemed to shrink before the echo of destruction.
There, another war raged—
quieter, deeper, crueler.
Reiji and Rikuto continued.
One as human.
The other… as something that wanted to be.
The fight was no longer physical.
Reiji's cuts no longer tore flesh alone—they slashed through mind, soul, and whatever it was that Rikuto believed he had but never understood.
Reiji's Shinkon was finally blooming in full.
A power that summoned the hidden truth of the soul, exposing it—
reflecting weakness,
corrupting certainty.
Rikuto began to doubt himself… and that made him more human.
Yet that same humanity made him suffer.
Between the strikes, the screams, the collapses,
Rikuto's eyes filled with tears he no longer knew were real or part of the illusion.
---
In Level 7, where science blurred into blasphemy—
Tsukimura watched.
Surrounded by stained documents, rusted scalpels, and flickering screens like fever dreams of a dying world, the doctor lifted a sheet of paper with trembling hands.
It was wrinkled, torn, covered in dried blood.
And yet the title remained clear as a curse:
How to Create the Divine Core.
"At last…" he whispered.
From a capsule covered by crimson membrane, a sphere emerged.
Small.
Blue.
Restless.
As though existence itself rejected its being.
Tsukimura approached the humanoid body lying still.
He opened its chest as one would dismantle a broken doll.
No trembling. No hesitation. No prayer.
He inserted the core.
The body convulsed.
But did not scream.
It moved as if something within were crumbling and rebuilding all at once.
As if it were being born…
and dying.
Tsukimura watched, entranced.
"This core isn't a Shinkon… it needs no soul, no judgment, no desire.
It is divine essence.
A pure, oscillating form—
neither good nor evil.
Only power.
An anomaly…
like the Blessed Bearers,
those phenomena that defy logic."
The essence would grant the humanoid stability—
the capacity to contain the power of a god…
without a soul to interfere.
No doubt.
No fear.
No error.
Tsukimura smiled.
"Shinsei… if you touch this essence, it might kill you.
But if you assimilate it…
you could shatter the human limit."
The humanoid ceased to move.
A faint blue glow spread from its chest.
Its veins lit up.
Eyes—once nonexistent—began to form.
It was no longer an experiment.
It was a promise.
A promise of destruction.
---
A blue flash engulfed everything.
Not light—
presence.
The humanoid rose slowly, as though gravity itself rejected its birth.
No longer a creature.
No longer an experiment.
A god.
Its silhouette perfect, devoid of eyes, mouth, or emotion—
yet its mere existence sent chills through reality.
Tsukimura did not look upon it as one gazes at a masterpiece,
nor as a father seeing his child walk for the first time.
He looked as an architect would look upon a structure that defied physics.
"You don't need to speak.
You don't need to read.
You don't need to understand," he said calmly.
He had given it one purpose—
to create or to destroy.
And he had stripped from it the most absurd function ever granted to gods throughout history:
To observe without acting.
"The gods of old were statues—mute idols.
You are not.
You will act.
You will mark the new origin."
The humanoid took a step.
The floor cracked.
The walls decayed.
A data terminal displaying research files turned to dust.
Seconds later…
those files rewrote themselves.
The machine was reborn.
It was the cycle of creation and destruction—
in real time.
Without soul.
Without guilt.
Tsukimura smiled—
not in joy,
but in pure, cold satisfaction.
"We no longer need symbols hanging from crosses, nor words rotting in temples…
We will forge our own faith.
A faith without prayer.
A faith without mercy.
A faith that owes nothing to the heavens."
The laboratory trembled softly—
not from any structural flaw,
but from the divine presence of something that should not exist.
And yet…
It did.
Tsukimura placed his hand upon a metal altar.
"Humanity will change.
And this time, not by hope…
but by fear.
For they will no longer believe in a god to feel loved.
They will believe…
to avoid being destroyed."
---
And thus, while the steel of men clashed against the will of gods,
and fragile souls struggled to tear the threads of fate deep beneath the earth,
a god without faith awoke—
not to save the world,
but to claim it.
Thank you for delving into this second arc,
where war is not only waged with blades,
but with wounds of the past,
decisions without return…
and souls still undecided on which side they stand.