Smoke braided with the stench of blood and boiled oil. Chinatown's narrow lanes, once a web of markets and lanterns, had become a maze of shattered stalls and burning carts. Men surged through alleys with bats, steel pipes, rods and knives — a single, brutal language of bone and metal. The clash of leather-on-wood and bone-on-steel was constant: a relentless percussion that turned street and tunnel alike into a single, horrible drum.
Speed Faction met Dark Crocodile Society in a storm. It was no longer raids or skirmishes; this was total war. Bodies fell, men scrambled, and every shout was answered with the ring of iron. Then, from the north and south gates, a new tide poured in: Cheongryong and Union — disciplined, brutal, and unflinching. Their banners tore at the smoke as their men raised rods and pipes and thundered:
"FOR OUR EMPEROR! FOR DANIEL PARK!"
The cry spread like wildfire; it gave courage to some and froze others in fear.
---
A Room Before the Storm
Away from the choking streets, in a side room of the palace ringed with scorched banners and cracked tiles, two men faced each other with the weight of history between them.
Jaegyeon Na's jaw was set like flint. His eyes were cold, void of anything but the single blade of purpose contained there. He did not shout, only let his voice drop like steel on stone:
"Today — this ends."
Across from him, Yujae Seon's mouth curled into that same thin, cruel smile that had carried him through smaller wars. A smear of blood cut across his cheek but did nothing to the arrogance in his tone:
"Yes. It ends — with you."
The men moved into each other like two towers collapsing. That small room held the echoes of fists and feet, a brutal choreography that wasted no motion nor wasted threat. The duel was tight, concise: Jaegyeon's Taekkyeon sweeps, Yujae's sharp, efficient counters. Around them the city roared, but here the world narrowed to strikes and breath.
---
The Throne Room — Arrival
The palace's throne room had been hollowed out by the fight. Pillars were scored, silk banners shredded. Paecheon Jo still sat atop the carved throne framed with dragon reliefs — but the throne no longer concealed the hairline fractures forming beneath his reputation. He gripped a Hwarang sword with a hand that trembled with a rage too old to be wholly fear and too fresh to be denial.
Daniel Park entered as if he had all the time in the world. The black of his suit swallowed the lantern light. He walked forward and the room pulled tight as a drawn bow.
Paecheon rose, face split by bruises and blood, voice cut by the old, raw pride he had relied on for decades:
"Look what you have done. Because of you my empire frays. Today I will not merely kill you — I will tear you apart and rebuild what you ruined with your flesh!"
Daniel's response was a slow, effortless smile. He stepped closer, voice low and contemptuous, the sort of voice that carved men into their true shapes:
> "A jackal may wear the skin of a lion, but that does not make him one. No matter how he struts or how he growls, his true nature will not hide for long. The crocodile's strength belongs to the water; the moment he leaves it, the lion reduces him to bone. I am not a lion. I am a dragon. A raging dragon. I bring only death."
There was no bravado in the line — only cold certitude. Daniel moved with the ease of someone who had already calculated every variable. Around them, the palace doors burst inward as Cheongryong and Union executives spilled into the compound, battering the last of the croc defenders back into the maze of the palace's ruined wings.
---
The Streets Answer
In the avenues and tunnels, Cheongryong and Union pushed like floodwater. They used bats and pipes with the ruthless economy of trained men: a strike to break a knee, a swing to flatten shoulder, a rod to pry open a line. Speed Faction's units — Sung Jegal and Roy in the lead — carved lanes through the enemy's ranks. Boknam and Yeowool moved in guardian arcs, shepherding civilians away from collapsing barricades while fending off the most desperate counterattacks.
The shouts of "Emperor!" rolled through smoke and blood. Where men saw Daniel's name they surged forward like flocks in a storm, and where the croc's black coats lined up, men faltered as their formation buckled under coordinated pressure. The defenders were brave, vicious, organized — but they were being ground away.
---
Throne Room Breakdown
Back in the ruined throne room, Paecheon Jo's fury became a thermonuclear roar. He stamped, brandished the Hwarang blade, and shouted the litany he'd recited for decades — the myth he used to convince himself of power:
"I am Emperor! I am ruler under heaven! I am greater than Gapryong Kim! Greater than Shingen Yamazaki! I am absolute master — no one stands above me!"
His voice, though, was getting thin at the edges. The palace echoed it, but where once the sound had rallied men it now hung like a plea.
Daniel stepped forward and peeled off the Cheon Ma mask with deliberate slowness. The smirk never left his mouth.
"Emperor? No. You are not. Titles cling to men who earned them; you cling to a myth you cannot carry. The only man who can be called Emperor is the one who stands above heaven itself. I will not be ruler under heaven — I will be the heaven."
He let his hand fall, slow and deliberate. The room seemed to inhale.
Then Daniel shifted his gaze.
At first it was a nuance — his pupils pinched, focus sharpening. The air contracted, as if sound itself slowed. Then the transformation completed: the familiar map of iris and pupil inverted into that uncanny sign of something beyond human — the UI manifestation. Not a cinematic flare of neon, but an impossible stillness to the eyes; the irises took on a void-like clarity, the pupils pale, the stare like a blade that read motion before it moved. It was the first time anyone in that throne room saw the phenomenon — and it landed like a verdict.
Daniel did not shout. He did not need to.
His voice, when it came, was a private thunder:
"Let me show you why you should accept me as Emperor."
---