Kiligaku and Toshiro stepped out of the portal and onto a world that looked as though it had already died once.
The ground beneath their boots was charred pitch-black, cracked and brittle like overburnt glass. Every step produced a faint crrrk as the surface fractured under their weight. In every direction, the land stretched out barren and ruined, dominated by colossal volcanoes that clawed at the sky like jagged spears.
Some were dormant, their mouths sealed and scarred. Others roared with life.
Rivers of magma flowed openly across the surface thin glowing streams that merged into massive, slow-moving molten currents. The lava bubbled and hissed, sending sparks into the air with wet plops and sharp szzzzz sounds as pockets of gas burst at the surface.
Above it all, the sun loomed mercilessly large, its light pressing down on the planet like a hammer. Heat waves warped the air, bending the landscape in shimmering distortions.
The atmosphere itself was thick with ash and smoke. Grey-black clouds drifted lazily overhead, occasionally glowing red from reflected magma below.
Yet neither Kiligaku nor Toshiro showed the slightest discomfort.
Kiligaku let out a low whistle, hands resting casually in his pockets.
"Damn… this place kinda reminds me of the Magnus Realm back at the academy."
Toshiro glanced around slowly, eyes calm, unfazed by the hellscape.
"Only visually," he replied. "The heat and gravity don't even come close to that nightmare. After training in extremes like that, I can't even tell how hot it is here anymore."
Kiligaku snorted and pulled out his phone, swiping casually despite the oppressive heat. He opened the temperature app and raised an eyebrow.
"Three thousand five hundred degrees Celsius," he said. "Compared to Magnus, this is basically a warm-up."
He tilted the phone, inspecting it. "Still… I'm impressed it hasn't melted."
Toshiro shrugged.
"It's charged with meta energy. Same principle as our clothes. The more energy flowing through it, the more durable it becomes."
Before Kiligaku could reply
A violent surge of energy ripped through the air.
Both of them felt it at the same instant.
Their instincts screamed.
"Incoming!" Kiligaku snapped.
They moved as one.
A split second later, a blazing energy blast tore past the space they had just occupied with a deafening WOOOOOOM, slamming straight into the side of a distant volcano.
The impact was catastrophic.
The volcano detonated outward in a thunderous BOOOOOOM, its entire side collapsing as molten rock and debris were flung kilometers into the air. The ground ruptured violently, shockwaves racing outward as everything within four hundred and eighty kilometers was destroyed vaporized into glowing dust.
When the dust began to settle, a massive crater remained, its edges still glowing red-hot.
Kiligaku landed lightly at the rim of the destruction, eyes sharp.
"That blast…" he thought.
"A Rokude."
He vanished.
The ground CRACKED where he had stood as he launched himself forward at blinding speed, streaking toward the source of the attack.
The Rokude barely had time to turn.
Kiligaku came down from above like a meteor.
His leg swung down in a brutal axe kick, striking the Rokude directly on the head.
The impact sounded like CRUNCH bone, armor, and flesh collapsing at once.
The force tore clean through the creature, splitting it in two as easily as scissors through paper.
Instant death.
Kiligaku landed without slowing.
At the same moment, a new presence flickered at the edge of his senses another Rokude, a few hundred meters to his left.
He turned
but Toshiro was already there.
The Rokude barely screamed before Toshiro's hand clamped over its face. His fingers tightened.
CRACK.
The creature's skull collapsed inward. Toshiro flung the lifeless body aside like trash, where it skidded across the scorched ground and came to rest near a magma stream.
Kiligaku jogged over, glancing around.
"Didn't expect to run into Zunans this fast."
Toshiro wiped his hand clean against his suit.
"Looks like we'll be busy. We should stick together."
"No objections," Kiligaku replied. He paused briefly, expression thoughtful.
"Though… I wonder how Pathro's doing with Kobayashi. Kobayashi didn't exactly look like the cooperative type."
Toshiro exhaled slowly.
"I think he's more introverted than hostile. Still those two working together?"
He shook his head slightly. "Not happening easily."
Suddenly
Both of them froze.
A heavy, oppressive presence rolled across the land, pressing down on their senses like a physical weight.
They turned.
Far in the distance, through heat distortion and drifting ash, two towering silhouettes emerged.
The infamous Ichigan Zunans.
Dark red and black auras poured off their bodies, warping the air around them. The ground beneath their feet cracked as they advanced.
Kiligaku's lips curled into a grin.
"Well, would you look at that," he said. "Guests of honor already showed up."
Electricity began to crackle around his body ZZZT—CRACK—ZZZZT blue-white lightning dancing across his arms and shoulders.
"I was kind of hoping I'd get to beat your kind again."
Toshiro's green aura flared quietly, steady and controlled.
"We should separate them," he said. "Fighting two Ichigans close together always gets… messy."
"On it."
Kiligaku vanished in a flash of lightning and reappeared beside one of the Ichigans, slamming into it mid-motion and launching it across the planet with him.
The shockwave shattered the ground beneath them.
Toshiro remained behind, facing the second Ichigan.
He settled into his stance, eyes cold, aura pulsing softly.
"Ready when you are," he said calmly.
"Devil's cockroach."
The Ichigan shrieked a harsh, ear-splitting scream that rattled the air as if answering the challenge.
Toshiro raised his hand, forming a long spear of green energy, sharpened at both ends, humming softly with lethal intent.
High above
The Ichigan Kiligaku had carried roared and twisted midair, preparing to fire its horned blast.
Kiligaku's eyes narrowed.
"Oh no you don't."
"Thunder's Calamity."
Lightning erupted from his body in a blinding flash.
A massive bolt shot upward, KRA-KOOOOOM, piercing the sky and then driving straight down through the planet itself clean through to the other side.
Kiligaku landed lightly as the thunder echoed endlessly.
The smoke cleared.
A perfect cylindrical hole, twenty kilometers wide, had been punched straight through the planet.
He exhaled slowly.
"It was about to fire its horns," he thought. "Would've been annoying to deal with that again."
Unlike Pathro's raw, catastrophic explosions, Kiligaku's attacks were precise. The destruction followed the lightning's path exactly nothing more, nothing less.
He glanced up.
"I know that won't kill it."
As if on cue, the Ichigan regenerated.
Charred flesh peeled away. Missing limbs reformed. Burns faded as its body restored itself in seconds.
Kiligaku clicked his tongue.
"Yeah… that regeneration's just as annoying as I remember."
Then he paused.
No fear.
No hesitation.
He realized his breathing was steady.
"…Huh," he thought. "I'm not scared like I was during the test."
His aura surged higher.
"Guess I've gotten stronger," he mused. "Or maybe it's just experience."
A grin spread across his face.
"Either way… all I need now is enough charge to one-shot you."
Lightning crackled louder.
"This should be fun."
....
Kaile stood in the middle of a battlefield that had already ended.
Seven corpses littered the ground around her mangled, broken remains of the Igarae-class Zunans. Their bodies were twisted at impossible angles, limbs severed, torsos crushed inward as if struck by overwhelming force. Dull blue blood soaked into the soil, splashed across exposed roots and splattered heavily over Kaile's combat suit.
The suit itself was no longer its original color. It was streaked, smeared, and caked with gore.
Three remained.
The Igarae were towering creatures each standing nearly three meters tall, their frames grotesquely thin around the abdomen, stretched so tight that bone outlines pressed visibly against their skin. They had four long arms, each ending in clawed, jointed hands. Their skin was a lifeless dull blue, almost corpse-like.
Their faces were wrong.
No eyes.
No nose.
Only a wide, vertical mouth splitting their face, running from chin to upper abdomen, surrounded by twitching flesh. Two long antennae protruded from their skulls, quivering violently as they sensed danger.
Fear.
The three remaining Igarae raised their arms in unison.
From the palms of each hand, metallic rods formed instantly and fired forward with violent WHRRRR—SHRAAAK sounds, tearing through the air at immense speed.
Kaile didn't even flinch.
Her body blurred forward as the rods screamed past her, missing by centimeters. One sliced through the air beside her head with a sharp SCREE, another shattered stone behind her in an explosion of debris.
She was already in front of one Igarae.
It shrieked and swung down with two arms in a desperate slash.
Kaile ducked smoothly beneath the strike, her body twisting mid-motion. Her leg whipped around
CRACK.
A spinning kick slammed into the creature's side with axe-like force. The impact sheared it clean in half, flesh and bone parting as if cut by a massive blade. The upper half of the Zunan flew sideways while the lower half remained standing for half a second before collapsing.
Kaile stepped forward without breaking stride.
She placed her boot on the severed torso's face.
KRUNCH.
The head imploded beneath her heel, blue blood and fragments bursting outward.
At this point, Kaile looked less like a soldier and far more like the monster.
Another Igarae screeched and fired a rod at point-blank range.
Kaile caught it.
Barehanded.
The rod screeched as her fingers clenched around it. She spun her body, using the momentum, and hurled it back
BOOOOM—SHRAAAAK.
The rod punched straight through the creature's head, exiting in a spray of gore as its body collapsed backward lifelessly.
The last Igarae froze.
Its antennae twitched wildly. Its posture faltered.
Kaile slowly turned her head toward it.
Her eyes were cold. Focused. Murderous.
The creature turned to run.
Kaile raised one finger.
A sharp TZZZZT filled the air as energy condensed at her fingertip, glowing violently.
"Zap."
The beam fired instantly.
FSSSSHHHHHH
The upper half of the Igarae was erased, vaporized into smoking nothingness. Only its legs remained, collapsing forward with a wet THUD.
Silence followed.
Kaile exhaled slowly and glanced around at the field of corpses.
"Igarae-class Zunans…" she muttered, wiping blood from her cheek.
"Definitely stronger than Rokude. But nowhere near an Ichigan."
She straightened, rolling her shoulders.
Only now did the planet around her truly come into focus.
It was… bizarre.
The world was covered in enormous trees, far larger than anything found on Earth. One tree alone had a base wide enough to match the area of a large city, its roots sprawling outward like massive highways of wood. The trunks stretched impossibly high thirty kilometers tall, disappearing into the clouds above.
Kaile looked upward, unimpressed.
"Pathro, Kiligaku, and Toshiro are already ahead of me," she said calmly.
"If I want to catch up, I need something more challenging."
A faint smile tugged at her lips.
"Where's an Ichigan when you actually need one?"
SHRAAAK—SHRAAAK—SHRAAAK.
Without warning, metallic rods fired from behind a massive tree root.
Kaile caught them all without turning.
Her fingers clenched.
CRRRRUNCH.
The rods crumpled into scrap in her hands.
"Too weak."
She vanished.
The air cracked where she stood.
In the next instant, she appeared behind the Zunan that had attacked her.
Her fist drove forward.
BOOOOOOM.
The punch obliterated the creature entirely its body reduced to vapor and fragments in an instant.
But the force didn't stop there.
The shockwave slammed into the colossal tree beside it.
CRRRAAAACK-BOOOOOOM.
The massive trunk split and collapsed, dragging eight surrounding trees down with it in a deafening cascade of snapping wood and crashing debris.
The forest trembled.
Kaile stood still amidst the destruction, unfazed.
....
Meanwhile Kobayashi
The land around Kobayashi had been utterly ruined.
The ground was split open in jagged fractures, stained black and crimson, soaked with cooling blood that hissed faintly where it met molten cracks beneath the surface. Hundreds of corpses lay scattered in every direction Rokude and Igarae Zunans torn apart, cleaved clean through, limbs strewn like broken weapons across the battlefield. Some bodies still twitched, nerves firing uselessly, before going still forever.
The air smelled of iron, scorched flesh, and ozone.
Behind Kobayashi, one Rokude remained alive.
Barely.
Its body was torn and cracked, one horn shattered, its torso burned and leaking glowing fissures of unstable energy. Still, its hatred hadn't died. With a guttural GRRRRRK, it raised its trembling arms and began charging a blast, energy whining sharply as it condensed
WEEEEEEEE
Kobayashi sensed it instantly.
And ignored it.
He didn't even turn.
The blast detonated against his back with a deafening BOOOOOM, the shockwave ripping outward and carving a massive crater into the land. Rock vaporized. Mountains in the distance cracked and collapsed. The Rokude itself was caught in the backlash of its own unstable attack and disintegrated mid-scream, its body torn apart in a violent KRAAASH of self-destruction.
Dust rolled outward like a tidal wave.
When the smoke cleared, Kobayashi stood exactly where he had been.
Unharmed.
Not a scratch.
He exhaled slowly, looking down at his own body, then flexed his fingers.
"…If I'm going to increase my durability," he muttered to himself, voice calm, analytical, "I need to get used to tanking attacks."
His glowing swords faded away into nothingness as he continued, eyes narrowing slightly.
"Rokude firepower isn't a real threat anymore. No point dodging or blocking."
As he straightened, something caught his attention.
Far, far away beyond the ruined horizon the sky flashed.
A massive explosion bloomed in the distance, swallowing entire regions of land. The shockwave arrived seconds later, a low, rolling WHUUUUM that shook the ground beneath his feet.
Kobayashi squinted.
"…That's definitely Pathro."
He watched as another explosion erupted, then another each one far larger than the last. The Rokude blasts he'd seen barely reached a hundred kilometers of destruction.
Pathro's were erasing thousands.
"If this planet were Earth-sized," Kobayashi muttered, shaking his head slightly, "he would've destroyed it already. Completely unnecessary destruction…"
He took a breath, his posture relaxing as his thoughts drifted.
"Pathro Kitsimoyo. Number one cadet overall. Academy points, combat evaluations, tactical rankings everything."
A faint smirk tugged at his lips.
"Smart. Skilled. Strong. I figured he'd be the type to brag about it… but he barely even acknowledges it."
He paused.
"…Or maybe he does. Just not out loud."
Then
SNAP.
The sensation hit his mind like thunder cracking directly inside his skull.
His eyes widened.
"This presence!!"
At the same instant, far away, Pathro felt it too.
This is way stronger than an Ichigan.
What the hell is that?
The planet itself was massive its radius nearly twenty times that of Earth, a colossal world approaching twice the size of Jupiter. And yet, despite the immense distance separating them, the Zunan's energy was so overwhelming that it pierced through everything.
Distance meant nothing.
Kobayashi clenched his fist.
Elsewhere, Pathro reacted immediately.
I need to find Kobayashi.
He extended his senses, locked onto Kobayashi's energy signature, and launched himself forward, tearing through the atmosphere at blistering speed.
When Pathro arrived, the sight made him halt mid-air.
Kobayashi stood calmly, feet planted, energy already forming in his hands. A bow of pure glowing energy solidified between his fingers, an arrow nocked and drawn back aimed at something impossibly distant, far beyond sight.
Pathro stared.
"…You sensed it too?"
"Yeah," Kobayashi replied without looking away. His eyes were focused, expression sharp.
"Feels like big trouble."
The energy string TWANGGED as he pulled it back further, locking onto the Zunan's exact location purely through sensing.
Then
FWOOOOM!
The arrow launched.
It screamed through the atmosphere, space warping slightly around it as it accelerated reaching nearly twenty percent the speed of light in an instant.
Moments later
The arrow reached its target.
But instead of piercing through
A hand closed around it.
Dead stop.
All momentum vanished instantly, the air around the arrow rippling as physics itself seemed offended.
Kobayashi clicked his tongue.
"Tsk."
"…Fine then," he said coldly.
"Explode."
The arrow detonated.
KRRRAAAABOOOOOOM—!!
Thousands of kilometers of land were obliterated in an instant. The surface of the planet collapsed inward, forming a vast crater, debris and molten rock blasting outward in every direction.
When the smoke cleared
The Zunan stood there.
Unscathed.
Not even a scratch marred its body. Only faint scorch marks hinted that an explosion had even occurred.
Kobayashi narrowed his eyes.
"…Yeah. He's going to be a problem."
The silhouette finally became clear.
This Zunan looked almost human more than any they had seen before. Roughly two meters tall, well-built, its physique powerful and balanced. But its body was covered in grey scales that caught the light faintly, hard and unnatural.
Its face was structured like a human's, but its eyes were wrong irises glowing yellow, sclera burning red. Wild, black spiky hair fell to its shoulders, shifting slightly as it moved.
And behind it
A tail.
Long. Muscular. Alive.
It swayed slowly, deliberately, as if showing that it was fully under control.
The Zunan rose into the air, levitating above the massive crater. Energy surged around its body with a deep HMMMM, the ground below trembling violently as cracks spread outward.
Its gaze locked onto Pathro and Kobayashi.
Then
It vanished.
Both boys felt it instantly.
Fast.
"Damn," Kobayashi thought. It's just as fast as my arrow.
He barely had time to react crossing his arms into an X
BAAAM!!
The punch landed.
The impact sent Kobayashi flying across kilometers of land, his body smashing through mountains with deafening KRRRAASH—KRRUNCH sounds, peaks collapsing behind him like paper.
At the same time, Pathro ignited his hands in red energy, swinging forward with explosive force
but the Zunan dodged.
It grabbed Pathro's arm just beyond the glowing red region and SLAMMED him straight into the ground with a thunderous BOOOOM, then followed with a brutal knee strike to the stomach.
KRAAACK!
Pathro was sent flying in the same direction as Kobayashi.
As he tumbled through the air, Pathro flipped repeatedly, bleeding slightly from his mouth, before digging his hands into the ground and skidding to a halt just meters away from Kobayashi.
"…Damn," he thought grimly. It's way too strong.
He turned quickly.
"Are you okay, Kobayashi?"
Kobayashi pushed himself up slowly. Purple bruises were already forming along his arms, blood pooling beneath the skin.
He stared at them silently.
Not even an Ichigan would've done this.
Especially when I blocked.
Nearby, Pathro dropped to one knee, coughing up blood onto the cracked ground.
"One kick…" he muttered, eyes wide with disbelief.
"That's insane. What the hell is this thing?"