The Morin Hotel was no longer a building; it was a closed loop of non-Euclidean geometry.
For three days, Special Division 4 had been trapped on the eighth floor.
Food was running out, tensions were high, and the Eternity Devil was laughing from the very walls, demanding Denji's heart.
"It's an infinite loop,"
Aki muttered, leaning against a wall that shouldn't have been there.
"No matter how fast you run, you end up back at the elevator."
Okarun stood in the center of the hallway, his violet hair flickering.
Beside him, Momo was glowing with pink energy, acting as a living filter for the suffocating dread filling the hotel.
"It's not infinite,"
Okarun said, his voice echoing with that double-tone.
"It's just a folded dimension. It's like a piece of paper crumpled into a ball. I can feel the 'seams' where the paper overlaps."
Okarun didn't wait for a plan. He activated his Cutting Phase and sprinted.
Instead of running down the hallway, he ran into the wall. But he didn't crash; he vibrated at the exact frequency of the Eternity Devil's flesh.
"Okarun! Don't let it swallow you!"
Momo yelled, her psychic hands slamming into the walls to keep the "mouth" of the hotel from closing on him.
Inside the walls, Okarun found the core—a pulsating, multi-faced mass of rot.
He didn't just slice it.
Remembering the hunger he felt in Shibuya, he opened his hands and gripped the core.
The Sukuna-energy and the Phase-engine worked in perfect, terrifying harmony. He began to inhale the Eternity Devil.
"More... I need more!"
Okarun roared.
The hotel began to groan.
The "Infinite" space was being sucked into Okarun's chest like water down a drain.
The hallways stretched and snapped, the geometry collapsing as the fuel for the loop was consumed.
The "Golden Line" in Okarun's palm flared brilliantly, growing thicker—but then it flickered and dimmed.
Not enough. Even an "infinite" hotel was just a drop in the bucket compared to the distance between universes.
As the last of the Eternity Devil was digested, Okarun's body underwent a strange mutation.
The violet streaks in his hair didn't just glow; they began to detach, floating around him like shards of glass.
Suddenly, there wasn't just one Okarun. There were five.
"Whoa! Ghost-boy is multiplying!"
Denji shouted, revving his chainsaws as the hotel's physical structure finally reappeared.
It wasn't a standard illusion. Okarun had gained the Phase-Step Mirror.
By absorbing the Eternity Devil's looping nature, he could now "store" his previous seconds of movement in the current moment. Each "afterimage" was a solid, phasing entity that could strike independently before snapping back into his body.
The Morin Hotel was now a hollowed-out shell.
The Eternity Devil was gone—not killed, but completely erased from existence, its energy now sitting in Okarun's gut.
Okarun slumped to the floor, the four afterimages merging back into him with a violent jolt. He looked at his hand.
The "Golden Line" was strong, but it was still missing a vital connection.
"It's not enough, Ayase-san,"
Okarun wheezed as Momo rushed to heal the spatial cracks on his skin.
"The Eternity Devil gave me the internal capacity to hold the path open, but I still don't have the external thrust to cross the void."
"We need something bigger,"
Momo said, her face grim. She looked toward the window, where the Tokyo skyline sat under the watchful eye of Public Safety.
"Something with more raw, destructive power than a hotel ghost."
Behind them, Himeno and Aki watched in silence.
They realized that Okarun wasn't just a Devil Hunter anymore.
He was a living, breathing Singularity.
Makima, watching through the eyes of a small bird on the windowsill, smiled.
The "Eternity" was now inside her "Dog."
He was becoming the perfect weapon to face the Gun Devil—and perhaps, once he was done, he would provide the bridge she needed to conquer other worlds.