Hours later, the lab section was alive again with motion and faint hums of restored machinery. The Division 4 group—tired, hungry, but stubborn—kept circling Kang Woo and Makima, helping however they could. Maybe, just maybe, through some miracle, Makima could complete the Philosopher's Stone.
But the problem was the same. Exactly the same. Piles of black, ugly, half-melted stones filled several buckets—failed transmutations that looked more like burnt slag than divine material.
Power crossed her arms and groaned loud enough to rattle the glass. "What's the point of this?! There are so many of these stupid rocks! Makima's gonna lose and we're all fuc—"
Denji's hand shot out, clamping over her mouth before she could finish. "Power, hey! You already ate half the meat and all the fries! You want your punishment to actually get enforced this time? No meat. For a year."
Power froze. Her eyes widened in horror. "Ehh?! I'm not punished yet?"
Aki sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. His expression was dead flat. "I'm the one who cooks at home, Power. So you better start respecting me—since we three live together."
Kang Woo looked up from the half-fused mass of ore and broken tools, his eyes tracking the weary slump in everyone's shoulders. The stooges—his unintentional little crew—were running on fumes. Less than nineteen hours left before Makima's trial, and exhaustion hung thick in the air like dust. Forcing progress now would only make it worse.
He straightened, brushing his hands off. " Enough for now. Let's take a rest and get some sleep."
Himeno groaned, half-laughing, half-ready to collapse. "Yeah, right. And when we're asleep, another hydrogen bomb's gonna go off in my face again, huh?"
Kang Woo cracked a faint grin. "No, I mean it this time. You have my word. Rest does more good than burning yourselves out. Forcing something that won't yield is pointless."
Makima sat beside the reactor table, her usually sharp eyes dulled with fatigue. The only real success she'd had was that strange glowing core—the one created by accident when Kang Woo had shielded her from the explosion. Even now, she couldn't tell whether it was a true Philosopher's Stone or something else entirely.
She exhaled slowly. "I made that by accident, Kang Woo. You took most of the blast for me. I… doubt I could recreate it."
Kang Woo crouched near her, tone steady but encouraging. "Maybe not yet. But that's the point. It's better to have the freedom to fail than to cling to success inside your comfort zone. Right now, you're beyond your limits—and that's good, Makima. That's where growth starts."
Kang Woo watched the lab slowly empty out—Himeno yawning, Kishibe stretching with a sigh, Denji and Power already arguing their way toward the door.
"Stop hitting my head so much!" Denji barked, shoving her shoulder.
Power flicked him right back, smug grin plastered across her face. "Your brain's in the wrong place, human! I'm just helping it find its proper course!"
Kishibe walked behind them, cigarette hanging from his lips, muttering something about needing a drink for every five minutes around these idiots. When the door closed, only Aki, Himeno, and Kobeni remained.
Aki lingered, wanting to speak—
but Kang Woo beat him to it, his tone calm and unreadable. "Your question's this, right, Aki?"
Kang Woo continued, eyes half-lidded. "Why didn't I give you everything straight away? Why not teach you my magic, my techniques? You said back on the Kyoto balcony that people like you could never reach my level. You wanted to know what I meant by that."
He paused, gaze cutting directly at Aki. "Isn't that right, Aki?"
Himeno crossed her arms, cutting in before Aki could speak. "Let me correct your phrasing—you said 'people like us.' That sounded like you were belittling us, Kang Woo."
Kang Woo tilted his head slightly, expression unreadable. "Then look at the facts," he said evenly. "Do any of you have supernatural abilities of your own?"
Aki's brows furrowed. "But if you could just teach us—like you did with Makima-san—if we trained, learned from you repeatedly, we could—"
Kang Woo interrupted, voice low but cutting through the room like a knife. "Any human in this damn world has none of it. You're kept alive by blood and breath—the same thing bugs and beasts have."
He leaned back, smirking faintly but without humor. "You humans—this whole species—have no mana, no ki, no chakra. Not even spiritual energy worth mentioning. I'm stranded in a world devoid of essence. The only exceptions are freak anomalies—hybrids like Denji or those Vought-grade supes—but even they're mediocre compared to what I've seen."
He gestured vaguely, tone turning sharper. "Even fear-based Devils, those fucking Primal Devils—their power means very little to me."
Kobeni's voice trembled slightly, nervousness mixing with a touch of sadness. "Kang Woo… do you hate us?"
Kang Woo looked at her for a moment, his tone steady, almost clinical. "Hate? No. I'm just stranded in a world with no worth to measure—while others I've seen had uniqueness . This world's… empty, that's the simple truth."
Makima stepped in gently, voice calm but firm. "Okay, Kang Woo. Thank you for the honesty. But can we end it there? Please don't judge us too harshly."
Kang Woo glanced toward Aki and Himeno, his eyes narrowing as if reading ahead. "I know what you're about to say, Aki. In the next zero-point-three seconds, you'll ask why I don't give you the same power—why not let you take my Commandment like Makima did, right?"
Aki tensed but didn't deny it.
Kang Woo turned to Makima. "Alright, let's make this simple. If you, or anyone else here, tried to take my Commandment inside your body—would it absorb you… or do what Makima did?"
Makima's face tightened slightly. She hesitated, then confessed quietly, "It's true. What Kang Woo says is real. His Commandment tries to consume me."
Her eyes drifted downward, a rare trace of strain in her expression. "I've subdued it… but it's very, very hard."
Kang Woo's hands moved almost casually, fingers weaving the ancient sigils. "All Creation Hand—Ygg Neas ," he intoned, the words folding the air. He wanted to speed-run the lesson for Aki; there was no patience left for slow explanations tonight.
"As for Quincy abilities," he said without looking up, voice flat and sharp, "this world is devoid of spiritual energy. Your bodies don't hold it. Lucky for you, I'm tired of lagging—so I'll speed-run everything, Aki. Don't expect it to be gentle."
Himeno's eyes flashed. "Kang Woo, that's a terrible joke. Don't you dare treat our lives like a game — I'll punch you if you keep talking like that."
Kang Woo allowed a faint, dangerous smile. Then the lab's light bent. Space itself folded, and at the center a pulsing blob unfurled — a core of raw code and shuddering black light, like circuitry stitched from nightmares. It hummed, alive with jagged purpose.
He stepped forward and tapped the core with the flat of his palm. "That," he said, voice low enough to make the hairs on their necks stand up, "is the Gun Devil's source code. You wanted revenge? Fine. I'm handing it to you on a silver fucking platter. If you want to finish what you started, kill it now."
Himeno raised a brow, trying to lighten the mood. "That's a neat trick, but I doubt that little ball's really that important."
Kang Woo didn't even blink. "I'm not in the mood for humor."
He snapped his fingers. A sharp crack echoed—and the Authority of Projection activated. Newsprint and holographic screens spiraled into the air, plastering the lab in headlines and global alerts.
BREAKING NEWS: ALL FIREARMS MALFUNCTION WORLDWIDE.
GUNS JAMMED. TANKS, SHIPS, AND SMALL ARMS FAIL TO FIRE.
UNEXPLAINED SYSTEM COLLAPSE.
Every image, every flashing report showed chaos—armies unable to fire, weapons dead in their owners' hands.
Aki froze. His throat went dry—Kang Woo wasn't bluffing. Right now, he wasn't in any mood to fuck around.
Aki clenched his fists. " You want my soul now . ? !"
Kang Woo gave a small, humorless laugh. "That would be a good idea, . But your world's souls? Worthless. Even if I harvested 100 millions of them at once, it wouldn't please me one bit." He gestured lazily, eyes glinting with disdain. "I'd probably toss the whole batch in a cosmic dumpster and throw it into the nearest black hole."
He straightened, his tone dropping into a calm, cruel cadence. "The only souls worth anything were from the Aging Devils' world—the human-tree variants. They lived for thousands of years and aged into something rare. I harvested every one of them until even the Aging Devil herself went catatonic; that was probably the largest Auswählen in history ever performed. Then I erased the Aging Devils' world—crashed it under my Auswählen canopy, ."
He looked at Aki again, expression cold and absolute. "So no. I don't need your soul, Aki. I've already had better."
Aki didn't respond. His entire life—his goal—was now within reach, yet somehow, it felt hollow. Like the justice he'd chased had turned into dust in his hands.
Himeno stepped forward, voice cutting through the silence. "Wait. Just a moment." Her tone sharpened. "If Aki destroys that thing—what happens to the rest of the world?"
Kang Woo didn't blink. "One thing's for sure," he said flatly. "Everyone who relies on guns to defend themselves will have to switch to crossbows. Every manufacturer will forget how to make a firearm, how to reload. And soon enough… you'll all be back to the medieval era."
He tilted his head, faint smirk tugging at his lips. "Too bad, right? But it's worth it. Isn't it?"
Himeno's eyes narrowed. "You just made everything worse for everyone, Kang Woo."
Kang Woo's expression didn't change. "The Gun Devil still roams this world. Give it five minutes, and a million lives are gone."
But in his mind, his thoughts were cold and precise. They don't know. Only Makima and I do. The Gun Devil's already been defeated… his body scattered across nations. They're fighting illusions of what's long been dead.
Aki drew his blade with a single, measured motion, the metal whispering as it left the sheath. "Kang Woo," he said, voice tight, "I can kill it. There'll be no consequence for me, Himeno-senpai, or Makima san , right?"
Kang Woo nodded slightly, but his tone came with weight. "Yeah.. You'll be fine. But you need to understand something, Aki. Once you do this, the Gun Devil—and the concept of the Gun Devil—will vanish. Like it never existed. It's not like Denji's little chainsaw mutt if you delete a file , and the file goes to trash bin it can sometimes be recovered.."
"My ability is absolute erasure. you destroy that source code now, firearms, weapons, all gun-based technology, the entire chain of production—will cease to exist. Forever. Like they never fucking existed to begin with." ,kang woo continued
He turned his head slightly, eyes glinting. "History won't remember them.. Humanity'll drop right back to swords, arrows, and sharpened sticks."
Makima stepped closer, voice dropping to a quiet whisper only Kang Woo could hear.
"Kang Woo… I'm not asking for your judgment on this. But you and I both know—the Gun Devil's already defeated. What's left isn't a threat. It's political fear... something the governments of this world exploit to keep their monopoly on weapons intact. If Aki destroys that ball… there's a high chance civilization could collapse."
Kang Woo didn't answer. He simply raised a hand and made a small gesture—two fingers to his lips, then outward. Silence. A signal meant only for her.
Watch Aki.
Aki stood still, the weight of generations pressing down on him. His breathing grew shallow as memories clawed at the edges of his mind—his little brother, smiling, laughing—then vanishing in the deafening scream of a bullet.
His hand trembled. He looked at the glowing core. Then at his blade.
And with a breathless grunt, Aki threw his katana to the floor. It clattered loudly, the sound sharp in the heavy silence.
"My brother didn't want this," he muttered, eyes hollow. "He wouldn't want the whole world dragged into this."
He stepped back, shaking his head. "If I destroy that thing… it'll involve everyone on the planet."
A beat passed. Then—Aki surged forward and punched Kang Woo square in the face.
Kang Woo didn't even flinch. His head barely tilted. The only reaction was a faintly amused breath from the Demon King.
Aki staggered, holding his wrist. "Tch—ah, damn… I think my hand's broken... ouuuhhhhhh..."
Himeno rushed over, kneeling beside him with her medkit already halfway open. "Okay, okay, calm down, my kouhai. This is... a lot. Just breathe." She started wrapping the bandage fast, movements trained and firm, but her voice stayed gentle.