"Mahito," said Fuku, his voice tense. "That thing is a demon. To have passed through the katanas' sensor, it must have something very specific. Let's put our rivalry aside and exorcise that creature."
Fuku took out a bottle of divine powder, sprinkled it on his blade, and handed the rest to his rival.
Mahito nodded silently. "Our katanas were forged for this," he thought, gripping the hilt of his weapon. "Blind runes that never fail. In fifteen years, no demon, no matter how stealthy, has been able to hide from this glow. But this one... he passed us by as if he were a ghost...." A chill ran down his spine as he looked at the vibrant metal. "The last time I saw my blade shine with this thirst was before that creature that the Divine Swordsman had to annihilate personally."
Mahito looked at the frenzied glow of the weapon and felt the coldness of death. "If the Divine Swordsman was the only one capable of dealing with something of this level, our chances of survival are perhaps nil. If we die here today, only he can stop whatever this is."
The black captain stifled the premonition. There was no turning back, he gritted his teeth, pushing away the feeling of death. "FUKU!" Mahito shouted, giving the signal.
"Art of the Lightning Sword: Reatsu Tatsu: First Movement!"
Fuku's sword was enveloped in blue lightning, forming the silhouette of a dragon. He advanced toward Afro with a vertical strike, from bottom to top. The impact was so violent that the earth rose, throwing Afro into the air.
Fear had paralyzed the village. Inside the houses, parents hugged their children with desperate force, trying to hide the trembling of their hands. The sound of lightning and vacuum explosions made their eardrums bleed; residents doubled over, covering their heads, reduced to the most primitive state of survival.
In the air, Afro was met by Mahito, who moved like a blur.
"Sword Art: Kaatsu: Third Movement!"
Afro was torn to pieces. Mahito passed through him countless times, delivering pressure cuts that disintegrated flesh. The attack ended with Mahito plunging his sword into Afro's throat, dragging him to the ground outside the village limits, where the earth exploded on impact.
Fallen, Afro felt his consciousness wavering. "I underestimated them... I can regenerate everything, but only as long as I keep my head in place."
On his knees, Afro grabbed the blade that tried to behead him with his bare hand. The blood evaporated before it touched the ground, but his golden eyes remained fixed on his executioners.
Mahito gritted his teeth, applying all the strength of his being to sink the steel. "He was able to withstand the third movement of Kaatsu..." thought the black captain, sweat mixing with the divine dust. "My Dao is all concentrated in my hands, but I feel like I'm trying to cut through a mountain."
From the village gate, Fuku appeared like lightning. "Reatsu Tatsu: Second Movement!"
In an erratic shot, he changed position every fraction of a second, transforming into a zigzag of blue lightning. In the blink of an eye, what was coming from the flank appeared behind Afro, the blade arcing to sever the wanderer's neck.
Afro, with one hand still blocking Mahito's sword, did not hesitate. With a crack of bones and tissue sprouting like hungry roots, his forearm regenerated out of thin air. In just a second, the new arm shot back and blocked Fuku's blade in midair.
He was at the epicenter of a storm: Mahito's pressure crushed him from the front, and Fuku's electricity fried his nerves from behind. Afro spat out a gush of black blood. The samurai sensed victory was near, but the Hybrid's body had other plans.
"Dash into Souls: Three Incarnations (Complete)."
Three specters of Afro separated from the center. One of them jumped forward, remaining static like a silent spectator. The other two advanced like shadows, grabbing Fuku and Mahito's faces with brute force, the sensation was terrifying. It wasn't the heat of flesh, but an icy cold, a vacuum that seemed to suck the ambient temperature. Fuku and Mahito felt a pull that did not come from their muscles; Afro was grabbing their Dao, the internal energy that sustains life. It was an absolute invasion: he manipulated what was inside to violently project what was outside, trying to throw them headfirst against the ground.
The captains roared with hatred, fighting against the icy paralysis that invaded their souls. In a Herculean effort of will, they forced their bodies to move and delivered a cross-cut, a steel scissor that severed Afro's head with surgical precision.
Well, so it seemed.
The steel cut only through empty air; Afro's body vanished like a residual trace, a lingering image of a probability that no longer existed.
The sky darkened abruptly. The first signs of rain began to fall, heavy drops that crackled against the dirt. Afro, now in the place of the soul that had served as a spectator, stared at the clouds with terrifying calm.
Fuku stood still, breathing heavily, his mind trying to process the impossible. "I understand..." he thought, as cold sweat ran down the back of his neck, and he said to Mahito, "It's not cloning. That demon divides itself into probabilities. The souls execute the movement first, and then the physical body chooses which one it wants to collapse into. It's an ability of pure uncertainty... it decides where in reality it wants to be."
Mahito wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, his eyes fixed on Afro.
"And as if that weren't enough," Mahito added, his voice hoarse, "he possesses an ability identical to Retro Dao. It is Dao touching Dao."
The black captain stopped, planting his feet firmly on the damp ground and adjusting his combat stance, closing all points of energy escape from his body. "To avoid the touch of those souls, we cannot offer resistance," Mahito continued.
Fuku, immediately understanding his long-time rival's strategy, completed the reasoning: "Understood. We must perform the Absence of Dao. If there is no energy flow in us, he will have nothing to grab onto."
Afro kept his face lifted toward the sky for a brief second, just long enough to feel the first drops of rain. It was the last vestige of humanity before the massacre.
"I went easy on you," he said, his voice sounding as if it came from the depths of the abyss.
Fuku and Mahito watched cautiously as Afro's hands, the ones that had locked steel with bare flesh, closed, fully regenerated. Suddenly, red lightning began to snake across his body, crackling like whips of blood.
His eyes shone with the intensity of a dying sun. An unbearable wave of heat expanded from Afro, creating a thermal pressure field so violent that the rain, before touching the ground, evaporated into jets of hissing steam. Fuku and Mahito felt the oxygen escape from their lungs; the air had become heavy, dense, and lethal.
"Dash in Souls: one incarnation."
A soul separated from Afro in a scarlet blur. In an impossible split, Afro became two distinct entities attacking the same target: Mahito. The black captain found himself in a tactical nightmare, facing different movements coming from the same being. Afro hit him with a brutal knee to the face, and in the same millisecond that Mahito recoiled from the impact, he received an aerial kick.
Mahito used his katana as a shield, sliding backward under the overwhelming pressure. Desperate, he counterattacked: "Kaatsu: First Movement!"
Afro dodged sideways with insulting ease. Mahito, in an effort to survive, elevated the technique to the Third Movement, passing Afro like a whirlwind of blades. Afro dodged each cut, moving between the gaps in the atmospheric pressure. On the last blow, Afro stopped and faced Mahito. A wave of pure pressure emanated from his golden eyes, striking the samurai's brain. Mahito's head tilted back, his eyes rolled back and turned white; he was unconscious, fighting in a mental limbo not to succumb.
Afro didn't stop. He picked up the porcelain mask and threw it into the air with great force. Time seemed to freeze as he doubled his punch, concentrating all the thermal energy in the environment into his fist.
"ONE QUIVALENCE!"
The punch hit Mahito's stomach with the force of an implosion. It was no ordinary physical impact; it was the total transfer of all the inertia of the combat. Mahito's body was launched like a projectile, flying through the trees and disappearing into the darkness of the forest.
Afro materialized in the soul facing Fuku. The red captain came in a roar of despair, lightning tearing the earth as he leaped for the final blow.
"Art of the Lightning Sword: Reatsu Tatsu: Fourth Movement!"
An erratic lightning dragon, sickly red, descended from the skies fused with Fuku's vertical blade. Afro crouched under the crushing pressure, but not to retreat. The instant the steel was about to split his skull, he defended himself by clapping his palms together with a sharp crack.
"Ne no Tachi: Third Movement."
Afro's body vibrated. In a fluid circular motion, he spun his hands, deflecting the blade's trajectory toward his ear and then, with precise momentum, redirecting it upward.
Fuku froze, his heart pounding. His most lethal attack had been deflected as if Afro were the conductor of that electric fury. But what paralyzed the samurai was not the technical error; it was the name. Ne no Tachi. The hesitation lasted only milliseconds, but it was the opening Afro needed.
Afro struck Fuku's chest with his open palm. All the energy of the erratic dragon was returned to the samurai's body in a single devastating pulse. Fuku was thrown backward by his own power, while Afro, in an instinctive movement, caught the porcelain mask in midair and slotted it into his belt.
Suddenly Afro doubled over, a stream of thick black blood evaporating before it touched his feet. His chest rose and fell at an irregular pace as smoke evaporated from his skin.
"Shit!" he thought, feeling his synapses scream in agony. "Ne no Tachi was meant to be executed through a blade. Steel serves to filter the charge, to give way to the flow. Trying to conduct a Fourth Lightning Movement using only nerves and bones is suicide."
He felt the inside of his arms throbbing, as if blood were boiling inside his veins. Not possessing mastery of the Dao, Afro could not harmonize the energy; he merely forced it, compelling his biology to endure a strain that should have been impossible.
"If I were only human, my organs would have exploded the moment I touched it," he admitted to himself, as his regeneration worked frantically to mend the internal ruptures.
Wiping the blood dripping from his chin, he took a deep breath, trying to stabilize the trembling in his hands.
From among the shattered trees, Mahito reemerged. He was disfigured, his armor reduced to pieces, his body trembling. He did not advance. He just stared at Afro with a terror that transcended the battlefield.
"How do you know Ne no Tachi?" asked Mahito, his voice faltering under the lashing rain. "Demon... where did you learn the technique of the gods?!"
Afro didn't answer, and the silence infuriated the captain. With a roar of despair, Mahito thrust his katana into the ground. A wave of artificial gravity expanded, crushing Afro against the mud; the wind pressure increased so much that the air felt like lead. Mahito didn't stop; he launched bursts of vacuum into the distance, advancing for the final blow.
But Afro was no longer limited to a single body.
He separated a soul that instantly materialized in front of Mahito. They engaged in a drastic and bloody dance. Afro lost arms, legs, pieces of flesh, but his biology was an unstoppable engine; limbs sprouted again before they even touched the ground.
Fuku, recovered, descended from the sky like a blue lightning bolt. Afro did not hesitate: he launched a second soul that collided with the captain in the air, generating a sonic impact that dispersed the rain. On the ground, Mahito was slaughtered by three simultaneous souls that hit him with brutal headbutts and blows, overwhelming his senses.
The soul fighting in the air disarmed Fuku with surgical precision. It grabbed the captain's lightning sword and, in an arc of blue light, cut him in half.
Silence fell over the field, interrupted only by the sound of flesh giving way. Mahito fell to his knees, his blurred vision focusing only on those golden eyes that glowed in the darkness. Afro walked calmly toward him, but with each step, thick black smoke rose from his skin. Afro grew visibly thinner with every meter he walked; his muscles retracted, his skin clung to his bones, and his cheeks hollowed. He was consuming himself to keep from collapsing.
"I learned Ne no Tachi from my master," said Afro, his voice cold and emotionless.
Mahito's eyes widened. Before he could utter the name that burned in his throat, Afro grabbed him by the neck and lifted him off the ground. Mahito felt the life drain from him, his lungs collapsing under the Hybrid's strength. Afro buried his bare hand in the center of the captain's chest and felt around until he extracted Mahito's liver... He needed immediate energy replacement, and left the body as if nothing had happened.
As he walked back to the village, he brought the still-warm organ to his mouth, and with each bite, the black steam emanating from his skin diminished. Mahito's flesh became the energy Afro needed to rebuild his devastated cells. He walked with the calmness of one who is merely obeying a law of nature.
Mahito, with his last breath, saw the silhouette of his predator walking away, and his last thought echoed in his dying mind:
"Henshin... you did it. You created a monster."