The Captain advanced. The attacks followed one after another: one, two, three, each time faster than the last. Hundreds of axe blows were delivered in violent succession.
"This is for Kira's broken wrist," said the Captain.
He ended the sequence with a brutal kick, stomping on Afro and sending him rolling across the floor of the resonance chamber. The Captain stopped and lit a cigarette. Afro tried to get up, but remained on his knees as thick smoke enveloped him. The fog began to squeeze his body with physical force, breaking his bones one by one.
"Why did you kill those hundred men?" asked the Captain.
Afro, despite the pain, smiled.
"I needed to feed myself. That's all. Hunger is the only law that accepts no negotiation. You call it a massacre; I call it keeping the system running. Life is just an organized consumption of energy to postpone the end."
The Captain smiled. He appreciated the reasoning.
"At least you're intelligent."
"I read a lot of philosophy," replied Afro.
The Captain walked calmly towards him. He grabbed Afro's dreadlocks and pulled his head up, exposing his neck. He placed the blade of the axe against his throat.
"Can I know something before I go?" asked Afro. "How did you discover my frequency? I always wanted to do a resonance."
The Captain brought his face closer and replied:
"As you can see, my right eye is demonic. I exorcised a very strong demon whose power was this. This mask I wear is also his face. The eye allows me to see the frequencies of my opponents, but the price to use it is very high."
Afro smiled. The Captain delivered the fatal blow, but the blade only cut through the air. He had not cut flesh; he had cut a soul. The Captain immediately deactivated the resonance.
Outside, in the reality of the dry lake, the real Afro was standing. He held a Dao Core and smashed it against his chest, feeling the energy strengthen his body and heal his injuries.
Afro assumed his stance. Ne no Tachi: First Movement. The instant his first step touched the ground, the distance disappeared. He instantly appeared in front of the Captain and delivered a devastating uppercut. The impact sent the Captain flying into the air, but Afro was already up there, moving with a speed that defied gravity.
In the air, the Captain was treated like a ping pong ball. Afro struck him from all angles, catching and throwing him repeatedly without letting him fall. Before his opponent's body could react, Afro initiated Ne no Tachi: Second Movement.
He spun his body in midair, opened his fist, and concentrated the power of Three Equivalences. The punch landed squarely on the Captain's face. The crash was brutal. The Captain was sent flying vertically toward the ground with such force that part of the mountainside gave way, collapsing with him to the lower levels.
Tara, Kael, and Takamura watched the scene in absolute silence, paralyzed by bewilderment. If Afro was capable of going beyond that, he was no longer just a leader; he was on a level of existence far above any of them.
Down below, the Captain rose from the wreckage. There was no sign of admiration on his face, only a dry laugh.
"I don't have any more time," he said.
He removed the Oni mask and threw it into the air; the smoke eagle dove down and the mask settled onto the creature's face. At the top of the rubble, Afro remained motionless. In the middle of the dust cloud, only his red eyes glowed intensely.
The Captain's right eye flashed again, activating the resonance a second time. Giant hands of smoke emerged from the ground, trying to grab Afro. He dodged the attacks with agility, advancing directly against the Captain. The moment Afro struck to finish off his opponent, the Captain's body fell apart: it was just smoke.
Instantly, the real Captain appeared behind Afro, delivering a horizontal cut that split him in half. But there was no resistance, no blood. Afro's body also dissolved. The Captain had cut another soul.
The resonance cracked. Afro forced his way in, emanating such intense heat that the gray space began to disintegrate. He spat blood, a biological reaction to the shock of the soul the Captain had just annihilated, but the liquid didn't even reach the ground; it vaporized instantly due to its nature.
The Captain understood that Afro had finally deciphered his pattern. Whenever his right eye flashed, the resonance manifested itself. Afro had begun to leave incarnations of souls outside the domain a second before impact.
The Captain's right eye began to bleed profusely, and he faltered, losing his balance.
"How many cores did you use to reach my level?" asked the Captain, his voice failing.
"I used ten Dao cores," replied Afro.
Only then did the Captain understand the strategy. When Afro had projected the seven souls into the courtyard, not all of them had been destroyed. He had ordered one of them to move away to embed itself in the stored cores, serving as a receptacle. When Afro fell into the first resonance, he simply incarnated into the soul that was outside, charged with energy.
"Ten cores!" exclaimed the Captain, horrified. "That amazes me. You must be exorcised at all costs."
Afro advanced, lifted the Captain by his hair, and pierced his heart with his claws. The Captain's body shook, died, and immediately dissolved into thick smoke. Afro looked at his empty hands before staring at the sky. He understood the truth: he had been fighting a clone all along.
In the silence of his office, far from the mountain, the Captain's right eye bled. He grabbed a cloth, wiping the red trail running down his face and the blood rising to his mouth. He sat, his body trembling from the effort of the distant projection.
"Shit," he hissed through clenched teeth.
Kira approached and brought him water. He drank it in one gulp, trying to regain his stability.
"The Empire must come here immediately. Before the Blue Festival passes. Send a letter now."
"Captain, what is the emergency level?" Kira asked, his voice tense.
"Calamity level."
On the other side, Afro climbed the mountainside. His hands were pressed against his navel, feeling the residual heat from the cores. He felt himself returning; he began to feel complete. He had executed Ne no Tachi without the sword, but the greatest victory was another: he had not spent his demonic essence. He used the Dao. The flow of energy in his navel left him, for the first time in a long time, satiated.
The storm began. The heavy rain was the sign that the Blue Festival was about to begin. Without the sun, protected by the curtain of intense water, the demons could finally move freely. At the top, as soon as Afro arrived at the destroyed courtyard. All the surviving demons knelt, their heads bowed before his arrival.
Kael and Takamura were in shock. Ten cores at once was biological suicide for any of them. Tara had already told them what she had seen: Afro's soul passing through her to embed itself with Dao.
"Master," Kael said, bowing deeply. "With your permission, tell me... how many cores did you use?"
Afro looked him in the eye, coldly.
"I used ten Dao cores."
Takamura shuddered, unable to process the information.
"I can only use five in a whole day, and never all at once. I need three hours of rest between each one. If I use the second one, the rest time increases..." Takamura thought.
Tara tried to ask about the troops lost in the chaos of battle, but Afro interrupted her immediately:
"There is no room for the weak while I am your master. There will be greater chaos than this; this served only as a test for those who can stand before me. Swear allegiance once more, and I will make you, inferiors, into something that has evolved."
Kael hesitated. "A second oath? Why?" he thought, a spark of indignation rising. But the memory of the violence he had witnessed, the ten cores, the Ne no Tachi, stifled any doubt. Strange and impossible things were now the new norm.
Takamura stood up, his imposing presence serving as an anchor for the survivors. He faced the prostrate demons. In the Abyss, one can speak for all, as long as the consent is unanimous. One by one, the demons nodded. The pact was sealed in silence.
"On behalf of the demons here present, I, Takamura, and all those who have entrusted me with this duty..." he knelt again, his voice vibrating with an ancestral gravity, "swear allegiance to the High Lord before me, Afro. That at the slightest disobedience, we burn as when we are under the sun."
The effect was immediate. An ethereal line shot from each demon's chest and connected directly to Afro's heart. He floated, his body bathed in raw light. His skin cracked like soil under pressure; his biology was being rewritten. The leap was violent: Now he was a High Lord.
Afro fell to his knees, gasping. The new power was heavy. Black shadows projected from his back, hungry souls trying to tear through the fabric of his essence to escape. He ignored the new abilities pulsing through his system, because his eyes were fixed on the ground.
His tattoos began to detach from his skin. They crawled like ink snakes to a stone wreckage that contained ancient inscriptions from the temple. Under the touch of those marks, the letters on the stone moved, rearranging themselves until Afro could decipher them. On the broken slab, only one incomplete word could be read: "Ado...".
He stood up, the shadows on his back still struggling. He passed between the prostrate demons, who watched their master's mutation with terror and admiration. Afro walked to the only pillar that remained almost intact. As he placed his hand on the stone, his tattoos flowed into the pillar, filling the grooves until the entire temple glowed a deep golden hue.
The temple was not just stone; it was an archive. Afro closed his eyes, processing the information that flowed directly into his mind. He now understood the nature of the place and what lay beneath it.
"I am going to eat a Sentinel..." said Afro, pointing to the mountain where the blue festival was taking place.