DAMMIT!!
The curse echoed only inside Levi's mind as his foot caught one of the enormous roots twisting through the forest floor. His body lurched forward before crashing face-first into the mud for what felt like the hundredth time. He clenched his teeth, swallowing every instinct to groan. Making noise in a place like this was the last thing he wanted. Whatever lurked within Mount Jukai didn't need help finding him.
With an irritated sigh, he pushed himself back onto his feet. Mud clung stubbornly to the bandages wrapped around his body, while his soaked samue had long since lost any trace of its original color beneath layers of dirt and rainwater. Two weeks of stumbling through the forest had left him looking less like a warrior in training and more like a man the mountain itself had been slowly swallowing. The relentless rain only made matters worse. It transformed the earth beneath his feet into a swamp of slick roots and unstable ground, turning every step into another opportunity to fall flat on his face.
Around him, Mount Jukai remained as haunting as ever. Towering ancient trees rose endlessly toward the heavens, their branches weaving together into a dense canopy that allowed only thin strands of sunlight to reach the forest below. Thick fog drifted silently between the trunks, cloaking the wilderness in an almost ghostly veil, while the mountain itself breathed with life. The wind whispered through countless leaves, unseen creatures moved somewhere beyond the mist, and distant calls from birds and wild beasts echoed throughout the forest like voices carried by the earth itself.
Yet Levi experienced none of it.
He couldn't see the towering trees stretching above him. He couldn't hear the wind, the rain, or the cries of the animals surrounding him. He couldn't even feel the cold mud clinging to his clothes or the rain soaking into his skin. The medicine had stolen every one of his five senses, leaving him trapped in a world of absolute silence and darkness where even the passing of time had become impossible to measure.
The only reason he knew two weeks had passed at all was because the pills had begun to wear off once already, forcing him to take another before continuing deeper into the mountain. As he carefully made his way through the forest, his stomach suddenly growled in protest. The last proper meal he had eaten was before setting foot inside the forest, and now, two weeks later, hunger had become as constant as the rain itself.
Levi clicked his tongue.
Stupid stomach.
Ignoring it was all he could do.
Despite spending two weeks wandering through the mountain, he hadn't adapted to it in the slightest. Hunting, fishing, even building something as simple as a shelter—every basic survival skill had become an impossible task while stripped of his senses. Worse still, instead of learning how to survive the wilderness, the wilderness had spent the past fourteen days trying to devour him.
On his very first day, he had unknowingly wandered into a lake infested with crocodiles and barely escaped with his limbs intact. Three days later, after collapsing from exhaustion atop a tree, he had awakened wrapped inside the coils of a monstrous serpent so enormous it felt less like a snake and more like a dragon. Its body had tightened around him until breathing itself became a struggle, while its fangs were large enough to cleave straight through bone. Then, just yesterday, he had stumbled into the cave of a colossal bear and been sent tumbling down the mountainside before he even understood what had happened.
It had been an ordeal unlike anything he had ever endured.
The worst part wasn't the pain.
It was that none of it had brought him any closer to mastering Super Intuition.
His training hadn't progressed.
Not even a little.
Levi abruptly stopped walking.
...What the hell am I doing?
This is so damn stupid.
His fist slowly tightened until his nails dug into his own palm, drawing blood that mixed with the rain before dripping silently into the mud beneath his feet.
Curse you old man.
This is impossible.
How the hell am I supposed to sharpen my senses... if I don't even have them?
The more he dwelled on it, the hotter the frustration burned.
His jaw locked so tightly it felt as though his teeth might crack under the pressure. He lifted his head toward a sky he could neither see nor feel, every muscle in his body trembling with the urge to scream.
God...
He wanted to roar.
To curse.
To vent every ounce of anger festering inside him.
Yet he endured it.
He swallowed every bit of it.
Little by little, the fury faded alongside the rain. His clenched fist slowly loosened, and his shoulders sagged beneath the weight of exhaustion.
There was nothing before his eyes.
Nothing beneath his feet that he could feel.
Nothing around him that he could hear.
Only the warm blood trickling from his open hand, disappearing into the soil below.
Suddenly, something began moving beyond the trees. As the last rays of sunlight disappeared beneath the horizon, the forest seemed to change with them. The thick fog that blanketed Mount Jukai swallowed what little light remained, and one by one, glowing yellow eyes began emerging from within it. Low growls rolled through the wilderness like distant thunder, growing louder with every passing second until the silence itself was buried beneath their hunger. Then they finally stepped into view. Massive wolves, each one large enough to tear a grown man apart, their long fangs glistening beneath strands of saliva that dripped endlessly onto the soaked earth.
Unknown to him, Levi had been completely surrounded.
There were at least a dozen wolves, yet none of them moved. They didn't circle him like ordinary predators measuring the right moment to strike. Instead, they stood perfectly still, their eyes fixed upon him as though awaiting the command of something far greater than themselves.
Then it came.
Out of the deepest shadows of the forest, a monstrous black wolf slowly emerged from the darkness. It towered over the rest of the pack, its enormous frame making the others appear almost ordinary by comparison. It walked with the quiet certainty of something that had never once questioned its place at the top of the food chain. Its eyes were as red as the blood soaking into the ground beneath Levi's feet, burning with a hunger so primal that it resembled death itself.
No...
It looked like a damn reaper coming to claim another life.
The beast was unmistakably the alpha.
Unlike the rest of the pack, however, it didn't rush its prey. It approached with measured steps, studying Levi from every angle. Something about the young warrior stirred its instincts. Even stripped of his senses, the man standing before it didn't feel like helpless prey. For a brief moment, the beast hesitated, waiting to see whether the stranger would reveal the fangs hidden beneath his silence.
Nothing came.
The hesitation disappeared.
The alpha lunged.
Its massive body slammed into Levi with terrifying force, driving him into the muddy ground beneath its weight. The instant their leader committed, the rest of the pack followed without hesitation. They descended upon him from every direction, jaws clamping onto his arms, shoulders, and legs, tearing at him with savage desperation as though determined to strip every piece of flesh from his bones.
Levi fought back with everything he had left.
But two weeks of hunger, exhaustion, and countless injuries weighed heavier than the wolves crushing him beneath their bodies. Gritting his teeth, he released a violent surge of Destruction Aura, the crimson force erupting around him and blasting the beasts backward before he staggered back onto his feet. Deep bite wounds covered his body, blood pouring freely from his shoulder as ragged breaths escaped his lungs one after another. Around him, the wolves resumed their slow circle, no longer looking at him as easy prey, yet far from willing to abandon a meal that was already bleeding to death.
...Wolves?
How the hell did they find me?
I'm covered in mud and dirt. They shouldn't have been able to catch my scent.
The answer had been following him ever since he lost control of his frustration.
It was the blood.
The mud had concealed his scent... but the blood dripping from his hand had betrayed him.
Levi gritted his teeth.
For a brief moment, the answer seemed obvious. One swing was all it would take. A single eruption of Destruction would wipe every wolf off the face of the mountain and bring the nightmare to an end. It was the quickest solution... and perhaps the only reasonable one. Otherwise, this was where his journey would end, torn apart and devoured by a pack of beasts in the middle of Mount Jukai.
...What a pathetic way to die.
Crimson aura slowly gathered around his body, his aura beginning to swell like a volcano moments before its eruption.
Then...
It stopped.
...No.
A bitter realization settled over him.
Whenever he found himself standing before a wall too great to break...
He searched for a door instead.
There was nothing wrong with surviving. Nothing wrong with being clever. Those choices had carried him this far and earned him victories no one believed possible. But if he truly wanted to become the worst Demon the galaxy would ever know, there would eventually come a day when there was no door left to find.
Only the wall.
His fingers slowly curled into a fist.
...Not this time.
If he truly intended to accomplish his goals, then his fangs had to be just as sharp as the beasts surrounding him. So even with death closing in from every direction, Levi chose the harder path.
...The Wrath Boy.
Prove it.
The wolves continued closing the distance while Levi reached inward once more, desperately searching for the same feeling that had answered him during his battle against Rumbler.
Come on...
Just let it flow.
Nothing.
Again.
...Flow.
Still nothing.
Against Rumbler, his five senses had still been there to guide him. Back then, letting them flow had been enough. Now there was only darkness. He had already reached Kakusei—Awekaned, but Chōwa—Harmony wasn't something he could force through desperation alone.
The wolves gave him no more time.
They attacked together.
Levi answered with fists, elbows, and kicks, striking wherever teeth sank into his flesh. Every punch he threw was guided only by pain, reacting to the bite before retaliating against it. One wolf leaped onto his back and drove him into the mud beneath its weight, but Levi reached over his shoulder, seized the beast by the neck, and rolled it violently onto the ground. Before he could regain his footing, another lunged from his side. He barely slipped past its jaws, stumbling backward as his breathing grew heavier with every passing second.
He was losing.
"...No."
A quiet thought escaped him.
There's another way.
Levi slowly exhaled.
The tension left his shoulders.
His breathing settled.
Even his stance changed.
Once again, Destruction flowed from his body, but this time it carried none of its usual violence. Instead of exploding outward, it spread quietly across the forest floor, drifting over the earth like gentle ripples crossing the surface of a still lake. The wolves sensed almost nothing. The aura was so calm, so subtle, that it never stirred their instincts.
Only the alpha moved.
Growing impatient, the enormous beast launched itself forward with terrifying force, shattering exposed roots beneath its paws as it opened its jaws wide enough to crush Levi's head in a single bite.
Just before its fangs reached him...
Levi moved.
A single kick crashed into the wolf's ribs, hurling the monstrous beast sideways before it slammed violently into the trunk of an ancient tree.
The rest of the pack froze.
The prey that had been standing at death's door had suddenly struck back.
Levi remained perfectly still.
The crimson ripples continued flowing through the earth, slipping beneath tangled roots, jagged stones, and everything hidden beneath Mount Jukai's surface. Each wave quietly spread through the mountain before returning to him, carrying with it the shape of everything it had touched. He wasn't trying to force his senses to break through the blockage anymore.
He was letting his aura search in their place.
Little by little, the echoes painted the forest inside his mind.
The roots beneath his feet.
The trees surrounding him.
The wolves closing in.
And somewhere within those silent currents flowing endlessly beneath the mountain, Super Intuition stopped resisting the darkness and simply bloomed around it.
The wolves attacked again.
Levi welcomed them.
His body surged forward like a crimson phantom, every movement flowing seamlessly into the next. He slipped between snapping jaws, ducked beneath claws before they reached him, and answered every attack with one of his own. He leaped through the trees, branches bending beneath his feet as the pack relentlessly pursued him through the forest.
They attacked together.
They attacked separately.
They coordinated their assaults.
They changed directions without warning.
It didn't matter.
No matter how unpredictable their movements became, it was as though Levi already knew where the next attack would come from.
One by one, the wolves began to fall.
A punch shattered one beast's ribs.
A kick crushed another's jaw.
Another was driven headfirst into the trunk of a tree before collapsing lifelessly onto the forest floor.
Soon, the clearing grew quiet.
Only the alpha remained.
Moments ago it had been the hunter.
Now it was the prey.
The massive wolf turned and fled into the darkness, abandoning the rest of its pack without hesitation. High above, branches suddenly rustled.
The beast looked up.
A crimson figure descended from the canopy, eyes burning with a red so deep that the wolf's own blood-colored gaze looked pale in comparison.
Levi landed before it.
One strike.
The alpha never rose again.
...
Not long afterward, a small fire flickered beneath Mount Jukai's towering trees.
Beside it sat a young Demon, quietly eating the remains of the very beasts that had come to devour him. Around him, the forest swayed beneath the night wind, as though nothing had happened at all.
Yet somewhere within that endless wilderness, something had changed.
Since he entered the Jukai forest... the mountain had finally recognized him.