By 9:55 PM, Faiz was already waiting by the apartment entrance. He wore a crisp suit and had a heavy-duty camera strapped securely around his neck, ready to document the impossible.
Right on the dot at 10:00 PM, a sleek black sedan pulled up. Kiyoshi was at the wheel, looking as tense as ever, but Faiz's attention was drawn to the woman sitting in the back. She looked completely... ordinary. No scars, no glowing eyes, just a woman with a relaxed posture.
Faiz slid into the car, and the woman offered a faint smile. "So, you must be Faiz. I've heard quite a bit about you from Kiyoshi. I am Fuse Saki, Captain of the 5th Division of the Akuma Hunter Association"
Faiz leaned back comfortably against the leather seat. "Faiz Adriansah. As you can probably tell, my Japanese is a bit of a mess. But as long as we understand each other, we're good."
Saki let out a soft chuckle. "You're surprisingly brave, I'll give you that. It's the first time a researcher has been crazy enough to demand field observation. The last guy who got too close died when the Akuma cells he extracted forcefully bonded with his own, killing him on the spot."
Faiz raised an eyebrow. "Wait... I read that Hunters have modified bodies. You guys integrate Akuma DNA to fight them, right?"
Saki nodded, her expression turning slightly more serious. "Exactly. But it's all about the ratio. Some Hunters are ten percent Akuma. Others thirty. A select few push it to ninety-five percent. The higher the percentage, the more brutal the power."
The car came to a slow halt. Outside the window lay an abandoned, overgrown livestock farm. The air smelled of damp earth and something distinctly metallic.
Kiyoshi cut the engine but kept his hands glued to the steering wheel. "I will wait here," he said, his voice tight.
Saki stepped out of the car, her gait terrifyingly casual. Faiz followed, keeping a safe distance and readying his camera.
"You look way too relaxed for a monster hunt," Faiz muttered, adjusting the lens focus.
Saki glanced back with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Haha... when you do this every day, it just becomes a chore."
A sharp rustle tore through the tall grass.
Faiz immediately backpedaled, bringing the camera to his eye. Saki's demeanor shifted instantly. Her gaze turned razor-sharp, emitting a terrifying pressure.
"Is that it? An Akuma?" Faiz asked.
Before Saki could answer, a grotesque monstrosity bursting with mismatched, muscular arms lunged from the bushes straight at her. Saki didn't even draw a weapon. She simply turned her hand downward.
CRUNCH.
The multi-armed Akuma was slammed flat against the dirt, its bones shattering as if crushed by a sudden, invisible gravity well.
"Hmm. Too weak," Saki sighed, sounding genuinely disappointed. "Boring."
Suddenly, the shadows around them twisted. Guttural snarls echoed from every direction. Dozens of Akuma emerged from the tree line, boxing them in.
"Uh, hey, Captain of the 5th Division?" Faiz called out, his finger hovering over the record button. "There's a lot of them. What's the plan?"
Saki clicked her tongue. "I can't use my full output here. If I drop the gravity field to its maximum, you'll be crushed along with them."
In the blink of an eye, she vanished from her spot.
She's fast, Faiz thought, struggling to track her movements.
Saki weaved through the horde. She wasn't using gravity anymore; her strikes manifested as transparent, high-pressure blades that sliced cleanly through the Akuma, leaving perfectly smooth cross-sections of flesh and bone in her wake.
Faiz, meanwhile, was jogging backward, frantically snapping photos and recording video. Damn, their attack range is lethal, he analyzed calmly. One clean hit and I'm a goner.
Three Akuma broke past Saki and lunged at the researcher. However, Faiz wasn't just a bookworm; he'd been getting into street fights since elementary school. He smoothly sidestepped a sweeping claw, ducked under a lethal bite, and pivoted out of the danger zone with practiced reflexes.
Saki caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. "Wow! Not bad for a lab rat!" she yelled over the carnage, before decapitating two more monsters.
Encouraged, Faiz raised his camera to get a close-up of a dying Akuma.
SWIPE.
A massive, serrated claw tore through the air, completely obliterating the heavy-duty camera in Faiz's hands. Plastic and glass exploded into dust.
"WHAT THE—!" Faiz froze, staring at the empty strap around his neck. His precious, expensive camera. Gone.
The Akuma that had destroyed it let out a screech and lunged for his throat.
Something inside Faiz snapped.
Moving purely on instinct and rage, he ripped off his suit jacket, sidestepped the monster's lethal lunge, and slipped behind it. With a swift, violent motion, he wrapped the reinforced fabric of his jacket around the Akuma's neck, planted his knee into its spine, and pulled back with everything he had, choking the beast.
Saki whirled around, her jaw dropping. "HEY! ARE YOU NOT AFRAID OF DYING?!"
She dashed forward, her invisible blade cleaving the choked Akuma in two to save the insane researcher.
Faiz dropped the severed head, ignoring the blood soaking his shirt. "Ah, fuck... my camera," he groaned, running a hand down his face. "All that footage, gone."
Saki didn't have time to scold him. The horde kept coming, and she threw herself back into the meat grinder.
After several intense minutes, the screeches finally died down. The farm was littered with monstrous corpses. But Saki didn't relax. The air suddenly grew thick and suffocating.
"Faiz... get back," Saki ordered, dropping into a low combat stance. "There's something else. Something much stronger."
Faiz just stood there, his face completely deadpan. I don't even care anymore, he thought, mourning his electronics. I'm clocking out.
Without warning, a towering Akuma burst from the earth. Its face was a writhing mass of tentacles, like a nightmare pulled straight from a Cthulhu mythos. It moved with blinding speed, swiping at Saki. She barely dodged, managing to slice one of its arms off, but the beast ignored her.
It pivoted instantly, locking its sights on the unprotected human.
Faiz didn't even have time to blink. A massive force slammed into his chest, launching him through the air. His back collided violently with the thick trunk of an oak tree, the sickening crack of his ribs echoing in the clearing.
"FAIZ!" Saki screamed. "Damn it, this is why non-combatants shouldn't be here!"
The Cthulhu-Akuma charged Saki, and she met it head-on, her invisible blades hacking at its flesh. But the monster's wounds knit together almost instantly. Its regeneration was absurd.
Slumped against the base of the tree, Faiz opened his eyes. The world was spinning, the edges of his vision bleeding into darkness. He couldn't breathe. His lungs were filling with fluid.
Fuck... he thought sluggishly. Am I... actually going to die here?
His eyes fluttered shut.
When Faiz opened his eyes again, there was no farm. No Saki. No monsters. Just an endless, suffocating void of absolute nothingness.
"Hey, weakling."
The voice echoed from everywhere at once. Faiz turned his head and saw a figure stepping out of the shadows. It looked like him, but its eyes burned with a chaotic, malicious light.
"You..." Faiz muttered. "Devil Faiz."
D.Faiz grinned, exposing impossibly sharp teeth. "Mwahahaha... It's been a while, Faiz Adriansah. Or should I call you by your old title? The Half-Crazy Human."
Despite dying, Faiz let out a dry, hacking laugh. "Half-crazy? I threw that edgy nickname away a long time ago. Besides, how the hell are you even here?"
D.Faiz crossed his arms, floating slightly above the void. "Long story short? You're dying. And I'm here to make a deal. You still want to live, don't you?"
Faiz went quiet. He stared into the abyss, his thoughts racing. "I do," he said slowly. "But I have no intention of reverting to who I was back then."
D.Faiz drifted closer, looming over him. "Hmm... You don't have to be the Half-Crazy Human. But if you die, I fade away with you. If you want to survive this... lend me your body. I will flood your veins with my power. You keep the wheel, I just provide the gas. So—"
"Deal." Faiz cut him off instantly. "I refuse to die right now."
D.Faiz's grin stretched from ear to ear. "Mwahahaha... excellent. Then rise, Faiz Adriansah!"
Back in the physical world, Saki was losing ground. The Cthulhu-Akuma landed a grazing blow, sending her skidding through the dirt. As she struggled to her feet, she heard a sickening, crunching sound from the tree line.
She turned her head. "F-Faiz?"
Faiz's crushed chest was rapidly expanding and snapping back into place. His shattered ribs knit together with a horrifying popping noise. Steam rose from his wounds as he slowly stood up, cracking his neck.
The Cthulhu-Akuma noticed the movement. Abandoning Saki, it charged straight at the resurrected human.
Faiz didn't run. He just smiled. A dark, unhinged smile.
"Hey," Faiz whispered, his voice vibrating with an unnatural resonance. "Did you really think I wouldn't be pissed off about my camera?"
He cracked his knuckles, the sound like gunshots in the quiet night.
"I AM VERY PISSED OFF!" Faiz roared. "AND WHY AM I EVEN TALKING TO A SQUID-FACED FREAK LIKE YOU? IT'S NOT LIKE YOU UNDERSTAND A WORD I'M SAYING!"
Faiz didn't use a stance. He just launched himself forward like a cannonball.
The Akuma reacted, swinging a massive, tree-trunk-sized arm that smashed directly into Faiz's face. Faiz hit the dirt hard, half his face caved in.
Fuck, he thought, as the pain registered for a microsecond.
Then, the demonic power flared. His face regenerated in an instant. He sprang back up, moving twice as fast as before.
He didn't fight like a martial artist. He fought like a rabid animal. He dodged erratically, lunging into the creature's guard, ignoring its grazing hits, and began tearing at its flesh with his bare hands. He ripped tentacles from its face, shattered its joints with brutal, uncalculated strikes, all while laughing maniacally.
"HAHAHAHAHA!"
Time blurred.
When Saki finally limped back into the clearing hours later, the scene was entirely quiet.
The Cthulhu-Akuma wasn't just dead; it had been violently disassembled. Gore and flesh painted the grass. In the center of the carnage, Faiz lay flat on his back, staring up at the cloudy night sky, utterly exhausted.
Saki approached him cautiously, staring at the unimaginable destruction. "Uh... Faiz? Are you alright?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly. "That power just now... it's decided. You're coming with me."
Faiz barely managed to turn his head, gasping for air. "Where...?"
Saki looked down at him, her casual demeanor finally returning as she offered him a hand.
"To the 5th Division Headquarters."