AKIHIRO ATLAS
I hurled my spear with all my strength toward Zagreus; its sharp tip cut through the air in a horizontal line, aiming for his neck. My move was quick and decisive—it was as if I had sworn to leave no single opening unguarded.
But it… was beyond my expectations.
He grasped the hilt of his sword and spun it in a single fluid motion. The impact of metal against metal produced a short, sharp sound, and my attack changed direction and flew off as if it had no weight at all. In that moment, I realized that it was not my strength that determined the outcome; it was his control.
We locked eyes.
Time seemed to freeze for a moment. In their eyes, the echo of my words still lingered—cold, sharp, and unsuppressed anger. This wasn't mere irritation; it was something that simmered deep inside, waiting for the right moment to burst forth. And at that moment, I could clearly sense that I was the target of this.
While he was trying to say to me, "I'm asking you for the last time -" I concentrated my lightning power in my right foot and delivered a hard kick to the center of his abdomen, sending him flying backward. I was only able to throw him back about 6-7 steps. He's stronger than I thought, 'a demon 2nd' I don't know what means the king, but the 2 most powerful among them. I feel like this is really hard if it meant my job.
"We have passed the talk phase, Zagreus. I have no desire to join you or kings or queens like you who took my fellow tribesmen from me. Go back and tell the High King that he will never see me except in his dreams.While saying this, I'm sure I looked very cool. I closed my eyes and waited for a few seconds. I slowly opened my eyes again, slightly squinted, and Zagreus was no longer in front of me.
"Fuck!"
While I was looking around quickly and searching for him, I noticed the shadow falling on me, so I looked up and my body was filled with lightning as I ran away, and the car falling on me happened at the same time. Fortunately, I escaped unhurt, but the attacks didn't stop. From the top of the roof, Zagreus pointed his sword back at me and swung not once, not twice, not three times, but countless times, unleashing crosswise attacks charged with his Spirit Power.
"From the Sky!"
Once again, my body was covered in lightning. I was moving at supersonic speed, but their attacks never stopped. How can this mad demon swing his arm so quickly?!!
After dodging several slashes, I transformed back into human form. As I slid at top speed across the ground, I impaled my foot into the ground to block the final slash coming toward me. I charged my spear with lightning power and threw it with all my strength.
My spear, which had split the intersection in two, passed through and went away. I called it back towards me, but before it could reach me, my vision changed.
My spear was forming in my hand with lightning when I saw a sword in the middle of my face; I was about to be split in two. I ignored the formation of my spear, stepped aside, and escaped being cut in two by the sword. Zagreus was right before my eyes. I thought I was faster than him, but this time he brought his sword from a vertical position to a horizontal one and swung it toward me from the 1-step distance between us. I quickly recalled my unformed spear and leapt into the air, trying to weaken the sword's blow by kicking my spear with both feet. That was the fastest reaction I could come up with on the spot, and despite it, the sword blow threw me back so hard that I found myself passing through two buildings and emerging from the other side.
The building I got stuck in was the third one I hit, and I slowly pulled myself out of the rubble. As I coughed, my blood splashed onto the ground. I had sustained serious injuries, and my vision blurred because I was probably bleeding from my head.
I quickly formed my spear and thought of a technique that might be useful at this moment.
"Fulgur Nuptiarum."
With this technique, I gained the power to gather all the lightning in our realm into a specific organ of mine.
By "realm" I mean a Sacred Domain; currently, I am in the Earth Realm and a Sacred Domain consisting of strange numbers. There is an incredible source of electricity and lightning here. Their technological systems are different.
A Sacred Domain can possess different time periods, different habits, different races, different powers—in short, anything that sets it apart from another. Rather than simple, distinct pocket universes, they are complex realms caught between reality and its counterfeits. A Sacred Domain contains infinite-dimensional spaces, and therefore its creators sometimes cannot control them themselves. Those who can control them on their own are beings from the highest layers. The creator of Cistern, unable to control it, placed Team 0 entirely in the sky as the force that sustains Cistern's structure and existence through those who uphold it.
I don't know who created this Sacred Domain, but the people who live here have truly accomplished useful things. If it was their lightning that saved me in this battle, it is my duty to reduce their enemies to ashes.
All the lights have gone out. The car headlights went out and the sounds of electrical appliances ceased. All the electricity and lightning that would form from the clouds was slowly gathering in my hand.
I freed my right arm.
It was as if what flowed through my veins wasn't blood but a shattered sky; my arm transformed into a pulsating web of lightning, sparks flying. The electricity surged from beneath my skin, burning through the air and even stretching the space around me. I didn't suppress that power—on the contrary, I released it completely.
Suddenly, I became active.
I advanced not by crashing into the buildings' walls, but by using them as stepping stones; as I leapt from one wall to another, I left behind scorch marks and cracks. I leapt forward through the holes I had come from—my sole goal was clear.
Zagreus.
I swung my fist with all my strength.
"Mouse." he said.
His voice was calm. Disturbingly calm.
Just as my fist was about to land on his face, he opened his palm and stopped me.
At the moment of impact, all the pent-up energy within me burst forth uncontrollably. The power exploded from the point where our hands touched; streetlights along the avenue detonated one by one, the metal bodies of cars were crushed and shattered, and the windows shattered into pieces with a deafening noise. The air was filled with the smell of burnt ozone.
But he... didn't even move.
"How... how did you do it? ! " I shouted angrily, my voice sounding foreign even to my own ears.
His gaze was fixed on me.
"You are powerless, Akihiro Atlas. " he said, as if stating an indisputable fact. "If our master did not want you, I would kill you with one blow, just as I would any human. "
Something inside me broke.
Anger... no, it wasn't just anger. It was the explosion of humiliation, repression, and the desire to prove myself at a single point.
He still hadn't let go of my hand.
That's when I made my decision.
While my eyes were fixed, I gripped his wrist with my other hand—firmly, determinedly. Without even a moment's hesitation, I threw my body back and performed a backflip. Using my weight, I twisted his arm, forcing its joint beyond its natural range of motion.
Master Shu's voice echoed in my mind:
"If the power is not enough, change direction."
Now, I was using his power... against him. I could break his arm with a single move.
However, breaking this man's arm was not a sufficient punishment. Who knows how many people he killed?
I didn't slow down my movement at all. Before he could react, I formed my spear and swiftly severed his arm between his shoulder and elbow. I spun my spear in my hand and gathered all the lightning that had scattered around from my previous technique once more in the same way. This time, I loaded all of it onto my spear and pointed it in a straight line at the spot where his heart was.
Die.
He grasped my spear with his uninjured hand and easily stopped me. While I was trying to redirect my thrust power back there, I paused for a second in surprise, and he took advantage of that pause to grab me by my spear and spin me around on himself before slamming me hard into the ground behind him. I bounced back across the ground. He clenched my spear in his hand and shattered it into pieces. My bleeding increased, but I managed to stand up once more. What I saw next made my eyes widen in shock.
A vein emerged from his arm, with red and blood tissues visible, and it attached itself to the limb lying motionless on the ground, slowly reattaching to his arm. All the gaps suddenly filled in, and his arm reconnected to his body as if nothing had happened.
"Demon blood. A demon can regrow any severed limb. No matter which part of me you cut off, I can rejoin my body. You cannot harm me or us in this way, Akihiro. "
The possibility of such a thing was extremely dangerous. While there was a massive power disparity between us, it seemed like I had lost my only way to weaken him. If I couldn't cut off his limbs or harm him, how could I render him unable to fight and kill him?
Even though I didn't want to run away, I thought about it for a moment. While he's coming after me, I might try to pin him down in a weak place and kill him. However, I don't even know how to kill right now.
"Don't even think of running away, Atlas. I recognize your scent very clearly. I'll never forget it. You can't ambush me. You can't just run away after what you said about us. You've fallen into my grasp once, and you'll never escape again. You can't escape, you can't escape. For you, there's no way out beyond this tiny corridor." He slowly began to walk towards me again. The sword reappeared in his hand, and he charged at me with quick steps.
When Zagreus began swinging his sword, I realized this wasn't just an ordinary series of attacks; each blow was intended not only to kill me but also to crush me, to break my will. The first blow from the right, accompanied by its sharp whistling sound as it sliced through the air, struck my spear and sent a jolt that radiated from my wrists to my shoulders. Before the vibration of that blow had faded from my bones, a second strike came from the left; I reflexively turned my spear, and metal struck metal, sparks exploding before my eyes. It showed no sign of pausing. A diagonal line rising from the lower right corner, followed by a lethal arc line descending from the upper left... They all connected flawlessly to each other. It was as if I wasn't fighting a human, but an unrelenting, breathless machine.
I was twirling my spear in my hand and letting defense flow naturally; there was no time even to think in response to each blow; my body moved on its own. I channeled my lightning power into the shaft of the spear; with each block impact, electricity exploded, attempting to dampen the blow, but its power was different. With each collision, the sound became heavier, more dominant. It was as if my weapon wasn't defending, only delaying the disintegration. When he delivered a vertical blow, I held my spear horizontally to block it; the force of the impact caused my knees to buckle slightly and my feet to slide involuntarily on the ground. The horizontal intersection coming from the right immediately forced my defense to shift to the side. The distance between us wasn't staying constant—it was dragging me backward step by step.
The ground seemed to be slipping from under my feet. With each blow, I was forced a step backward, and with each step backward, I struggled to regain my balance. The lightning spreading from my arm to the spear grew even more intense; the crackling energy leapt out in all directions to disperse the impact of the blows. But even that wasn't enough. Each of his blows carried not only physical strength but also overwhelming willpower. I was defending—yes—but I wasn't the one in control. I was just trying to survive.
My breathing became irregular. With each block, it got slower, and with each intersection, I felt a momentary delay. He, on the other hand, didn't slow down. From the right, from the left, from above, from the side... the blows flowed like a rhythm, but this rhythm was what spelled my doom. I could feel my spear trembling; not only from the force of the blows, but also from reaching its limit. If this pace continued, I wasn't sure whether the first thing to break would be my gun or me.
And the worst part was this: I really didn't know how long I could last.
As my knees slid backward, I felt the ground cracking beneath me. Each blow seemed to strike not only my spear but also my willpower. My breathing grew heavy, but his pace... never faltered for a single moment.
I searched for a momentary gap.
There was none.
The sword swung again from the right—
This time, instead of meeting it, I shifted to the side. The roar of the steel passed by my ear.
At that moment, I concentrated the power of lightning at the tip of my spear and charged forward.
"Now!"
I charged forward, pointing my spear at him.
But... his eyes.
As if knowing everything from the very beginning, he slightly twisted his wrist and pushed my spear aside with the flat edge of his sword. In the continuation of the same movement, his elbow hit my rib. While his elbow was touching me, it became covered in an aura of the same color as the one that had come from his previous limb—that is, the color of red blood.
I lost my breath.
I was thrown backward.
As my feet scraped against the ground, I struggled to regain my balance, but he had already come at me. This time, his attacks were even more severe. My vision was fading.
"Our blood may be too exhausting for an ordinary human like you. Even the moment it touches your face, you feel like you're about to faint. "
I really felt like I was going to faint for a moment, just as he said, but for some reason the effect disappeared afterward and he continued talking nonsense.
"Right now you're losing your hearing; soon your sensory abilities will fade and you'll faint. I'll take you away from here nicely, Atlas! "
It wasn't what he said. There was something strange about it, and I wasn't that impressed.
For a moment, I fell to my knees to pretend to be submissive and waited for him to come at me.
He came towards me in heavy steps, and when he slowly extended his hand towards my head, I filled my steps with lightning and immediately moved behind him, pointing my spear towards his heart. He reacted very quickly, but that didn't save him. Although my blow didn't land on his heart, it struck him in the shoulder and passed right through.
My lightning power was dissipating with a crackling sound.
"How long will you keep running?" he said in a cold voice.
I clenched my teeth.
I wasn't running away.
I was holding on.
And I had to show him this difference.
I felt like closing my eyes... but just then everything slowed down.
The angle of his sword's attack.
The way his feet stepped.
The way his shoulder tensed.
I saw it all.
This time I didn't back down.
My spear lodged in his shoulder wasn't slowing him down, maybe, but his shoulder's range of motion must have decreased because of it.
On the contrary, I took a step forward.
As the sword descended, I positioned my hand in the same way someone makes the scissors gesture when playing rock-paper-scissors, and positioned myself at the center of the blow. I channeled the Spirit Power throughout my entire body into my hand, which I held like a sharp blade. At the moment of impact, I unleashed my lightning power.
A sound resembling thunder echoed.
For the first time... he lost his balance.
My eyes opened.
"I've got you."
I spun the spear and made a sharp upward thrust from beneath. He ran—but this time he was the one retreating.
A few steps separated us.
We were both breathing heavily.
But this was no longer the same war.
The man who had just pushed me away was gone.
Now… he wasn't sure about what stood before him. Neither was I.
Zagreus tilted his head slightly to the side, a faint smile appearing at the corners of his lips; not as if he were weighing my words, but as if he had already decided how to respond.
"So this is how the game is played from your perspective…" He was looking at me with a sneaky smile, a spear in his shoulder and a cut on his chest.
"How beautiful," he continued, his voice dropping almost to a whisper. "Then let me adjust the rules a bit to suit you…"
He took a step. Just one step.
But in that step, there was more intention than in all his previous attacks combined.
"I won't kill you right away. " he said calmly. "No... that would be too simple. Too merciful for someone like you. "
His eyes locked on me; this time there was no anger. There was something worse—a cold certainty.
"And finally…" he murmured, lifting his head only slightly, "you will bring yourself to that place where you want to die. "
This time his smile was a little more visible.
I was about to open my mouth and speak when suddenly it disappeared from my sight.
"So fast… Why didn't it react to my movements even though it was that fast?!!"
It was deliberately playing with me…
I immediately summoned my spear back into my hand and, after it had formed slowly, began to survey my surroundings. I was thinking I couldn't stand in the open when something was thrown at me from too great a speed for me to see it coming. To block it, I immediately thrust my spear vertically and split the object in two.
An awful meaty sound came.
I had escaped whatever I had cut, but when I looked at my spear, I saw its tip was completely red. A red liquid was dripping towards the ground.
"W-What…?"
With fear, panic, and pain, I slowly turned my head first to my right and then to my left.
To my right was the upper part of a woman's body from the abdomen upwards. To my left was the lower part of the same woman's body from the abdomen downwards.
I lost my breath; air couldn't fill my lungs. My stomach tightened, and I could barely contain
the nauseous wave rising inside me. My hands began to shake even more.
"No…"
I took a step back. My foot slipped, and I nearly fell.
"No... no... no..."
I wanted to look away.
But I couldn't escape.
That image was etched into my mind. Wherever I looked... it was there.
My fingers went limp. The spear almost fell from my grasp. That red liquid was still dripping... each drop was like a scream echoing in my brain.
"I… I did it…"
My voice was trembling as the words spilled from my lips. There was a fear within me that I couldn't recognize.
This… wasn't the fear I felt towards the enemy.
This…
I feared myself. I killed a person in self-defense.
My stomach tightened once again. I turned my head to the side and closed my eyes, but it was futile. The image wouldn't go away. It was as if it had been etched into the inside of my eyelids.
I tried to breathe.
But every breath... caught in my throat.
"Is this... me...? " My voice turned into a whisper.
For a moment, I looked at my hands. Trembling, uncontrolled, foreign hands... They didn't seem to belong to me.
It was as if I wasn't the one who dealt that blow. But I couldn't deny the truth. I had done it. And in that moment... something inside me broke.
The noise of the battle was still all around me, perhaps... but for me, everything had fallen into silence.
Because for the first time...
I had seen what I had truly become. From now on, more people would die in the wars I fought. This was a place where humans lived. A place where people killed other people.
"This… This… This is mine…" I looked at my spear and took in the scent of the blood I saw, then I felt like vomiting so I quickly turned my head back and held it towards the ground, but for a moment I had forgotten that I was in battle.
Zagreus suddenly appeared next to me. I slowly lifted my head to look at him with faded eyes, when he struck me in the center of my abdomen, sending me flying back for meters, and I crashed into a car on a main road.
The collision was unnecessarily soft for some reason I don't know, and the car's metal was too hot. As I tried to get up by gripping the ground, the area where I held on became a pool of blood. I thought it was my own blood. I got up without paying much attention and glanced toward the car for a second.
This time... my mind couldn't escape.
Because the image was too unmistakably close to deny.
The front end of the car had caved in. The metal had buckled, and the windows had cracked and shattered. But what was really there... wasn't metal.
They were the ones. They were stuck between me and the car. For a moment, I couldn't understand what I was seeing. My brain tried to break down the image, to make sense of it… but it couldn't.
Then…
Everything fell into place at once.
And something inside me broke.
"...yo-"
I couldn't make a sound.
My feet wanted to take me back, but my body was frozen. My eyes involuntarily locked onto that spot. I... I hadn't just hit them. I hadn't...
I had pressed down on the accelerator.
At that moment, I understood why the impact felt "soft."
Because the impact wasn't on the metal...
It had hit them first.
My hands started to shake. My fingers went numb. I couldn't even feel whether I was holding the spear anymore.
"No…"
I nodded. Slowly. As if trying to convince me.
"No… this… this isn't me…"
But my eyes weren't lying.
A man.
A woman.
And among them... a little boy.
All three of them were in front of the car... they seemed to be embedded in the metal due to the impact of my collision. Their organs and blood were scattered everywhere. Their bodies were shattered.
My mind didn't want to look at the details.
But my eyes couldn't look away.
It was as if someone was forcing me to watch.
As if… this was my punishment.
I lost my breath. My chest tightened. My stomach cramped.
"I… couldn't stop…"
I whispered the word.
But that wasn't an excuse.
This was a fact. And that fact…
It didn't change anything. My knees shook. I took a step. Then I stumbled.
"I... did I see them...?"
I tried to remember. I tried to recall that moment.
That split second right before the collision.
But my mind was blank...
It was as if they had specifically erased that memory. As if... I had chosen not to see it.
"No…" This time my voice came out a little louder.
"I'm not like that..."
But the sentence fell apart on my lips.
Because there was another voice inside me.
Cold. Cruel. Real.
But you did it.
I put my hands over my ears.
"Stop it…"
But it didn't stop.
You killed them.
"I said stop! "
I screamed. I screamed so loudly my voice cracked. My throat burned.
My breathing became irregular. My eyes filled with tears, but I couldn't even cry.
It was as if even my body didn't know what to do. I couldn't stand still because I was shaking.
Not only my hands, but my entire being was trembling.
"I… I was just fighting…"
I took a step back.
"I wanted to protect them…"
Then another one. But the image… It seemed to grow larger the farther I moved away, I could never escape it.
"I… was going to be a hero…"
I whispered. This sentence... At that moment...
It tore me apart.
Because what stood before me...
Was not something a hero would do.
This… was a disaster. And I… was at its center.
My eyes drifted into space.
My mind was falling apart.
My thoughts were overlapping, losing their meaning. Names. Faces. But most of all… Those three silhouettes.
They wouldn't go away. They wouldn't go away. And that moment I understood. It wasn't just a moment. This... It would stay with me. With every breath. In every battle. In every silence. And maybe...
It was never really going to get better.
The inner me and the outer me, that is, me, yes, that me, the me who is Akihiro Atlas, was talking to itself, that is, I was talking. I don't know what I said.
"Stop... stop it... they're not coming out of my head—they don't have a voice, but they exist, you know, they exist, like they're still there, like that collision never ended... I wanted to save them, I... I still thought I was a 'good person' when I threw that punch...but what I called 'good' went over them, went through them—and I felt... so it was soft, so it was warm—because it wasn't a blow, it was... it was someone's last moment, and I went through it... and now I can't rewind, I can't erase it, even if I close my eyes they're not leaving, if I open it, they're already there... I'm not a hero or anything, I'm just someone who doesn't realize how people die when I'm doing what I think is right... and do you know the worst part? Somewhere inside me is still saying 'keep going'... still saying 'if you were faster you would have saved'... so either I'll stop and do nothing and people will die again, or I'll keep going... I'll do it again... and I... I can't decide which one is more terrible anymore... because I guess I'm not staying in either... I... where do I end up now?"
As my chest rose and fell unevenly, everything that had built up inside me was compressed into a single point—fear, disgust, guilt, and that overwhelming heaviness I couldn't describe—tightening like an invisible curse around my heart, making each breath a little more painful. The warmth spreading beneath my knees, the texture of the blood mixed with the ground that felt as if it were still alive, the fragments of the scene I had just witnessed that refused to fade from my mind... all of it overlapped. My thoughts no longer formed a coherent whole; they swirled around in my mind in fragmented, scattered images that drowned each other out. At that moment, without any rational thought, I instinctively understood that I could not bear this burden. I slowly lifted my head towards the sky; as my neck tightened, what rose from within my throat was not a word but a fracture. "ARES! When I screamed "!" my voice was far from being merely a scream that shook the air; it was a call that shattered everything within me, a call that forcibly tore apart the boundaries that defined me.
My spear, in my hand, turned into dust particles and rose into the sky, slowly transforming into a large figure. I was transforming my image into my avatar.
At that moment, the atmosphere around us changed; this change was not like the sudden blowing of a wind, but rather like the presence itself gaining weight. It was as if an invisible hand had pressed down on reality, making it several times denser. As the sky darkened, I immediately realized that this had nothing to do with clouds; the light wasn't fading away, it was being suppressed. First, I felt something rising behind me—a presence I felt before I saw it, a presence so intense, so overwhelming, that it became impossible not to see it.
When I slowly turned my head, what I saw was a being that, despite having a form, belittled the concept of form. Its massive body resembled a human figure, but this resemblance was merely an illusion; for that body was like molten metal that had solidified again with fury. Its surface was not smooth; on the contrary, it was riddled with cracks, and the red light seeping through those cracks was merely a suppressed reflection of the power within. Every time it moved, these cracks would widen and then close again, as if the very existence of its being were constantly held under tension.
His shoulders were broad enough to bear a battlefield, and the armor he wore... if it could be called armor at all, was far from being a piece of protection crafted by a master. It seemed more like it had been formed by the accumulation of countless conflicts, shattered weapons, shattered bodies, and unquenchable anger; its surface bore deep scars, fissures, and echoes of ancient blows, but these marks did not appear as relics of the past; rather, they looked as if they were still alive and breathing. When she lowered her head, her face could not be seen clearly; It was as if it were a constantly changing image; one moment the features of a warrior would appear, the next everything would blur and sink into darkness. However, his eyes... they remained fixed. The two red dots burned like an unquenchable fire, and one felt as if they not only saw but also weighed everything they looked at.
The spear he held in his hand only resembled mine in shape; for it was not a weapon but destruction itself. Its length and weight were so extreme that they could not be explained by physical measurements; it was as if it had been forced to fit into its environment and had therefore been forced to distort its own form. Its tip appeared not only sharp but capable of tearing through the fabric of reality with a density that seemed almost supernatural. The energy circulating around the spear was neither purely light nor darkness; it was more of a reflection of the battle itself, distorting the surroundings with an invisible yet palpable vibration. With its presence, everything around receded; sounds faded, movements slowed, even time seemed to be crushed under the weight of this being.
Finally, he bowed his head a little more and his gaze turned directly towards me. There was no mercy in that gaze, not even anger; there was something more disturbing. Recognition. It was as if he wasn't seeing me for the first time; as if he already knew everything there was to know about me, and this knowledge neither surprised nor interested him. At that moment, a strange awareness arose within me; this presence was not an external force. It was not merely a god I had summoned. This was the culmination of everything that had built up inside me—every repressed urge, every dark part I had ignored—taking shape. And the moment I summoned it... there was no turning back.
"Aki... There's more we need to save. If you called me, don't just sit there. "
END OF CHAPTER