"What the hell just happened?"
Emrys stayed still for a long moment, his two Draindas hanging loosely at the end of his arms, his breathing still ragged, while his mind struggled to catch up with what his body had just accomplished without him.
There wasn't a single demon left standing.
He mentally replayed the last few minutes, or at least what he'd consciously perceived of them, those scattered fragments where his brain seemed to have handed over control to something faster, more instinctive. Fifteen steps. Nine steps. A jump. A severed head. Then nothing, a productive blank until this exact moment, when he'd fully regained awareness of himself, surrounded by corpses he didn't remember finishing off.
That's it.
The thought hit him with a clear, striking clarity, as if his own body had been trying to shout it at him since the fight began.
That's it. This is my ideal fighting style.
"This has absolutely nothing to do with the style I'd been using up until now," he admitted. "It just felt... true. Like it was the only path I was ever meant to walk."
Not the cold, clinical precision he'd developed with his borrowed Projections. Not the raw power a single oversized blade could have offered him. Something more organic, more alive, where his haki's extreme anticipation stopped being managed by conscious calculation and instead attached itself to pure bodily reflex, where his own talent finally expressed itself without needing to be channeled through some specific hero's borrowed memory.
Exhaustion had been the catalyst for this shift, the engineer that had come to sweep away all the architect's wild blueprints with a solid dose of practical reality.
He stood there in the middle of the carnage, a tired but genuine smile spreading across his face.
I found something. Finally.
"But this is only the beginning," Emrys said, dismissing both his swords. "There's no way I'm settling for just this."
And just like that, as exhaustion finally caught up with him for good, Emrys dematerialized, every one of his senses cut off from the outside world.
*
Twelve hours passed this way, while Emrys recovered from his exhaustion. After that half-day of "sleeping," he felt he could finally "wake up."
His body materialized, and he started yawning and stretching, more out of habit than anything else.
"Hmm! Haa! Now that was a good nap," Emrys said.
He then cracked his bones to shake off the stiffness he felt, more mental than physical.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
"It's been a while since I last slept, honestly," Emrys admitted, cracking the last parts of his body. "Even though I'm not sure you can really call that sleeping."
With nothing left to do here, Emrys decided to head back to the village, having one last thing to take care of. This time, though, he didn't take to the air like he had on his way over, preferring to travel there on foot instead.
"I'm in a particularly good mood right now," Emrys said, starting to hum to himself.
This was a phenomenon that generally happened to Emrys after a phase of "sleep."
Upon "waking up," he became far more sensitive to the magical energy present in the atmosphere. And in the mornings, that energy was at its purest.
"I'm honestly surprised it's this cheerful, given we're in a place crawling with demons. But I guess their magical energy got swallowed up too."
What Emrys called sleeping wasn't actually what the other races did. Being a creature whose entire body was made of magical energy, despite having a morphology identical to a human's, Emrys had no need to sleep, drink, eat, or even breathe.
He drew his life essence from the surrounding air, and that was what he breathed, not oxygen. For that reason, Emrys disliked using area attacks like Black Pulse or Black Dome. To him, it was like holding his breath while the magical energy refilled the affected zone, or until he left that same zone.
"I still don't get why Drainda doesn't affect my own body when it affects my magical power, but I guess that's the kind of bullshit you have to expect with Golden Finger stuff."
Even his process of bodily reinforcement wasn't the same as that of beings of flesh and blood. When he trained, moved, or fought, the magical energy that made up his body was used as fuel, pushing him to breathe faster and harder in order to draw in more particles.
After exertion, just like an ordinary human, his body adjusted to accommodate that effort, and so the concentration of magical energy within him increased, improving his physical abilities.
So sleep, as Emrys understood it, was more of a resting state where his body stopped moving and his senses were completely cut off from reality, in order to recover faster.
The first time he'd experienced this was the day he'd first recalled his memories of his previous life. And the last time it had happened was 3 years ago, when, during a test far from Dubs's workshop, he'd accidentally poured his entire mental energy into Drainda, creating a Black Pulse that spread out over two kilometers.
"Yeah, without Dubs I really would've died that day."
Lost in these memories, Emrys hadn't even noticed that he'd already covered the 11 kilometers separating him from the village.
"Already? At my usual walking pace, I should still have 3 kilometers left," he said, surprised. "Did I get faster without even realizing it?"
Logically, the answer to that question should have been no, and indeed, that wasn't quite it, his speed hadn't suddenly increased, but something about the way he moved had changed without him noticing.
Emrys's natural talent whispered to him what that detail was.
"It must be because I'm making fewer wasted movements," he realized. "I don't fully get how that difference can be this massive, but it's kind of the same concept as with Ultra Instinct."
But Emrys decided to shelve that line of thought for later. Right now, he had to focus on the task at hand.
"Those bodies aren't going to bury themselves."
Emrys couldn't detect people who were already dead with his haki, so instead, he sent a wave of Structural Grasp sweeping over the village.
"Urgh."
The sheer volume of information gave him a splitting headache, but nothing he wasn't already used to feeling.
He found a hundred and forty-nine bodies intact enough to be buried, and 64 so badly damaged that all that remained were mounds of flesh mixed together.
"Sigh. This is gonna take forever."
2 days later
"Finally done," Emrys said, driving a projected sword into the ground.
That sword served as a gravestone for a grave dug beneath it, the grave of one of the village's slain residents. All around, arranged in concentric circles, were other graves, each marked with a sword in place of a headstone.
And in the first rings of that formation stood 64 swords with no grave beneath them at all.
Since he only used his magical energy to materialize them, the swords would hold indefinitely as long as they weren't broken or he didn't dismiss them himself. To avoid any issues, he'd made sure the swords had no cutting power whatsoever, and that they would shatter if anyone ever tried to strike with one.
With every gravestone now in place, Emrys made his way to the center of the formation and knelt to pray.
"Oh entity whom I do not know but whose greatness I sense. I beg you not to hold my ignorance and my lack of faith against me, but instead to take pity on these lives so unjustly cut short. I pray that their souls find happiness and peace, whether in the afterlife or in reincarnation."
He opened his eyes and stood back up, casting one last glance over the cemetery.
"I'm sorry I didn't make it in time. I can't promise I'll always be on time, but I'll do my best to learn something from this experience," he turned and left, not without leaving one last word behind. "Rest in peace."
And so, Faker returned to his wandering life.
*
Three years later.
A village in flames, somewhere on the fringes of a province no one bothered remembering the name of anymore. A hooded silhouette, a crimson cloak rippling behind it despite the absence of wind, cutting down a swarm of blue demons with strikes as gorgeous and fluid as they were efficient.
"It's him. It's him again," a survivor murmured, trembling, clutching what was left of his family close. "The Blade Specter."
Elsewhere, weeks later, a scorched clearing where nothing moved except the hooded silhouette kneeling before a row of freshly dug graves, a moment of silence it granted itself before setting off once more toward the horizon, never seeking the slightest recognition.
He had arrived too late, this time. As he had many times before.
A bustling market, in a city spared from the fighting, where two merchants traded rumors in hushed voices over a vegetable stall.
"Why do people call him that again?"
"Apparently he always shows up out of nowhere and vanishes the same way, leaving behind graveyards with swords for headstones in places with no one left to bury the dead."
"They say he single-handedly reduced an entire magical beast to rubble, over by the Gray Hills. Something the size of a hill, so they claim."
"The same one who wiped out the demon camp near Verchamp?"
"Same one. His name's Faker, I think."
"Funny name for a hero."
"Word is he never asks for anything for his services, but he never turns down payment either, if it's offered. Shows up, handles the problem, leaves right away."
The name traveled that way, by word of mouth, growing with every telling, sometimes twisting almost beyond recognition, but always carried by that same confused admiration, that mix of gratitude and fascination for this elusive figure who always turned up exactly where he was least expected.
And somewhere along the way, that name had finally reached ears far more highly placed than those of simple market merchants.
*
The council chamber, tucked at the heart of Stigma's command, echoed that day with a particular tension, mixed with the obvious boredom of some of its occupants.
Meliodas, sitting with studied nonchalance in one of the richly ornamented seats, spun a report between his fingers, while Elizabeth, standing beside him, kept her eyes fixed on the document she'd just finished reading.
"Faker," she finally said, raising her eyes to the assembly. "I imagine you've all heard of him."
"The Blade Specter," Gloxinia, the fairy king, answered without much enthusiasm, his delicate wings twitching slightly at his back. "Hard not to hear about him these past few months. My scouts bring me word of him almost every week."
"A human wandering the provinces killing small fry," Dolor, the giant king, commented, crossing his massive arms with obvious disinterest. "Useful, I suppose. But we've got far more decisive fighters to manage than the growing reputation of some drifter."
"That's exactly why we should recruit him," Meliodas cut in, finally dropping his casual air. "You've read the incident reports same as me. An entire village cleared of gray demons in a matter of minutes. A magical beast nest wiped out without a single civilian casualty. This kid, whoever he is, fights at a level that far exceeds some lucky vagabond."
"He could genuinely be useful to us," Elizabeth added, her voice soft but firm. "Especially if his skill keeps growing at this rate. Might as well bring him officially into our ranks rather than let him operate alone out there."
A silence greeted that proposal, punctuated by Gloxinia's visibly jaded sigh.
"Honestly, one more human or one less," he said, shrugging. "Do what you want. Doesn't really concern me."
"Same here," Drole added, already turning his attention to another document laid out in front of him. "If you think it's worth it, go for it. I don't see the point in objecting over something this small."
At the end of the table, having stayed silent until then, Ludociel finally lifted his head, his piercing blue eyes sweeping over the assembly with that calculating coldness so characteristic of him.
"It costs nothing to try," he finally said, his voice even but sharp. "Send someone to find him. If he agrees to join us, good, we gain another piece on the board. If he refuses, or if he gets himself killed before we even manage to recruit him..."
He paused, a thin, warmthless smile barely curling his lips.
"...it won't be much of a loss either way. One more human or one less, as our dear king of giants so aptly put it."
Meliodas quietly clenched his jaw but let it go, knowing full well that confronting Ludociel head-on over this kind of remark would only make an already tense situation between them worse.
"Nerobasta," Ludociel continued, addressing the old fairy seated off to the side, her weathered face lined with deep wrinkles, her eyes sharp and attentive despite her advanced apparent age. "Send a few humans out to find him. Competent people, capable of locating him and presenting our offer properly. No need to waste more valuable resources on such a minor task."
"Yes, my lord," Nerobasta answered in a raspy voice, inclining her head slightly.
"After all," Ludociel added, refilling his cup of golden wine with an almost theatrical nonchalance, "might as well let humans be good for something while they're still around. Beats them just taking up space on the battlefield."
Elizabeth clenched her fists beneath the table, a flicker of restrained anger crossing her usually gentle gaze, but she said nothing, knowing that the battle she was already fighting, convincing the archangel of the value of every life caught up in this conflict, even the demons', wouldn't be won with a single well-placed remark.
Meliodas, for his part, quietly rested a hand over Elizabeth's beneath the table, a silent gesture that said more than any protest they could have voiced aloud in that room.
"That settles it, then," Ludociel concluded, rising from his seat with cold elegance. "Nerobasta will handle the details. This meeting is adjourned. I don't even understand why a meeting over something this trivial was held in the first place."
As the assembly began to disperse, Meliodas exchanged a knowing look with Elizabeth, the same silent thought crossing both their minds.
They both hoped, without daring to say it out loud in front of the others, that this mysterious Faker would accept the offer soon to be presented to him.
And that he'd survive long enough for that to happen.