The Aokigahara Rift did not welcome intruders. The moment Ren Hanshin stepped past the rotting tree line, the temperature plummeted, and the light of the setting sun was snuffed out. Above him, the canopy of black branches was so thick it formed a solid roof, blocking out the sky.
The air was thick, humid, and smelled like damp earth and decaying meat. Miasma, a toxic nature of highly concentrated, stagnant mana drifted through the roots like a pale fog.
The blue holographic system screen flickered as soon as Ren took his tenth step into the woods.
[WARNING! Entering Unregulated S-Rank Anomaly Zone: Aokigahara Rift.]
[Spatial coordinates corrupted.]
[Map functions offline.]
[Warning: Miasma toxicity level is lethal to all entities below A-Rank Vitality.]
Ren exhaled slowly. His breath plumed into a white cloud in the freezing air. His newly enhanced Vitality passively filtered the toxic miasma from his lungs, but it still left a foul, bitter taste in his mouth.
The blue screen was suddenly shoved aside. The crimson chat box appeared, but unlike its usual pristine appearance, the edges of the box were glitching with static.
[The God of Fate is glaring at the rotting trees.]
[God of Fate]: This place is disgusting. The spatial laws are tangled like old yarn. It smells like the corpse of a god.
[God of Fate]: I can see you, my love, but the connection is... muddy. Do not go too deep. Do not let the shadows hide you from me.
"I need to go deep," Ren muttered, his boots sinking into the soft, spongy moss. "The monsters on the edge of the rift are just scavengers. I need the predators."
He willed the Severance of Destiny into his right hand. The scythe cast a dim, bloody glow through the pale fog, illuminating the gnarled trunks of trees that looked like grasping hands.
Jubei had told him to find his 'Domain'. To force his internal willpower onto the external reality. Ren closed his eyes, focusing on the Mana Core burning in his chest. He tried to push the energy outward, to project it past his skin.
WHOOSH!
A wave of red mana spilled from his body, rolling over the damp earth. It just leaked out chaotically, like water spilling from a shattered glass.
[System Notice: You have aggressively flared your mana.]
[Stealth broken. You have alerted nearby hostile entities.]
CLICK!
Ren opened his eyes. He had failed to create a Domain, and instead, he had just rung the dinner bell. The silence of the forest was instantly shattered by a high pitched clicking sound. It came from the canopy above, echoing from multiple directions.
Ren bent his knees, entering the relaxed stance Jubei had dumped into him. He didn't look up. Looking up would require shifting his neck, which would throw off his center of gravity. Instead, he expanded his Perception to its limit, feeling the changes in the air currents above him.
'Three of them,' Ren calculated. 'Fast. Heavy.'
The fog above him swirled rigidly. A monstrous creature dropped from the branches, plummeting straight toward Ren's head. It was a Hollow-Wood Arachne, a horrific fusion of a giant wolf spider and rotting timber, easily the size of a van. Its six glowing green eyes looking at him, its massive mandibles dripping with acidic venom.
Ren didn't use the Void Step. He waited until the beast was three feet away.
'Breathe in. Drop the shoulder. Pivot.' Ren sidestepped with precision. The Arachne crashed into the mossy ground right where Ren had been standing a fraction of a second prior, its weight creating a small crater.
Before the monster could recover, Ren gripped the scythe and used the energy to swing the blade downward in a rigid arc.
THWACK!!
The crimson blade cleanly severed three of Arachne's legs on its right side.
SCREECHH!!
The monster shrieked, a cacophonous sound like tearing metal, and rolled on its back. Ren didn't hesitate. He reversed his grip and drove the blunt bottom of the scythe handle into the cluster of its shining green eyes, crushing its brain.
[Target Eliminated: A-Rank Hollow-Wood Arachne.]
[EXP gained.]
There was no time to celebrate. The remaining two Arachnes dropped from the canopy, flanking him from the left and right. They learned from their packmate's death, instead of lunging, they spat green webs of corrosive acid.
Ren raised his left hand, the dull silver band of the Ring of the Silent King catching the dim light. He needed to use his own power. He channeled his mana pool, but this time, he didn't let it explode outward. He visualized the energy, weaving it into an invisible wall just inches from his skin.
The acidic webs struck the invisible barrier. They sizzled, melting through the condensed mana in less than a second, but that single second was all Ren needed. The Embrace of the Weaver vibrated, taking the remaining splash of acid without taking a scratch.
Ren lunged forward, executing a precise form of Jubei's 'Flow'. He slipped beneath the arc of the falling acid, stepping into the guard of the left Arachne.
"Sever," Ren whispered.
The scythe flashed. A crescent-shaped crimson line hung in the air for a brief moment. The left Arachne was cleanly split down the middle. Ren didn't stop his momentum. He used the flow of his swing to spin 360 degrees, and hurled the scythe like a boomerang at the final Arachne. The spinning crimson blade cut through the fog, burying itself into the monster's thorax and pinning it to the trunk of a black tree.
Silence returned to the forest, save for the dripping of green blood onto the moss.
[Target Eliminated: A-Rank Hollow-Wood Arachne (x2).]
[You have Leveled Up!]
Ren walked over to the tree and yanked his weapon free. He was breathing expeditiously, a thin layer of sweat on his forehead. He had killed three A-Rank monsters without taking a single hit, without using Void Step, and without relying on the raw destruction of the scythe's special skills. It was pure martial efficiency, but it wasn't enough.
"My mana is too wild," Ren muttered to himself, looking at his hands. "When I tried to form a barrier, it was brittle. The God of Magic's barrier felt like a solid mountain. Mine felt like wet paper."
The crimson screen popped up, shining softly in the dark forest.
[The God of Fate is resting her chin on her hand, watching you intently.]
[God of Fate]: You are trying to act like a Shield, my love, but you are a sword.
[God of Fate]: A Domain is a reflection of the soul. The God of Light's Domain heals. The God of Death's Domain rots. You carry my brand, Ren. What do you think your soul reflects?
Ren stared at the red text. He looked down at the dark blood staining the hardwood of his boots. He thought about the three years of humiliation, the betrayal, and the cold certainty he felt when he slaughtered Ryuichi's assassins.
"Severance," Ren whispered. "Control. Cutting away the things that try to touch me."
[The God of Fate is smiling warmly.]
[God of Fate]: Yes.
****
Day 14 in the Aokigahara Rift.
Ren had lost track of the sun. The eternal darkness of the canopy made time irrelevant. He sat cross-legged by a small, magical campfire. His dark clothes were torn in several places, and dried monster blood was caked under his fingernails. He looked like he belonged in the Rift. His health hovered comfortably around 90%, thanks to his massive vitality, but his mental exhaustion was immense. He had fought Shadowstalker Panthers, Rotten Wyrms, and hordes of Undead Treants. He was Level 55 now.
He had not found his Domain yet. He stared into the small blue flames of the campfire. The silence of the forest was deafening, pressing against his eardrums like sheer weight. The isolation of an unregulated zone was designed to drive hunters insane. There was no sky, no wind, no sound of civilization.
Just the fog, the monsters, and her. The omni-view camera hovered across the fire from him, its red light the only constant companion he had.
[The God of Fate is gently stroking the screen.]
[God of Fate]: You look so tired. Your eyes are heavy.
[God of Fate]: Let me sing to you, Ren. Let me soothe your mind.
Before Ren could type a response on his interface, the air around him changed. The crimson threads woven into his Embrace of the Weaver coat suddenly elongated. They detached from the fabric, glowing softly in the dark, and began to weave themselves together in the empty space beside him.
Ren watched, his breath hitching, as the threads formed a solid silhouette. It wasn't her full manifestation, the system wouldn't allow a Sovereign to enter a mortal anomaly zone without tearing reality apart, but she had pushed a concentration of her divine mana through the coat to form a projection. A ghostly, crimson figure of a woman sat beside him by the fire. She had no distinct features, just the silhouette of long, flowing hair and a delicate form.
She leaned closer. Ren could feel an impossible, freezing pressure against his shoulder as the projection rested its head against him. A voice, soft, melodic, and intimate, echoed not in his ears, but inside his mind.
'Rest your eyes, my king. I will keep the monsters away. I will wrap my strings around the throats of anything that steps into the light.'
Ren's muscles tensed. The sheer possessiveness radiating from the phantom was suffocating. She was millions of miles away, sitting on a cosmic throne, yet she was wrapping herself around him in the deepest forest on Earth. He couldn't escape her. Even in the unregulated wild, he was in her cage, but as the crushing fatigue of two weeks of non-stop survival pulled at his eyelids, Ren found a dark comfort in that cage. The other gods would send assassins, monsters, and Avatars to kill him. But she? She would unmake the universe to keep him breathing.
Ren closed his eyes, resting his head back against the trunk of a black tree.
"Just for an hour," Ren murmured into the dark.
'Forever,' the voice whispered back in his mind.
As Ren slept, the forest around the campfire turned into a slaughterhouse. Three A-Rank Shadow Panthers, drawn by the scent of his blood, crept toward the light of the fire. Before they could even cross the tree line, invisible crimson threads shot through the dark. The threads wrapped around the panthers' necks, tightening with brutal force. The panthers were instantly decapitated, their bodies dragged silently into the fog so the sound of their blood hitting the leaves wouldn't disturb Ren's sleep. The Goddess watched him breathe.
****
Day 28.
Ren stood in the center of a clearing, his scythe buried in the ground beside him. He was bleeding. A long gash ran down his left bicep. The Embrace of the Weaver had absorbed the brunt of the impact, but the force of the monster had been S-Rank.
Standing thirty yards away was the apex predator of the Aokigahara Rift.
It was a Wendigo King. A tall, fifteen foot tall monstrosity of pale skin, jagged antlers, and elongated claws that are painted with dark, necrotic mana.
[System Warning: SS-Rank Guardian 'The Starved King' has located you.]
SCREEECHH!
The Wendigo let out a screech that shattered the bark of the surrounding trees. It moved with speed that defied its massive size, closing the thirty yards in less than a second. Its necrotic claws swung horizontally, aiming to decapitate Ren. Ren didn't reach for his scythe.
He remembered the feeling of the Goddess's phantom resting on his shoulder. He remembered the suffocating control she had over her space. She dictated that threats were not allowed to exist near her.
'I am not a Shield,' Ren thought, his crimson eyes glowing in the dark clearing. 'I am a Sword.'
Ren planted his feet and unleashed his Mana Core all at once. He didn't just flare it outward. He grabbed the chaotic energy with his willpower and forced it to submit. He forced his killing intent, his hatred, and his desire for control into the mana, weaving it into a spherical field expanding thirty feet in every direction. The air within the sphere instantly turned a dark red hue. The gravity doubled. The fog was instantly pushed out of the zone.
[System Notice: The Host has successfully manifested a Domain!]
[Domain Unlocked: 'The Executioner's Block'.]
The Wendigo King plunged into the red sphere. The moment the S-Rank monster crossed the wall of Ren's Domain, then instantly its speed vanished. It looked like it had hit an invisible wall of molasses. The necrotic mana surrounding its claws flickered and died, suppressed by the crushing authority of Ren's willpower.
In his Domain, Ren was the Sovereign.
Ren casually reached out his hand. The Severance of Destiny ripped itself out of the ground and flew into his grip. He walked slowly toward the struggling, frozen Wendigo King.
"You step into my space," Ren said, his voice echoing with a faint dual-tone, as if the Goddess was speaking with him. "You die by my rules."
Ren swung the scythe. In the real world, the attack was fast. Inside his Domain, it was instantaneous. The Wendigo King's horned head flew off its shoulders before the monster even realized it had been cut.
[Target Eliminated: SS-Rank The Starved King.]
[Large amount of EXP gained!]
[You have reached Level 65!]
Ren exhaled, and the red sphere collapsed, plunging the clearing back into the dark fog. He fell to one knee, panting vehemently. Maintaining the Domain for just five seconds had drained half of his mana pool. He had done it. He had formed his Domain.
The crimson screen flashed.
[The God of Fate is standing up from her throne, clapping her hands.]
[God of Fate]: Flawless! Perfection! You carved out a piece of reality and made it your own!
[God of Fate]: Thirty two days left, my King. Keep grinding. Keep cutting. Show them the monster I created.
Ren stood up, gripping his scythe. He looked into the deepest part of the Rift. "I'm just getting started," Ren whispered.