"Seven Stars: Demonic Flame Spreads Across the Plains!"
Saga's eyes were completely bloodshot as he wildly swung the Shichiseiken through the air. Colossal crescents of sword-qi, burning with an unholy green fire, intertwined to reduce the structural timber pillars and tatami mats of the dojo to fine dust. Instead of exhausting itself upon the floor, the emerald demonic fire festered along the stone foundations like a persistent plague, turning the very bedrock volatile.
Faced with this overwhelming, continuous barrage of slashes, Brook's skeletal frame drifted through the upper air, leaving a series of fluid, pale blue afterimages.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Soul Solid and Shichiseiken clashed repeatedly in a rapid-fire cadence. With every single point of contact, the Yomi Frozen Air attached to the meteorite black steel rapier precisely neutralized the wisps of green demonic fire that attempted to migrate down the blade to invade Brook's system.
"Cease your evasive dancing! Turn to white ash before my blade!"
Saga's cognitive autonomy had been entirely warped by the parasites within the steel. Abandoning all defensive positioning, he leaped high into the rafters, locking both hands onto the hilt to bring down a swirling orb of green fire several times larger than his previous metrics, targeting it straight for Brook's skull.
Brook stopped shifting his weight.
He stood perfectly anchored on the floorboards, the ghostly blue fire within his empty sockets flaring into a sudden, blinding dance. He slowly extended his rapier, the point leveling directly toward the descending target.
"A mind entirely devoured by a piece of iron loses the absolute baseline of swordsmanship," Brook murmured, his voice dropping into a cold, resonant baritone. "The edge you swing carries zero soul intention. An unrefined attack of this caliber cannot even chip the enamel of my bones."
"Yomi Style: Requiem for the Soul—The Return of the Swallow!"
Whoosh!
Brook's silhouette reconfigured into a straight, dark blue streak of light. Instead of executing a defensive retreat, he advanced directly into the path of the incoming emerald fireball, shearing through the center of the mass with an impossible, fluid velocity.
There was no earth-shattering physical explosion—only the clean, soft snap of a lock sliding into place.
In mid-air, Saga's posture froze instantly, his hands locked around the hilt of his weapon as his momentum died.
The green demonic fire he relied upon was split cleanly by a flawless, linear gash the exact microsecond Brook cleared his perimeter. Immediately after, an absolute, zero-degree frost unrolled from the cut, systematically sealing the emerald flames and Saga's right arm together within a thick block of dark blue underworld ice.
Thud.
Saga hit the tattered tatami mats heavily, his eyes rolling back into his skull as his consciousness collapsed entirely. The bizarre, vein-marked Shichiseiken slipped from his unfeeling fingers, clattering against the stone several meters away.
"Saga!"
Maya ran across the floor, her hands shaking as she threw her weight over the unconscious instructor, tears cutting through the dust on her cheeks. She pressed her fingers against his neck matrix; finding a steady, rhythmic pulse beneath the skin, a long breath of relief escaped her lips.
The officers of the Eclipse Pirates observed the display with flat indifference, their postures relaxed. As outlaws navigating the highest friction of the seas, they maintained zero habits regarding the treatment of a defeated enemy.
By this time, Brook had already sheathed Soul Solid, stepping across the flagstones to stand directly over the fallen Shichiseiken.
Sensing the immediate threat, the demonic weapon began to vibrate against the stone. Deprived of its host's blood supply, the emerald luminescence along the edge flickered erratically, the steel letting out a low, weeping wail while wisps of black, resentful mist curled around the crossguard to warn any approaching fingers.
"Maintain your guard, Brook," Sabo said, taking half a step forward as his hand gripped the custom alloy staff. "The concentrated malice within that iron hasn't dissolved. If a common baseline attempts to seal it, possession is instantaneous."
"Yo-ho-ho-ho... that parameters align perfectly with my requirements."
Brook extended a pale, fleshless hand, his skeletal fingers closing tightly around the hilt of the Shichiseiken. The microsecond his bones locked onto the grip, he turned his face toward Maya, who was watching from the margins with wide, terrified eyes.
"Little girl. Do me the kindness of launching that embroidered bag containing the three jades into the upper air."
"What... what is your intention?" Maya clutched the cloth bag against her ribs, her breath shallow with a primitive dread.
"The collective resentment within this steel has been suppressed by those three jade elements for a century, leaving its current output far too thin," Brook explained, the pale blue fire within his eye sockets flaring into a calm, absolute focus. "I intend to register this weapon to my personal inventory. A fractured, restricted demonic asset that lacks its unmitigated baseline is entirely unworthy to serve the Soul King."
"Maya. Toss the elements up," Ace commanded from the rear, his arms crossed over his chest, his voice carrying the unyielding weight of an absolute sovereign.
Under the suffocating pressure of Ace's baseline aura, Maya's fingers lost their strength, her hands trembling as she cast the embroidered bag high into the open space above the training floor.
"No!" she whispered, dropping her chin as she closed her eyes.
Whoosh!
Brook brought the Shichiseiken around in a single-handed arc, a ghostly emerald line cutting the vacuum.
Crack!
High in the air, the three sacred seal stones engineered to throttle the blade's curse were instantly shattered into fine mineral dust under the impact of the edge.
The exact millisecond the jade dissolved, the entire structure of the dojo seemed to drop into a bottomless abyss. The immense, concentrated resentment and blood-malice accumulated within the Shichiseiken over a hundred winters erupted like a ruptured dam, unleashing its ultimate, unmitigated power across the room.
A wave of green demonic fire—ten times more dense than the flames Saga had managed—pierced through the ceiling rafters, racing wildly down the length of Brook's arm to instantly envelop his entire skeletal chassis within a massive, roaring emerald sphere.
Roar—!
The distinct, overlapping howls of countless historical dead resonated from the center of the flames. Those long-suppressed resentments attempted to flood Brook's cognitive matrix, intending to systematically erase his sanity.
"Brook!" Buggy shrieked, his boots sliding back in panic.
Ace stood motionless beside the table, tracking the green fireball with absolute calm. His Observation Haki clearly registered that the spiritual entity representing Brook wasn't undergoing any degradation; on the contrary, his soul mass was expanding in a terrifying, organized manner.
"A simple parasite sword that has merely digested the residue of the dead believes it can dictate terms to my awareness?"
Brook's quiet whisper vibrated from the center of the emerald fire.
"I am... the Soul King!"
Boom!
Following the declaration, a dark blue light violently erupted from the absolute core of the green fireball. This luminescence carried zero blinding flash, but it projected an absolute, unyielding dominance that belonged exclusively to the underworld. It operated like the opening of a tectonic abyss, greedily tearing apart and devouring the peak green resentment that attempted to resist its sovereignty.
Squeak—!
The thousands of vengeful spirits bound within the steel let out a shrill, mournful wail, as if their programming had collided with its natural apex predator.
A moment later, the green demonic flames wrapping Brook's frame were forcibly siphoned back into the core of the sword. The Shichiseiken trembled violently, its cursed emerald veins flashing erratically before completely settling into an absolute, subordinate silence under the weight of his spiritual suppression.
The glare faded.
Brook remained standing in the center of the floorboards, his black tailcoat completely untouched by the fire.
In his grip, the Shichiseiken had entirely reconfigured its visual aspect. The edge remained surgically sharp, but the nauseating copper stench of ancient slaughter had vanished. In its place was a strange, shimmering aura—a fluid blend of pale, underworld blue and deep emerald.
Brook executed a casual, single-handed flourish.
Whoosh!
A cross-shaped wave of sword-qi, heavily infused with both Yomi Frozen Air and the subjugated demonic flames, unrolled across the room, cleanly shearing through one of the remaining concrete walls. The edges of the cut revealed an impossible phenomenon: one half of the masonry was completely white with thick frost, while the adjacent half had been reduced to grey ash by the fire.
"The absolute synthesis of frost and flame... a thoroughly delightful weight," Brook murmured, his empty sockets tracking the edge with quiet satisfaction. "Mr. Jeno, it looks like your department will need to balance a new scabbard to accommodate this mass."
The conquest was absolute. It wasn't the erasure of the curse, but the permanent subjugation of a century-old demonic asset by virtue of his status as the Sovereign of Souls. From this hour, the Shichiseiken was no longer a malicious parasite engineered to devour a man's mind—it was the exclusive edge of the swordsman from the underworld.
Does Brook intend to immediately integrate his newly stabilized dual-element sword intent into the ship's daily training yard drills, or will the arrival of an unannounced Marine surveillance vessel off the coast of Asuka Island provide an immediate test for the Soul King's new armament?
30+ chapters are available now and daily updates! @patreon.com/Authorzero