Aurelius walks with calm, measured steps through the massive wooden gate of the remote mountain temple. The thick floorboards of dark cedar creak softly under his boots. As he walks deeper into the shadowy dojo, he clenches his fists so tightly that his knuckles turn white. He is completely turned inward, heavily upset, and sulking about the suffocating restrictions of the bet.
Damn it,
he curses in his own head, while his breathing resonates heavily in the void.
Not relying on my Photon Anting… No shortcuts. No flashes of light. How on earth am I supposed to fight properly if I can't use that brute speed? Without that light power, I am slow. I am vulnerable. This sword will eat me alive if I am not careful.
He stops precisely in the geometric center of the gigantic, empty training hall. The silence is suffocating, so thick that you can almost touch the spiritual energy in the air. Until the entire room suddenly begins to vibrate.
“WHO DARES ENTER MY DOMAIN?!”
The heavy, booming voice cuts through the silence like a sledgehammer. Immediately after the echo, the lighting springs on everywhere. Hundreds of crystals built into the massive wooden pillars and the high ceiling light up simultaneously with loud, sharp clicks. A dazzling, fuchsia and azure glow bursts through the hall, casting every detail of the weathered wood and stone altars in a spiritual radiance.
The heavy voice in the shadows falls silent instantly. A deep, jerky inhalation sounds, as if the speaker is significantly startled by the pure presence of the intruder.
“Mmm… It was about time,” the voice mutters, now a lot lower, filled with an ominous charge. “But this means only one thing. The wheels of fate are finally turning.”
Aurelius regains his icy focus, lifts his head, and locks his gaze on the darkness before him. “My name is Photo. I have come here because I want to learn. I am… I am afraid that I am not strong enough this way. I must fight in other ways. I am absolutely forbidden from blindly relying on my Anting. I must master my pure sword art, from the absolute foundation.”
On the sides of the dojo, dozens of shadowy warriors suddenly loom from the deep recesses. Upon hearing his words, they immediately burst into loud, mocking laughter.
“Hahaha! A fighter who is afraid of his own power?!” shouts one of the warriors with his weapon drawn. “What is this snot-nose doing here?! Go back to your mother!”
At the top of the large stone stairs, deep in the shadow of the altar, the leader of the dojo remains motionless, however. His gaze is unreadable, but his eyes spit fire. With a subtle, cold nod, he gives his disciples the order.
In a split second, the warriors spring at Aurelius from all sides with brutal visual impact simultaneously. Swords glisten murderously in the pulsating crystal light, a wall of shining steel descending upon him.
Aurelius does not step back a single millimeter. His pupils narrow into slits. Without drawing his sword from the scabbard, he uses purely the flat, wooden back of his heavy blade and the scabbard itself to deflect the attacks.
The entire hall fills with the blood-chilling clatter of metal on wood. Sparks splash in golden-yellow rains from the scabbard whenever he parries one razor-sharp blow after another with pure, raw muscle power and terrifyingly perfect timing. He turns on his axis, ducks under deadly horizontal strikes, and knocks weapons out of the hands of his attackers with brutal precision without attacking even once himself. Between the intense, consecutive strikes, the attacking warriors look up toward the stairs with growing doubt in their eyes, asking with their looks if they should even continue against this immovable wall.
Suddenly, the leader leaves his throne. With a fluid, inhumanly powerful movement, he launches himself from the high platform straight down.
The massive impact of his landing cuts through the dojo like a shockwave. The heavy wooden floorboards bend deeply, and a deafening creak echoes against the walls, as if the foundations of the temple itself are splitting. Splinters shoot upward like projectiles. The remaining warriors lose their balance and jump backward in panic to respectfully make room for their master.
“Hymmm… Photo, you say…” the man grumbles, while straightening his broad, scar-covered shoulders. His aura is so bizarrely heavy that the fuchsia crystals around them begin to flicker and crackle. “Are you mocking us, boy?! Why do you only use the back of your blade?! Why, damn it, do you refuse to draw your weapon?!”
The grandmaster beckons everyone with a sharp, authoritarian gesture to absolutely stop and keep their distance. He fixes his piercing gaze full on Aurelius. “You and I. One-on-one. Fighting here and now. I am Master Shinto. Let’s see if you are even worth dirtying my dojo… and let’s see if you still dare to fight so arrogantly without drawing your sword!”
Without further warning, Shinto draws his own refined katana. The air whistles terrifyingly when he steps toward Aurelius. He begins to strike at him with brutal, possessed power. The strikes shift from a calm, calculating rhythm to an insane, dazzling speed in a fraction of a second. The steel sings a deadly song through the burning space.
“USE YOUR POWER, BOY!” Shinto roars while striking, his voice cracking from pure rage. “DRAW THE SWORD! I AM GETTING TRULY ANGRY NOW! SHOW ME WHO YOU ARE OR DIE HERE ON MY FLOOR!”
A razor-sharp, diagonal strike from Shinto grazes Aurelius’s nose, leaving a thin trail of blood. The pressure is bizarrely high. If he does not react now, he will be chopped into ribbons. With a brutal, instinctive movement, Aurelius grabs the hilt and draws his sword from the scabbard with a loud, metal-slicing sound.
SHIIIING!!!
At that exact moment, a chilling, possessed, and demonic scream escapes directly from the dark steel of the weapon. The sound is so intense that the dojo’s windows begin to shatter. It resonates through the marrow and bone of everyone in the room: “KILLL!!! KILLLL!!! BLOOD!!!”
Deep inside, Aurelius feels the darkness pulling.
Do not give in,
he clenches his thoughts.
I am the master of this steel, not the other way around!
The entire dojo falls silent in one blow. The disciples stare with large, fear-filled eyes at Aurelius’s possessed weapon. They have never witnessed anything so evil and powerful in their lives.
Master Shinto reacts immediately, his pupils large from the pure, shocking realization. A wild, psychopathic, combative grin appears on his face. “Ah… So that’s how it is! A possessed blade! GIVE EVERYTHING YOU HAVE, PHOTO!”
Shinto explodes in a forward movement and begins to strike at him at a murderous tempo. But Aurelius refuses to give up. Without using his photon power for his speed, he manually activates his red Ignition form. Red, fiery lightning bolts begin to burst from his pores. Purely utilizing his own physical limits, he begins to flash through the room.
The fight escalates visually at an insane pace. Aurelius’s red sparks and the fuchsia glow of the crystals collide against each other with rock-hard shockwaves. Aurelius evades Shinto’s brutal strikes by a hair’s breadth, shooting past the grandmaster like a red wraith and delivering small, razor-sharp cuts to the master’s traditional robe in split-second movements. Pieces of fabric flutter burning through the air.
Shinto notices that he is losing ground and that the boy is beginning to press him purely on technique. “Enough!” the master roars.
With a deep, wheezing inhalation, Shinto channels his complete, massive spiritual aura straight into the steel of his own katana. The blade begins to vibrate so hard that the air around it distorts in a purple glow. With an inhumanly fast counter, he breaks through Aurelius’s defense with brutal force. The subsequent, all-destroying kick hits Aurelius full in his side.
The blow is so bizarrely hard that Aurelius is launched sideways through the air. He breaks through one of the thick wooden training dummies, which disintegrates into hundreds of splinters with a loud crack, before he slides heavily over the cedar floor. A deep, smoking groove forms in the wood. His possessed sword slides from his limp hand and clatters meters away on the cold floor. The red glow of his Ignition dies out immediately, his skin turning deathly pale. He spits out a large wave of blood onto the wood and hits the floor with his fist using his very last bit of strength.
“Failed!” Aurelius screams out, his voice hoarse from pure frustration and anger toward himself. “No… What a damn mess! What a disgrace! I couldn’t even hold my ground without my flashes!”
With trembling limbs, he tries to gather his broken body. He pushes himself up onto his knees with immense difficulty, but at that exact moment, the extreme energy drain strikes mercilessly. During the intense battle, the possessed sword did not just drain his spiritual reserves, but sucked out his complete life force like a parasite.
A chilling cold pulls through his veins. His muscles refuse all service and relax completely. The dojo walls begin to spin wildly around him, and the bright light of the fuchsia crystals fades into a vague, black mist. His breathing stops. Powerlessly, he feels his consciousness slip away. His eyelids become leaden and close irrevocably. Completely knocked out, his body tips forward, ready to smack soullessly against the floor.
Before he hits the hard wood, a shadow flashes in front of him. Master Shinto steps forward with impossible speed and catches the limp warrior right in his firm, muscular arms.
Shinto looks at the exhausted, stark-white face of the boy. The master’s hard, fierce look immediately makes way for pure, sincere concern and a deep, unfathomable respect.
“Stay calm, little warrior…” Shinto speaks in a calm, warm, and fatherly voice, while pressing Aurelius firmly against his chest. “You did many times better than expected. You fought like a true demon without misusing your powers, even when the sword was draining you dry. And believe me… I already had fairly high expectations of you. Welcome to my dojo, Photo. Your grind starts now.”
Master Shinto lifts the limp, weightless body of Aurelius effortlessly in his powerful arms. Without looking back at his stunned disciples, he steps with large, rippleless strides through a hidden sliding door at the back of the dojo. He walks through a long stone corridor lit by torches where the heat greets them. The air here becomes thicker, heavier, and smells pungently of molten honey and burning beeswax.
At the end of the hall, Shinto pushes open a heavy, copper-reinforced door. The room that reveals itself is a gigantic, underground bathhouse. It is a visual spectacle here: thick, languid steam clouds rise up to the vaulted ceiling. But this is not water. The gigantic basins, carved into the rocks, are filled to the brim with liquid, glowing candle wax in all colors of the rainbow. Floating in the liquid are exhausted warriors, sunken deep in the warm grease to let their spiritual reserves and damaged muscles heal.
Behind the central bar of the bathhouse stands the bathkeeper, Sergio Waxelton. Sergio is a scrawny, somewhat slouching guy with an unkempt stubble beard and a deep, hazy look in his eyes that speaks volumes about his gigantic drinking problem. He wobbles a bit on his legs while polishing a wooden mug with a dirty cloth.
Shinto walks straight toward him and lays the motionless Aurelius down carefully on a marble treatment table next to the largest bath, which is filled with deep fuchsia-shining candle wax.
Sergio looks up with a glazed eye, takes a swig from a flat flask he quickly produces from behind his apron, and wipes his nose with his sleeve. “Ah… hic… Master Shinto. Another one who thought he could take on the world? He looks pretty deathly pale, if I’m being honest.”
Shinto fixes Sergio with an icy, deadly serious gaze, causing the scrawny bathkeeper to stand up a little straighter.
“Take good care of him, Sergio,” Shinto speaks with a heavy, commanding voice that leaves no room for discussion. “Give him the deepest treatment. I have extremely high hopes for this young warrior. Do not let him drown in your own negligence.”
Sergio swallows hard and nods quickly. “Will do, will do, boss. No worries. Waxelton stands for quality, as long as the drinks are cold.”
Together, they lift the limp body of Aurelius and let him slowly sink into the warm, syrupy fuchsia candle wax. The liquid grease closes around his exhausted limbs like a dense, healing blanket. The heat immediately begins to pull into his muscles to manually counteract the extreme drainage from the possessed sword, while Aurelius remains in a healing coma with eyes closed.
Meanwhile, the focus shifts thousands of meters higher into the freezing open air.
Silarias is loudly huffing and puffing on the razor-sharp point of a gigantic, frozen iceberg. His breath turns into thick, white clouds in the thin, freezing air. His traditional undercover cloak flaps wildly around his gigantic body, but the hood has since blown back. He is frustrated, exhausted, and complaining aloud to the elements about the restrictions of the bet.
“If I could just use my lion power now, I WOULD HAVE BEEN AT THE TOP AGES AGO!” Silarias roars out of pure frustration.
His raw, heavy voice crashes against the ice walls and echoes in a deep reverberation down the mountains.
Without that Bansaday power, I have to do everything on pure human muscle,
he grumbles to himself while slamming his frozen fingers into the next ice-cold rock wall.
No breaking illusions with my presence, no brutal physical boost. Just climbing like a mortal. What a terrible grind.
With one final, explosive exertion of strength, he pulls his massive body over the absolute edge of the mountain peak. He hoists himself up, shakes the snow from his cloak, and stands stiffly on the snowy plateau.
Directly in front of him looms a gigantic, golden temple that shines in the scant sunlight breaking through the clouds. Right in front of the massive entrance gate stands an ancient monk in a serene posture, his hands tucked deep into his sleeves. A warm, almost tangible peace radiates from the man.
The monk bows his head respectfully, and a mysterious smile appears on his face.
“Greetings, traveler…” the monk speaks with a voice that causes the icy wind around them to subside. “We were already expecting your arrival.”
Silarias opens his eyes wide in pure amazement and stands rooted to the spot in the deep snow.