The atmospheric pressure around the mountain peak dropped so abruptly that oxygen was squeezed from the lungs with an audible whoosh. The sky was no longer a normal atmosphere; it was a churning, pitch-black mass where liquid, cobalt-blue electricity branched out like thick neural pathways, while lightning bolts thicker than tree trunks chained the clouds to the peaks. The ancient temple on the summit seemed to float on a bed of pure energy, bathed in an unnatural, gold-blue light that scorched the wisps of fog into glowing glass, and the temple walls vibrated with a humming tone that made teeth chatter.
At the foot of the mountain, three-dimensional space tore open with a dry, deafening snap.
The lightning did not strike down from the heavens; it erupted upward from the ground in a perfect, vertical column of blue plasma, where the intense heat caused the stone steps to liquefy into shining, hissing obsidian in a fraction of a second. Out of the sizzling vapor drifted Blitz, the small spiritual cloud trembling violently while his tiny eyes darted wildly in every direction. The familiar presence that filled his entire existence was nowhere to be seen, causing the edges of his vaporous body to immediately turn a dull, ashen gray, as if loneliness were causing him to physically wither.
“Friend?” Blitz whispered, his voice hoarser than usual, completely drowned out by the whistling of the thin air. “Are you here? Don’t leave me alone, friend!”
There was no answer, and the little cloud lowered his head, staring silently at the scorched, liquefied earth.
Then, reality exploded a second time.
A second plasma column activated right beside him, so powerful that the sudden air pressure reduced the surrounding trees within a hundred-meter radius to ash in a single blow, while the shockwave scattered the vapor clouds with brutal force.
“YEEHAW!! Oh, hahahah… Friend!!”
Beat stood there. His cobalt-blue Oni form had escalated; the horns on his head emitted a pulsating, rhythmic light, and the lightning sparking with thick embers from his muscles left micro-fissures in the air around him, making the atmosphere crackle as if it could catch fire at any moment.
Blitz perked up instantly, his gray color vanishing in a fraction of a second to make way for a blinding, pulsating white-gold. The little cloud shot into a mad rotation around Beat’s massive shoulders, spinning pirouettes in the air while laughing hysterically with pure relief: “FRIEND!! You’re here! You’re really here!”
“Of course I’m here, little guy!” Beat laughed, his voice heavier and deeper due to the Oni transformation. He balled his fists, causing blue sparks to hiss across his knuckles. “Did you really think I’d leave you behind? We’re going to crash this summit!”
Beat looked up, his gaze narrowing into two slits of pure blue light as he saw his target: the temple resting on the peak like a beacon of pure power.
Without a word, he reached forward and firmly grabbed Blitz, his fingers closing around the spiritual substance that glowed like a warm lantern. Beat bent deep at the knees as the stone ground beneath his boots began to pulverize into fine dust under the immense pressure, circles of fracturing rock spreading rapidly around his feet before he even leaped.
“Hold on, Blitz!” Beat roared. “We’re going to fly!”
“I’m holding on, friend! Speed!!” Blitz screamed enthusiastically.
Then, he vanished.
His movement was no longer running; it was a succession of packed sonic booms that made the mountainside resonate and crack. Beat materialized and dematerialized in the blink of an eye, for one moment he was at the bottom of the winding path, and a millisecond later he left a trail of deep, molten craters on a rock face three hundred meters higher. He flashed like jagged lightning everywhere and nowhere along the path, completely ignoring the laws of inertia, while boulders dislodged by his speed exploded into debris before they even hit the ground.
With a last, all-consuming flash of light, he shattered the threshold of the temple, his boots boring deep into the ancient, marble floor of the central hall to brake his momentum, leaving a trail of sparks and deep grooves in the stone.
From the deep, tangible shadows at the back of the immense hall, a voice echoed; it was not a sound that traveled through ears, but a heavy, vibrating bass that struck directly into the bones.
“Finally!!”
Beat immediately brought his arms up into a fighting stance, the kinetic energy still glowing on his fists like burning embers. “Where are we? And who are you?” he asked, his voice heavy with built-up adrenaline, before spitting out a wisp of static electricity. “Show your face!”
The figure in the darkness rose from a throne that seemed carved out of pure, solidified lightning, while the shadows clustered around him as if they feared him, surging like a black sea. He lifted his heavy, armor-clad foot to take a step forward.
But his foot did not touch the floor.
The distance between the throne and the threshold was bridged in zero seconds as an immense pressure wave blasted through the hall, so violent that the heavy stone pillars on either side showed deep cracks and the marble roof began to splinter. Beat’s hair was blown straight back while his clothes flapped wildly, and the figure stood suddenly eye-to-eye with him. The creature’s sheer presence was so suffocating that the air around them began to crackle and turn purple from the extreme tension.
“Hahaha, to think you’d ask that!” The figure roared, a sound that shook the walls as if the temple itself were collapsing. “Fight me and learn the truth… let’s see if you are even worthy! And you, overly cute-looking cloud, since you’re already here, show me what you’re made of! Don’t just stand there watching!”
Blitz shrank back a little behind Beat’s shoulder, but his gold-blue sparks shot aggressively forward. “Who are you calling cute, big man?! I’ll break you!”
From the deep, subterranean foundations of the structure, a rhythmic, heavy thumping began to sound; these were no musical instruments, but the pure, sonic heartbeat of the figure, making the temple walls resonate like gigantic drums. The vibration was so intense that the stone floor beneath their feet began to crumble into white powder.
“HAHAHA, YOU KNOW WHAT? I’M FEELING GENEROUS TODAY!” The titan threw his head back and laughed boisterously, while his eyes began to light up with the exact same cobalt-blue energy that fed Beat’s own Oni form. “YOU KNOW THE NAME… BECAUSE YOU WEAR ME!”
The words hung in the air, heavy and charged like an approaching thunderstorm.
Beat froze, his gaze locked onto the figure before him, and within a fraction of a second, his mental barrier completely collapsed. The puzzle pieces crashed into place, and the realization of the identity of the being in front of him, combined with the memory of the absolute, unbreakable agreement between them, made his breath catch entirely while his pupils contracted into pinpricks.
“This… this can’t be,” Beat stammered, his fighting stance faltering for a moment. “You are… the agreement… it’s real.”
The figure immediately noticed the change in Beat’s eyes and the rising panic; he burst into loud laughter, his own adrenaline peaking, and the blue lightning streams around his body grew wilder, larger, and more destructive, blasting deep holes into the marble floor because he was incredibly hyped by his opponent’s mental fracture.
“I envy the value in your words… I’ll tell you that! Show me what those words mean!”
The air pressure in the gigantic temple hall shifted in a single instant as the gold-blue light intensified to a blinding white, so bright that the contours of the hall blurred, and the marble floor beneath their feet began to vibrate with a brutal, rhythmic frequency. The vibrations were so intense that deep fracture lines shot through the ancient tiles, glowing bright blue with stored energy, and Beat recognized this specific, all-consuming energy all too well, for it was the source stored deep within his own being.
His pupils locked onto the titan before him, and his voice cracked with pure disbelief.
“Raijin!!”
Raijin threw his head back and let out a booming laugh that cracked the remaining walls. “YES! SAY MY NAME, YOUNG BLOOD!” Before the sound could die away, he dematerialized; it was no longer pure speed, as he transformed into a living current of cobalt-blue lightning that zipped zigzag through the immense hall at an insane pace. The walls, ceiling, and pillars flashed in succession whenever his electrical form collided with them, blowing chunks of stone apart each time.
“Friend, haha! You use a fraction of my power?!” Raijin’s voice echoed from everywhere at once, carried by the static electricity in the air. “I am not just electricity, I am not just music..! I am the storm itself!”
In a fraction of a second, Raijin materialized high in the air, directly above Beat, his massive fist balled together into a destructive, electrical hammer blow surrounded by a dense, howling crown of crackling plasma. With the force of a crashing meteor, he drove the strike straight down, determined to smash Beat out of the air and deep through the temple floor.
“See what a real strike feels like!” Raijin roared downward.
The brutal fist plunged, but it did not hit Beat.
“Not with my friend!!” Blitz screamed.
With an unexpected, bright flash, Blitz shot forward as the little cloud transformed in a fraction of a second from a cute companion into a dense, robust wall of condensed, shield-like spiritual energy. Blitz took the all-destroying hammer blow head-on, the impact causing a white shockwave that shattered the remaining temple windows into millions of microscopic pieces and made the air tremble with heat.
But Blitz did not yield a single millimeter, and instead of being blown backward, the cloud’s form expanded with aggressive, fluid speed, his vaporous arms and wisps wrapping completely around Raijin’s massive fist and body, desperately locking him in a suffocating, glowing grip.
“Now, Beat! Get him!” Blitz called out, his voice warping under the pressure.
Raijin whipped his head wildly back and forth within the spiritual mass, his teeth bared in a fierce grin. “Mm.. let me out! Persistent little cloud!” he grunted.
His body began to spin on its axis at an insane speed, a rotation so powerful that the stored electricity shot out in all directions like deadly, jagged spears, piercing straight through the ceiling and the thick walls of the temple, until with a brutal burst of strength, he ripped himself free from Blitz’s grip with a loud CRACK.
As soon as his feet touched the ground, Raijin began running like a madman in a gigantic circle across the battlefield, leaving a wall of blue fire in his wake. As he ran, he brought his arms back in a perfect rhythm and struck his heavy fists hard against the massive drums mounted on his back.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The sound of the drums was not just audible; it directly seized the matter of the temple itself. With every heavy strike, the stones of the structure began to obey as if they were liquid, and the massive steps of the winding path outside broke free from their foundations with loud violence to take to the air. Dozens of heavy, angular boulders and stone slabs floated into the central hall and began flying across the battlefield at a killer pace, transforming the space into a chaotic, deadly storm of flying rock.
“DANCE TO MY RHYTHM!” Raijin bellowed as he struck. “SHOW ME HOW FAST YOU ARE!”
Beat was thrown back by the enormous air pressure, but his boots dug deep into the marble until he skidded to a halt with a loud grinding sound, remaining on one knee for a moment while the debris and stone slabs flew past his head at a sizzling speed, leaving deep scratches in his armor. Slowly, he rose, casually wiping the dust and a thin smear of blood from his chin with the back of his hand, his gaze locked through his eyelashes onto the titan.
“Mmm… Raijin… bring it on!!” Beat spat a bloody spark onto the ground. “You wanted to see my rhythm? This is my rhythm!”
With a raw shout, Beat threw his arms outward. “Cherenkov!” he roared, and the activation of the technique caused the entire temple hall to mutate. His cobalt-blue Oni form reacted instinctively and struck back with unprecedented intensity, producing a bright, nuclear-blue glow radiating from him that was so fierce it permanently scorched the shadows of the flying stones onto the walls while the air began to smell of ozone and burnt metal.
He looked sideways at the floating cloud and extended his hand. “Blitz! Time to charge up!”
Blitz did not hesitate for a second, his tiny eyes glowing brightly. “Together, friend! Full throttle!” He shot forward for a massive high-five.
Right at the midpoint of their touching impact, it happened. Beat’s all-consuming cobalt-blue energy spread like wildfire to Blitz, and the spiritual cloud immediately mutated along, his white-gold glow completely absorbed and replaced by the same razor-sharp, electrical blue power supply. The room filled with a shrill, high-frequency hum that went straight to the bone, both of them now resonating at the exact same insane frequency of pure speed.
“We are one, friend!” Blitz cried, his voice now buzzing with electricity too.
“Let’s go!” Beat replied.
Without leaving a trace, they both vanished from sight, transforming into two parallel, cobalt-blue lightning streams that began to shoot zigzag, perpendicular, and at impossible angles through the gigantic space. The flying boulders were reduced to fine dust purely by their kinetic slipstream, exploding into clouds of gray powder the instant the currents flashed past them.
Raijin, standing in the center of the hall amidst the chaos, threw his head back, his heavy voice drowning out the duo’s sonic booms.
“YES!!! IF YOU HAVE THIS, THEN COMBINE EVERYTHING… LET’S SEE HOW YOU UTILIZE IT! SHOW ME THE VENGEANCE OF YOUR POWER!”
As Raijin looked at them with a determined gaze, the thunder began to intensify and the rain grew more extreme, while furious wind gusts ripped ruthlessly through the shattered battlefield.