Chapter 186 – Patterns in the Fire
They had all seen war.
They had destroyed kingdoms with a thought, burned civilizations for balance, sealed ancient sins beneath mountains and oceans.
But none of that prepared them for this.
The creature stood silently at the center of the crater — humanoid, flickering red veins, black-fluid skin. No face. No expression. No sound.
Just silence.
Then Zeus raised his hand.
Thunder churned in the clouds above, spiraling inward. Lightning danced between his fingers like a living serpent, growing brighter, sharper, angrier. He didn't speak. He simply brought his hand down.
A lightning bolt the size of a cathedral slammed into the crater, blinding white and furious.
The ground shook.
The ice evaporated in an instant.
Snow turned to ash.
But the creature had already moved.
It slithered — not ran — through the gaps of the assault, bending its form like water through a broken dam.
Ra stepped forward, no expression on his face. A miniature sun flared into existence between his palms — white-hot, radiant, containing no love, no warmth. Only annihilation.
He raised it into the air, and a column of concentrated solar flame descended from above, spearing the earth with celestial fire. The ground sizzled, then fractured.
At the same time, Amaterasu lifted her hand, and an arc of pure solar energy shot forth — not flame, but divine radiance, compressed to collapse atoms.
Two suns.
Two gods.
One target.
And still…
The creature danced between the heat.
It melted and reformed in microseconds, shifting like mercury across battlefields, never directly challenging, never fully escaping — but never letting itself be struck.
From the side, Týr nocked three arrows at once, each forged from the bones of giants. He whispered no prayer. He needed none.
He loosed.
The arrows flew in an arc of war, dragging silence behind them like spears through wind.
The creature flickered again, twisting in mid-air to avoid the first, coiling around the second, and rebounding off the shockwave of the third.
It wasn't just fast.
It was watching them all.
Calculating.
Every attack it avoided was absorbed mentally, like a puzzle being solved in real time.
And yet, the others continued — they had to.
Athena cast a spearlight technique once used to vaporize hydras. The creature was already gone.
Michelangelo carved barriers mid-air that shattered into piercing shards of marble light. The creature slid under the gaps.
Rasputin, grinning madly, tore open a seal that ripped the local air pressure into a vacuum. It reappeared just outside the zone, unharmed.
Some attacks caused massive destruction — the snowfields became a minefield of 50-meter craters, melted and reshaped terrain that cracked the Antarctic crust.
But none of it stopped the thing.
It wasn't just reacting.
It was waiting.
Then they saw it shift again.
It angled sideways.
It was moving toward someone.
Tezcatlipoca.
He stood apart — calm, arms crossed, his obsidian mirror pulsing faintly behind him. He wasn't panicking. He rarely did. But this time, his expression was tight.
He wasn't built for long-range combat. His power was close-range deception and force — overwhelming strikes, illusions, misdirection. But he had no shield for what was coming.
The creature knew it.
It darted toward him — and in a heartbeat, its fluid form extended forward.
Just a touch.
Just a finger.
Tezcatlipoca felt the cold reach his skin, and his reaction was immediate. Without ceremony, without hesitation, he severed his hand with a flick of obsidian.
The mirror flashed.
His hand hit the snow.
But the creature was already gone.
It grabbed the hand mid-fall — and ate it.
No time to celebrate its kill.
It was already dodging again.
The other gods and immortals struck at once — a full-force barrage of binding glyphs, soul-cutting arrows, collapsing heat, and rippling force.
But it was too late.
The creature had learned from the second touch.
It had eaten.
And now it was even faster.
They noticed something else.
Wherever it moved, the ground didn't return to normal.
The snow darkened.
The air warped.
The very reality under its path was beginning to corrode.
Black veins spread behind it — not fast, but steadily, like rot underneath fresh skin.
"Even the land is infected," Merlin whispered, eyes narrow. "It doesn't just consume flesh. It corrupts concepts."
Athena stepped forward, spear raised. "It's waiting for a weakness. It won't stop until it eats one of us completely."
Týr's voice was like stone grinding on stone. "Then don't give it the chance."
But even as they said it — they knew.
It wasn't just attacking randomly.
It was choosing.
Watching.
Learning.
And now it had tasted two gods.
The air itself was changing.
Where the creature passed, the world began to unravel — slowly, subtly, but unmistakably. The snow no longer crunched beneath their feet the same way. It sagged. Collapsed. Shriveled like skin left too long in flame. The deeper layers of ice took on a sickly tint, dark veins creeping outward in all directions from the thing's path, like a fungal bloom of rot and silence.
The mana in the air began to thin.
Wards flickered.
Some divine spells — those cast too close to the corrupted zone — began to dull on their own.
Ra was the first to notice. He raised a hand, conjuring a small flare of sunfire, just to test.
The flame wavered.
Flickered once.
And dimmed.
"…This place is dying," he murmured. "Not burning. Not collapsing. Just… losing structure."
Rasputin exhaled, his smile twisted with frustration rather than humor. "We're doing this like it's a duel," he muttered, adjusting his coat, eyes still locked on the thing. "Why hasn't anyone called in the military? Why not just nuke the damn thing? Flood it with drones. Bullets. Tanks. Plasma bombs. Empty the sky on it."
Flamel didn't look at him. "Because that would be stupid."
Queen Elizabeth's voice was as sharp as ice: "We'd be feeding it. A buffet of warm bodies, tech signatures, pattern noise. It doesn't need divinity to grow. It just needs systems."
Amaterasu turned toward them, her expression calm but brittle. "If this thing adapts to human weapons — even once — we won't be able to stop it at all. Imagine it growing past the veil of magic and into the arteries of modern civilization."
Rasputin spat into the snow, the steam curling from where it hit. "Fine. No bullets. But right now, we're bleeding power. You feel it, don't you?"
They all did.
Some more than others.
Merlin lowered his staff and pressed two fingers to the air — testing the leyline pulse beneath the ground. What should have felt like a living river of magic now shivered under his touch, sickened and quiet. "The corruption is eating not just matter, but context. It's not defiling. It's nullifying."
Even Zeus, mighty and rarely shaken, shifted his stance. His lightning still coiled around his body, but there was hesitation now. "If it weakens divine power… it may weaken other systems too."
Ra added quietly, "Like the planet's."
Michelangelo knelt and touched the ice beneath his boot. "The lines of proportion are failing. Even the geometry of the land is warping."
Athena's brow furrowed as she peered into the distance. "That's why it's moving in arcs — not randomly. It's mapping the reach of its own distortion."
Týr's jaw clenched, his eye hard. "It's claiming territory."
Far beyond the corrupted path, a bird fell from the sky.
Frozen mid-flight.
Dead without wound.
A ripple in the mana — like a vacuum seal — had suffocated its internal magic. Even lesser life could not survive near the spread.
The others didn't see it.
But the creature did.
It turned its head — just slightly — toward the fallen bird.
No face. No eyes. But somehow… they all knew it had noticed.
And it was satisfied.
They were gods.
They were immortals.
And for the first time in untold millennia, they stood on ground that rejected them — not because of defiance or curse or sin…
But because something was rewriting the rules beneath their feet.
The creature wasn't just a threat.
It was a wound in the story of Earth.
And it was growing.
The wind howled louder now, but not from nature.
It was the land itself — groaning beneath the weight of violation. The corrupted veins had spread far wider than anyone realized. Beneath the ice, unseen but felt, the rot was threading itself through ancient soil, through pockets of sleeping ecosystems that had never known human touch.
And the creature?
It was thriving.
Its steps had grown longer.
Its speed — more fluid, more erratic, like a dancer learning rhythm from their enemies. The black-red sheen of its body pulsed faster, sharper, more often.
Athena's grip on her spear tightened. "It's not just adapting," she said through gritted teeth. "It's evolving with every breath."
Then Ra spoke — not in alarm, but in cold certainty.
"It's feeding again."
Everyone turned.
Where once there had been a ridge of untouched snow, now there was only a dark smear of corrupted ice. Along the edges of the black tide lay bodies — small ones. Twisted, half-absorbed, stripped of magic and warmth.
Penguins.
Foxes.
Seals.
Other creatures native to the hidden ecology of Antarctica — now dead, their essences assimilated.
Rasputin growled under his breath. "It's eating the world, one heartbeat at a time."
Zeus didn't wait for a cue.
He lifted both arms, lightning searing out of the sky in three massive bolts that collided on the creature's last known position. Ra followed instantly, summoning another column of sunfire, aimed slightly behind, cutting off escape. Amaterasu joined with a line of divine flame carved across the battlefield — a radiant crescent meant to burn through illusion and concealment.
Týr's arrows flew in succession, forming a cage of kinetic force.
Michelangelo hurled a sculpture seal made from concentrated ley geometry, forming a sphere of folded space.
Even the immortals added to the assault — not in desperation, but precision.
And for a moment…
The entire Antarctic horizon became a maelstrom of divine fury.
A cataclysm worthy of myth.
Ice shattered.
The sky tore.
Snow boiled.
The blast zone became a crater over a hundred meters wide — and then deeper, burning downward through frozen layers never touched by sunlight.
Smoke rose.
Visibility dropped.
Everyone braced — some with weapons still raised, some scanning for movement. For a heartbeat, there was hope.
Then—
The creature burst forth.
Its form warped, half-molten, flickering with embedded colors and shapes it hadn't displayed before. It launched out of the smoke not randomly — but with purpose.
Straight toward Athena.
She saw it coming — just too late.
It wasn't moving like before. This was not evasion.
This was a kill dash.
She raised her spear, calling an Aegis field, ready to counter. Zeus and Týr reacted in the same instant, but they wouldn't reach her in time. Even Amaterasu's hand was still forming a seal.
It was too fast.
Too close.
Then—
A voice.
Low. Calm. Human.
"Get down."
No divine thunder.
No mythic flourish.
Just a man's voice — firm, steady.
And then the sky shattered sideways.
A beam of blue-black energy streaked through the air from far beyond the ridge — not fire, not lightning, not divine at all. It didn't hum with power. It didn't roar.
It screamed with concentrated velocity — like a singularity compressed into force, wrapped in silence.
It hit the creature square in the chest mid-flight.
There was no dodge.
No reaction.
Only impact.
And when it struck, the creature was blasted backward, torn from the air like a puppet with its strings cut.
It spiraled through the already-destroyed battlefield, plummeting down, breaking ice, tearing stone, crashing further—
—until it hit bedrock.
And kept going.
When the light faded, it had vanished into a newly-formed 200-meter-deep shaft — steam and dust curling upward from the pit like the breath of the planet itself.
Silence.
Real, final, stunned silence.
The gods didn't move.
The immortals didn't speak.
Only one thought echoed between them:
Who fired that?
And more importantly—
Who just saved a goddess from death?
Chapter 187 – Beyond Sight, Beyond Reach
Rewritten
Ten minutes earlier.
The signal was faint — barely more than a whisper across the threads of mana. But Ciel had felt it.
She emerged in golden shimmer beside Alex, her usually warm expression clouded by something sharp.
"It's here," she said. "The same feeling. The same rot. It's just like World Frontier… but more hungry."
Alex, who had been quietly sorting through enchantment layers on a nearby table, didn't look up.
He simply said, "Location."
"Antarctica. South Polar Shelf. Latitude eighty-two—"
"I don't need exact," he interrupted. "Just give me a two-hundred-kilometer buffer."
She paused. "You're not going straight in?"
Alex finally looked at her. His voice was calm, clipped. "No. First, I watch."
A ripple split the air behind him.
He stepped through.
Southern Hemisphere – 200 km from Target
Snow drifted lazily along a jagged ridge of volcanic ice, untouched by satellite or step. And there, standing alone on an outcrop like a forgotten statue, was Alex — dressed not in a hoodie, but in something new.
As he landed, his outfit shimmered. The cloth of his casual wear dissolved into embedded panels and overlapping segments of matte-black metal, sleek and soundless, trimmed in glowing blue circuit lines that pulsed softly with internal energy. His armor hummed in silence, responsive to his breathing. It wasn't just defensive gear. It was a high-mobility battlefield interface — designed and engineered by himself
And like everything he made, it had evolved.
At his back, a long shape began to unfold.
Segment by segment, a device uncompressed itself into reality — drawing from dimensional storage sealed in quantum locks.
What emerged was unmistakable.
A Railgun.
But not just any Railgun.
This was the weapon that once measured four meters long, designed to punch holes through titanic horrors armor alike. Back then, it had been crude. Overwhelming. Too large for most hands.
But now?
It was smaller. Sleeker. Smarter. Deadlier.
Roughly the size of a high-caliber sniper rifle, with a pressure-dampening core, recoil-absorbing skin, and triple-mode targeting rails folded along the barrel. Its chassis glowed faintly in blue-black patterns — alive, aware, precise.
Alex knelt on one knee, stabilizing the weapon with practiced ease. The sight adjusted instantly to his vision, overlaying atmospheric readings, leyline interference, and celestial angles in floating geometric data.
He peered through the scope.
And saw it.
Target Acquired
From this distance — 200 kilometers away — most beings would see nothing but ice, haze, and the ghost of the horizon.
But Alex saw everything.
The creature moved like liquid shadow. He could read its pattern. The distortion of space. The decay of light. Even through atmospheric interference, he could track the stuttering mana around it, corrupted like fraying code.
And then he saw her.
Athena.
He didn't know her.
Didn't need to.
What he did know was that this thing was charging toward her.
Too fast for them to stop.
Too late for countermeasure.
He exhaled slowly, syncing breath to recoil calibration.
"Lie down," he sent with a mental ping — a compressed whisper across the battlefield.
No time to wait.
He fired.
There was no boom.
Just light.
A blue-black beam tore through the atmosphere like a judgment rendered in absolute silence. Its trajectory curved slightly, adjusted for rotation, heat distortion, mana drag.
The moment it struck, the creature vanished into impact force — launched backward with such speed that it carved a trench through the ice and vanished into the Earth, punching down over two hundred meters before the ground stopped screaming.
Alex stood slowly, retracting the Railgun into compressed sheath-form along his back.
"Test complete."
Time to move in.
He arrived without light or sound — just a single ripple in space, barely enough to disturb the steam rising from the crater's rim. And yet, every god and immortal there turned at once.
They felt it.
Not the pressure of divine presence.
Not the hum of infernal energy.
But something that didn't belong.
A signature without classification.
Something that should not exist.
Ares, still nursing the loss of his arm, regarded him with sharp-eyed suspicion. But there was no mockery in his stare now — only curiosity… and caution. The way this newcomer had struck the creature — cleanly, decisively — was not something Ares could ignore.
Athena, battered but standing, locked eyes with Alex. She offered no greeting, no warning — just a still gaze, calculating and strangely quiet. She had always trusted reason. And something about Alex radiated a dangerous kind of intentionality.
Zeus didn't speak. His muscles were tense beneath his cloak, his gaze unreadable. He scanned Alex up and down, as if searching for divine lineage, for ancestry, for any hint of familiar power.
He found none.
Because none of them could read him.
It was like staring at a blank page that refused to stay blank. A paradox wrapped in restraint.
Only Merlin showed recognition.
Not of the face. Not of the voice.
But of the aura — a silence deeper than silence, the echo of something absolute.
Merlin remembered a moment. A report. A disappearance. A void that once consumed one of the oldest nightmares in the world.
And standing before him now was the source.
He's the one who erased Vlad Dracula.
But he said nothing.
Neither did Alex.
He stepped toward the crater's edge, slowly, calmly, unbothered by the weight of every gaze upon him.
Then he spoke — not loud, not commanding. Just enough for all of them to hear.
"So this is the thing that's been making a mess."
And with that, he peered down into the crater — unshaken, unimpressed, and entirely in control.
Chapter 188 – Inventions from free time
The creature rushed in, lunging toward Alex in a blur of twisted limbs and red-black sludge, faster than most gods could react. Its movements were sharp, erratic, like a storm given form — but Alex stood firm, waiting.
In a blink, he summoned a weapon from dimensional storage — a black high-tech sword with embedded blue circuits, its design sleek and dangerous. It resembled a katana, but sharper, more modern. The blade shimmered with refined engineering: its tip was glowing blue, while the rest of the weapon pulsed softly with circuit veins across the obsidian metal.
Alex had created countless inventions over time — not out of necessity, but habit. Building things had become his quiet obsession, a way to focus his mind when peace grew too loud. Some of his creations were ingenious, others entirely useless, born from idle curiosity or moments of boredom. The katana he now wielded and the dimensional storage that delivered it were among the rare successes — tools forged in solitude that now proved essential in war.
The gods shouted, trying to warn him.
"Don't engage in close combat!"
"Keep your distance!"
"It corrupts by contact!"
But it was too late — or perhaps, exactly on time.
The creature struck. And Alex blocked.
The impact shook the air. The corrupted thing attempted to press further, shifting shape to reach for different parts of Alex's armor — its fingers and limbs coiling around, trying to spread its touch.
And it succeeded, at least partially.
But it was useless.
First, Alex's armor was alloys and anti-entropic design. Its durability was absolute — resistant to all known forms of decay, including the corrosive touch of the creature.
Second, Alex's Endurance stat was 22,674 — meaning he could shrug off forces that would crush mountains, survive dimensional collapse, and nullify physical effects like acid, corrosion, or even time erosion.
Third, his Willpower of 22,298 rendered him completely immune to mental or spiritual corruption. Where others would lose their minds from a single touch, Alex remained still — cold, clear, unshaken.
The creature gained nothing.
And Alex wasn't just enduring.
He was fighting back.
His speed — 25,365 kilometers per hour — allowed him to move perfectly in sync with the enemy. Where it thought to be unpredictable, he was already there. Where it feinted, he was already cutting.
He struck back with the katana-like blade, blue arcs trailing through the air. The creature reeled, its body deforming as it tried to pull away — but Alex followed, relentless.
He didn't hesitate.
He didn't fear.
He simply moved.
And the gods, watching from the rim of the battlefield, said nothing.
Because for the first time…
They realized the battlefield had shifted.
With a sharp sidestep and a blur of movement, Alex knocked the creature off balance — his blade slicing low across its center mass. The impact sent it flying, tumbling through the air like a distorted comet, its form rippling with instability.
Alex didn't waste the opening.
From a compartment on his side, he pulled a fist-sized cube — matte black, laced with blue circuits that pulsed like a heartbeat. Without hesitation, he threw it.
The moment it left his hand, the cube spun once midair.
Then, it unfolded.
Eight corners expanded outward, each segment forming a jagged angular spike that shot toward the ground and around the falling creature. In less than a second, they slammed into place, surrounding it in a perfect octagonal cage.
The ionic force field activated instantly.
The creature thrashed. Tried to adapt. Its corrupted body pulsed, shifted, attempted to phase out — but the containment field Alex had developed was no longer a prototype. He had upgraded it over time, learning from past battles. Now it didn't just trap.
It erased.
Inside the cube's perimeter, arcs of blue-white energy surged, wrapping the creature in layer after layer of accelerated molecular destabilization. It tried to escape — but every movement made it worse. Its own body began to flicker, segments collapsing in on themselves as if being rewritten by pure force.
And then—
Its body began to dissolve.
Sludge peeled away.
Limbs unraveled.
Its mind, whatever it had, fractured and dispersed.
The cage didn't scream. It didn't shine.
It just consumed, like inevitability given shape.
Within moments, the creature was gone — no residue, no escape, no roar.
Just silence.
Alex stood still, his sword lowered.
The gods and immortals stared.
None spoke.
Not even Zeus.
Because what they had just witnessed wasn't survival. It wasn't divine judgment. It wasn't even a legendary spell.
It was a man — with a cube.
And he had just destroyed something they couldn't even contain.
Chapter 189 – What Remains After Silence
The creature was gone.
But the wound it left behind was not.
Alex stood at the edge of the broken field, his gaze sweeping across the corrupted terrain — a dead radius of blackened ice and rotting wind, stretching for hundreds of meters in every direction. The decay lingered like poison in the bones of the Earth, refusing to fade even with the threat extinguished.
He narrowed his eyes.
Then reached into his dimensional storage.
What emerged was a black pillar, smooth and silent, laced with the familiar blue circuitry of his other tools. It was tall — around two meters, heavy-looking, yet strangely elegant. He carried it with one hand, without strain, and planted it into the frozen soil with a quiet thunk.
He stepped back.
The pillar pulsed once.
And activated.
A soft hum filled the air as light patterns raced across its surface, branching out in slow ripples that expanded across the corrupted ground. The air shifted — not violently, but purposefully, like reality itself was taking a deep breath.
In under thirty seconds, the decay began to retreat.
The rotted ice regained its sheen. The snow returned to pure white. The mana in the air, once fractured and thinning, began to stabilize and flow again like a living river.
It was not dramatic.
It was not divine.
It was just... effective.
This was one of Alex's inventions — a scaled-down version of the original Verdant Engine. Designed to restore ecological integrity, cleanse magical corruption, and renew life in areas struck by metaphysical damage.
As the field completed its restoration cycle, the land looked untouched.
As if the wound had never existed.
The gods and immortals, still watching in silence, saw no ceremony. No flex. No prayers. Just a man who created something to fix what others couldn't.
And used it like it was normal.
The cleansing finished.
The wind settled.
Alex turned away.
No words. No farewell. No demand for recognition or praise. He simply stepped away from the pillar, his back to the gods, his blue-lined armor humming softly with residual power as the glow of the restored land settled into stillness.
And then—
he vanished.
Gone in a ripple of spatial distortion. No teleportation flare, no divine signature. Just absence.
The silence left behind was louder than any spell.
The gods and immortals stood frozen in place.
No one understood what they had just witnessed.
Not fully.
Not yet.
"Who was that…?" Athena finally asked, her voice almost reluctant to break the quiet.
No one answered.
Except one.
Merlin.
He didn't look surprised.
Only thoughtful.
And maybe, faintly… uneasy.
When the others turned to him — gods, immortals, strategists — they noticed the difference in his expression. The others wore confusion.
Merlin?
Recognition.
Ra narrowed his eyes. "You know him."
Merlin nodded once. "I've seen that man before."
Zeus folded his arms. "Where?"
Merlin's gaze didn't leave the place where Alex had stood.
"At the Crimson Court."
The name alone brought weight. Even those who had never stepped into that underground monarchy of ancient vampires knew what it meant.
Týr frowned. "That's vampire territory. What business did you have there?"
"I went," Merlin said, "because I sensed the awakening of Vlad."
Silence.
The air shifted again, but not from power. From memory. From fear.
Ra's expression darkened. "You mean… Dracula?"
Merlin nodded. "He had taken over the body of the Vampire Queen. No one else noticed. Not the lords. Not the heirs. Not even the girl hosting him. But the man in black—he separated them. Cleanly. Without injury. And then—"
He paused.
"He killed Vlad. Permanently."
Those words were heavier than spells.
Everyone there knew what that meant.
Vlad Dracula — the King of Night.
A being who once warred against gods.
A creature whose curse outlasted kingdoms, whose power bent fate, whose mind refused the boundary between life and death.
"He could fight any of us," Athena said softly. "Even together, it would've been a question of who lived and who died."
Merlin didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
The field was quiet again.
Because now, the question wasn't just what that man had done.
But who he truly was.
Even though none of them could name him — not god, not immortal, not scholar — one unspoken truth hung in the cold air above the now-healed battlefield:
Whoever he was…
He should not be an enemy.
Because if someone like that chose to fight them…
They all understood.
There would be no battle.
Only outcome.
Chapter 195 – The Name No One Knew
It began as a whisper.
A sealed report. A blurred satellite image. A field of decay in Antarctica, completely restored within minutes — no casualties, no trace of the corruption, and one anomaly:
A man in black armor.
Blue circuit lines.
A sword that hummed with silence.
No divine presence. No spell signature. No matching records in any known registry.
And most troubling of all — no weakness.
Within days, the story spread across hidden networks.
In the halls of the European Magic Association, mages poured over distorted leyline scans and energy imprints, unable to classify what they saw. In the Vatican's sacred archives, cardinals whispered of the man as a judgment or herald. In Beijing's shadow sanctums, old spirits debated whether he was a forgotten demigod from an erased dynasty.
By the end of the week, the speculation had mutated into a thousand theories.
"A failed divine weapon, now walking free."
"A child of two forbidden lineages — demon and god."
"Merlin's hidden apprentice."
"A resurrected Ancient Hero using cybernetic magic."
"The Black Warden of the World Frontier — escaped from the sealed realm."
Even the gods heard the rumors.
Even the gods disagreed.
In Olympus, some thought he might be a discarded tool of Nyx.
In Takama-ga-hara, the kami argued whether he bore resemblance to the swords of Izanagi.
In Asgard, Týr said only, "He fought without waste. That alone is divine."
No name followed him.
No origin stuck.
He was simply referred to as:
"The One in Black."
Or, more cautiously:
"The One Who Walked Through Corruption."
The world — divine, magical, and hidden — had been shaken.
And none of them knew…
He was already home again.
The room was dimly lit, lined with reinforced charm wards, silent sensors, and half-drunk cups of coffee. A large display screen flickered with grainy footage taken from a high-altitude surveillance drone — zoomed in on the blue-black beam that had pinned the creature into the Antarctic crust.
Beside it, multiple conspiracy threads scrolled by in real time:
"Unknown Divine Hybrid?!"
"Secret Vatican Enforcer Program?!"
"Maybe the son of Odin and a machine?"
"Black Armor User DESTROYS Cosmic Horror with ONE SHOT!!"
Sarah Elwood — mother, world-class demon hunter, professional skeptic — let out a laugh so sharp it nearly cracked her coffee mug.
"Son of Odin?"
Mark Elwood, grizzled but sharp-eyed, leaned back in his chair and smirked.
"I like the theory where he's a time-traveling archangel from the World Frontier."
Alice, seated cross-legged on the couch and flipping through a report on her tablet, rolled her eyes.
"It's him. Obviously. The armor's his. The movement style is dead-on. And that sword?" She pointed at a blurry frame. "That's his weird high-tech katana that he made during a 'relaxing weekend.' I had to test swing it in the yard. Cut through the shed."
They all shared a look.
A long, quiet moment.
Pride.
Amusement.
And a touch of disbelief.
"He's causing a global identity crisis," Sarah said fondly. "Of course he is."
"Our son," Mark added, shaking his head, "is a walking international incident."
"He's not in trouble, is he?" Alice asked, more serious now.
"Not unless someone's dumb enough to push him," Sarah replied. "And if they are…"
"...then may the gods help them," Mark finished.
They all raised their drinks.
To Alex.
Wherever he was.
While governments and immortals struggled to classify the man in black, the supernatural community had already started its own investigation — piecing together blurry footage, satellite echoes, leaked mana readings, and, more interestingly...
Weapon design.
Clips of the battle were slowed, magnified, frame-analyzed.
And one detail stood out.
The sword.
A black high-tech blade, glowing with blue circuitry, shaped almost exactly like a katana — albeit more refined, more compact. It moved in perfect arcs, with frightening elegance and speed.
That alone sparked a new theory.
"It's a Japanese weapon. Definitely custom, but the form is traditional."
"I'm telling you, this guy was trained by Amaterasu's court."
"No way — Tengu blacksmiths. Only they could integrate spirit-forging with modern tech."
"What if he's a synthetic kami?"
"No. He moved too human. That's the scary part."
More forums lit up. Whisper networks in Kyoto stirred. Divination circles in Fukuoka burned offerings to try and trace the blade's spiritual echo. Even archivists in Takama-ga-hara reviewed their lost records — looking for any forbidden projects that might explain a katana with anti-corruption capabilities.
The result?
No matches.
No leads.
Only speculation.
But the whispers grew.
"He's Japanese."
"Or half."
"Or trained by them."
"Or something worse: independent."
Some feared him.
Some idolized him.
But none could confirm anything.
Because the man with the katana…
Never left a name.