Shojiro's body flickered forward, warping space itself as Red Drift ignited again.
His frame twisted — this time compressed even tighter with Torque Pulse Valve rippling through his core. The ground imploded under his prep dash as he lunged, one hand already forming a spear-hand aimed for the neck.
But—
FWISH—
An arm shot out behind him.
Shojiro's eyes widened—
It was impossible. The demon had no presence there—no shadow, no shift, no tell—
CLANG.
His forearm snapped upward, intercepting the strike inches from his neck.
[Reflex Matrix Override: ACTIVE]
Shojiro (gritting his teeth):
"Cheap trick."
He skidded to a halt mid-air, rebounding with a mid-flip twist—only to finally see what had happened.
The Brute stood across the clearing — but now its entire frame had mutated.
Its chest was bloated with hypergrown muscle fibers, each tendon moving like it had a mind of its own. Dozens of sinewy arms jutted out from its back, shoulders, ribs — made entirely of writhing muscle cords.
Some were thin and whip-like. Others thick as trees, ending in jagged claws.
And they moved autonomously, swinging in defense, scanning the terrain behind it, covering its blind spots.
Shojiro (eyes narrowing):
"…So you gave yourself omnidirectional muscle whips just to stop me from blitzing you."
The Brute roared.
Its body began to pulse, matter folding inward and outward in waves as it overclocked its own biology, increasing mass in real-time. It grew a meter taller. Its footsteps cracked the earth.
Shojiro cracked his knuckles.
Shojiro (smirking):
"Alright. Time to test something too."
His spinal muscle clusters ignited, funneling internal heat into his limbs as his Soma Sovereign Core activated — flooding his bloodstream with an adrenaline-VYTHRA compound.
Shojiro (to himself):
Let's see whose evolution's better.
The Muscle Transmission Blitz
A low rumble echoed across the battlefield.
The Brute didn't charge.
It disintegrated.
Not into ash. Not into mist.
Into muscle fibers — cords, strands, ligaments — ripping free from its core and slithering through the terrain like crimson snakes.
They raced across the earth, under the ground, over rocks, through air — like a nervous system detached from a body.
Shojiro's eyes widened.
This wasn't regeneration.
It was translocation.
Shojiro (thinking fast):
"Don't tell me… it's transmitting its own muscle mass as teleportation data?"
Too late.
WHIP—!
The fibers reconvened just inches behind him — reshaping instantly into the Brute's full arm and upper torso.
SHHUNK!
Blood sprayed mid-air.
Shojiro's left arm—gone.
Ripped clean at the shoulder joint by a blade of twisted muscle tendons sharpened to a serrated edge.
His body spiraled from the impact, crashing into a cliffside — dust and boulders collapsing around him.
The Brute reformed fully just a few meters away, steam pouring from its muscle threads as they knitted back into a humanoid frame.
But now it looked even less human.
Its lower half had become a fleshy anchor, tethered to muscle tendrils spread across the battlefield — allowing it to slingshot itself at any angle, any direction, any time.
It wasn't teleportation.
It was muscle-phase skipping — converting muscle data into dispersed VYTHRA packets, then recompressing its body somewhere else.
Shojiro groaned, rising to one knee, blood soaking his side.
His shoulder was already steaming — Myofibril Dominion kicking in.
But the pain was searing.
His arm… would take time.
Shojiro (wincing, grinning anyway):
"Heh… Alright then."
He stood, one arm still pulsing with heat.
Shojiro:
"If you're gonna spread muscle around the battlefield…"
His feet shifted — Red Drift igniting beneath him.
"…then I'll just have to condense mine into a single point."
The battlefield had turned quiet.
The Brute's muscle tendrils crawled over rocks and terrain like hungry vines, twitching for movement.
It had scanned left. Right. Back. Underground. Even overhead.
Nothing.
Shojiro was gone.
No sprint trails. No Red Drift heat. No light-speed blur.
The blitz wasn't coming — or so it thought.
Suddenly... the air bent.
From directly above, a thunderclap split the clouds.
And there he was—
SHOJIRO MOMO, descending like a meteor, his entire body twisted and condensed into a single fist.
Soma Sovereign Core had activated, pumping raw VYTHRA and adrenaline into every cell — his heart was beating like a war drum.
His entire right arm had mutated: not grotesquely, but monstrously.
Fibers coiled and braided like a giant anchor cable.
Torque Pulse Valve shrieked from his back, venting heat and kinetic charge as his muscles compressed into a megalithic fist.
Shojiro (yelling mid-air):
"YOU WANNA FIGHT MUSCLE—!?"
He spiraled once, arm pulled back.
Shojiro:
"THEN EAT MINE!!"
BOOOOOOOM!!!
The impact sounded like a continental faultline breaking.
His fist landed directly on the demon's core — the Brute had barely turned its head before it was flattened into paste, the force atomizing muscle fibers, rupturing the land in a shockwave of torn rock and VYTHRA vapor.
The ground split outward in a massive crater — smoke hissing from the impact zone like the mouth of a volcano.
Shojiro panted, one knee in the crater, his titanic right arm steaming.
Muscle reconfiguration was already burning through his stamina — but the brute didn't move.
Its core was mush.
The monster had been crushed by its own arrogance.
He stood.
Shojiro (wiping blood from his mouth):
"Speed's nice… but sometimes…"
He flexed his arm — still triple its normal size.
"…you just gotta punch things really hard."