Chapter 758: The Power of the Heart, Touching the Concussive Pulse of the Spiritual Light
Drip.
Like a drop of water falling into a deep well, like a stone dropping into the abyss.
The moment that sound appeared, silver ripples spread out in concentric rings. The cells across Kaito Shirogane's entire body felt as if they were being baptized by an invisible force.
Even though his eyes no longer needed to blink from dryness, in that split second, he blinked once.
With just a single blink, everything in the world vanished.
The ruined Tokyo-3, Izayoi Sakamaki standing atop the debris, the extraterrestrial giant nearly the size of a planet—everything disappeared.
The world before Kaito Shirogane's eyes was now completely empty. Under a gloomy, eerie light, seawater that had lost its original color shallowly soaked the world. Aside from that, everything had vanished.
Buildings, mountains and rivers, the earth, vegetation, animals... humans...
Everything was gone.
Along with them, the sounds that constantly echoed—sounds so familiar that one's body grew accustomed to them and no longer paid them any mind—had also vanished.
Leaving only Kaito Shirogane alone, standing on the surface of the water.
Kaito Shirogane tilted his head to inspect his surroundings. He found that visibility here was surprisingly good. Although the light was dim, with his current physique and eyesight, he could easily see extremely far away.
In this world, there were no obstructions. He even felt as if he could see the curvature at the end of the world.
Standing alone on the surface of such a massive planet, an unprecedented sense of desolate emptiness instantly enveloped Kaito Shirogane.
"You should have realized it long ago, shouldn't you, Kaito Shirogane?"
"You are very lonely."
"You... have no kind."
A voice sounded by Kaito Shirogane's ear. It was akin to a whisper, its tone incredibly gentle, yet because of the dead silence all around, the voice was resoundingly loud.
Kaito Shirogane tilted his head again, as if dodging the voice.
He saw silver ripples echoing through the void, then vanishing.
Kaito Shirogane raised his hand, and golden Ki condensed in an instant.
Hum~
A Dodon Ray pierced through the air, streaking like a golden beam before disappearing into the dark, gloomy sky.
There was no explosion, nor the tangible sensation of hitting anything.
Even the sound of the Dodon Ray tearing through the air seemed utterly solitary in this world.
Humans are a social species. This sociality doesn't merely refer to humanity's high reliance on division of labor and cooperation; it also means that humans need to anchor their own existence through other humans.
A human's various personalities, language, and interactive abilities all require another "other" for mutual anchoring and confirmation.
A deaf person, unable to receive feedback for an extended period, will subsequently lose the ability to speak.
"Kaito Shirogane, you are merely a beast that has wandered into the human world. Here, there is nothing that interacts with you."
"You speak, yet you cannot say who you truly are."
"You listen, yet you cannot hear your own true voice."
"Even that heart of yours is nothing more than a replacement part you constantly swap out and discard..."
Kaito Shirogane stopped walking at some point. Moving in this world had no effect. Without any coordinates for reference, Kaito Shirogane couldn't even confirm whether he was actually moving.
It was uncertain whether this special scene right now was even a real space.
That voice continued to chatter endlessly by Kaito Shirogane's ear. Because the voice was gentle, it didn't feel noisy. The other party's understanding of him clearly exceeded the limits.
It even knew about Kaito Shirogane's frequent heart replacements.
In reality, Kaito Shirogane didn't cherish his own heart all that much.
First, for the Heart of Karma required by the Crimson Sin, he personally carved out his own heart as a sacrifice.
Then, for power, he swapped it for Enel's Heart of the Thunder God.
Finally, he even shoved the Mad King's heart into his empty chest.
"See? You constantly claim to thirst for a heart, but what you truly thirst for is ultimately just power, ultimately just external things..."
That voice completely read Kaito Shirogane's thoughts and continued communicating along his train of thought.
The dead silence of the world became even more pronounced at this moment. Kaito Shirogane suddenly felt a chill on the top of his feet, then his calves, his knees...
The seawater beneath his feet, under the gloomy and dim light, began to rise.
Kaito Shirogane's Bukujutsu (Dance of the Sky), which easily allowed him to stand in mid-air, was surprisingly unable to support him standing on this water.
Within that water existed things belonging to a completely non-material world. Here, the laws of physics were invalid.
Kaito Shirogane stood his ground, his head lowered, allowing the voice to continuously echo in his ears, allowing the seawater to constantly submerge him.
And in another world, Izayoi Sakamaki similarly stood his ground. But the difference was, all around him was a scene of decay.
He looked up at the sky outside the school. A dim red sun seemed very close to him, and the school had been submerged by a liquid of indiscernible color.
Everyone collapsed one after another in front of him, then vanished into the water, leaving only the clothes on their backs to prove they had ever existed.
"Haven't you already grown completely sick of such a boring world and life?"
"No matter what happens to a world like this, you shouldn't care, right..."
"After all, you already have a new world. You bear the Mandate of Heaven, you are a Child of Destiny. Only a world like that can allow your talents to take root and sprout."
"Leave, Izayoi. This is not your world..."
Izayoi Sakamaki stood in place, the tops of his feet gradually submerged by the liquid.
But he suddenly smiled.
"So this is the so-called Trial of [Love]?"
Izayoi Sakamaki suddenly raised his leg high, then stomped down violently!
BOOM!
Terrifying power transformed into golden lightning, directly piercing through the planet's crust with a single strike.
Accompanied by terrifying screeches and cracks, the school building was instantly torn apart by a fissure beneath his feet. Next went the playground below the building, the foundation, all the way down. He saw the thick tectonic plates torn apart as well.
Then the magma layer, and finally the crust itself completely fractured, causing massive amounts of magma to erupt.
Izayoi Sakamaki dropped from the sky. With a casual wave of his hand, terrifying power directly tore apart everything around him.
Izayoi Sakamaki plunged straight down, falling towards the core of the planet.
"Trying to reform me through [Love], and trying to kill that guy through [Loneliness]. Is this your strategy... Ouroboros?!"
BOOM!
As Izayoi Sakamaki fell towards the core, he fiercely threw a punch. Following that, terrifying power erupted, and everything before his eyes was torn asunder.
"Hahahaha... Hahahahaha!"
Terrifying, maniacal laughter echoed in his ears. The scene before Izayoi Sakamaki's eyes shifted, and he had returned to the moment he first entered this [Lost World].
The surroundings were already submerged by an orange ocean; only the very tops of the buildings remained exposed.
Everything in this world seemed to have vanished. Only beyond the sky, that massive white figure watched the two of them with crimson eyes.
The maniacal laughter agitated the air, and blazing white air currents danced wildly all around.
Izayoi Sakamaki felt a power and aura far surpassing what the other party had displayed when challenging him earlier.
Golden Ki, mixed with a blood mist, surged into the sky. An intense presence, accompanied by the beating of those three hearts, grew increasingly pronounced.
Kaito Shirogane looked at the figure in the sky. An extremely intense illusory fluctuation spread and extended from behind him.
Within the illusory fluctuation, the silver-white fluctuation belonging to the Mad King was very distinct, and there was also a dim grey fluctuation mixed in.
These fluctuations lingered on Kaito Shirogane's skin, outlining his figure, making it appear incredibly slender.
Strands of fluctuating lines extended in all directions, forcefully engraving Kaito Shirogane's presence into this world.
Because a human exists, they naturally interact with other things. Even mindless, inorganic matter will still be destroyed and altered by their presence.
Amidst Kaito Shirogane's maniacal laughter, his expression gradually twisted from ecstasy to something more contorted.
He felt it...
That power he had only felt once before.
That true self he could only see clearly after being torn apart and pulverized.
In that empty world, after Kaito Shirogane allowed himself to be completely submerged by that liquid, his existence was on the verge of dissipation.
At the moment his Wall of the Heart began to collapse...
On the brink of that dissipation, Kaito Shirogane once again saw his true self.
Illusory, silver-white, green, grey, purple...
Various colors began to spread from within Kaito Shirogane's body. He hadn't even activated the Kaio-Ken; he wasn't using the terrifying [Ki] generated by the 8-Fold Kaio-Ken to grant himself ability immunity.
He had simply touched his true self.
In truth, Kaito Shirogane didn't care in the slightest about the things that voice had murmured in his ear.
Whether he belonged to "humanity," whether he needed to be accepted by other "humans"—Kaito Shirogane had never considered such things.
Kaito Shirogane had never subscribed to any moral issues. Just like in past worlds, he had killed many people, and he had also saved quite a few.
But he neither viewed himself as a demon nor a hero.
He was just himself.
Now, as this cognition of Kaito Shirogane touched his reality, concentric rings of intense fluctuation materialized and spread outward.
[You have touched the Concussive Pulse of the Spiritual Light]
[The Concussive Pulse of the Spiritual Light has begun to manifest]
[While the Concussive Pulse of the Spiritual Light is manifested, its intensity, effects, and abilities will change based on the depth of your connection and your state of self.]
Crack, crack~
In the void, silver-white crystalline planes shattered. These things had been wrapped around Kaito Shirogane and Izayoi Sakamaki like invisible barriers.
Now, these things were completely shattered by the fluctuations naturally radiating from Kaito Shirogane's body.
Izayoi Sakamaki slightly shielded his eyes with one hand. The martial artist had undergone some kind of change. At this moment, various colors of radiant light shone from him.
There lay a power that even he found incredibly novel.
Izayoi Sakamaki got his wish, witnessing the unique power possessed by this group of people capable of freely traversing various worlds. He then looked at the massive creation above the world.
He suddenly bent his knees, then stomped down with incredible force.
Crack, BOOM!
As the ocean and ground beneath his feet completely shattered, terrifying air pressure erupted directly. The blazing white air pressure was like a massive fan, instantly destroying everything below.
However, the spot where Kaito Shirogane stood remained completely unaffected.
When the wind pressure reached him, it was naturally smoothed over by those countless, radiantly colorful fluctuations.
Kaito Shirogane's eyes naturally emanated a dazzling spectrum of colors. He looked at Izayoi Sakamaki, then similarly bent his knees and stomped down hard.
Crack, BOOM!
Terrifying explosive power appeared once again, instantly destroying the orange ocean below.
In mid-air, Kaito Shirogane clenched his left fist, and a phantom appeared behind him.
Izayoi Sakamaki similarly felt the terrifying explosive power from below, but he didn't turn around.
The two transformed into two beams of light, instantly shooting tens of thousands of meters into the sky, then simultaneously throwing a punch at the illusory giant figure.
As Kaito Shirogane threw his punch, a golden Authority manifested on his left fist.
To obtain a power similar to what he saw in Izayoi Sakamaki, he naturally began to mobilize every ounce of power within his physical body, without any need for conscious direction.
Therefore, the Authority [Ki and Force] residing within his body was mobilized simultaneously, just like a muscle that already belonged to him.
The golden Authority of Force instantly flowed from within Kaito Shirogane's body onto his fist.
In that instant, it was as if Kaito Shirogane possessed a power beyond human control out of thin air. Or rather, the law of [Force] had been mastered by him.
He could alter the application of force in his hand at will.
The golden Authority flashed. The terrifying immense force wasn't just born from his physical body; it was generated out of thin air from the void itself.
[Archetype of Terminus and Genesis EX051, your Authority: Ki and Force has leveled up. Current: Tier 3 (Adaptability 100%)]
BOOM!
Kaito Shirogane punched, and [Force] erupted from ahead of his arm.
A cyan vacuum wave, accompanied by golden Ki and a blazing white shockwave, soared into the sky together.
On the other side, Izayoi Sakamaki threw a punch, and golden radiance exploded directly.
Crack, BOOM!
Terrifying radiance burst from the parchment, shooting straight into the sky and exploding thunderously.
The blazing white shockwave transformed into a massive cloud ring, spreading over Underwood and forming a colossal ring cloud over ten thousand meters wide that lingered for a long time.
The figure of the lifeless boy in the white pilot suit shattered simultaneously, while two figures fell from the sky.
Izayoi Sakamaki raised his hand, and a fifth Star had already appeared on his wristband.
Meanwhile, Kaito Shirogane found a larger fragment of parchment in his hand. On his hand, faint illusory crystalline planes flashed continuously.
[You have obtained the Gift: Power of the Heart (AT Field)]
He won this Gift Game, and it actually really granted him a power like the AT Field?
Kaito Shirogane grew even more curious about the guy hosting this Gift Game behind the scenes.
Exactly what level of strength did this guy possess to actually pull something like this off?
No, theoretically speaking, this was already somewhat beyond what Reincarnators at the Sovereign Monarch tier could achieve.
A mere Sovereign Monarch, relying on abilities, would already find it difficult enough to trap him temporarily. Aside from that woman in the Western District whom he had never fought before, Kaito Shirogane didn't believe any other Sovereign Monarch could trap him while simultaneously running various other Gift Games.
It was illogical.
Unless... the other party had already surpassed the tier of Sovereign Monarch.
Or perhaps, this Gift Game wasn't the work of just one person's power at all.
"Look quickly! Someone else has entered that 6-Star Gift Game!"
"Warn the others! There's a 6-Star Gift Game over there! It holds terrifying Gifts!"
Kaito Shirogane and Izayoi Sakamaki turned their heads and found that everyone from both their groups had already gathered in front of that so-called 6-Star Gift Game.