Ashen sat on a red rock covered with dried blood, thick steam rising slowly from it as if the earth itself was breathing in pain. Around him stretched an endless field, a sea of mutilated corpses that were once massive beasts. Their bones were shattered, and their blood formed sticky rivers flowing toward an endless horizon.
The sky above was crimson, cut by bolts of strange energy twisting like snakes. At its center, the hourglass turned slowly, not measuring time, but judging it.
Every grain of sand that fell caused a faint tremor in the world, as if everything was bound to its breath.
Ashen lifted his head toward it. His calm eyes held no fear or awe. His gaze was as cold as a blade.
He whispered quietly, his voice clear in the eternal silence:
"Even hell has limits… but this place has gone beyond them."
The marks of endless battles were still carved into his body, black lines of wild energy running under his skin, but his spirit seemed more stable than ever.
The feral intent that once tried to devour him now bowed before him… and even circled around him like a loyal servant.
He sat still, closed his eyes, and raised his right hand toward the air.
A strange bone tablet appeared, floating in the void, glowing faintly with a dim, ashy light. It was one of the mysterious tablets left to him by that boy from his forgotten memory.
When he touched its surface, threads of silver energy seeped into his mind.
In an instant, visions flashed before his eyes: battles between giant beings, exploding stars, collapsing worlds… then words appeared, written in a language he had never seen before, yet his mind understood them instantly, as if they had been carved into his soul since the beginning of time:
"Energy Shock Technique – For those who understand chaos."
Ashen felt strange vibrations flow through his body, as if the tablet itself was testing him.
Instead of resisting, he opened his spirit completely.
He had learned in hell that resistance without understanding only leads to destruction.
Information began to pour into his mind like light.
Each line felt like a heartbeat, each drawing planted a thread of power in his blood.
Within moments, he fully understood the technique.
---
The Energy Shock Technique was unlike anything he had ever known.
It wasn't just a fighting method or a skill… it was a whole philosophy of how to understand and control energy.
"All energy is life, and every life can cause a shock. Whoever understands the first pulse understands the final explosion."
He read the words softly, then studied the three described skills carefully:
1. Initial Shock – Concentrates inner energy into a condensed sphere around the user's fist, launched at a speed that pierces air, time, and matter.
2. Grand Shock – Gathers massive energy and releases it as a circular wave of destruction, leaving nothing but ruin behind.
3. Seismic Shock – Keeps energy condensed around both fists, making every strike break down everything it touches—body, spirit, or energy.
Ashen lifted his eyes from the tablet and murmured in his usual calm tone:
"A technique from beyond this world… perfectly suited for me."
Then he began to analyze it.
One thing was clear: the technique didn't depend on any specific type of energy.
In other words, he could fuel it with his blood energy—or even with his feral intent.
The blood on the ground started trembling, responding to his thoughts.
He raised his hand, and the blood around him floated into the air, spiraling around his fist.
The more he focused, the brighter the blood glowed until it became pure red light.
He whispered to himself as if speaking to hell itself:
"Let's see if this shock can truly shatter the world."
---
He clenched his fist.
In that instant, a sphere of bloody light formed around his hand.
It pulsed like a living heart, each beat echoing in the air, as if it was ready to explode at any moment.
When he released it,
it turned into a red beam that tore through the void.
There was no normal sound of explosion—only a silent blast that made the horizon itself tremble.
The result was catastrophic—a distant bloody mountain vanished completely, leaving behind only drifting red dust.
Ashen stared at his hand, stunned.
---
He then trained relentlessly.
Each time he fired the Initial Shock, he changed its path, its intensity, its shape.
By the tenth attempt, it looked like spears.
By the fiftieth, like spiral storms.
By the hundredth, it was no longer a sphere of energy, but a blood arrow piercing everything—even the air seemed to bleed as it passed.
But despite its power, he felt the technique was still incomplete.
Ashen's body no longer desired just power—it craved complete control over it.
He closed his eyes, gathered all his energy, and began practicing the second skill—Grand Shock.
He spread his arms, and the blood around him rose into the air like massive red pillars.
The feral intent boiled with him, waiting to erupt.
Then he drew it all into his body at once—
WOOOOOOOMMM!
A massive circular wave burst out of him, turning into a wall of red flames that swept across the field for countless kilometers.
Every corpse evaporated, every rock turned to ash, and the blood became boiling vapor in the air.
Nothing moved in the field anymore.
Ashen breathed slowly, every cell in his body singing with power.
"So this is the Grand Shock… it feels like the heartbeat of the world itself."
Then he raised both fists, preparing for the third skill.
Bloody energy surrounded him, focusing around his fists like a dense shell of light.
He felt the air disappear and space collapse.
He struck once.
The sky cracked open.
The Seismic Shock wasn't just energy—it was pure destruction, tearing through the very layers of existence.
A vibration shook his body; he gritted his teeth and muttered:
"One mistake… and I'll turn to ash."
But he endured.
He stood amid the red dust, as if the world itself had bowed to him.
---
Days passed without meaning.
Every moment he fought, learned, and experimented.
What shocked him most was how fast his mind now worked.
What used to take him weeks to comprehend, he now understood in hours.
His spirit reacted to the tablet as if it had always known the technique.
He sat silently after a long session and said:
"Is this because of the spiritual embryo?"
He remembered the moment he carved the Rune of Devouring into the embryo, and how its color turned crimson.
He remembered how the two giant eyes melted into it…
Maybe, just maybe, what happened had made him something in between—a human on the outside, but something else within.
He raised his head toward the still-turning hourglass in the sky and said:
"It seems rest time is over."
---
In the distance, the ground began to shake.
Roaring sounds filled the air, followed by a bright red light, then the earth exploded.
From the cracks emerged endless hordes of beasts, larger and more savage than ever before.
Each one carried strange marks, as if born from pure rage.
Ashen stood and looked at them with cold, emotionless eyes—like an empty shell stripped of all human feeling or childhood innocence.
He was nothing but a hollow corpse driven by fire, regret, and revenge.
He raised his hand, his eyes glowing red.
"Let's begin again."
The first beasts charged at him as the blood around him spun into a living storm.
That was only the beginning…
The true shock was yet to come.