Just as most people watched the meteor continue its relentless descent—utterly powerless to stop it and on the verge of giving up—a deep, thunderous roar suddenly erupted from within a massive crater.
Only then did everyone realize they had been overlooking an existence of overwhelming strength all along.
If anyone else had claimed they could smash a meteor apart with just a few punches, the crowd would have mocked them without mercy.
But when those words came from that particular oni, no one present doubted him—or thought he was bragging.
After all, this was the same being who had not long ago split the first falling star in half, then caught the second one with his bare hands. Even if the third meteor was larger, it wasn't entirely impossible that he could stop it as well.
Ren Kuroda's words were like a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart, instantly reigniting everyone's hope of survival. And when they saw that the second meteor at the bottom of the crater was rapidly cracking and shrinking, their confidence only grew stronger.
With a single sentence stabilizing everyone's shaken emotions, Ren was still locked in combat with the second meteor down in the crater.
To be honest, the reason he'd said that was simply to keep the people above from mentally collapsing.
As for whether he could actually stop the third, even larger meteor—Ren himself had no real confidence.
But in a situation like this, he had no choice but to say it.
Abe no Seimei had paid a tremendous price to alter the trajectories of three celestial bodies in succession—massive yōki consumption, even severe backlash.
But was Ren any better off?
Maintaining Half-Oni Transformation and Blade Spirit Release simultaneously was already an enormous burden on his body. And from the very beginning, he'd been fighting at peak intensity without pause. Blocking two meteors back-to-back had drained him far more than he let on.
And setting aside whether he could stop the third meteor at all, there was still the question of whether the people outside could even hold out long enough for him to finish crushing the second one.
Though the noise outside had been nonstop, Ren could clearly sense that many of the weaker yōkai were already completely exhausted.
If this continued, the meteor's descent would inevitably accelerate.
Even if he'd stabilized their mental state, the reality was that the meteor's fall was only going to get faster.
"…No idea what'll happen if I do this," Ren muttered to himself."But even if things get worse—can they really get worse than this?"
After a moment's thought, Ren continued holding the meteor—now nearly shattered—up with one hand, while the other stopped punching and instead reached into the void itself.
When his hand emerged again, it was gripping a massive gourd.
Biting open the stopper of the Endless Wine Gourd, Ren hoisted it with one hand and began pouring wildly into his mouth.
This time, he showed no restraint.
He didn't care what would happen if he drank himself senseless.
At this point, what he lacked wasn't reason—it was power.
Reason had become meaningless.
What he needed now was the kind of strength that could crush everything.
A torrent of fine wine poured down his throat like an inverted Milky Way. The gourd seemed bottomless—despite pouring out far more liquid than its size should allow, it showed no sign of running dry.
As for Ren himself, after just a few seconds of this reckless drinking, his consciousness began to blur.
Even so, he didn't stop.
As vast amounts of alcohol flooded into him, his yōki began to swell visibly, rising at an astonishing rate.
What had been SS−rank yōki surged past SS, climbing straight into the realm of SS+!
A yōki storm like a raging tornado exploded upward from the depths of the crater. The sheer pressure of that overwhelming power caused many of the weaker yōkai on the surface to collapse to the ground, legs giving out beneath them.
The yōki wasn't even directed at them.
And yet, with such terrifying power existing so close by, the suffocating pressure alone was enough to steal their breath.
Even Ren himself had never experienced power like this before.
Unfortunately, he was in no state to appreciate it.
With massive amounts of ultra-pure alcohol in his system, even someone who claimed they could drink a thousand cups without getting drunk would be wasted by now—let alone Ren, who wasn't especially good with alcohol to begin with.
Through the oni race's unique Fear conversion, the alcohol rapidly transformed into yōki. The more he drank, the more violently drunk he became—and the stronger he grew.
Now Ren was still standing, but his consciousness was completely muddled.
In his hazy state, all he felt was that the giant rock he was holding was annoying—it was getting in the way of his drinking.
He gently set the Endless Wine Gourd by his feet.
Left hand bracing the meteor, right hand clenched into a fist, Ren threw a single punch—
"BOOOOM—!"
A deafening, earth-shattering crack rang out as massive fissures spread across the meteor's entire surface. The rock that had required considerable effort to destroy while Ren was sober was now obliterated by a single punch.
One blow shattered a meteor that still retained nearly half its mass. The shockwave alone, after pulverizing the stone, continued surging skyward.
With the obstruction overhead gone, Ren casually picked up the Endless Wine Gourd again, popped the stopper, and resumed his full-on drunkard mode, guzzling without restraint—completely ignoring the third meteor still falling from the sky.
At first, everyone was ecstatic upon seeing Ren destroy the second meteor so effortlessly, along with the terrifying yōki radiating from his body.
With his current strength, his earlier words clearly hadn't been empty bravado. Even if the third meteor was much larger, it should've been nothing more than a few punches.
But just as everyone began eagerly awaiting Ren to step in and save them—
They realized that this guy was down in the crater drinking like his life depended on it, visibly smashed out of his mind.
This was exactly what Ren had feared from the beginning.
"Life-Thirsting Drunk" could massively boost combat power—but alcohol numbed the brain, stripping away clear thought.
For a master swordsman, losing clarity of mind was absolutely fatal. No matter how strong you were, without control, disaster was inevitable. Shuten Dōji himself was the perfect cautionary tale.
But in that situation, Ren truly had no better option.
Without chugging massive amounts of alcohol, even he couldn't stop the third meteor.
"Ren-sama, please pull yourself together! Wake up—everyone's still counting on you!"
One glance at his condition was enough for Nekomata and the others to realize that Ren had used the same Fear he'd activated during his fight with the Earth Spider.
But back then, even drunk, Ren hadn't been anywhere near this bad—he hadn't completely lost his ability to think.
They still remembered that after the battle with the Earth Spider, Ren had officially shared drinks with the yōkai of Kidōin for the first time.
The ceremonial wine they drank that night came from this very Endless Wine Gourd.
At first, Tearai-Oni and Amanojaku had secretly mocked Ren—an oni with such terrible alcohol tolerance.
But after they drank it themselves, they realized the truth.
It wasn't that Ren couldn't drink.
It was that the wine from the Endless Wine Gourd was absolutely vicious.
The so-called ceremonial exchange meant the lord drank from a large cup, while subordinates drank from smaller ones—a sign of loyalty and hierarchy.
Yet after draining their small cups, most of the yōkai collapsed unconscious on the spot. Only a handful of senior cadres managed to stay awake.
Ren, on the other hand, had downed a full large cup and remained perfectly composed.
That was when they understood.
This wasn't ordinary alcohol.
It was wine produced by an SS-rank item—on a completely different level from anything in the mortal world.
Seeing Ren now, drunk beyond belief, Nekomata and the others understood exactly why he was in this state.
But they had no way to wake him.
Trying to rouse a drunk person was hard enough—trying to wake a drunken monster who was currently the strongest being on the battlefield was downright terrifying. If he went berserk, injuries would be the least of their worries.
"Hey… what's your lord most afraid of?""If you want to sober up a drunk, talking about what they fear works best."
As seasoned drinkers, Aotabō and Kejōrō offered a suggestion. Even someone completely wasted could snap back to clarity for a moment if they heard something they truly cared about.
But after hearing that, Samurai Spirit, Nekomata, and the others just stared at each other blankly.
Was there… anything Ren-sama was afraid of?
Within Kidōin, Ren had always been synonymous with invincibility.
He was powerful, compassionate, and possessed wisdom far beyond their reach.
Could someone like that really fear anything?
"…Do you think Tenjoin Ayami-sama counts?""Ren-sama is still a high school student, right? If Ayami-sama found out that he was drinking at this age—and got this drunk…"
"…Would that scare him?"
As cadres who were frequently summoned by Ren to other worlds, they knew more than most.
They knew that Ren-sama had a mother.
And more importantly—
They knew he cared about her deeply…and was absolutely terrified of her.