Chapter 427: Face the Fire!
Late autumn. Mid-morning.
Ren Shiroki hoisted his rucksack, traded a few firm promises with the Hub crew,
and stepped out to begin the next leg of his pilgrimage. Destination: The
Inside.
Meanwhile, across town at the Motobe-ryu Jujutsu Dojo, another rare guest had
arrived—[THE DEVIL LANCE] Kuroki Gensai.
The bearded titan sat cross-legged on the polished cedar boards, his dark karate
gi draped under a weathered trench coat. His shoes were placed neatly by the
entrance. Across from him sat the master of the house, Motobe Izo.
The two veterans sipped their steaming green tea in silence.
Motobe recounted the conversation he had shared with Ren Shiroki the previous
afternoon.
"Hm..."
Kuroki listened without a word, sipping his tea.
Not long ago, he had leveled a direct challenge at the young man: What kind of
combatant do you intend to be? What do you seek? Wealth? Power? Or merely
battle?
At the time, Ren hadn't given him a clean verbal answer.
Yet now, after traveling this far and surviving match after match, the young
man's philosophy had crystallized. Ren sought the absolute definition of
"Strength." He understood the concept of "Difficulty," but he did not run from
it. He chose to face the fire head-on, throwing himself into the teeth of danger
to drag out the truth.
"I see," Kuroki murmured, exhaling slowly. "Hm. That is an answer I, Kuroki, can
respect."
Kuroki paused, his eyes narrowing slightly as he met Motobe's gaze.
"Motobe-dono... could you defeat Ren Shiroki?"
Motobe took a slow sip of tea, letting the steam warm his mustache. He pondered
the question, then answered with brutal honesty. "If you put me in the Pit under
standard arena rules... I'm not sure I'd crawl out alive."
"Is that so?"
Kuroki drained his cup and stood up. He walked to the entrance, slid on his
wooden sandals, and hoisted a compact travel pack over his shoulder. Tucked
inside his trench coat was his own metal Secret Key Card—identical to Ren's,
save for the digital engraving of the Six Insects district.
"Then it is time I fulfilled my own contract."
The Devil Lance stepped through the door, his heavy strides carrying him
steadily toward The Inside.
Roughly an hour later.
Ren Shiroki arrived at the outer buffer zone surrounding the lawless territory.
It was a decaying ghost town. The air smelled of rust, stagnant water, and soot.
This was not yet The Inside proper, but because it directly bordered the Ward,
outlaws and fugitives frequently slipped across the line, causing the
neighborhood to wither away over the decades.
Most of the original residents had fled. No developers dared to invest. Slowly,
the perimeter had become a concrete wasteland—quiet, empty, and rotting under
the autumn sun.
Tap, tap, tap.
Ren walked at an easy, rhythmic pace.
Up ahead, a colossal wall loomed against the skyline, easily fifteen meters
high. Looking closer, it wasn't merely a wall; it was a fortress-like block of
monolithic, multi-story concrete structures with sealed, slit-like windows—half
prison, half military barricade. The weathered surface bore layers of patches
and steel reinforcement plates, evidence of decades of maintenance by the
Metropolitan Police Department.
Ren emerged from the desolate streets and stepped before the massive checkpoint:
The Gate of the Three Wolves.
The gate itself was an industrial freight-bay entrance, large enough to fit an
eighteen-wheeler. Outside sat an armored guard station with police barricades,
searchlights, and temporary military-grade tents.
Normally, the detachment posted here was small. The MPD couldn't control the
Ward anyway, and the outlaws inside rarely bothered to pick fights with the
police at the perimeter. But today, the checkpoint was crawling with heavily
armed tactical units.
As Ren approached with his pack, several officers moved to intercept him. But
before they could draw their sidearms, two familiar voices called out.
"Hold your fire! He's with us! Stand down!"
Inspector Morio Sonoda and Detective Ichika Iori stepped out from the main
security tent.
Iori waved off the tactical officers, her sharp, shark-toothed grin on full
display beneath her crooked cowlick. She leaned forward, hands on her hips. "You
actually showed up, Shiroki-kun... You, that freak Oliva—I swear, you martial
arts maniacs can't stay away from trouble!"
She smirked. "Still, you guys are doing the MPD a massive favor. Thanks for
coming."
Ren blinked. "So Mr. Unchained is already inside?"
He knew Oliva had been tracking IDEAL using Doyle as an informant, but hearing
it confirmed meant the American titan had secured his own key card. As Oliva had
said: "I will never allow anyone to be freer than me."
The Freest Man on Earth had invaded the Freest City on Earth.
"Nice. That's perfect!" Ren chuckled.
Sonoda looked at Ren's eager expression and gave up trying to talk him out of
it. He stepped forward and laid out the situation.
"The origins of The Inside go back to the Bakumatsu period—a settlement built by
rogue Shogunate soldiers and outcasts. Over the years, it metastasized into a
total black hole. Terrorists, murderers, undocumented immigrants, syndicate
hitmen... and the people born within the walls who know no other world."
Sonoda held up two fingers. "Surface and subterranean sectors combined...
roughly two hundred thousand people."
Ren raised an eyebrow. "Two hundred thousand?"
"That's larger than several official wards in Tokyo," Sonoda said grimly. "The
geographic footprint isn't huge, which means the population density is
terrifying."
"And right now, it's a powder keg."
Sonoda lowered his voice. "With covert backing from Katsumasa Hayami of Toyo
Electric, the syndicates IDEAL and The Worm have stirred up the local street
lords. They're planning an armed takeover to seize total control of the Ward's
infrastructure."
"If they spark an all-out riot, two hundred thousand desperate people will surge
toward the perimeter. No barricade on earth could hold that back. It would be
the worst urban disaster in Japanese history."
"Economists suspect Toyo Electric wants to use the chaos to crash the markets
and manipulate stock prices to buy up the ruins."
Sonoda looked exhausted. He wasn't a hero; he was just an honest detective who
wanted his city to survive. He gestured toward an elderly female officer
standing near the barricade. She had a sharp hawk-nose, severe eyes, and a
posture coiled with explosive martial torque.
"That's Madam Hawk from the restructured Secret Service Division. An elite Kenpo
master. Even with her team and our special tactical squads, the odds are
garbage."
Sonoda reached out, gripping Ren's hand tightly. "I shouldn't be asking this of
an eighteen-year-old kid... but whether you're here for the fight or to help us
out, thank you, Shiroki-kun. Please... watch your back."
"I can't give you a tactical plan. But if you need an extraction or fresh intel,
radio me immediately."
Ren felt a warm, slightly embarrassed grin touch his face. "Sonoda-aniki, don't
worry about it."
He looked toward the dark entrance of the gate. "A crisis where the odds are
garbage? That just means the enemies waiting inside are the real deal."
"If you want to see true strength, you have to face the fire!"
Madam Hawk turned her sharp gaze toward him. "Young man... you're throwing
yourself into hell. What do you hope to gain from this mess?"
Ren smiled—bright, effortless, and completely transparent. "A pilgrimage. To
temper my fists, and finally learn what it means to be strong. That's all."
With that, Ren bid the police farewell.
He walked through the reinforced security gate and entered the long, shadowed
tunnel of the Three Wolves Checkpoint.
The corridor was nearly a hundred meters long, lit by flickering emergency
bulbs. Bunk rooms and storage lockers lined the walls, used by the border guards
for shift rotations.
Ahead, at the far end of the tunnel, a pale rectangle of sunlight bled through.
Meanwhile, at the Soul Combat Hub...
Ohma Tokita and Kazuo Yamashita were in the middle of an afternoon training
block. Ohma was running footwork drills on the mats when Fusui casually
mentioned that Ren had already left for the Ward.
"Tsk. He really went..."
Ohma stopped, wiping the sweat from his neck with a towel. As a native of The
Inside, the thought of his old stomping grounds brought back a wave of
complicated memories.
"That place hasn't changed a bit in twenty years. Back then, when the turf wars
got too bloody, even Niko would grab me by the scruff of the neck and drag me
'outside' to lie low until the fires burned out."
Ohma smirked, a flicker of nostalgia in his eyes. "Honestly... hearing about it
makes my blood itch."
Kazuo Yamashita was jogging on the treadmill, gasping for air. He looked over,
worried. "It sounds terrifying... But Shiroki-kun isn't reckless, right? He'll
definitely keep his head down and scout carefully!"
[The Inside — Three Wolves Sector Terminal]
CLATTER-CLANG!
A massive pair of hands seized the chain of the heavy corrugated roll-up gate,
yanking it upward with explosive force. Sunlight flooded the tunnel.
Ren Shiroki stepped out into the open air of The Inside.
The vista before him was a sprawling, chaotic sprawl of makeshift architecture.
Weathered corrugated tin, cracked cinderblocks, and tangled electrical wires
stretched as far as the eye could see. Closer to the gate, open-air black
markets were in full swing—vendors selling everything from canned rations and
bootleg medicine to machetes, tactical gear, and assault rifles.
And directly in front of the gate... sat an armed garrison.
Just as Sonoda had warned, IDEAL and the Worm had assembled their forward
vanguard right at the border. Nearly a hundred outlaws—hardened mercenaries,
heavily tattooed syndicate enforcers, and local killers—were lounging around
burning oil drums and technical trucks.
When the gate rattled open, every single head snapped around. A hundred pairs of
murderous eyes locked onto the solitary youth carrying a rucksack.
"Phew..."
Ren exhaled a cloud of warm air. He didn't reach for a weapon. He casually swung
his rucksack off his shoulder and set it down neatly in a dry corner of the
tunnel entrance.
Then, he stepped forward, cracked his neck—pop, pop—and looked at the hundred
armed thugs with a wide, predatory grin.
"You boys look like you're waiting for a dance."
The next millisecond—
VROOM!
Ren pivoted, driving his heel laterally into the reinforced concrete wall of the
gateway.
BOOM—!!
A thunderous shockwave tore through the alley. A massive, cratered fracture
imploded into the concrete, sending chunks of masonry and dust raining down onto
the sand.
It was a blatant, unapologetic declaration of war. The sheer arrogance of it
snapped the thugs' nerves like dry twigs.
Ren turned back, his single right eye burning with an unholy, crimson light that
left two vivid light-trails in the swirling dust.
[SATSUI NO HADO]—UNLEASHED!
The air warped. The killing intent was so thick it smelled of copper and burning
iron.
Ren beckoned the hundred outlaws forward with a single flick of his fingers.
"Nice. That's perfect!"
"Come get some, boys! We're going to paint this street red until you've had your
fill!!"
☆☆☆
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