Two weeks had passed since the "renovation" of Pela's isolation chamber.
The atmosphere within the 5th Division Headquarters had undergone a rather significant shift. The subterranean corridors—usually cold, rigid, and filled only with the echoing thud of military boots—were now occasionally graced by the soothing chime of a bamboo Angklung or the bizarre, giggling laughter of a modified Akuma echoing through the ventilation shafts.
Faiz Adriansah, the biology grad from Palu, had managed to accomplish something the elite scientists of the 5th Division had deemed impossible: he had given their biological killing machine a "heart."
That morning, the Yokohama sky was a brilliant, deceptive blue, a stark contrast to the dirty work they were about to perform.
In a rusted warehouse district near the shipping port, Faiz sat casually atop a stack of metal shipping containers, sipping his favorite brand of canned black coffee. His custom carbon-fiber combat suit was already looking a little worse for wear, covered in dozens of shallow scratches—a testament to his rapidly increasing field hours.
Down below, in a wide-open clearing between the old warehouses, Pela was "playing."
"Pela, remember the rules," Faiz called down, his voice lazy but firm. "Don't obliterate their internal organs! Tsubasa needs the liver samples intact for his research!"
"Understood, Faiz!" Pela cheered brightly.
Circling Pela were three Beast-type Akuma—massive, hyper-muscular wolves with matted red fur. They snarled, saliva dripping from their jaws as they prepared to pounce. But Pela didn't look scared in the slightest. In her right hand, she held the massive, custom-carved bamboo Gasing (spinning top) Faiz had made for her.
"Spinning Top... Go!"
Pela threw the wooden toy. But she didn't just throw it using physical strength; she manipulated the localized gravity around the object. The heavy bamboo top shot forward with the velocity of a sniper bullet, spinning so violently it created an ear-splitting, high-pitched hum.
WHOOSH! CRUNCH!
The top smashed directly through the skull of the first wolf, ricocheted off the ribs of the second, and shattered the front legs of the third in one perfect, hyper-accelerated curve. Blood sprayed across the dirt, but Pela nimbly skipped backward, dodging the gore while giggling happily.
"Strike!" Pela clapped her hands.
Faiz sighed, crushing his empty coffee can in his grip. "That kid... she treats life-or-death combat like a game of bowling."
Despite his relaxed posture, Faiz was constantly on high alert. His hand never strayed far from the plasma Nunchaku holstered at his waist. He watched Pela through analytical eyes. Her movements were vastly more controlled now. If two weeks ago Pela was an unstable nuclear bomb, today she was a precision-guided missile. Still incredibly lethal, still slightly unhinged, but at least she now understood the difference between friend and foe.
"Good job, Pela," Faiz said, casually dropping from the five-meter-high shipping container. He landed perfectly silently on the asphalt—a physical feat that was becoming increasingly normal for his mutating body. "Let's bag the samples and go home. Kiyoshi is waiting."
Pela trotted over and immediately latched onto Faiz's arm, rubbing her slightly dirt-smudged cheek against his shoulder. "Faiz, Pela is hungry. I want Takoyaki."
"We'll buy some on the way back. But please, don't eat the wooden skewers this time," Faiz sighed, gently patting her messy hair.
They walked toward the extraction van looking exactly like an older brother and his little sister coming home from the park—completely ignoring the mangled corpses of monsters behind them that could have easily slaughtered a platoon of armed soldiers.
Meanwhile, in the Heart of Tokyo.
A vastly more suffocating atmosphere hung heavy in the air at the Supreme Headquarters of the Akuma Hunter Association (AHA).
From the outside, it was a sleek, modern skyscraper. But on the absolute top floor, inside a windowless space known as the "Round Room," the elders and political elites of the organization were gathered. The room was pitch black, illuminated only by a single, harsh spotlight aimed directly at the center of the floor, where Captain Fuse Saki stood at attention.
Standing half a step behind her was Ishikawa Hisoka. He held a silver briefcase containing the 5th Division's monthly reports, but his hands were trembling slightly. The atmospheric pressure in this room was crushing—not from physical gravity like Pela's power, but from the sheer, overwhelming Haki and political intimidation radiating from the old men who held the fate of Japan in their hands.
"Fuse Saki," a deep, gravelly voice echoed from behind the shadowed desk. It was General Yamamoto, the Chairman of the Oversight Committee. "Your Division's report this month indicates a two-hundred percent increase in Akuma extermination efficiency. An extraordinary number."
"Thank you, General," Saki replied smoothly. Her face was an emotionless mask, her steel war fan tucked neatly into her sash.
"However," another voice interrupted—an elderly woman whose voice sounded like grinding sandpaper. "We also received reports regarding the methods you are employing to achieve these numbers. You recruited a foreign civilian infected with an anomalous Akuma gene, and you let Subject 009—that undead puppet—out of her cage."
"Their names are Faiz Adriansah and Pela," Saki corrected, her tone dropping by a few degrees. "They are not 'civilians' or 'puppets.' They are S-Class tactical assets."
"They are TICKING TIME BOMBS!" Yamamoto roared, slamming his fist onto the desk. The sound echoed violently through the massive room. "You are playing with fire, Captain! The Akuma genetics inside that Indonesian boy are highly unstable. We reviewed the security footage of him hospitalizing your Vice-Captain! That eye... that aura... that is not a human power. That is a High-Level Demon currently in hibernation!"
"And the Corpse Girl," another elder chimed in. "She was created to be disposed of once the behavioral experiments concluded, not to be kept as a pet. If those two lose control in the middle of Yokohama, the collateral damage will eclipse any standard Akuma attack we've ever faced. Are you prepared to bear the weight of those sins, Saki?"
Hisoka swallowed hard. Cold sweat rolled down his spine. He subtly glanced at Saki, terrified that his volatile Captain was going to snap and try to decapitate the entire council.
But Saki didn't draw her fan. Instead, she smiled. A thin, arrogant, and utterly condescending smile.
"With all due respect, honorable elders," Saki said, flicking her wrist. SNAP. Her steel fan opened in a flash. "You sit up here in your ivory towers in Tokyo, reading statistics on paper, while my men bleed in the streets of Yokohama every single night. Our old methods—sending baseline humans with firearms and minor bodily modifications—have hit their absolute ceiling. The Akuma are evolving. They are getting faster. They are getting smarter."
Saki took a bold step forward, her eyes piercing the shadows, challenging every elder in the room.
"To kill monsters, we need monsters of our own. But the monsters I hold are different. They possess something the wild Akuma do not. Something that, unfortunately, is beginning to fade from our own human Hunters..." Saki paused dramatically. "...They possess humanity."
"Humanity?" General Yamamoto scoffed loudly. "In demons?"
"Faiz Adriansah possesses an ironclad will and extraordinary self-control. And Pela... she is actually beginning to learn empathy. As long as they are under my direct supervision, they are the sharpest swords Japan has to offer. If you wish to disarm your best weapons in the middle of a war, be my guest. But do not call me crying when Tokyo is leveled to ash because you were too terrified of your own shadows to fight back."
A heavy, suffocating silence blanketed the room. The tension was so thick it could be cut with a knife.
"Very well," Yamamoto finally spoke, his tone exhausted but laced with a lethal threat. "We will allow you to continue playing with your new toys for now, Saki. But mark my words: If they spill the blood of a single innocent human... the execution order will be issued immediately. Not just for them, but for you as well."
"Understood," Saki offered a shallow, mocking bow, immediately turning on her heel. "Come, Hisoka. We're going home."
They walked out of the AHA headquarters in total silence. Hisoka didn't dare let out a breath of relief until they were safely sealed inside the armored black limousine heading back to Yokohama.
Hisoka stared at Saki, who was massaging her temples as she watched the Tokyo skyline blur past the tinted windows.
"Captain..." Hisoka started hesitantly.
"What?"
"The Board's question back there... it's actually something I've been wondering myself," Hisoka admitted, bracing himself. "I acknowledge Faiz is strong. Incredibly strong. But why are you defending him so fiercely? I mean, he is a massive liability. If that 'Thing' inside him ever fully takes the wheel, who could possibly stop him? Even you might not be able to."
Saki slowly turned her head. She didn't answer immediately. She pulled a slim cigarette from her case, lit it, and exhaled a long plume of gray smoke.
"Hisoka. Do you know why the other Divisions call me the 'Demon Queen'?"
"Because of... your absolute strength and ruthlessness?"
"No. Because I know exactly what it feels like to be hated and feared by the people you are trying to protect," Saki said, her eyes distant. "This world doesn't need pure, white-robed heroes anymore, Hisoka. It needs bastards who are willing to dirty their own hands so the innocent can sleep soundly at night."
Saki leaned forward, her gaze intense. "Faiz... he reminds me of my past. He has pure darkness living inside him. But he fights it, every single second of every day, refusing to drown in it. He adamantly rejects becoming a monster, even though giving in would be the easiest path. That desperate desire to remain 'human' makes him vastly more valuable than a thousand Hunters who only fight for a paycheck or a promotion."
Saki crushed her cigarette into the ashtray.
"Besides," Saki smirked, her sly, dangerous smile returning. "I want to see the absolute limit of his evolution. Will he become the savior of humanity... or the new Demon King? Either way, isn't that a fascinating show to watch?"
Hisoka could only shake his head. "You really are crazy, Captain."
"Thank you for the compliment."
Suddenly, the encrypted comms tablet mounted on the dashboard blared a shrill alarm. Saki snatched it up. The face of the Division 5 central operator appeared, pale and panicked.
"Captain! Emergency! An A-Class energy signature just manifested in Sector 9! An abandoned mansion in the Yamate Hills!"
"A-Class?!" Saki frowned deeply. "Who is the closest active unit?"
"Unit Faiz and Pela are currently driving directly past that route on their way back to base!"
Saki's eyes widened in horror. "Patch me through to them! NOW!"
Yamate Hills, Outskirts of Yokohama
The extraction van slammed on its brakes, screeching to a halt in front of a towering, rusted iron gate. Beyond the gate sat a massive, European-style mansion that had been abandoned since the first Akuma outbreaks five years ago. Thick, dead ivy choked the stone walls, and imposing gargoyle statues lined the overgrown courtyard, staring blankly at the intruders.
"Faiz-san," Kiyoshi stammered, his hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. "The van's sensors are picking up an impossibly dense Akuma energy wave from inside that house. This... this is on a completely different scale than the wolves."
Faiz slid the van door open and stepped out onto the cracked pavement. He stared up at the looming mansion. His enhanced senses picked up a very distinct, nauseating scent. Sulfur, ancient dust, and... the coppery tang of old, dried blood.
"Yeah. I can feel it," Faiz muttered.
"Faiz..." Pela tugged anxiously on the hem of his jacket. Her cheerful demeanor had completely vanished, replaced by a tense, feral alertness. Her sharp teeth ground together. "Something strong is in there. Really strong. It smells like... old rocks."
Faiz tapped his earpiece. "Saki. We are on-site. What are your orders?"
Saki's voice came through heavily distorted, drowning in static interference from the massive energy field. "Faiz... fall back... it's a trap... A-Class... Gargoyle... do not engage..."
"The signal is garbage," Faiz grumbled, tapping the earpiece. "Gargoyle? Sounds like a massive headache."
"Pela doesn't like this place," the girl hissed, hiding behind him. "Pela wants to go home."
"If we leave it alone, it's going to wander down into the city, Pela," Faiz said calmly, though his heart was hammering against his ribs. His logical researcher's mind screamed at him to run, but the other instinct inside his blood was practically vibrating with a terrifying excitement. "We'll just do a quick recon. If it's too dangerous, we run. Kiyoshi, keep the engine running."
"R-Right!"
Faiz and Pela vaulted over the rusted gates. They waded through the waist-high dead grass of the courtyard. The silence was unnatural. No crickets, no wind. Total sensory deprivation.
They reached the heavy oak double doors of the mansion. They were slightly ajar, as if inviting them in.
"Ready, Pela?" Faiz drew both of his plasma Nunchaku.
Pela nodded, her eyes bleeding into pitch-black voids. The localized gravity around her began to warp, causing loose pebbles to float inches off the ground.
Faiz kicked the doors open, and they stepped into the grand foyer.
It was cavernous, boasting a high ceiling adorned with a shattered crystal chandelier. A grand, sweeping staircase dominated the center of the room. But it wasn't the architecture that drew their attention.
Sitting perched on the second-floor balcony railing, looking down at them, was a monster.
It was massive—easily ten feet tall if it stood up straight. Its entire body appeared to be carved from dense, jagged gray granite. Massive, leathery bat-like wings were folded behind its back, and its face was a classic, demonic visage complete with curved stone horns and glowing yellow eyes.
An A-Class Construct-Type Akuma: The Gargoyle. Known for their near-impenetrable defense and high intelligence.
The creature didn't attack. It simply stared down at them, its yellow eyes burning in the gloom.
"Fascinating..." the Gargoyle spoke. Its voice was impossibly deep and grating, like two massive boulders grinding against each other. "Two children of the Akuma... walking on two legs, wearing human clothes, and serving them like obedient guard dogs."
Faiz tightened his grip on his batons. "You can talk? That makes things easier. Surrender, or we destroy you."
The Gargoyle let out a booming laugh that shook the dust from the rafters.
It casually stepped off the balcony, plummeting twenty feet.
BOOM!
The marble floor shattered upon impact, creating a massive crater. The shockwave was so violent Faiz had to drop his center of gravity just to keep from being blown backward.
The creature stood up to its full, terrifying height. It leaned forward, sniffing the air.
"Your scent..." The Gargoyle pointed a massive stone talon at Pela. "You... a corpse forcibly reanimated. A lost soul trapped in a rotting vessel."
Then, it pointed its talon squarely at Faiz. "And you... the vessel for the slumbering King. Why? Why do you use the noble blood of the Akuma to protect the weak, pathetic cattle known as humanity? Do you have no pride as the superior race?"
Faiz scoffed loudly. "Noble blood? Superior race? Don't make me laugh. You're all just failed genetic mutations ruining the ecosystem. And me...?" Faiz locked eyes with the towering beast. "...I am human. My name is Faiz Adriansah. Remember that before I reduce you to gravel."
"Human?" The Gargoyle sneered, its stone face twisting into a mocking grin. "You lie to yourself, boy. Let me show you reality."
"PELA! ATTACK!" Faiz roared.
Without a second of hesitation, Pela launched herself forward. "DON'T MAKE FUN OF FAIZ!"
She vaulted high into the air, thrusting both her palms down toward the monster. "Gravity Press: 100 Times!"
A visible shockwave of purple gravity crashed down directly onto the Gargoyle's shoulders. Under normal circumstances, this attack was dense enough to compress a military tank into a metal pancake. The floor beneath the Gargoyle instantly collapsed, cratering another three feet into the earth.
But the Gargoyle remained standing. It merely bent its knees slightly.
"A decent weight," the Gargoyle commented lazily. "But stone does not feel pain."
Pela's eyes widened in sheer disbelief. "Im...possible..."
The Gargoyle snapped its massive stone wings open with blinding speed. The heavy, jagged wing swatted Pela out of the air like a fly.
WHAM!
The sickening sound of the impact echoed through the hall. Pela was launched across the foyer with the velocity of a baseball, smashing violently into a thick concrete pillar. The pillar shattered, burying her small body under a pile of heavy rubble.
"PELA!" Faiz screamed.
"Your turn, traitor," the Gargoyle rumbled.
Before Faiz could blink, the massive stone beast crossed the room, its speed completely defying its massive weight.
Operating purely on the reflexive muscle memory drilled into him by Hisoka and Saki, Faiz spun his Nunchaku, bringing the heavy plasma baton down directly onto the Gargoyle's face.
CLANG!
Sparks erupted in a blinding flash. It felt like striking a solid steel vault. The kinetic recoil shot up Faiz's arm, instantly numbing his shoulder. His custom-made AHA weapon bent wildly out of shape.
"Weak," the Gargoyle muttered, backhanding Faiz effortlessly.
Faiz tried to cross his arms to block, but the sheer physical force was insurmountable.
CRACK.
The bones in his left forearm splintered. He was blown backward, skipping across the marble floor and tumbling through the shattered glass of the chandelier.
"Guh!" Faiz vomited a mouthful of blood. The room was spinning violently.
He struggled to push himself up on one arm, looking desperately toward the rubble where Pela had fallen. There was no movement. Just her small, pale hand sticking out from the rocks, motionless, still tightly clutching her ruined teddy bear.
A dark, boiling rage ignited in Faiz's chest. This wasn't the cold, calculated anger of a researcher. This was a scalding, primal fury that began to incinerate his rational thoughts.
"What... did you do... to her..." Faiz hissed, blood dripping from his chin onto the ruined marble.
The Gargoyle simply opened its massive maw. Deep within its stone throat, a bright orange light began to gather. A high-frequency, ear-splitting hum filled the room, shattering the remaining intact windows of the mansion.
"Perish along with your shame," the Gargoyle commanded.
SONAR BEAM!
A hyper-condensed beam of sonic vibration erupted from its mouth. It wasn't a laser of heat; it was pure kinetic frequency, designed to literally vibrate molecules apart at a sub-atomic level.
Faiz didn't even have time to flinch.
VZZZZZZZZZ!
The beam swallowed Faiz entirely. It punched straight through the mansion walls behind him, tore through the thick forest on the hillside, and struck three abandoned office buildings in the distance, instantly vaporizing them into clouds of fine dust.
The path the beam carved was completely immaculate. The floor, the walls, the ceiling—everything within its trajectory was simply erased from existence.
The Gargoyle clamped its jaws shut, thin wisps of smoke trailing from its teeth. It looked down the massive, dust-filled trench it had just carved through the earth. There was absolutely no sign of life.
"Disappointing," the Gargoyle grumbled. It turned around, intending to dig Pela out of the rubble to consume her core.
However.
Thump-thump.
A heartbeat echoed from the dust. It wasn't a normal heartbeat. It sounded like heavy war drums being beaten inside a vacuum.
The Gargoyle froze. Its sensitive ears picked up the distinct sound of footsteps casually walking out of the thick dust cloud at the end of the trench.
"Oi... you overgrown pebble..."
The voice was different. It was Faiz's voice, but layered heavily underneath it was a raspy, demonic growl dripping with pure, unadulterated malice.
From the swirling dust, a silhouette emerged.
The entire upper half of Faiz's combat suit had been completely vaporized by the Sonar Beam. His exposed skin was burning a bright, unnatural crimson, as if magma were flowing just beneath his flesh. Thick, jagged black veins pulsed violently across his torso, forming terrifying, abstract runic patterns.
The deep lacerations on his face were knitting themselves closed at a speed visible to the naked eye. His shattered left arm gave a sickening CRACK as the bones forcefully snapped themselves back into perfect alignment.
Faiz slowly raised his head.
His right eye was still human brown. But his left eye... it was no longer just a glowing red iris. The sclera had turned as pitch-black as the void, and the blood-red pupil burned so fiercely it left a trail of light in the air as he moved.
On the left side of his head, his hair floated wildly from the static energy, and a small, jagged bone spur had pierced through the skin of his forehead—a demonic horn just beginning to grow.
"Who did you just call weak?" Faiz asked. Or rather, The Half-Crazy Demon asked.
Deep within his subconscious, D.Faiz was roaring with maniacal laughter, completely hijacking the pain receptors and converting the agony into pure, explosive adrenaline.
Output Level: 60% Active.
The Gargoyle turned fully to face him, its yellow eyes narrowing. For the first time in centuries, the ancient stone monster felt an emotion it hadn't experienced since its creation.
Hesitation.
"You... survived that attack?"
Faiz flashed a wide, unhinged grin, revealing teeth that had elongated into sharp fangs. He stretched his hands out, his fingernails rapidly extending into thick, blackened claws.
"Survived?" Faiz laughed, the demonic echo vibrating through the ruined hall. "I just woke up, you bastard."
Faiz bent his knees slightly. The concrete beneath his feet instantly cratered from the sheer kinetic pressure of his stance.
"Now... it's my turn to play bowling with your ugly stone head!"
BOOM!
Faiz vanished from sight. Not because he teleported, but because he had just broken the sound barrier from a standstill.
The real fight had only just begun.