filthy, blood-stained streets of Hell, Aiden Vincent walked with visible difficulty. His soul had taken heavy damage during the brutal clash with Alastor. He was deliberately avoiding his idle transfiguration for now. While manipulating his soul to reconstruct damaged areas could help, the cost had doubled. Every use drained him twice as hard.
What truly bothered him, however, was his newly acquired Granite Cannon. Using that eye came with a maddening drawback — he had to sacrifice fifty percent of his vision just to fire it. He wasn't exactly thrilled. Sure, the raw destructive firepower felt good, but he would find a way to fix its flaws. He always did.
"Okay… okay," he muttered, voice hoarse. "The cost of a simple technique is brutal. In exchange, I lost half my cursed energy for a moment and felt completely drugged…"
He suddenly bent over and vomited a thick splatter of blood onto the cracked pavement. The color was disturbingly off — a sickening mix of deep purple and black.
"What the fuck…?" Aiden whispered, crouching down to touch the puddle. The texture felt wrong, almost oily. He remembered vividly that both he and Mahito had always bled red. So what the hell was happening to him now?
"Hey, you alright there?" a feminine voice called out.
Aiden turned slowly. Standing a few meters away was an imp who looked vaguely familiar. He didn't give it much thought. Instead, he forced himself back to his feet and began applying his soul manipulation technique on himself, desperately trying to patch up the worst of the damage.
"Yeah, yeah… I think I just took some bad drugs or something," he lied casually, feeling his cursed energy being drained at double the normal rate. The parts of his soul that were beyond repair were being recycled into something else — something darker.
"Dude, I've done plenty of drugs. I know when someone's tweaking," the imp replied, surprisingly helpful for a place like Hell. She gently guided Aiden toward a nearby bench. The moment she touched him, he let out a sharp groan of pain.
"What's your name?" Aiden asked, opening one eye to look at her properly.
"Barbie Wire," she answered, pulling out a half-eaten sandwich and offering it to him. He politely declined.
"So she's Blitzo's sister…" he thought internally, trying to roll his shoulder only to feel a sharp, stabbing pain shoot through it. He really was inexperienced in real fights. He had bet everything on that Granite Cannon and a binding vow born in a single moment of pure epiphany.
"You get into a bar fight with a bunch of biker demons or something?" Barbie asked, eyeing his torn-up clothes.
Aiden let out a long sigh as he looked down at his new outfit. It looked cool, sure, but it wasn't his taste at all. He had basically just copied Ryu's style on impulse.
"…Yeah, something like that. My shirt caught fire from a Molotov and I stole this jacket afterward," he replied calmly, feeling his muscles slowly knit themselves back together.
"Rough. Well, see you around," Barbie said with a casual shrug, turning to leave without another word. Aiden now owed her one.
"I'm just… me," he muttered to himself, staring at his reflection in a cracked storefront window. Mahito's appearance was beautiful in its own twisted way, but he wanted to be himself again. Raising a hand to his face, he began reshaping it with deliberate care.
He crafted something new — a fusion of his old human self with Mahito's unique traits and the raw demonic essence of Hell. His hands became pitch black like charred coal, yet covered in a soft, beast-like fur similar to his legs. Two sharp horns curved from his forehead. Visible stitches ran across parts of his body like living seams. A bold mark reading **"SOUL MASTER"** was now etched into the side of his abdomen. A long, dangerous harpoon-like tail swayed behind him. He needed this new look to avoid drawing too much unwanted attention from Overlords and freaks like Sir Pentious.
"Welcome back… Aiden Vincent," he said quietly, keeping Mahito's smooth voice for now.
He stared at his new reflection. The transformation had consumed a massive amount of cursed energy, but it was worth it.
"Well, at least my eye is back to normal. Now I just need to figure out how to fix that damn Granite Cannon…"
His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a sharp, terrified scream coming from a nearby alley.
Aiden's head snapped toward the sound. There, in the shadows, he saw Barbie being assaulted by a group of sinners.
"Well… someone has to lend a hand eventually," he whispered coldly.
He modified his clothes with a thought, shifting them into something closer to exorcist attire, and began walking forward with deliberate, unhurried steps — as if he were merely passing by.
"Come on, sweetheart, we're gonna have so much fun," growled a massive bull-like sinner, pinning Barbie down. "We sinners got connections, you know."
"Let me go, you piece of shit!" Barbie screamed, struggling violently.
"Time to play with our new pri—"
The bull demon never finished his sentence. In an instant, half his torso was sliced open with horrifying precision. He let out a raw, agonized scream, clutching the gaping wound as blood sprayed across the alley walls.
A few meters away, Aiden stood calmly. A long, razor-sharp blade — reminiscent of Kars' — protruded from the side of his own body like a living weapon. In that moment, a cold realization hit him: he had been blindly copying Mahito's fighting style. That had to change. He needed his own technique, his own path. Carmilla was a master of close-quarters combat, and he had only beaten her by sheer luck. Angelic steel could still hurt him badly.
"Even though I'm still human…" Aiden said softly, a dangerous smirk forming on his lips, "I can't deny the simple truth… I'm special."
He paused, then facepalmed hard.
"I really just made that lame-ass Jujutsu Kaisen Shibuya arc opening joke…" he groaned, dying internally from second-hand embarrassment.
You are special~
---
The destiny of this world was walking an uncertain path. God would no longer intervene directly. He simply watched His own grand spectacle from afar. He could not create curses — that would unleash unprecedented chaos. The human world was already overflowing with evil. The mere existence of Aiden Vincent was already an anomaly.
He could be considered equal to Gabriel in a way — both had felt the direct touch of God upon their souls. But the question remained: how would each of them act when the time to fight finally came?
Until then, Aiden had to develop himself as much as possible… to reach that Special Grade Plus level — the same terrifying height occupied by monsters like Sukuna and Gojo.