The scarlet light of Hell's sky bled across the infernal city like a fresh wound, casting an oppressive crimson glow over everything it touched. Yet inside a dusty, forgotten office in one of Pentagram City's decaying buildings, the world felt strangely muted. Aiden lay slumped over an old wooden desk, using his crossed arms as a makeshift pillow. A low, irritated groan escaped his lips as the cursed energy humming through his veins finally dragged him back to consciousness.
He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand, blinking slowly.
"Okay… Not a fucking nightmare after all," Aiden muttered, voice thick with exhaustion. He rolled his neck, hearing several sharp cracks. The ache in his muscles was real. The stench of sulfur and blood in the air was real. This was Hell.
He had plans—ambitious, ruthless plans. The rules of this world could be bent, and he intended to break them wide open. Contracts were the currency of power here, and he would exploit every loophole. Losing limbs was apparently possible in this universe; that meant genetic material, cloning potential… but no, that was too slow. He would do it the way Yuta Okkotsu did—stealing power directly, elegantly, and without mercy.
"Well," he said to the empty room, standing up and stretching, "I just need to trade knowledge from my old life. Biological and mechanical engineering should be worth something down here."
Aiden stepped out of the office, searching for clothes. The only thing he found was a relatively intact corpse already reduced to bones and rags. He stripped what he could use without much disgust—after all, he was no longer fully human. Minutes later, he emerged onto the streets of the Pride Ring wearing the dead sinner's coat and pants. His long hair was tied back in a neat ponytail, eerily reminiscent of Suguru Geto's style.
He had two clear objectives: locate Sir Pentious and Baxter.
"Option one," Aiden murmured as he walked, hands in his pockets, "find a territorial war and hope the snake shows up. Option two, track that canon event where both of them appeared together in Baxter's storyline." He remembered fragments of the original show. Baxter had built Shockwave technology for Vox. That was a useful detail.
He slipped into a narrow alley. A few minutes later, another sinner followed him in.
---
Some time later, the same sinner was slumped against the grimy wall, one eye swollen shut and blood dripping from multiple cuts and bruises.
"I already told you everything I know!" the sinner wheezed.
Aiden crouched in front of him, his expression calm and cold. He flexed his fingers, feeling the inhuman strength granted by Mahito's cursed technique flowing through his new body.
"Where are Sir Pentious and Baxter?" he asked again, voice dangerously even.
"I don't know, man! I swear—"
Another brutal strike sent the sinner's head snapping back. Aiden didn't enjoy the violence, but he felt no remorse either. These weren't humans. They were sinners. Creatures who had earned their place in eternal damnation.
"If you're not useful to me now," Aiden said softly, grabbing the sinner by the collar, "you'll be useful later." He memorized the man's face, tore a piece of the sinner's shirt to wipe the blood from his hands with mild distaste, and dropped him.
"Not very helpful," Aiden sighed, stepping back into the main street. "But it's a start."
He felt nothing—no guilt, no fear, no hesitation. If he were still fully human, he might have avoided this level of brutality. But this body, this soul… it was changing him. He glanced down at his hand, opening and closing his fingers.
"I guess the vessel is affecting me more than I thought," he whispered.
For a brief moment, a foreign voice—not his own—echoed faintly in the back of his mind. He dismissed it. Just a fleeting thought. Nothing important. Not yet.
---
Seven hours passed.
Aiden had tried everything. He'd asked (sometimes "gently") around the Pride Ring, visited places where the old demon from the presentation might have been seen, and avoided Vox entirely. The Media Overlord was too unstable right now—freshly rejected by Alastor and volatile as Homelander on a bad day. One wrong move and Vox might level half the city in a tantrum. Aiden wasn't ready to risk that yet.
Instead, he occupied his mind with something far more interesting: cursed techniques.
Simulating other techniques would be relatively easy. He could use transfigured humans to start his own version of the Culling Game. Distribute cursed techniques to normal souls. Create cursed fetuses and vengeful spirits. Ten Shadows? Doable, though imperfect without the proper inheritance system. Mahoraga was out of the question unless he found a way to trick the technique into manifesting through a human vessel.
But Soul Resonance… that was the real jackpot.
Mahito had been a wildcard among curses. The ability to manipulate souls directly, to split and clone pieces of his own soul—there was almost no limit to what could be achieved. What was stopping him from creating something as insane as Crona? Or the dreaded Kishin? What if he reached the level of the Kishin that nearly killed a literal God of Death?
The possibilities were intoxicating.
"God, this is boring," Aiden grumbled, flipping open a stolen flip phone. He had already deleted the useless junk—contacts, messages, and most photos. But one picture had caught his eye.
He zoomed in.
In the background stood a distinctive house: industrial yellow mixed with a dull, oppressive dark blue.
"Where the hell…?" He searched desperately for any visible street sign or landmark. Finally, he found it.
"Street 666, number 279," he read aloud.
Aiden glanced at the nearest street sign. 167. Still far, and night was falling fast.
"Shit… It's almost dark. Whatever. I can push a little longer. I'm not at Mahito's endless stamina level yet, but I should manage another hour or two."
He broke into a run, leaping fluidly between rooftops and fire escapes, using the photo as a geographical reference. The buildings in Pentagram City were bizarre and often similar, but small details—cracks in the walls, signage styles, the density of neon—helped him navigate. He was moving into the more residential outskirts, far from the central chaos.
The blue tones in the architecture grew stronger. He was getting close.
"Finally, some real progress," Aiden muttered, yawning as he kept moving.
He recalled the two main theories about where Sir Pentious and Baxter lived. They might have been arms dealers or inventors like the human duo Lyle and Loopty, scraping by on sales until they secured stable funding. Or perhaps they already had a patron—possibly Carmilla Carmine and her late-but-still-influential husband. Sir Pentious had always seemed like a frequent client of Carmine Industries.
Aiden's eyes lit up as he spotted the exact house from the photo.
"That's it!"
He approached carefully, confirming every detail. The architecture, the colors, the strange window shapes. This was their residence.
A satisfied smirk crossed his face. He had found his targets. The first step toward creating a cursed spirit that could act like Rika, or perhaps an Inventory Curse modeled after Toji's, or even a Soul Eater-style weapon, was now within reach.
But for now…
"Time to find somewhere to crash," Aiden sighed, exhaustion finally settling deep into his borrowed bones. "I'm fucking drained."
He melted back into the shadows of Pentagram City, already planning his next move as the blood-red sky continued its eternal, mocking glow.
...
Give your Power Stones, now... Or... Am toch you