The Demonic Steel Threads were wrapped around Akira's wrists and ankles, cold and hard like the fangs of a metallic beast. Every time he tried to take a deep breath, the threads tightened further, sending sharp stabs of pain through his limbs.
— "Move," Souei ordered in his icy voice, turning to lead him into the depths of the forest toward the capital.
Akira took his first step with difficulty, but before his foot could even touch the ground...
[CRITICAL WARNING! CRITICAL WARNING!] [Spatial distortion detected!] [Number of targets: 6.] [Average Level: 85!] [Survival Probability: 0.001%]
The system's crimson flash screamed in his mind with a force that made him close his eyes in pain. In that same moment... Souei stopped.
The intelligence commander didn't turn around, but his eyes narrowed with a terrifying coldness. — "Annoying insects..." Souei whispered.
Boom!
The ground exploded beneath Akira's feet. From the shadows, six masked entities emerged, moving at a speed the human eye could not follow. They weren't ordinary monsters, but professional assassins reeking of death and black magic. Enemies of the Tempest nation, they had been waiting for the right opportunity to set an ambush in the forest.
Three of them lunged at Souei simultaneously, their swords coated in toxic green mana that dissolved the air around them. — "Watch out!" Akira shouted instinctively.
But Souei didn't move a single step. He raised his fingers with exaggerated slowness. Slice!
A thin sound, like tearing silk, cut through the air. In a fraction of a second, the three assassins stopped mid-leap. They froze completely. Then... their heads slid off their bodies at the same moment, and blood scattered like black rain to water the leaves. They had been sliced by invisible threads before they even realized they were dead.
Akira's face went pale. Terrifying power... a power that didn't belong to anything his mind could comprehend. But the battle wasn't over.
The remaining three assassins realized immediately that Souei was an untouchable monster. One of them—the largest of the group—turned toward the bound Akira. He realized this weak human might be Souei's weakness or a valuable hostage. The assassin lunged at Akira like a projectile, his black sword aimed directly at the young man's heart.
[ALERT: APPROACHING DEATH.] [ACTIVATED: SURVIVAL PULSE - MAXIMUM.]
Time slowed in Akira's eyes. He saw the sword's blade approaching his chest millimeter by millimeter. He tried to move, he tried to run, but Souei's threads bound him completely. He was helpless. Weak. Exactly as he had stood helpless before his mother's bed as she breathed her last.
That feeling of helplessness... that pain... exploded inside him like a volcano. — "I... won't... die... here!" Akira roared from the depths of his throat.
[MAXIMUM EMOTIONAL RESPONSE DETECTED.] [ACTIVATED LATENT ABILITY: MEMORY OF PAIN.] [MERGING PAIN WITH SOUL FRAGMENTS...]
Suddenly, the black sword stopped an inch from Akira's chest. The masked assassin's eyes widened under his mask. His body was trembling. His sword had struck something hard, something invisible, yet dense and terrifying.
Before Akira, a soul fragment formed from nothing... but it wasn't transparent and faint like the previous time. It was black. Black as the void of space, absorbing the light around it.
[ATTEMPTING TO BREAK PRIMARY SEAL: THRONE OF HOLLOW.] [RESULT: PARTIAL BREAK - 1%.]
A savage black aura radiated from Akira's body. It wasn't mana... it wasn't magical energy. It was something that rejected the laws of this world. The black fragment rose like a guillotine blade, and in one motion, it pierced the assassin's arm, his sword, and his chest, splitting him in two in an explosion of blood!
But the fragment didn't stop. It completed its circular path around Akira's body to strike the Demonic Steel Threads binding him. CRACK!
The sound of the threads snapping echoed through the forest like the sound of breaking glass. At that exact moment, Souei turned.
For the first time in 500 years, the eyes of the legendary intelligence commander widened in genuine shock. His threads... the threads that could only be destroyed by a true Demon Lord, had been cut!
Akira fell to his knees, panting heavily, the black aura slowly evaporating from around him to return to his body. His body was burning from within, and his mind was screaming from exhaustion.
Souei killed the last two assassins in the blink of an eye, then approached Akira slowly. He no longer looked at him as an "insect" or a weakling, but as an "unknown threat." Souei stood before Akira, who was lifting his head with difficulty, and said in a voice carrying an entirely new tone... a tone of caution:
— "From what hell did you come, for heaven's sake? That energy... it cut my threads."
Akira smiled weakly, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, before the vision in his eyes went completely dark and he lost consciousness, leaving Souei standing over him in the silence of the dark forest, his mind boiling with a thousand questions.