Kanoru narrows his eyes on the flaming skeleton bird. Its wingspan darkens the sky, every movement trailing black fire, the air itself burning with its presence.
He turns to the Spirit King beside him and says calmly, "Take care of the Spirit King down below. Protect my sister and her family."
The Spirit King nods without a word and dives toward the ruins of Entori, where the second enemy Spirit King emerges from the fractured cityscape—drawn by the fall of his companion.
Kanoru raises his right hand, still holding the heart. A thin film of water curls over his palm, encasing the heart. It dissolves in a blink, the water consuming it with a quiet hiss—leaving nothing behind. All across his body, blobs of deep-blue water slide off him like sweat and fall toward the earth. One of them lands directly on the corpse of the dead Spirit King below, soaking into it silently.
Preparation complete, Kanoru's body begins to radiate heat. His skin flushes red as if igniting from within. Without waiting for a signal, he shoots upward, meeting the skeleton bird high above the battlefield.
The two titans stop, suspended in the air—close enough to feel each other's pressure, far enough to prepare their assault. They do not speak. Even if they wanted to, their languages are foreign. But the intent is mutual. One must fall.
Then, they strike.
Black fireballs burst from the bird's skeletal wings, arcing through the sky with sickly flame, each one a compressed knot of destruction. Kanoru immediately senses the signature. Familiar. Foul.
'The Bone Clown's energy… This thing might be one of his disciples.'
But it doesn't matter.
He slashes his palm through the air, and grey wind blades form—razor-thin and curved like crescent moons. They race toward the fireballs.
The sky cracks.
Explosions bloom in midair, each impact tearing a hole in the clouds. Wind and flame roar against one another, forces of annihilation colliding in bursts of ash and light. Neither side gains ground, neither retreats. The fireballs burn out. The wind blades scatter into dust.
The first exchange ends in stalemate, the sky momentarily silent but boiling with tension. Then Kanoru moves.
His hand twists and grey energy coils in his palm, forming a rotating sphere—dense, humming with cutting wind and pressure. Without pause, he hurls the grey rasengan toward the skeleton bird.
In response, the creature flares its massive wings, black flames dripping from bone. Feathers made entirely of fire shoot out, forming a curved, blazing shield in front of it. The rasengan slams into the shield. For a heartbeat, nothing happens.
Then it begins.
The rasengan drills into the flame shield, devouring it slowly. The pressure builds until the black flame feathers burst apart in a fiery explosion, the rasengan detonating with them. The shockwave shreds clouds, fire and wind dispersing into glowing fragments.
Kanoru narrows his eyes.
'He's probing me. Not attacking with full strength… good. That gives me time.'
Though the Skeleton Bird's strength is the same tier as the red thunder rhino, its approach is completely different. This creature tests before it commits. And that hesitation gives Kanoru room—to learn, to adapt, to grow.
They resume their battle.
Blades of grey energy and arcs of black flame fly between them. Every movement in the air is a blur. Every attack splits the sky. They clash again and again, but even as Kanoru fights, half his thoughts turn inward.
'I need to skip the six alien energy filters… if I can convert my chakra directly to grey energy…'
Every strike he launches helps him close the gap. With every cycle of his chakra, he pushes it, forces it, urges it to leap over the intermediate steps and leap straight into grey energy.
But each transformation costs energy. His reserves fall. Twenty percent left.
That's when the water blobs return.
Drifting from the air like gentle rain, they find him and merge into his skin. Steam hisses where they touch him, regenerating vaporized blood and torn flesh. He breathes easier. He moves faster. His wounds vanish.
And with every healing cycle, his body changes.
Steam alien energy surges through him again. It burns his blood from within, increasing his strength with each flare. The process is violent—pain sharp enough to blur his vision—but he doesn't resist it.
He welcomes it.
As some of his blood evaporates, the rest tempers itself. The burning force transforms his circulation, strengthening every vein, every organ. His physical body—already far beyond mortal—is slowly stepping toward the Spirit King Realm alongside his spirit.
Kanoru exhales. His chakra sharpens. His blood boils.
He's not just holding his ground anymore.
He's ascending.
Kanoru exhales. His chakra sharpens. His blood boils.
He's not just holding his ground anymore.
He's ascending.
Grey energy coils tighter around him, no longer wild and raw—it answers his will. A flick of his wrist forms a long spear, sleek and honed, the blade vibrating with cutting intent. He hurls it. The grey spear screams through the sky and pierces the black flames around the skeleton bird, forcing the creature to flap hard and retreat.
The bird screeches, furious. It folds its wings and dives, black fire crackling over its bones, closing the gap with terrifying speed.
Kanoru doesn't retreat. He lifts his hand and five short grey daggers hover beside him, then flash forward like lightning. The bird weaves through most, but one strikes its left wing and a splash of fire explodes from the contact. Bone chips scatter.
Kanoru keeps moving. He steps in the air and forms twin sabers, grey wind howling from their edges. As the skeleton bird lunges forward again, he spins and slashes with both blades, carving a violent arc that forces the bird to pull away, flames licking through the sky as it avoids a direct clash.
The skeleton bird snarls, trying to force a close-range exchange, but Kanoru dances out of reach each time, replacing his weapons with new ones—a scythe, a flail, a javelin—each more condensed, more deadly.
Every attack using the grey energy makes control of Kanoru's control over increase.
Each weapon he crafts is an extension of his mind.
Down below on the forest floor, Meriko stares up through the branches. Her breath catches.
She feels the pressure from above, but she cannot tell if it's from her brother or the skeleton bird. Both energies are overwhelming, heavier than anything she's ever known. They surpass the nine elemental energies taught across the spirit world—this is something else entirely.
Their energy doesn't shimmer like fire, flow like water, or swirl like wind. It burns her soul just by proximity. Meriko clenches her fists. One of them is a creature from another world—a nightmare realm far beyond their own. That it wields unfamiliar power makes sense. But her brother?
Kanoru's energy stuns her. 'Frightens' her.
It's alien. New. A force she's never felt, and yet it exudes from her own blood. Her soul freezes at the sight of it, and her body screams to flee, to hide.
Aoi, trembling beside her, whispers, voice tight with fear, "How can they be this strong?"
A few others watch, shaken. One murmurs, "They don't feel like Spirit Kings… it's something beyond."
Another speaks, reverent and dazed, "Ancient Spirit Saints…"
Ziyu nods slowly. "It looks like it."
Subuki, wide-eyed, turns to his wife. "Meriko… when did your brother become a Spirit King?"
Kanjo, eyes locked on the sky, adds, "Yeah, Mother… when did Uncle—?"
His words halt as they all look upward.
Kanoru raises a massive sword of dense grey energy, thick with destruction. He hurls it through the sky. The skeleton bird opens its flaming beak and fires a roaring black beam to meet the attack.
The two powers collide. The sword shatters. The black beam vanishes. Silence follows as glowing grey shards rain down.
One shard lands on a tree near the group.
There's no sound. Just—'annihilation'. From the top, the tree turns to powder, disintegrating down its trunk until nothing remains.
Kanjo stares, his voice hushed as he finishes, "And it looks like Uncle didn't become a Spirit King recently…"
No one speaks.
Meriko finally answers, her eyes still fixed on the sky.
"I don't know."Meriko look at worry at her brother, she wants to help her brother but and then turn to look at the spirit king that was guarding Entori now fight against the spirit King who destroyed Entori. The towering Knight fighting against equally large lizardman. "I don't know." Meriko's voice trails off as her gaze lifts once more.
Her heart tightens as she watches her brother above, surrounded in spiraling grey light. She wants to fly to him, to fight at his side, but she knows it would be meaningless. She would only get in his way. Her fingers curl into her palms as she forces herself to look away, toward the other battle in the skies south of Entori.
The Spirit King who once guarded the city now clashes against the Spirit King who destroyed it.
Steel slams into steel, earth-shaking. The towering knight's phantasm looms like a war god—armor of radiant metal, a massive two-handed sword glowing with golden energy. Opposing him is the massive lizardman, just as large, wreathed in red scale armor. His phantasm takes the form of a reptilian war champion, muscles rippling, wielding a cruel black spear longer than a tree trunk.
Their battle is brutal, physical. No illusions. No tricks.
The knight swings with thunderous force, each blow sending out golden arcs that carve deep into the clouds. The lizardman meets them with savage precision, spear spinning in tight arcs, deflecting and countering. Sparks fly. A mountain in the distance cracks as a wave of impact reaches it.
Sword and spear. Strength and technique. Each strike ripples across the land.
Sometimes, they clash with such intensity that the very air folds around them. Sometimes, they exchange rapid blows—twenty strikes in the span of a breath. At one moment, the lizardman drives his spear straight toward the knight's throat. In another, the knight steps in with a rising slash that nearly splits the spear in half.
Meriko watches in awe. This battle, terrifying and grand, could decide the fate of hundreds. It could shift the balance of this entire region.
And yet…
Her eyes drift back to her brother and the skeleton bird. Their battle looks nothing like this one. It isn't a contest of strength or will. It's something deeper, stranger—forces so alien they barely resemble cultivation at all.
Compared to that, even the clashing Spirit Kings look like two mortals locked in a duel.
Watching them, Meriko feels a distant hope: 'perhaps, with time, she might reach this level too…'
But then her gaze returns to Kanoru. To the grey light that eats through the sky. To the pressure that numbs her fingers and tightens her chest.
And in her heart, something grows silent.
Before her lies a fog. Thick and unknowable.
Where her brother walks, she cannot follow. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Meriko stands silent, eyes locked on the sky where grey winds howl and black fire claws through the air. Her soul shudders beneath the weight of it—not from fear, but from the sheer alien pressure of what she sees. This isn't a battle between cultivators. This is something beyond. Something deeper. Older. More refined.
The nine elemental energies she trained in her entire life now feel… crude. Earth. Wind. Fire. Water. Lightning. Metal. Wood. Ice. Light. They're the ground beneath her feet.
But what her brother wields—this grey energy—and what that burning skeleton bird releases—this cursed black flame—they are the sky above. Untouchable. Unfathomable.
She realizes then. No one beneath their level can defeat them. It's not just a matter of strength. It's the very nature of energy itself. A completely different foundation.
Above them, the battle shifts.
Kanoru narrows his eyes.
The skeleton bird stops its barrage of black fireballs. Its wings flare wide, spreading its phantasm across the sky like a storm rolling over the horizon. A massive, skeletal monstrosity of charred bone and cursed fire begins to descend—its phantasm body moving with purpose, with weight. The bird flaps once, and the air screams. It soars forward, not with spells, but with its whole being.
It wants to crush him with raw presence.
Kanoru's brows tighten. 'It noticed.'
From the start, he's been holding back. He never summoned his phantasm. Because he couldn't.
But that restraint has painted him as vulnerable.
The skeleton bird thinks it has found an advantage.
It rushes closer, its vast bones tearing through cloud, black fire swirling into the shape of claws. It tries to force a close-range confrontation, where its size and phantasm can dominate.
But Kanoru does not let it.
He floats backward, his breath steady, chakra spiraling around him. The grey energy curls and compresses into shapes—first a javelin, then a hammer, then a wide-edged axe, forming and collapsing in a blink. Then a dozen blades fan out behind him like wings of smoke.
He hurls them forward.
Each blade cuts through the air with unnatural silence—like the world itself is afraid to acknowledge them.
The bird screeches and sweeps its wing, smashing several blades with its flaming bones. But not all. One sinks deep into its ribcage. Another carves through a talon.
It charges again.
He refuses to close the gap.