Meanwhile, in another part of the maze, Shun was deeply troubled.
"I feel like I've seen you guys somewhere… but I can't remember. Would you mind introducing yourselves?" he asked, his tone calm but laced with a genuine curiosity that unnerved his opponents.
Not long after entering the labyrinth, he had encountered them—three figures radiating immense power. One looked like a demon straight out of a myth. His Observation Haki screamed that they were illusions, yet their presence felt unnervingly real. The exam was supposed to test willpower through trauma or desire, so why was he facing this?
'Whatever. No point pondering. Just ask them.'
"$&@&@! Finally found you! You won't escape this time!" the demonic-looking one roared, a wild grin splitting his face. He had purple skin, green hair, and six muscular arms.
"Huh? You look similar to $&@&@, but different… are you his son?" the second man asked, his voice dripping with arrogance. He was human, with blue hair and a prominent scar under his left eye.
"No, it's him. He probably used that peculiar magic of his to reverse his age again," the third one concluded. He appeared as a young man with serious eyes and black hair. Both humans held swords, their stances speaking of a lifetime of battle.
"Hello? Who are you guys again?" Shun repeated, his patience thinning.
"…"
"Huh?! Did you forget about us?!" the demon bellowed, looking genuinely shocked.
"Don't be fooled! He might be pretending to catch us off guard. It's his signature move," the black-haired swordsman warned.
'They seem to know a version of me,' Shun realized, a cold knot forming in his stomach. 'And they're this cautious… Are they connected to the Memory Fragments? Did Makarov somehow hire an illusionist from the Alvarez Empire? That seems impossible.'
While he pondered, his opponents moved.
The demon king—as Shun mentally dubbed him—acted first.
The air shattered.
It wasn't a metaphor. The very atmosphere fractured under the impossible pressure as the demon's foot drove into the earth. The ground didn't crack; it erupted, vomiting stone and soil toward the cavern ceiling. There was no wind-up, no telegraphing of the attack—just a simple, physics-defying leap.
In a blur of motion, he was gone.
Shun's body moved before his mind could catch up. His Observation Haki screamed of a lethal threat, a force that could obliterate him if it connected. His palm shot forward, meeting the colossal, six-armed punch head-on.
The clash was an ant challenging a meteor.
POOF-!
To any onlooker, the result would have been incomprehensible. The ant utterly dominated. The meteor—the demon king—was repelled with the very force he had generated, his body hurtling backward and shattering through countless layers of solid rock.
'That was too close. Without Observation Haki, I'd be paste. That impact should have done serious damage, using his own momentum against him.' Shun's expression was grim.
'This demon is on a completely different level from Zero. If the other two are comparable, I'm in real danger. I've gotten arrogant. This… this is a necessary wake-up call.' A nervous, yet exhilarated grin touched his lips.
"Hahaha! This annoying magic! It's the same bastard as expected!" The demon king emerged from the dust cloud, his wounds visibly knitting themselves back together at an alarming rate.
"Let's attack together! Don't let him escape again!" the black-haired swordsman commanded.
"Don't give me orders! I'll do what I want!" the scarred swordsman retorted, yet he fell into a flanking position regardless.
Three enemies, each far surpassing Master Zero, surrounded him.
The battle reignited.
POOF-!
Shun moved first, vanishing from their sight with a burst of speed.
"Where did he go?!" the demon king roared.
"Above!!"
POOF! POOF!
Shun fired a volley of compressed paw-shocks like bullets, aiming for temples and hearts. The real attack came from his mouth.
"Poison Dragon's Roar!"
A torrent of violet poison engulfed the demon king. While the swordsmen dodged and parried the paw-shocks, the demon took them head-on, his regeneration working overtime.
'His regeneration is monstrous,' Shun assessed. 'Let's see how he handles a toxin that corrupts the essence itself.'
The poisonous storm swallowed the demon whole.
"Guh… AGHHHHH!"
It was not a roar of battle-rage, but a raw, ragged scream of pure agony. For the first time in centuries, the demon king felt a pain that wasn't fleeting—a venom that sought to unravel his very being. His head snapped back, tendons cording in his neck as his cry of anguish echoed through the cavern.
All the while, Shun's paws never stilled, maintaining relentless pressure on the two swordsmen.
'The title 'Predator' is a bitter pill to swallow, but I can't deny its power. Without this lethal edge, my magic wouldn't be enough. To think my venom at maximum potency could do this… One is neutralized. I must eliminate the other two before he recovers.'
He unleashed another Poison Roar toward the swordsmen, but they had already adapted, their bodies honed to perfection allowing them to evade the wide-area attack. The black-haired knight closed the distance in a flash, his sword arcing toward Shun's neck.
'As expected. The same tricks don't work for long against masters.'
Shun brought his paw up to repel the blade. But the moment before contact, the sword's momentum abruptly halted.
His Observation Haki shrieked a warning a fraction of a second too late. From the swordsman's palm, a concealed projectile—a nail or a dart imbued with killing intent—was launched at point-blank range, aimed directly at his heart.
'This bastard! His entire honorable knight facade was a deception! He follows only one rule: win by any means necessary!'
Shun desperately used his paw to recoil his body backward, the projectile grazing his side instead of piercing his heart. A searing pain lanced through him.
'Seriously… Without Observation Haki, I would have died multiple times over today.' The thought was a grim acknowledgment of his own mortality.
"Tch! He dodged your trump card! Hahaha! Let's just attack together!" the scarred swordsman laughed.
"Shut up! We attack and buy time for @&$@& to recover!" the black-haired one snapped.
They argued for less than half a minute, preparing to launch their next assault.
But Shun was already gone.
'There's nothing more to gain here. Fighting them is pointless. They're too cautious to even give their real names—or perhaps some magic prevents me from hearing them. They were just illusions, yet they possessed such terrifying power. Who did Makarov hire? This goes far beyond a simple test of will.'
A chilling realization began to dawn on him. This wasn't just an illusion. It felt like a memory, a ghost from a past he couldn't recall.
'A certain someone… with the name…'
The pieces refused to connect, lost in a fog of forgotten history.
"System!" he called out inwardly, desperate for an answer.