CHAPTER 6
The air thickened.
The wind spiraled violently, carrying a storm of crimson petals billions of them until the entire Plains of Vabos swam in red.
With graceful, unnatural precision, the petals gathered around Vabon's stone pillar, weaving themselves into a towering, blood-soaked tree. From the pillar, the petrified golem figures rose into the sky. Their stone flesh cracked apart as their bodies reshaped, bleeding freely as they transformed.
They became likenesses of Solos—mocking imitations—but with three tormented faces:
one sobbing tears of blood,
one smiling grotesquely,
one twisted with pure rage.
Their combined aura exploded, rising at a terrifying pace. Solos lifted his hands, and threads of glowing energy tore from his back, anchoring him to the bloody tree and his summoned clones.
Reality shuddered.
The roars of beasts vanished. The wind died. Even the insects fell silent.
Solos spread his wings.
"I welcome thee," he declared, "to my domain. As my lord commands… so shall I act."
Behind him, the three clones knelt in prayer.
---
Throughout the transformation, Dax simply stroked the flat of his blade, studying Solos with the ravenous curiosity of a surgeon inspecting a rare specimen.
"You're strong," he murmured, voice trembling with excitement. "Very strong. Oh, how I would love to study you…"
His lips twitched. The madness behind his eyes surfaced.
"How you'll look under my scalpel… I must find out. I've never caught a fourth-dimensional being."
He wasn't titled **the Black Doctor** for nothing.
In the next instant—
**Bang! Bang! Bang!**
A whirlwind of steel and flesh filled the domain. Thousands of blows collided in seconds, each impact threatening to tear space apart.
Dax paused, staring at the blood leaking down his knuckles. His body felt no pain, only exhilaration. Deep within, something ancient and cruel awakened.
**Killing Series — First Form: _Covered in Blood.
Killing intent erupted from him like a living plague. His aura drowned the plains, twisting the air into a suffocating miasma where phantom corpses wailed and drifted around his silhouette.
Solos hesitated for the first time.
"Thee… thee cannot be human. What art thou?"
Dax vanished. The air detonated in his wake.
He reappeared before Solos, drawing Cil in a wide arc.
But the angel moved with godlike swiftness. His wings hardened, turning to a crimson metal as he parried the blow. Behind him, the three summons mobilized:
The archer soared above the clouds.
The mage retreated behind Solos, chanting.
The warrior charged forward.
Danger.
Dax flickered againbut the massive stone-winged golem matched his speed.
"Just because you're stone," Dax said calmly, squeezing his fist, "doesn't mean you're limited."
The golem froze midair, crushed by telekinetic force. Stone groaned under the pressure.
Solos watched, captivated.
This ability… this was not magic. Not blood. Not divine. Something else entirely.
Dax opened his palm, launching the compressed golem like a cannonball.
Solos tilted his head to avoid it with casual indifference.
The mage was not so lucky—
CRUSH.
The impact obliterated it into dust.
Before Dax could advance, a scream of tearing sky echoed above.
Thunk!
An arrow speared into his chest.
Then another.
Then a storm.
A barrage of bloody arrows slammed into him, tearing and tossing his body like a puppet.
"Combust."
Solos clenched his fist.
Every arrow inside Dax exploded.
The shockwave hurled him across the sky. Blood sprayed in beautiful arcs—but Dax only burst into hysterical laughter.
"Hahahahahahahaha! I can't control my body!" he shouted gleefully.
Solos appeared beside him mid-air, blade already descending.
BOOM!
Dax's body cratered the earth, landing upright with a feral grin. Muscles bulged. Power rippled across his skin.
Cil hummed calling to him, speaking a language only her master understood.
With a simple nod, Dax pressed the dull spine of the katana against his own neck.
"Your power," Dax said, voice cold as winter, "is dominion over blood."
He raised the blade.
"And I am the Slaughterer. Slaughter is impossible without blood."
He grinned.
"Today… I will slaughter blood itself."
His killing intent surged into Cil, devouring the blade, reshaping it. The air vibrated violently as a familiar cosmic scream rolled across the plains.
"A sonar?" Solos looked up, confused. Nothing was there.
Then he saw it.
Hovering behind Dax
A whale.
A colossal, star-devouring phantom of a whale, its presence warping reality around it.
Solos's wings trembled.
"W-what… what have we provoked?"
The pressure came not from Dax but from the weapon.
The katana's shape melted and elongated into a sleek black rod etched with glowing runes of the World-Devouring Whale.
At its tip formed a scythe's crescent blade, crimson like fresh blood.
Dax exhaled sharply.
"You are beautiful, Cil."
Above them, the archer summoned another volley waves upon waves of arrows.
"You lack respect," Dax murmured.
He raised the scythe by its black rod…
…and drew a single perfect arc.
Silence.
For several long seconds, nothing moved.
Then the world convulsed.
The massive blood tree parted cleanly down the middle, sliding free from its roots before collapsing in two neat halves.
Cracks spidered across the sky.
The entire "Blood World" domain shattered like glass, dissolving around them and returning the plains to reality.
Solos stared, stunned.
Since the beginning of this battle… this "human" had broken every rule Solos understood.
He must die.
If this creature grows stronger even the god he served could fall.
Solos clenched his fist.
Dax looked at the scythe, momentarily speechless at its power but he had no time to marvel. There was still an angel to kill.
He vanished.
The two collided again faster, fiercer, more violent than before. Trees uprooted. Stones liquefied. Space rippled.
Without realizing it, they tore through the fabric of the world and reappeared atop a volcanic peak.
They had arrived at Mount Gahena.