Red Cap lay cracked and wheezing at the base of the spiral pipe. His fans hissed and booed, confused, some began to flicker like faulty projections. But then—his broken laughter echoed, low and wrong. "Heh… ha-ha… HAHAHA—"
He rose.
Slowly.
Spitting molten blood.
"One thousand strikes… good form," he rasped, jaw hanging at a sick angle, slowly resetting with the sound of gristle grinding glass. "But what is style... without chaos?"
He raised his scythe again, blood qi trailing from its tip like a war-banner. His Domain shifted. The ramps warped. Rails bent like snakes. Pipes curled into impossible helixes. Red Cap's World responded to his pain. A deafening bassline hit like a war drum, and everything changed. Where there were ramps and rails… now stood a blackened amphitheater. Smoke machines hissed. Spotlights carved through the darkness.
Fireworks cracked and boomed over head in the false sky. A phantom rock band snarled to life—drummers made of bone and brass, guitarists with spinal cords for strings. Their music was savage,primal and infectious. The air vibrated with sovereign qi. The mosh pit was full.
Thousands of ghostly concertgoers, screaming specters and echoing silhouettes, all thrashing to the Sovereign beat.
Their faces ghastly, their bodies ectoplasm. Red Cap reappeared in center stage, sweat-slick, shirtless, veins glowing like lava tubes.
He grabbed the mic and screamed into existence:
"ROCK AND ROLL!"
With a sound like a thunderclap, a fourteen-ton boulder materialized in his right hand. He reared back like a pitcher winding for eternity—
—and hurled it with earth-shattering force straight at me!
I let my Intent flow and time slowed.
"Chrono Field!"
I vanished in a crackle of qi, gliding 10 meters to the left, wind and lightning trailing my form. The boulder exploded behind me—pulverizing dozens of spectral fans, whose pieces reformed instantly, laughing and moshing harder. I exhaled. "...Illusions," I muttered. But the noise… the chaos… the flickering lights...
It was a trap. Faeluxe whispered, "I can't see the floor. I can't sense qi direction. He's scrambling all input." Snake Man snarled, swiping at a figure only to find air.
"These aren't real souls… they're echoes!"
Marla hissed. "No—some of them are real. I just felt a killing intent pass me."
Felicity drew close to me, her eyes glowing violet. "Ash. He's using the concert to mask a real army." The beat dropped again.
Red-Cap, skated across the stage and backflipped into the mosh pit. He vanished—then reappeared on the far-left flank, now wearing a devil-horned crown and pointing his scythe toward the party.
"NOW DO YOU FEEL IT, TERRANS?" he howled.
"THE POWER OF CROWD CONTROL!"
From the smoke and strobe lights, a second wave of hockey punks surged forward—this time enhanced, trailing neon afterimages and flickering with sovereign boosts. The strobe lights pulsed like an arrhythmic heart. Sovereign Chi throbbed through the rampage zone. Echoes screamed and laughed, hands raised in worship of Red Cap's chaos.
But our crew? They answered with violence. Faeluxe was first. Blades of wind qi bloomed from her limbs as she burst into the mosh pit like a cyclone. Her movement was dance—her strikes surgical. "I'll carve you a path, Sensei!" With a wicked twirl, she split a hockey punk down the middle. The chain-bone saw clattered to the floor, useless.
Another lunged—she dodged under it, whispered, "Too slow," and drove her heel through its chest, bursting it into mist. Snake Man moved like venom in fog. Silent, cold, coiled death. "You're all noise. Let's see what's under the mask." One punk swung wide—Snake Man dipped beneath, spine bending like silk, then flicked his finger.
A needle of qi exploded into the undead's eye socket. He vanished into shadow, reappeared behind another, and crushed its throat with a palm wrapped in serpent sigils.
"Next."
Hammerhead just grinned. Two punks charged him, dual chainsaws revving.
"Cute."
He took one step forward and slammed his fists into the obsidian floor.
BOOM!
A shockwave ripped through the crowd. Dozens of ghostly spectators snapped out of existence. The floor spider-webbed with cracks. hockey punks went flying like ragdolls. "Still don't get the whole 'skate' thing," he grunted, "but smashing? That's universal."
Marla hovered above the mosh pit, her viper hair writhing. Her lips curled, fanged and cruel. Each serpent reared, charged with seething green animus. "Let's burn the performance."
ZAAAAAAM!
Beams lanced down in spirals, melting through illusions and flesh alike. Each impact carved runes of forbidden destruction into the floor. One beam struck a real punk—its mask cracked, revealing a burning skull. "So some of you are real. Lovely."
Amid the storm, I stood perfectly still. The noise drowned, the illusions danced, and Red Cap raged from above. But my eyes locked on the rhythm beneath it all. "Felicity. Cover me." She blinked, startled—then nodded, snapping her fingers. Tempest qi surged around her like a storm-wall. I dropped down sitting cross legged.
"Spirit Man."
My body glowed briefly—then emptied. My spirit form rose out, fluid and luminous, my spiritual senses heightened a thousandfold. The crowd flickered like broken light. And then I saw them. Spiritual anchors.
Folded origami sheets of intent, in the form of obsidian nails driven into the spirit plane. Folded mental energy of intent and resonance, tethering the concert to Red Cap's qi. Tens of thousands of nodes arranged in a geometric lattice.
I surged forward in spirit, threading through the chaos like wind through reeds. "Thousand Lords Spirit Palm Strike!" My hands lashed out hundreds of times each, in my spirit man form. A three-dimensional ripple of qi exploded out and across psychic planes; KA-BOOM!
Back in the physical world, the floor stuttered. The mosh pit faltered. A hockey punk mid-swing phased out of existence. Felicity gasped, "You did it Ash" Above, Red Cap staggered mid-amp jump, landing off-rhythm. His ghostly fans flickered.
"W-what? No—NO! This is my SOLO!"
I turned to the remaining node network. "I see your rhythm now, Red Cap," I murmured. "Time to break the world." I darted between flickering specters, my spirit form glowing with clarity. Only two origami intent networks remained—pulsing with sovereign level intent, shackling the domain like nails in a coffin. One more node and this whole place stumbles, I thought. Two, and it falls apart. I shot toward the second node.
High above, Red Cap froze mid-lick of his guitar-axe, his neon tongue twitching. His warlord grin faltered. His glowing green eyes turned toward the distant shimmer of spiritual energy warping around Ash like a comet tail.
"...Oh no you don't."
His feet screeched against the obsidian ramp as he launched down the half-pipe at impossible speed, scythe spinning, sparks blazing like comet trails behind him.
"ROOOOOCK AND RUUUUIN!!" But before he could reach Ash—BOOM!!!
A boulder-sized palm slammed down in front of him like a falling meteor.
Hammerhead.
Blocking the ramp like a sentient mountain. "Where you going, pogo stick?" Red Cap snarled, "Outta my way, Golem!" "You wanna get to Ash?" Hammerhead said, cracking his neck.
"You go through me."
Red Cap barreled into him with his shoulder, unleashing a rolling Sovereign qi burst—his wheeled sabatons carved twin gouges through the obsidian as he tried to grind through Hammerhead like a meat plow. But Hammerhead didn't budge. He flexed his spine, lowered his stance, and caught Red Cap by the throat with one massive hand.
CRACK!
Red Cap grunted, startled as the pressure around his neck exploded like a vice of stone. "How about we dance?" Red Cap swung his fist in a full arc, but Hammerhead caught it open palm. The blow created a shockwave that blew back the closest punks.
"You're just a big wall!" Red Cap hissed. That's all you are!"
"NO! Say it aint so- You noticed." Hammerhead grinned wide, " I'm going to fall on you now." He slammed a headbutt forward, full tilt, forehead meeting Red Cap's nose.
CRUNCH.
The Sovereign skidded back, face twisted. Then Hammerhead roared—and punched downward, his knuckles shattering the obsidian ramp. The entire slope buckled, throwing Red Cap off balance.
Red Cap flipped, spun midair, and tried to recover with a twirling grind—
—but a chunk of obsidian exploded beneath him, courtesy of Hammerhead's shoulder tackle.
BOOOOM!
They crashed through a pipe rail, plummeting together in a freefall of chaos. Red Cap spat blood. "I'll kill your whole crew, you shark-faced freak—!"
"Too late," Hammerhead snarled.
"Ash is already tearing your fake kingdom apart."
Above, in the void of music and illusion, I attacked the second-to-last array node. It also was comprised of tens of thousands of miniature arrays. Yet in my spirit man form I felt a new sensation, an infinite vortex of energy.
Just then my thousand lords spirit palm and the one thousand palms of death ascended to Tier II!
My after-Image strikes from the one thousand palms of death now generated five after strikes. Eager to test the new tier two capabilities of these techniques I turned my attention to the last two node networks.
I rapidly flourished my palms in the direction of the second major network.
"Thousand lords spirit palm!"
I launched the attack but this time thousands of massive golden palms rained down from my flurry! Smashing into the Spiritual node lattice!
The sky turned dark.
The crowd dimmed.
The beat stuttered.
Only one node remained. And now, Red Cap had a problem. A big one. Red Cap tumbled end over end, skidding across the cracked ramp with sparks flying from his sabatons. He growled, slammed a hand down to stop himself—and looked up.
Marla was waiting.
Floating.
Not standing.
Floating just above the obsidian floor, layered in Black blade armor gleaming with cursed sigils. Her serpent-hair hissed in unison, eyes blazing green. Viper tongues flickered. "You picked the wrong runway, darling," she purred. Time for your style points to go negative."
Red Cap snarled and launched forward on wheeled feet, scythe revving like a jet turbine. "I'll cleave you from your smile down—!"
SHRREEEEEEM!
A beam of sickly green animus lanced from Marla's palm—then split into six separate streams, ricocheting around the terrain like a cursed laser grid. Red Cap twisted midair, barely dodging the first—but the serpents struck. Two vipers from her hair lunged, biting deep into his arm.
CRACK–ZAP–HISS.
His armor fizzled and warped, mutating, turning soft and molten where the venom hit. "Your domain's cute," Marla cooed. "But it doesn't belong to you. You're just squatting in a dream." Red Cap swung wildly, but she was already gone.
Behind him now.
"Boo."
She slammed her heel into his back, and a wave of animus erupted point-blank, launching him into the rock wall with enough force to dent the stone. He staggered out, dazed—only for vines of green spectral energy to wrap his limbs and pin him midair. Each tendril shimmered like snake skin, coiled with biting tension.
"That's Animus Thread binding," she whispered.
"Illegal in twelve provinces. I'm so naughty."
Red Cap's eyes twitched as he gazed at Marla, He winked "I like the taste of your Animus."
BLAM!
A final cone-shaped blast from her serpents detonated in his chest—sending Red Cap pinwheeling across the field, smoke trailing from his cracked armor.