The journey north culminated not at the bustling gates of the village Shinji had glimpsed, but at the imposing threshold of Yamato's domain.
The North Head's mansion wasn't just grand; it was a fortress of elegance carved from the planet's bones. Towering walls of polished, deep-gray stone, veined with streaks of rose quartz, rose defiantly against the backdrop of jagged, violet-tinged peaks. Wrought-iron gates, intricate as frozen lightning, swung open silently. Inside, the scale was dizzying: a cavernous foyer with a double staircase sweeping upwards like wings, vast crystal chandeliers scattering light across flawless marble floors that reflected Shinji's awestruck, travel-worn face. Libraries hinted at ancient knowledge, ballrooms spoke of forgotten grandeur, and a dining hall large enough for a small army exuded silent opulence.
"Finally here!" Yamato announced, his ancient voice echoing slightly in the vast space. He moved with the familiar, unnerving stillness, his luminous blue skin seeming to absorb the ambient light.
Shinji whistled, the sound sharp against the quiet. "The North's Village looked impressive, but this... this is something else. Makes the East seem like a campsite."
"Glad it meets your approval," Yamato replied, a flicker of something unreadable in his obsidian eyes. "But admire quickly. You won't be lounging in the parlors. We spend the training time here." He gestured broadly, encompassing the mansion's formidable structure.
"Here?" Shinji blinked, looking around at the sheer size. "We're training inside this?"
"For the next four months, yes," Yamato stated, his tone leaving no room for debate.
"Four months?!" Shinji's voice jumped an octave. "Trapped in this... museum? That's insane! I'll lose my mind!"
Yamato tilted his bald head, a gesture that managed to convey profound patience and mild exasperation. "I am unfamiliar with the lifespan expectations of your people, Shinji Kazuhiko, but unless four months constitutes your entire existence, the duration seems irrelevant. You sought training. This is the training ground."
"Life span isn't the issue!" Shinji protested, running a hand through his vibrant hair. "It's the boredom! Training shouldn't feel like house arrest in a fancy tomb!"
Yamato's obsidian gaze fixed on him, the air seeming to thicken slightly. "You are the one who demanded to walk through hell, boy. Cease your nagging and prepare to work. Your complaints are a shield against the discomfort of growth. Drop it." He turned and began walking deeper into the mansion. "Follow."
Shinji scowled but fell in step, muttering, "Damn it."
They stood in a surprisingly austere chamber deep within the mansion; a vast, empty hall with stone floors and high, narrow windows. The opulence was stripped away, leaving only space and purpose.
"Clarify your objective," Yamato commanded, his voice resonant in the emptiness. "Beyond 'getting stronger'. What is the core you wish to forge?"
Shinji hesitated. *How much can I tell him? Merus warned...* He met Yamato's ancient eyes, feeling their weight. "To protect. To never fail again like I failed Tamago. To be strong enough to face... what hunts me." It was vague, but true.
Yamato studied him for a long moment. The silence stretched, heavy. "Hmm," he finally hummed. "Irrelevant for now. What is relevant... is the sheer, untamed potential radiating from you. It's... immense. Chaotic. Like a star trapped in flesh. We begin with fundamentals. Strength." He planted his small, booted feet firmly on the stone, arms loose at his sides. "Strike me. With everything you possess."
Shinji stared. "Are you... serious? Sir, with all respect, you look... fragile."
A ghost of a smile, cold and sharp, touched Yamato's lips. "Appearances deceive, boy. I may seem weak, but do not mistake containment for frailty. I could reduce this mansion to dust if I chose. Now. Strike."
Shinji took a breath, centering himself. He recalled the Voidheart surge humming beneath his skin. He focused it, not on rage this time, but on pure, concentrated force. He stepped forward, telegraphing nothing, and drove his fist straight towards Yamato's center.
The impact wasn't the soft thud Shinji expected. It felt like punching a mountain forged from neutron star material. There was a microsecond of resistance, an impossible density, then;
KRA-BOOOOOM!
The sound was apocalyptic. A shockwave ripped outwards. Yamato didn't just move; he became a blue-white projectile. He tore through the reinforced stone wall of the chamber like paper, then through another, and another, a comet of cerulean light and shattered masonry. Debris rained down as Shinji stood frozen, fist still extended, dust settling around him in the sudden, ringing silence. A perfect, Yamato-shaped tunnel, easily fifty meters long, now vented the chamber to the windswept highlands beyond.
"W-What the hell?!" Shinji breathed, staring at the devastation. He sprinted to the ragged hole, peering out. Yamato lay sprawled amidst pulverized rock, his simple leather clothes torn, luminous blue blood oozing from multiple gashes, one arm bent at a sickening angle.
"Hey! Old man! Are you alright?!" Shinji yelled, genuine panic lacing his voice.
Yamato groaned, pushing himself up with his good arm, wincing. His obsidian eyes, though pained, held a spark of something fierce, almost exhilarated. "...Damn it all," he rasped, spitting blue blood onto the gray stone. "Fetch a medic! And some structural engineers!" He looked up at Shinji, his gaze piercing despite the pain. "What are you, boy? Is your entire species walking cataclysms?"
Shinji swallowed, helping Yamato sit up carefully. "Who knows," he muttered, echoing Yamato's earlier phrase, his mind reeling. Is he really this vulnerable? Or was he holding back... impossibly? A seed of doubt sprouted: Should I be training with someone I can accidentally obliterate?
Five hours later, Yamato was patched up, his arm in a sling crafted from shimmering, flexible metal, his wounds sealed with glowing bio-gel. They stood on the highest parapet of the mansion, overlooking a sheer drop to jagged rocks far below. The wind whipped at their clothes.
"Durability test," Yamato announced, his voice still raspy but firm.
Shinji eyed the drop, easily six kilometers straight down. "You want me to... jump? From here?"
"Precisely," Yamato nodded. "If you die, my obligation ends. If you refuse, my obligation ends. Win-win."
Shinji stared at him. "That's... idiotic logic." He peered over the edge again, the wind tugging at him. Yet, a strange certainty settled over him. The Voidheart hummed, a low thrum of power. The fall didn't feel deadly. "But... fine. I won't die." He stepped onto the parapet ledge.
Yamato watched him, obsidian eyes narrowed. "Your confidence is... unnerving. You show no fear. Why?"
Shinji offered a grim half-smile. "Just a feeling. A really strong one." Before Yamato could probe further, Shinji pushed off.
He didn't plummet; he arrowed down. The wind screamed past his ears, the ground rushed up with terrifying speed. He instinctively tucked, bracing for impact, feeling the immense kinetic energy build. Will I regenerate? Shatter? The moment of impact arrived.
CRUNCH-THUD!
Shinji hit the rocky basin below not with the splattering impact Yamato might have morbidly anticipated, but with the sound of a meteor striking bedrock. A crater spiderwebbed outwards from his feet, dust billowing. He stood in the center, knees slightly bent, completely intact. He looked down at himself. No broken bones. No ruptured organs. Not even a scratch. He brushed dust off his tunic and looked up towards the distant parapet, a tiny figure against the sky.
Yamato's voice, amplified by some trick of acoustics or power, echoed down: "Marvelous... Truly marvelous!"
Shinji looked at his hands, then at the crater around him. *No damage? At all?* The realization hit him like a physical blow. *My durability... it scaled with the strength. Voidheart Surge didn't just make me hit harder... it made me withstand harder.* A thrill, cold and exhilarating, ran through him. He wasn't just unkillable; he was becoming indestructible.
The "wilderness" Yamato led Shinji to just after his second test right then wasn't a forest; it was a primordial slaughterhouse. Jagged obsidian spires clawed at a bruised-purple sky. The air hung thick with the scent of ozone, decaying vegetation, and something metallic and predatory. Strange, carnivorous plants snapped at the air. The silence was oppressive, heavy with unseen threat.
"Your crucible for the next two weeks," Yamato declared, gesturing towards the desolate expanse. "Survive."
Shinji gaped. "Here? Alone? For two weeks? What's this supposed to teach me? How to be bored and starve? This feels like abandonment, not training!"
Yamato didn't turn. "Danger refines instinct. Adversity forges will. Hunger teaches resourcefulness. Your power is immense, Shinji, but untamed. Raw. You react; you do not act. Here, stripped of comfort, facing the teeth of Suchumus, you will learn control or you will learn nothing. Survive." With that, he turned and walked away, his small form quickly swallowed by the jagged landscape.
"Hey! Wait!" Shinji yelled, but only the wind answered. He was alone.
-*Animals? Haven't seen a single one since I landed...* The thought was barely formed when a shadow detached itself from the base of a nearby spire.
It wasn't a bear as Shinji knew them. It was a nightmare rendered in flesh and chitin. Easily four meters tall at the shoulder, its body was a mass of overlapping, razor-edged plates the color of dried blood. Its head was all jaws – three sets of them, layered like industrial shredders, dripping viscous saliva that sizzled where it hit the rock. Six glowing red eyes, devoid of intelligence, radiated pure hunger. It moved with terrifying silence for its size.
Shinji had a split second to register the threat before it blurred. brutally fast. A clawed limb, thicker than Shinji's torso, lashed out. Shinji dodged by instinct, Voidheart speed kicking in, but not fast enough. The claw grazed his arm.
It wasn't a scratch. It was an evisceration. Flesh, muscle, and bone parted like wet paper. Shinji's forearm hung by shreds of tendon. Agony, white-hot and blinding, seared his nerves.
"ARGH!" He stumbled back, clutching the ruin of his arm. Before he could even process the pain, the creature was on him. Jaws snapped, shearing through the air where his head had been. He rolled desperately, the movement tearing his ruined arm further. Another claw slammed down, catching his hip, shattering bone and tearing through his side. He felt himself lifted, then wrenched savagely.
RRRIIIPPP!
The world tilted crazily. Shinji saw his own legs, severed at the waist, tumble away. The creature's central jaws snapped shut, consuming his severed arm whole with a sickening crunch. Darkness surged at the edges of his vision as he hit the ground, upper body sprawled in the dust, entrails spilling onto the cold rock. *Disgusting... can't let it... eat me...*
The Voidheart Surge roared. Not just warmth this time; a supernova detonating in his core. Regeneration wasn't just fast; it was violent. Bone snapped back into place with audible cracks, muscle fibers screamed as they wove shut, skin stretched taut over the closing abyss in his torso. His legs reformed in a burst of steam and light. He scrambled back, whole but gasping, as the creature lunged again, its maw wide.
This time, Shinji met it not with flight, but with fury. He punched. His fist, fueled by agony and adrenaline, slammed into the creature's lower jaw. Chitin cracked. The beast roared, staggering back. Shinji kicked, aiming for a joint. The impact reverberated up his leg, but the creature only snarled, swiping with another claw. Shinji dodged, feeling the wind of its passage, but sensed movement behind him.
A second creature, slightly smaller but equally horrifying, lunged from the shadows, its claws raking deep furrows across Shinji's back. He screamed, spinning, lashing out with a backhand that connected solidly, sending the second beast stumbling. But the first recovered, jaws snapping. They moved with chilling coordination, flanking him, attacking in tandem. One would feint, drawing his guard, while the other struck from the blind spot. Claws tore flesh. Jaws snapped shut on empty air where limbs had been a millisecond before. Shinji fought with desperate ferocity, fueled by pain and regeneration. He punched, kicked, dodged, healed. It was a brutal dance of destruction and renewal.
The days blurred into a crimson haze of pain, violence, and relentless survival. One creature became two, then three, then packs. Shinji learned their tactics; the ambushes from crystalline crevices, the coordinated rushes, the way they exploited his momentary vulnerability during major regenerations. He learned to fight smarter, using the terrain, anticipating their moves, conserving energy between bursts of brutal offense. The Voidheart Surge hummed constantly now, a background engine of power. He felt faster, stronger, tougher with each encounter, each regeneration. The creatures that had torn him apart on day one now fell to single, shattering blows.
Day 4 - Late Afternoon
Shinji stood panting amidst a grotesque sculpture garden of shattered chitin and cooling ichor. His borrowed clothes were in tatters, plastered with drying blue blood; mostly not his own. A fresh gash on his cheek steamed as it closed. He surveyed the carnage, a grim tally running in his mind.
"Thirty-eight... thirty-nine... forty..." He nudged a massive, severed head with his boot. "Forty-one... forty-two." He looked at his hands, calloused and stained. "Forty-two... I've become a butcher. A monster hunter." A hollow laugh escaped him. "Yamato... you mad old bastard. Is this training? Or just sanctioned slaughter? He probably expects me dead. Imagine his face..." The laugh died. "But... I don't feel human anymore. Not after this." The sheer volume of death, the repeated mutilation and rebirth, the primal fury required to survive; it was changing him. Tempering him? Or eroding him? He shook his head, dispelling the dark thoughts. *Survival first. Philosophy later.* "More. There are always more."
He closed his eyes, reaching inward, beyond the fatigue, beyond the adrenaline, to the strange new sense that had blossomed amidst the constant threat. It wasn't sight or sound; it was a knowing. A spatial awareness of imminent danger. He focused, pushing it outwards like a radar pulse.
"Act 2: Danger Sense."
Information flooded his mind, crisp and clear: Two signatures. East. 9.2 kilometers. Aggression: High. Three signatures. West. 11.5 kilometers. Aggression: Medium. One signature. South. 1.1 kilometer. Aggression: Rising. A predatory grin touched his lips. *Jackpot. Then, surprise. The range... yesterday it capped at eight klicks. Pushing through injury... it stretches the ability.* The realization was electrifying. Trauma isn't just fuel for strength... it's a whetstone for the mind.
"Time to collect," he murmured. He didn't run; he exploded from his stance. The air cracked with a sonic boom as he vanished, a yellow-and-green streak tearing across the desolate landscape. Distance dissolved under Voidheart-enhanced speed. The encounters were brutal, efficient. The lone southern beast died mid-lunge, its skull imploded by a hypersonic kick. The eastern pair fell seconds later, spines shattered before they fully registered his presence. The western trio lasted barely longer, reduced to twitching ruin by a whirlwind of precise, devastating blows. Shinji stood amidst the latest carnage, barely winded. The power was intoxicating. "Like swatting flies. Could I swat a God like this? Saganbo..." The arrogance of the thought was thrilling.
Suddenly, his Danger Sense erupted. Not a ping, but a scream inside his skull. A wave of pure, primal terror washed over him, so intense it felt like his brain was being scoured with ice. He clutched his head, staggering. "Gah! What the hell?!"
His senses locked onto the source: *North-Northwest. 5.1 kilometers.* Not just danger. Dominance. Rage. Immense Power. A challenge. A king.
He moved towards it, not with caution, but with the grim purpose of a challenger. He found it in a clearing of shattered crystal trees. It dwarfed the others. Six meters tall, its chitin plates were black as void-space and etched with glowing crimson runes. Four sets of jaws gnashed slowly. Eight eyes, burning like molten iron, fixed on him with chilling intelligence. This wasn't mindless hunger; this was malice.
It moved. Not a blur; an unstoppable force. A single, contemptuous backhand swipe. Shinji raised his arms to block.
CRACK-SMASH!
The impact wasn't just physical; it was spatial. Shinji felt bones shatter in both forearms. The force lifted him off his feet and hurled him backwards like a ragdoll. He smashed through three thick crystal spires before slamming into the base of a fourth, stone and crystal shards raining down around him. Pain, sharp and deep, lanced through him. His blood; welled from deep gashes.
He pushed himself up, arms already knitting, the familiar warmth surging. A genuine grin, fierce and bloody, spread across his face. "Hmph! Finally! You pack a punch, ugly! You managed to draw blood!" The injury was minor compared to his daily ordeals, but the force... it was exhilarating. "That won't be enough to power me up, but you've got my attention!"
The Bear King (for that's what it was, a sovereign of this lethal wilderness) roared. The sound wasn't auditory; it was a pressure wave that flattened the remaining crystal trees in a wide radius. Shinji braced, feeling it vibrate in his bones.
Shinji charged. He ducked under a sweeping claw that could have decapitated a tank, drove a fist like a piledriver into the creature's armored stomach. The impact sent shockwaves through the ground. The Bear King grunted, staggering back half a step, more surprised than hurt. Shinji pressed the advantage, leaping, spinning, delivering a devastating roundhouse kick to the side of its massive head.
KRA-KOOM!
The kick connected with the force of a meteor strike. The Bear King's head snapped sideways with impossible speed. Its entire colossal body lifted off the ground, hurtling backwards like a discarded toy. It crashed through a smaller ridge, then slammed into the base of a towering mountain of dark, volcanic rock half a kilometer away.
The impact was cataclysmic. A massive section of the mountainside, weakened by the titanic collision, groaned, cracked, then sheared away with a roar that dwarfed the Bear King's. Thousands of tons of rock cascaded down in a thunderous avalanche, burying the point of impact in a swirling cloud of dust and debris that blotted out the bruised sky.
Silence descended, heavy and choking. Shinji landed lightly, breathing hard, arms fully healed, eyes fixed on the settling dust. *Did that do it?*
Then, from within the settling cloud, came a sound that froze Shinji's blood. Not a roar of pain. A roar of summoning. Deep, guttural, resonant, echoing through the canyons and spires.
From every shadow, every crevice, every jagged horizon, glowing red eyes ignited. Dozens. Then scores. Then hundreds. The lesser beasts, drawn by their King's call, poured into the shattered clearing like a dark, chittering tide. They surrounded Shinji, a sea of snapping jaws, clacking claws, and hate-filled eyes, the Bear King's immense silhouette slowly emerging, unharmed, from the dissipating dust of the avalanche behind them.
Shinji looked around at the encircling horde, then back at the looming King. The predatory grin returned, wider, sharper, edged with the madness of four days of relentless battle and rebirth. He cracked his knuckles, the sound sharp in the sudden silence before the storm.
"Oh, I see!" Shinji called out, his voice ringing with adrenaline and grim amusement. "Called in the whole family for the funeral? Smart move." He dropped into a fighting stance, energy crackling around his fists. "But too bad, Your Majesty... Today, everyone dies."