I know where I am! It's that Genshin Impact thingy, right? Chapter: 16

***

I woke up not knowing where I was.

This was, unfortunately, a rather common occurrence these days. 

I took a moment to glance around, more out of curiosity than anything else, trying to track where my things were.

My shirt was on the floor. My pants had somehow ended up on a chair across the room. There was a pair of women's underwear hanging from the ceiling fan.

How did that even get up there?

I turned my head to the side.

Ah. Right.

A woman was sleeping next to me, face half-buried in a pillow, breathing softly. Dark hair, nice figure from what I could see. Really pretty. Also, one of her boobs was visible. 

Really pinchable nipple, that one.

Bits and pieces of last night started filtering back. I was in... Sydney, I think? One of the stops on my world tour.

It was the whole thing. Seeing that my tour around the world wasn’t for tourism, but existed so that I could memorize locations around the world to be able to open portals anywhere at any time, my visits to places were brief. To maximise the efficiency of fumo-based teleportation, I didn’t need to explore a town, just see one spot in it, and be driven away somewhere else.

That’s how I explored countries for the past month. 

I think I am in Sydney, but I wasn’t sure. 

Most of the time, I was banned from doing anything fun, like sightseeing, bar hopping and such, I was genuinely just… being driven through places with frequent stops to glance around.
Obviously, they couldn’t just board me on a plane and had me fly all over the world, or they would’ve done this by now. If I couldn’t actually remember a location or distinguish it, I can’t teleport to it, so I needed to be on the ground and pay attention. I also needed to focus on the image of a place I was to open a portal to. They didn’t let me dwell anywhere; it was very much the ‘we drive to this city for three hours so you can glance around for a minute, now back to driving’. 

The only outliers were either the times when I stopped to sleep, my one day weekend per week (unless there is an emergency), or when my transport details were mixed up, and the guys who were responsible for the logistics of yours truly had to run around arranging a new plane/hovercar/helicopter/whatever.  

Yesterday was my sacred resting day. The reason why I don’t remember which city the nightclub was in… was because this crap sort of mixes in my head. I remember being driven past it, so that’s where I portaled out on weekends. Which Aussie city it was - I couldn’t tell. I spent the whole time inside trying to find a woman who a) was pretty b) wanted to get laid with me. 

So, I found this girl… what was her name?

Eh, whatever. 

One thing led to another, and we are here, pretty sure it’s her apartment. I sat up carefully, not wanting to wake her, and started locating my clothes.

My constitution meant hangovers were basically a non-issue for me nowadays, which was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I felt fine. A curse because it removed one of the natural consequences that might've stopped me from making questionable decisions.

I got dressed just in time to see the woman start to move in the bed.

“Good morning,” I greeted, earning myself a glance of a pair of sleepy eyes, “Sorry, sweetheart, but as I said yesterday, I sort of have to run,” I told her apologetically, as I finished getting the shirt on, “You have my Sup, I’ll write if I am ever around these parts again!”

To my pleasant surprise, there was no drama this time around. She mumbled something incoherently, but let me go without much of an issue. 

Once outside of the apartment, I allowed myself to stretch with a yawn and summoned the shadows to get my usual coat over the shirt. I quickly checked the contents of my over-the-shoulder pouch bag, and yep, everything was still in place.

Good, because last time I had my smartphone pickpocketed in Brazil, our internal security guys had to raid someone. Which was sort of awkward for the criminal syndicate that ended up with my phone.

After that, I went for the glasses in my inner pocket… couldn’t find them. Blinking owlishly, I tried searching again, only to realize they were on my face. 

…how the hell did I sleep with those? You can genuinely blind someone with their edges.

Good thing that’s not how the girl woke up.  

“Alright,” I told myself, glancing around and seeing no people or cameras, “Show time.”

I called upon the powerful, terrifying, and no doubt ancient deity in my shoulder pouch. 

The Nameless Fumo answered, and the reality unzipped its fly in front of my face… 

…wait, that didn’t come out right, did it?

Shaking my head and suppressing a chuckle, I stepped in through the portal.

The portal spat me out right in front of the Australian M.O.T.H. compound's main entrance.

I'd been here a few times already over the past week, so the guards at the checkpoint barely reacted to my appearance. Literally appearing out of thin air tends to lose its shock value after the first couple of times.

"Morning," I greeted the guy at the security booth, a stocky man I'd spent some time with in the smoking room purely because I was there for some cool stories from containment zones. "Knightmare," he nodded back, already waving me through, "You look like you had fun."

"What gave it away?" I asked, raising an eyebrow even as I walked past. He gestured vaguely at his own neck, smirking.

I glanced down… right, hickeys. Probably should've checked for them. Eh, whatever; it doesn't matter.

"A good soldier bears his battle scars with pride," I declared solemnly, pressing a hand to my chest.

The guy just shook his head, chuckling. I waved him one last time before proceeding. The compound's corridors were busy enough at this hour. I passed a few soldiers I recognized from previous visits, exchanging nods and brief words as I went. I liked the Aussies; they were fun and organized enough. Their HQ wasn’t top of the line like the guys in Europe, who were really overstaffed due to two Herrschers popping up there in a row, but at least they had enough funding and competent leadership to not look like total clowns… like the guys in South America. 

Obviously, people at this HQ were mostly the operatives still undergoing training, or those on rotations outside of quarantine territories (of which every country, much less a continent like Australia, had a few), but there were still a bunch of people I knew. Mostly because I ate here throughout the last week. "Knightmare, your transport got delayed," one of the logistics guys informed me as I passed by, not even stopping, his eyes glued to his tablet.

Was he waiting for me at the entrance?

"By how much?" I asked, mildly irritated already. "Couple hours, give or take," he shrugged apologetically, still walking. “Apparently, the Skybolt scheduled for your tour had some sort of bird fly into the turbine. Our airfields aren’t as well equipped to shoo those away like commercial airports.”

"Wonderful." I sighed to myself.

Normally, I would’ve just requested another plane instead, and that would work on Mu or in Europe, over the honkai exclusion zones… but the countries weren’t so quick to give M.O.T.H. permissions.
Australia was actually one of the countries that, apparently, didn’t like us very much. That’s why, despite having several Skybolts stationed right there in the hangar area, it would take them hours to schedule a new flight for me. Because the previous flight was booked for a specific Skybolt, and now permissions had to be changed. 

It’s the bureaucratic CBT that shouldn’t even exist in an emergency in which M.O.T.H. usually operated, but some retards never learned. 

This crap is infuriating. I have so much other shit I’d rather be doing, but the logistical and tactical advantage of being able to deploy anywhere in the world was too much, even with little episodes like this in the way. It was annoying as shit, but no matter how much governments tried to convince me that helping them and their people out wasn’t worth it, I bore with it. Even if precious days by now were drained away by red tape I shouldn’t be dealing with. I kept walking, eventually reaching the waiting room I'd grown familiar with over my visits. A couple of couches, a sad excuse for a coffee machine, a TV playing muted news.

I dropped onto one of the couches.

Two hours. Great.

“Yeah, not doing it,” I said, taking out my smartphone and dialing my personal coordinator back in HQ.

“Yes…?” A sleepy voice. 

That’s weird. I am in Aussie land, but Mu and so our main HQ is almost in the same timezone. One or two hours difference max. 

And knowing how responsible the person on the other side usually was… did I interrupt during her day off? Did… did she even have day offs?

“...hey Klein,” I said, trying not to sound too guilty, “So, my morning fly-by was canceled and, eh, I sort of had to call someone to confirm.”

“...please don’t call it that.” She asked, yawning, without much outrage. I felt guilty enough not to push it.

“Anyhow, they said it’ll take two hours or so to get me a new Skybolt. I wanna go to the open training area and exercise a bit, work up a sweat, and all that. Wanted to inform you so you wouldn’t get caught off guard or anything,” I explained my plans briefly.

“That is agreeable,” The Mobius’s personal spy replied quietly, “I will notify whoever it may concern. Please keep your smartphone close this time.” ‘Unlike the last time’ - went unsaid. Which, I mean, fair enough, at least it wasn’t the outbreak alarm that I couldn’t hear past my Sin Devil Trigger practice, and just a call to inform me that a pilot in Poland was waiting for me.

I just smiled a bit. 

“You are a treasure, Klein.” I said quite honestly, “Sorry for taking away some of your sleep time.”

“It’s alright,” The voice from the other side replied sleepily, before letting out a mighty yawn, “I shouldn’t have fallen asleep on my desk in the first place…”

Mobius, I am pretty sure that’s abuse. In every country except for Japan, and maybe, like, South Kore- I mean the United Korea. 

“If you have too much on your plate, you can delegate, you know?” I asked the woman seriously. With some genuine concern, “I am a big boy, I won’t break down crying because my favorite nanny can’t keep an eye on me. Just have some intern wrangle my timetable and schedules.”

“I can’t.” Seeing that it was audio-only, I couldn’t see Klein, but I am confident she shook her head at that, “You can’t be left unsupervised in case something happens.”

Something happens… right. 

The fact that it was even a concern while I was threading ‘allied countries’ was telling enough. They didn’t expect assassination, or if they did expect one, they didn’t expect it to succeed, which was… fair. 

Between danger sense, sin devil trigger, and my armour, I am confident I will be able to live through even a surprise nuke. Well, a smaller-scale nuke… 

In all honesty, I had no idea how the fuck M.O.T.H. managed to keep any of the political shit away from me so far.

I am yet to speak to a concerned general who says,‘ our country needs your help, son’, yet to be offered bribes, yet to even be offered something silly, like a citizenship and a promise that my help will never be forgotten if only I… dunno, nuke China or kidnap a president of some third world country, or something. 

It’s as if the bigwigs didn’t yet know of me and what I can do, but I was sure they did know. Mobius had to report to them, didn’t she?

My portal-creating abilities couldn’t have been kept hidden, which is one of the reasons why my travel plan is so tightly monitored by the authorities of the countries I visit. They didn’t want me anywhere near their military objects and governmental buildings, which is why my route was sort of monitored… as if that shit would’ve mattered. 

Newsflash, me being able to open a portal in your capital already means you aren’t safe, fuckeroos. Everything else is the governments desperately trying to cope with me existing. 

“Well, I’ll catch up with you later,” I promised, hearing an affirming ‘hmph’ from the other side, before hanging up.

Then I opened my pouch and fished out the Fumo.

I spun it around in my hands a bit, admiring the stitchwork on a doll of Yukari. As always, I was certain its eyes were looking in another direction, and its face had a wider smile than yesterday.

I never bothered photographing it, because I was decently sure that if I did, things might escalate. Like, I dunno, she wouldn’t show up in photos right, or start moving around, and generally fucking with me more. 

Trying to photograph her means acknowledging her power. 

The gigantic not-Starbucks cookie I left in its hands yesterday was gone too. 

“Thanks a lot for your help,” I said, patting the Fumo. I wasn’t sure if offerings made it more powerful, or even if it would save me from a possible Chucky arc that may follow, but so far, there was no attempted murder via portal, so I was doing something right. I think.

I hope.

I pray.  

I gently got a second cookie and placed it into the fumo’s hands. I could swear I saw them curl on the sweet treat a little. 

“I’ll have to exploit you a little more,” I added quietly, glancing up from the doll and towards the space in front of us, “A lot of people rely on me… and on you too, even if they don’t know it.” I said quietly, “Please bear with it for a bit. I’ll try to find out how to pay you back.” I promised, and, expectedly, received no reply.

Closing my eyes, I channeled some mana into her, picturing a location, and the portal opened.

I hid the Yukari Fumo back into the pouch and stepped into the training area. 

Thing is? Ever since I got Sin DT (I was forbidden by Mobius to shorten it further to avoid confusion), the indoor training facility in our HQ has been way too limited. I just couldn’t push myself in my devil form over there. 

So, instead, M.O.T.H. got me a cool spot in one of the Mu’s national parks. Apparently, a honkai outbreak happened here five years ago or so, so it was already long since quarantined. 

But because the outbreak of Honkai energy happened here before the First Eruption, the level of contamination was pretty much nothing… at least by our standards now.

“Well, the hell do I work on today?” I wondered to myself, before glancing down from the small mountain peak on which I stood. 

Really, I should just practice some more with my shadow control or Reality Edge… but I got a new toy recently.

“Ahhh, who cares if I don’t need it!? It’s cool!” I set aside my pouch, dispelled my coat, and started to undress. 

Soon enough, I stood on the mountain peak pretty much naked, aside from the underwear.

“Can’t get used to that…” I muttered, rolling my bare feet back and forward. I really couldn’t operate comfortably without shoes… well, unless I was in my devil form.

Even those small stones here, while they couldn’t really hurt me… felt uncomfortable.

I stood on my tiptoes, then rolled back a bit to my heels, back and forth a few times, until the weirdness lessened a bit. 

Then I nodded to myself, breathing out. 

A bunch of steam left my mouth. 

This still felt fascinating. I knew it was cold this high up, early in the morning, on Mu. Yet, it felt perfectly comfortable for me.
I could still feel the wind, and it felt cool and refreshing, but it didn’t really affect the temperature for me. 

The reason for that was a string I pulled two weeks ago, when I was ‘touring’ Africa. It took the shape of the force technique that I felt as if I practiced for decades. 

I can’t really explain the mechanics without going very allegorical and in depth, but basically, it makes it so that the temperature my body experiences is always comfortable, unless I cancel the technique. We tested it, and up to -60 Celsius, I felt nothing. Upwards to +200 celsius I felt nothing either, not with air, not with boiling water. 

I had an instinctive knowledge that low enough and high enough temperatures would still harm me, but we decided against testing the exact limits. 

I couldn’t overstate how huge this was, actually. It’s not only that I could not overheat from the outer stimuli… it was that the temperature produced inside my body couldn’t get beyond ‘comfortable’ for me. Even during exertion and workout. It meant I couldn’t truly ever overheat with this technique active, and while this isn’t a problem most people outside of athletes encounter, trust me, with my armour, this was a serious issue on the longer missions. My muscles could handle the exertion, but it got steamy. Well, not anymore. 

But this wasn’t what I was out to train. 

No, I was here, on this mountain peak, to train Muay Thai.

This, too, was a string I pulled. A mundane martial art, that sounds cool and all, but so what? Didn’t I have private instructors teaching me and developing combat styles for me?

I sure did. 

The issue is that the string didn’t just provide me with knowledge on kata, a few moves, and so on. 

It gave me a complete understanding of that style of combat. None of the muscle memory, none of the conditioning and skills, but I understood Muay Thai now. I understood how to fight with it, how to train it, how to hone it.

I used to box a bit in my previous life. What I remembered from it was nothing compared to what the string gifted me. 

This string also finally gave me a perspective. A perspective of someone who practiced Muay Thai his whole life (even if I was a fraud). 

Ever since Belarus, my combat instructors were… well, sort of useless. I still did some training with them, some light sparring without armour, and a lot of them were genuinely good. Better than me in terms of techniques, I guess? It just didn’t matter. Even without magic and DT, with danger sense and my passive enhancements alone, I beat them black and blue, even four on one.  

I couldn’t learn anything new. They weren’t enough to push me anymore; they couldn’t teach me anything worthwhile. 

When it came to wielding a spear and a sword, there wasn’t that much to it. You had your stances, your sectors of attacks and defences, there were some tricks, sure, but fundamentally it’s not difficult to get how to leverage strength for attacks and blocks. Not exactly rocket science in terms of knowledge, you just practice your stances, and you git gud with practice.

The trick was always in muscle memory and in-the-moment decision-making that required a lot of training and practice. Especially in live combat. 

Anime super-moves, unfortunately, weren’t real. In normal sword fighting, at least.

But my instructors also just didn’t get a lot of the stuff I had to deal with on the missions. 

So outside of those basic stances and footwork, they couldn’t offer much in terms of practical advice, just guesswork. 

They don’t understand what it means to have danger sense and be able to react before you are even attacked. They don’t understand what it is like to fight an opponent who can launch you into the sky with a punch, even if you block it, unless you deflect the strike just right, and fix yourself to the ground somehow. They don’t understand what it’s like to fight beasts who don’t care about pain or dying, and not men. 

I couldn’t formulate those things in words, I just continued to spar to my instructors and heard their criticism, getting frustrated, because I couldn’t articulate what felt wrong, and felt like they weren’t really helping me improve.

Then I got the Muay Thai string.

And I got it. What my issue was. What was eating away at me.

This skill wasn’t the ‘I am suddenly a master of Muay Thai from Earth’ thing. No, it was as if I became a master of Muay Thai from a martial arts manga or, fuck, some fighting game. I knew how to use this style on superhuman levels, comparable to my level in armour… I mean fuck, I was pretty sure I knew how I could condition myself to this level, if I had a… decade to spare? Yeah, around that much.

I suddenly just knew how to plant my legs and rotate my torso in a way that would let me redirect a strike from a Chariot, instead of blocking it and getting launched a street away. 

It wasn’t the sort of skill any of my instructors here could teach me, because, well, none of them ever were in a weight class when they needed to redirect this much force, and where they were strong enough to do so. 

It was this Muay Thai mastery that led me to the revelation I should’ve arrived at a while ago. 

My instructors, those genuinely skilled people from around the world gathered to train me, they had nothing to teach me anymore. 

On this path of a superhuman monster slayer, I was the trailblazer. A terrifying prospect, to be honest. 

That being said, Muay Thai was useless to me by all metrics. Unarmed combat is pointless when you have a weapon as amazing as Reality Edge, isn't it? The smart thing would’ve been to take whatever lessons I could from my sudden martial arts ‘mastery’ and leave it be. 

…but I didn’t want to. 

The knowledge and sheer understanding of Muay Thai I suddenly had felt like a lifetime of someone’s work and dedication. It gave me an important revelation. 

Just throwing this skill aside felt as if I was an ungrateful prick. This skill by itself was A LOT. Back on my Earth? I would’ve killed just to have it. 

So, I resolved myself to internalize the teachings. 

Condition my body, like I now knew how, to a superhuman level. Condition my mind and reflexes. Condition my spirit.

Well, I am terribly limited in terms of how much time I could dedicate to all of this, but I tried to give it my all. 

I was a novice with a profound understanding of a master, no muscle memory, and a freakish augmented body. There was work to be done. 

I started with footwork today.

Not shadowboxing, not drills. Just movement. The way the knowledge in my head demanded it.

I moved in slow, deliberate circles across the uneven mountain rock, keeping my weight balanced, my stance narrow enough to pivot but wide enough to stay grounded. Each step was measured and precise. The rocky gravel-like stones shifted beneath my bare feet, and I let myself feel it, let my soles map the terrain even as I kept my eyes forward.

Zigzag patterns came next. Left, right, forward at an angle, back at another. The pattern was simple in theory, but demanded total awareness of where your feet were at any given moment. In a real fight, you never get to look down, and when acting at my real speed, the same would be true even for my superhuman ass. 

Which is why I needed to drill it until it’s muscle memory. So I wouldn’t even have to think. 

I could move without thinking ever since Belarus, ever since that string that made me elegant and stylish, but… I wanted to be able to move like this, too. I didn't know what this footwork was called. Didn't know if it had a name at all. But I knew it was right, knew it in my bones the same way I knew how to breathe or blink. 

I could almost swear I could remember doing this before, yet I didn’t. I kept at it for ten minutes straight, moving in silence, letting my body learn what my mind already understood. I moved deliberately slowly, making sure I did it right, and slowly picked up speed, until it became difficult to be sure my execution was perfect.

Then came the strikes.

I started with the basics. Jab. A snapping punch, more to measure distance than to hurt, at least unless inhuman strength came into play. Cross. The power shot, thrown with full hip rotation, the rear foot pivoting until only the ball remained on the ground.

But it was the kicks I needed to drill most.

The roundhouse. Muay Thai's signature weapon, even I saw it in video games and movies. The kick that separated this art from every other striking discipline on the planet. 

Somehow, I knew that in my bones. This move was special. 

I threw one, feeling the rotation of my hips, the way my standing foot should pivot a full hundred and eighty degrees to generate maximum torque. The way my shin, not my foot, was the striking surface.

The first few felt wrong. Not bad, exactly, just slightly off. My hips were rotating correctly, my arms were swinging in the proper counterbalance, but there was a millisecond of hesitation somewhere in the chain. A hitch that would get me countered in a real fight.

I kept throwing them. Ten. Twenty. Fifty. Each one a little smoother than the last.

I would’ve loved to do a ‘ten thousand roundhouse kicks of gratitude’ just to see if I could. Unfortunately, no time. I moved to push kicks. The jab of the legs. Straight to the body. To the face. The skipping variation, where you hop forward off your back foot to catch a retreating opponent. Each variation had its purpose, its timing, its moment of vulnerability that you had to minimize.

The knowledge in my head was overwhelming in its completeness. I didn't just know the techniques, I knew when to use them, how to set them up, what counters they invited, and how to bait those counters.

But this was pointless. I knew, but I didn’t think like a Muay Thai fighter. I was a genuine damn internet-expert, I knew everything there was to know, understood it all perfectly… but I thought way too slowly. I had no muscle memory. I couldn’t plan a fighting strategy in the moment, only from the calmness outside of the fight. My body and spirit both needed to catch up.

I transitioned into combinations. Jab, cross, low kick. Jab, push kick, rear roundhouse. Then something that felt more natural to the art, more fundamental. Push kick to measure, catch the return, sweep the standing leg. The sweep targeted the ankle while your opponent was off-balance from their caught kick.

I practiced it on air, visualizing the opponent, imagining the weight distribution, the moment of vulnerability. The opponent I could imagine the easiest was another human. Elbows came next. The diagonal slash that could open a man's face like a knife. The horizontal cut. The upward strike that rose from below like a crescent moon. Each one was a close-range weapon, meant for the clinch or for the pocket when your opponent had closed distance and thought they were safe.

They weren't safe. Nothing was safe inside elbow range.

Especially when I recalled that my Sin Devil Trigger form had crystal spikes growing out of those.

I worked through the knee techniques with the same methodical focus. The straight knee, driven upward into the solar plexus or the face, if you had the height advantage. The angled knee that slipped between your opponent's guard. The flying knee, a high-risk, high-reward technique that could end a fight in an instant if it landed clean.

The sun was climbing higher now. I'd been at it for nearly an hour, just drilling fundamentals, and my body was finally starting to respond the way it should. The hesitation in my kicks was gone. My push kicks snapped out clean and fast. My elbows felt sharp enough to cut.

I warmed up for today, but I knew this progress would mostly be gone by tomorrow. It takes months of practice to get it fixed to the level of a reflex. Time for the next phase.

I closed my eyes and reached for the shadows.

They pooled at my feet obediently, dark and eager, responding to my will like they always did.

But instead of forming them into a weapon or a construct, I let them gather into a larger mass, a puddle of absolute darkness that seemed to drink in the morning light.

Then I fed it something different.

The demonic energy came from somewhere deep in my chest, a burning reservoir that had existed ever since Belarus. It wasn't mana. Mana was calm, controllable, almost clinical in its application. This was something else. Something that wanted to be used, that hungered for violence in a way that should have been concerning, but instead felt perfectly natural.

I channeled it into the shadow mass, and the darkness began to rise.

It took shape slowly, reluctantly, as if the demonic energy was fighting against the form I was trying to impose. A torso first, broad and vaguely humanoid. Then arms, thick and long. Legs that planted themselves on the mountain rock with an audible crunch. A head that was more suggestion than feature, with hollow spaces where eyes should be that somehow still managed to convey attention.

The figure stood opposite me, wreathed in wisps of darkness that curled off its form like smoke from a dying fire. It looked like me in the way that a smudged photograph looks like its subject. The general shape was right, but all the details were blurred, indistinct, wrong in ways that were hard to articulate.

"Sparring," I told it, my voice steady despite the strangeness of addressing my own creation. "Muay Thai rules. No weapons, no devil fuckery. You should be almost as strong and fast as I am in my armour, so hold back by a bunch, until you are just slightly stronger and faster than me. And try to win."

The shadow tilted its head.

It was creepy as fuck. This little trick was something I figured out relatively recently, and unfortunate as it is, my ‘doppelganger’ was pretty dumb and couldn’t operate further than 10 meters from me. 

Which was a shame, considering my shadow constructs could now exist as far as I could see. 

Breathing out and knowing I will barely have the time to react, I took the defensive stance, one knee high, elbows raised. "Go."The shadow moved.

It closed the distance between us in a blur, gravel exploding outward from where it pushed off the ground, and I barely managed to catch the push kick it drove into my chest. The impact lifted me off my feet and sent me skidding backward across the rock, my heels digging furrows into the mountain stone as I fought to stay upright.

The sound of the kick connecting was wrong. Too loud, like a car crash compressed into a single instant. It echoed off the surrounding peaks and faded into nothing.

Fast. I knew it was fast, but experiencing it was something else entirely, even if I knew what to expect.

I reset my stance just as it came in again, this time with a jab-cross combination that moved faster than my eyes could properly track. My danger sense screamed warnings, and I slipped the jab on instinct, letting it whisper past my ear, but the cross caught me on the shoulder and spun me halfway around.

My feet left the ground. Small rocks scattered in every direction, pelting the nearby boulders like hail.

I hit the ground rolling and came up in a crouch, guard high, breathing hard.

The shadow was already moving again. A roundhouse aimed at my ribs, thrown with perfect form and horrifying speed. I stepped into it and caught the kick against my forearm, the way I'd drilled a thousand times, but the impact jarred my bones so hard I felt my teeth rattle.

The sound was like a thunderclap. A sharp crack that bounced off the mountain faces and returned as a fading echo.

I tried to sweep its standing leg, the counter that should have followed naturally, but it read me somehow. Anticipated the technique. It retracted the caught leg and checked my sweep with its own shin, bone against bone, and this time the sound was wet, meaty, like two sides of beef being slammed together by an angry god.

We separated. The shadow circled to my left. I circled opposite, keeping my distance, trying to come up with a plan. 

At our skill level, whoever was attacking had an advantage. That was a simple fact I had to keep in mind.

It came in with a feint, a low kick that I dropped my guard to check, and then redirected into a high kick aimed at my head. The trajectory started low and curved upward like a question mark, a deceptive technique that I recognized instinctively even though I couldn't have named it if someone asked. I got my arm up just in time, blocking the shin with my forearm, but the force drove me sideways. My feet scrambled for purchase on the loose stone, and I felt something in my shoulder protest the treatment.

The shadow pressed its advantage. Inside now, too close for kicks, close enough for elbows and knees. A horizontal elbow sliced toward my face, and I ducked under it, feeling the displaced air ruffle my hair. A knee came up, straight to the body, and I twisted to take it on my hip instead of my solar plexus.

Still hurt.

Still drove the air out of my lungs in a surprised grunt.

But I was inside now, too.

Clinch.

I grabbed for its head, fighting for the double collar tie, the position that would let me control its posture and throw knees of my own. My hands sank into the shadow-stuff of its neck, finding something solid beneath the darkness, something I could grip and manipulate.

It fought back immediately, hands clawing for my biceps, trying to strip my grip. We wrestled for position, our feet churning the gravel beneath us, neither willing to give ground. Every time it tried to posture up, I wrenched it back down. Every time I tried to throw a knee, it shifted its hips and took it on the thigh instead of the body.

I wasn't going to break.

I feinted a knee, felt it shift to defend, and used the opening to snap its head down while driving my own head up and forward in a headbutt. The impact sent a shockwave through my skull and probably would have knocked a normal person unconscious. The shadow staggered, its grip loosening, and I followed up with a straight knee that I drove upward with every ounce of strength I could muster.

The knee connected with its midsection. The sound was apocalyptic. A boom that seemed to shake the mountain itself, that sent a cloud of dust billowing outward from our feet, that scattered stones the size of my fist in every direction.

The shadow doubled over, and I saw my opening.

Upward elbow.

Thrown from below, rising like a crescent moon, aimed at the underside of its chin.

It connected.

The shadow went airborne.

For a moment, just a moment, I felt like I was winning. Like I'd cracked the code, found the rhythm, figured out how to fight something that was supposed to be better than me.

Then the shadow hit the ground, rolled, and stood up. 

There was no damage to the construct. Obviously. Even if it lowered its durability for me, it could regenerate from the small pool of demonic energy I’ve given it.

I shifted in place and winced, feeling my elbows and knees hurt like hell, and my vision spun a bit. 

I lifted up a finger.

“A sec,” Demonic energy flared around me, outlining a demonic silhouette, and I released my demonic form in an explosion of energy.

For just two to three seconds, I floated there, under the morning sun, allowing my body to regenerate. 

Then I dispelled the transformation. After over a month of practice, I landed on my feet and wasn’t breathing like I’ve run a marathon. 

It was also a bit alarming how much white hair I’ve had. Over half now. 

“Alright,” I told the shadow who was patiently waiting, “Let’s go, round two.”The next twenty minutes were hell.

It adapted. Every technique I used more than twice, it started reading. Every pattern I fell into, it exploited. I'd throw a jab-cross-low kick combination, and it would check the kick and counter with an elbow that nearly took my head off. I'd go for the clinch, and it would time a throw so perfectly that I'd find myself on my back staring at the sky.

It was bullshit, because I knew for a fact it exploited its heightened reaction time compared to me. No matter how much it jobbed to be ‘just slightly stronger’ than my squishy human body without the Shadow Armour on, it could still react on its peak abilities. 

It felt like I was fighting against a fucking martial arts manga grandmaster.

But I adapted too.

Danger sense. Even if the shadow never attacked with the intent to kill, danger sense still sort of works. With some practice, I could tell which combination would be more dangerous for me to commit to by how my danger sense responded.

I started mixing my timing, throwing techniques at irregular intervals, and feinting more than I struck. When it read my patterns, I abandoned them entirely, switching from technical distance fighting to aggressive pressure that walked through strikes and demanded exchanges at close range.

The mountain peak became a war zone. Gravel had been blasted away in wide arcs, leaving bare rock that was already showing cracks. The air was thick with dust and the echoing aftershocks of every collision.

I caught a roundhouse flush on my ribs and felt something give. Crack or just deep bruising, I couldn't tell, but it sent a lance of fire through my side that made breathing a challenge.

I responded with a push kick to its face that sent it stumbling backward, buying myself space to reset.

It came back in immediately. Relentless.

Inside again. Clinch again.

This time I didn't fight for the double collar tie. Instead, I went over-under, one arm hooking under its armpit, the other controlling its neck from above. A position for wrestling, for manipulation, for the kind of dirty clinch work that won fights in the later rounds when both fighters were exhausted and technique was all that remained.

I felt it try to knee me, read the shift in its weight, and timed my counter perfectly. As its knee came up, I pulled down on the side of its standing leg and pushed up with my overhook simultaneously.

The dump sent it sprawling.

I stepped back, chest heaving, every muscle in my body screaming in protest. The shadow pushed itself up from the crater it had made, darkness reknitting where my strikes had torn through its form, and for a long moment we just stood there, facing each other across the ruined landscape.

"Stop," I said.

The shadow went still.

There was blood in my mouth from where I'd bitten my tongue during one of the exchanges. My arms felt like lead, my legs like they were filled with sand instead of muscle.

It felt wonderful.

I dismissed the construct, letting the demonic energy disperse. The shadows scattered, retreating to their natural positions as if nothing had happened. The only evidence of what had occurred was the slightly damaged peak and the dust in the air, which would clean with the next gust of air.

I once again briefly entered Sin Devil Trigger, like I did countless times during the spar.

Then I lowered myself onto a relatively intact boulder and just sat for a while. 

I checked my smartphone. Still forty minutes before my Skybolt was ready, according to the last notification.

Not enough time for another round. Not if I wanted to rest and take a shower after this. Probably for the best. 

It felt weird. I knew this was pointless. Practicing with my demonic energy, umbrakinesis, and Reality Edge was countless times more useful. 

But it somehow never felt this fulfilling. 

This felt almost intimate. Also, so fucking cool.  

Because I actually felt like I knew precisely what I was doing for once. 

"Let’s do it again tomorrow," I told the empty air, then immediately reconsidered. "I should have the time.”

For a moment I wondered if I am genuinely insane. 

Then again, I did just imagine a clone hard enough to fight and get actual gains from. Like a Baki chara…

…no.

No, it can’t be. 

I can’t possibly be turning into a Baki character. I am not gay, damn it!

Chuckling to myself, I summoned Reality Edge into my hand and glanced at my reflection on its nice, polished edge. 

Yeah, I wasn’t buff enough to be a Baki character… yet. 

Then again, I don’t think I can realistically get there without some very weird string or steroids. After all, Sparda’s genetics also aren’t predisposed to Jojo Part 3 builds. The best you get is muscled twinks. 

“The hell do I even do about you?” I wondered to myself, channeling some demonic energy into the Devil Arm, and willing it to punch a hole from where it sat towards a small boulder opposite us.

It sparked… and did something. I think a small portal opened. Very briefly.

Yet I felt so much resistance from the spear. Like all the energy oomphed in, overflowed, messed up the direction, and came out wrong. 

I could sort of brute force the effect in Sin Devil Trigger by just pumping so much energy that it doesn’t matter, but outside of it, in my fragile human body? If I tried to use that much demonic energy, I am pretty sure I would disintegrate. 

I still wasn’t too worried. It still felt like something was happening inside the Devil Arm. Like it was resting, and yet… growing stronger. 

Which was good in my book. 

But it has been like this for a month. And I can feel it taking in some of my demonic power even now, what does it…

Suddenly, I felt it. A deep, vibrating resonance, as the spear ignited purple for a moment. 

The world lurched.No, that wasn't right. The world didn't lurch. The world ceased to exist, and something else took its place, as if someone cracked an invisible mirror right in front of me.

One moment, I was sitting on a boulder, staring at my spear. Next, I was somewhere else entirely, standing on a surface that was there only because my feet insisted it had to be.

I didn’t even register a transition from sitting to standing. My brain blanked out when I tried to realize when it happened.

"What the fuck?" I whispered.

Is this the sort of shit Dante had to deal with all the time in his line of work?I looked around, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

Geometry decided to juju-jump me. That was the only word for it. Cubes the size of houses floated in the void, with familiar orange lines colouring them, rotating slowly on axes that shouldn't have been possible. Some of them intersected with each other, occupying the same space without any apparent conflict. Pyramids hung upside down, their tips pointing toward something that might have been a horizon, except the horizon kept shifting every time I tried to focus on it.

There were spheres too, perfect spheres of absolute darkness, and others that glowed with a faint purple light. They orbited nothing, following paths that curved in directions I couldn't name. 

I remember seeing simulations of 4D space, of how they would look like for a 3D character trying to navigate them. 

This is how this felt. You looked left, but you didn’t really look left enough; you had to look… ehem, LEFTER. 

Shit was maddening.

There was no sky above me. Just more shapes, stretching into an infinity that made my brain hurt to contemplate. Triangles nested inside triangles nested inside triangles, each one slightly offset from the last, creating patterns that seemed to move even though nothing was actually moving.

Or maybe everything was moving, and I just couldn't tell.

I took a few experimental steps forward. The nothing-surface held, which was nice. I started walking properly, though I had no idea where I was going. There didn't seem to be any landmarks, just endless geometric impossibility in every direction.

I wasn’t concerned only because I knew I could likely crack this dimension like glass in my Sin Devil Trigger. Then I noticed something that wasn't just floating shapes.

A village. The remains of one, anyway.

Wooden houses, the kind you'd see in old Eastern European countryside, sat scattered across a plane that definitely hadn't been there a moment ago. Some of them were intact. Most weren't. Walls had been torn apart and frozen mid-collapse, suspended in the air like a photograph of destruction. Roofs hung at impossible angles, defying gravity that probably didn't exist here.

I walked closer, and suddenly, my bare feet were touching grass. Actual grass, brown and dead, but grass nonetheless.

I am pretty sure I just teleported a hundred meters or so. Again, without noticing. The village was wrong in ways that went beyond the obvious damage. One house had been bisected cleanly, its interior exposed like a dollhouse. I could see furniture inside, a table with plates still on it, and chairs arranged around it. But the table was also outside the house, a duplicate sitting in what used to be a garden. And another copy floated ten meters above, slowly spinning.

Space just didn't work right here. Things existed in multiple places at once. Distances meant nothing. But the village felt the most solid. 

Things were in three dimensions here, outside of some objects which… ‘lagged out’. I passed what might have been a well. The bucket hung suspended halfway down, frozen in time, the rope leading up to a mechanism that had been scattered across three different locations simultaneously. There were no bodies anywhere, which I was grateful for.

The village stretched on further than it should have. I kept walking, passing the same broken fence from three different angles without ever turning around. A barn loomed ahead of me, then was suddenly behind me, then was to my left, all without me changing direction.

Disorienting as hell, but also weirdly familiar. Not the village itself. I had no idea where this place was supposed to be. 

No, what felt familiar was the energy. The same energy that pulsed through Reality Edge. The same energy I'd been channeling moments ago.

This was inside the Devil Arm. This was what remained of the Herrscher of the Void.

The purple glow I'd noticed on the floating spheres was stronger here, closer to the village's center. It pulsed slowly, rhythmically, like a heartbeat.

Something was waiting for me there. I could feel it.

It happened seamlessly, I kept on walking, and eventually, there was no grass under my feet, but instead, snow. 

I stood in a… floating island, I think? The one I stood on looked like a part of a snowy forest torn out of the planet and left to hang… somewhere.

Countless small islands all around, as far as I could see. One above me, where I felt it from. That one was a piece of a commie-block building.

The demonic energy felt just like my own. 

A figure stood there. Familiar yellow eyes, with a strange, almost star-like pattern deep inside. But the hair was snow white, just like my own was getting.

The strange outfit, as if fused to skin, and infused with scales. Reality Edge in her hand, the spear was alight with demonic energy.

Without a doubt…

“The Second, huh?” I muttered, projecting a copy of the spear made out of shadow into my hand. “What, is this some sort of an attempt at a rematch?” I asked jokingly, gesturing around, “That won’t work out well for you, you know?”

This wasn’t knowledge like the one that came from a string. This was a deep, guttural understanding. Like how a human knew that if you dropped a rock, it would fall.

So did I know that a Devil Arm that decided to rebel against its rightful master… would end up fucked up.

The Herrscher, now a demon, merely stared, lifting its spear.

Well, boss fight round two, let’s g-

“Aaaaaaaaaaagh!”

A feminine, even childish shout, but seething with such raw anger and hate that even I was taken aback despite my pre-battle rash.

Then a purple blur impacted the Herrscher, and they both started to fall, as the purple… girl? Purple girl was showering the white-haired one with punches.

When they fell to the ground, I could only stare as a girl with purple hair, who looked even more like the Second Herrscher I remembered, was doing a Kratos God of War finisher on the non-resisting white-haired… twin?

Wait, what the fu-

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Author Note: Alright folks, new chapter of your favorite gacha-slop is here, hope you enjoy sloppily devouring it as much as I enjoyed sloppily making it.

Seriously, though, some shit is planned for the next few chapters.

My beta reader is complaining that I am getting autistic about Martial Arts here, and he doesen’t like it, laugh at this soyjack beta male for me. Thanks.