Smoke. Screams. Silence. Then—the one came out of the shadows.
The air warped.
A wave of raw pressure rippled outward, flattening the remaining debris of what was once central Shinjuku. Amid the rubble and the chaos, Lucien and his team could only raise their heads slightly, breathless and bloodied, to witness the man who stood above them all.
Then he stepped forward.
Karu Arakizawa.
The Captain of Division One. The strongest among the whole of the Nightguard Corps. The one they spoke of in hushed reverence. And now, he was here on the destroyed battlefield.
Lucien blinked away the blood in his eyes. "That's him..."
Rylen exhaled sharply. "We're finally saved."
Jason sat against a cracked wall, bruised and half-conscious. Even he managed a grin. "About damn time. That old man came."
Emiluna whispered, "He actually came..."
The battlefield was a graveyard. All around them, the monstrous howls of the remaining Level 4 and 5 beasts still echoed. Fifteen Level 4s and twenty Level 5s remained. That, along with the evolved Level 2 monstrosity towering above them all—shrouded in black mist and flickering with energy.
But Karu didn't flinch on bit.
He moved instantly.
A streak of red and silver—faster than anyone in the world—sliced through the sky. And then it happened.
With a single downward strike of his arm, a radiant wave of energy exploded outward, shaped like an X made of blazing inferno and jagged lightning. The air split in half.
BOOM.
Four Level 4s and seven Level 5s evaporated in under a second. No screams. No time. Just instant annihilation. Charred husks hit the ground as ash. The remaining monsters froze in instinctual fear.
Division Five, Kagetsu, Ayumu and the second division captain could only watch.
Karu landed without mercy, his boots hissing as they made contact with the scorched ground. His suit, officially codenamed "Titan-0 Apex", wasn't just armor—it was a divine instrument of war. Forged from Chrono-Alloy and imbued with elemental cores, it was the only exo-frame capable of manipulating wind, fire, earth, and ice simultaneously at hypercompressed levels.
Hexagonal plates shifted and whirred subtly with his every breath. Every piece of the armor was sleek yet armored, elegant yet tactical. His helm—crowned with a thin crimson crest—shrouded his eyes with a HUD visor, feeding him constant data. The suit granted him:
Relativistic+ speed through adaptive gravity jets.
Elemental conjuration via micro-reactors.
Flight through quantum field boosters in his boots.
Enhanced strength, enough to lift skyscrapers with ease.
Damage nullification shielding, layered with chrono-phase platin.g
Chassis & Frame:
Material: Tri‑plasma‑alloy ceramic composite—lightweight yet impervious to Level 1 monster attacks.
Height: 7 ft even; mass at zero‑G around 400 lbs. Full of muscle
Power Core: Quantum singularity cell providing near‑infinite energy reserves, recharging ambient elemental projectors.
Elemental Cores:
Pyro Reactor (shoulders): Generates +10 000 ° F plasma jets; can ignite a 500 ft firestorm in less than seconds.
Cryo Matrix (chest): Projects −500 °F frost novas; capable of freezing a Level 3 monster's limb in one single blast.
Aero Dampers (back): Multi‑vector thrusters enabling Mach 3+ flight, atmospheric shifts, and zero‑G combat.
Gaia Stabilizers (waist): Seismic boots that channel tectonic energy—earthquakes at magnitudes between 6 and 9.5, reinforced shields.
Weaponry:
Titan Lance (plasma spear): Dual‑mode—melee extension up to 12 ft; secondary micro‑railgun burst.
Voidbreaker Gauntlets: Kinetic fists that can shatter reinforced concrete or bone with a single punch. Can destroy a skyscraper within seconds with a couple punches
Phantom Blades: Collapsible wrist‑blades of phase‑shifted energy; cut through monster hide like butter.
Defenses:
Shield Matrix: Reactive aether field that auto‑adjusts to incoming attacks—thermal, kinetic, or energy.
Stealth Protocol: Limited cloaking by bending light around the armor—30 sec burst, 2 min cooldown.
Neural Link: Direct synapse‑to‑armor integration for millisecond response time.
Special Systems:
Omni‑Sensors: 360° monster bio‑signature tracking up to 2 miles.
Nanite Repair: Micro‑nanites that slowly mend armor nicks and seal major wounds.
No one else in the Corps came close to him. Karu was a one-man army. A god in armor.
He stepped forward slowly, eyes locked on the towering Level 2 monster in the distance.
Its obsidian wings unfurled. Its molten breath leaked from its jaws.
Karu's voice, deep and resolute, echoed across the field.
"You evolved twice already... Let's see what that earned you."
The monster bellowed and charged towarda Karu.
What followed wasn't a normal fight—it was destruction incarnate.
The creature lunged forwrad, sending a beam of searing fire from its breath alone. Buildings behind Karu exploded in pillars of flame—but the captain was gone in an instant.
Above.
He reappeared in the night sky, gauntlets drawn, spiraling downward like a comet. His armor flared with wind and fire energy as he rotated, his entire body becoming a whirlwind of fire.
CRACKBOOM.
The gauntlets shot through one of the monster's wings mid-air, forcing it to the ground. The shockwave destroyed and cracked open a three-block radius, glass raining like stars. Karu landed on the ground, summoned a fissure beneath the beast with a stomp, then filled it with magma from beneath the earthcrust.
The Level 2 roared and swiped—but Karu blurred backward, leaving an afterimage of himself behind.
He reappeared at the creature's side, firing twin bolts of ice that froze its left arm completly. Then, with a twist of his gauntlet, the ice detonated—shattering the limb into crystalized gore.
Lucien and his team stared in awe.
"He's destroying it," Rylen whispered.
The monster responded by letting out an earth-rending scream and unleashed a barrage of dark energy blasts towards Karu. Karu's suit adapted instantly, redirecting wind barriers around him like shifting shields. Each blast collided and scattered harmlessly across the dome into buildings.
But even as he dominated, Karu's HUD calculated energy output. Time was running out. This level of output couldn't be sustained forever.
He needed to end it sooner then he thought.
Karu rocketed forward at relativistic speeds—his afterimages lingering behind ghosts of himself. He stabbed both Phantom Blades into the monster's chest and lung, while still embedded, detonated a point-blank firestorm that engulfed five city blocks entirely.
BOOOOOOM.
The creature howled in pain, scales melting, bones glowing red-hot.
Karu landed a mile away on the ground, smoke rising from his armor. He panted once—but didn't rest. "Now."
Suddenly, the Level 2's body began to twitch more and more. Its core pulsed rapidly—irregularly.
Lucien's eyes widened. "No you can´t be serious. It's... evolving again."
The monster howled again—this time in a lower, deeper voice that echoed across dimensions beyond our understanding.
Its body began to shift into an new form.
Its teeth elongated, serrated like swords. Its wings stretched wider the before, lined with dimensional rifts. Its claws darkened in comeplete darkness—pulsing with violet energy.
And then… the worst part of all this.
A new power emerged from the shadows.
The Dimensional Claw appeard.
With a single swipe, it erased an entire skyscraper. But not with brute force—it simply vanished into nothingness. Time collapsed in on it, and the structure was gone, as if it had never even existed in the first place.
Lucien gasped. "That's... that's time displacement."
Then came the energy blasts—not just fire or radiation, but raw spatial tears. One struck the skyline, and an entire district collapsed in a second.
And finally—its ultimate attack.
The monster inhaled.
Its core ignited with fire.
And it fired.
A city-wide beam—white and red and black—tore across the entirety off Shinjuku. In less than a second, it erased dozens of blocks. The explosion consumed everything. Flames, gravity pulses, and complete silence.
Lucien used his regenration just in time.
When the dust settled in Shinjuku... there was no more Shinjuku left. Just a wasteland of molten concrete and twisted steel.
But one figure still stood—undefeated, unmoving, alive.
Karu Arakizawa.
His armor was cracked in a lot of places, leaking sparks. But his eyes glowed with fury and rage.
"He tanked that attack on his own?" Emiluna whispered.
Karu clenched his fists. "I've survived worse than this."
Meanwhile, the rest had recovered enough to stand up and fight again.
Lucien's aura blazed as he stepped forward. "We take out the rest of those monsters."
Rylen nodded. "Leave the big one to Karu—for now atleast."
The 15 remaining Level 4s and 13 Level 5s surged toward them, ready to kill.
Lucien leapt into the sky, summoned his Purgeflame, and fired a spiraling beam that tore through three Level 5s and killed them.
Jason roared in rage and slammed the ground, sending out a shockwave that crushed multiple Level 4s.
Rylen moved like lightning, dashing and punching from target to target, slicing limbs with precise precision.
Emiluna kept them all alive—shields, bursts of light magic, and heals. When Jason was impaled because it was a 5 one 1, she flashed forward, healed his wound in real time, and kicked the attacker's jaw clean off with a elegant kick.
Kagetsu, Ayumu and The Captain of the second division cleared the remaining monsters with 1 combined attacks.
They fought like wolves. Wounded. Angry. Unified.
Screams echoed. Blood rained.
And when the dust settled… only one enemy remained on the battlefield.
Karu stood, battered and wounded, as the evolved near-Level 1 monster advanced towards him.
Lucien stepped beside him.
Then Jason. Rylen. Emiluna. Kagestu. Ayumu. The second Divison captain
They didn't speak one word.
They didn't need to.
Karu smirked behind his cracked helm. "I'll handle the front of this monster. You burn the bastard from behind."
Lucien's eyes glowed.
They all took their stances. Ready to fight.
And together, they faced off with the monster.
The storm wasn't over in the slightest.
It was only beginning.