CHAPTER 2: THE GNARLED ROOT OF DUTY
The night was a lie.
From the street, Tokyo glittered its usual electric promise. Neon kanji painted the damp air in strokes of red and blue. Salarymen staggered from izakayas, laughter echoing off glass and steel. It was a city performing normalcy with frantic, convincing grace.
But Bob Perez saw the cracks in the performance.
It started as a pressure, a dull, psychic throb behind his eyes, synced to the slow, alien pulse of the Spirit Blade hidden beneath his bed. The Blade was no longer inert. Since the museum, it had become a compass needle, quivering towards a specific, gnawing hunger to the east. It was a cold root digging into his soul, whispering of a deep, wet darkness and the slow dissolve of all things.
He hadn't slept. He sat on the floor of his six-tatami room, the Blade across his lap. The grey steel was passively cool, but the faint, internal blue glow—the light of the Spirit King's order—was a constant, accusing reminder. Every few minutes, a violent, silent tremor would pass through it, and the violet rune they'd seen form after the museum would flare like an infected wound. Gnaw-Rot. The God of Corrosion. That was the name that had etched itself into his mind the moment the first god had been contained. It was down there, somewhere in the city's vast, concrete guts, feeding.
A sharp knock rattled his flimsy door. Not the polite tap of his landlord. This was a declaration.
He shoved the Blade under his futon just as the door slid open. Mr. Kirito filled the frame, backlit by the hallway's grim fluorescent light. He didn't look angry. He looked old. The usual simmering frustration was gone, replaced by a deep, bone-weary dread. He held a small, stainless-steel lunch pail.
"You did not come to work," Kirito said, his voice flat. He stepped inside, closing the door behind him. His eyes, sharper than any knife, scanned the sparse room and landed on the slight bulge under the thin mattress. "You are holding your breath, Perez. It is bad for the digestion."
"I'm sick, Kirito-san," Bob said, the lie ash in his mouth.
"Yes," Kirito agreed, placing the lunch pail on the tiny table. "A sickness of the spirit. A sickness I know." He didn't sit. He stood like a sentinel. "The museum. The blackout. The 'gas leak' story on the news is transparent to anyone with two working neurons. You were there."
Bob said nothing. The pressure behind his eyes spiked, a psychic echo of the god's hunger. He winced.
Kirito saw it. His eyes narrowed. "It is already in you. Faster than I feared." He finally sat, the small stool groaning under his weight. "You touched something, didn't you? Something that was not meant to be touched."
The weight of the secret, the terror of the last twelve hours, was a stone in Bob's throat. He was a boy from Manila who cooked noodles. He wasn't built for this cosmic burden. The words tumbled out in a raw, choked rush—the blade, the vision, the fifteen streaks of doom, the Spirit King's warning.
Kirito listened in absolute silence. When Bob finished, the old chef didn't call him insane. He didn't yell. He simply bowed his head, his shoulders slumping under an invisible weight.
"So," Kirito breathed, the word heavy with finality. "He succeeded. The Artificer. He finally broke the lock."
Bob's head snapped up. "You know that name? The Spirit King said—"
"I know more than I ever wished to," Kirito interrupted, his voice a low growl. He fixed Bob with a look of profound pity. "You are not the first Warden, Perez. You are the last in a line you never knew existed. And the blade you hold… it was not always alone."
He unbuttoned the top of his chef's jacket. There, over his heart, was not a tattoo, but a scar—a complex, spiraling brand of silvery tissue that seemed to shift under the light. "My partner and I… we did not just study ancient texts. We found the sources. The Spirit King's power was not the only primordial force that was… contained."
Bob stared, a new chill seeping into his bones. "What did you contain?"
"That," Kirito said, re-buttoning his coat with trembling fingers, "is a story for a day when the world is not ending. For now, know this: the Artificer believed the gods were wasted in a prison. He saw them as batteries. As weapons. He sought to crack the Spirit Blade's seal for decades. I opposed him. We… parted ways. Violently." He gestured to the scar. "I thought I had buried his work. I was wrong. And now, because of my failure, you hold the consequences in your hands."
The Blade under the futon gave another vicious throb. This time, Bob didn't just feel it; he saw it. A flicker of a map superimposed over his vision. Tokyo, sketched in ghostly blue lines. Fifteen pulsing, malevolent stars scattered across it. One, a violent violet, pulsed with a frantic, hungry rhythm directly beneath them, in the labyrinth of tunnels and pipes.
"It's moving," Bob whispered. "The god. It's… feeding. Getting stronger."
Kirito stood. "Then we have no more time for talk." He opened the lunch pail. Inside, nestled next to two perfect onigiri, was not food. It was a weapon. A chef's knife, but unlike any Bob had ever seen. The blade was a dark, matte grey, similar to the Spirit Blade but shorter, utilitarian. The handle was wrapped in old leather. "This is Hakutaku," Kirito said, handing it to Bob hilt-first. "The White Blade. It cannot seal a god. But it can harm things that are… spiritually vulnerable. It was my partner's first prototype. A key that failed to turn. Keep it close."
Bob took the knife. It was unnaturally light. It felt like holding a shard of silence.
"What do I do?" Bob asked, the question no longer a whimper, but a plea for a roadmap in a world without roads.
"You follow the hunger," Kirito said, his eyes bleak. "You find the god. And you make the Blade do what it was made to do. I will find your friends. They will need to know. You cannot do this alone, Perez. No Warden ever could."
---
Twenty minutes later, Bob stood at a rusted maintenance hatch leading down into the flood control tunnels beneath Shinjuku. The Hakutaku knife was in a makeshift sheath at his back, the Spirit Blade, now disguised in a long, worn cloth wrap, was in his hand. The psychic pull was a physical yank now, a fishhook in his mind reeling him towards the dark.
He'd texted the group a single, nonsensical word: ROOT.
They arrived within minutes, materializing from the nighttime crowd. DJ looked wired, his usual humor replaced by a jittery energy. Tallo was a statue of focused calm, but his eyes held a new, grim understanding. Kumi clutched her tablet like a shield, her face pale.
"Kirito found us," Tallo said simply. "He told us enough."
"Dude, you unleashed video game bosses onto real-life Tokyo?" DJ hissed, but there was no mockery in it, only stunned awe. "That is the most metal thing I have ever heard."
"My scanners have been going insane since yesterday," Kumi whispered, showing her tablet. A 3D map of the city's subsurface was overlaid with a creeping, violet stain. "It's a corrosive energy signature. It's consuming organic and inorganic matter at a molecular level, converting it into more of itself. It's… it's like a cancer for reality."
"Where?" Bob asked, his voice tight.
Kumi pointed to the hatch. "Convergence is ninety meters down, two hundred meters east. An old storm drain junction that was sealed off in the 80s."
Tallo knelt, examining the hatch lock. It was massive, rusted shut. "This will take tools. Time we don't have."
Bob didn't think. He acted. He pointed the cloth-wrapped Spirit Blade at the lock. He didn't know a technique. He just funneled the panic, the urgency, the cold purpose of the Blade, into a single thought: Open.
A thin, precise beam of blue energy, sharper than a laser, shot from the tip of the wrap. It didn't explode. It sliced through the hardened steel lock mechanism with a sound like a sigh, leaving edges glowing orange-hot for a second before they cooled. The hatch groaned open, revealing a reeking, black maw.
The stench that wafted up was not just decay. It was the smell of unmaking—ozone, acid, and something sweetly rotten. The psychic pressure became a drumbeat in their skulls.
"Oh, hell no," DJ breathed, taking a step back.
"We are with you," Tallo said, placing a hand on Bob's shoulder. The solid weight of it was the only real thing in the spinning world.
Kumi activated a light on her tablet, her hands shaking only slightly. "I'll map our path. And try to monitor its energy core."
They descended into the gullet of the city.
The tunnel was a cathedral of neglect. Water dripped with a slow, maddening rhythm. The beam from Kumi's light cut through the gloom, illuminating crumbling concrete and strange, phosphorescent fungi. But as they moved deeper, the environment changed. The concrete walls began to look… melted. Not by heat, but by a creeping, crystalline violet substance that crawled like ivy. Where it touched, the concrete didn't crumble; it simply ceased to be, leaving behind smooth, glassy hollows filled with more of the glowing violet crystal.
The air grew thick and caustic, burning their lungs. The psychic drumbeat became a constant, teeth-rattling hum—the song of Gnaw-Rot.
They rounded a final bend and stopped dead.
The junction chamber was vast, a subterranean plaza now transformed into a nightmare grotto. The violet crystal was everywhere, covering walls, ceiling, pipes in a throbbing, organic crust. In the center, coiled around the ruins of a massive pumping engine, was the god.
Gnaw-Rot was a centipede of living violet crystal, each segment the size of a refrigerator, pulsing with sickly light. It had no eyes, only a massive, circular maw at its front, lined with rows of rotating, diamond-tipped teeth that ground against each other with a sound like grinding glaciers. As they watched, it extended its head and bit into a steel I-beam supporting the ceiling. The metal didn't bend or break. It dissolved in a flash of violet light, flaking away into dust that was absorbed into the god's crystal hide. It was growing stronger with every bite.
< TARGET IDENTIFIED: GNAW-ROT. GOD OF CORROSION. POWER LEVEL: 12% AND RISING. >
The words appeared in Bob's vision, crisp and digital, a system prompt from a reality that had suddenly become a game with the highest stakes imaginable.
The god sensed them. Its massive, blind head swung towards their light. The grinding teeth focused on them. It didn't roar. It vibrated, a subsonic frequency that made the crystal on the walls shiver and their bones ache.
"Okay," DJ squeaked. "New plan. We go back. We call the army. We nuke the site from orbit."
"No time," Bob said, unwrapping the Spirit Blade. The blue light within it flared to life, pushing back the violet gloom. The Blade felt eager, hungry. It recognized its prey. "It's too confined. It would collapse the tunnels. The city above…"
"Then we fight here," Tallo said, falling into a low, ready stance. "Kumi, weak points?"
"I-I'm scanning… the energy is densest at the joints between segments! But the crystal armor is deflecting my probes!"
The god moved. It was terrifyingly fast for its size, a ripple of predatory muscle and crystal. It didn't charge. It flowed across the chamber, its maw opening to engulf them.
Bob's kitchen-honed reflexes took over. He dove sideways, rolling behind a corroded pump housing. The god's head smashed into the spot where he'd been standing. The concrete floor didn't crack; a perfect, smooth bowl three meters across simply vanished, dissolved into nothing.
He scrambled to his feet, heart hammering against his ribs. This is impossible. I'm going to die down here.
The Spirit Blade pulsed in his hand, and a new surge, not of fear, but of focused clarity, washed through him. It was the same focus he used during the dinner rush, when twenty orders were up and every second counted. He saw the god not as an unstoppable monster, but as a chaotic, messy order that needed to be corrected.
As Gnaw-Rot reared back for another strike, Bob didn't retreat. He ran towards it, along the chamber's edge. He planted his foot, twisted his torso with the same motion he used to swing a full stockpot, and brought the Spirit Blade around in a wide, horizontal arc.
"SPIRIT SLASH!"
The words tore from his throat, charged with the Blade's own will. A crescent of pure, blinding blue energy, three meters wide, screamed from the blade. It wasn't fire or lightning; it was a slash of pure spiritual order, the antithesis of the god's corrosive chaos.
It connected with a sound like the world's largest bell being struck.
Gnaw-Rot shrieked—a high-pitched, grating sound of outrage. A network of cracks, glowing with blue light, spiderwebbed across the violet crystal of its head. It was hurt. It could be hurt.
A desperate, wild hope ignited in Bob's chest.
The battle became a brutal dance of annihilation. Bob was no swordsman. He was a brawler with a divine key. He used the terrain like he used his kitchen—ducking under pipes, using pillars for cover, always moving. He'd lure the god into striking, then dart out and deliver another Spirit Slash, each one chipping away at the crystal armor. But he was tiring fast. Each slash drained him, a cold fatigue seeping into his muscles.
"Bob, behind you!" Kumi screamed.
A whip-like tendril of crystal shot from the god's side. Bob raised the Blade instinctively. The blue light flared, forming a shimmering, semi-transparent hexagonal shield—a Spirit Ward—just in time. The tendril shattered against it, but the impact drove Bob to his knees, the Ward flickering.
"Its pattern!" Kumi shouted, her voice cutting through the chaos. "It recoils for 2.3 seconds after a direct hit to its main sensory cluster! The maw!"
It was the opening they needed. "DJ! Tallo! Now!"
DJ, who had been frantically throwing chunks of debris to little effect, understood. He didn't have a spirit power, but he had lungs. He filled them and unleashed a raw, piercing scream right at the god's maw. The sound wave had no physical effect, but it disrupted the god's focus, the vibrations interfering with its predatory senses.
That was all Tallo needed. He moved like water flowing over stone. As the god hesitated, confused by the sonic assault, Tallo sprinted up a slanted pipe, launched into the air, and came down with a devastating axe kick onto the very segment Bob had cracked. The impact, focused by a lifetime of training, didn't just hit—it shattered. A plate-sized chunk of violet crystal exploded inward.
Gnaw-Rot writhed, its corrosive aura sputtering. Its core was exposed.
Bob didn't hesitate. He charged the final few meters, the Spirit Blade held high like a chef's knife aiming for the heart of an ingredient. With a final, wordless roar, he plunged it deep into the pulsing, violet light within the shattered cavity.
There was no explosion.
There was a silent, expanding implosion of light. The violent violet energy composing Gnaw-Rot unraveled, pulled into a screaming vortex centered on the Blade. The monstrous form dissolved into streaming rivers of dark light that were sucked violently into the steel. The cavern fell dark, save for the soft blue glow of the Spirit Blade.
A single, perfect violet rune, complex and jagged, etched itself onto the base of the blade, next to the hilt. The gnawing hunger in Bob's mind vanished, replaced by a sudden, profound stillness in that one, specific direction.
He collapsed to his knees, gasping, the Blade clattering to the wet ground beside him. He was drenched in sweat and grime, his arms trembling with exhaustion. But he felt different. Stronger. As if a fraction of the god's vast, corrosive power had been left behind in him, a trophy from the hunt.
The others gathered around him, panting. The violet crystals on the walls were fading to dull, dead grey.
"You… you did it," Kumi whispered, her eyes wide behind her glasses.
DJ just stared at the new rune on the Blade. "Dude. You have a god-pokedex."
Tallo offered Bob a hand, pulling him to his feet. "The first of fifteen," he said, his voice grim. "The next one will not be so easily surprised."
Bob picked up the Spirit Blade. It felt lighter. More an extension of himself. The psychic map in his mind was still there, fifteen stars. One was now dark and silent. Fourteen still glowed with malevolent life.
He looked at his friends—the loudmouth, the fighter, the genius. They were covered in muck and breathing hard. They had just faced a cosmic horror in a sewer.
"We need a base," Bob said, his voice hoarse but clear. "And we need to get a lot better. Fast."
The Warden had passed his first trial. But as they climbed back towards the neon-lit world, the weight of the fourteen remaining stars pressed down on him, a map of a war only they knew was being fought. The first root of duty had taken hold, and it was dug deep into terror, friendship, and the cold, hungry steel of the Spirit Blade.