Chapter 6: Solos
The air thickened, heavy and oppressive, as though the sky itself bled.
A violent spiral of wind erupted across the Plains of Vabos, whipping up a storm of crimson petals—billions upon billions—until the entire landscape drowned in a churning sea of red. Each petal glistened wetly, carrying the metallic tang of fresh blood.
With eerie, unnatural grace, the petals converged around Vabon's towering stone pillar. They wove together, layering and fusing, until they formed a colossal, blood-soaked tree—its bark slick and pulsing, veins of crimson throbbing beneath the surface like living arteries.
From the pillar's surface, the petrified golem figures stirred. Stone cracked and bled as their bodies reshaped, shedding rocky husks in wet chunks. They rose into the sky, transforming into mocking likenesses of Solos himself—perfect in form, blasphemous in execution.
Each bore three tormented faces:
one weeping endless tears of blood,
one stretched in a grotesque, lipless smile,
one contorted in pure, animal rage.
Their combined aura detonated outward, climbing at a terrifying pace—suffocating, divine, merciless.
Solos lifted his hands. Glowing threads of crimson energy tore from his back, anchoring him to the bloody tree and to his newly birthed clones. The threads hummed with power, binding master to creation.
Reality shuddered.
The distant roars of beasts fell silent. The wind died mid-gust. Even the insects ceased their chirping, as if the world itself held its breath in terror.
Solos spread his vast, blood-drenched wings wide.
"I welcome thee," he declared, voice resonant with ancient authority, "to my domain. As my lord commands… so shall I act."
Behind him, the three clones dropped to their knees in perfect synchronization, heads bowed in solemn prayer.
Throughout the entire transformation, Dax remained utterly still.
He stroked the flat of Cil's blade with slow, reverent fingers, studying Solos the way a surgeon studies a rare and exquisite specimen laid bare on the operating table.
"You're strong," he murmured, voice trembling—not with fear, but with raw, uncontainable excitement. "Very strong."
His lips twitched. Madness surfaced fully now, gleaming bright and sharp in his eyes.
"Oh, how I would love to study you…" He licked his lips unconsciously. "How you'll look under my scalpel… I must find out. I've never dissected a fourth-dimensional being."
He wasn't called the Black Doctor for nothing.
In the next heartbeat—
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The world blurred into a whirlwind of steel and flesh.
Thousands of blows collided in mere seconds—each impact a detonation that threatened to tear the fabric of space itself. Shockwaves rippled outward, flattening trees and carving furrows into the earth.
Dax paused mid-motion, staring at the blood trickling down his knuckles. No pain registered—only exhilaration, electric and intoxicating. Deep inside him, something ancient and cruel stirred, uncoiling like a predator scenting prey.
Killing Series — First Form: Covered in Blood.
Killing intent erupted from him like a living plague.
His aura flooded the plains, twisting the air into a suffocating miasma. Phantom corpses materialized in the haze—wailing, drifting, reaching with skeletal hands around his silhouette.
Solos hesitated—only for a fraction of a second, but it was there.
"Thee… thee cannot be human." His voice wavled slightly, the formal cadence cracking. "What art thou?"
Dax vanished.
The air detonated in his wake.
He reappeared directly before Solos, drawing Cil in a wide, vicious arc.
The angel reacted with godlike swiftness. His wings hardened instantly, feathers fusing into sheets of crimson metal. He parried the strike with a resonant clang that shook the ground.
Behind him, the three summons mobilized in perfect unison:
—The archer soared high above the clouds, bow drawn.
—The mage fell back behind Solos, lips moving in rapid, arcane chant.
—The warrior charged forward, colossal sword raised.
Danger.
Dax flickered again—but the massive stone-winged warrior matched his speed, closing the gap with impossible agility.
"Just because you're stone," Dax said calmly, voice almost conversational as he squeezed his fist, "doesn't mean you're limited."
Telekinetic force clamped down.
The golem froze mid-charge. Stone groaned, cracked, buckled under invisible pressure.
Solos watched, transfixed.
This ability… this is not magic. Not blood art. Not divine law. Something else entirely.
Dax opened his palm.
The compressed golem launched forward like a cannonball, hurtling toward Solos.
The angel tilted his head—a casual, almost lazy dodge.
The mage behind him was not so fortunate.
CRUSH.
The impact obliterated the summon into a cloud of dust and shattered stone.
Before Dax could capitalize, a scream tore through the sky above.
Thunk!
An arrow—thick as a spear, forged of condensed blood—speared straight into his chest.
Then another.
And another.
A storm of them followed—hundreds raining down in an endless barrage, tearing through flesh, lifting and tossing his body like a broken puppet on invisible strings.
"Combust."
Solos clenched his fist.
Every arrow embedded in Dax's body detonated simultaneously.
The shockwave hurled him skyward. Blood sprayed in beautiful, arcing fountains.
Yet Dax only laughed—hysterical, joyous, unhinged.
"Hahahahahahahaha! I can't control my body!" he shouted gleefully, voice echoing across the plains.
Solos appeared beside him mid-flight, blade already descending in a killing arc.
BOOM!
Dax cratered into the earth, landing upright in the smoking depression—feral grin splitting his bloodied face. Muscles bulged unnaturally. Power rippled across his skin like living lightning.
Cil hummed in his grip—eager, insistent, speaking in a language only her master understood.
With a nod, Dax pressed the dull spine of the katana against his own neck.
"Your power," he said, voice dropping to winter-cold calm, "is dominion over blood."
He raised the blade high.
"And I am the Slaughterer. Slaughter is impossible without blood."
His grin returned—wide, predatory, terrifying.
"Today… I will slaughter blood itself."
Killing intent surged into Cil, pouring from him like a flood. The blade devoured it greedily, reshaping, evolving. The air vibrated violently as a familiar cosmic scream rolled across the plains—low, resonant, ancient.
"A sonar?" Solos glanced upward, confused. Nothing visible marred the sky.
Then he saw it.
Hovering behind Dax—silent, immense, reality-warping—
A whale.
A colossal phantom whale, star-devouring and abyssal, its outline etched in cosmic void. Its presence alone bent light and crushed the air beneath it.
Solos's wings trembled involuntarily.
"W-what… what have we provoked?"
The pressure did not come from Dax.
It came from the weapon.
Cil's form melted, elongating. The katana dissolved and reformed into a sleek black rod etched with glowing runes—the mark of the World-Devouring Whale. At its tip, a crescent scythe blade bloomed, crimson as arterial blood.
Dax exhaled sharply, eyes wide with reverent awe.
"You are beautiful, Cil."
Above, the archer summon nocked another volley—waves upon waves of blood arrows forming in the sky.
"You lack respect," Dax murmured.
He raised the scythe by its black rod…
…and drew a single, perfect arc.
Silence.
For several long seconds, nothing moved. No wind. No sound. Even the blood tree stood frozen.
Then the world convulsed.
The massive blood tree parted cleanly down the middle—trunk sliding apart with surgical precision before collapsing in two perfect halves, roots still clutching the earth.
Cracks spidered across the crimson sky like fractures in glass.
The entire "Blood World" domain shattered—shards dissolving into nothingness, returning the plains to ordinary reality beneath a clear, indifferent sun.
Solos stared, stunned into rare silence.
Since the battle began, this "human" had broken every rule he understood—every law of blood, divinity, and existence.
He must die.
If this creature grew any stronger, even the god Solos served might fall.
Solos clenched his fist, wings flaring.
Dax glanced at the scythe, momentarily speechless at its raw power.
But there was no time to marvel.
An angel still needed killing.
He vanished.
The two collided once more—faster, fiercer, more violent than ever before. Trees uprooted in their wake. Stones liquefied under the pressure. Space itself rippled and tore.
Without realizing it, they shredded the barrier between realms—
—and reappeared atop a volcanic peak, steam and sulfur choking the air.
They had arrived at Mount Gahena.