Ilias slowly turned his head to the right, leaning out slightly. His constricting eyes met the figure of someone who was next to him just a mere moment earlier, using her head to obscure his sight from the Daimyo of Yakuramoto’s decapitated head. Now, his young eyes were unprotected from not only that, but the woman who lay dead below Anwen with a bullet in the back of her skull. It was Manisha. There was no difference between the blood that leaked from her wound and the cherry red kimono she wore, a gift from Genichi himself. It was all red.

  “Mama!” the boy’s scream was blood curdling, an almost animalistic cry that emerged from his small throat as he dragged the word for a while. Not a single dry eye was among the sailors around him, as some screamed in horror while others wept.

  Rohan stared at his feet, unable to say a single word or react. He was frozen in an almost catatonic state, as if the anguish around him was nothing but noise around him. But as he sat still, he whispered something that only those nearest to him could hear.

  “Just kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Wipe them out.” the veteran sailor mumbled.

  While the guards’ attention was on the woman who had needlessly sacrificed herself to save the hostage, Ivan pried open a floorboard and pulled a rifle out from underneath, making as little noise as possible. Then, with a stoic look on his face, with tears running down his cheeks and without saying a single word, he riddled all eight guards with bullets. The Utrium bullets sprung out of the gun’s barrel, leaving a trail of purple behind them, which would have looked beautiful had the situation not gone from uncertain to horrific. He rose, walking over the head as he stepped forward to the bodies, and pried a knife from of the utility belt of one of the guards. He cut his own bindings off before he set Anwen free from her position, his shaking hands trying to be as gentle as possible before laying her against a wall away from Manisha and the other corpses. He then dropped the knife at Bhavana’s feet.

  “Free everyone,” he requested of her, his voice uncharacteristically jaded and exhausted. “Kaito’s guys need my help.”

  He walked out of the unlocked cell, before closing it. In the distance, the sound of intense gunfire and clashing swords echoed in the halls of the prison, a sign that Kaito’s scheme had been unveiled by those loyal to the Shogun.

  Stefan’s emerald eyes dragged away from the television screen, pulling towards the Shogun. On that man’s face was a disgustingly happy grin, satisfied that he would get what he wanted. The Reserve aura emanating from the boy’s skin and armor was thick, like a purple fog circling around his body. It had never been so strong before. The determination he had shown in the Barrens was only a fraction of what he felt at that moment.

  He plunged the tip of his sword into the clay surface of the field, which held it upright. He unsheathed Gareth’s dagger, which floated above his palm as he steadily walked toward Daisuke. The red-hilted blade glowed with red particles floating around it, contrasting the purple aura coming off of Stefan.

  “I wouldst suggesteth grabbing yond rapier backeth. I don't need to has't an unfair advantage.” Daisuke said as he jogged in Stefan’s direction, holding his sword diagonally.

  There we go, my Grandson! Keep that trivial thing you call humanity away! Yes, this is the spirit of a true Titanian! Cut that trash away!

  The boy appeared like a shadow or a ghost when not even a second later, Daisuke’s sword has been sliced cleanly in half, the blade clinking as it hit the ground. Stefan had appeared right before the Shogun before he could even blink. He got a good look at the man’s expression changing from proud to terrified. Then, Stefan sliced more. All that was in Daisuke’s hand was the hilt of his sword. But despite rendering him defenseless, Stefan did not cease cutting away. The next slice took off three of Daisuke’s fingers, so cleanly that it was as if a gust of wind that taken them off. The man stumbled backwards, falling to the ground. Stefan stood over the man with a terrifying look in his eyes, an expression that invited nothing else but death.

  Daisuke stared at the boy, quivering as he sat helplessly. The crowd had gone from cheering their Shogun on to gasping with uncertainty, their faith in his competency wavering.

  “Thee might not but knoweth this, Mr Laine. But I am one of three. Thence art three liketh me in this w'rld embracing myself,”

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  The corners of his lips twitched until his body became still and quickly ceased trembling. His lips became a straight line before quickly turning into a grin like he once had before.

  “Three with gifts yond a might beyond this celestial orb hath bestowed upon. I didn't wisheth to combat thee because thee w're simply the strongest. I wanted to seeth if thee w're one of mine own two peers, but thee art not!”

  The hand from which Daisuke’s fingers had been severed reached out. Stefan was astonished to find out that somehow, in a very short sequence of time, the Shogun’s fingers had regenerated, as if they had never been severed in the first place. However, this only fueled his anger and hatred.

  Daisuke grabbed a piece of blade from his dismembered sword, grasping it in his bare hand. Although pain flashed across his palm and blood trickled to the ground, he wielded it like it was intact. He took two leaps backwards as he got back to his feet. Like a brisk deer prancing across the forest floor, Daisuke charged, ready to strike Stefan. With speed that no human should have possessed, Stefan caught the blade in his palm. He wrapped his fingers around it, crushing it so greatly and quickly that that segment of blade further divided into two, with the half closer to Stefan clattering on the ground. Daisuke had predicted this and immediately thrusted the piece still in his hand straight into Stefan’s chest. Stefan’s other hand, grasping Gareth’s dagger, swung forward as if moving of its own accord. The dagger sliced across the front of the Shimajimese leader’s helmet, exposing his face and neck. At the exact same moment, his blade fragment plunged through Stefan’s chest armor, stopped only by the dense, Utrium-fortified muscle under his skin.

  Whether or not Stefan was one of the Honoured Three that Daisuke was part of and had grown up hearing legends of, this was a very well-matched fight. Stefan, fighting only after being dragged into a state of madness, went toe-to-toe with Daisuke, a man who had been transferred the Reserve of the past Shogun as every Shogun before him had, matching one another’s speed and movements. Indeed, the son of Titanian monarch had never battled so intensely as he was with the Shogun of the Shimajima, a man who had the Reserve of a thousand years worth of military leaders.

  Daisuke delivered a kick to the side of Stefan’s knee, sending him down to the ground. Unable to think rationally, Stefan tried to find his dagger, but a stomp on his hand by the Shogun prevented him from doing so.

  “Thence hath nev'r been a single combat in mine own existence I've enjoyed such as this one, Mr Laine. Aught words ere I declare myself victor?”

  The Titanian spirit that had taken a hold of Stefan’s mind was infuriated by the Terran’s prideful words. His fingers twitched underneath Daisuke’s foot. Bending backwards in an unnatural manner, his fingers wrapped around the foot, squeezing them like a log trapping a limb against the ground. Stefan made sure to hear a shriek of agony emerge from the man’s lips before he threw him high into the air. The man ascended 30 yards into the air, to the shock of all those in the arena. The impact of his body smashing into the ground created a crater about waist-deep, sending dissipating purple aura and dust into the air.

  Stefan approached the nearly dead man, making his arrival known even before he got to Daisuke with heavy footsteps. He twisted the blade shard out of his skin, throwing it to the ground like it was any other piece of rubbish. The boy went down on his knees, clamping his hands around the handle of his dagger, pointing the blade downwards at the chest of the dying man whose chest faced the sky.

  End his misery, grandson. This man is no longer a part of your bigger plan. He stopped being so after he saw your people as things to play with. He never had any intentions to speak with you diplomatically. Finish him.

  “Sorry, Your Excellency,” Stefan hissed like a bloodthirsty predator. “You weren’t part of the bigger picture.”

  And the bloodbath began. Master-crafted pieces of armors became strips of confetti as Stefan slashed at it with his dagger. Each swipe of his blade dragged more blood into the air, painting the crazed boy red. Skin and bone tore away like paper as the Shogun’s body looked less and less like it belonged to a once-living person. Only, the Shogun’s body still showed signs of life. His mutilated body parts began to regenerate rapidly, although his consciousness hadn’t returned. Like a frustrated wolf who had lost sight of its prey, Stefan searched around his body, looking for a way to end him off for good. Then, a single rational thought manifested in his head, as if the human part of him was gaining ground against the madness that was his Titanian side.

  Destroy the source of Reserve production—the heart.

  Decisively, with exhaustion breaking through and the adrenaline that made him seem invincible wearing off, he plunged his dagger into the right side of the Shogun’s body, smoothly entering it like a hot knife cutting a slab of butter. Gathering his waning strength, he repeated the maneuver twice more, and that was it.

  As the thousands of spectators hurriedly filed out of the arena, as pro-royal soldiers brought their fight against military loyalists closer to the arena, Stefan dropped the dagger, tilting his head back so that he was gazing at the sky, strewn with orange, pink and yellow as the sun began to retire. A sky that Manisha would never again see.

  Humanity and stabbing physical pain trickled back into his body as his Titanian rage dissipated. Unable to process what he had just done, nor what drove him to do it, he let out a monumental shriek that reverberated around the arena, so great that it was as if the Yeupisians could hear it from the continent. Then, he collapsed forward, his form falling beside the dead Shogun.