The rhythmic clacking of wheels on steel replaced the sound of crashing waves. šā«ā„ā blinked. The air no longer smelled like salt and heavy with martial intent; it was recycled, stale, and smelled of transit-commuter coffee. He was sitting on a train.
Damn, I really should have slept early last night huh?
He looked down at his lap. His hands were smaller, softer, and lacked the calluses of a warrior. He was holding a smartphone. On the screen, the digital pages of Martial Unity were open. He checked the time in the corner: 7:23 AM. He still had a few minutes before his stop.
I should really control myself. I almost didn't get any sleep just binge-reading.Ā
The feeling of holding off a novel, letting it stack chapters, and finishing it in one go is just so satisfying. I don't smoke nor vape. Definitely not drugs. But the feeling was definitely like crack.
He yawned and rubbed his eyes, feeling a strange lingering pressure in his skull. He shook his head and returned to the text. Right, where was I? Rui and the Sages were in a grueling fight with the final boss, the Chimera. After tons of sacrifices and years of constant battle... they won! Shits so hype! Technically the Devil defeated it and even ascended. Who would have thought?
I scrolled up and the text began to flicker. The words blurred into static. I couldn't even hear my own internal monologue anymore. As I continued reading, a sense of despair washed over me.
I felt light-headed. I knew I should be able to differentiate reality from fiction, but a horrible feeling of dread crept over me. My vision washed out into a blinding white light. Images flashed through my mind like a broken film reel. I saw a world-ending explosion. It was not the end. There was more.
A deep crippling fear gripped šā«ā„ā's heart.
Suddenly, the white light shattered. The sound of the train was replaced by a thunderous roar.
BOOOOOOOOM.
Merun's head snapped to the side. Hide's haymaker had connected with enough force to create a shockwave that kicked up the beach sand in a massive curtain. The impact was deafening.
Merun's body went limp. He hit the sand hard, his face buried in the dirt.
The beach erupted in triumph.Ā
"HEEEEELL YEAAAAAH!"
"HE DID IT!"
"Did you see that? One hit!"
The Tanaka warriors surged forward, their cheers drowning out the sound of the crashing waves. They had seen men's heads turn into paste from less. Nearby, the thirty squires who had served as resonance anchors slumped. They weren't injured, but they looked dazed, their brain power temporarily drained by Hide borrowing their mind.
"You did it, commanderā" A Martial Squire walked toward Hide.
"Get back! The duel isn't over!" He yelled.
The demon's hand twitched in the sand. Slowly, he pushed himself up. He stood unsteadily, clutching his head as he reeled from the fading echoes of the symphony. The physical damage was minimal, but his mind was a mess. The blow to his head had shaken loose memories of a life before this beach. He felt a cold, existential dread that came with absolute uncertainty.
In the novel, he thought the Chimera boss was the end. But the dream he just went through said otherwise... that there was something much worse.
He stared at the stunned Hide. The punch was powerful... but he was confident he could withstand blows from a Martial Senior with an activated martial heart. He just couldn't believe how easily he had been compromised. He had a massive weakness to mental attacks!
It was simply incompatible with his current state. He tried to process it like a reader would. If there was one thing he liked about Martial Unity, it was that techniques were grounded and could be explained.
How did the voices get inside? How was that possible? When did the hypnosis start?
Merun shook off the dizziness and charged. He expected a struggle, but what followed was bizarre. He threw a series of punches, each one fast enough to break the sound barrier, but Hide dodged them all with picture-perfect precision. It was like he was pre-reacting, but he wasn't. Even at unnatural angles, Hide's body would twist out of the way just before the hit landed.
The fuck kind of reflexes?! Merun wondered. Is it my mind that's slow? Am I in an illusion? It should be impossible though, it feels too real, and this one's just a Squire...
No, he's not just a squire. I must treat him as a powerful enemy.
Should I test something?
Merun prepared a massive overhead strike, but before he even moved a muscle, Hide's body lurched to the sideādodging absolutely nothing.
Merun smiled behind his mask. So that's what it was.
He remembered a move he'd first felt when the boar nearly killed him, and the second time when he was fighting Noritsugu: controlling killing intent. He channeled that rage, focusing his intent like a physical weight without actually launching an attack.
Hide jumped. He retreated from a strike that didn't exist. Merun's theory was confirmedāthe man was tracking intent, not movement.
The battle shifted instantly. Merun began landing catastrophic blows as he used feints of pure killing intent to force Hide into vulnerable positions. Hide grew desperate. His hand blasted open once more.
"Mind-Crushing Symphony!"
Hide reached into the brains of his anchors, recording the exact electrical firing patterns of their thoughts, and then broadcasted those identical pulses directly into Merun's skull.
He maps those signals to the exact same neural coordinates in Merun's brain as they were in theirs. When their auditory cortex fires, He can make Merun's fire the same way. The brain can't tell the difference between its own signals and the ones Hide is forcing into itāmaking merun hear all sorts of thoughts from his subconscious.
One anchor is a whisper. Ten is a crowd. But a hundred?
That's a Symphony.
Merun's eyes flew open in pain. "RRRRRGGGH!" The avalanche of voices returned, clawing at his skull, but this time he was ready. He gritted his teeth and pushed through the noise, driving a punch straight for Hide's chest.
"What theā" Hide gasped.
He instinctively tried to block it with a cross-guard, but fortunately, the Gnat thought otherwise. His upper body forcibly bent backward, controlled by the Viper-Gnat. The parasite prioritized a higher-chance of survival over Hide's commands as it deemed his decision insufficient to avoid the danger, forcing him to roll with the punch rather than take it head-on.
BOOM.
The gale of air from the impact nearly knocked the surrounding warriors over. The Gnat was right this time, lessening the damage of the blow, but Hide still grimaced in agony as he was struck.Ā He immediately activated another technique.
"Load Distribution!"
Suddenly, the thirty squires in the background lurched. They clutched their chests and doubled over, shivering in phantom pain. Hide had rerouted the "cognitive shock"āthe stun and disorientationāthrough the network. While he still took the physical damage, the mental aftermath was felt by his anchors, allowing Hide to remain perfectly functional as he instantly returned a counterstrike to the jaw that Merun easily tanked once more.
Merun, still fighting through the voices in his head, saw the oddity. Dozens of men were reacting to a hit they didn't take.
He realized.
They're... connected? Which means... What does it mean??
He struggled to come up with a strategy with dozens of voices in head, and eventually came up with one: Fuck it, let's see what happens.
"RAAAAAAAAAH!" He washed a wave of red, deathly killing intent over the crowd. The squires jolted, waking from their trance. They felt their danger sensing techniques screaming at them to run. With a weary and weakened mind, they scrambled away, far enough to break their anchor status.
Hide felt the network dim. He grew desperate; without anchors, he was losing the effectiveness of his martial techniques.
He tried to charge and force a counter-offensive to boost his men's morale and to stop the demon from focusing on the squires, but his body wouldn't budge.
Foolish Gnat! he thought, screaming internally. We will lose if you don't let me step forward!
The Gnat had never spoken before, but Hide's eyes widened as a voice echoed in his own mind.
NO.
He shook away the shock. The parasite had become more than terrified. It wouldn't let him charge at the demon.