Tobio opened his eyes, focusing.
He let his perception widen, spreading like water spilled on the floor, flowing to every corner of Hanyu Village.
First, he observed the village environment.
Watanabe was sitting on his porch, smoking while reading the newspaper. His energy was dark brown, stable, calm. A few children were still playing tag in the village field, their energy colorful, pulsing cheerfully.
Everyone was living their lives. No one knew that in a house at the end of the road, a boy was watching them from behind his room.
Then Tobio shifted his focus to the village cemetery.
The fresh mound of earth under the old cherry blossom tree was still as he had last seen it. But his grandmother's soul—the soul he had hoped was still there—was nowhere to be seen. Only a few lingering spirits drifted among the grave markers. They moved restlessly, as if sensing something watching them.
'Are they panicking?' Tobio observed their chaotic energy movements. They could feel his gaze.
He pulled his perception from the cemetery, shifting it upwards.
To the sky.
Layer after layer of atmosphere he passed through. Clouds rolled slowly, their energy a grayish-white, cold and damp. Above the clouds, the sky began to change color—dark blue, then purple, then pitch black.
And there, in outer space, a new world opened.
Tobio felt his eyes—his physical eyes—begin to burn. But he didn't stop. He pushed his perception further, piercing through boundaries that living beings should not be able to penetrate.
Fluid began to flow from his eyes. Or blood? He didn't know. He didn't care.
He saw the star-filled sky. Not the stars he knew from school lessons—balls of hot gas millions of light-years away. What he saw were points of energy of varying sizes and intensities. Some were dim, some dazzling. Some stable, some pulsing like a beating heart.
His gaze anchored on one place. A place incredibly bright. Brighter than any star in the sky. Its brightness wasn't physical light—this was the light of existence, light made of something purer than any energy he had ever seen.
Heaven.
Tobio could feel its vibrations from an immeasurable distance. Inside, he saw figures with pure white souls. And among them, one figure stood out: twelve wings. A halo above its head. Energy so dense it almost blinded his perception.
'Michael. Or another Seraph?'
He observed for a moment. The light surrounding that figure was so thick—as if it could destroy creatures of darkness just by touching them. Tobio imagined Sirzechs or Ajuka standing before that light, and he was certain they would be severely injured.
---
In Heaven, Michael was standing near a crystal window showing the universe. Beside him, Gabriel—an angel with twelve silver wings—was reading a report on devil activity in the Japanese region.
Suddenly, Michael stopped.
There was a subtle disturbance in his existential perception. As if something was touching his consciousness from a great distance. Not a physical touch, not a mental attack. But observation. Someone was watching him.
"...Just now..."
Michael showed no emotion. His face remained calm, as usual. But his eyes—eyes that had witnessed thousands of years of history—sharpened.
He directed his gaze at Gabriel. "You felt it too?"
Gabriel, who had been slightly restless, nodded. Her fingers twisted the edge of her white robe. "Yes. But... this is not an enemy."
She looked at Michael, confusion in her clear blue eyes. "Not an attack. Not detection. This is... observation. From the other side."
Michael nodded slowly. His mind worked quickly. Who could perform observation from such a distance? Who could pierce through dimensions and see into Heaven without being detected by their defense systems?
He remembered the report from a few days ago. Griselda and Dulio—the Brave Saint members he had assigned—had not yet reported contact with the target. But the data from the Sacred Gear System showed anomalies that continued to increase.
"Possibly... him."
Gabriel turned quickly. Her eyes widened. "That child? This far?"
Her tone changed. Not anger, but worry. Genuine worry.
"Why is he pushing himself this far?"
Michael didn't answer. He only gazed towards where the observation came from—towards Earth, towards a small village in Japan, towards a boy with eyes that now resembled small galaxies.
'Tobio Ikuse. What are you searching for out there?'
---
Tobio pulled his perception back from Heaven.
His physical eyes felt like they were burning. Blood flowed from the corners of his eyes, down his cheeks, falling into his lap. But he didn't stop. He pushed further.
His perception widened. Earth began to appear as a blue-green sphere with a thin veil of energy surrounding it. He saw the moon, not the gray rock he knew, but a silvery energy sphere with a slow pulse at its core.
'This far?'
He kept pushing. The sun appeared as a giant ball of fire, but strangely not too bright. Not as bright as Heaven earlier. Perhaps his eyes had become abnormal to excessive light. Perhaps his perception had adapted in ways that couldn't be explained.
He passed planets one by one. Jupiter with its giant energy vortex on its surface. Saturn with its vast rings.
And at the edge of the solar system, a blue planet like ice with a very strong storm inside it.
Neptune.
Tobio endured the pain beginning to spread from his eyes to his entire head. His brain felt like it was being squeezed from within. But he hadn't yet found what he was looking for.
He pulled his perception back to Earth. Through the atmosphere. Through the clouds. Through the dimensions shrouded around reality.
'Where is Great Red?'
He searched for the gap. The small gap between dimensions, where the Dimensional Gap existed—the space between everything, where the laws of physics did not apply.
And he found it.
A small gap, nearly invisible, pulsing with energy he did not recognize. Tobio pushed his perception inside.
And the world around him changed.
Colors merged into one, not like an orderly rainbow, but like a canvas splattered with paint from all directions.
Form, space, time—none of it had meaning here. Tobio's vision distorted several times, like a television screen losing its signal.
But he pressed on.
And in the midst of that chaos, he found it.
The great red dragon was sleeping. Two large wings on its back, two smaller ones beneath. Its body was surrounded by red energy so dense it looked like frozen fire.
'Great Red.'
Tobio observed the creature's core. He wanted to understand—how great was its power, how great the threat if one day it awakened.
But as his perception touched Great Red's core, something happened.
Pressure. Overwhelming pressure. As if the entire ocean had fallen on his shoulders. His brain throbbed with pain, dizziness splitting his consciousness, and blood from his eyes flowed more heavily.
Its vastness... its soul was too vast to comprehend.
Tobio nearly pulled his perception back. But he held on. He had to hold on. He had to understand.
Then, the dragon moved.
Great Red was dreaming. A dream about a boundless sky, about space that never ended, about freedom that creatures trapped in dimensions could not comprehend.
But its dream was disturbed.
Something was there. Something was watching it. Not a threat—no creature in the Dimensional Gap dared threaten it. But observation. Someone was watching it. From outside. From a place far away.
Great Red opened its eyes.
It searched for the source of that observation. Its perception shot through dimensional gaps, through layers of reality, until it reached a small village in the human world.
And in a house room, a boy with eyes like small galaxies was standing on the floor. His body trembled. Blood flowed from his eyes. And his soul... was cracking.
Great Red closed its eyes. It returned to its dream, to the boundless sky it always chased.
"A human... how strange."
It murmured softly, then sank back into its sleep.
Tobio felt Great Red's gaze brush against him for a moment. The pressure he had felt earlier doubled, and he nearly lost consciousness. But he held on.
One more. One more he had to find.
Trihexa.
He pulled his perception from the Dimensional Gap, returning to layers of reality closer to the human world. He searched for where the seal was—not in this world, perhaps in a completely isolated separate dimension.
He passed through various dimensions. Each was like a room with a different door. Some were empty, some contained strange creatures moving without purpose, some were only endless white expanses.
Not. Not. Not.
His brain was already burning. Felt like it was melting from within. His body trembled uncontrollably. Blood continued to flow from his eyes, soaking the wooden floor around him.
But he didn't stop.
Then he found it.
A dimension difficult to penetrate. Layer after layer of seals surrounding it, like a peeling onion. Outside was only darkness—dense darkness that swallowed light, that swallowed everything.
Tobio forced his perception inside.
Layer after layer he passed through. Each layer felt like a stone wall to be broken with his own head. But he kept going.
And finally, he saw it.
The monster.
Its body consisted of various beasts—a bird with bat wings, a lion with a mane of fire, a dragon with pitch-black scales. Seven necks, seven heads, ten horns. It was bound by chains pulsing with sacred light, light Tobio did not recognize—hundreds, perhaps thousands of seals holding it.
'Trihexa.'
Tobio observed the creature's core. Not its physical body made of various beasts, but its existential core.
And what he saw made his heart stop for a moment.
Trihexa's core was shaped like a boy his age.
Empty eyes. An expressionless face. But inside, Tobio could see something he couldn't explain—an emptiness that was not absence, but hunger. A hunger that would destroy everything if those seals ever opened.
And as his perception touched that core, something struck him.
Not pressure like Great Red. This was different. This was something that destroyed.
Cough.
Tobio vomited blood. His body convulsed violently. His brain, already hot as molten metal—now felt like it was being crushed from within by invisible hands.
Crack.
The sound of a crack. Not in the room, but inside himself. In his soul, already cracked since that night, now cracked again. Deeper. Wider.
But in the midst of unbearable pain, Tobio smiled.
"Worthy of being the final boss of this world."
His whisper came out with blood flowing from his lips. Then his body collapsed to the floor.
Just before his consciousness completely faded, he felt something. A presence. Someone beside him. Someone who hadn't been there a second before.
Ophis stood beside Tobio's fallen body on the bedroom floor. The little girl in her black gothic dress stared expressionlessly, as usual.
But in her hand, black energy began to gather—not to attack, but to hold.
"You went too far."
Her voice was flat, without emotion. But there was something there—something she might not even realize herself.
She extended her hand towards Tobio. Black energy spread, enveloping the boy's body, holding back his existence that was beginning to fragment.
"If he is destroyed now... there is no meaning."
Ophis stared at Tobio's pale face, smeared with blood, yet still smiling faintly at the corners of his lips.
"If he survives..." She paused for a moment. Her usually empty eyes blinked once, twice. "Perhaps... there is."
She lowered her hand. The black energy enveloping Tobio slowly absorbed into the boy's body, filling the cracks in his soul—not repairing them, but holding them together so they wouldn't shatter completely.
Ophis stood still for a while, watching.
Then she vanished. Like her arrival, without sound, without trace, leaving Tobio alone on the silent bedroom floor.