The digital shrill of the alarm clock sliced through the silence of the room. On the bed, a young man with striking dual-toned hai,stirred beneath his blankets.
He reached out a sluggish hand, fumbling blindly until his palm finally slammed down on the snooze button.
Silence returned, but only for a moment.
He sat up, the sheets falling away to reveal a series of intricate, dark markings across his torso and arm. He stared at his hand, his expression caught between confusion and exhaustion.
"Was that all a dream?" he muttered to himself.
The memory of it was vivid, a sharp contrast to the mundane morning light. "But... it felt so real." He shook his head, trying to clear the mental fog.
"I shouldn't think too much about it."
The mundane reality of hunger soon took over. He stood and made his way to the kitchen, his mind still half-anchored in whatever vision he'd had. He checked the counter where he thought he'd left food.
"Nothing?."
"The ramen I made isn't here," he noted, a frown deepening on his face.
He turned to the fridge, hoping for a backup. "I think I left some in the fridge..."
He pulled the handle, but the light only revealed empty wire shelves.
"Huh? It's empty!!??"
A strange unease began to settle in his gut. It wasn't just the ramen. The very air in the apartment felt thin, shifting. He turned toward the door, intending to head to the store.
"I guess I need to buy some at the... gro...ce...ry store?"
His voice trailed off as he stepped through the doorway. He wasn't in his hallway. He wasn't even in his building.
Behind him, his entire apartment began to distort and dissolve like a glitching digital file.
"HUHHHHHHH!!!" he yelled, spinning around.
The walls were stretching, pixelating, and then—snap. The building vanished into the horizon of a vast, white void.
"What tha..."
He stood alone in a literal "nothingness." There were no streets, no sky, only a seemingly endless white floor and towering, distant pillars.
Panic surged. "Where did everything go? Where did my house goooo!!"
"What just happened?"
he whispered, his small figure dwarfed by the scale of the empty world. "Then that wasn't a dream..."
-"Finally, you're awake."
The voice was cool, regal, and laced with an effortless authority. He spun around to find a woman with long, flowing hair and a piercing gaze watching him from a distance.
"Kougoshi Arufa... or should I say, Kuroshiraga Arufa... correct?"
Arufa stared, his breath hitching. The woman sat atop a massive, ornate throne positioned at the top of a grand staircase, flanked by gargantuan pillars that reached into the white haze above.
"A hit from Truck-kun does take its toll," she continued, her tone almost mocking. "I thought you'd never wake up. Took you long enough."
"Who are you and where am I?" Arufa demanded, his voice echoing in the vast space.
-"Who I am isn't important right now," she replied, leaning forward slightly. "You're in my Pseudo Realm. However... you do know where this is headed, right?"
Arufa's eyes narrowed. "How did I get here?"
"I redirected your path to this place," she said simply.
"Listen... I've got a task or favor I need to ask of you."
"Favor?" Arufa repeated skeptically.
"There's an item I need you to collect from another world."
Arufa looked up at her, a defiant glint in his eyes. "What do I gain from doing this?"
The woman didn't flinch. "Well... the last known location of this artifact, of course." Between them, a holographic projection shimmered into existence: Artefact N.O. 47, a complex, interlocking geometric cube.
Arufa felt a jolt of recognition. She knows what I'm after? He clenched his fist. How? Why?
"Why choose me of all people?" he snapped.
"You obviously read my memories... there are still far more qualified people than me."
The woman paused, a small, mysterious smile playing on her lips.
"Listen, kid... the reason I choose you is simple. I like you... you're different."
Arufa gritted his teeth,"Either way... if you are capable of erecting a Pseudo Realm of this echelon... why can't you do it yourself? I'm certain you're powerful enough."
-"Simple," the woman replied, her shrug dismissive yet graceful. "I too... have my limitations."
Arufa stared at her, his mind racing. Limitations? She's hiding something. He thought back to the moment of his "defeat" If his intuition was right, he hadn't just been hit by any vehicle; it was an imitation of the infamous 'Truck-kun,' likely a technique used by the hand-mask guy.
He realized with a jolt of grim respect that while he was being dragged toward a 'Prison Realm,' this woman had forcibly redirected his path here.
"I see"
"Can you give me some insight into this other world and the item's location?" he asked, trying to find stable ground in this conversation.
"If it helps, I'll tell you then," she said. With a wave of her hand, the void around them shifted, replaced by a holographic projection of a distant, planet with a mountain range along its circumference, from its north pole to its south and back .
"You are to be sent to a world called Kenikin Sekai. This is where you will find the item I am looking for: Artefact No. 911, also known as the Key of Solomon."
The image zoomed in on a world that looked like a jagged marble.
"Kenikin Sekai was originally a Realm created for a single purpose: to exile powerful Dreadspawn and keep them locked away from Earth and the rest of humanity,"
she explained. "However, due to unforeseen circumstances, the place is now inhabited by multiple sentient races and species. Chaos and conflict later arose among them "
The projection showed a planet physically split by a massive, world-spanning mountain range. "Because of this, Kenikin Sekai is divided into two areas. One side is Nede, the most populated region.
The other..." she paused, the hologram glowing a blood-red. "...is Dunes. It is a barren wasteland inhabited by high-level Dreadspawn and their mutant demonskin cousins. It has a 10 to 20 percent survival rate for humans. That is where you will find the Artefact."
Arufa looked at the layout of the Demon Continent, Dunes. "Artefact No. 911 is specifically within the domain of Demon Lord Dezura," she added coolly. "You'll find it in the capital, [[Maitairiku]] "
Arufa let out a breath, a strange sense of déjà vu washing over him.
"This whole thing sounds familiar... fine. I'll do it."
"One more thing," the woman said, her eyes narrowing as she looked him up and down.
"You're kinda... weak."
Before Arufa could snap back a retort, she continued, "So I'll give you some magic abilities if you want to stand a chance against a Demon Lord. The new abilities are as follows—"
"As if—" Arufa began, but the woman cut him off with a sharp look.
"What tha—"
Suddenly, the floor beneath Arufa simply ceased to exist. He plummeted into a dark fissure that opened in the fabric of the Pseudo Realm
. "AHHHH!"
his scream echoed as the woman's voice followed him down: "I'm sending you elsewhere for now. Have fun."
....
In a distant far away dark and desolate plane , the dark clouds part as an object from beyond peirces the sky and illuminates the dark plan ,to show numerous deformed and grotesque creatures across the landscape.
Arufa felt his entire being being torn apart and stitched back together in a millisecond. His body felt like it was being inflated, his organs rearranged and compressed into the size of a marble, only to be violently expanded again.
"It hurts... it hurts!" he gasped, his vision blurring. He was conscious through every second of the molecular restructuring.
He hit a hard surface, gasping for air as his body finished regenerating.
He looked at his hands, watching black orbs of energy dissipate into his skin. He was in a cold, grey room that felt like it was made of glitching light.
"The room is dissipating? Just like a membrane..." he wheezed, pushing himself up from the floor. He looked up, and his heart stopped.
Towering above him was a creature of pure nightmare—a massive, multi-limbed entity that dwarfed the room itself. Its presence was a physical weight, crushing the air from his lungs.
"What's... this feeling?" Arufa whispered, with despire.
-
"MOVE."
. Above him, the creature was a nightmare of geometry and biology—a central, lidless eye fixed upon him, supported by thick, segmented limbs that looked like the legs of a prehistoric crustacean.
"GO. MOVE. RUN."
The commands hammered into his brain in a frantic staccato. Arufa stood paralyzed, his shadow stretched long against the white floor by the blinding light of the creature's singular pupil.
Every instinct screamed at him to bolt, but his muscles were lead.
Why can't I move? he screamed internally. Why am I frozen stiff?
The creature was an embodiment of the very thing he had spent his life trying to avoid.
"I'm gonna die," he whispered, his teeth clenching so hard they felt ready to shatter. "Is this how it ends? Being afraid?
The creature lunged, its massive, spiked limbs descending like falling pillars.
"DREAD FACTOR: SCOPOPHOBIA,"
The air around him didn't just move; it curdled. A swirl of dark, ink-like energy erupted from his skin. The fear wasn't gone, but it had been harvested—turned into a fuel source.
The "Death Count" loomed in his mind—a staggering 89 failures, 89 times he had hesitated and paid the price in a cycle of theoretical ends. But the 90th time would be different.
-
A memory—or perhaps a fragment of a life he'd tried to bury—surfaced. He saw himself as a child, small and hunched, standing in the shadow of a tall, dark figure.
"Kuroshi, what are you so scared about? Going outside? Is it the stares?" The man's voice was casual, almost dismissive.
The young Arufa had stayed silent, his pale hair a beacon that he felt invited every judgmental eye in the city.
"It is quite difficult not to stare with that hair of yours ""
"Look, there's no need to be concerned about people's stares," the man had continued, looking out over the urban horizon.
"To be honest, people don't really give a shit. They have their own problems to worry about. How you look is the least of their concerns."
-
Then , his worldveiw morphed into a black void . but in this void, two black orbs appeared with one attracting space itself . The other pushing space away ,with point of light at the center.
-
I remember now... Arufa's eyes snapped open, no longer clouded by panic.
He had spent his life running from the feeling of being watched.
"I was afraid of the stares people make," Arufa muttered, his gaze narrowing until it matched the intensity of the monster's eye.
"But now is not the time... to dread."
He reached for the pendant at his chest, a silver disc of concentric circles that hummed with a dormant, ancient power. His fingers brushed the metal, and the world slowed to a crawl.
"GATES... ONE TO FIVE."
"OPEN."
Arufa didn't hesitate this time. The silver pendant at his throat flared with a blinding, mechanical light, its concentric rings spinning with a high-pitched whine that cut through the monster's psychic pressure.
"FIRST INTERMEDIATE ART: ACCRETION DISC DIALATE!"
The space around collapsed. A flat plane of shimmering energy expanded outward from Arufa, slicing through the base of the towering, multi-limbed creatures as if they were made of nothing more than paper. They barely had time to let out a final, distorted screech before the disc passed through them, leaving a trail of pixelated static in its wake.
But he wasn't finished. The raw energy surging through his veins felt volatile, a sun trapped behind his ribs.
"SECOND INTERMEDIATE ART: SUPER NOVA ABSOLUTE!"
Arufa unleashed the output. What followed was a two-stage cataclysm. Stage I was a sphere of pure, white heat that expanded instantly, vaporizing everything.
Stage II was the shockwave—a pillar of light that erupted toward the heavens, carving a massive, jagged crater into the scenery
When the light finally died down, Arufa stood alone in the center of a wasteland he had created.
He stared at his hands, which were trembling and singed.
"I almost killed myself," he wheezed, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
-
Unbeknownst to him, he was being watched.
In a separate, tranquil space, the mysterious woman-Noboru Tenjo , sat back, casually eating popcorn as she watched the destruction unfold on a floating monitor .
Beside her stood a refined older man in a tuxedo—Oliver Kurosu.
"So you chose makai ,instead of all other realms, to assess him..." Oliver noted, his gaze fixed on the screen.
"Yeah," the woman replied, her eyes never leaving Arufa's image.
"It's the least harsh one I could think of. I needed a thorough analysis of his abilities... his habits, his tendencies... his strengths and his methods."
"What do you think of him so far?" she asked.
Oliver's expression remained stern. "The boy overthinks too much. His form is all over the place, not to mention his excessive output that's bound to strain him.
His technique is sloppy and needs polish."
The woman took a sip of her drink, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips. "Oh?"
"That's all I can say for now," Oliver continued, though his eyes softened slightly.
"It's far too early to make a final verdict. But one thing is certain: the young lad seems to have a significant sense of discipline. Although... he still does need some formal training."
Back in the crater, Arufa collapsed to his knees among the bleached bones of perhaps fallen Dreadspawn.
"I'm... exhausted," he whispered.
He looked toward the horizon, where a distant pillar of light was beginning to form. "It seems I respawn every time I die in this place... but I don't have that ability. I guess it's from that woman."
He dragged himself toward the light, his vision blurring.
"I'm not sure... but that pillar of light... might be the next checkpoint or whatever."
He took one step, then another, moving toward the unknown.