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Two weeks of silence inside the diamond dome.
From outside, nothing had changed. The dome sat in the valley, pulsing faintly with Kaneki's heartbeat, occasionally crackling with residual death energy from the dungeon below.
Inside, Kaneki hadn't moved.
He sat in perfect stillness, the Dullahan skull floating in front of him at eye level, suspended in a web of hair-thin blood threads that held it in precise position. His eyes were open but unfocused, his awareness directed entirely inward—and into the skull.
Death energy was nothing like blood magic. Blood magic responded to intention immediately, like a well-trained dog. Death energy was more like a wild current—it existed, it moved, it had direction and force, but it didn't care about intention. It simply was, and anything in its path either adapted or was unmade.
For the first two days, Kaneki had tried to direct it the way he directed blood, and the death energy had simply gone where it wanted while minor necrotic burns appeared on his hands.
He stopped trying to direct it.
He watched instead.
Death energy in the skull moved in patterns. It wasn't random—it had rhythm, like breathing, like a tide. Expansion, contraction. Accumulation, release. The Dullahan had been powerful because it had aligned its entire existence with that rhythm, moved with the current rather than against it.
On day five, Kaneki synchronized his heartbeat to the skull's pulse.
On day nine, the necrotic burns stopped forming.
On day thirteen, he extended one finger and the death energy moved toward it without him forcing anything. Just a gentle pressure, like cupping water from a stream rather than trying to grab it.
By the end of week two, he could hold the death energy in his palm like a dark flame. He couldn't shape it precisely yet. He couldn't direct it with the finesse he used for blood magic. But he wasn't fighting it anymore.
[Passive skill consolidation: 67% complete. Estimated completion: 8 days remaining.]
[Notice: Master's synchronization with death energy has improved from 4.2% to 61.8% over the past fourteen days.]
[Additional notice: Touka and the Red Order are approaching the goblin settlement. Arrival estimated in three hours.]
Kaneki nodded slightly, not breaking his meditative state.
Kaneki sneezed.
The death energy in his hand flickered.
He looked at his empty palm, mildly irritated. "Someone is talking about me."
[Probability: High. The Red Order's flag was just raised and the army began moving toward the settlement.]
"Rimuru," Kaneki murmured.
He settled back into stillness, reaching for the death energy again.
Three hours. He could maintain meditation for three more hours.
The walls of the goblin settlement appeared on the horizon just before midday.
The Red Order marched in formation toward the main gate, the black flag with its skull-and-scythes insignia snapping in the wind ahead of them. A thousand Blood Orcs in organized ranks, their converted forms radiating control and purpose rather than the mindless hunger of their previous state.
The gate guards saw them from the watchtowers first.
There was a brief period of visible alarm—a thousand Orcs marching on your settlement was never a comfortable sight regardless of context—followed by what appeared to be frantic activity as word spread inside.
By the time Touka reached the main gate, a reception party had assembled outside it.
She hadn't expected the horns.
Six of them, wielding weapons and wearing the confident posture of experienced fighters. One with a flaming katana standing at the front, his red hair and the warrior's bearing making his identity as the Ogre prince obvious even without introduction. Beside him, the pink-haired princess. Behind them, the ancient swordmaster, the purple-haired berserker, and two others.
They formed a line between the Red Order and the gate, hands on weapons, expressions ranging from controlled hostility to outright aggression.
Touka stopped the army with a raised fist.
She walked forward alone until she was ten meters from the Ogre prince.
"I am General Touka of the Red Order," she said, meeting his eyes. "We are not here for combat. We are here to see Rimuru Tempest on Lord Thanatos's authority."
The Ogre prince's hand stayed on his katana. "You're Orcs."
"We were," Touka said. "We are Blood Orcs now. Lord Thanatos's instrument in this forest."
"She speaks the truth." A voice came from behind the Ogre line—small, blue, and currently sounding like someone who hadn't slept properly in two weeks. Rimuru came through the assembled warriors, looking notably less vibrant than he probably once had. Two rounds of mass naming in a short period was evidently not kind to a slime's energy reserves. "Let them through. She's one of Thanatos's people."
The Ogres didn't look entirely convinced, but they stepped aside.
Touka looked at Rimuru. He looked at her. The slime's Great Sage was visibly running an analysis—she could feel the appraisal skill brush against her status—and whatever it found made Rimuru go slightly quiet.
"You're a lot more powerful than I expected," Rimuru said.
"Lord Thanatos named me personally," Touka replied.
"Ah." Rimuru seemed to accept this as sufficient explanation for most things. "Well. We have rooms available if you'd like to—"
"We'll camp outside the walls," Touka said.
Rimuru paused. "Outside the walls. Thanatos built those walls specifically to protect everyone in the area."
"We are Blood Orcs," Touka said simply. "We are an army. Armies camp outside. It would be improper to bring a thousand soldiers into a settlement without permission from its master, and Lord Thanatos did not grant that permission."
Rimuru stared at her for a moment. "He didn't grant permission because he probably didn't think about it."
"Then the answer is no until he does."
Another pause. Rimuru seemed to be processing the experience of dealing with someone who followed Thanatos's indirect authority even more strictly than the Servant-Master Pact compelled him to.
"The Orc Lord," Touka said, changing the subject. "He and his guard are detained inside?"
"In comfortable guest quarters, yes. Thanatos said to keep them contained." Rimuru sounded slightly pained by this. "They're not happy about it, but they're not making trouble. The Orc Lord is...not what I expected. He seems lucid. The curse doesn't seem to have him fully."
"His will is stronger than most," Touka said, filing this away. "I'll need to speak with him tomorrow. Tonight we establish camp."
She turned back toward her army and raised her hand.
The Red Order began to move with practiced efficiency, breaking into smaller units and spreading into a camp formation outside the eastern section of the wall. Within twenty minutes, a proper military encampment was taking shape—organized, defensible, disciplined.
Rimuru watched them from the gate. The Ogre prince came to stand beside him.
"They follow orders like a real army," the prince said quietly.
"They are a real army," Rimuru said. "Apparently Thanatos created an entire military force while I was busy managing this settlement."
"He created them? From Orcs?"
"From the same Orcs that attacked your village." Rimuru sounded tired. "He killed most of them, converted the rest, and sent them here to deal with the Orc Lord situation." A pause. "While he's meditating in a diamond dome in a valley two hundred kilometers away."
The Ogre prince was quiet for a moment. "And you serve this being?"
"I do," Rimuru said, and didn't elaborate on the full circumstances of how that had come to be.
"Why?"
Rimuru watched Touka's figure moving through the camp, directing placement and organization with the practiced authority of someone who'd been a general far longer than two weeks.
"Because the alternative," Rimuru said, "is being in the way of whatever he's building. And I'd rather be part of it."
The Red Order's flag went up at the camp's center, planted in the earth with a decisive motion that drove it two feet into the ground.
The skull and scythes caught the afternoon light.
The Ogre prince looked at it for a long moment.
"The God of Death," he said softly, echoing what the Orc Lord had apparently called Thanatos. "I can see why they'd think that."
"Don't let him hear you say it," Rimuru said. "He'll either find it funny or deeply inconvenient. With him, there's no predicting which."
Inside the diamond dome, Kaneki held a small sphere of pure death energy in his palm.
Dark, steady, contained.
For the first time since entering the dungeon, it didn't fight him.
[Skill consolidation: 71% complete]
[Death Energy Synchronization: 64%]
One more week, roughly. Then the skills would be refined, the death energy would be properly integrated, and he could move on to whatever came next.
The Orc Lord situation was being handled.
The Red Order(he loved the name Touka had come up with) was established.
Through Great Sage's connection to Rimuru, he sensed the settlement was steadily growing.
He could afford to be still for a little longer.
The death energy pulsed in his palm, dark and patient.
Kaneki matched its rhythm.