The dimensional key didn’t smash a hole through space—it just folded two distant places together, neat as a magician snapping a cloth.
One second, Ren was in the damp, drizzling night of Paris.
The next, he walked straight into Tokyo’s blinding, sticky morning without missing a step.
Behind him, reality snapped shut with a sharp clap.
He stood in Ginza’s shadow, dwarfed by skyscrapers, adjusting his suit.
His clothes shifted and cooled, brushing off the Tokyo humidity and keeping him perfectly comfortable.
Tokyo was nothing like Paris.
Paris was all slow grace and hidden depth—a waltz, really.
Tokyo felt like living inside a circuit board.
Human traffic pressed in from every side, neon billboards flickered even under the high sun, and the air stank of exhaust, electronics, and frying food.
Ren just moved with the stream, anonymous.
Nobody noticed him.
He’d already triggered the obsidian ring on his finger—a relic that blurred his presence, making people glance away and instantly forget him.
In this rush of salarymen and students, he was as forgettable as a stray shadow.
He wasn’t here to make trouble or announce himself to the local mages.
Honestly, he just wanted breakfast and a little entertainment.
After a few blocks, he found what he needed: a posh café on a hotel terrace, overlooking a busy Tokyo intersection.
He slid a receptionist a perfect pearl—fresh from the Mariana Trench—and took a seat near the glass, high above the chaos.
He ordered Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, a plate of lavish matcha pastries, and enjoyed the small luxury.
The coffee was perfect—sharp and almost alive on his tongue.
He murmured, barely above a whisper, [Scanning…
Divine energy signature detected.
Two kilometers away and closing fast.
Target airborne.
Warning: high collateral magical output in the area.] Honestly, Ren could feel it even without the System.
That much raw, badly controlled power—the Seventh Campione was close.
It was chaotic, like a storm howling inside a kid’s body.
Then the world broke open.
First, the sky changed.
The sun vanished—eclipsed by spiraling, gray-black clouds.
The air turned cold.
Wind screamed down the streets, shattering windows and driving people to panic.
Car horns blared as vehicles smashed together.
Pedestrians ran for cover, dodging a sudden, lethal spray of breaking glass and flying debris.
Ren watched it all like someone looking down at an anthill after upending a rock.
Suddenly, the fight crashed into view.
A gigantic spectral dragon—twisting currents of dark water and crackling with lightning—smashed out the side of an office tower, raining concrete and steel down onto the city below.
The beast roared, and the sound wasn’t so much heard as felt—deep in your teeth, down your spine.
A divine monster, drawn here by the Seventh’s flare of power.
Right behind it: Godou Kusanagi.
Ren watched the teenager fall from the sky, sword blazing with golden light.
Two girls trailed him—one in red and black with a rapier, the other a shrine maiden desperately throwing up shields to protect anyone in their path.
They were a disaster.
Godou swung his blade.
Divine energy flashed out, slicing off the dragon’s tail.
The dragon writhed.
A blast of pressurized water shredded a billboard and carved a commercial jet clean in half.
Street mages worked below, trying to cordon things off with hypnosis and magical shields, but the fight was way too big for them.
Ren tried a pastry—bitter matcha cream, just sweet enough, really excellent.
Across the avenue, the fight got worse.
Godou shouted an incantation, gripping for more power.
Authority of the Persian Warlord.
The Bull.
A massive ghostly bull shimmered into being above the city, hooves broad as parking lots.
It charged the dragon.
The impact exploded—blinding light, shockwaves ripping through steel and glass.
The pressure wave thundered up to the terrace, hard enough to turn the hotel to dust.
Ren barely glanced up.
He tapped his cup.
A portal blinked open, and the bejeweled tip of a shield—legendary, ancient, not Rho Aias but nearly as strong—appeared between Ren and the blast.
The force hit the shield, split, and just moved around him.
On either side, the terrace—furniture, glass, concrete—was obliterated, hurled back into the hotel.
But Ren and his little patch of tile hung over the city, untouched.
His coffee didn’t tremble.
Not a crumb out of place.
The portal sealed.
The shield vanished.
Below, the water dragon unraveled into mist.
Godou Kusanagi knelt in the ruined street, exhausted, sword vanishing from his grip.
The blonde knight yelled at him for losing control.
The shrine maiden patched him up, panic in her eyes.
Sure, they’d won—but they’d wrecked a business district doing it.
Ren finished the last sip of coffee.
He set his cup down with a soft clink.
“Fascinating,” he muttered.
“That’s power enough to crack the world, and he swings it like a madman with a sledgehammer in a crystal shop.” Down in the streets, every divination charm and compass suddenly went haywire.
The mages froze as their tools shattered—every last one spiking on the same impossible signature.
Not the Seventh King, but something older and heavier.
The Eighth King had just shown his hand.
Panic spread.
Mages pointed at the ruined terrace, shouting through comm-stones.
Even Godou and his knights stared upward, sensing the abyss where Ren waited, perfectly calm.
The blonde, Erica, summoned her blade.
Her eyes were wide, knuckles white.
She caught sight of Ren, still drinking his coffee on a floating scrap of tile, and looked ready to leap the building.
Ren just looked back.
He tipped his cup in a lazy salute—a little playful, a little mocking.
He’d seen enough.
The Seventh King was everything he expected: too much power, too many obligations, a walking disaster in the making.
Before Erica could charge, before Godou could do anything, Ren raised his hand.
Space folded behind him.
He tossed a heavy gold Roman coin onto the table, stepped backward, and vanished.
When the Committee’s mages finally scrambled up to the terrace, they found only the coffee cup, an empty plate, and a gleaming coin left behind—perched on a strip of tile that hung in midair against all reason.
The Eighth King was gone, and the Japanese magical world was in a full-blown panic.