Hours earlier, long before the blood-red letter ever materialized at Lockout Headquarters…
The oppressive, rain-soaked woods outside the perimeter of Site 2 were deathly quiet.
Tez was dragging his feet through the dense mud, his heavy boots sinking into the dark earth with every agonizing step.
His chest heaved, his uniform torn and blackened from scorched rock.
The continuous strain of maintaining the Lava Tornado Twister had completely drained his Maana reserves down to zero, leaving his internal organs burning with agonizing fatigue.
“Ahh… This is my limit…” Tez whispered, his knees finally giving out beneath him.
He fell forward, his fingers clawing uselessly at the wet bark of an ancient oak tree as his vision slowly faded into absolute blackness.
“I don’t have enough energy left to move…”
As Tez’s physical body slumped against the base of the tree, his conscious mind plunged deep into the abyss of his inner subconscious realm.
Instead of cold mud and dark woods, Tez found himself floating in a endless, boiling sea of roaring crimson fire.
Swirling torrents of liquid magma bubbled around his spirit, radiating an overwhelming heat.
Emerging from the blinding depths of the flames, the massive, terrifying shadow of Kung—the ancient Dragon Spirit—loomed above him.
Kung’s scales glistened like superheated iron, his slit-like golden eyes staring down into Tez’s soul with immense pressure.
“Tez,” Kung’s deep, guttural voice echoed throughout the fiery dimension, shaking the very foundation of his mind.
“Your soul and your will are excellent… but your physical body lacks the internal endurance to withstand immense Maana.”
Tez floated on his back in the burning sea, looking up at the towering draconic entity, his spiritual hands trembling.
“But Kung… I need to use power without blowing my body apart,” Tez replied weakly, clutching his chest.
“I’m hitting my limits every single time I fight!”
“Then break them,” Kung growled sternly, his crimson aura flaring violently, sending a massive shockwave across the fiery sea.
“Break your limits to expand your Maana pool and increase your aura presence!”
SNAP!
Tez’s eyes snapped open!
The smell of smoke and mud was gone, replaced by the faint, comforting aroma of burning herbs and dried wood.
Tez found himself lying on a simple wooden bed inside a dim, cozy cabin.
The heavy, suffocating weight in his chest had vanished; his wounds were neatly bandaged, his anti-Maana exhaustion completely wiped away, and his inner fire burned brighter and lighter than ever before.
“Hey! Who treated me?!” Tez yelled, bolting upright on the bed, his head darting around the small room.
“I have to get to Lockout! My friends are waiting!”
“Why are you making so much noise? I’m not deaf,” a raspy, dry voice replied from the doorway.
An old woman slowly walked into the room, leaning lightly on a wooden staff.
Without a word of warning, she threw a small glass bottle filled with a glowing, viscous golden liquid straight at Tez’s head.
Tez instinctively caught it out of mid-air.
“Drink it,” she said flatly, walking over to a bubbling iron pot hanging over a small fireplace.
“It’s good for dragons.”
Tez looked down at the glowing liquid suspiciously before uncorking the bottle and chugging it down in one gulp.
The liquid felt like liquid sunshine going down his throat, bursting into a massive surge of pure, warm energy inside his stomach, instantly refilling his Maana core!
“I thought I was the only one!”
He paused, looking closely at the wrinkled face of the woman.
“Hey, old woman—”
“I am not ‘old woman.’ Call me by my name: Noni,” she interrupted calmly, stirring her pot with a long wooden spoon.
“Noni? What kind of name is that?” Tez muttered, scratching the back of his neck before leaning forward with intense curiosity.
“Okay, Noni… Tell me everything.”
Noni turned her head, her milky white, blind-looking eyes staring directly into Tez’s soul.
“I know everything. Look at your eyes… I read a book long ago about a man who wielded dragon powers—his heart burned with the exact same inner flame as yours.”
“A man who wielded dragon powers?!” Tez’s breath hitched in his throat.
His knuckles turned white as he gripped the glass bottle.
“I… I really am not the only one?!”
LOCATION: DIAMOND STAR – SURROUNDING ORBIT
While Tez sat inside Noni’s quiet cabin learning of the ancient past, millions of miles away on the ruined surface of Diamond Star, absolute cataclysm was unfolding.
The sky above the crystal planet had been completely torn to shreds, revealing the terrifying, swirling purple void of deep space.
Master Kaizo and his rogue cousin, Flucée Bakner, were locked in a violent, world-shattering clash of ultimate techniques!
Flucée roared with psychopathic glee as he spun his massive, double-sided cosmic blade.
One side of the weapon glowed with an eerie, ancient divine light—harnessing 10% of the legendary weapon Thresse—while the opposite blade hummed with violent gravitational spatial pressure, continuously creating localized black holes that devoured surrounding mountain peaks into non-existence!
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
Kaizo’s legendary blade, Kai, blocked three consecutive dimensional slashes in a microsecond, sparks of pure cosmic energy showering down like falling stars.
BEEP!
BEEP!
Suddenly, a high-frequency emergency comms signal flashed across the HUD display inside Kaizo’s cybernetic visor.
It was an encrypted distress audio line directly from Rihasa at Lockout Headquarters.
“Master! We don’t have enough power to save Tez! How do we evolve ourselves?!” Rihasa’s panicked voice cried out through the static of space, echoing inside Kaizo’s helmet.
Flucée laughed maniacally, lunging forward with a overhead strike capable of splitting a moon in half.
“Focusing on a phone call during a duel with me, Kaizo?! You really are arrogant!”
CLANG!
With incredible precision and sheer brute force, Kaizo caught Flucée’s massive, double-sided blade with a single hand, his cybernetic glove emitting intense white smoke under the pressure!
Kaizo ignored Flucée entirely, speaking calmly into his comms receiver with unwavering confidence:
“Why do you think you are weak? You didn’t just get powers… powers chose you because you are worthy. Now, let me show you the true meaning of going beyond limits!”
At that exact second, back inside the quiet woods of Earth…
Noni looked Tez directly in his fiery eyes, her raspy voice echoing in complete unison with Kaizo’s voice across the stars:
“You didn’t just get powers… powers chose you because you are worthy. Now, let me show you the true meaning of going beyond limits!”
He released Flucée’s blade and took half a step backward, drawing every single drop of his inner reserves, pushing his energy past its theoretical maximum into forbidden territory.
=========================================
FORBIDDEN TECHNIQUE: GATE 3 OF DEATH
USER: Master Kaizo
MAANA OUTPUT: INFINITY
VISUAL: Veins exploding with golden cosmic energy, Cyber-suit shattering under sheer pressure
=========================================
“GATE 3 OF DEATH—INFINITY MAANA!” Kaizo roared!
CRACK!
SHATTER!
The high-tech, reinforced cyber-suit encased around Kaizo’s body completely shattered from the inside out!
The sheer, unadulterated pressure of his surging infinity aura disintegrated the armor plating into fine golden dust.
The veins across Kaizo’s arms and neck bulged, glowing with blinding cosmic energy as his blue-white hair floated upward against gravity.
High in the sky above Diamond Star, the cosmic clouds parted, and a gargantuan, golden ethereal phantom materialized—the legendary, ancient form of SKYLAR, the ultimate supreme warrior of the Lost Generation from 400 years ago!
“COSMOS BREATH… LAST TECHNIQUE!” Kaizo screamed, swinging his blade Kai downward with the full weight of Skylar’s phantom behind him!
Flucée’s eyes widened with manic excitement rather than fear.
“YES! THAT’S IT! THAT’S WHAT I WANTED!”
Flucée triggered his own dark Gate of Death, his double-sided sword absorbing three localized black holes into its edge, turning the blade pitch black!
“MASSIVE BLACK HOLE CRUSHER!” Flucée screeched, thrusting his weapon upward to meet Kaizo’s strike!
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The collision between the golden Cosmos Breath and the Massive Black Hole Crusher was catastrophic.
The shockwave didn’t just shatter the surface—it split Diamond Star completely in half!
Tectonic plates dissolved into raw light, and half of the entire planet was wiped off the cosmic map in a fraction of a second!
The dimensional rift generated by the explosion rippled across space and time, tearing through galaxy sectors and shaking space stations hundreds of light-years away.
LOCATION: DOMAIN OF THE PROTECTOR GOD – UV7
Deep within the sacred, divine realm of Sector UV7, sits the grand, eternal throne room of the High Realm.
Sitting upon a massive, throne forged from burning star-core metal was the Protector God of UV7—the ancient, legendary entity whose authority governed entire solar systems, and the father of both Master Kaizo and Flucée Bakner.
As the dimensional shockwave from Diamond Star’s destruction hit the throne room walls, the ancient candles flickered.
The Protector God opened his glowing, cosmic eyes, resting his chin on his hand with a heavy, exasperated sigh.
“Bring those two idiots to me immediately,” the Protector God ordered, his deep, booming voice echoing effortlessly across light-years of space into the ears of his elite guards.
“It’s time I teach my sons a lesson.”
TO BE CONTINUED….
If you read this chapter with your interest I am sure you are gonna love my creation…