Nioh was a blur of motion and lightning, fighting bare-fisted now, his umbrella long retracted. The thunder god had descended. His fists cracked bone, his knees shattered skulls. Every movement left a trace of static, every step burst with ground-splitting pressure. The remnants of the Hell zombies—misshapen, twitching horrors once feared—fell before him like brittle leaves caught in a storm. They didn't stand a chance.

On the far side of the Hellscape, beyond the sealed perimeter and safe behind the armored barriers of the diffusion field, the spectators watched in open-mouthed silence. What they were witnessing wasn't a battle. It was a revelation.

"The prince is too strong," someone whispered, awestruck.

"I can't believe it..."

"He's going to survive, right?"

"The other heirs are there. He won't fall. He can't."

"Yes. He is... the Strongrest."

And then the chant began. It started as a murmur—tentative, like the first tremor before an earthquake. But within seconds it swelled to a roar.

"Prince Nioh! Prince Nioh!"

It echoed across the fields and cities of Dawyth, carried through the speaker towers and mirrored on every screen. A nation's heartbeat rising as one. Cheers surged through the cities, across barracks and estates, up temples and military outposts. It was as though the entire fiefdom took a single breath, together, and screamed their loyalty into the skies.

But such unity, such passion, carried weight.

The soundwave of their reverence rippled across the land and beyond, like a pulse through the very atmosphere. And somewhere in the unseen folds of reality, ancient things—things without names or forms—shifted at the echo. Something was listening. Watching.

And at the center of it all, Nioh screamed.

The wave of sound, that cascade of hope and faith, didn't empower him—it stabbed into his mind like a blade of light. Sharp, ringing. It cracked through the rising madness, piercing through layers of rage and static, dragging his flickering consciousness to the surface. A new struggle began—not in the body, but in the soul.

Inside the storm of his inner world, two versions of Nioh clashed.

One, his hair blazing crimson, was fury incarnate. Red-haired Nioh, unshackled, unrepentant. His body radiated raw Hell energy, every movement savage, every strike designed to dominate.

The other, ashen-haired and calm-eyed, was weathered by pain but rooted in clarity. He stood his ground, resisting the tide, refusing to surrender control to chaos. This was the Nioh who endured. Who remembered.

And sitting in the shadows of their battlefield, as though watching a play unfold, was Ekoh—his biocore.

An ethereal figure, Ekoh's silver hair shimmered like starlight. His expression was unreadable, detached, almost amused. Chains of molten gold snaked from the void, restraining the red-haired Nioh, though those chains now pulsed and trembled as the Hell energy poured in. With each cursed drop, the red entity grew stronger, his voice louder.

"You are weak," Red Nioh growled, his eyes burning with madness. "Let me take control. Let me fix this."

But White Nioh didn't falter. He fought with silence, with the patience of stone. He withstood the fury.

Ekoh, unbothered, continued to toy with a single strand of energy in his lap—one unlike the others. It shimmered not with Hell's corruption, but with something deeper, older, untouched.

Then White Nioh turned to him. "It's time for the deal."

Ekoh raised a silver brow. For a moment, the internal battle froze. And then, smiling faintly, he turned to the red-haired Nioh.

"Sorry," he said with unbothered cruelty. "I won't intervene next time."

With a lazy wave of his hand, the golden chains tightened, dragging the screaming red Nioh back into the abyss of their shared mind. The shriek echoed, then fell into silence. Chaos, for now, was buried.

Now alone in the mindscape, Ekoh stood.

He opened his left palm.

Six radiant orbs rose from his hand, spinning slowly—each one pulsing with color, essence, and power. Each one a biocore Nioh had fused with on his path. They orbited around him like moons around a dying star. Yet one of them remained dim, cracked and dull—a core unfinished, potential unrealized.

Ekoh's right hand began to weave signs in the air—complex, elegant motions older than language. With a final twist of his fingers, a circle of runes burst to life beneath him.

A radiant sigil, ancient and geometric, expanded beneath Nioh's feet in the outer world.

The array wasn't visible to the average eye—but its effects were immediate. The spinning formation spread, etched into the very fabric of the island. It reached beyond the clearing, cutting into the soil, wrapping itself around the sealed land like a crown of blades.

And then, it began to draw.

The siphoning intensified. The Hell energy in the area—wild, defiant, ever-present—began to drain faster, pulled into the rune like blood into a wound. The fog thinned. The sky cleared, ever so slightly. The corrupted land groaned once more, not in pain, but in offering.

Nioh's body twitched in response.

He blinked. His eyes, once swirling with static and rage, cleared for a moment. The blood on his face crackled and smoked. Lightning danced down his arms, controlled now, not wild. His breath steadied. The madness had quieted, but the strength remained.

--

Back in the circle, Ekoh exhaled softly.

With almost reverent grace, he released the strand of energy he had been holding—the one that shimmered darker than all the others.

The Sin of Gluttony, drawn from Akron's core.

The strand drifted down, slow as falling snow, until it touched Nioh's left hand. Instantly, it burned through him. His body tensed violently, tendrils of black and violet energy rushing through his veins like molten iron.

His right hand, already brimming with the lightning charge accumulated from the five static cubes, now trembled. Sparks cracked and surged between his fingers, the air around it warping with volatile force.

He stood at the center of the maelstrom—one hand holding uncontained energy, the other holding the first of the sins.

The earth quaked beneath him.

And then—

Flashback.

The inner world. Dim, spiraling with ancient diagrams. The circle of biocores rotated slowly overhead. Ekoh stood near a conjured diagram, fingers drawing new runes into the void as he spoke.

Nioh, seated cross-legged, his eyes burning with ambition, listened in silence.

"If the strand of energy harvested from Akron's core is from the Sin of Gluttony," he said, "then within the Hellscape—scattered, corrupted—are the other six sins."

Ekoh nodded, slowly. "Seven sins. Seven cores."

"If I can gather all seven… I don't need a Warden-killing weapon," Nioh said. "I can become one."

Ekoh arched a silver brow. "With the vitality of the Sin of Greed… and the fusion potential of Gluttony… it's a far-fetched plan. You'd need to find them. Fuse with them. Withstand them."

"It could work."

"Even if it could, you'd still need a source—a supply of energy on a scale too absurd to measure."

Nioh's lips curled into a grin. "Then I'll harvest something older than the sins themselves."

Ekoh paused. "What?"

"Harmonic wave energy."

Ekoh blinked. "…You want to collect cheers?"

"The faith. The will. The reverence of a nation," Nioh said. "That moment when an entire fiefdom believes, and shouts, and offers everything they are… to me."

Ekoh slowly leaned back, lips parting in something between disbelief and awe.

"Well," he chuckled. "Then let's pull the biggest heist of the century."

The field had gone quiet.

Not silent—but tight with tension, like the air before a thunderclap. Thousands of Hellspawn stretched across the charred horizon, their claws dragging through the ash, their maws twitching in anticipation. A wall of black and rot, breathing as one. At the front stood the Original Lich, its robes of shadow coiling like smoke, bone fingers clutched around a rusted censer that dripped sickly green mist.

And opposite them—alone, surrounded by a ring of cracked lightning—stood Nioh.

His chest heaved slowly. Hair now a storm of crimson fire and ashen streaks, caught in the charge of his growing storm. One hand still buzzed with the raw energy of the cubes, radiant with stolen power. The other cradled the fused sin of Gluttony, a black-glowing flame curled into his palm like a newborn star.

Magnus narrowed his eyes from the cliffs above. His golden armor hummed with subtle resonance, but his voice was quiet.

"I thought I knew power," he said, voice almost reverent.

Beside him, Lithaa crossed her arms, her expression unreadable, lips curled just faintly. Her long veil billowed softly in the remaining static.

"A single misstep and he implodes. Or worse—becomes what we feared."

"And yet," Magnus murmured, "I can't look away."

In the ring below, Nioh's gaze drifted up—away from the army, away from the Lich—and locked onto Akron.

He said nothing. But his eyes—glowing with that strange crimson-silver mix—held a message. A question. You lit the spark. Don't flinch now.

Akron, still clutching the core conduit box, simply nodded once.

Do it.

Nioh exhaled. The ground beneath him split slightly. Lightning crackled up his spine. The storm above began to swirl in synchrony with his pulse.

The Lich raised its censer and howled. The undead horde surged forward—claws, bone, hate.

Nioh stepped forward, lowering both arms like a conductor readying a requiem.

Then he whispered, to no one in particular:

"Let's begin the heist."

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