The sun was just beginning to dip behind the great walls of Tempest, casting an amber glow across the horizon. The peaceful silence of the late afternoon was suddenly shattered as four streaks of energy tore across the sky—one crimson red, one glacial white, and two shadowy streams trailing behind.
With a gust of frigid wind and a crackle of heat, Guy Crimson, Velzard, Rain, and Misery touched down in front of the Labyrinth's gate, landing like gods descending from the heavens. The ground shook slightly. Wind howled and settled.
Just nearby, Rimuru and Veldora were sitting under a tree, recovering after another round of intense training inside the Labyrinth. They were covered in minor scratches, nothing lethal, but what stood out was their expressions—serene. Their auras? Transformed.
Veldora, once talkative and annoyingly playful, now sat in deep silence, staring at the sky as if pondering the very meaning of strength itself. His usual booming voice and over-the-top antics? Gone—for now.
Guy noticed immediately. His crimson eyes narrowed.
"...Something's different."
Velzard nodded slowly.
"You feel it too? Their aura. It's sharper. Denser."
Rain tilted her head slightly, observing Veldora.
"Even he's quiet. That's... weird."
Misery added, almost whispering:
"Creepy, actually."
Rimuru looked up as the group landed, blinking in surprise.
"Oh? Guy? Velzard? What are you two doing here?"
Guy crossed his arms, a grin slowly tugging at his lips.
"Couldn't sit around and watch you surpass us, now could we? Milim told us everything."
Rimuru sighed, brushing dust off his shoulder.
"Yeah… Yujiro came to visit, and well… he decided to stay. Diablo asked him for a real training, and…"
He gestured toward the massive gate behind him.
"That thing became hell. Ramiris remodeled it under his guidance. And I mean hell—the kind with layers, torment, no magic, pain multipliers, gravity changes, monsters that eat fear... it's a madhouse."
Velzard's icy-blue eyes sparkled slightly with interest.
"We can tell. Even Veldora's changed. And not just physically… his whole presence feels different."
Veldora, still seated, nodded once. No words.
That alone was a statement more powerful than any speech.
Guy took one step forward, hands in his pockets.
"So… where's the devil himself?"
Before Rimuru could answer, the gates of the Labyrinth creaked open, slowly, ominously. A wave of pressure flooded the area. Heavy, primal, terrifying.
From the shadows emerged Yujiro Hanma.
Casual.
Confident.
Hands in his pockets. His grin wide. His steps slow and heavy, each one radiating a presence like thunder. The air itself bent around him.
Even Guy, a demon born of chaos, felt his instincts scream just a little.
Velzard tensed.
Rain and Misery took half a step back, unconsciously.
Yujiro's eyes scanned the group.
"Well well… look who finally showed up," he said with that devilish smirk.
Velzard lowered her eyes slightly out of instinct.
Guy exhaled deeply, but still held his usual cocky edge.
"We heard there's some real training going on. Figured we'd see if we're still up to snuff."
Yujiro looked him up and down, then turned to Velzard and then Rain and Misery.
"You all want in?"
Guy nodded.
"If Rimuru, Diablo, and even Veldora are changing this much… then hell yeah. I'm not about to fall behind."
Yujiro turned toward the gate without a word. His back to them, he casually waved his hand.
"Then step in. Don't expect mercy."
The wind grew cold.
The air thick.
Everyone could feel it.
This wasn't just a dungeon. This was a living nightmare forged by the strongest creature in existence.
Velzard gave Veldora one final look.
"Don't embarrass me, brother," she whispered as she stepped forward.
Guy cracked his knuckles, chuckled, and followed.
Rain and Misery glanced at each other and nodded before silently stepping in.
Behind them, several Tempest generals—Hakuro, Souei, Geld, Shion, and even Gobta (after being dragged)—stood ready at the edge, shaking in anticipation and fear.
Yujiro stood at the threshold, watching them all enter.
He grinned.
"And now… it gets fun."
As they crossed the threshold, the entire world shifted.
The moment their feet touched the black stone floors of the Labyrinth, reality twisted. The sky vanished, replaced by a swirling storm of colors. The air turned thick and humid. Lightning crackled across clouds inside a ceiling that shouldn't exist.
A voice echoed, booming, in their ears:
"No magic. No skills. No weapons. Only will. Only strength."
"This is MY world."
Guy landed on a floating stone platform just as gravity flipped sideways, almost slamming him into a wall. He gritted his teeth.
"Okay… this is insane…"
Velzard landed somewhere entirely different—a snowy wasteland where the blizzard was so intense her body was being pushed backward despite her being the Ice Dragon. The cold pierced even her.
Rain fell into a room of mirrors, each reflecting twisted versions of herself. The voices whispered her worst fears. Her worst memories.
Misery stood in total darkness. No sight. No sound. Only her heartbeat.
Then—
BOOM!
An invisible force slammed into her gut, and Yujiro's voice whispered:
"You didn't breathe right."
Meanwhile, Guy was dodging a barrage of boulders, each thrown by monsters covered in shifting runes. One punched the air, and the pressure alone shattered a mountain behind him.
He smiled, bleeding from his lip.
"Now THIS is training."
Back outside, Rimuru stood next to Veldora, watching the entrance seal shut.
"They're in."
Veldora nodded.
"Yujiro will break them. Mold them. Reforge them."
"Just like he did to us," Rimuru said softly, clenching his fist.
A low hum came from beneath the earth. The Labyrinth was alive. And inside, the strongest warriors the world had ever known were about to be stripped down to their very core—and rebuilt.
From this moment forward…
There would be no turning back.
Months have passed while they all still training in Tempest.....
Far from the chaos and evolution unfolding in Tempest, beneath the surface of a ruined capital that once belonged to a fallen kingdom, a secret chamber pulsed with dark energy. The walls were made of cursed obsidian and laced with veins of crimson magicule. In the center stood Yuuki Kagurazaka, clad in a new black and silver coat, one that shimmered with unstable runes. Before him hovered a colossal, jagged crystal, glowing with chaotic magic.
The members of the Harlequin Moderate Alliance—Laplace, Kigali, Footman, and Tear—stood around him, uneasy as tendrils of black lightning occasionally struck the ground from the spell's incomplete form.
Yuuki's eyes gleamed with obsession. His grin was sharp—like a man who had seen the end of the world and decided to rewrite it.
"This is it," Yuuki said, voice low but charged with wild energy. "Project Dreadbind. The spell that will make me a god."
Kigali folded her arms, her black nails tapping against her elbow.
"You've been saying that for months, Yuuki. You really think this is enough to slow him down? Yujiro's not even a monster—he's... he's something else."
Yuuki turned to her slowly, the shadows across his face dancing.
"He rejects magic. He rejects rules. But that's his flaw."
"Because this spell doesn't attack his body. It attacks existence itself—the framework around him."
Footman, sitting on a slab of broken marble with his arms crossed, muttered,
"This whole thing is starting to sound suicidal…"
Laplace chuckled nervously, adjusting his hat.
"Slowin' down Yujiro... ain't that like askin' a hurricane to wait a minute?"
Yuuki stepped forward, pointing to the runes engraved into the floating crystal.
"It's not about brute force. I created a multi-layered hexfield, a collapsing spell dome that bends perception and causality. It won't harm Yujiro physically—it will delay his reactions by manipulating localized time in a three-meter radius around him."
He flicked his fingers, and a projection of the spell's mechanics burst into view—swirling spheres of time fractures and mana nets arranged in a spiral cage formation.
"Even for someone like him, if his fists arrive one second too late—it's enough."
Tear, normally silent, finally spoke, her voice brittle.
"And the Demon Lords? How are you going to bend them?"
Yuuki's grin widened.
"With their egos. I've been studying their evolution patterns. They're prideful, powerful, and bound by their souls. This spell—called Pactum Tyrannis—will infect their evolved cores."
"It won't control them like puppets, no... It'll whisper commands. Nudge. Bend them toward submission. And because it will target their egos, they won't even know they're being influenced."
Kigali's eyes narrowed.
"You're playing with things far beyond even us now, Yuuki."
He stepped into the center of the spell ring, black energy swirling around his feet.
"That's the point. The world's evolving. Yujiro's training the Demon Lords to become gods. If we don't outsmart them now, we're just flies waiting to be swatted."
He raised both hands, and the crystal pulsed violently.
"We don't need brute strength. We need control."
The chamber trembled. The runes along the walls began glowing blood-red. It was as though the entire room—no, the world itself—was holding its breath.
Hours later, the chamber had dimmed, and Yuuki stood surrounded by the others. A test dummy had been placed in the spell's radius—surging with artificial energy mimicking a high-level Demon Lord. Yuuki activated the first layer of Pactum Tyrannis.
The results were terrifying.
The target slowed instantly, twitching and staggering as the spell warped its perception of time. Dark whispers echoed in its mind, and its magicule aura dimmed as the cursed influence dug into its soul fragment.
Kigali looked on, stunned.
"It... worked."
Yuuki turned to her, eyes hollow with ambition.
"Not just worked. It obeyed."
Laplace let out a low whistle.
"Bloody hell, mate… That's some real devilry."
Yuuki smiled darkly.
"Phase one complete. Now we find a battlefield. Somewhere far from Tempest. Somewhere where Yujiro won't suspect until it's too late."
Footman asked, "And when he finds us?"
Yuuki laughed, a bone-chilling sound.
"Then we make him bleed."
From the distant shadows, far above in a place untouched by mortal perception, Feldway stood in his divine observatory, watching it all unfold. Though Yuuki didn't know he was being watched, Feldway's divine eye had marked him.
"An interesting insect... spinning webs far beyond his kind."
Obera stood beside him, her voice amused.
"Should we intervene?"
Feldway smirked.
"Not yet. Let the spider weave. When the time is right… we'll burn the web and trap them all in the ashes."