Shadow Menace: I Live Among Mortals, I Kill Among Gods

"I'm not here to be your hero. I'm here to make corpses out of your faith." — Kaito

It was called the Valley of Lamentation.

Once a cradle of divine beauty, now a festering crater of bones and black flame. Smoke curled from the cracks in the ground like the earth itself was weeping.

And through that ruin, tearing through shadows at 304 km/h, came a scream of engine and wrath:

My Yamaha R6.

Blackened. Runes glowing along its frame. Tires kicking ash into the faces of dead angels.

I didn't slow down.

Didn't flinch.

Didn't blink.

My coat flared behind me like a phantom flag as I passed through the broken gates of the battlefield, where thousands had already gathered.

Resistance forces. Demigod mercs. Excommunicated celestial knights.

On the horizon, Vermund's legions.

Towering abyss-forged titans.

Humanoid warlocks stitched with divine tendons.

Flesh-cloaked cultists wearing the skin of fallen angels.

I didn't stop to speak to anyone.

Just rode through the chaos and parked the bike at the front line—engine idling like a monster ready to growl again.

Eve approached, blood already staining her gloves.

"You came alone?"

I looked at the horde.

"No. I brought enough hate for all of us."

The air turned thick—like breathing through blood.

As I stepped forward, Kagetsura hummed, hungry. My aura began to spiral—black and red, hissing like coiled serpents. Sparks of corrupted sigil light crawled across my skin, flaring with each heartbeat.

A warlock charged me, howling in Celestial tongue. Runes lit across his arms, casting a firestorm in my path.

I didn't flinch.

You think fire scares me anymore?

I stepped into it.

The flames wrapped around my body—but my aura devoured them. Crimson waves surged outward, stripping the magic like meat from bone.

He stumbled.

I was already in front of him.

Kagetsura cut upward through his chest. Bone split. His scream gurgled into silence as blood sprayed across my jaw.

Then—

"KAITO! Behind—!" Eve's voice, distant.

A dagger soared toward my spine.

I turned in time to catch the assassin mid-air by the throat. His eyes widened in shock.

I tilted my head.

"Did you think I'd go down easy?"

I crushed his windpipe with one hand. Dropped him like garbage.

A third cultist, wearing the torn wings of a fallen angel, tried to cast a holy seal.

I vanished in a blink-step.

Reappeared beside him.

"Don't wear wings you didn't earn."

I drove my blade through his ribs. The seal exploded, but my sigil burned brighter, negating the blast in a storm of corrupted aura.

They came in waves—twenty, thirty, fifty at a time.

And I didn't give them the dignity of fear.

My boots crushed bones.

My sword was a line of death.

My aura danced with ghostly tendrils—each lash slicing apart enemies as they approached.

A robed prophet begged me to stop.

"Kaito… You're walking the path of annihilation! She would never want this!"

I stopped for a heartbeat.

Lysaria?

I lowered Kagetsura slightly.

Then whispered, "You don't get to speak her name."

He smiled, relieved.

That was his mistake.

I stepped forward and sliced his legs off at the knees.

He hit the dirt, screaming, bleeding from stumps.

I knelt beside him.

"She didn't want this," I said, "but I do."

And I cut his throat open in one clean sweep.

Black ichor painted the battlefield like rain.

Another soldier tried to flank me—sigil-horns carved into his skull, spear lit with divine runes.

He shouted: "Face judgment!"

I caught his spear, twisted it from his grip, and rammed it through his own mouth.

His body spasmed.

I kicked it off and wiped my sword against his coat.

Judgment? I am the reason judgment fled this world.

Across the battlefield, I saw Eve watching me. Her expression was unreadable. Shock? Awe? Fear?

Didn't matter.

I walked through corpses like a king through roses.

Every step I took, my aura darkened the ground.

Every enemy I passed... didn't get back up.

Explosions cracked across the valley. Eve launched a divine grenade into a horde of cultists, sending limbs flying.

The demigod twins fused into a single being of light and fire, tearing into the enemy like a banshee made of rage.

But I never stopped.

I carved through them all.

Sometimes they ran.

Sometimes they begged.

I didn't care.

Because every time I closed my eyes, I still saw Lysaria's body crumpled under that cursed spear.

This wasn't a war.

This was a reckoning.

The world shook.

From the depths of the valley came a sound that made even the titans back away—a wet, writhing mass crawling up from the old graves.

And then we saw it.

The Wall of Flesh.

Dozens of angel corpses stitched together. Screaming mouths. Rotting wings. Hands that reached for nothing. Their eyes—blank but wet with tears.

Some still begged for death.

This is what Vermund's mercy looks like…?

One of the mortals beside me threw up. Another ran.

I didn't move.

The Wall opened dozens of mouths at once:

"Chiiiild of the broken sigil..."

"Murderer... Redeemer... Failure..."

"JOIN USSSS..."

"I'm not here to join," I said coldly. "I'm here to erase you."

I revved my aura—crimson flaring violently, mixed with streaks of void-black lightning.

I sprinted at the Wall, leapt, and slammed Kagetsura deep into its belly.

Screams—hundreds—exploded outward.

Dozens of arms reached out to grab me.

I flared my aura again—this time outward—and vaporized the limbs within a 10-meter radius. The sigils on my skin ignited like demonic scripture.

The Wall retaliated.

It launched a column of tongues wrapped in cursed steel.

I bent low, skidded across ichor-soaked ground, and sliced them mid-air. Blood rained.

"Too slow."

I blink-stepped again—behind the Wall this time—and began carving my way through it from the back.

Each strike of Kagetsura released a shockwave that tore through bones and false sinew. My aura coated the wounds, preventing regeneration.

One angelic face—a child's—turned to me, crying.

"Please… I was once holy…"

I looked down at her.

Then whispered, "Then you should've stayed dead."

And I plunged the blade into her skull.

The Wall shuddered. Screamed. Collapsed into a river of twitching meat.

Its final words gurgled through sludge:

"...so be it... butcher of the divine…"

Hours later, blood-soaked and empty, I stood before the black citadel at the valley's center.

Vermund's stronghold.

The gates bore the marks of the old gods, now twisted.

I looked up at them.

Then turned to Eve.

"Tell the others to rest."

She frowned. "You're going in?"

"Not yet."

I looked at the gate and whispered:

"First, I make sure there's a grave big enough."

And then I walked away.

Back to my R6.

Back to the cold wind and the stench of divine corpses.

The war had begun.

And I had only started counting bodies.