Chapter 653: The Pursuit of the Primordial Dragon Court
[You have been affected by the capability: Life Equation.]
[You have obtained the Characteristic: True Will (World's Rare Treasure) — You will be immune to the effects of will-deprivation capabilities whose priority is not higher than the Life Equation.]
[You have obtained the Characteristic: Hyper-Empathy (Incomparably Rare) — You will passively gain an empathy effect with all individuals within your sensory range. Note: This capability is bidirectional.]
[Special Reincarnator EX051, your developmental stairway: Stairway of Eternal Return has been affected by the capability: Life Equation. The stairway is temporarily unavailable.]
[Special Reincarnator EX051, you have touched the Developmental Stairway: Binary Paradox (Tier 13). Please return to the Terminal Management Layer to query detailed information.]
[Special Reincarnator EX051, you have made contact with the Special Creation: Inner Sea of the Planet. Magical Power is increasing... Anomaly detected, no Magical Power found.]
[Special Reincarnator EX051...]
The system prompts continuously refreshed like a blinding curtain of light. Kaito Shirogane clutched his chest. That high-tier symbiote dragon Grendel seemed genuinely dead, ceding absolute silence to his senses without a single trace of energetic feedback.
The fundamental effects of the [Stairway of Eternal Return · Tier 5: Dragon's Heart Furnace] had been entirely lost, leaving him structurally disqualified from even attempting to bridge the parameters for [The Ultimate Lifeform], which explicitly required the seamless unification of life and anti-life matter.
Kaito inhaled a series of sharp, ragged breaths. His state wasn't driven by how severely broken his physical vessel was; rather, at this exact microsecond, his inner soul was trapped within an ocean of pure, unadulterated agony.
That unprecedented, suffocating weight forced a rare wisp of absolute, processing-wise exhaustion to finally show across his features.
Yet, catching Satoru Gojo's loud, mocking words, Kaito still managed to wrench the muscles of his face, forcing a bizarre, monstrously contorted grin.
"Ha~ Hahaha... Yeah. Who would have calculated that the Kryptonian actually held a trump card of that classification!"
In truth, Kaito Shirogane had already meticulously compiled his internal parameters to accept his own terminal liquidation. Even if his high-tier immortality attributes were systematically bypassed, his instantaneous self-regeneration bricked, his framework dealt irreversible existential damage, or his [Twelve Labors] completely drained without triggering a single wisp of Nirvana—
True, absolute physical death was an outcome his ego could seamlessly shrug off.
The exact microsecond he chose to aggressively and non-discriminatorily tear the life force from other organisms, his clinical mind had naturally and flawlessly accepted the baseline reality that he would eventually encounter a grander apex predator fated to systematically erase his own existence from the board.
Routed, finalized, and erased—it merely meant his biology was restricted to a low-tier metric, nothing more.
Whether launching a head-on grapple against the Black King · Luffy, Saitama, or the Black King · Superman, Kaito Shirogane never cede a single micro-gram of cognitive processing to calculate whether his soul could execute a full resurrection.
That mindset was completely, flawlessly distinct from his previous, deliberate orchestration to provoke Wanda into executing a total existential erasure against his frame.
When stripped down to its unrefined core: the singular thing he desired, the absolute thing his soul lusted after, was purely that high-tier, unadulterated essence of raw violence.
Only when pinned against an absolute, monster-tier enemy who genuinely forced his system to experience an unmatched threshold of peerless strength would Kaito Shirogane's mind completely dissolve into that pristine, flawless domain where life and death ceased to exist.
And furthermore... he consistently harbored a deep, burning thread of pure anxiety. Faced with a rival of that classification, the raw, frantic manic pulse swirling within his cells looked as if it were on the verge of violently tearing his psyche to pieces—exactly as if a primeval, unyielding instinct deep within his soul was aggressively driving his limbs to swing his fist, to launch the assault, to execute the slaughter!
To forcefully prove to the cosmos that his frame was by no means a weak, low-tier piece of meat.
Kaito lacked a clean analytical breakdown to verify whether this erratic manic drive was a subterranean hazard planted within his core by [The Three Supreme Kings], or if it simply represented the absolute, unblemished nature of Kaito Shirogane's baseline archetype.
He clamped his obsidian hand over his heart. At this exact millisecond, his newly re-engineered senses captured an exceptionally dense, chaotic sea of pure human emotion with an absolute, crystal-clean clarity for the very first time since breaching the gates of the Space.
So... the so-called [Heart] actually houses a threshold of agony this monumentally crushing...
Kaito waved his left hand with absolute detachment, signaling [Black Face] to methodically recede into the shadows. This native deity originally anchoring the Naruto universe—having systematically devoured the divine alignment of an external Outer God before being thoroughly, unconditionally broken to Kaito's absolute soul-force—had officially cede his host a line of pure, unadulterated loyalty that stood beyond all doubt.
The Tree Herder clenched his fists tightly, his entire system wound dangerous tight as a severe wave of panic locked onto his mind.
At this precise stage of the conflict, the terror paralyzing his thoughts wasn't driven by the statistical probability of his own physical erasure; rather, he was deeply, professionally terrified that his current performance was an absolute failure when measured against the sacred mandate the Kryptonian had entrusted to his soul.
He was explicitly the absolute singular Reincarnator operating on this worldline who had been proactively resurrected under the authority of the God of All Mortals. He had sworn an unyielding vow to systematically purge the corrupt, fallen interlopers of this generation.
Yet right out of the gate, his coordinates had sustained a direct collision against a Mercenary Tao who had failed to die.
Damn it all to hell...
Clap.
A lone hand firmly and cleanly clapped down onto the Tree Herder's shoulder plates. His biological framework executed an instinctual, violent tremor under the contact, as his mind automatically compiled a dense barrage of terrifying chronological images detailing his immediate end.
How exactly would Mercenary Tao choose to finalize his execution...
Would the monster effortlessly detonate his skull into a spray of essence, or would he systematically smash his entire torso down to the molecular level, or perhaps... weaponize a hyper-concentrated stream of Ki to punch a vacuum cavity straight through his ribcage...
Clap.
Another distinct pat landed against his armor. The Tree Herder's entire frame jolted, only for his narrow eyes to watch Kaito Shirogane—whose physical weight was currently being almost entirely braced by Artoria Pendragon's frame—slowly and methodically march past his silhouette.
The blonde-haired child, young Parker, still retained a dense, hyper-activated coat of Armament Haki wrapping his small limbs. His young face was completely flooded with an expression of ecstatic, pure surprise as he skipped across the rubble to plant his coordinates right before Mercenary Tao's chest.
"Lord Kaito! You genuinely are an absolute superhero, just like I calculated!"
"Did you perceive it? I weaponized the supreme power you seeded into my soul to rescue hundreds of thousands of people from the ruins!"
The child's frantic, non-stop chatter reverberated loudly inside the Tree Herder's ears, leaving him with a profound, hallucination-like sensation that his own consciousness had been entirely detached from reality. His analytical matrix found it completely, flawlessly impossible to parse the current layout of the board.
And across the corridor, Hakumen's narrow eyes similarly smoothed into a deep, calculating frown.
Her sharp intuition instantly identified a monumental anomaly: Mercenary Tao's current systemic parameters were intensely, entirely compromised!
Kaito Shirogane evaluated the King of Knights, who appeared to be executing a calculated line of petty professional retaliation for his historical methodology of grabbing her by the scruff to cross the stratosphere; despite her restricted height metrics, she was aggressively pushing her arm upward to forcefully hoist his neck by the collar. Yet to his surprise, his newly altered sensory channels could distinctly, sharply process the precise, micro-gram of genuine satisfaction rippling through her mind.
So even an absolute, unyielding tyrant of her tier can experience a wave of bright satisfaction over a triviality of this classification?
At this exact microsecond, Kaito Shirogane felt as if the grander parameters of his historical existence had been nothing more than a primitive insect permanently trapped and sealed within a block of stagnant amber. His psyche had been structurally denied an immense, boundless ocean of multi-dimensional sensory data.
Throughout his life, it was only when locked inside the most cataclysmic, blood-soaked grapples or the most agonizing thresholds of physical re-engineering that his engine could forcefully experience a wisp of that clean satisfaction.
Yet the ordinary cattle surrounding his coordinates could naturally, effortlessly tap into that spectrum on a whim...
An intense, ravenous wave of pure, unadulterated envy violently ignited within Kaito's core.
Thump~
For the absolute first time since his birth, Kaito Shirogane captured the rhythmic, organic pulse of his own [Heart]—not as an automated reaction triggered under the duress of an external threat, but as a direct, unadulterated byproduct of his own internal emotional parameters executing an upgraded evolution.
Whosh!
A dense shroud of brilliant primordial fire violently ignited across the exterior surface of his skin. The characteristic [Lonely Envious Flame] flamed with unprecedented, monumental intensity; despite his coordinates sustaining absolutely zero external attacks at this microsecond, he had proactively and effortlessly forced the capability to execute a manual activation.
His foundational physical attributes began a total, multi-layered escalation. While the immediate scaling metrics weren't astronomically high, the phenomenon was an absolute, flawless verification: every single line of capability and characteristic anchored within his system could be systematically, manually unleashed under his own absolute agency.
A Reincarnator was by no means a primitive, code-bound player trapped inside a pre-programmed video game interface.
These abilities and unique traits were never meant to operate as rigid, immutable mechanics hardcoded by the system; rather, it was solely because a Reincarnator's personal processing capacity and soul-force failed to meet the required thresholds that the Space cede them these standardized, hardcoded formats to ensure the capabilities could be safely governed.
The exact millisecond your own individual agency amasses a sufficiently monstrous density, you can effortlessly manipulate reality on a whim, unleashing your power along whatever structural vector your ego dictates.
And that... was the absolute definition of true, unyielding Strength!
His thoughts smoothly shifted back to evaluate the Black King · Clark Kent, who had casually and flawlessly inverted his alignment to move between the Anti-Life Equation and the Life Equation at a moment's notice.
Paired together with the most mysterious, high-priority entities anchoring the apex database of the Space—[The Three Supreme Kings]. Does that specific boundary represent the absolute definition of what it means to occupy the state of a [King]?
His analytical matrix lacked the data to verify the deduction.
But Kaito Shirogane methodically directed his absolute focus toward the structural markers of the brand-new developmental pathway his soul had just touched...
The Stairway of Binary Paradox. Sporting a monumentally massive length of thirteen complete tiers, it cleanly and flawlessly matched the absolute longest developmental stairway Artoria Pendragon had historically detailed within her proprietary archives.
An apocalyptic tier of violence of this classification—that was the absolute strategic target his soul would aggressively and relentlessly hunt down throughout the next world cycles!
[CRITICAL WARNING! Special Unit · The Primordial Dragon Court will complete direct orbital entry into this mission world within 3 days of Space Regional Time Velocity.]
[Special Reincarnator EX051, your panel has successfully locked onto the Temporary High-Priority Directive · Flesh of the Enemy (Special).]
[TEMPORARY DIRECTIVE LOG — FLESH OF THE ENEMY (SPECIAL)]
Directive Classification: Special Paradigm / Repeatable Submission Enabled.
Narrative Parameters: An elite, hyper-advanced trans-dimensional faction operating within the wider multiverse has captured the structural signature detailing the total loss of their proprietary Sephiroth resource. They have dispatched a specialized, high-tier intercept execution squad to track down the coordinates, successfully locking their tracking arrays onto this mission world. You are ordered to systematically annihilate the incoming intercept elements to the absolute best of your combat capacity while prioritizing your baseline survival metrics.
Directive Compensation: Eliminating a full-fledged member of The Primordial Dragon Court guarantees an absolute, non-perishable drop of high-tier evolutionary Materials. For every singular unit of The Primordial Dragon Court systematically liquidated on this grid, an immense threshold of Merit will be credited directly to your profile within [The Goddess's Residence]. (Amassed Merit can be weaponized to systematically elevate your structural Authority parameters across the Space database, or deployed directly to farm raw resources.)
"Tch. They certainly know how to pick a mathematically perfect operational window, this Primordial Dragon Court..."
Kaito Shirogane directed his narrow, pitiless gaze across the lines of his gathered yin generals, before his absolute focus smoothly and decisively locked onto a specific individual standing within the huddle.
With a fluid motion of his left hand, a thick wisp of that familiar, ancient Mud of the Holy Grail materialized within his palm.
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