The moment a sliver of confidence rose in Genichi's chest, the follow-up plan took shape just as quickly.
With the boost from the Boosted Gear and his aerial mobility, he would keep harassing the Stray Devil after it lost its vision, pecking at it over and over, grinding down its stamina and vitality until it finally collapsed. Then he would finish it.
But in the end, he had underestimated his opponent, or overestimated his own first-time combat sense.
He forgot, or rather, he had never known at all.
Spiders, beyond sight, often possess an extremely acute sensory ability, something people casually call "spider-sense."
For a Stray Devil whose lower body had become fully arachnid, vision might matter, but it was far from the only way it perceived the world.
In the instant Genichi's guard loosened, just slightly, as he heard that scream and believed he had seized the rhythm of the fight, he shifted his position to set up the next strike.
That was when everything changed.
The Stray Devil, which had been twisting wildly in pain and looked momentarily uncoordinated, suddenly moved with a precision that felt wrong.
It wasn't flailing.
Its eight thick legs stomped into the web's tangled structure, and with the spring of those silk lines, its entire body launched like it had been fired from a colossal slingshot. It surged toward Genichi's position in midair at far greater speed than before, following a bizarre arc that defied instinct.
Worse, in the middle of that lunge, one of its front legs snapped forward like a viper that had been waiting for this exact moment. Under the faintest glimmer of moonlight and leftover demonic glow, it became a blurred black afterimage, stabbing out with crushing force.
Straight at Genichi's chest and abdomen.
Fast.
Too fast.
And the angle was vicious, perfectly sealing the direction Genichi would most naturally evade with his wings.
"What?!"
Genichi's pupils shrank to pinpoints. Every hair on his body bristled.
That sense of death hit him like ice water, washing his mind blank.
He tried to dodge. But even doubled reflexes and speed were still too slow against a prepared kill strike like this.
He had barely begun to shift sideways when the black shadow was already on him.
Pshhk.
A dull, nauseating sound of something hard and sharp driving through flesh, then biting into bone, rang out in the silent warehouse.
Time seemed to freeze.
Genichi lowered his gaze in disbelief.
A spider leg, armored in black chitin, as thick as a child's arm, its tip dripping viscous green fluid, had punched straight through his body.
It entered through his chest and burst out his back, spraying a warm mist of blood.
The pain arrived a half-beat later like a tidal wave, then detonated through every nerve in his body.
It wasn't just torn flesh. The toxin riding that leg flooded into the wound, savage and immediate, shredding his vitality and numbing his senses.
"Gah…"
Genichi choked on a groan, blood spilling from his mouth.
He could feel his life draining fast, pouring out through the hole in his chest with every hot pulse of blood. Coldness and weakness surged over his limbs like rising water.
I screwed up.
The thought slammed into his fading awareness like thunder.
He had actually flipped the table on himself against something like this?
Was he really going to die here?
Die on his first live mission?
Die to a Stray Devil he didn't even know the name of?
No.
Absolutely not.
The absurd luck of crossing worlds, the cruelty of the Soul Battle Arena, the chance to devour the Boosted Gear, his endless hunger for strength, and deep down, the arrogance and survival instinct of someone who refused to be erased.
All of it ignited at once in the brink of death, sparked by the spider leg spearing him and the life bleeding out of him.
It became fury.
Fury so hot it felt like it would burn him from the inside out.
Why?
Why should I die here?
I still have too much to do.
Too much power to take.
Too many worlds to conquer.
That extreme rage erupted like a volcano, smashing the last fragile dike of reason and striking a dormant resonance deep in his soul.
On his left arm, the Boosted Gear reacted.
As if it had sensed the host's towering, self-destructive rage and unwillingness, the gauntlet exploded with a crimson light fiercer than anything before. The jewel on the handplate flashed wildly, like a dragon's heart beating in its final moments.
Genichi wasn't actively controlling it.
His emotion, pushed to its absolute limit, had synchronized with something buried in the Divine Tool, with the resentful echoes of the past hosts. A resonance so intense it snapped like a chain.
Almost at the same moment Genichi was pierced, a complex dark red magic circle lit up in the warehouse's shadows.
Light flared, and figures stepped out.
Rias Gremory, Akeno Himejima, Yuuto Kiba, and Koneko Toujou, rushing in after watching from the shadows and sensing Genichi's life slip into danger.
The instant they arrived, the scene that greeted them was Genichi hanging in midair, his chest impaled by a black spider leg, blood everywhere.
"Genichi!"
Rias's expression shattered. Flame-like anger and shock lit her emerald eyes, demonic power surging as she prepared to act.
But in the moment she moved to intervene, something else rolled through the warehouse first.
Genichi's soul, roaring at death itself, spilled out as sound.
Not normal speech.
An ancient, authoritative chant, heavy with destruction, formed in the air like a verdict spoken by a dragon.
"I awaken…"
His voice was hoarse, yet it carried a power that shook the spirit.
"I am the Heavenly Dragon who stole the principle of domination from God."
Rias froze mid-motion, her face struck blank with disbelief.
The gentle smile vanished from Akeno's lips for the first time, replaced by raw, stunned horror.
Even Yuuto, always composed, clenched his hand on his sword hilt, eyes tightening.
That incantation.
"I laugh at the infinite, and I grieve over the dream."
The chant continued. Each syllable landed like a hammer against their hearts.
The air in the warehouse turned thick and scorching. Pressure rose violently, centered on Genichi.
The Stray Devil sensed the lethal threat too. The remaining glimmer in its damaged compound eyes flickered madly as it tried to pull the leg out of its prey, or press the attack harder.
Too late.
"I shall become the Red Dragon of Domination."
Genichi's body began to shake. Not from pain.
From power.
A force far beyond his current limits poured through the Boosted Gear like a broken dam, flooding into a body already on the edge of collapse.
"And sink you into the crimson purgatory!"
The final line hit like an execution bell, carrying every shred of Genichi's fury and refusal to die.
Boom.
A pillar of crimson demonic power erupted from him like a volcano that had been sealed for ten thousand years. It blasted through the warehouse's ruined roof and speared into the cloud-choked night.
That power was no longer a "warm" red.
It was dark red, violent, blistering, saturated with destruction and brutality, like molten rock mixed with blood.
Genichi's figure vanished inside the torrent.
Then the demonic power condensed, shaping itself with savage purpose.
First came armor.
A full-body suit of crimson plating formed around him, far more complex and vicious than the usual gauntlet manifestation. Its lines were wild, layered with scale-like patterns and lethal angles, a warframe built for slaughter.
But it didn't stop.
Under Rias and the others' horrified eyes, the armor began to swell, twist, and mutate out of control.
Massive spikes thrust from the joints. The back split open at the shoulder blades, and wings erupted, enormous, formed from pure demonic power and dragonfire, crimson enough to stain the air.
The helmet stretched forward, reshaping into a dragon's head. Only a single slit remained, burning with red-gold flame as a visor.
In the span of a heartbeat, Genichi's human outline was gone.
In its place stood a towering, dozens-of-meters-tall horror cloaked in crimson armor, exhaling a dragon's pressure so heavy it made the air wail.
A dragon that looked like it had crawled up from the depths of hell itself.
A red dragon.
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