Twenty soldiers broke completely, their minds unable to handle what they were seeing. They clawed at their own eyes, screaming incoherently, their sanity shattered beyond any healing.

The remaining one hundred sixty soldiers tried to hold formation, but Satou could see their discipline fracturing. Could see the way their hands shook, the way they glanced at each other with eyes that begged someone else to make the decision to run.

He gave them no such mercy.

[SHADOW ABSOLUTE ]

The shadows on the nightmare-warped battlefield responded to his will like extensions of his own body. They rose up, solidified into tentacles of pure darkness, and lashed out at the human formation.

Shadow tendrils wrapped around soldiers, constricting like serpents. Men screamed as the darkness squeezed, crushing armor, breaking bones, suffocating life from bodies. Twenty soldiers died in the first wave of shadow attacks.

Others tried to cut at the shadow tendrils with blessed weapons, their holy enchantments allowing the blades to actually damage the solidified darkness.

But for every tendril they cut, three more appeared.

Satou walked forward through the nightmare realm he’d created, his form still distorted by Fear Incarnate, shadows writhing around him like a living cloak.

A soldier with more courage than sense charged him directly, blessed sword raised in a desperate overhead strike.

[PERFECT COUNTER]

Satou’s combat transcendence allowed him to read the attack perfectly—see its arc, its timing, its intended impact point—and respond with a counter that exploited every microscopic flaw in the technique.

He sidestepped the sword stroke by exactly one inch, letting the blade pass harmlessly past his shoulder, then drove his clawed hand up under the soldier’s armored ribs and into his heart.

The man died with his sword still raised, his perfect overhead strike turned into a perfect suicide by a predator who understood combat at levels human training couldn’t match.

Satou withdrew his bloodied claws and continued forward.

A squad of archers tried shooting at him from range, their arrows enhanced with holy magic that should have penetrated demonic defenses.

[SHADOW ARMOR]

Darkness solidified around Satou’s body, forming a protective layer that intercepted the arrows mid-flight. The blessed projectiles actually damaged the shadow armor, their holy enchantments eating away at the darkness—

But not fast enough. The shadow armor regenerated faster than the arrows could destroy it, each new arrow finding layers of protective darkness waiting.

Satou raised one clawed hand toward the archer squad and activated another ability:

[NIGHTMARE CONSTRUCTS - ENHANCED]

The nightmare realm around him responded, shadows coalescing into semi-physical forms that took the shape of wolves—twisted, horrifying versions with too many eyes and teeth that glowed with malevolent intelligence.

Six nightmare wolves materialized and launched themselves at the archer squad.

The archers screamed, dropping their bows and drawing swords to defend against the supernatural predators. But nightmare constructs didn’t die like normal creatures—cutting them just made them dissolve into shadow and reform seconds later.

The wolves tore into the archer squad with brutal efficiency. Throats ripped out. Bellies opened. Men dragged down and torn apart by teeth that existed on the border between dream and reality.

The archer squad—twelve soldiers—died in screaming agony.

Satou felt no satisfaction. No joy. Just cold, methodical efficiency as he systematically reduced the human force in this sector

.

One hundred forty soldiers left.

He accelerated.

[TIME DILATION - MODERATE]

The temporal ability he’d absorbed from Richard Clay kicked in, speeding up his personal time stream by three times relative to the world around him.

To Satou, everything slowed down. Human soldiers moved like they were wading through honey—their sword strikes, their shouts, their desperate attempts to defend themselves all occurring at one-third normal speed.

To the humans, Satou simply became impossibly fast.

He moved through their formation like a red-wreathed blur, his claws finding vital points with surgical precision. Throat. Heart. Spine. Kidney. Each strike perfectly placed to kill quickly and efficiently.

Ten soldiers fell in what seemed like seconds from their perspective.

Twenty.

Thirty.

A captain tried organizing a defensive square, shouting orders to his remaining troops, trying to impose some tactical structure on the chaos.

Satou appeared beside the captain—one moment fifty feet away, the next moment standing at his shoulder, close enough that the man could feel hot breath on his neck.

[TEMPORAL ECHO - BASIC]

Four after-images split off from Satou’s form, each one a temporal echo of his movements. To the captain and surrounding soldiers, it looked like four identical Satous had appeared simultaneously from different directions.

The captain’s mind couldn’t process it. Which one was real? Which ones were illusions?

All of them were real. Or rather, all of them were temporal echoes of the same being, each representing a slightly different moment in Satou’s personal timeline.

The captain swung his sword at the nearest Satou—hit nothing but air as the echo dispersed.

The real Satou, standing in a different position, drove his claws through the captain’s back and out his chest.

The defensive square formation collapsed without leadership. Soldiers scattered, discipline finally breaking completely under the horror of fighting something that moved through time itself.

[SHADOW ABSOLUTE MOVEMENT]

Satou teleported to the fleeing soldiers, appearing ahead of their escape route. They ran directly into him, their momentum carrying them forward into waiting claws.

He killed them as they came, his enhanced strength allowing each strike to be lethal. No wasted movement. No excessive force. Just efficient, brutal murder. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Ninety soldiers left in this sector.

Eighty.

Seventy.

Some tried surrendering, dropping weapons and raising hands in the universal gesture of submission.

Satou killed them anyway.

These humans had invaded his settlement. Had killed his people. Had threatened everything he’d built over five years of blood and effort.

Mercy was for after the battle. Right now, there was only extermination.

[VOID FANG]

He channeled existence-erasing energy into his claws, coating them in darkness that was absence itself—not shadow, not darkness, but true void that unmade whatever it touched.

A soldier tried blocking Satou’s strike with his shield. The Void Fang-enhanced claws didn’t cut through the shield—they erased it. Where metal had been, now there was nothing. Not even fragments or dust. Just... absence.