Guild Wars

"My name is Shuro Muramasa, and I am the first and only son of the great Sengo Muramasa. At the age of 3, I could already beat grown men to death with my bare hands. At the age of 7, I had mastered every sword form in existence."

Shuro spoke slowly and deliberately, as if recounting a tale as old as time.

"Our clan has been flourishing during my father's era only to one day end up eradicated by the Dragon race in tandem with the then True God of Magic. My ancestor is the noble True God of the Sword, and their clash and rivalry was well known among the Divine Realm, even to the Origin Gods."

"With the eventual fall of my ancestor after the sneak attack by the despicable Dragon race, my father had been almost vanquished if not for the ensuing Divine War that occurred. At the time, he was but a youth, no older than a teen."

"Despite this, he overcame countless challenges and mastered our ancestral sword style, taking a step further with the help of a divine blacksmith he met on his travels to create the blade I now wield, the Scared Katana of Muramasa."

"However, the path to the Divine Realm was cut off and despite reaching the pinnacle of mortal power, my father had been barred from ascending despite possessing Divine Energy of his own. The legacy of the True God of the Sword was unable to ascend, ha!"

Shuro's voice gained a certain intensity. "However, it turned out that other such Divine Seeds were also blocked. Most notably, the Divine Seed of the True God of Magic who perished in that war, your master, Richmond."

"With old grievances and new ones forming, these two 'Titled Gods' clashed endlessly many times, unable to decide the winner between them. As such, they opted to leave the verification of superiority to the next generation, our generation."

Shuro raised his head slightly to glance at Draco. "Given your lack of preparation, I can rightly assume that your master failed to inform you about any this. As expected of the lineage of magic, as clumsy and incompetent as ever."

Draco's eyes flashed. A long-forgotten memory within his mind resurged, back to when he had just completed his Sword and Sorcery Quest from Richmond which had granted him Subjective Magic. At the time, Richmond had wanted to teach him a forbidden method of accumulating external mana storage, but the AI had almost struck him down for it.

In response, Richmond offered to teach him once he reached Rank 5 and that he would also introduce him officially to other Tilted Gods. In fact, Draco still possessed the special spatial rune that Richmond had granted him at the end of the Quest.

Alas, so much had happened after that. Draco had received the rune when he had been still a Rank 1 Avenger, a Semi-Epic Hidden Class. Since then, he had pretty much been reborn as a Divine Rank Abyssal Prime, then to 100% bloodline awakening then to Semi-Eternal Abyssal Eternal and now a Rank 5 of that same class.

His power had not grown in any sense that could be measured, akin to going from a germ to a multiverse destroying deity. Richmond himself had likely long forgotten this entire matter, too busy being nestled within the Morningstar World while enjoying his time furthering his Divine Law of Subjective Magic and guiding Draco's descendants.

A mere old feud with another Titled God was something worth bothering Draco about? Laughable!

Despite realizing this, Draco maintained his soft smile. "And? Is that all? Have you gotten everything off your chest? If I were you, I'd do that as quickly as possible, or you might not have the chance later."

Shuro simply glanced at Draco silently and shook his head. "Arrogance bordering on delusion, but to be expected. You are immensely powerful and talented, this is a fact that cannot be denied."

"From the moment Richmond accepted you as his disciple, I came to monitor you by acting as a seller in your castle. I watched you train with Richmond in the ways of his inferior magic, and your rate of growth alarmed even me.

However, I was reassured by your eventual debaucherous and lustful nature, for you and your master are the same, unable to extricate yourselves from the pleasures of the flesh."

"That was your weakness and will be your downfall. Afterward, your power increased nonsensically, and I had to let go of my monitoring, no less in part due to Richmond giving me a warning after your training was complete, otherwise I would have beheaded you right there and then."

"Since then, I have been training and waiting for you to reach the necessary power to engage in our duel, but you kept jumping about doing random things, leaving me frustrated. Just when I thought that time was about to come as you reached Rank 4, you went and did something unforgivable."

Shuro's body suddenly exploded with a whitish-gray aura that was as sharp as the edge of the finest sword, seeming ready to cut anything that stood before it.

"You kidnapped my father." He said simply, and that seemed to supersede all the things he said before.

Draco was silent for a bit and then smiled widely. "Your father? Sengo Muramasa? You mean… this guy?"

Suddenly, Draco tore open a void beside him and ragged out a skinny and weakened person who looked one foot away from death. He then threw the person to the ground, allowing the person before him to see their state even if they liked lowering their head.

Shuro glanced at his father, who raised him from infancy and instilled all his life teachings as well as immense amounts of fatherly love into him, now a candle in the wind, having likely suffered unspeakable tortures beyond comprehension.

"Not that you mention it, we did torture him a lot but he was quite resilient. He always retained some sort of hope no matter how much we tried to drag his method of tearing the void to traverse the passage between dimensions from him."

Draco smile and sized Shuro up with interest. "I guess that hope must have been you?"

Shuro was silent, his breathing growing more erratic as fury rose within him. Seeing the pitiful remnant of his rather as well as the words from Draco, he felt his immense self-control over his emotions begin to slip as madness threatened to take over.

"Hey, why don't we wake him up so that your father gets a good long look at his son?" Draco suggested as an idea came to him and he pointed a finger at Sengo Muramasa, restoring his cognitive functions which had diminished after suffering so much torture.

Sengo Muramasa suddenly felt his mind return to him after spending so long in a void of nothingness that was akin to death, but at the same time not. The first thing he felt was the withered breath of life around him and then that familiar sword essence that he had created himself.

Finally, he raised his eyes to take in a sight he never thought he would have the privilege to see ever again.

"S...Shuro…? My son…?" Sengo almost did not dare to believe that the gods would bless him such.

"…father." Shuro could only reply weakly, his white corneas becoming slightly bloodshot due to the wealth of emotions within him at this moment.

Sengo regained his senses and looked around. Once he saw the form of Draco hovering behind him - wearing an amiable smile as he even waved peacefully at Sengo as if greeting a friend - the man almost went crazy as his eyes widened with fear and horror.

"NO! THIS CANNOT BE!" He screamed in fear, clawing away with his weak flesh.

Suddenly, it was as if thunder struck Sengo as he paused and frantically turned to Shuro.

"SON, FLEE AS FAR FROM HERE AS YOU CAN! DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES FIGHT THIS MONSTER!"

Shuro was not stunned, but his eyes became even redder. His great and fearless father who even dared to venture into worlds unknown had been reduced to this state. Just what kind of suffering did he suffer under the hands of this bastard to become like this?

As for Sengo's warning, Shuro ignored it. He had observed Draco for a long time and was even aware of his involvement in the destruction of the Demon Realm, his Divine Laws, and his feat of calling down the moon on an army of True Gods and sending them packing.

As a mere Rank 5, he would not have dared to show himself before Draco if this precise moment hadn't been calculated and prepared for ahead of time. However, the current scene before him was something that Shuro couldn't have predicted.

He thought his father had long been done away with because his soul shadow within Shuro's mental scape had dimmed and dissipated. It turned out that he had simply been locked away in a different void, so the soul shadow could not reach its master and thus dissipated.

Shuro would normally not have jumped to conclusions, because even if the soul's shadow would grow vanish, it could mean that Sengo was somewhere very far. However, even when his father traversed different worlds, the soul shadow never dissipated no matter how long he spent away, leading to this mistake.

If he had known…

He would have negotiated first, even if it meant betraying the directives of the ones who sponsored him to kill Draco.

Shuro's' hands twitched, placing them on the hilt of his katana. He hesitated between taking action to rescue his father or acceding to whatever demands Draco might make for his release. Once Sengo was back, the ones behind him would be more confident of vanquishing him later on, right?

However, before Shuro could do anything, Sengo - who was still roaring admonishments to his son to tell him to leave - was suddenly silenced. Draco's foot came down on the man's head, pressing it to the ground slowly, grinding it into the dirt, and forcing the weakened man to eat soil.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING BASTARD?!" Shuro roared for the first time, losing his composure and drawing his silver katana immediately.

Draco smiled, showing his pristine white teeth. "I mean, it's not my fault, right? He was making so much noise and acting like a bitch in general."

Then he laughed lightly. "Run? Escape? You are firmly in my grasp, where can you possibly run to? Not to mention I called him out here to show you what your fate will be in my hands, not for him to give good fatherly advice."

Shuro was breathing like a wounded bull, his body tense and itching to make a move on Draco, but withheld due to that last bit of reason in his mind that still managed to retain control.

"Let. Him. Go." Shuro managed to squeeze out with much effort, his eyes deeply bloodshot.

"S-Son… you must… run…" Sengo muttered weakly, using the last of his strength to say this, still desperate to make sure his son survived this fatal encounter.

"Enough from you. Now that I have this fellow, who knows as much as you do, I can simply extract the answers I need from him. You can go in peace." Draco said coldly, despite his face bearing a pleasant expression.

Crack!

His leg came down on Sengo's head, crushing it completely and turning it into mush. The already weakened body was extinguished of its life as it twitched once or twice before becoming eternally still.

To buttress the point, a wave of blackish energy emerged from Draco's foot where it connected with the head of the corpse, sweeping over the body and turning it into ash so fine that it faded away like bad pixels.

Sengo Muramasa was annihilated in both body, soul, and spirit by the purest Destruction Eenrgy, ensuring that whether resurrection, time reversal, or any other means could never bring him back to life. Even his soul was gone, leaving Draco unable to capture it into his Nine Hells.

All of this, right before the frozen Shuro Muramasa.

Draco's smile extended all the way to his ears, a sick and perverse expression of enjoyment appearing as he revealed his true nature.

Shameless bastard? Loving father? Passionate leader?

All facades.

This was the real him, a being who delighted in the genuine and true suffering of others, the Source of Evil!