novelraw Chapter 90 90: Dawn
Chapter 90 90: Dawn
The shrill, piercing ring of the burner phone shattered the dead silence of Jin's bedroom.
It was 2:14 AM. Jin's eyes snapped open, the tomoe of his Sharingan spinning to life in the darkness before his conscious mind had even fully booted up. He grabbed the phone from the nightstand.
"Speak," Jin commanded.
"Boss," Shukaku's voice cracked over the line, punctuated by the heavy, rhythmic thud of gunfire and shattering glass. "We are under attack. We're barely holding them off."
Jin didn't ask questions. He hung up, throwing off the covers. In five seconds, he was dressed in a dark hoodie and combat pants. In fifteen seconds, he was in the garage.
With a deafening, guttural roar, the engine of his modified Kawasaki Ninja fired up. The garage door hadn't even fully opened before Jin tore out from beneath it. The heavy sportbike ripped through the quiet suburban streets of Kuoh, its neon underglow leaving a vivid, blurring streak of light against the pitch-black asphalt.
Within minutes, Jin neared Shukaku's compound.
The perimeter was in chaos. Several unmarked black vans had breached the outer gates. Men in tactical gear swarmed the courtyard.
Jin didn't hit the brakes. He twisted the throttle to the maximum, aiming the Kawasaki directly at a slanted concrete retaining wall near the compound's edge. He hit the incline at over a hundred miles an hour, using the wall as a makeshift ramp.
The bike launched spectacularly into the night sky.
Suspended in the air, Jin looked down at the battlefield. Shukaku and his surviving guards had formed a tight, defensive circle. In the center was Valerie. The Sephiroth Graal hovered above her, casting a brilliant golden dome over the defenders. Every time a guard took a lethal hit, Valerie's holy magic surged, knitting their flesh back together and pulling them back from the brink of death. She was the only reason they hadn't been wiped out.
Jin's crimson eyes scanned the attackers. They were highly organized. He spotted several vanguard fighters utilizing dense, physical Touki, but they were nowhere near the strength and number of the Manji Clan. The real problem was the backline. Mixed into the assault team were Onmyoji—Shinto spellcasters—standing in perfect formation, using glowing paper scrolls to rain explosive elemental magic down upon Valerie's straining shield.
Jin kicked off the footpegs, abandoning the airborne Kawasaki.
The heavy motorcycle crashed directly into the spell of the Onmyoji squad, exploding in a blinding fireball of gasoline and shrapnel.
Before the smoke could even clear, Jin landed directly at the epicenter of the blast.
His body was already dense with Touki. His forearms were coated in the pitch-black sheen of Armament Haki, and around his clenched fists, the chaotic, white spheres of the Tremor fruit hummed with vibration.
Jin launched himself at the spellcasters.
To the human eye of shukaku guard, he was nothing but a terrifying, vibrating blur. He didn't use martial arts; he used absolute, overwhelming kinetic force. He struck the first Onmyoji in the chest. A sickening, wet crack echoed across the courtyard as the man's ribcage shattered, his body violently exploding outward like a dropped watermelon.
Jin moved like a phantom, bobbing and weaving through the people. With every punch, a heavy shockwave tore through the air, bursting human bodies and painting the courtyard in thick streaks of crimson.
As Jin ripped his fist from the chest of another spellcaster, his Sharingan's peripheral vision caught a sudden, massive distortion in the air. A blur was approaching him from his blind spot—fast. Impossibly fast.
Jin instantly pivoted, raising his Haki-coated arms into a cross-guard, bending his knees to absorb the anticipated kinetic impact and use the force to slide backward.
The figure materialized. It was a handsome Japanese man with sharp features and dark hair, stepping directly into Jin's guard to deliver a point-blank punch.
The fist connected.
Jin braced for a mountain-shattering impact. But the force that hit his arms was... weak.
It was strong enough to break a normal human in half, but against Jin's monstrous, Touki-reinforced density, it felt like a light shove. Still, the sheer momentum of the speedster's approach and jin himself ready to launch back using the momentum carried Jin backward, sending him crashing into a concrete wall and leaving a small, spider-webbing dent.
The man didn't follow up. He stood ten yards away, his hand raised. "Fire!"
The remaining Onmyoji instantly turned their scrolls on Jin. A massive, combined barrage of fire, lightning, and wind slammed into the dented wall, engulfing Jin in a raging inferno.
The man watched, his chest heaving slightly.
The smoke cleared. Jin stepped out of the crater. His hoodie and shirt were completely incinerated, reduced to falling ash, but the dense, scarred muscle of his torso was completely unblemished.
Jin cracked his neck, his Sharingan analyzing the man's bio-rhythm. "I see. You have a completely unbalanced attribute spread. You put absolutely everything into speed."
"That is more than enough to finish you," the man sneered.
"Oh?" Jin challenged.
Man angry at being taunted "Then react to this!"
The man vanished. He accelerated straight at Jin, aiming a punch directly at his face. He expected Jin to block again, to brace for the impact.
Instead, Jin's who was throwing punch use his Sharingan and tracked the micro-movements of the man's shoulders. Jin adjusted his own trajectory, took the punch and launching the man back.
Jin follow up ready to not give him space.
But the speedster was simply too fast .Already getting his bearing he dropped his level, sliding effortlessly completely under Jin's grasp, escaping the lethal counter-attack.
Jin landed on his feet, his mind running a cold, tactical calculus. I can see him. I can react to his trajectory. But I physically cannot move my limbs fast enough to catch him.
If Jin couldn't catch the leader, he would simply remove his army.
Jin ignored the speedster entirely. He turned his back on the man and charged directly into the dwindling ranks of the remaining guards and spellcasters.
The slaughter resumed.
The fast man, seeing his squad being ripped to shreds, panicked. He accelerated, striking Jin in the exposed back.
Jin didn't even attempt to defend himself. He let the man land the blow while simultaneously driving his claws through the throat of an Onmyoji. The speedster's punch landed, but lacking heavy physical power, his knuckles merely left a shallow, bleeding scratch across Jin's back.
It continued , jin killing his people and him not being able to stop jin.
"Stop!" the man roared, growing desperate. He focused every single drop of his Touki into his hand, forming a hardened blade of energy. He moved at his maximum velocity, striking Jin directly in the side of the neck.
It was a perfect, lethal strike. It left a deep, jagged wound, drawing a heavy spray of arterial blood.
The man finally smiled, gasping for air, thinking he had broken the monster's impenetrable defense. But his smile vanished, his eyes widening in absolute, paralyzing horror.
The deep wound on Jin's neck hissed with steam. Before the blood had even hit the floor, the flesh violently knit itself back together, leaving smooth, unblemished skin.
"No... no, no, no," the man whispered, taking a step back. "What are you?"
Jin didn't stop. He broke the neck of another guard. Only five attackers remained.
"Stop, or I kill all of your friends!" the man screamed, re-calibrating his target. He vanished, reappearing directly in front of Valerie and Shukaku, driving his fist forward.
CLANG.
The speedster bounced off the golden, holy barrier of the Sephiroth Graal. Valerie stood firm, her eyes glowing with divine light, keeping the shield .
The man turned around. Jin dropped another corpse. There were only three guards left.
"Stop!" the man yelled, his voice cracking, thick with genuine defeat. "Stop, and I will return! We surrender!"
Jin stopped. He lowered his blood-soaked hands, leaving the three terrified, surviving spellcaster—who had been skill enough to evade his rampage—shaking in the courtyard.
Jin turned slowly, his crimson eyes locking onto the speedster. "Look at the mess made because of you. Who are you?"
"I cannot tell you," the man gritted his teeth. "Otherwise, you will hunt us down."
"Tell me who you are and why you are here," Jin said, his voice a low, terrifying rumble. "I will let your remaining people leave with you, and I will forget today's matter. Lie to me, and you all die."
The man looked at the mangled corpses of his elite squad. He swallowed his pride. "We are from the Himejima Clan. We are here because we suspected Shukaku being behind the assassination of the Prime Minister."
"And for that, you come here in the middle of the night, killing people based on just a hunch?" Jin asked coldly.
"He was moving into the capital! He was getting close to becoming the Prime Minister without any of the Five Principal Clans backing him! . That out of normal " the man argued, defending his clan's paranoia. "That makes him a rogue threat to national security!"
"Hey," Jin pointed a bloody thumb at his own chest. "He has me. I eliminated the Manji Clan by myself. Does that not make it clear enough who backs him? Or do I have to join your little circle and do Shinto rituals to get your permission?"
The man didn't speak. He stared at the human who had just annihilated an elite Himejima strike force without breaking a sweat. He had rarely, if ever, been in a position of such utter powerlessness.
"Okay," Jin said, the tension leaving his shoulders. "You will go back to Kyoto. You will tell your Clan Head, and you will tell the other Four Clans: Kuoh and Shukaku are strictly off-limits. Do not cross my borders again."
The man nodded stiffly. He pulled a radio from his belt and dialed a frequency. A few tense minutes later, the heavy thrum of helicopter blades chopped through the night air. A black, unmarked chopper lowered into the courtyard. The speedster and his three surviving men climbed inside and quickly ascended, retreating into the dark sky.
Jin watched the chopper disappear, his mind already filing away the tactical data from the skirmish.
Three big weaknesses I need to work on, Jin noted internally.
1. Speed.
2. Magic . gotta start reading it again , hope i got the time.
3. Flight. Fighting in the air is going to become normal from here on out, and jumping won't cut it. I need aerial mobility.
He turned around and walked toward Shukaku and Valerie. The surviving guards were staring at Jin with wide, unblinking eyes, their mouths slightly open. They had heard the legends their boss spoke of, but seeing the massacre firsthand was entirely different.
"They won't be a problem anymore," Jin said to Shukaku, wiping blood from his knuckles. "I think they got the message."
He looked over at Valerie. The golden chalice had faded. She was standing behind Shukaku, her face bright red, her hands clamped firmly over her eyes.
"Good work with the shield, Valerie," Jin said, confused. "But what happened to you? Why are you blocking your face?"
"J-Jin-san," Valerie stuttered, her voice muffled behind her palms. "Your... your clothes."
Jin looked down.
The concentrated barrage of Onmyoji fire magic had completely incinerated his hoodie, shirt, and combat pants. He was standing in the middle of the courtyard wearing absolutely nothing but the charred, smoking remnants of his waistband and underwear.
"Oh," Jin said flatly.
The surrounding guards shifted awkwardly, silently wondering how he had only just realized he was nearly naked.
"Maybe," Jin muttered, sighing deeply, "I should invest in some magic clothing."
After raiding a spare cloth from Shukaku's , Jin finally made his way home.
The walk was quiet. The sun was just starting to crest over the horizon, painting the sky in soft shades of orange and bruised purple. The frantic violence of the night felt entirely disconnected from the peaceful, sleeping suburbs of Kuoh.
Jin " Maybe i should have become a devil, teleport would have really helped me."
The light hit a perfect, balanced dawn as Jin finally reached the familiar gravel driveway of his mundane house.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
Standing casually by his front door, waiting for him, was a man with flowing crimson hair and an aura of authority.
"Hello, Jin," Sirzechs Lucifer said, a polite, entirely unreadable smile on his face.
But he wasn't alone to visit jin home.
From the upper side of the sloping suburban road, two more figures were casually strolling down toward Jin's property. One was a tall, slender man with grace . The other was a breathtaking woman draped in elegant, traditional garments that seemed to weave the morning sunlight into their very fabric.
The Goddess Amaterasu paused at the edge of his driveway. She looked at the Crimson Satan standing on his porch.
"Oh my," Amaterasu spoke, her voice like chiming bells ringing in the cool morning air. "Did we come at a bad time?"