EPISODE 43: Bake-Kujira (Part 3)

Inside the green dimension saturated with despair, Zenoda's killing intent — which had begun radiating gold — provoked the ancient wrath of the ocean lord. Feeling that the absolute authority within its own domain was being challenged by what should have been nothing more than prey, the Bake-Kujira did not stand idle.

"HUAAAHHHHHHH!"

A roar that sounded like hundreds of drowning souls echoed through every corner of the dimension. From within the gaping skeletal whale's jaw, a bright-green spiritual energy rapidly gathered, compressing and spinning like a whirlpool, then fired point-blank at Zenoda's body.

The green laser screamed through the void, carrying a corrosive force ready to melt any mortal soul it touched.

Zenoda, watching it come, responded immediately. His combat reflexes had never dulled. Rather than blocking it head-on, Zenoda rotated his ankle and sprinted left at full speed.

WHOOOOSH!

The colossal green laser swept through the empty space Zenoda had just vacated, striking the void of the dimension and creating intensely hot spiritual shockwaves.

Recognizing that the whale monster had left a massive gap in its defenses while spending so much effort on the laser discharge, Zenoda saw an enormous opening. Without hesitation, he leaped high into the air, cutting through the dimension's unusual gravity, and shot toward the whale's head. He positioned himself for an aerial attack.

(Opening!) Zenoda thought, eyes narrowing to a sharp point.

In the air, Zenoda took the Battōjutsu stance he had been drilling for the past full week. His left hand prepared to hold the sheath, while his right hand reached for his left hip to draw the black Iado in a single lightning-speed slash that would split the whale's skull.

But...

When his right fingers reached his hip, he felt nothing. No grip wrapped in woven cloth. No wooden sheath. Only the empty fabric of his coat.

(Wait... where the hell is my sword?!)

Zenoda's eyes went wide with alarm. In the middle of his epically committed aerial dive of death, a bitter reality had just struck his human logic like a hammer.

He had only just realized that this was not the physical world he usually inhabited. This was the Spirit Realm — a pure Realm of Souls. When his body was swallowed by the Bake-Kujira in the real world, only the essence of his soul and the projection of his consciousness had been forcibly pulled into this dimension. Physical material objects like an iron sword, his dimensional storage pack, and armored clothing had been left behind with his physical vessel outside — or at least were completely inaccessible within this spirit world.

Realizing he was flying directly at a monster with completely empty hands, Zenoda cursed internally.

(Damn it!)

But Zenoda was not a fighter who depended on a single weapon. With his hands empty, he forced an extreme repositioning in midair. The movement that had been designed to draw a sword, he forcibly redirected using his soul's core muscles — twisting the trajectory into a spinning kick instead.

"Hiahhhhh!" Zenoda shouted, channeling the remaining kinetic force into his right leg.

He shot toward the skull of the skeletal whale, driving a locomotive kick that should have been capable of shattering dragon bone.

SWOOOSH!

But with spectacular misfortune... Zenoda's kick, packed with tremendous power, connected with absolutely nothing solid. His foot passed straight through the whale's skull structure as though kicking through a cluster of green smoke. No impact. No pain to the monster.

Zenoda landed on the illusory ground of the dimension slightly off-balance, realizing immediately that purely physical attacks carried no meaning in this place.

Watching the human in front of it kick empty air, the Bake-Kujira's spirit form drifted downward, looking at Zenoda with eye sockets radiating absolute mockery.

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!" The Bake-Kujira's raspy laughter thundered back, shaking the sea of green energy around them. "What a stupid human! Have you forgotten where you are, little rat?! This is my Spirit Realm! No physical attack from a lesser creature can touch me here! HAHAHAHA!"

Zenoda stood still. He rubbed his leg — which had gone numb from kicking nothing — then crossed both arms over his chest. He thought for a moment, ignoring the monster whale's arrogant laughter.

(How does one fight a creature in the form of a pure spirit that cannot be directly attacked by physical force or ordinary weapons?) Zenoda's mind worked rapidly, analyzing the laws of the dimension.

But rather than thinking through elaborate ways to channel special spells or sealing incantations... Zenoda suddenly became aware of one extremely fundamental, basic fact about this dimension. A fact that had somehow slipped past his mortal memory because he was too accustomed to playing "an ordinary human" on Earth.

The moment that realization hit, Zenoda's expression changed completely. He made the face of someone whose mind had just been blown — a condition where his brain was exploding from just having recognized the most devastatingly simple yet incredibly epic solution.

His mouth fell slightly open, and he looked upward at the ceiling of the green dimension as though receiving divine revelation from above.

"Hold on..." Zenoda said quietly, interrupting the monster whale's laughter. He looked at the Bake-Kujira with blinking, confused eyes. "You said... what kind of realm was this again?"

The Bake-Kujira stopped laughing and snorted with annoyance at having to repeat itself.

"Are your ears broken, human?!" the whale snapped condescendingly. "This is the Spirit Realm! Or more precisely, a pure soul realm I created specifically to trap and slowly drain the core life essence — the soul — of human beings! In this boundless void with no physical limits, I allow your souls to suffer so you understand the true meaning of agony before you finally become my sustenance!"

The arrogant explanation from the Bake-Kujira had just confirmed Zenoda's revelation.

Zenoda slowly lowered his gaze. A thin smile — deeply dangerous, utterly calm, yet radiating extraordinary dominance — began forming on his face.

(So that's how it is...) Zenoda thought with immense satisfaction. (This is a pure soul dimension. A place where the limits of the physical body, the laws of the mortal vessel, and the restrictions of mortal muscle do not apply at all. A place where only the true essence of the soul has form and power.)

Zenoda pressed a hand against his own chest, feeling the vibration of the seals he had placed upon incarnating.

(If in the outside world I have to restrain myself to the point of dying to prevent my pure power from destroying the mortal vessel called Zenoda... then inside this Spirit Realm — which happens to be exceptionally powerful — I don't need to worry about my physical vessel exploding! This soul space is actually the safest possible place to release my seals. Perhaps... I can use this slightly.)

Without any hesitation, Zenoda closed his eyes. He reached for the deepest core of his existence.

Click.

Inside his soul, the restraining lock that had been confining the cosmic ocean was forced open. Zenoda released just a fraction — only one small sliver — of the seal on Ursilium's core soul.

WUUUUUUNNNNNNGGGGG!

In that instant, the Bake-Kujira's pocket dimension — which had been a stable, densely green space — immediately began shaking violently as though struck by an earthquake of absolute magnitude. The spiritual air inside the dimension cracked.

From inside Zenoda's body, a Pure Gold brilliance of blinding luminosity exploded outward, sweeping away the surrounding green darkness completely. The golden light was not merely bright — it carried a spiritual gravitational pressure of overwhelming weight, as though all the galaxies of the universe had been compressed and forced into that cramped room.

Feeling the completely irrational energy anomaly, the Bake-Kujira's spirit form recoiled backward in midair. Its glowing green eyes went wide with horror.

"What is this?!" the Bake-Kujira shrieked in panic, its bone body shaking as it tried to withstand the pressure of that golden light. "This mana... this mana is impossibly powerful! What kind of force is this?!"

But the ancient sea monster's greed quickly overpowered its fear. It stared at the golden light radiating from Zenoda's body with open, ravenous jaws.

"Oh! So this is why you could withstand the corrosive effects of my Spirit Realm from the very beginning!" the Bake-Kujira announced, its voice saturated with covetousness. "You've been carrying rare spiritual energy inside your mortal soul! Remarkable! But no matter... if I defeat you and devour your soul completely right now, that extraordinary golden power will become entirely mine!"

At once, the storm of golden light that had been erupting outward slowly began dimming and coming under control. It condensed and shrank to a single point, concentrated and settled solely around the figure now standing at the center of the arena.

When the light fully stabilized, the form of the mortal young man named Zenoda had vanished.

In his place now stood a man of far more majestic bearing — an appearance of genuine adulthood, radiating an authority that caused every form of life to instinctively want to prostrate itself. The man wore an elegant base of all-black clothing, covered by a long white coat adorned with luminous gold tribal motifs running along its edges. His hair was silver-white, and his eyes... his eyes were two miniature galaxies in gold that regarded all things with emptiness yet carried absolute authority.

That was the true spiritual form of the Supreme God: Ursilium.

The Bake-Kujira — a sea monster that had lived for thousands of years and been the dread of sailors across the ocean — could barely comprehend who the man standing before it was. The primordial instinct of the monster suddenly felt as small as plankton before the sun.

"Who... who are you, really?!" the Bake-Kujira asked, its voice trembling without its awareness.

The gold-and-white robed man did not answer immediately. He raised his hand — clad in black cloth gloves — and looked at his fingers, now free of the chains of mortal flesh. He slowly curled his hand into a fist.

Ursilium then looked up, meeting the giant whale spirit's gaze with eyes as cold as deep space.

"Mortals in the lower realms frequently call me a God," Ursilium said, his voice now resonating with hundreds of harmonically layered tones capable of penetrating the deepest reaches of the Bake-Kujira's mind. "My subjects and civilized beings call me King of the Universe. And other cosmic entities older than civilization know me by the title of Ancient Primordial Guardian of All Galaxies."

Ursilium lowered his hand, his golden aura glowing with the gentle luminosity of a crown.

"However..." Ursilium continued calmly. "...you may address me by my true name: Ursilium. That is, if your humble soul is strong enough to bear the weight of uttering that name without shattering into pieces."

Hearing a self-introduction of this multidimensional scale, the Bake-Kujira's mind — limited as it was to Earth's ocean — could not process it. Its pride as lord of the sea flatly refused to accept the reality that the creator entity of the universe was standing inside its own belly.

"Nonsense!" the Bake-Kujira growled hysterically, denying the reality that was making its soul shudder with terror. "A god? King of the Universe?! Hahaha! Don't make me laugh! You are simply a lying mortal who happened to recently obtain a minor secret magical blessing from your ancestors! Even asking me to utter your disgusting name... I find it utterly repulsive!"

Hearing blunt, raw mockery from a skeleton monster, Ursilium did not feel the slightest anger. The god possessed no mortal ego that could be easily wounded. On the contrary, Ursilium stroked his chin with one index finger, looking at the monster with an expression of curious interest mixed with a touch of pity.

"Is that so?" Ursilium murmured quietly, a thin smile — a smile rarely shown to creatures of this tier — forming on his face. "You know, skeleton fish... in all the billions of years of eons that my existence has traversed across various dimensions, you are the first creature to have the audacity to say something this foolish and this insolent directly to my face."

Ursilium tilted his head slightly. "Interesting. Let's see how far that pride of yours can protect you."

Realizing it was not going to win a verbal exchange, and sensing that the golden aura was growing increasingly threatening to its life the longer the standoff continued, the Bake-Kujira lost its patience entirely. Pure rage seized every part of its bone structure.

"ENOUGH TALK!" the Bake-Kujira roared with full force.

Without another word, the massive whale moved at the maximum speed it could achieve inside this spirit dimension. It shot through the green air, directing its sharp bone snout and gaping jaw in a direct collision course — intending to ram, bite, and chew Ursilium into dust in a single massive destructive strike.

Watching the hundred-meter colossus launch itself like a falling mountain, Ursilium took no defensive stance, chanted no protective spell, drew no weapon. He didn't even blink.

When the whale's jaw was only five centimeters from his face...

With nothing more than a shift of his body weight, and one very small, very leisurely step to the right—

SWOOOOOOSH!

Ursilium's body relocated with a speed that literally shredded the concepts of space and time inside the pocket dimension. Not running — shifting, instantaneously.

The Bake-Kujira, barreling forward at full force, succeeded only in hitting empty air and the golden light residue Ursilium had left behind. Unable to brake, the monster continued launching forward under its own momentum, crashing into the boundary of its own dimension — causing the entire green space to shake violently.

"DAAAAMN IT!" the Bake-Kujira roared furiously. The monster twisted its enormous body in the air with frustration, facing Ursilium again — who was now standing calmly in a new location without a single mark on him.

Recognizing that close-range attacks would never make contact with this mysterious entity, the Bake-Kujira returned to its long-range tactics. The monster opened its jaw wide.

"DIE!"

The whale concentrated the full corrosive power of its Spirit Realm into its throat. It fired the same green spiritual laser as its first attack once again. But this time, the laser was three times larger, immensely dense, and carried a killing force capable of erasing an entire city in an instant.

The colossal green laser shot in a direct line toward Ursilium.

Watching the ocean lord's ultimate strike approaching, Ursilium didn't even bother to evade. The god simply raised his right hand in front of his chest and opened his palm — the casual gesture of someone telling another person to stop.

"Pointless," Ursilium said flatly, his voice utterly calm.

CRAAAAASSSHHH!

The absolute-voltage green laser struck directly into the center of Ursilium's right palm.

But rather than the hand shattering or melting, the lethal beam stopped completely — arrested inside Ursilium's palm. The green light spread sideways like water striking an impenetrable glass wall. Ursilium had deflected the whale monster's ultimate energy attack with nothing but his bare open hand, without shifting even one millimeter backward.

The Bake-Kujira's eyes went wide in horror watching its finest attack contained like a gentle breeze. "Th-that's impossible...!"

After holding the laser current for a full second, Ursilium drew his hand back slightly to establish momentum — gathering the contained laser energy into a dense ball in front of his palm.

"Now. Return to your owner," Ursilium said.

With striking speed and precision, Ursilium drove his palm forward.

BLLLLAAAAASSSSHHHH!

Ursilium didn't fire his own magic — he reflected the whale's energy laser directly back to its source. But through the infusion of absolute gold energy from the god's hand, the reflected green laser had mutated. Its speed and destructive force had tripled beyond the original's power, transforming into a pillar of lethal energy the size of a full warship.

"Wh-WHAT?!"

The Bake-Kujira had no time to evade. The reflection speed exceeded the limits of a soul's reaction time.

The colossal energy pillar struck the Bake-Kujira's chest and rib structure with direct, devastating impact.

"ARRRRGGGGHHHH!"

A scream of agony — piercing, heartbreaking, and unlike any sound ever heard before — detonated from the skeletal whale's jaws. The energy that struck it didn't merely damage its physical structure — it burned the core of its very soul from the inside.

The tremendous green-and-gold explosion shattered a significant portion of the Bake-Kujira's left rib cage. Spiritual smoke billowed in thick clouds, and the colossal body of the Bake-Kujira was hurled far backward, smashing into the boundary of its own dimension's sky — causing dimensional cracks to begin appearing throughout the green pocket space.

Ursilium stood straight in the center of the collapsing arena, slowly lowering his hand. His gold-tribal coat billowed in the explosion's wind. He regarded the ancient monster now dying before him with the gaze of absolute judgment.

The God had revealed his true form, and the law of the jungle inside this Spirit Realm had been overturned in its entirety.