Chapter : 541

The helmet materialized on the figure’s head, a thing of intimidating, brutalist beauty. And from the darkness of its visor, the two points of white-hot fire blazed to life, their intensity so great it seemed to bleach the color from the very air around them.

He surveyed his creation in his mind’s eye. The towering, armored demon of solidified flame. It was perfect. It was a being of pure, unadulterated, and terrifying, power. It was a vessel worthy of the sun itself.

But it was missing one thing. The final, most crucial, element. The tool with which it would deliver its apocalyptic judgment. Its weapon.

The System interface pulsed, a new prompt appearing, its golden, fiery text awaiting his final, creative command.

[Spirit Form Customization Complete. Awaiting Armament and Weaponry Parameters…]

Lloyd took a deep, steadying breath. The vessel was forged. Now, it was time to give the demon its sword.

The silent, armored demon stood in the holographic void of the creation interface, a monument of cooled magma and contained, white-hot fury. Its form was perfect, a terrifying embodiment of destructive potential. But a soldier, no matter how powerful, was incomplete without his weapon. And the weapon Lloyd envisioned for this creature was not a tool of dueling or a symbol of rank. It was an instrument of pure, unadulterated, and overwhelming, annihilation.

His mind returned once more to the wellspring of his inspiration, to the anime of his Earth life. He remembered the blades of those otherworldly warriors, the soul-reapers. Swords that were not just steel, but extensions of the soul, each with its own name, its own unique power. He remembered the zanbatō, the massive, often unwieldy, “horse-slaying swords,” blades designed not for finesse, but for raw, cleaving power. And he remembered the Captain-Commander’s own blade, a simple, unassuming katana that, when its true power was released, became a weapon capable of erasing all it touched from existence.

That was the concept. But he would give it his own, brutalist, engineering-inspired twist.

“Armament,” his mental command was sharp, decisive, a final, critical design parameter. “A greatsword. But more than a greatsword. A zanbatō. Its scale is to be… colossal. So massive that its very existence is an insult to the laws of physics. So large that no mortal, no lesser being, could possibly hope to wield it. It is a blade fit only for a god of fire. A blade that is not just a weapon, but a statement of absolute, overwhelming force.”

In the holographic space, the weapon began to materialize in the armored demon’s clawed, obsidian-like gauntlets. It was immense. The hilt alone was as long as a normal man’s arm, wrapped in what looked like the dark, hardened hide of some great, scaled beast. The crossguard was a simple, brutalist bar of black, unadorned iron. And the blade…

The blade was a river of dark, volcanic steel, easily twelve feet long from hilt to tip, and as wide across as a man’s chest. Its edge was not a fine, razor-sharp line, but a thick, brutally honed wedge, designed not to slice, but to cleave, to shatter, to sunder. Down the center of the massive blade, a single, deep fuller, a blood groove, pulsed with the same deep, crimson, lava-like light as the veins in the demon’s armor. It was a weapon that was less a sword and more a sharpened, angry, and very, very large, piece of a mountain.

“But it is not enough for it to be large,” Lloyd continued, his vision sharp, precise. “It must be alive. It must be an extension of the fire within.”

“The blade itself,” he commanded, “is to be perpetually, eternally, wreathed in roaring, crimson flames. Not the silent, white-hot fire of the spirit’s eyes. This is to be a chaotic, untamed, living inferno. A fire that licks at the air, that roars with an unheard, spiritual sound, that leaves a trail of shimmering heat and scorched reality in its wake. It is a weapon that does not just cut with steel; it burns with the very fury of its wielder.”

The colossal, dark steel blade in the model’s hands suddenly erupted. A silent, roiling sheath of vibrant, crimson-red flame, shot through with streaks of brilliant orange, engulfed the blade from crossguard to tip. The holographic flames danced, writhed, licked at the empty air of the void, their imagined heat a palpable, terrifying presence. The blade was no longer just a sword; it was a captured, roaring wildfire, a tool of absolute, elemental destruction.

Chapter : 542

He looked at his creation. The towering, silent, magma-armored demon. The horned, faceless helm with its white-hot, stellar eyes. And the colossal, roaring, flame-wreathed blade of annihilation held in its gauntleted fists. It was perfect. It was terrifying. It was a work of art.

The System interface pulsed again, the fiery gold text awaiting the final, crucial input.

[Armament and Weaponry Customization Complete. Vessel Design Finalized. Please assign a designation, a name, to your new Transcendent Spirit Partner.]

A name. A name worthy of this creature. A name that spoke of fire, of power, of a being born from the heart of an inferno. He thought of the ancient legends of Earth, of the tales of desert spirits, of genies, of beings of smoke and fire. And a single, powerful, and ancient name came to him.

“Iffrit,” he whispered, the name a soft, sibilant hiss in his mind.

The System accepted the designation instantly.

[Name Registered: Iffrit.]

[Transcendent Spirit Profile Complete: Affinity - ‘Absolute Annihilation Fire’. Form - ‘Magma-Forged Demon’. Weaponry - ‘Flame-Wreathed Zanbatō’.]

[Total Cost: 1 Spirit Grant (Tier: Transcend).]

[User Authorization is required to initiate the final manifestation protocol. The summoning process will be immediate and will generate a significant, high-energy event. Ensure summoning location is secure and can withstand extreme thermal and kinetic stress.]

[Proceed with Summoning?]

Lloyd’s heart was a frantic, hammering drum in his chest. He was standing on the edge of a precipice, about to take a leap into a new, and infinitely more powerful, reality. This was it. The culmination of his gamble, of his vision, of his strange, cross-world memories.

He looked around the quiet, safe, and soon-to-be-profoundly-insufficient, stone study of his Soul Farm. Yes. The location was secure. And if it couldn't withstand the stress… well, that was a problem for future Lloyd.

His will was a shard of steel, forged in the very fire he was about to unleash.

“Proceed.”

---

The command—“Proceed”—was a quiet thought, a whisper in the silent sanctuary of his mind. The response from the System was a silent, cosmic scream.

The world of the Soul Farm, his private, stable dimension, did not just shimmer or tear. It broke.

He was violently, brutally, ripped from his own consciousness, his perspective thrown from the cool, logical interface of the System back into his physical form, which was still seated on the floor of his study. And his study was now the epicenter of a contained, and rapidly escalating, apocalypse.

It began not with light, but with heat. An intense, suffocating, and absolutely, comprehensively, overwhelming wave of pure, raw, thermal energy erupted from the center of the room. It was not the clean, sharp heat of a forge fire, nor the crackling, energetic heat of lightning. This was the dry, searing, unmaking heat of a blast furnace, of a desert sun, of a world being stripped of all its moisture, all its life.

The air in the room, once so still and neutral, instantly superheated, shimmering violently, distorting the very light, making the stone walls seem to warp and melt like wax. The sturdy oak furniture—the desk, the chairs, the bookshelves—didn't catch fire. They simply… carbonized. They blackened, smoked, and crumbled into fine, grey ash in the space of a single, silent heartbeat. The cool stone floor beneath him began to glow, a dull, angry, cherry-red, the very rock protesting the impossible temperature.

Lloyd cried out, a raw, strangled sound of pain and shock as the searing heat washed over him. His own Ferrum fire, the innate heat that ran in his blood, flared to life in a desperate, instinctive attempt to shield him, to create a buffer against this overwhelming, external inferno. It was like trying to stop a tidal wave with a teacup.

Then came the light.

It was not the pure, divine azure of Fang Fairy’s summoning. It was a furious, angry, and deeply, profoundly, malevolent crimson. A vortex of swirling, crimson-red light and black, oily smoke erupted in the center of the room, a miniature, violent volcano tearing its way into existence. It roared, a silent, spiritual sound that was pure, untamed, destructive power, a sound that bypassed the ears and vibrated directly in his soul, shaking his very core.