Ryku's body trembled. Not from fear, or pain, like it had so many times in the past month. Ryku was in awe, complete jaw dropping awe. The only thing that stopped him from physically dropping his jaw, besides the fact it already laid on the floor, was his desperate desire to not pass out. It took the vast majority of his mental strength to keep the Devil Glass from knocking him unconscious. He could only periodically peek at the fight ensuing in the hall lest the glass slip him into an indefinite slumber.

He's glad he took the risk though. Oh was he glad. He'd witness a monster, a skyguard. They were like a Titan in human skin. No, they were stronger. Just being in the presence of their ahjer felt suffocating. He'd never felt anything like it. Comparing it to his own was like comparing a bottle of water to the Chi’Umi lake. How could you? They were incomparable.

It started when the Baron's boy walked by, ever eager to look like he's doing something. He'd heard some commotion about an angel, but he thought little of it. He didn't believe the Baron was that reckless. Enslaving an angel would be pure suicide. What could he do with it other than keep them in complete secrecy? No one in their right mind would buy them off him. That was practically daring the royal family to come after you.

There was definitely a new prisoner though. He sensed the extra guard they stationed down here, the only guard they stationed here for that matter. 'Down here' being the bottom layer of their slave compound, the place they kept all the potentially problematic ones. Guards weren't necessary cause each one got a Devil Shard shoved in their head and chains that weakened them. This new one did have a guard though, so even though he refused to believe it was an angel he was vaguely intrigued in what they caught that made them so scared.

It turned out they were right to be sacred. When the mythical beast of a man broke out of his cage, he walked out like the doubly reinforced orcanite door was just straw to be blown away. Ryku had seen powerful beings before, many times in fact. He was a silver badge after all, access to the upper echelon was a given. Once upon a time he'd even been in the presence of one the leading beasts of the jungle, an exceptionally terrifying human-sized lizard. He'd been trespassing in their land of course and beat a very hasty retreat once the opportunity presented itself, but he kept a clear picture of what feeling their ahjer was like. He thought that was massive then, but it felt absolutely puny in comparison to what he was experiencing now.

Most people took ahjer sense for granted. It was the most basic of basic skills that even children had. Those people just didn't understand its potential. Sure, for the simpletons its main use was either finding the best clusters of ahjer for spells or making sure they were empowering themselves correctly, but it could be so much more. If you trained and studied it well enough it could tell you everything. How much ahjer your opponent had, when they were using it, when they were casting spells, what kind of spells they were casting, how long it would take to finish casting. Ryku couldn't do all of that just yet, but it was still possible. So much information right there, right at your fingertips.

If any of the Baron's men cared to properly train their ahjer sense they'd have known fighting this human hurricane was as foolish as fighting an actual hurricane. It was probably more foolish. How could they possibly win? Even without training their ahjer sense, did they not hear that wail? That’s a run very far away kind of wail, it sounded like his soul was being ripped from his body. The regular schmucks obviously took the hint, only the four at the top were dumb enough to come down.

Of course, the human natural disaster cleaned them out effortlessly. He even made time to mock Sunset White, the second most menacing figure in the whole region and the very reason Ryku was laying prone in a cell right now. In fairness, is it mockery if it's true? He absolutely toyed with them before the rest of the bastards arrived and then he just wiped them all out. Even knowing the impossibly wide gap between them, seeing Sunset White get swatted to death with their own weapon shocked him. What a pathetic way to go out.

He carried their defeated corpse all the way back down the hall before dumping it next to the boy’s guard. Ryku couldn’t remember the guards name, but he was a man of little importance anyway. What the force of nature made human planned to do next was of far more import. He seemed to be talking to the boy, but Ryku couldn’t only hear the boy’s frantic yells. From what he could make out of the hysterics the Titanman was likely a mainlander, he definitely wasn’t from one of the islands. The boy was yelling some very basic information, the kinds of things you only had to tell someone who didn’t live in the area. More than just the area though, the boy went on to explain that this was no man's land in between the Taiyo Dynasty and the Kingdom of Whitesails. Who but a complete foreigner would need to be told that?

It was at that realization that the awe he felt shifted towards apprehension. He hadn’t expected the man to be a local, but a complete foreigner? Why would someone that strong, come here? What was his goal?