The first node looked like a wall decoration.
Just another embedded rune-panel pulsing faint red behind a cage of steel rods, tucked above a rusted inspection stairway.
But Raifu could hear it.
Not with ears.
With rhythm.
Each pulse of that rune played a different note in the systemic beat of the complex. Like a false key on a broken piano—faintly off, just enough to ruin the melody of motion for every soul it touched.
And worse, it recorded.
It didn't just track movements. It watched intention. Trying to trace anomalies in Thread resonance. Which meant someone upstairs—some system mind or distant enforcer—felt his combo earlier. The time skip. The kills.
He didn't care.
He cared that the node was alive.
And now, he would kill it.
He waited in the corner of the dim corridor, crouched behind a mound of discarded armor fragments. The guards weren't near—he made sure of that earlier by rerouting one of them into a false patrol line using his own bloody bootprints.
He stared at the node.
Closed his eyes.
And began to breathe.
One… two… pause… draw.
He gathered momentum—not like energy, but like choreography.
His foot shifted just right.
His shoulder rotated with perfect delay.
And his hand struck not the metal—but the Thread layer underneath.
A ripple exploded from his palm.
No flash.
No fire.
Just vibration—so sharp, it turned the pulse into a scream inside the panel.
The rune flickered once. Then shattered.
The node cracked like ice under heat.
The system's eye blinked—and didn't reopen.
He backed away slowly, scanning the hall.
Still quiet.
Still rhythm-bound.
But something had changed.
He felt it in the floor.
System Relay #471 Offline
Observer Loop Disconnected
Threat Level: Undefined
[Unbound Signature Detected – Isolation Recommended]
The system's voice echoed only faintly. Not in Raifu's mind, but in the way the light dimmed slightly. The walls themselves were listening less.
He'd just silenced part of the prison's rhythm grid.
He moved to the next junction.
More cautious now. Not because of fear—but because he could feel the resistance.
The system wasn't just watching anymore.
It was reacting.
Three guards turned the corner ahead—fully armed, faster than before, eyes pulsing slightly blue.
Soul-Scan enabled.
They had authorization to kill.
Raifu smiled for the first time.
Test me.
He charged.
Step One.
He leapt forward, body low, rotating mid-air. Agility unlocked. The motion didn't break rhythm—it became invisible inside it. He twisted sideways as a bolt of energy passed his former location.
Step Two.
He slammed into the first guard's chest with a double-kick, using him as a wall to spring off and twist through the air.
Step Three.
Now mid-spin, his foot dragged the air like a blade—Mana engaged. The air cut. Thin ripple of force lashed the second guard's cheek—splitting skin without contact.
Step Four.
He landed in a roll behind them. They turned.
He didn't wait.
Step Five.
A rising elbow cracked one's chin. As he fell, Raifu twisted—palms flaring with soft white lines. Mana + Rhythm activated.
Step Six.
He whispered: "Break, then bend."
The floor under the last guard pulsed, shoving him upward into Raifu's waiting knee.
Step Seven.
Combo closed.
They fell.
System didn't respond.
Thread Count: 5
But this time, something else triggered.
LEVEL UP: 3
+5 Stat Points Earned
Allocated: +3 Agility, +2 Mana
[New Passive Skill Unlocked – "Thread Echo"]
Description: After a successful 5+ combo, Raifu's last motion leaves a delay image behind—a subtle rhythm imprint that distracts enemies and confuses lock-on systems.
Raifu stood over the last twitching guard.
His eyes flicked toward the next relay node, halfway embedded in the floor tiles ahead.
Two destroyed.
Dozens to go.
He didn't sigh. He didn't smirk.
He stepped.
And the world obeyed again.
Chapter: 2
Level: 3
Thread Count: 5
Stat Points Earned: 5
Points Allocated: +3 Agility, +2 Mana
New Combo: Mana-Elevated 7-Step with Air Cut
New Skill: Thread Echo (Passive – movement afterimage effect)
Combat Style Used: Aerial Slide Tempo + Spiral Break + Disruption Palm
Notable Event: First System Relay Kill; system eye blinded; reality bent in motion
(Do you like the previous chapter style with note, or would y'all like sun breaks like this?)
🧠 Etymological Lore Note
"Mana" – from Proto-Polynesian mana, meaning "power, authority, prestige."
In traditional Pacific Islander cultures, mana isn't magic—it's spiritual resonance tied to action, lineage, and presence.
Raifu doesn't cast spells. He doesn't fire bolts.
His mana is the reality's respect for his rhythm.
The silence wasn't still.
It vibrated.
Not like music—not like warning—but like a system that had been punched in its breath and didn't know whether to scream or reboot.
Raifu walked through the fading heat trails of his last combo, arms relaxed, body uncoiled like a spring mid-air. The three dead guards behind him bled out in a spread pattern that followed the arc of his final strike—a design born of motion, not brutality.
The corridor ahead was unlit. And that was new.
Normally, light in Chain Sector 7 never failed. Not for the slaves. Not for the guards. Not even for the janitor drones.
This darkness?
It was defensive.
The system was trying to reset rhythmically. Pull its pulse back into balance.
But Raifu had already cracked its metronome.
He touched the wall gently.
The stone responded like flesh under tension. Pulse feedback. Somewhere far beneath him, maybe a control relay or timing fork facility, the rhythm was recalculating his presence.
Thread Echo—the passive wake of his movements—had already split two response squads in half.
One chased a phantom down a stairwell he never entered.
Another fired stun-blasts into a cleaning drone that moved in sync with his earlier slide pattern.
Raifu didn't smile.
But the air did.
It rippled once as if in approval.
He stopped at the next junction and crouched.
This was a heavy access route.
One of the feeder arteries into Sector 7's main power logic core.
He recognized the signs: rhythmic valve markers on the wall (heartbeat intervals), soul-rune anchors etched every six meters (to trap unbranded spirits), and two visible energy forks glowing orange.
The corridor was too clean.
Too perfect.
He waited.
One beat.
Two.
Then he saw the shimmer.
Not movement.
Not a person.
A Threadwatcher.
They looked human—but weren't.
Drones in humanoid form built to perceive combat rhythm at a micro level.
They didn't attack.
They observed, catalogued, predicted.
This one hovered midair slightly, as if stepping with ghost shoes. Its limbs floated with impossibly slow grace—every twitch recorded.
Raifu knew their weak points.
But he also knew: they broadcast.
He needed to kill it without breaking tempo.
Plan: Echo Inversion
He stepped forward slowly.
Let his body enter a shadow rhythm. Not one of aggression, but of misdirection.
He timed each breath with the hum of the corridor.
He mirrored the Threadwatcher's motion—but with an intentional lag.
A beat behind.
Then—shift.
He used Thread Echo.
Moved forward, but let his afterimage stay one step behind.
The watcher locked onto the image—prepared to strike.
But the real Raifu had already moved left—low, silent, fast.
Palm-strike.
He struck upward through its under-torso.
The drone twisted. Began to scream—
He crushed the audio module with a two-finger pulse-blast.
Silence.
The drone folded.
Its body didn't fall—it collapsed into dust. Like the system couldn't decide what to do with a machine that failed at rhythm.
Raifu stood over the dust pile.
His heart barely accelerated.
Only his mana responded—humming lightly under his skin.
Something sharp pinged in his ear.
Threadwatcher Terminated
[System Pulse Delay Triggered – Next Tactical Response Slowed]
Agility +1
Mana +1
System message (in code):
"He moves like a god who forgot he was human."
Raifu moved on.
Next Room: The Observation Loop.
If he could reach the observation relay, he could invert the data stream.
Feed false threat rhythms back into the system.
Let them chase ghosts while he dismantled the real cage.
But first—he needed a stronger rhythm.
He needed a weapon.
One built from sound.
He paused at a control panel ahead.
The interface was locked. Biometrically tethered to a command soul-path user.
He placed one hand on it.
And waited.
No force.
Just timing.
One…
Two…
Echo.
The passive thread in his hand shivered.
And the interface responded.
It thought he was someone higher up.
Because no low-born moved like that.
The panel opened.
Inside: a compact soul-synchronized shockfork—a melee tool used to disable rhythm-warped prisoners.
He took it. Spun it.
The metal sang.
Raifu nodded once.
He could use this.
He could even… teach it.
END OF PART II. (Leave a comment how do you like this so far?)
He didn't run anymore.
He glided.
Every step became a study in distance, balance, and consequence.
Raifu now understood: speed didn't equal efficiency. Rhythm was expenditure just as much as it was flow. The system punished those who rushed, rewarded those who danced.
And he wasn't improvising anymore.
He was composing.
The observation loop ahead was not guarded—at least not by flesh.
The air itself was coded.
Thin layers of harmonic defense—trigger threads—hung in the corridor like spiderwebs made from ultraviolet song.
You couldn't see them unless you knew what to feel for.
Raifu stopped three paces from the threshold.
He inhaled.
Then slowly exhaled with purpose.
Mana pulsed through his breath—not outward, but inward.
The breath didn't push.
It listened.
He caught the invisible threads in that moment—five. Strung across the corridor like traps waiting for careless movement.
Each one connected to an echo-trigger, designed to create a feedback scream the second the rhythm of a step broke sync.
He smiled faintly.
The system thought it could anticipate his sound.
It still didn't understand his silence.
He stepped sideways.
Placed one hand on the wall, fingers dragging slowly.
Then—paused.
Shifted his body's internal rhythm just enough to imitate a guard's tempo.
And slid forward.
One. Float. Heel. Hold. Two.
Ghostloop initiated.
He left behind a faint trace—not visible. Not physical. But auditory.
A rhythmic afterimage—his own beat from three seconds ago—looping outward like a soft echo in the environment.
The trap threads flinched.
Then activated.
Not on him.
On the ghost of him.
The hallway screamed—but behind him.
Raifu was already inside.
He entered the Observation Loop Room—a low-tech vault flooded with terminal arrays, echo-pathway displays, and rotating auditory monitors. All pulsing with the heart of Sector 7's surveillance system.
And all now blinking red.
Every console was trying to correct for the error Raifu just introduced.
They couldn't find him.
He'd fractured the loop.
His rhythm was untrackable.
He was no longer a person to them.
He was a *ghost.
At the center of the room stood a technician.
Alcry. Younger than Raifu.
System brand still fresh. A former slave, now working compliance in exchange for "permissioned survival."
He turned, slow and terrified, hands raised.
Raifu didn't kill him.
He didn't have to.
He raised the shockfork—not to strike—but to spin.
The motion was slow, hypnotic. A figure-eight spiral that hummed in the stale air.
The technician froze.
"You're… You're not one of us."
"I'm not one of them either," Raifu said softly.
He walked to the nearest terminal, nodding toward the opposite wall.
"Go. I didn't come for you."
The boy ran.
Raifu turned back to the system.
Phase One: Disruption.
He fed false movement data into the auditory thread logs.
Copied his own ghostloop. Varied the tempo.
Then layered it.
Seven different movement signatures—spaced like an amateur trying to improvise martial steps.
Let them think he was panicking.
Phase Two: Drain.
He redirected three soul-path trace monitors to run false diagnostics on corrupted data logs.
It forced the system to increase internal mana draw just to stabilize its surveillance.
While it burned energy…
He rested.
Raifu sat down in the corner of the observation room. Closed his eyes.
Slowed his breathing.
Conservation Tactic #1: Pulse Economy
→ Only strike when within a 3-beat zone
→ Use mana in micro-chords—not waves
→ Let natural movement do the damage
→ Never kill out of sequence
Conservation Tactic #2: Ghostplanting
→ Move with delay
→ Leave rhythm behind
→ Make the system chase the echo
→ Kill the ones who fall out of sync
The system had tried to label him.
It tried "Slave."
It tried "Dead."
It tried "Threat Level: Undefined."
None of them fit.
He wasn't a threat.
He was the counter-measure to the entire rhythm architecture.
[Mana Efficiency Bonus Unlocked]
➤ Raifu now expends 30% less mana when using environmental-weave combos
➤ Focus-based breathing restores +1 mana/4 beats
[AGILITY UP +1]
[MANA UP +1]
Stat Allocation Confirmed
He stood.
System alarms in far sectors began to die.
The nodes no longer knew where to look.
He was everywhere and nowhere.
His mana wasn't a fuel gauge anymore.
It was a language.
And the world was learning to listen.
Chapter: 2
Level: 3
Thread Count: 5
Stat Points Allocated This Chapter: +4 (Agility +2, Mana +2)
New Technique: Ghostloop (Echo Trail + Decoy Rhythm Signature)
Passive Upgrade: Mana Efficiency (30% reduction on environmental-thread use)
Combat Style Used: Ghostplant Tempo + Inversion Echo
Notable Event: System trap bypassed, observation hub disrupted, mana conservation unlocked