Chapter : 539

His mind flashed back, unbidden, to a different world, a different kind of story. To the quiet, lonely evenings of his second life on Earth, after the children were grown, after his second wife had retired to her own quiet pursuits. He remembered the solace he had found in the vibrant, epic tales of a world called Japan, in the flickering holographic screens of his media room. He remembered the anime. The stories of gods and monsters, of warriors who could shatter mountains with a single blow.

And he remembered him. The one whose power, whose sheer, overwhelming, apocalyptic presence, had always resonated with a deep, almost frightening, part of his own soul. The Captain-Commander. The old man with the quiet, weary eyes and the soul of a living inferno, who held the power of the sun itself in the palm of his hand. The one whose final, ultimate release, his Bankai, was not just a weapon, but a statement of absolute, all-consuming, and utterly, comprehensively, annihilating power.

The memory was a spark, an inspiration. It was a vision of what fire could be. Not just a tool of destruction, but an element of absolute, final, and undeniable, judgment.

He looked at the churning, roaring vortex of red and crimson on the elemental wheel. And he made his choice.

He reached out with his will, not with hesitation, but with a sudden, absolute, and joyful, certainty. He didn’t just select the fire affinity. He pushed his own intent, his own vision, his own memory of that anime captain’s apocalyptic power, into the selection itself.

Not just fire, his mental command was a sharp, clear, and deeply ambitious, declaration. I want the sun. I want a fire that does not just burn, but un-makes. A fire of absolute annihilation. A fire that is the end of all things. The fire of a god.

He poured his will into the System, and the System, for the first time, seemed to… respond. The churning vortex of red on the elemental wheel did not just accept his selection. It flared. It roared. It transformed. The familiar, almost mundane, reds and oranges intensified, brightened, until they were no longer the color of a simple flame, but a brilliant, painful, almost pure, white-hot incandescence. The very concept of ‘fire’ in the System’s database seemed to be forcibly, violently, upgraded by the sheer, audacious, and memory-fueled, intensity of his demand.

A new prompt appeared, its text blazing with the same white-hot light.

[User Input Detected: High-Concept Affinity Parameter - ‘Absolute Annihilation Fire’.]

[Cross-referencing with User’s Extra-Dimensional Memory Archive (Sub-folder: ‘Anime, Shonen, Overpowered Captains’)...]

[Concept Match Found: Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni - Zanka no Tachi.]

[Affinity Parameter Accepted and Integrated.]

[Warning: Selection of a High-Concept Affinity will result in significantly increased energy consumption for all related abilities. The power output will be proportionally, and catastrophically, higher. Do you wish to proceed?]

Lloyd’s grin was a feral, wolfish slash in the darkness of his own mind. He had not just chosen fire. He had chosen the sun. And the System had understood. It had looked into the deep, forgotten archives of his Earth memories, had found the specific, perfect reference point for the power he craved, and had said: Are you sure you can handle this?

“Proceed,” he whispered, the word a prayer, a promise, a declaration of intent.

The moment he confirmed his choice, the world of his mind exploded. A torrent of pure, primal, and unimaginably hot energy flooded his consciousness. It was not the crackling, energetic rush of Fang Fairy’s lightning. This was different. This was the raw, silent, and absolutely, overwhelmingly, powerful energy of a star being born in the center of his soul.

He felt the heat, a fire that burned not his skin, but his very spirit, purifying, reforging, branding him with a new, terrible, and magnificent, power. His own Ferrum fire, the simple heat of the forge, felt like a child’s candle flame in the face of this solar flare. He felt his unified core, his new engine of power, groan under the immense, sudden influx of this new, incredibly potent, and highly volatile, energy signature.

He gritted his teeth, his entire being trembling with the effort of containing, of absorbing, this new, divine fire. It was agony. It was ecstasy. It was the price of a god’s power.

And through the fire, through the pain, through the brilliant, white-hot incandescence, the next stage of the creation process began. The System interface reappeared, its text now a shimmering, fiery gold. The affinity was chosen. The forge was lit. Now, it was time to shape the vessel. It was time to build the demon that would wield the sun.

Chapter : 540

The inferno in his soul slowly, painstakingly, came under his control. The roaring, white-hot torrent of ‘Absolute Annihilation Fire’ energy was not tamed, not exactly, but it was… contained. Channeled. It settled into a new, permanent reservoir within his unified core, a sleeping sun, a quiet, terrifying promise of future, apocalyptic power. Lloyd’s mind, which had been a crucible of pure, elemental energy, slowly cooled, reformed, the cold, sharp focus of the creator reasserting itself over the raw, overwhelming experience of the power itself.

He was still sitting on the cool stone floor of his private study within the Soul Farm, his physical body trembling with the aftershocks of the immense energy infusion. But his mind was clear, focused, and filled with a new, exhilarating purpose. The System interface glowed before him, the fiery gold of its text a reflection of the new power that now hummed within him.

[Affinity Selection Complete: ‘Absolute Annihilation Fire’ (High-Concept) successfully integrated into User’s core power matrix.]

[Next Step: Spirit Customization.]

[A Transcended spirit’s form is a reflection of its Master’s will, its elemental affinity, and its core purpose. The vessel must be designed to effectively channel and withstand the immense power of its chosen element. Please dictate the physical parameters for your new spirit partner.]

A new screen bloomed in his vision. It was not a menu of pre-set options, not a list of creatures to choose from. It was a blank slate. A three-dimensional, holographic modeling space, a wireframe of a basic humanoid form hovering in its center. Beside it, a vast, almost infinite, array of conceptual tools and descriptive input fields blinked expectantly.

This was not just choosing a spirit. This was creation. True, absolute creation, guided by the almost limitless power of the System and the boundless horizons of his own imagination. He was not just a user anymore; he was a designer. An architect of a god.

He closed his eyes, his mind turning inward once more, reaching back across the void of time and space, to the flickering holographic screens of his Earthly life, to the stories that had shaped his understanding of what true, overwhelming power looked like. He thought again of the Captain-Commander, of his final, ultimate form. Of the stoic, ancient warrior who, when he released his full power, became not just a man, but an embodiment of the sun’s fire, his very presence capable of scorching the world to ash.

That was the concept. That was the legacy he wanted to build upon. But he would not create a mere copy. He would create his own interpretation. His own warrior. His own demon of flame.

He began to dictate, his thoughts sharp, precise, the commands of an engineer designing a new, and infinitely more dangerous, kind of battle suit.

“Form: Humanoid. Towering,” his mental voice was a low, creative hum. “Not of flesh, but of something… harder. More primal. A being forged in the heart of a volcano.”

The wireframe in the modeling space began to shift, to stretch, to grow, resolving itself into the shape of a massive, powerful, humanoid figure, easily nine feet tall, its proportions not human, but demonic, its shoulders broad, its limbs thick with a contained, impossible strength.

“Armor,” he continued, his vision sharp and clear. “Its body is not to be skin, but a suit of interlocking, articulated armor. It is to be its skin. Its very being. The material should look like solidified flame, like cooled magma. Jagged. Asymmetrical. A thing of natural, violent creation.”

The surface of the wireframe model began to fill in, to texture. Plates of what looked like obsidian, shot through with deep, crimson veins that pulsed with a faint, internal, lava-like glow, began to form, locking together with a silent, perfect precision. The armor was not smooth, not polished. It was a masterpiece of brutal, intimidating beauty, its jagged pauldrons rising like volcanic peaks, its gauntlets ending in sharp, obsidian-like claws. It was the armor of a demon king, of a god of war from a forgotten, more violent, age.

“The face,” Lloyd commanded, “is not to be seen. It is a mystery. A void. Obscured by a horned helmet, forged from the same volcanic, crimson-veined material. The horns should be massive, wickedly curved, like those of a great, demonic bull. And the eyes… the eyes are not to be visible. There should be only darkness within the helm’s visor. A darkness from which two points of pure, white-hot, incandescent fire burn, like twin stars in an abyss. They are not to be eyes. They are to be the very heart of the inferno itself.”