The Celestial Tempest and Shiro Oni

Prologue (3)

Prologue (3)

Gun led Rimuru through a maze of back streets and hidden roads until he reached a forgotten junkyard on the outskirts of Seoul. Old car parts, bits of rusted metal, and abandoned machinery piled up like mountains of decaying steel. Rimuru watched warily as they advanced toward the rusty gate that guarded this place.

Gun finally stopped his vehicle and turned towards her. "Welcome to your boot camp."

They walked into the junkyard, which Gun opened with a key he seemed to have kept for a long time. Rimuru frowned, looking around in disbelief. "Really? Here?"

"Exactly," Gun said. "Here you will learn what it means to survive and fight without depending on anything but your instincts. Therefore, you will have to learn something fundamental: to endure pain."

Before Rimuru could react, Gun threw a direct punch at her in the stomach that caused her to double over from the impact. She fell to her knees, breathing heavily.

"What are you doing?!" she shouted, trying to recover, but Gun simply watched her with the same smile that had accompanied her since the beginning.

"This is no ordinary training," he said, maintaining his calm but firm tone. "I'm not here to teach you moves. I'm here to forge you. Today you will only receive hits. And if you want to give them back to me, you'll have to reach a new limit."

During the days that followed, Rimuru endured a series of brutal training sessions in which Gun attacked relentlessly. Kicks, punches, and forceful blows fell on her, leaving her on the ground each time, sore, but with a spark of rage growing inside her. Gun made sure she didn't dodge the blows, forcing her to withstand every impact and teaching her to resist.

"Every blow you receive sharpens your senses," he explained to her after each session. "Pain wakes you up and shows you your limits. But it also gives you something that few have: a total connection with your body."

With each day, Rimuru felt his frustration grow. Gun would not let her advance a step; it always ended up on the ground. Until, in one of those sessions, something inside her changed. After taking a particularly strong blow, he felt his frustration and anger come to a head. Her pupils began to glow with a greenish hue, and a fierce and almost primitive energy emerged in her.

"Do you finally want to hit me back?" Gun smiled when he saw the intensity in his gaze.

Uncontrollably, Rimuru threw a punch with all his might. Although Gun blocked it, the impact resonated and, surprisingly, he took a step back. Rimuru didn't stop there. In a wild state, he began to unleash a flurry of attacks. Blows, kicks and even desperate movements with their long nails. In his rampage, he managed to rip Gun's torso, leaving a mark that, although not deep, managed to cut him.

Gun noticed his transformation, satisfied and at the same time cautious. "That's ... the Animal Domain," he murmured, not losing his defiant smile. "But you still don't know how to control it."

Rimuru, now utterly consumed by instinct, continued to attack relentlessly, like a freed beast. Gun, undeterred, decided to resist each blow, assessing his power. As the fight continued, he knew that he had succeeded in awakening in Rimuru a strength that was beyond the human.

Three days later

Rimuru barely felt the passage of time since Gun took her to that forgotten junkyard. It was his third day of training, and his body was covered in bruises and small wounds. The first few days had been a storm of blows, and now she was almost at her limit, exhausted and sore, but determined not to give up.

That morning, Gun arrived with the same indifferent expression as always, lighting a cigarette while watching Rimuru with a faint smile. "Ready to continue?"