The Axe of Price. A magical tool, aged for nine hundred years.

The mana it was wreathed in was immense enough to shatter Homura’s burning eyeball as if splitting firewood. The molten lens burst, spewing flames and viscous innards.

The splattering, fiery sap sizzled against Ikaku’s skin, melting it.

But Ikaku didn’t flinch. Barely recovered from total paralysis, he had somehow dragged his half-dead body right to Homura.

A full recovery was too much to hope for. Still, Ikaku didn’t flinch. He endured the searing heat as if he couldn’t feel it at all.

It's my final task. Hold out for me, body of mine.

Just for a moment. Just one more time.

“GUAAAAAAAH—!?”

“Don’t let go, Axey!” Ikaku roared, tightening his hold on the axe. Already lodged in the eye, the heavy blade drove deeper into the mutated, malformed skull.

Ikaku gripped the hatchet with both hands, leveraging the momentum of his fall. His massive frame swung like a pendulum, all that pressure converging on the blade’s edge.

Yanked violently downward, the flaming behemoth pitched forward. It flung Ophelia aside, catching itself at the last second by bracing its hands against the water’s surface.

Now that the Demon was lower, Ikaku was able to plant both feet on solid ground.

“Hfff—!”

This wasn’t some esoteric mystery. It wasn’t magic.

The secret to Ikaku’s power was oxygen. A terrifying technique that had stunned even his master.

One day, at Ikaku’s request, Aleksandr Bogdanov bought him some eighty hot water bottles. When he returned to his disciple after lunch, he found the place littered with brutally burst bottles.

His master had asked, “What in the world are you doing…?”

“Have you forgotten? I am a creature who cannot help but train his muscles.”

“I’m well aware of that. You’ve already trained every part of your body to the point where there’s no room left for improvement. That being said, what are you doing with the hot water bottles?”

Ikaku had taken a deep breath, blowing into the mouth of a hot water bottle. The thick rubber container inflated like a balloon before bursting into shreds.

“The lungs are muscles, too.”

With that said, Ikaku took another breath and popped the next one.

Aleksandr’s jaw hung open.

Later that night, he looked it up online and learned that the lungs themselves contain no muscle.

He was left with a single thought: What is that monster…?

A bodybuilder through and through, Ikaku Akamuro trained every muscle to its limit—all to defeat Demons.

By that point, his lung function was great enough to slurp down a six-meter-long udon noodle in a single instant. He was thirteen at the time.

After this shocking incident, his master sought out and invited a certain virtuoso to help his disciple advance even further.

That was none other than the master of masters himself: Arvind of the Secret Arts.

Arvind Darshinu. The Indian master with a protean body passed on his knowledge. 

A unique form of breathing. The mysteries of the Indus. The yogic art of Pranayama. 

On this night, that secret art had granted Ikaku the power to strike down Demons time and time again.

An average person’s lung capacity is four liters. A top-tier competitive swimmer’s is ten.

In contrast, Ikaku Akamuro—who had continued the madness of “weight training for the lungs” and even mastered the yogic art of Pranayama—possessed a lung capacity of… an astonishing 800 liters.

This was the theoretical maximum the human body could withstand, compressing air with “lung muscles” without exploding from the internal pressure.

His bulked-up super-lungs and Pranayama breathing granted him immense suction power, enabling his terrifying cat-huffing.

It also allowed him to take in massive amounts of oxygen to fuel his vast musculature.

“Hffff—HAAAH!”

He shattered Homura’s posture, forced it into a groveling bow, then stomped with a full-power Seismic Kick.

He shoved with the axe that had just split the burning eyeball like firewood.

Unleashed with Zero Force, the heavy blade drove past the shattered eye, tore through molten lava, crushed the behemoth’s eye socket, and carved into its brain.

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