Progress part 2 (Ashen Awakening)

The first rain fell with a thud against the metal crates—cold, heavy, indifferent.

John Wayne stood still, the wetness slowly seeping into his uniform, staining the khaki with streaks of ash and blood. Just a few days prior, he had stood proud before General Marcus Bennet, showcasing skills and strategies no mere recruit should possess. Impressed, the general gave him a rare chance—to deploy as part of the rear supply unit in the conflict-ridden zone of 1996. It was supposed to be safer. It wasn't.

Now, surrounded by the broken bodies of his comrades—the same men he shared smokes and stories with around the barracks fire—John knew what real war was.

Hell.

His fingers trembled as they hovered over the hilt of his combat knife. All the memories of his past life came rushing back—the quiet days as an engineering student, the promise he made to his mother before death came as a blur of metal and screeching tires. Truck-kun. Reincarnation. The void. The wheel of fate.

He had spun it—won five wishes.

He thought they'd make him a hero.

But heroes bleed too.

The stench of burnt oil and seared flesh filled his lungs, and his mind began to collapse inward. He fell to his knees, unable to process the carnage. The faces of those around him—the boy with the missing front tooth, the man who taught him how to reload faster, the quiet one who read old poetry—were now slack-jawed corpses littered with bullet holes.

John's breath hitched.

And then—

Silence.

A flash in his brain.

A whisper, like a ripple through the void.

"Emergency protocol override initiated. Activating direct control: Skill—Great Sage."

His brown eyes dulled into silver—an eerie, emotionless void. His body did not fall. It moved.

Without his will.

From deep within the labyrinth of skills and blessings granted by the wheel of fate, Great Sage awoke.

A sentient skill—omniscient, analytical, merciless.

She scanned the terrain. The scent of sulfur clung to the wind. The faintest tremor in the earth betrayed heavy footfalls.

Enemy scan complete. Hostile presence: 300. Objective: secure and defend supply cache. Priority override: eliminate all threats.

John's body became a vessel. No longer the soul of a boy haunted by grief, but a machine guided by unerring logic and cold efficiency.

His form slinked into the shadows between crates. No gunfire. No sound. Only silence, and death.

A knife materialized in his palm, grip reversed.

Utilizing Observation Haki…

Movement. Fifty meters northeast. A lone scout stepped cautiously, muzzle of his rifle raised.

Too slow.

John's body moved like a ghost, slipping through shadows, emerging just behind the scout.

One breath.

One slice.

A gurgle.

Silence.

The first soul claimed.

A dormant flicker inside his chest stirred.

The Demon Lord Seed.

Minutes blurred into an hour. Then two. Then three.

Blood misted the air like morning dew. The dark was no shield from the silver-eyed phantom.

With every kill, the Great Sage grew more efficient. She mapped their routes, studied their formations, turned their numbers into a liability.

The enemy never understood.

Why their comrades disappeared without a sound.

Why the supplies remained untouched even as the unit meant to protect it was slaughtered.

By the fourth hour, only forty rebels remained.

Some ran. Others fired wildly into the darkness. But bullets couldn't kill what they couldn't see.

One by one, the silver-eyed demon came for them.

John's body—though scraped, bruised, and cut—never faltered. Each graze was noted, managed, ignored.

And the seed in his chest pulsed.

Fifty souls.

A hundred.

Two hundred.

Each life fed the growing core of darkness inside him.

By the time the 299th body hit the ground with a wet thump, the final rebel stood alone, shaking.

He looked at John—not as a soldier.

But as a monster.

Ashen eyes. Bloodstained uniform. A silent figure amid a graveyard of the fallen.

"No... you're not human…"

The rebel dropped his weapon and ran.

He didn't get far.

John's body, under Great Sage's command, moved like lightning. A low dash, a twist, a blade.

Three hundred souls.

The night fell silent again.

Dawn broke over the horizon, casting soft gold over the blood-soaked crates.

The Great Sage gently lowered her master's body onto one of them, where the final crate of ammunition remained untouched. Her calculations were complete. No hostiles remained within a ten-kilometer radius.