Akane POV:
Akane had always been weak—or so her father claimed, drilling those words into her from the moment she could understand them. He despised her very existence, just as her mother despised him. Her mother, a human, loathed the sight of Akane's horns, a stark reminder of the oni blood in her veins. When Akane was only six months old, her mother left, abandoning her with the man she hated most.
"She looks just like you," her mother had spat before disappearing into the night, leaving Akane behind.
For nearly half a year, Akane was nameless, ignored, and unloved. When her father finally deigned to name her, he chose "Akane," meaning "dark red," for the vibrant color of her hair—a feature inherited from her mother. But even this name carried resentment. Her father's fists fell on her more often than not, as though punishing her for the mother who had fled.
Her father had one lesson for her, one truth he repeated over and over: "The weak get devoured by the strong."
This was the oni creed, the only law they lived by. Akane's father was no exception. To him, strength was everything, and Akane's human half made her less than nothing. To him, it made her weak.
But Akane, even as a child, understood her father's arrogance for what it was: blindness. Being human was not a weakness. It was her greatest strength.
She had always been fascinated by humans. Fragile as they were, humans possessed a resilience that oni lacked. Oni focused solely on physical power, dismissing anything beyond brute strength. Their arrogance made them predictable—and careless.
Her father embodied this arrogance. He was oblivious to the hatred simmering behind Akane's quiet demeanor. He never noticed her clenched fists or the way her dark eyes lingered on the scars he left on her body. He never suspected that his daughter was planning to kill him.
She had been plotting his death for years.
Her hatred for him began the first time he beat her to death—or close enough. She was barely a year old. His fists, as heavy as iron, had left her broken on the floor, bleeding and gasping for air. But even then, her oni blood kept her alive. She healed, her body knitting itself back together over time.
Her father never stopped. The beatings continued, his fists a constant reminder of his so-called strength. But Akane endured. She waited, learning, growing stronger with each passing year. She knew her father was powerful—though not as mighty as Kaido, King of the Beasts, his bloodline was still full-blooded oni.
Oni didn't die easily. Ordinary poisons did nothing to them, and regular blades shattered against their skin. Trapped in their remote home in the jungle, Akane had few resources to work with. But she was patient. And she got her reward for that.
One day, while wandering the dense jungle, she found a rope-like material hidden among the foliage. It was no ordinary rope. Its fibers were impossibly strong, resistant to even the sharpest steel. It was tough enough to bear massive weight—perfect for what she had in mind.
Over the next few days, Akane crafted her plan with meticulous care. She fashioned a noose from the rope and rigged it above her father's bed. She tested and retested the mechanism, ensuring it would work flawlessly. She left nothing to chance.
That night, her father stumbled into the house, drunk as usual. His massive frame swayed as he muttered curses about Kaido, bemoaning his life and his supposed burdens.
"Damn beast," he slurred, collapsing onto his bed, the wooden frame groaning under his weight.
The trap sprung the moment his head hit the pillow. The noose snapped tight around his thick neck, cutting off his breath with brutal efficiency. His hands clawed at the rope, his eyes bulging as he realized what was happening.
"Akane!" he gurgled, his voice a strangled rasp. "Help me! Get this off me!"
But Akane didn't move. She stood in the doorway, watching with wide, unblinking eyes as her father thrashed against the noose. The more he struggled, the tighter it pulled. His nails scraped uselessly at the rope, drawing blood from his neck.
His voice cracked, shifting from anger to desperation. "Please! Akane, help me! I'm your father!"
She tilted her head, studying him with cold detachment. His massive hands, so used to beating her, flailed helplessly. The once-terrifying figure—a towering, four-meter oni who had terrorized her entire life—was reduced to a pathetic, blubbering fool, begging for his life.
She said nothing.
She simply watched as the light in his eyes dimmed, his struggles weakening until his body fell still. The house was silent except for the creak of the noose holding his lifeless form.
Akane stood there for what felt like hours, her small frame bathed in the pale light of the moon streaming through the window. She wasn't afraid. She wasn't even sad. She felt something she hadn't expected: fascination.
Her father, so proud of his strength, had died like any other weakling—desperate and powerless.
Akane was ten years old when she committed her first murder.
As she cut down his body and disposed of the evidence, her thoughts crystallized. She wasn't weak. She had never been weak. Her father had been wrong about everything. True power wasn't brute strength or physical dominance. True power was cunning. It was patience. It was understanding your enemy's weaknesses and exploiting them.
Her human side—her despised, ridiculed human half—was what had made her different. Her human blood gave her the ability to think beyond the simplicity of oni brute force.
Strength alone wasn't enough to survive in this world.
Strength combined with strategy—that was true power.
That night, as she stared at the ashes of the man who had called her weak, Akane felt no regret. She had taken her first step toward becoming something far more terrifying than her father could have ever imagined: someone who was both oni and human. Someone with the physical might of an oni and the shrewdness of a human.
And she would never stop.
…Or so she thought. Even after his death, the sins of her father came back to haunt her. The World Government was collecting and eliminating other stronger races. And her father had a bounty over 500 million berries. She learned later on that it was her mother who gave up their location for a hefty sum of money. They sent their forces to kill an oni with over 500 million bounty, but instead they found a child of eleven years old.
Akane killed twenty of those men that day. But even then, it wasn't enough. She was captured and it was decided that she will be the test subject for the new underground lab they had made. There were a lot of human slaves who did the odd jobs and the testing. And the main lab rats were, Akane herself, a lunarian child and a giant child.
Those two died only a couple of years after they arrived. The giant killed himself and the lunarian was subjected to extreme situations that was far beyond his healing capabilities.
After their deaths, Akane was alone again. And she never lost hope. She has seen what death looks like. She has seen it in her father's eyes. And she wanted no part of it. She will wait and remain patient. Until the day she gets her chance.
And it was today that she got her chance. A relocation after seven long years of captivity. It was the perfect chance for her to escape. So, she made herself look weaker than she actually was. Waiting for the moment when that scum of a man will come close to her range. If she gets the controller then it's game over for him. But it seems that this scum wasn't as stupid as he pretended to be.
He perfectly toyed with her using his left hand. Just as she was about to go on the aggressive, the green eyed man arrived. He cut of the wrist that was holding the controller in a speed that should not be allowed for a human to have. And even then Akane knew that it wasn't his full speed. He asked her for her name and after some hesitation, she replied.
That prideful look in his eyes were still there as he started speaking to her, while totally ignoring the commander's hand he had just cut off. Akane thought at first that it was arrogance. But no. This wasn't arrogance. This was confidence. Confidence that he can kill every single person here without giving much effort. And the only reason he was even bothering speaking to her is because he found her interesting.
"How long are you going to continue pretending, Akane?" He asked with a strange tone in his voice, "Don't you think it's time that these men realized who they are dealing with?"
His words were so simple and yet those same words resonated something deep inside of her. Something primal, something raw. Something that was truly dangerous. Something that she has held back for almost seven years. Her oni blood. And she decided that she's held back long enough.
Before anyone could even realize what was happening, her hand moved like a blur and stabbed one of the men that was holding her back. His voice broke and he gurgled his own blood as he found his vocal cord missing. Akane threw away the organ she had just pulled out and looked at the other men. Their expressions were filled with terror as they looked at the oni before them. The oni they were experimenting on just this afternoon. The oni that was now free.
Akane grinned seeing their expression.
Tonight, they will feel her wrath.