"Wakey, wakey, beggar boy," Luke heard right before someone slapped him hard in the face, causing a jolt of pain to course through his head. He opened his eyes to see the Jackson standing right beside his bed.

Luke's eyes widened in shock.

How could Jackson even be here? There were bodyguards outside, weren't there? Were they asleep? On their break? Had they left?

Luke considered yelling for help, but thought better of it. Sakura was right there. If Jackson had another pocket knife and hurt her, he would never forgive himself. Then again, having her sleeping defenseless like that was much worse.

"Sakura!" he yelled quickly. "Sakura, wake up! Sakura!" He kept yelling with all his might, but she didn't as much as move her eyelids.

What was going on? She was breathing, so she wasn't dead at least. Had Jackson drugged her? Why was the bully here? Lt. Jones couldn't have found out about Sakura's recordings, right?

Was...

Was Jackson here to deal with Luke once and for all?

"You got yourself a nice place here, huh?" Jackson said walking around like he owned the place. "You scored big with the yellow whore." He arrived beside the sleeping Sakura.

That closeness was too much Luke. That monster could not be that close to her. The tiny, weak spark of desire for justice inside him that had ignited when his grandfather spoke about being a warrior grew into a powerful flame.

A flame of ire that wanted to burn.

"Stay away from her," Luke ordered with so much power in his voice that even he was surprised by it.

Jackson, of course, only smiled wider and ignored Luke. Instead, he caressed her face with a finger. "Now that I look closely, she's not that bad, is she? I've had worse." He looked back at Luke.

The ire became a burning volcano of pure rage lava. It became a thousand suns glued together, ready to burn all creation. He had never hated anyone so much in his life like he hated Jackson now, not even during the worst beatings.

"Leave her alone!" he demanded louder than before, his entire body trembling with anger.

Jackson laughed. "She's even making a man out of you, huh?" He grabbed her face. "I bet you fell in love, didn't you? With her money, that is. Even I was impressed by her family money when my parents told me."

"Leave her alone! Now!" Luke yelled and shook in the bed. His limbs sent pain shooting through him, but he ignored it. Only Sakura mattered now.

"My, my, you're really jealous. Never took you as the possessive type. Are you afraid she'll fall in love if she has a taste of me?" He approached his face slowly to hers. "Do you think she would follow me like an obedient little dog?" His mouth was almost touching hers. "It might be fun to force her into becoming my little bitch. She looks like the kind that would resist... at first. They all submit in the end."

"I'll kill you!" Luke screamed in overwhelming rage and started to struggle violently in the bed to stand up. Unfortunately, he had four broken limbs. All he managed was to move a little to the side, but the side grates stopped him from falling. "If you do anything to her, I'll kill you! I swear it! I'll fucking kill you!"

Jackson laughed loudly and released Sakura, then stepped back. Luke calmed a little at that. His ire became merely a dormant volcano while an earthquake was underway.

"Tell you what, beggar. I'll give you a chance. A chance to grow powerful enough to one day, who knows, do something to me." He approached Luke and raised a single finger, which he slowly moved toward his temple. "A little gift from powers much beyond your understanding." His irises turned red.

Jackson's finger touched Luke, and something just...

...invaded his head.

Something pushed through his skull, drilling into his brain with a pain that wasn't so bad. He had had worse.

But it also released a burning heat inside his head.

It was a completely different type of heat than his phoenix heart's. While his phoenix warmth felt like a good thing that could cause destruction if needed, this heat felt like it only existed to cause pain and grief.

It wanted to destroy and consume all.

Yet, it was weak. A heat much greater than it came from his heart and pushed it back. Fire fought fire in his brain, leaving it painfully scorched. He screamed in absolute anguish as the two powers battled each other.

The invading fire might not be as strong as phoenix fire, but it fought with its all. The flames of Luke's heart struggled to destroy the invader. It took an eternity, but in the end, Luke's heart emerged victorious.

It had completely destroyed whatever the source of that flame was.

Luke didn't stop screaming though. Whatever Jackson had done to him had physically pierced his skull to invade. It still hurt, even though he could feel the soothing flames of his phoenix heart now decreasing the pain and healing the tiny, tiny hole on his forehead at the same time.

He dind't see when the system's icon appeared on the bottom of his vision. However, he must've unintentionally focused on it, for the message opened itself.

Eternal Phoenix's Heart

The Eternal Phoenix's Heart has prevented a Demonic Seed from invading your soul.

Soon, the pain faded away, his reason returned, and with it, understanding of what he was reading.

There was a reason Jackson had acted so uncharacteristically aggressive on the rooftop. A reason Sakura wasn't waking up and no one was coming to check on why Luke was screaming. A reason Jackson could attempt to put a Demonic Seed into Luke's soul.

Jackson was a demon.

The weakness of the invading flame showed he was still a young demon though. And by destroying the Demonic Seed, Luke had just stolen from the boy his one chance of growing stronger in the short term.

Jackson's reaction was of utter surprise at first. His eyes widened so much Luke thought they might pop out, and his mouth became a perfect "O." The shock was short-lived and quickly became absolute rage. A rage as strong, Luke thought, as what he himself had felt moments ago. Jackson was actually radiating heat as the fires of sheer anger burned through him.

"You're dead!" he yelled and released a shockwave that pushed everything around him slightly away. "You're fucking dead!" He jumped at Luke and put his hands over his mouth and nose.

Luke couldn't breath, but that wasn't the worse. Jackson's hands were burning his face, even letting out a fizzling sound. His entire body was radiating so much heat that it was distorting the air around him.

And that's what saved Luke.

The fire alarm went off. Water started falling from the fire sprinklers on the ceiling. Sakura coughed, a sign that the demon's sleeping spell was either broken or wearing off now that a new external physical factor had been added. That meant Jackson had very little time to act.

So he released Luke and pulled his hand back, keeping it straight. It started burning. Literally. The smell of burnt skin and flesh filled the place, and Luke, who was breathing hard after almost suffocating, took a mouthful and gagged. Jackson screamed in anger and agony.

Sakura opened her eyes, confused at first, then full of panic.

Jackson attacked.

His hand went straight into Luke's chest and heart.

"Luke!" Sakura yelled in absolute terror.

As blackness came to Luke, the last thing he saw was Sakura rushing to his side while Jackson removed his hand and ran away from the room.

The tower's skies belonged to two species: dragons and phoenixes. They weren't present in all floors, but if a floor had any one of them, they naturally ruled over it. There was no exception at all.

Dragons were power incarnate, both physically and magically. Even phoenixes gave way to them. Yet, phoenixes were the beloved children of fire, and even dragon fire, no matter how strong, couldn't kill a phoenix. Weaken it, yes, but the final spark of life would remain with the phoenix unless it was attacked in another way. And if there was a spark, it would one day recover into a living flame.

The main purpose of a phoenix's fire was eternal life, even if it could be used offensively to cause death.

Demons were the extreme opposite. They also considered themselves children of fire, but theirs was a fire that burned everything in their way. Its purpose was to bring pain and destruction, and it could only heal demons, unlike phoenix fire.

Both phoenixes and demons were beings of fire, and phoenix fire was the purest flame in existence. Therefore, it was one of the very, very few things other than the suffering of others which demons could absorb to grow stronger. That made phoenixes a natural prey for demons.

However, when magic was involved, the line between prey and hunter blurred.

Phoenixes were in no way weak. They gained nothing from killing demons but the satisfaction of killing their hunter, and maybe SP under the system. They loved life in general, but had an obvious soft spot for their own lives, and could become a raging inferno of revenge when they were threatened. Their hatred for being treated as food made them hunt and kill any demon on sight.

When Luke had resisted the Demonic Seed, he had been just another soldier fighting a battle older than human civilization.

And in this case, the natural prey held the advantage.

Demon fire was nowhere close to being as powerful as dragon fire. Phoenixes could survive the latter, and thus they could also naturally survive the former. Jackson's hand had hurt Luke much more as it pierced his heart than the fire that hurt Jackson himself.

Demon fire corrupted any living matter it touched, but phoenixes could ignore it completely. Though Luke's regeneration was only faster than a human's, his heart was not human. It was the heart of an actual eternal phoenix that had replaced his human heart.

Anyone who thought they could kill a phoenix just by poking a hole through their heart was an idiot.

Well, the myriad phoenix might die from it just to be reborn the very next instant in the past and enact vengeance on you before you could do anything to her. They were considered the worst enemy to have. The eternal phoenix, however, would keep living for all eternity as long as its heart wasn't completely crushed.

In fact, the eternal phoenix's survival was so good, it made no sense for Luke to have the heart of one safely inside him. From what his memories told him, if someone took an eternal phoenix's heart out of their body, it would just grow into a new phoenix as time passed. Placing it inside someone should just have killed the person as it melted their flesh. It was just a very complex way of burning someone to ashes.

Jackson's attack had hurt Luke and made him unconscious, but it hadn't killed him. Instead, the damage to Luke's chest before the hand reached the heart was the hardest thing to deal with.

While his phoenix heart could ignore demon fire, his body couldn't, and Luke's flesh was still infected with a kind of nano fire that human technology couldn't put out. If anyone other than him had been infected, it would burn their body away like a festering wound until they died. It was a horrible way to go. Fortunately, his heart would prevent the corruption and regenerate the affected area, though it would take time.

Slow or not, he would survive, and that's all that mattered.

So Luke wasn't surprised when he woke up in yet another room. It seemed every time he fainted, a new room was given to him.

The current one looked like a fancy hotel room. The bed was ridiculously comfortable, to the point he felt he was lying on clouds in the sky, and dark wood with golden details was the main decor theme. The room was large, had an abstract painting on a wall and a glass wall that gave him a beautiful view of a beach. The sun rising from the blue ocean on the horizon was breathtaking. The early hour meant he had either been transported very quickly out of the hospital or had been unconscious for more than a day.

He looked around, but couldn't find Sakura anywhere.

His chest hurt, but not as much as he thought it should. Jackson had used demon fire, but since he was probably still a weak demon, his fire was weak too.

Demon fire...

Demons...

Fear filled Luke's body and soul.