The moment Sarah's breathing evened out into the deep, rhythmic pattern of true sleep, the gentle warmth vanished from Kenta's expression. The small, approving smile he had offered her faltered and died, leaving his face a cold, impassive mask. The teacher was gone; only the weapon remained.
He moved with a predator's quiet grace. He pulled the roughspun blanket up to her chin, his touch fleeting and impersonal, a final duty performed. His eyes, however, were already scanning the room, assessing threats that were no longer potential, but imminent.
From the corner of the room, the twin scabbards seemed to call to him. Hikari no Ha, the Blade of Light, hummed with a soft, reassuring energy. Yami no Hikari, the Light of Darkness, was a void of pure silence, a hunger waiting to be fed. He crossed the room and took them up. The familiar weight in his hands was a comfort and a curse. The leather-wrapped hilts felt like an extension of his own bones. With a single, fluid motion, he secured them to his obi, the quiet click of the sageo knot being tied the only sound he permitted himself.
He paused at the door, one hand resting on the frame. He closed his eyes, drawing not on the volatile Mana he had just taught Sarah, but on the disciplined, internal fire of his Ki. He pushed it outward, not as a destructive wave, but as a blanket, a shroud of utter silence. The technique settled over the entire inn like a layer of fallen snow. No sound would enter, and no sound would escape. Within its bounds, Sarah would sleep, untouched by the hell that was about to be unleashed. It was a sanctuary built on a lie, a peaceful silence paid for with coming violence.
Then, he was gone.
The scene outside the inn was not the bustling, recovering city they had fought to save mere hours before. It was a graveyard of stone and splintered wood. The entire front-facing quarter of the district was simply… gone. Not collapsed, but erased, as if a god had taken a colossal eraser to the world. Smooth, glassy craters yawned where buildings once stood. The air itself was dead, scoured of life and sound, heavy with the scent of ozone and powdered stone. This was Nox's casual signature, a testament to power so absolute it treated a city's destruction as a minor inconvenience on a journey.
Kenta did not mourn. He did not rage. He absorbed the devastation with a single, sweeping glance, his mind already calculating vectors and trajectories. His body crouched, and then he moved.
This was not mere speed. It was a denial of space. His Ki Technique, Shukuchi, turned the vast, broken landscape into a personal corridor. He did not run across the shattered ground; he flickered through the ruins, a phantom of black and crimson. One moment he was a silhouette against the ruined inn, the next he was a blur atop a half-standing wall fifty meters away, then a shadow disappearing into the gaping maw of a collapsed sewer entrance. He was a ghost, following a trail of absolute destruction that was as clear to him as a lit path. He was a hunter, and the scent of voided reality was his prey.
---
Deep below the royal castle, in the labyrinthine foundations that predated the kingdom itself, Nox hummed a discordant little tune. The Devil of Nightshinthal moved through the ancient stone passages with the air of a connoisseur strolling through a gallery. Her form—today a breathtakingly beautiful woman with hair like spun starlight and eyes that held swirling nebulae—was a stark contrast to her work.
With a casual flick of her wrist, a wall of enchanted royal stone, reinforced with generations of protective wards, dissolved. Not into rubble, but into their base particles, vanishing from existence with a soft hiss. She was not breaking and entering; she was editing the castle out of her way.
She was mid-step, about to annihilate another obstruction, when she paused. Her head tilted, a predator catching a scent on the wind. There was no sound, no tremor in the earth. It was a feeling—a pressure, a sharp, focused intent that cut through the ambient chaos of her own power like a laser. It was the feeling of being perfectly, irrevocably seen.
A slow, seductive smirk curled her perfect lips. "Well, now," she whispered to the dusty air. "A little lost puppy has found its way into the deep. And such a… angry little puppy."
She didn't turn. She didn't need to. She could feel him approaching, a silent arrow of pure malice aimed directly at her spine. She let him come. She even calculated the timing, adjusting her posture just so.
Kenta erupted from the shadows of a side passage, Yami no Hikari already free of its scabbard. The cursed blade left a trail of devouring darkness in its wake, a scar in the air itself. The strike was perfect, a horizontal slash meant to bisect her at the waist, faster than thought, fueled by a cold, controlled fury.
It connected.
And it stopped.
Nox stood unmoved. The blade of void-darkness rested against the fabric of her dress, not even slicing through the material. A faint, shimmering barrier of distorted space, visible only as a heat haze, had manifested an inch from her skin. The Obliteration Wave of Yami no Hikari, which could erase magic and matter, met its equal in Nox's passive reality-warping defense.
"Tch. Impatient, aren't we?" she chided, her voice a melodic mockery as she finally turned to face him. Her starlit eyes raked over him, from his grim face to the trembling dark blade. "That cursed sword is a fascinating toy. But to think it could touch me? How adorably provincial."
Kenta said nothing. His silence was a wall. His muscles strained, pushing against the immovable object of her defense.
Nox's smirk widened. "Oh, don't give me that silent treatment. I know why you're here. The righteous fury for your broken city? The vengeance for your broken friend?" She let out a light, airy laugh. "How droll. You are thinking so… small."
She took a step forward, the pressure of her LR-ranked aura flooding the corridor, a suffocating weight that made the very stones groan.
"I am not here for your city, little swordsman. I am not even here for your little princess. This?" She gestured around them, at the deep, ancient foundations. "I am looking for a key. A very specific, very old key. My master, the glorious Shadow Emperor Orion, requires it. And this pathetic castle, built atop far older, far more interesting ruins, is in my way."
Her eyes glinted with cruel amusement. "So you see, your suffering, your struggle… it's all just background noise. The collateral damage of a much, much larger game. You are an insect, buzzing at a giant who doesn't even have the time to properly swat you."
She leaned in slightly, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that was more terrifying than any shout.
"Now, be a good boy and run along. I am on a schedule. Or," she said, her gaze flicking to the still-drawn Hikari no Ha, "you can stay. And I will add two more legendary swords to my master's collection."