Rainbase.
The three cloaked figures moved swiftly through the quiet streets, their dark cloaks brushing the sand-covered ground. The city behind them was eerily still, the aftershock of their earlier violence lingering like the dry heat in the air.
The short man with the poisoned blade, Griv, yawned loudly, twirling his sword lazily. "That was too easy. Honestly, I expected more from the brother of Yohan. What a letdown."
"He was just a boy," said the tall one, Harn, with a shrug. "All bark, no bite."
"No," the leader, Savito, corrected, his voice low and measured. "It's not because he was weak. We had the element of surprise. That's all."
"You're right," said a voice from behind them, calm but cold. "You ambushed me."
All three froze. The air thickened. A dreadful chill swept over them, unnatural and sharp.
Savito's eyes widened. Before he could turn fully.
"Hokuteiken."
Grkk—!
Savito gasped, the sound of ice splintering through flesh echoing as a long, jagged blade pierced straight through his back and out his chest. His breath caught. Blood hit the sand, sizzling faintly against the cold blade that impaled him.
The other two reacted instantly. Harn launched himself backward, landing several meters away. Griv rolled to the side, sword already drawn, his face twisting in alarm.
Savito turned his head, his lips trembling. Behind him stood Zino, bloodied, pale, barely upright, but alive. His eyes burned with quiet fury beneath a sheen of sweat. Steam rose from his back where his healing power battled poison. His clothes were torn, stained with dried blood. He looked like a man pulled back from death itself.
"You—" Savito gasped.
Zino narrowed his eyes. Ice crept rapidly along the blade, spreading from the wound outward. Frost overtook Savito's chest, shoulders, neck—
"Crumble," Zino whispered.
Crack—! Prang!
In an instant, Savito's body shattered into hundreds of glittering shards, exploding outward like broken glass. A gust of wind scattered the pieces into the desert.
Silence fell. Only Zino's ragged breathing remained.
He staggered, gripping his chest, but stood tall. He glanced at the remaining two, his vision slightly blurred. "The hardest guy… is down. Two more to go."
Griv stared at the empty space where his leader once stood, mouth agape. "S-Savito…?"
Harn clenched his fists, his eyes blazing. "You were stabbed through the heart! No one survives that!"
Zino looked at them, a half-smile playing at the corner of his lips. "Me…? I'm not surviving." He wiped blood from his mouth, then held up his hand. It trembled uncontrollably. "I'm… dying."
The wind blew gently, lifting sand across the ground.
Time rewound—just seconds before Zino's supposed death.
The blade had been a breath away from his neck, poised to end his life. But in that very moment, something unexpected happened.
[System Notification: Your Air Element has reached Level 70. You can now turn parts of your body into Air Element.]
Zino's eyes widened—not in fear, but in surprise.
What timing...!
The instant the sword came down, his body responded instinctively. His neck, vulnerable and exposed, turned translucent—his flesh dispersing into air. The blade sliced through harmlessly, meeting no resistance.
From the outside, it looked perfect—clean, fatal. His eyes, wide in shock, sold the illusion. To the three cloaked attackers, it was over. They thought they'd won.
But Zino wasn't shocked because he was dying. He was shocked because of the system notification, an ability upgrade that arrived like divine intervention.
Still, he knew the truth: even with this new ability, he was badly wounded. Poison coursed through his blood, and the gaping wounds on his chest weren't healing fast enough. He couldn't take them head-on. Not yet.
So he made a decision.
He would play dead.
Let them believe they'd won. Let them turn their backs. Just like they had ambushed him… he would return the favor. And he'd strike first at the one who troubled him most—the shadow manipulator, Savito—the one who had pulled him underground.
Savito would fall. Then the others.
End of Flashback. Back to Present.
Griv, the short swordsman, took another step back, his entire posture tense. He stared at Zino with wide eyes, unable to hide the rising dread in his gut.
"He really got back up after that?" he muttered. "This guy… he's not human."
"No," Harn, the tall brawler, replied with clenched fists. "He's just too stubborn to die."
Savito was gone, shattered into a thousand frozen shards. Their leader—defeated in a single strike. However, that's because Zino ambushed him.
Looking at Zino's current conditions, he is already in bad shape. He stood there, bloodied and swaying, but his eyes burned with grim determination. He looked like a ghost risen from his own grave. His breath came in shallow gasps, but his presence was crushing.
Griv's fear trembled on the edge of his nerves—until Harn spoke again, louder this time. "We still have a chance. He's injured. He can't hold on much longer."
Griv clenched his jaw. "Right. I don't care what tricks he pulled… This time, he won't get back up."
Zino said nothing, simply raising his hand, and a cold gust swept past them. The temperature dropped. His entire right arm now shimmered faintly with air—partially transparent, flickering like heatwaves.
He was preparing to fight.
"Attack!" Harn roared.
Both men lunged forward.
Griv dashed low, sword drawn, aiming for Zino's side while Harn charged high, fist cocked back for a crushing blow. Their coordination was sharp, trained, and precise.
Zino narrowed his eyes. His breath was shallow, each inhale scraping against the cold air around him. He stood firm, blood still staining his chest and side. His vision blurred at the edges, but he forced himself to remain focused.
"I don't have time to bleed," he muttered. Then he pressed a palm against his side.
"Frozen Seal."
A layer of frost quickly spread across the wound, sealing it with a crackling hiss. The cold bit into his flesh, but it dulled the pain, locking the bleeding under a barrier of ice. It wasn't healing—but it was enough to keep him standing.
While he did that, Harn appeared beside him, fist cocked.
"Tekkai Seiken: Meteor Blow!"
A reinforced punch, fused with Tekkai's iron body technique, came crashing toward Zino. Zino barely leaned back in time. The force shattered the stone beneath his feet, sending a shockwave out.
Zino responded fast, drawing ice into his palm. Before he could counter, Griv moved in, his blade slashing down. The blade missed, as Zino stepped to the side.
"Nice evade, freak. But let me show you my art."
Griv vanished using *Soru*, reappearing behind Zino.
"Yasha Style: Phantom Fang!"
Zino spun, raising an icy barrier. The sword clanged against it, broke it off. Zino hardened his body using Tekkai, but a small gash formed near his shoulder. Blood trickled out again.
"Poison…" Zino muttered.
Griv grinned. "Of course. My blade is coated with a venom cocktail. The same one I used earlier. Even if you freeze the wounds, that stuff will still spread."
Zino's body trembled slightly. The poison, though slowed, hadn't left his system. The freezing was only a temporary measure.
"I see," Zino muttered, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "So, I need to end this fast."
Harn's muscles flexed as he crouched, then called out: "Tekkai Seiken: Rolling Mountain!"
In a flash, he spun and launched a devastating kick — not just fast, but weighted with the full force of his iron-hardened body. The air cracked as his foot surged forward, crashing into Zino's ribs.
Boom!
Zino barely had time to cross his arms, hardening his forearms with a coating of frost to absorb the blow. But the force behind it was monstrous. His defense shattered mid-impact, and his body was launched like a bullet, slamming into a distant rock wall.
Crack! The boulder fractured on impact.
"Gah…!" Blood sprayed from his mouth and from the reopened wounds across his chest and side.
Smoke and dust filled the air. Zino slowly pushed himself up, one knee hitting the sand. His breathing was ragged, and every movement sent jolts of pain through his body. Ice crystals still clung to the gashes on his side, holding back the bleeding — but barely.
"You're adept with the Six Powers," Harn growled, straightening from his kick. "But we've mastered them."
"You won't outmatch us in close combat," Griv added with a crooked grin, one hand resting casually on the hilt of his curved blade.
"Maybe not…" Zino rasped. A cold mist drifted from his palms, slowly fading. "But I don't need to fight for long…"
Frost began to melt from his hands. He closed his eyes.
He shifted. The cold mist disappeared, replaced by a shimmering distortion in the air around his body. The sand beneath him stirred unnaturally, lifted by small, controlled bursts of wind pressure.
Instantly, a subtle pulse swept through the battlefield. Zino's body lightened. His breathing, though pained, steadied. And most importantly his speed returned.
The two ex-CP9 agents lunged forward. Their movements were swift, precise, and perfectly synchronized — the kind of coordination only elite assassins could perform.
To Zino's eyes, blurred with exhaustion and blood loss, they vanished from view. But his eyes were no longer his primary guide.
Instead, his Observation Haki took over. He felt the vibrations of their steps, the shift in the wind behind their strikes, the hostility in their breath.
He vanished just as Harn's fist carved through the air where he'd been.
*Shu-shu-shu!*
Zino became a blur, weaving between the two assassins with bursts of wind jetting from his feet and elbows. Each movement was fluid, agile, and deceptively fast—his body seemingly untethered from gravity itself.
Griv's eyes sharpened. "Tch. You think you can keep dodging forever?" He stepped back, raising his blade. "Take this—!"
"Yasha Style: Shadow Slash!"
In an instant, he vanished, his figure blurring and splitting into several afterimages. Slicing winds followed, converging toward Zino from multiple angles.
At the same time, Harn positioned himself at the front, both fists clenched and glowing with compressed force.
"Tekkai Seiken: Hammer Impact!"
He stomped forward, the ground cracking beneath his step. With both arms hardened through Tekkai, he launched a double-fisted blow aimed to pulverize Zino with brute, iron-like force.
The two attacks came from opposite sides—a precise pincer assault meant to leave no escape.
But Zino didn't flinch.
"Fujin."
The word left his lips like a whisper, but the result was instant.
Boom!
Wind erupted from his entire body in a massive blast, halting both attacks just before they could land. The pressure wave didn't just push them back—it forced both Harn and Griv to stagger, blinking in shock.
The wind didn't stop.
It gathered, whirling faster and faster around them. In a breath, it expanded into a *cyclone*, then a howling tornado, enclosing all three of them in a roaring prison of cutting air and violent current.
"What… what is this?!" Griv stumbled, his footing lost as the wind tried to lift him. "Wasn't he an *Ice* user?!"
"Don't lose focus!" Harn shouted over the deafening wind. "This is still a fight!"
Zino's voice echoed from within the swirling storm, cold and resolute.
"Let me return what you gave me… by a thousandfold."
His body shimmered and melted into the wind, becoming one with the storm. Then—
"Arasatsujin!" (*Storm Slaughter!*)
The tornado constricted like a serpent tightening around its prey.
WHAM!
Shockwave punches, amplified by wind pressure, exploded from every direction. Fists of compressed air struck with crushing force, invisible yet merciless.
Griv shouted, "Tekkai: Full Guard!" His muscles hardened, body stiff as iron.
Harn followed suit. "Tekkai Kōsei: Stone Wall!"
The two tried to defend, calling upon their mastery of Rokushiki to absorb the blows. For a brief moment, it worked—the first few strikes slammed into their bodies with little effect.
But Zino's storm wasn't made for one strike—it was a barrage.
Each punch cracked harder than the last. Every impact sent shockwaves through their internal organs. Their hardened defense began to *splinter*—first small cracks, then ruptures.
*CRACK!*
Griv's Tekkai snapped. Blood burst from his mouth as he was flung across the cyclone, crashing into the swirling walls of wind.
Harn held his ground longer, but the final punch struck his ribs with such force, his body bent unnaturally before being hurled back like a ragdoll.