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"Hmph!"
Jin moved.
But there was no transition. One instant he was thirty meters away, and the next he was in front of Kuroi, his fist wrapped in a white light so blinding that the shadows in the chamber vanished.
But the terrifying thing wasn't his speed, which would have put a supersonic jet breaking the sound barrier to shame.
The most terrifying thing was the silence.
There was no shockwave. Instead, the air seemed to have been absorbed instantaneously by that power.
BOOM!!
The fist struck something invisible.
A barrier covering Kuroi like a second skin, an automatic defense that probably would have stopped any conventional attack.
But it didn't stop this one.
The cracks spread across the barrier like a spiderweb in fast forward, fragmenting it piece by piece with a crystalline crunch. And the fist, without losing a shred of momentum, punched through and penetrated directly into Kuroi's brow.
CRRACK!
Everything caved inward as if a cannonball had been driven between his eyebrows. A fist sized hole opened in his forehead, and a blackish violet liquid splattered in every direction like a geyser, drenching Jin's arm up to the elbow.
However...
"IT'S NOT ENOUGH!"
Kuroi laughed uproariously.
And from inside the wound, filaments of granulation tissue sprouted. They intertwined rapidly, closing the hole layer by layer, regenerating everything in a matter of seconds until his forehead was intact again.
As if the blow had never existed.
Immediately after, the four mouthparts of his jaw spread open, revealing a dark pit full of fangs, and at its depths, something began to glow.
A white light.
Faint at first, then brighter and brighter.
An energy cannon.
But Jin was already moving.
BAM!
An uppercut crashed into Kuroi's jaw with a brutality that snapped his head ninety degrees. The mouthparts clamped shut, and the attack about to fire jammed in his mouth.
With his head violently wrenched, his brain spun, and for a fraction of a second his eyes lost focus, and the tentacles around him thrashed without coordination.
'A fraction of a second.'
And in these fights, victory or defeat is decided in intervals smaller than that.
Jin compressed his entire body. Every muscle, every tendon, every fiber tensed like a spring.
The energy converged into his right fist, concentrating, compressing, accumulating until the air around him began to ionize and crackle with electric arcs.
A punch with a hundred thousand horsepower.
BOOOOOOOOM!!
In Kuroi's chest, where there had been flesh, there was now a hole.
Enormous and clean.
And through it you could see the tree behind him.
The edges of the hole were cauterized by the electricity, smoking, and the regeneration filaments trying to sprout burned up instantly, unable to close this wound.
And on top of that, the energy he had been building up in his mouth to kill Jin detonated.
It detonated inside him.
The lightning tore his insides apart from within. The flesh charred, the veins running through his body flickered one last time before going dark like burned out lights.
"How... is this possible..."
His eyes, which a minute before had burned with the ambition of a king, were now slowly fading, and in them was reflected Jin's face looking at him with the same calm he'd had from the very beginning.
"How can I die here..."
The arachnid legs holding him to the ceiling released one by one. The tentacles fell, the toothed heads closing their jaws.
"If I... was going to become... a King..."
Boom
His colossal body collapsed.
[Ding]
[Congratulations, Host. For successfully eliminating the Incubus Prince, Kuroi Ryūji, you have obtained 200,000 points.]
[Current points: 216,300.]
'TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND POINTS?!'
Jin stared at the corpse with new eyes. If a single boss dropped that kind of insane loot, then hunting big fish was, by far, the most profitable way to...
No.
He stopped himself.
Bugs of that caliber didn't respawn. Demon Princes didn't just pop up from under rocks. And even though the idea of farming a hundred thousand points a month by blowing up fat beasts sounded ideal, sooner or later the supply would run dry.
Only his "wings" could give him income in a constant and inexhaustible way.
Each wing generated a minimum of five thousand points a month, for every time he made them his. Simple as that. A hundred wings meant half a million points monthly.
Half a million, without having to kill anyone. Just doing what he did best.
While he fantasized about his glorious future of a hundred wings, the battle on the other side of the chamber was also nearing its end.
"M-My body... I CAN'T MOVE!"
Shigeru collapsed against the ground like a sack of bones, trembling. His limbs, which minutes ago had been shredding vines like they were threads, now wouldn't respond.
"Y-You... BITCH! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!"
"An anesthetic."
Shizuru walked toward him without hurry. Her heels echoed with a leisurely rhythm, and on her lips a dangerous smile curved.
"Those rosebushes you cut through earlier, do you remember them?" She crouched in front of him. "Every time you tore apart my vines, the thorns injected you with a dose, and every rose you stepped on while breaking free released paralytic pollen that you inhaled without noticing."
Her emerald eyes gleamed behind the lenses.
"Each and every one of those flowers was a paralytic drug, Director. The harder you fought, the more venom you absorbed~"
!
The realization hit him... it had all been part of the trap. She had been poisoning him through his own strength!
"DAMN YOU...!"
Shizuru's whip, a thick vine covered in thorns and roses, uncoiled from her hand and wrapped around Shigeru's neck.
It tightened firmly, driving the thorns in, and she pulled on the end until she was standing over him.
"Director, thank you so much for taking care of me all this time."
"But from here on, rest."
"Goodbye~"
And before Shigeru's horrified gaze.
"NO! WAI..."
Shizuru squeezed.
Pshuu!
Shigeru's head shot off his body like a champagne cork. It spun through the air with his eyes open in that frozen expression of horror, before landing heavily against the ground.
'Phew... finally taken care of.'
Letting out a sigh, Shizuru released the whip, which withered between her fingers and fell to the ground like a dry branch.
Months of infiltration, of fake smiles, of enduring that old man's disgusting gaze every time he passed her in the hallways, of pretending she didn't know what he was doing with the students...
It had all been worth it for that sound.
She turned, and her gaze found Jin.
Kuroi's colossal corpse lay at his feet like a collapsed mountain. The remains of the arachnid legs, the inert tentacles... and in the middle of all that, Jin standing, shaking off his arm.
The malevolent aura still emanating from the corpse was so dense that she held her breath involuntarily.
'Wh-What a hot man, Jin-kun...'
Her eyelashes trembled, and in the depths of her eyes swirled a gleam that had nothing to do with admiration.
But before that thought could take shape, a crash tore her from her daydream.
...
On the other side of the chamber, something had changed in the masked man.
With Kuroi's death, his movements had turned clumsy. As if the strings holding him up had been cut. His claws, which minutes ago had kept pace with Rinko, now arrived late. His dodges, precise before, now left gaps.
'NOW!'
Rinko sensed it immediately.
Ishikiri Kanemitsu sang.
The blade traced an arc of light that lit up the chamber like a horizontal bolt of lightning. The steel connected cleanly against the masked man's side and sent him flying.
His body bounced off the ground several times before slamming into the wall with a crunch. On impact, the mask covering his face cracked down the middle and the fragments fell to the floor.
"Cough... cough cough..."
The man slumped against the wall, coughing. From his mouth came masses of withered, dead tentacles that disintegrated on contact with the air, mixed with dark blood that wouldn't stop pouring out.
His entire body convulsed, as if whatever had been keeping him standing was rotting from the inside.
And his face...
Rinko stopped dead.
Without the mask, what stared back at her was the face of a man in his fifties. Emaciated, with deep dark circles, grayish skin, and sunken eyes.
But beneath all that deterioration, beneath the black veins crawling up his temples and the scars carving across his cheeks... there was something.
Something familiar.
Rinko's hand trembled.
"Are you...?"
A strange feeling welled up in her chest.
She didn't know him and she was sure she had never seen him. But those features...
They reminded her of someone.
But the man didn't give her time. Ignoring her daze and ignoring the blood gushing out of him, his trembling hand reached inside what was left of his clothes and pulled out something he had been carrying against his chest.
A letter.
Yellowed, wrinkled, with edges worn by years.
With the last of his remaining strength, he held it out toward Rinko.
"Please... d-deliver it... to Shiranui... I b-beg you..."
The name hit Rinko.
"WAIT!" She dropped to her knees in front of him with wide eyes. "Are you...?"
But the arm holding the letter was already falling. His fingers loosened, the letter slipped, and Rinko caught it in midair before it touched the ground.
When she looked at him again, the man's eyes were already closed.
"What happened?"
Jin and Shizuru came running when they heard Rinko's shout, but stopped when they saw the scene.
"If I'm not mistaken..."
Rinko stared at the man's face. The pieces fell into place slowly.
"He should be... Yukikaze's father. Missing for many years."
"The previous head of the Mizuki family?!" Shizuru brought a hand to her mouth with wide eyes. "Shiranui-senpai's..."
"Yes..." Rinko nodded heavily. "I remember Yukikaze told me once. Right after Aunt Shiranui and he got engaged, he vanished without a trace. All these years, Shiranui-san has been searching for him nonstop, never giving up..."
She looked at the letter in her hands.
"I never imagined that..."
'Shiranui Mizuki...'
While Jin listened to the conversation, his gaze drifted absently toward Shigeru's head.
'System, how many points does it cost to extract Shigeru's memories?'
[5,000 points.]
'Do it.'
With over two hundred thousand points in his account, five thousand was pocket change.
In an instant, a flood of someone else's memories poured into his mind. Images, conversations, documents, faces, all condensed into an avalanche of information that his brain processed at superhuman speed.
The secrets of the Zeus Group. The front academies. The contacts with the demon world. The transactions with the Incubi. Kuroi's plans...
Everything played out in rapid flashbacks, and when the cascade ended, Jin opened his eyes.
His gaze locked onto the colossal tree.
According to the memories, that tree wasn't decoration. For years, Shigeru had been collecting women who had fallen into depravity and feeding them to it.
'System, how many points would I get for handing this tree over to you?'
[100,000 points.]
[Note: This tree, by devouring women corrupted by depravity, can produce Fruits of Desire. There is a probability of helping users of high level abilities comprehend the Authority of Desire and ascend to the state of demigod.]
'Authority... demigod...'
His eyes gleamed.
'How many points would it cost to accelerate its growth?'
[300,000 points.]
Out of the question.
'Then take it.'
Without making the slightest sound, the giant tree vanished into thin air.
Where the tree had once stood, now there was only an empty space and a dark ceiling.
RUMMBLE!!
Immediately after, the entire place began to shake violently.
"Wh-What's happening?!"
Rinko and Shizuru jumped to their feet, looking around in alarm as cracks multiplied across the ceiling and floor.
"Probably because that guy died." Jin pointed at Kuroi's corpse, unfazed.
"Quick, let's get out of here!"
BOOOM!
...
They made it out of the institute just as the two upper floors caved in on themselves with a thundering crash that shook the entire forest.
When the dust settled, where the Zeus Materials Research Institute once stood, all that remained was a crater surrounded by rubble.
"Finally done with this shit..."
Stretching his arms above his head, Jin arched his back.
The night sky covered them, the stars still visible although the horizon was beginning to show a grayish tint that announced a distant dawn.
The forest around them was silent.
"Now we plan to notify the academy and have this place shut down..."
"And you, Jin-kun?"
Rinko looked at him, waiting for the answer.
"Me?" Jin checked his watch. Four in the morning. "I'm going back to sleep for a little while longer."
He waved his hand casually and turned to leave.
But he didn't make it past the second step when something soft, heavy, and warm pressed against his back.
"With two great beauties like us right in front of you~..." Shizuru's arms wrapped around him from behind, and her tits, those monstrosities that defied physics, crushed against his lower back. "Jin-kun doesn't want to stay a little longer~?"
"..."
Jin turned his head.
Shizuru was looking up at him with those half lidded eyes and her tongue peeking out to slowly trace the contour of her lips.
'She was tempting him!'
But now that he thought about it more calmly, ever since he'd saved her, Shizuru hadn't stopped trying to seduce him. The kiss on the cheek, the provocative comments, the way she looked at him when she thought he wasn't watching... And what had happened in the dormitory...
'Could it be that she's still...?'
His gaze drifted downward.
"Kya~♥️!"
Squealing, Shizuru shuddered against him and her arms squeezed tighter. Because upon feeling Jin's gaze traveling over her, her body reacted on its own.
A spark exploded between her legs, electric, identical to what she had felt a while ago when Jin's fingers were inside her.
Her pussy clenched in an intense spasm, and a sudden wetness soaked through her suit.
"Shizuru-nee, stop provoking him!"
Cutting the moment short, Rinko jumped between the two, pushing Shizuru backward.
Her expression was stern, but her ears were completely red.
And when she turned toward Jin, her voice dropped to a murmur only he could hear.
"Jin-kun... if you have time this weekend..." Her eyes looked up at him shyly from below. "C-Could you come to the Akiyama Dōjō...?"
The invitation sounded innocent. But the blush consuming her told a completely different story.
'Heh...'
Jin smiled on the inside. The upright and disciplined Rinko Akiyama, the Taimanin who had bitten her lips until they bled to keep from moaning in front of him, who had faked passing out because she couldn't bear the shame of having come in his presence...
Was now inviting him to her home.
'I'm going to love watching her when I break her apart.'
Leaning toward her, his mouth drew close to her ear, and his warm breath brushed that reddened earlobe. "With pleasure."
"Mmn~♥️..."
A tiny moan slipped out of Rinko as she shut her eyes tight and pressed her lips together, but the shiver had already run through her.
"What are you two whispering about~?"
Shizuru appeared from one side with narrowed eyes and a cat's smile.
"N-Nothing important." Rinko pulled away from Jin as if she'd been electrocuted, her face so red it glowed.
"Mmhm~, sure it isn't~"
"Well then, two beautiful ladies..."
Jin stepped back, hands in his pockets and a smile that promised nothing good for the chastity of either of them.
The moonlight bathed his back, blurring his outline.
"Until next time."
His silhouette slowly merged with the darkness of the forest, like a shadow returning to where it belonged.
First the edges, then the body, and in the end only that smile lingered for an instant in the blackness before vanishing completely.
And in the clearing, under the stars, the two Taimanin stood staring at the spot where he had been.
"Fufu~..."
Shizuru licked her lips, savoring something only she could taste.
"I'm definitely going to make that man mine."
"Shizuru-nee?!"
"What~? Or does Rinko-chan want to compete~?"
"I-I'm not...! That's not what...! It's just an invitation to the dojo!"
"Mmhm~ Sure it is~"
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The battle is over, but the real fight for Jin has just begun! 😳 Who do you think will win his heart (and body) first: Rinko or Shizuru?
Drop your predictions in the comments and don't forget to vote with your Power Stones! 💎
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