High above, piercing the thick layer of storm-heavy clouds over Ruitan, the sky seemed to tear itself apart.
Monolithic slabs of rock and earth plunged downward, slicing through the air with a sharp, lethal whistle.
At the heart of that chaotic freefall, two figures tumbled side by side—Laura and Katarina, motionless now, separated by only a few inches of frigid wind and dust.
The impact shuddered through the earth for miles in every direction.
A dense wall of dust and debris billowed upward, veiling everything for long, agonizing seconds.
As the haze began to settle, a hand slick with blood and laced with deep gashes clawed its way out, gripping the jagged edge of a shattered stone with desperate strength.
It was Katarina.
She dragged her weight forward, muscles straining in protest with every inch gained. She tried to call out, but the sound lodged in her throat, emerging as nothing more than a raspy, barely audible whisper.
"...Girl..." Her lips barely moved.
"Here."
The voice came low and drawn out from behind a mound of rubble.
Katarina turned her head slowly and saw Laura's hand emerge from between the stones, outstretched without a hint of threat.
Every step demanded what little remained of her life force. Her divine regeneration faltered, agonizingly slow and weak, stitching wounds together only for them to tear open again with every movement.
Her body screamed for her to collapse, to close her eyes and never wake up again.
Halfway there, the sole of her boot brushed against something soft and supple.
She paused and looked down. The dark leather eyepatch, caked in blood and dust, lay forgotten in the dirt.
Kneeling with immense effort, she scooped it up with trembling fingers and tied it back in place, concealing the darkness of an eye that had been her very first wound in a lifetime of conflict.
A few more agonizing steps brought her to Laura, who lay flat on her back across the churned earth, a claw pressed hard against her chest to stem an unrelenting crimson tide.
"Looks way better on you," Laura muttered, a weak, lopsided smile tugging at her lips—half ironic, half appreciative.
Katarina offered a hand.
As she hauled Laura up, a shared groan tore from their throats, uniting their agony in a single breath.
"Let's tend to these wounds," the Huntress said, her grip firm around Laura's wrist.
"Thank you."
They walked in silence, slowly pulling away from the crater. The thunder of the crash still echoed in the distance, but around them, only the drag of heavy footsteps and ragged, labored breaths broke the quiet.
Until Katarina spoke once more.
"What did you mean earlier... when you said you were a victim of theirs, too?" She hesitated, as if the very thought still felt absurd. "In all my life, I've never felt an energy so dense, so cruel... so monstrous coming from anyone the way I felt it from you."
"What are you, Laura?"
Laura turned her head away, her eyes drifting over the ruined landscape as her lips parted to answer.
"I've never told anyone this. Only a few know... like Silver and Kânia."
"Kânia... the Silver One's wife, right?" Katarina asked.
"Yeah. She's like a real mother to me. When I was little... I..."
The sound came before the words could leave her mouth.
A wet, sickening noise—the wet tear of flesh and the crack of bone occurring all at once.
Blood erupted in a high arc, splattering warm and scarlet across Laura's face.
Her eyes widened in horror.
Her vision, blurred moments ago, snapped into agonizing focus on a scene her mind revolted against: a massive, muscular arm driven completely through the Huntress's chest, bulging veins and exposed tissue bursting out from her back in absolute savagery.
She whipped around, her heart seizing for a fraction of a second. She had expected soldiers, expected Tsukumo, expected anything... except him.
It was Arthur.
"WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?!" Laura's scream tore through her throat like a thunderclap.
She shoved the massive man with every last thread of strength she possessed.
The arm slid from Katarina's chest with a wet squelch, and the woman collapsed limply into Laura's arms, her eyes wide open, uncomprehending.
"SHE WASN'T AN ENEMY ANYMORE!" Hot tears tracked through the blood on her face. "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"
Arthur remained unmoving.
Expressionless, without a flicker of hesitation, as if he had merely plucked a weed from his path.
He watched Laura sink to her knees, frantically trying to plug the gaping hole in the Huntress's chest, attempting to pull back someone who had already slipped away without ever knowing why.
"I am simply clearing my path," he said, perfectly calm, as though stating the obvious.
A heavy fist struck Laura across the face before she could react.
The shock outweighed the pain; the blow sent her world spinning, pitching her onto her side as a deafening ringing filled her ears.
She tried to push herself up, but her limbs buckled. Her body was too broken, far too weak to fight someone who knew every one of her limits.
"You will be my bargaining chip," Arthur's voice sounded distant, unreachable.
A second blow connected flush against her temple.
Darkness crashed down, heavy and swift, but before her eyes slipped completely shut, she managed to whisper—so softly only the wind caught it:
"Help me, Suki..."
The female whisper echoed, cutting through the deafening din of a battle far away.
A fragile, distant voice calling out for help.
The exact moment those syllables dissolved into the air, Tsukumo's knuckles slammed into Suki's jaw.
The crunch of bone and cartilage echoed off the ruins.
The sheer force whipped Suki's neck back violently, but this time, his boots didn't slide a single millimeter across the crushed stone.
He dug his heels into the earth.
Blood burst from his lips, and his answer struck in the span of a single heartbeat.
Suki's fists hammered into Tsukumo's chest in a furious flurry, driving the air from his opponent's lungs in harsh gasps before culminating in a vicious hook directly to the side of his face.
The raw inertia slammed them toward each other; the collision was primal, bone grinding against bone.
Their foreheads smashed together with a hollow thud that made the very air vibrate.
The compression of air detonated into a shockwave that swept across the courtyard, hurling blocks of concrete and twisted iron into the distance.
A thick, hot trail of blood ran down Suki's forehead, stinging as it flooded his left eye.
Physical pain, however, turned to ash.
In the split-second window born of the blow, he glanced over his shoulder.
A cold, metallic chill seized his spine.
Laura's vital spark—the pulsing energy she always radiated—was gone.
Only a suffocating void remained.
"Laura..." His voice faltered, the words escaping in a raspy murmur swallowed by the dust. "What's happening?"
Tsukumo's pupils dilated, the blood surging wildly through the veins of his neck.
"What nerve..." Tsukumo's snarl tore from his throat, overflowing with electric, palpable malice. "You dare look away in front of *me*?!"
Without warning, Tsukumo pivoted his hips, dropped his center of gravity, and buried both fists into Suki's gut.
The blow sounded like tearing leather.
Oxygen vanished from Suki's lungs in a violent wheeze, his body folding as he was dragged backward, carving two parallel ruts into the dirt floor.
Even doubled over in agony, Suki refused to yield to the momentum.
He used his own recoil as a spring; the stone fractured beneath his pivot foot as he lunged forward, slicing through the air like a gale.
The point of his knee drove into the tip of Tsukumo's chin.
Tsukumo's teeth bit into his own lip with a sickening snap, and before his body could tilt backward, Suki's opposite leg whipped around in an oblique arc, planting his shin into the enemy's temple with the weight of an anvil.
Heaving for air, Suki planted his feet back on the ground, his gaze cold yet burning with fierce life.
"My friends," he rasped, blood dripping down his chin with every syllable, "are worth infinitely more than you, Tsukumo."
A harsh, bubbling noise rumbled in Tsukumo's chest.
A filthy chuckle twisted into a sick, manic laugh as he spat a thick clot of blood onto the cracked stones.
"How tragic." He threw his arms wide, unhinged eyes gleaming with feverish malice. "What do I have to do to be the sole owner of your attention? Hmm? Should I rip the head off every single one of your little friends?! Is that it?!"
Those weren't mere words of provocation.
They were a match dropped into an ocean of kerosene.
The smell of charred flesh and burning straw flooded Suki's nostrils.
Screams of agony pierced his eardrums—echoes of a village consumed by flames, of lives reduced to ash.
Time seemed to freeze.
Shadows cast by the ruins deepened across Suki's face, devouring every trace of humanity from his features.
His jaw clamped shut so violently that the grinding of his teeth echoed through the air.
He exploded forward, the ground pulverizing beneath his boots.
When they collided, the fight devolved into a slaughter choreographed by pure rage.
Tsukumo surged to meet him, and the resulting collision obliterated any room to breathe.
Fists cut through the heavy air, moving too fast for the eye to track—flesh pounding flesh.
Fractured fingers.
Every dodge shaved skin; every counterattack that connected sprayed crimson droplets through the haze of dust.
The thunder of strikes beat against the stonework like heavy artillery, the violence escalating, blind and absolute.
At the peak of the exchange, in macabre unison, both planted their heels, torqued their hips, and threw their right arms with everything they had left.
Suki's knuckles crushed Tsukumo's cheekbone.
Tsukumo's fist caved into Suki's cheek.
At the exact same time.
The collision of forces displaced the very air between them, expanding into a colossal shockwave that swept the surrounding dust into a ring of raw power.
Behind the pair, the massive structural wall of the castle, already weakened by the battle, could not withstand the vibration.
The stone gave way, groaning loudly before collapsing entirely into a deafening avalanche of rubble.
The sound of the blow was dry and brutal, but what followed was not merely pain. An electric current—a dense, static hum—slithered beneath his skin.
It was a phantom vibration, an invasive heat that prickled every nerve ending, raising the hairs on his arms.
*Familiar. Strangely familiar.*
*What is this?* The question echoed in the depths of his mind, scrambling the precision of his reflexes.
Tsukumo showed no mercy for that moment of hesitation; his arm snapped back like the piston of an overheated engine, cocking his other fist for a lethal hook.
Suki threw his arms up in a cross-block, locking his forearms before his face the exact instant the impact landed.
The impact sounded like a sledgehammer shattering concrete.
But it was not the physical recoil that paralyzed him.
The kinetic energy of the blow did not dissipate into the air or bleed off into the block; it flowed *into* him.
Suki's eyes widened.
He felt Tsukumo's massive force seep into his bones, traveling from his cracked ulnas down to the base of his spine.
It felt like swallowing pure atmospheric pressure and watching it map out his veins.
Suki's guard buckled, his arms giving way a fraction of a second too early.
Tsukumo pivoted his hips.
His shin cut through the air and buried itself into Suki's exposed ribs.
The crack of breaking bone pierced the roar of the battle.
The momentum lifted Suki off his feet, launching him like a broken ragdoll through the dust-choked air.
He slammed violently into a mound of castle debris. Granite pulverized beneath his back in a thick cloud of lime and ash, searing his throat.
Suki wheezed, coughing up dark blood and dust.
Pain radiated from his fractured ribs with every ragged breath, but that prickling sensation... it hadn't vanished.
On the contrary.
Tsukumo's raw force throbbed beneath his skin, an invasive current clawing at his muscles from the inside out, refusing to fade.
Dancing in his blood.
He dug his filthy fingers into the cracked stones, trying to anchor himself to reality.
That was when the past tore through the smoke before him. The memory hit him with the same devastating weight as the kick, cutting through the chaos of his mind with terrifying clarity.
Silver.
A twisted, exhausted smirk cut across Suki's lips, staining his teeth red.
"No fucking way..." the voice rasped out, steeped in sudden disbelief.
The memory overlaid the bloodstained ruins—the serene, unshakeable aura of a god.
"Your transformation is pure, beautiful *adaptation*," Silver's voice echoed in his mind, smooth and unyielding.
Suki remembered his own confusion, the sensation of that discovery.
"Are you saying my body adapted to the element? Does that mean the transformation works for... anything? If I adapt to another element, if I'm exposed to another extreme limit... can I create a different kind of power?"
In the memory, Silver had stopped in his tracks.
Barely two meters separated them.
The untouchable entity brought a hand to his chin, rubbing it slowly.
The fathomless glint in his eyes was not that of a mentor, but of a fascinated scientist dissecting a rare anomaly.
"Probably."
That single word carried staggering weight.
"Your lineage is an anomaly," Silver continued, his voice laced with primal curiosity. "I cannot give you absolute certainty. But... I wouldn't rule out the possibility of your blood molding itself to new, extreme stimuli."
Returning to reality, I blinked away the smoke of memory and looked down at my hands.
Tsukumo's blood coated my knuckles, but beneath my skin, his power still burned, vibrating in an electric, intrusive echo.
*It's not just the elements...*
The answer snapped in my head with lightning clarity.
*I adapt to concepts, too.*
A raspy laugh bubbled up in my throat.
I pressed my palms against the hot stones, ignoring the stabbing pain in my fractured ribs, and pushed myself up.
*If I focus... if I can channel this force and push it outward...*
"You're taking too long to react."
The voice came from above, cutting through my thoughts.
I tilted my chin up.
Tsukumo stood atop the cracked summit of a castle pillar, his silhouette sharp against the gray sky.
He stared down at me with crossed arms and a calculated indifference.
I looked up at him from the rubble. I knew him. I knew the kind of monster I was dealing with, and that stance confirmed what I suspected.
He wasn't using even half of his arsenal.
"I think I just discovered something new, Tsukumo," I muttered.
I began walking through the wreckage, my boots crushing chunks of granite. The pain in my ribs felt insignificant compared to the heat surging up my chest.
A dark, almost addicting excitement took hold of my senses.
This fight was getting interesting.
"Oh, really?" Tsukumo tilted his head, his voice dripping with mockery. "And what does that change in our little conversation, Suki?"
I stopped.
I looked back, replaying the battle in my mind.
"You came at me holding the Last Forge," I said, locking eyes with him. "But I haven't seen you use raw, brute force once—not the way you actually like to."
My lips curled, letting the disdain show.
"Are you telling me you don't think I can handle whatever you've got stashed away?"
Tsukumo didn't answer right away.
He simply leaned forward, slicing through the air and landing on the courtyard ground just a few meters from me.
He landed without even bending his knees, kicking up a wave of dust and shrapnel that hit my legs.
"You're sharp to notice that, Suki," he said, slowly straightening his posture with a hungry glint in his eye. "In truth, I'm not using everything I have. If I were... you'd already be dead."
He gesticulated with his arms.
"And me? I wouldn't be having half as much fun."
Hearing that, the air left my lungs for a second.
Then, I exploded.
A loud, unhinged, tearing laugh echoed through the castle ruins.
I laughed right in the bastard's face—the most absurd, lethal opponent to ever cross my path.
The harsh sound bounced off the ruined walls, slicing through the heavy silence of battle.
And then, suddenly... I stopped.
The laughter died instantly.
My expression hardened.
I clenched my teeth so hard I tasted the bitter tang of blood in my mouth.
I balled my hand into a rigid fist and pointed it straight at Tsukumo's chest.
"NO."
The air around us simply collapsed.
The pressure that erupted from me was no mere burst of energy—it was an avalanche.
My aura thickened, dense and heavy as lead, expanding in an invisible wave that made the ground sink.
The surrounding stones began to vibrate, hovering off the earth.
The air crackled, saturated with an absolute weight.
Tsukumo, who had maintained a flawless posture until now, felt the sudden shift in the air.
His knees buckled slightly under the weight of that monstrous pressure, his teeth locking for a fraction of a second.
I locked my eyes onto his, holding every ounce of that crushing presence.
"I WOULDN'T BE DEAD."
Steam began rising from my body as if I were overheating, my blood boiling with a force I couldn't even calculate.
Every hair on my body stood on end.
My hair floated around my face, defying gravity as though I were submerged in deep waters.
Every beat of my heart pumped an overwhelming surge of blood, causing thick veins to bulge and pulse beneath my skin.
With every exhale, thick white vapor escaped from between my teeth.
A few meters away, Tsukumo watched it all.
He got the message.
Saving his greatest trump card for later was no longer an option.
I clenched both fists at my sides, dropping into a stance of pure, raw power.
The pressure of that absurd energy churning inside me was so immense that the only way to vent it was a guttural roar that tore through my throat.
Luminous markings began tracing across my skin like living circuits.
Red lines radiating the heat of magma intertwined with blue trails, cold as the ocean depths.
They spread rapidly, covering every single inch of my body.
My muscles expanded slightly—not into clumsy bulk, but into an absurd density that pulled my skin taut to its limit.
In response, Tsukumo shifted into a completely different stance.
It was the most subtle, delicate movement he had made since the battle began.
His feet widened just enough to anchor him to the ground; his left arm remained relaxed at his side while his right rose slowly, palm facing forward with fingers lightly curled, as if holding an invisible sphere.
Yet the torrent of power that exploded from within him seemed intent on swallowing my very presence whole.
His purple aura, already overwhelming, took on an outline of pitch-black darkness.
Instantly, I felt as though my weight had tripled.
Had it not been for the relentless force I radiated with every millisecond, I would have broken and collapsed immediately.
I held firm, but the ground wasn't as fortunate; the soil gave way beneath the pressure, and I sank knees-deep into the shattered rubble.
My own aura flared outward, clashing head-on and matching his in an invisible war.
Tsukumo matched my roar, shouting at the top of his lungs as he unleashed every last drop of his stockpiled power.
The massive collision between our auras was so colossal it warped the atmosphere itself.
High above us, the dense clouds began to swirl frantically, forming a massive vortex that tore open the heavens.
The very geography of Ruitan was being rewritten by our sheer existence.
And at the climax of our roar, both of us spoke our techniques simultaneously:
"Force Transformation."
"Supreme Gravity."