Time slowed down.
No…
That wasn't right.
The world itself still moved normally, but my perception had already entered that familiar state of battle clarity—and now it evolved even further.
Everything sharpened.
Every movement.
Every sound.
Every pulse of energy in the forest.
My thoughts emptied completely as my mind slipped into a trance-like state where instinct moved faster than reason.
I acted before anything fully made sense.
Tiger-san was only a few feet away.
I moved toward him immediately while simultaneously straining my atma core beyond its limits, forcibly ripping asura energy away from the surrounding beasts through sheer will alone.
Pain detonated inside my chest.
Not metaphorically.
It genuinely felt like some burning explosive had ignited directly within my heart.
But I pushed through it.
The black sphere was already descending.
The forest around us had begun dying before impact even arrived. Trees twisted violently as hurricane-force winds erupted outward in every direction. The pressure alone shredded branches apart into spiraling fragments.
I reached the tiger just as the sphere descended overhead.
Then I forced every remaining fragment of atma inside my body into the vajra mantle.
Every last piece.
No hesitation.
And for the very first time—
I forced the mantle into another living being.
The vajra mantle expanded around both of us at once, forming a compressed sphere of shimmering force moments before impact.
The instant my atma entered the tiger's body, I felt him collapse behind me.
Then I compressed the mantle further.
Tempering it.
Forcing denser and denser layers of atma together while holding the structure stable through pure desperation.
And then the projectile hit.
The first impact unleashed a catastrophic shockwave that erased the forest ahead of us instantly.
A fraction of a second later came the release of concentrated asura energy.
The front half of the vajra mantle was stripped away immediately.
Gone.
Like flesh ripped from bone.
For one horrifying instant, the protection failed completely.
An arc of black lightning barely grazed my body—
—and my stomach split open.
Pain vanished so completely that it circled back into something difficult to comprehend.
I looked down just long enough to see my own body opening apart beneath the ribs.
The vajra mantle restored itself immediately afterward, sealing the gap once more around us, but the damage had already been done.
I slammed one arm against the wound.
Not to stop the bleeding.
There was far too much blood for that.
No…
I was holding my organs inside my body.
Then the world froze.
Time itself suddenly felt fractured, stretched unnaturally thin by the sheer scale of energy erupting around us.
The explosion still wasn't over.
I already knew that.
So I continued reinforcing the vajra mantle over and over despite feeling my atma core tearing itself apart from the strain.
I fought just to force movement back into my own body.
Then the second wave hit.
The ground beneath us collapsed downward violently, dragging everything into a crater of shattered earth and uprooted stone.
But even as we fell, I refused to release either the mantle or the unconscious tiger behind me.
The storm of black currents and concentrated asura energy continued flooding outward far longer than it had any right to.
Too long.
Far too long.
My atma reserves vanished almost instantly.
After that…
I began burning my own life force instead.
Feeding pieces of myself directly into the mantle just to stop it from collapsing.
Time froze again.
Then came the final blast.
The largest one yet.
And just before my consciousness gave out, I saw the black sphere finally cease to exist.
My ears rang endlessly.
My body and soul both felt submerged in agony so overwhelming that numbness slowly began replacing it.
Nothing worked anymore.
I could not move.
Could not control my atma.
Could not even think properly.
My thoughts themselves felt heavy.
Darkness slowly eroded everything inside me one piece at a time.
I lay face-first against shattered earth soaked in mud and blood. One arm still pressed desperately against my ruined stomach while the other slipped weakly against the ground as something moved beside me.
The tiger.
Relief washed over me almost instantly.
A strange sense of peace followed afterward.
At least…
It survived.
Then through the fading haze clouding my senses, I felt another presence descending slowly from above.
And finally—
I let the darkness take me.