“You are not him.” Talulah spun around, her grip tightening on her blade.
She stared intently at the figure rising from the dust.
His eyes no longer held the boy’s familiar gaze; instead, they burned with a piercing, inhuman white light.
“Who are you?” The entity possessing Ivan did not answer.
He didn’t even look at the Draco leader.
Instead, he rolled his shoulders and tilted his neck.
A sickening crack of bone echoed in the tense air as he adapted to the mortal vessel he had just commandeered.
When he finally spoke, the voice slipping past Ivan’s blood-stained lips was entirely alien.
It carried a cold, echoing resonance, sounding as though he were muttering to himself, or perhaps complaining to an unseen audience.
“This kid…
he is truly reckless.” The tone held absolutely zero emotion.
It was pure, condescending judgment.
“With such meager strength, he dares to run wild.” Slowly, those glowing white eyes locked onto the surrounding Reunion Movement forces.
The gaze swept over the restless soldiers, freezing them in place before he raised a single finger and pointed it at his own chest.
“This kid,” he announced, his voice carrying an absolute, crushing authority.
“I am protecting him.” A deadly silence gripped the battlefield.
It lasted only a second before Mephisto’s sharp, grating shriek shattered the quiet.
The white-haired boy’s face twisted in fury at the sheer disrespect.
“Attack!
Tear him apart!” At his command, the Reunion soldiers broke.
Roaring like beasts, they surged forward in a tidal wave of rusted blades and drawn crossbows, swarming the lone figure.
They expected a desperate counterattack.
They received a massacre.
The entity simply raised his arm.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Without a fraction of a second’s warning, the earth violently ruptured.
Massive, jagged pillars of pitch-black obsidian erupted from the dirt in a deadly ring around Ivan’s body.
The vanguard of the Reunion charge never even registered the shift in reality.
They had no time to halt, no time to scream.
The impossibly dense black crystal lances punched straight through their boots, tearing upward through flesh, bone, and armor with zero resistance.
Crimson blood instantly slicked the dark, glassy surfaces.
And that was merely the opening act.
The ground fractured outward.
Dozens more obsidian spikes shot into the air like the terrifying fangs of a subterranean beast.
They moved with a predatory will, mercilessly harvesting the charging soldiers.
The Reunion formation collapsed into absolute chaos.
Screams of agony, desperate wails, and the sickening crunch of shattering bones drowned out the battle cries.
The offensive wave had been transformed into a one-sided slaughterhouse.
“No!
What is this stuff?!” a surviving soldier shrieked, wildly hacking his machete against a black pillar.
The steel blade bounced off, leaving nothing but a pathetic shower of sparks against the unyielding obsidian.
“It won’t break!
We can’t scratch it!” Talulah’s expression darkened into a mask of cold fury.
She thrust her hand forward, her Originium Arts flaring to life.
The air warped from the sheer heat as a massive sphere of scorching flames condensed above her palm.
With a destructive roar, she launched the blazing inferno straight at the glowing-eyed entity.
The entity did not flinch.
He did not dodge.
A thick, solid wall of obsidian materialized out of thin air directly in his path, intercepting the raging fireball.
The resulting explosion was deafening.
Liquid fire splashed across the battlefield, incinerating the rubble, but the black wall remained entirely unmoving.
Not a single scorch mark or hairline fracture marred its surface.
Behind that impenetrable defense, the forest of obsidian continued to expand, mercilessly claiming more lives.
The sheer impossibility of the magic finally broke the Reunion soldiers.
Their psychological defenses shattered.
Dropping their weapons, men and women let out terrified shrieks and scrambled backward, trampling each other to escape the expanding domain of death.
“Monster!
He’s a monster!” Fear spread rapidly like a plague.
“Ugh…” A suppressed groan tore through Ivan’s throat.
It carried the entity’s deep, resonant pitch, heavy with sudden impatience.
He lowered his head, his glowing eyes locking onto Ivan’s right arm.
The skin, previously just bruised and bleeding, was now fracturing.
Glaring white cracks spider-webbed across the flesh.
They were not physical lacerations, but the visual manifestation of a severe energy overload, and they were rapidly crawling up the boy’s forearm.
“Tsk.” The entity clicked his tongue in disgust, a faint trace of urgency finally bleeding into his flat tone.
“The vessel cannot hold.
Let’s go.” The earth ahead roared violently.
A fresh wave of obsidian pillars surged forward like a battering ram, forcibly tearing a massive gap through the remaining Reunion encirclement.
Shattered concrete and severed limbs rained down from the sky.
Taking absolute control of Ivan’s breaking body, the entity moved with terrifying stability.
He bent his knees slightly, channeling an beyond understanding divine power into the boy’s legs.
The concrete beneath his boots instantly pulverized into dust.
Defying every law of physics, he launched himself upward.
He became a blur of black and white, shooting straight into the gloomy heavens like a fired artillery shell.
“You wish!” Talulah roared, her usual composure entirely gone.
Flames erupted around her boots as she pushed off the ground, leaping high into the air for a final interception.
She brandished her longsword, condensing her scorching Originium Arts into a searing, concentrated stream of fire aimed directly at his flight path.
Facing the Draco’s all-out assault, the entity did not bother to defend.
He merely adjusted his trajectory mid-air.
Drawing back the arm that wasn’t yet consumed by white cracks, he faced the charging Talulah.
He simply threw a punch.
It was a strike driven by the crushing force of absolute, god-like power.
A deafening boom shattered the air.
The protective Arts shield surrounding Talulah disintegrated like wet paper the instant his fist made contact.
She couldn’t even track the movement.
She only felt an beyond understanding, overwhelming kinetic force violently smash into her chest.
Her entire body was sent hurtling backward as if she had been rammed by a speeding cargo ship.
She slammed directly into the reinforced wall of a distant skyscraper.
The structure buckled, bricks and steel collapsing inward as a massive cloud of dust swallowed her deeply embedded form.
Down below, the surviving Reunion soldiers stared blankly at the sky.
The monster who had just effortlessly swatted their invincible leader away was already shrinking into a black dot against the clouds.
No one dared to take a single step forward.
No one dared to raise a crossbow.
They stood frozen in the ruins, watching the figure vanish into the gloomy skyline.
High above the ruined city, the entity sped through the freezing air.
But the toll on the mortal vessel was accelerating.
The glowing white cracks on Ivan’s arm grew denser, webbing aggressively up his shoulder, crawling toward his neck and chest.
Suddenly, the divine force propelling them through the sky abruptly shorted out.
“Tsk!” The entity let out a sharp, intensely annoyed click of his tongue.
Gravity reclaimed its hold.
Ivan’s body plummeted from the clouds, entering a terrifying freefall.
Rushing up to meet them was the sprawling campus of an abandoned academy, Peterheim Middle School, its grounds choked with debris and neglect.
In the final fraction of a second before a lethal impact, a blinding surge of white light erupted from his eyes.
A localized, invisible force field snapped into existence, enveloping the boy’s body to absorb the kinetic shock.
Even with the buffer, the landing was brutal.
He crashed through the roof of a campus building, accompanied by the explosive clatter of shattering glass and the heavy thud of collapsing plaster.
He tumbled awkwardly into a dim, cavernous space.
It was a long-abandoned storage room, choked with thick cobwebs, rotting sports equipment, and stacks of discarded desks.
The impact kicked up a massive cloud of dust, swirling thickly in the pale light that filtered through the broken skylight.
The white glow in his eyes flickered, dimming rapidly until it was barely a spark.
Sprawled out on a pile of moldy gym cushions, the entity stared up at the fractured ceiling.
“Forget it…” he whispered, his tone laced with weary resignation.
“This place will do.” As the last syllable faded into the dusty air, the white light in Ivan’s eyes extinguished completely, plunging the boy into unconsciousness.
[Rhodes’s Note: Enjoying the operation so far, Doctor?
(This daily grind literally pays the landship’s rent!
to use the links!)