Stone dust drifted slowly back onto the Academy’s grand courtyard, settling over shattered marble and unconscious bodies alike.
The air was dry.
Abnormally dry.
The crimson cube held in the hooded man’s hand devoured every trace of moisture within a hundred-meter radius, draining the atmosphere with mechanical precision until the students’ lips cracked and their throats burned with every breath.
Goman Arashi stood tall in the middle of the devastation.
Static electricity crackled through his silver hair while his expensive uniform hung in torn strips, shredded by the violence of the battle.
Yet his chin remained raised, and his posture never faltered.
The pride of a noble refused to bow, even when surrounded by ruin.
A few meters away, Tariq clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles turned white.
Shadows trembled along his forearms like disturbed pools of ink, revealing the complete instability of his emotions and Spirit.
Fear twisted inside his stomach as he watched the man in black ignore the defeated professors sprawled across the ground and focus solely on the heir of the Arashi family.
“Do you even know who you’re talking to, trash?” Goman spat, struggling to force air into his lungs.
The stranger did not react.
His posture remained relaxed, almost indifferent.
“Lower your eyes,” he replied in a metallic voice devoid of anger, hatred, or emotion.
It sounded less like a threat and more like a mathematical conclusion.
“You are not even the primary target.” Without another word, the hooded man pressed a finger against the surface of the crimson cube.
A sharp whistle tore through the atmosphere, but it was more than sound.
It was a low-frequency vibration that struck the survivors’ eardrums like a physical blow, sending waves of pressure through flesh and bone alike.
Across the courtyard, hundreds of unconscious students began trembling violently.
Their bodies stiffened all at once as though invisible hooks had pierced their nervous systems.
The artifact in the stranger’s hand transformed into a gravitational well, ripping residual Spirit energy from every sleeping body and drawing it relentlessly toward the glowing crimson box.
Tariq staggered backward as the air caught in his throat.
The transfer was massive.
Devastating.
Streams of invisible energy flooded toward the cube while the students lying on the ground twisted beneath an unseen force.
Academy uniforms tore apart amid a chorus of horrific cracking sounds.
Bones fractured.
Muscles expanded far beyond their natural limits.
The teenagers’ skin took on a sickly gray hue while thick black veins pulsed beneath the surface like industrial cables carrying corrupted life through dying flesh.
Three meters from Tariq, a third-year student began losing his human form.
It was the same boy who had mocked them from the stands.
The same boy who had laughed at the smell of the slums.
Now his skeletal structure realigned itself with brutal force, and his jaw dislocated with a wet crack before a stream of dark blood poured from his mouth.
Dense gray growths erupted from his arms.
Long blades of bone burst outward from beneath his skin, tearing through muscle and fabric alike as his body reshaped itself into something monstrous.
Every movement was accompanied by the grotesque sound of flesh stretching beyond what nature had ever intended.
Tariq watched without blinking.
Pure horror unfolded before his eyes as the Central Academy transformed into a factory for monsters.
Their own classmates were mutating into Spiritual Suppurations, their humanity stripped away and replaced by something unnatural.
“Their cells were too weak to survive the loss of energy,” the man in black explained calmly over the guttural screams of the newborn creatures.
His gaze followed the students’ flesh as it regenerated at impossible speeds, sealing wounds and reinforcing malformed bodies.
“Now that they have been stripped of all Spirit, they become Suppurations through the Nourishment Spirit emitted and corrupted by this artifact.” The enemy leader’s gaze swept across the ruined courtyard before settling briefly on Goman.
The Arashi heir stood completely frozen, unable to process the collapse of everything he believed in.
The certainty of his world had shattered in front of him, leaving him rooted in place by disbelief.
Then the stranger’s attention stopped on a specific anomaly.
A faint green glow shimmered through the dust-filled air.
It came from Leila Amrani’s hands, where translucent healing energy radiated outward.
The gift of restoration.
The power to directly influence human biology itself.
Not far away, Issa Kaneshiro remained on his knees.
Blood dripped from his nose while a brutal migraine carved through the back of his skull.
Yet behind his cracked glasses, he forced himself to remain conscious, piecing together fragments of information as the enemy’s strategy gradually revealed itself.
Issa watched the students transform into monsters.
He watched flesh regenerate endlessly and cells divide beyond all biological limits.
The black-clad man’s power forced growth and healing in order to create immortal beasts, while Leila’s power forced growth and healing to preserve human life.
The mechanisms were different only in purpose.
It was the same principle.
The same biological frequency.
Suddenly the truth became obvious.
The man in black had not come to massacre the Academy.
He had come to capture the source of that energy.
He wanted the healer.
Issa opened his mouth to warn the others, but Tariq broke first.
The sound of snapping bones.
The smell of blood and ozone.
The sight of humans becoming monsters.
Every memory from the alleyway several days earlier slammed into his mind with overwhelming force, dragging the image of the crushed civilian back to the surface.
Fear vanished completely.
In its place rose a black, self-destructive rage so intense that it drowned out everything else.
He would not watch another massacre.
He would not stand there helpless again while innocent people suffered in front of him.
His shadow wrapped around his right arm.
Absolute darkness condensed into physical form, growing heavier and denser until it became a long black blade whose edge gleamed like fractured glass.
Every trace of hesitation disappeared as murderous intent flooded through his body.
Tariq charged.
A scream of hatred tore itself from his throat as he launched himself forward without strategy, teamwork, or restraint.
There was no plan, no tactical awareness, only the overwhelming desire to kill.
“You bastard!
You’re going to die!” He sprinted directly toward the man holding the crimson cube.
The stranger did not retreat.
He did not draw a weapon.
He merely raised his free hand toward the approaching boy as though responding to a minor inconvenience.
The courtyard trembled.
Marble disintegrated into powder beneath invisible forces, and countless grains of impossibly dry sand rose into the air.
Within seconds, a dense wall formed in front of the hooded man, creating a massive barrier designed to absorb the impact of Tariq’s shadow blade.
Far away from the slaughter unfolding inside the Academy, the sky above the metropolitan business district had turned black with smoke.
The air reeked of melted plastic and burning asphalt while emergency sirens screamed through shattered avenues.
Towering glass skyscrapers stood ripped open, spilling paper, debris, and fragments of steel into the streets below.
Captain Thiago Vane stood at the center of a devastated intersection.
His face no longer carried its usual calm expression.
Tension had frozen every feature as he surveyed the destruction around him, his mind working relentlessly to assess the scale of the disaster.
His long Commission coat was stained with gray soot, and his normally controlled breathing had become heavy and uneven.
Toxic smoke filled the air, forcing his lungs to fight for every breath.
Despite his exhaustion, his eyes never left the creature standing before him.
Crushing the wreckage of police vehicles beneath its immense weight stood an Orange-Level Spiritual Suppuration.
It resembled a mountain of corrupted gray flesh twisted into a grotesque mockery of life.
Its massive arms ended in bone spikes larger than streetlights, and although it possessed no eyes, its entire body radiated an overwhelming hunger directed solely at the Captain.
“Die, abomination,” Thiago hissed through clenched teeth.
He planted his boots firmly into the molten asphalt and flicked his wrist forward.
In response, dozens of chains forged from pure Spirit erupted from the ground like living weapons.
The incandescent amber chains wrapped around the creature with terrifying force, severing limbs and carving through flesh.
The monster released a rocky roar as it was torn apart, its gigantic bone-covered arms crashing onto the wreckage of vehicles below.
For a brief moment, the battlefield fell silent.
Thiago exhaled heavily, but victory never came.
Before his eyes, the severed flesh began to boil and writhe.
A disgusting energy saturated with corrupted Nourishment Spirit linked the detached limbs back to the main body, reconnecting muscle and tissue at a horrifying speed.
In less than a second, the wounds vanished.
Muscles rewove themselves.
Bone fused back together.
The Suppuration rose once more, completely unharmed, and released an even louder roar that shook the surrounding buildings.
Thiago’s tactical mind immediately accelerated.
The creature was not trying to flee, nor was it attempting to overpower him through brute force.
Every flow of energy inside its body was dedicated almost entirely to cellular regeneration.
This was not a predator designed to kill.
It was a wall designed to endure.
The realization struck him with icy clarity.
If he was trapped here, wasting time against an immortal mass of flesh engineered specifically to withstand a Captain’s strength, then the true objective had to be somewhere else entirely.
Every piece of the puzzle suddenly aligned.
“A diversion…” Thiago whispered.
His eyes snapped toward the distant horizon, toward the gleaming domes of the Central Academy.
A cold certainty settled in his chest as the truth became undeniable.
“The Academy has fallen into a trap.”