The last remnants of Tariq’s reason shattered.
Around him, the bodies of his classmates convulsed violently as their energy was ripped from their cells and drawn into the crimson cube.
The memory of the dark alley came flooding back without warning.
The smell of burnt flesh, the blood staining the concrete, and the crushing helplessness he had felt that day drowned every rational thought beneath a wave of destructive fury.
Tariq lunged forward.
His shoes scraped against the shattered marble as his shadow climbed up his leg and wrapped itself around his right arm.
The absence of light condensed into something tangible, dense and oppressive, forming a long blade of black ink.
Heavy and razor-sharp, it pulsed with murderous intent.
He was no longer thinking.
He only wanted to destroy the man holding the cube.
The hooded figure did not move an inch.
His eyes remained fixed on the charging boy as his mind calculated speed, weight, trajectory, and impact vectors with machine-like precision.
Without the slightest sign of urgency, he simply raised his free hand.
A wall of sand erupted from the broken pavement between them.
The grains were unnatural.
Every trace of moisture had been stripped from them, leaving behind a dead, desiccated substance that devoured vitality itself.
Tariq’s shadow blade struck the barrier with all its momentum, yet it cut through nothing.
The swirling sand eroded the darkness upon contact, grinding away his Spirit energy until it disintegrated completely within seconds.
“Stay out of my way, you gutter rat!” Goman Arashi’s voice cracked through the dry air like thunder.
The heir launched himself toward Morgen’s right flank, his expensive uniform reduced to rags and his face stained with soot and dust.
Despite his condition, his pride remained untouched.
Bringing his hands together, he poured everything he had left into a single attack.
“Crush beneath me!” he roared.
The atmospheric pressure plummeted before surging upward with catastrophic force.
The air above the hooded man became heavier than lead, and every fragment of debris floating throughout the courtyard slammed into the ground.
Local gravity multiplied twentyfold, forcing the environment itself into submission beneath Goman’s overwhelming Spirit.
The man in black released a quiet sigh.
There was no fear in his eyes, only calculation.
He could measure precisely how much energy Goman was spending and how long he could sustain such output.
In truth, he had been waiting for this attack from the beginning.
He had engineered the entire situation to provoke it.
With a casual motion of his hand, he dehydrated the surrounding atmosphere.
The final traces of humidity vanished from the air.
The extreme dryness destabilized the molecular cohesion sustaining Goman’s compressed pressure field.
Cracks spread throughout the invisible structure before it collapsed inward with a deafening snap.
The resulting backlash detonated like a thermal bomb.
Goman took the full force of the implosion directly in the chest.
The air exploded from his lungs as a spray of red saliva escaped his lips.
At the same time, streams of sand slithered across the ground and wrapped themselves around Tariq’s ankles, constricting his blood flow with mechanical precision.
Both boys were hurled backward by the shockwave.
Their bodies slammed into the shattered remains of the central fountain with bone-rattling force.
Their Spirit reserves were nearly exhausted, and their muscles refused to obey their commands.
Neither of them could rise from the pavement.
The man in black advanced slowly through the wreckage.
Glass shattered beneath his boots as he walked.
His attention drifted toward Leila Amrani, whose green healing aura still glowed through the dust-filled air like a beacon.
He raised a hand toward her, intending to complete his objective.
Then his movement stopped instantly.
CLANG.
A heavy metallic impact ripped through the silence.
A chain forged from pure Spirit energy tore through the air and pierced the sand wall as though it did not exist.
The glowing link embedded itself deep into the ground directly in front of the enemy’s feet.
A tall figure landed upon the marble with a thunderous impact.
The long coat of the Commission snapped violently in the wind as Captain Thiago Vane straightened his posture.
His gray eyes locked onto the hooded man.
The temperature of the courtyard seemed to drop the moment he arrived.
“Step away from them…
Captain Morgen,” Thiago said.
On the ground, Tariq stopped breathing.
Even through the agony in his ribs, Goman’s eyes widened in disbelief.
Captain?
The terrorist destroying their academy, the man turning students into monsters, had once belonged to the Commission’s highest ranks?
“Or should I say…
former Captain,” Thiago corrected coldly.
The hooded man slowly turned his head.
Morgen did not retreat.
He showed no surprise whatsoever.
The true battle had finally begun.
Thiago adjusted his footing atop the rubble.
His eyes scanned the battlefield within a fraction of a second, evaluating the density of the airborne sand, the dryness of the atmosphere, and the direction of the wind.
Amber chains vibrated along his arms, ready to strike.
If he attacked directly, the dry sand would act as insulation and diminish the impact of his bindings.
He needed a blind spot.
Morgen processed the situation with the same detached logic.
His gaze settled on Thiago as he reassessed the operation.
Captain Vane had neutralized the giant Suppuration in the city far faster than anticipated.
His arrival altered every variable on the battlefield.
Morgen lowered his eyes toward the metallic cube in his hand.
The machine vibrated frantically, crimson light flooding across its surface.
Suddenly, the mechanical hum began to slow.
The glow stabilized into a darker, steady tone.
The storage reservoir had reached maximum capacity.
Internal mechanisms automatically sealed the intake valves.
The device could absorb no more energy without risking catastrophic detonation.
Thiago noticed the change immediately.
“Your cube is full,” he observed.
“You can’t absorb anything else from this courtyard.” Morgen calmly closed his gloved fingers around the artifact and severed the flow of his own power.
The oppressive dryness crushing the students’ eardrums vanished instantly.
The sand binding Tariq’s legs collapsed into lifeless dust, allowing the exhausted student to gasp desperately for air.
Morgen stared at his former colleague.
His face remained an expressionless wall of ice.
“You arrived sixty seconds too late, Vane.” His voice carried neither triumph nor mockery.
It was merely a statement of fact.
“This operation is complete.” The sand around the traitor erupted upward.
A massive dark tornado formed in the blink of an eye, reducing visibility to zero.
Fine particles saturated the atmosphere while static electricity flooded the area, disrupting every detection method available.
Thiago reacted within milliseconds.
His chains shot directly into the center of the storm.
Golden links pierced the dust cloud with lethal speed, but the electrically charged sand distorted the amber’s tracking capabilities.
The trajectories veered off course.
The chains struck nothing.
A cold wind swept across the courtyard.
Slowly, the tornado collapsed back onto the shattered pavement.
When the dust settled, the center of the plaza was completely empty.
Morgen had vanished.
Silence settled over the ruins.
The groans of wounded students echoed from beneath collapsed structures while the guttural sounds of ongoing mutations resonated farther away.
The rescue divisions of the Commission would have their hands full for hours.
A body crashed heavily onto the ground several meters from Thiago.
Albert Thorne, the water-specialist lieutenant, lay unconscious.
His veins had collapsed from total depletion.
His own commander had drained him dry to power the escape vortex.
Elsewhere among the debris, the giant Roen Silas remained trapped.
His stone armor was shattered, his bones fractured beyond movement.
He could do nothing except lie there helplessly.
He had been discarded like a broken tool.
Thiago lowered his arms.
His chains dissolved into particles of amber light with a faint metallic chime.
There had been no extraction team and no magical evacuation.
Morgen had used his subordinates as nothing more than disposable batteries.
Once emptied, they were abandoned without hesitation.
Captain Vane studied the traces left behind across the battlefield.
The giant Suppuration unleashed in the city.
The brutal assault on the academy courtyard.
The students pushed to their absolute limits.
Piece by piece, the truth assembled itself within his tactical mind.
The trap had been layered from the very beginning.
Morgen had not attacked the Academy to kill professors, nor had he provoked Goman and Tariq out of simple cruelty.
He had manipulated them.
Every opening in his defense had been deliberate.
Every counterattack had been encouraged.
Each burst of shadow power.
Each atmospheric pressure dome released into the air.
The crimson cube had absorbed it all.
Morgen had used the Academy’s elite students as nothing more than a massive energy generator.
The entire battle had been a harvest operation.
And the Commission had delivered exactly what he wanted.