Chapter 343
Slightly better fodder (4)
Yohan looked unperturbed by the sudden and violent death he had caused. He had managed to kill a high spawnling in seconds, mostly because its strengths were focused on stealth and speed, but it was impressive nonetheless.
IAM watched him, his mind drifting back to the first time they met and everything that followed. Yohan had revealed that his brother had been part of the Hold, and IAM had realised that the brother he spoke about was one of the two who had treated and taken care of him after he suffered from mana exposure.
IAM hadn't known how he died, but the connection was undeniable.
Yohan's singular blue eye was an exact copy of the one his brother had… the brother he had been told was called Gohan.
IAM hadn't even known his name until then.
He remembered the moment clearly—Yohan, breaking down, overwhelmed—and IAM placing his KASSARA into his hands, telling him to shoot.
Yohan couldn't.
He couldn't bring himself to do it as he grieved his dead brother.
Afterwards, there was an apology from Yohan, and the whole event had been quietly pushed aside… until more recently, when Yohan began asking questions again about his brother. IAM, who had only limited interactions with him, answered what he could.
At the same time, IAM had come to understand more about Yohan's past as he pieced things together. Yohan had grown up in the lower section with his brother from a young age after their parents had tried to sell them to a prominent gang in the sector. They had managed to escape, his older brother taking care of him with money he had stolen from their parents.
Through his own connections, Gohan had found an opportunity to learn a path and chose one inclined toward healing. He became a cheap doctor for the people in their area, helping where he could.
That was until Yohan turned seventeen.
With war beginning to brew, Gohan decided to step forward, saying he wanted to help fight. The compensation alone could have allowed them to live more than comfortably.
Before leaving, he used the connections he had built as a healer to get Yohan into contact with a scout, arranging for him to be brought to the higher sector to take the trials.
He left satisfied, believing his brother would be able to take care of himself until he returned.
They couldn't have expected what came next.
Now Yohan stood here, nearing his eighteenth birthday, having learned of the tragedy of the Hold and of someone who had survived.
When he finally met that person, he was shocked… surprised…
And filled with an irrational rage that IAM had lived—while his brother had not.
A rage that led to everything that followed.
IAM couldn't imagine the feeling of waiting for someone, only for them to never arrive. Yohan had been abandoned by his parents, and the only family he had left had been cruelly taken from him, leaving him alone. It was natural for him to grieve.
Now, he seemed to be doing better. As he grew closer to Henry, Reuel, and IAM, they helped him through what would have been an unbearable time as he mourned.
Now, he had even actively been looking for IAM—the same person who had given him a gun to protect himself from a surprise attack—as he turned to face the remaining creatures.
With his well-built body, muscular and dense, he looked almost like a bodybuilder, though slightly more compact. He leaned forward and burst into motion, charging like a battering ram toward the remaining deadline creatures.
His first targets were the mid sprawlings.
His eyes glowed blue and red respectively as he closed the distance and slammed elbow-first into a deadline creature that looked like a cross between a zebra and an elephant, sending its massive body flying into another.
With a heavy, meaty impact, the two let out low moans of pain as Yohan followed through without stopping. He arched back slightly before driving his fist straight into the gut of one creature, then another, then another.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
His attacks were simple but powerful, each punch forcing them backward as his eyes remained locked in.
"ora ora ora ora ora ora ora!!!"
With one final overhead punch, his fist dug deep into its flesh as the creature collapsed. He grabbed the one behind it by the head, yanked it forward, and drove his knee straight into its face.
The sounds of impact echoed as Yohan was quite literally brawling with the deadline creatures.
It was then that IAM shouted.
"Stop showing off! Behind you—that high spawnling can shoot a really destructive ray! Get those creatures down before it attempts to hit you!"
Yohan paused as he processed IAM's words, and in that brief moment, one of the creatures took the opportunity to swing its trunk straight into his face with full force. The hit landed clean, the sound of impact sharp and heavy, but at that exact moment something strange happened as his right fist shot forward and slammed into its face with more than twice the force he had shown before.
The air itself seeming to buckle from the impact.There was a split second where everything held—
Then it gave.
The creature's head didn't just break—it burst. Flesh tore apart, bone shattered outward, and thick chunks of its body were blown away in a violent spray as the force carried through it completely.
And on Yohan's face, there wasn't even a hint of injury to suggest he had been hit.
He barely seemed to notice that he had just killed another deadline creature as his focus shifted to the bald one, its unsettling smile now gone as its mouth split open once more.
Instead of fear or caution, his eyes glowed with ingenuity as that strange phenomenon continued—whenever he was hit, his body would instantly respond with far greater force than he had shown before.
Before he realised it, all the mid sprawlings had fallen, leaving only one deadline creature standing.
He didn't shy away.
He turned to face it head-on, and the creature seemed to recognise him as the greatest threat as it began charging up again.
Yohan made no move to stop it. Instead, he took a deep breath and silently activated a method, his body beginning to radiate an aura like that of a mountain, unmoving and heavy as he stood waiting.
IAM, who understood what Yohan was attempting, wasn't sure if it was even possible. He had yet to see the full extent of Yohan's methods, but he chose to watch as he walked over toward Natsuki, who had just finished off the yeti as its body began to disappear.
From deep within its throat, its thin yet hardened piece of pulsating flesh slowly extended upward like some grotesque pillar. The surface of it throbbed rhythmically, the movement almost hypnotic as the same fantastical yet terrifying sight began to form once more. Heat waves rippled outward from the growing sphere, bending the air around it as if reality itself was struggling to hold shape.
The neon clash of pink and red swirled within the ball like liquid light, folding over itself, condensing, compressing—growing denser and brighter with every passing moment until it shone like a small star trapped within its mouth.
From this beautiful creature, from the glowing ball within its gaping mouth—
A deadly ray of pink and red shot forward, tearing through the battlefield as that same piercing sound rang out once more.
SCREEEE!
It was aimed directly at Yohan as it would be the last and final time it would use it's ability...
Yohan's eyes widened slightly as he felt the sheer power behind it, more than he had expected—but the surprise didn't last. Calm settled over him almost instantly as he stood his ground, not moving even an inch.
Natsuki and IAM watched in silence.
The ray slammed into his chest.
The impact was violent, overwhelming, enough to erase anything in its path—yet instead of tearing through him, instead of leaving a hollow void where his chest should have been, something else happened entirely.
His top was obliterated on contact, shredded apart instantly, fragments scattering into nothing as the force stripped it away. Beneath it, his body was revealed— A solid chest and six pack for abs.
And then—
The energy didn't pass through.
It spread.
From the point of impact, the neon pink and red seeped into his skin, threading through him like veins of light. It didn't burn through him—it entered him, coursing beneath the surface, branching outward across his chest, his shoulders, his arms, his torso, until his entire body was laced with glowing lines that pulsed with contained power.
It was as if the ray had been absorbed.
His muscles tensed, not in pain, but in containment. The energy moved through him in waves, flowing along unseen pathways, gathering, circulating, refusing to disperse. His skin almost seemed translucent for a moment, the light beneath it shining through, turning him into something unreal.
His eyes ignited.
They shone like twin beacons, light pouring from them as his mouth opened and a bellow erupted from deep within his chest, raw and powerful, yet layered and distorted.
"OOOOOOOHHHHHHH!!!!"
The sound carried weight.
His entire body began to release waves of colour, the same neon pink and red leaking off him like heat haze made visible. The air around him warped under the pressure, rippling outward as if he stood at the centre of something far greater than himself.
His hair lifted and spread, moving as though it had a will of its own, strands drifting and shifting as they too took on that same radiant glow. Every part of him was saturated in it, transformed by it.
He no longer looked human.
He began to look like a demigod, his body utterly stunning as the ray finally began to die out, the last traces of its power still clinging to him as he stood there, having taken the attack head on.
But it wasn't over!
The glowing lines beneath his skin began to shift. What had been spread across his body now started to move with purpose, drawing inward, converging toward a single point. They pulsed as they travelled, each strand of neon pink and red sliding beneath his skin like living light, gathering faster and faster as they all rushed toward his chest, then up—toward his throat.
His eyes, already blazing like beacons, grew even brighter, and now that same light began to spill from his mouth as it opened wider. The glow wasn't just visible—it was building, condensing, compressing into something far more concentrated.
A sphere of pure energy formed within him.
It wasn't stable. It churned and twisted, layers of neon pink and red folding into each other, growing denser with every fraction of a second. The light leaked past his lips, spilling out in thin streams as the pressure inside continued to rise.
He looked like a vengeful deity.
Then—
"OOOOOOHHHHHAAAAASCREEEEE!!!!"
Another bellow tore out of him, but it wasn't just a sound.
It carried the attack with it.
A raging torrent of pure neon pink and red energy erupted from his mouth, released all at once with overwhelming force. It didn't travel—it arrived. One moment it was leaving him, the next it had already reached its target, crossing the distance faster than thought itself.
It arrived... And went as there wasn't even a nanosecond of resistance to be had. There was no moment of impact to observe.
It was there—
And then it wasn't.
The creature was completely eviscerated, erased so thoroughly that not even fragments remained where it had stood. The space it occupied was simply gone, swallowed by the attack before anything could react.
And still, the attack continued.
The glowing lines across Yohan's body kept feeding into it, being pulled from beneath his skin and drawn into the beam as it sustained itself. His body dimmed gradually as more and more of that stored energy was expelled, the intensity of the light around him fading as it was consumed.
The moment he realised the creature was gone, he shifted.
He redirected the attack upward.
The beam tore into the sky, stretching endlessly above him, a pillar of destructive light that continued for several seconds more before finally weakening. The sound faded, the glow diminished, and the attack collapsed in on itself until nothing remained.
Silence followed.
The neon pink and red vanished completely from his body, leaving only his bare form behind. The glow was gone. The power was gone.
What remained was the cost.
His breathing was heavy, his body slightly trembling from the strain. A faint line of blood slipped from the corner of his mouth as he wiped it away with the back of his hand.
Then he turned.
Natsuki and IAM were already looking at him with something close to disbelief. Like they were looking at something that shouldn't exist.
Yohan met their gaze without hesitation.
"I've never taken such a strong attack… It took a bit more from me than I thought," he said, givin g a small nod, as if what he had just done was anything but abnormal.