"Missile strike requested! Target: Axville Mutant School! Those mutants are berserk!" Captain Jace barked into the radio as he ran for his life.
"Confirm?" came the clipped reply.
"Confirmed! Fire at will—blast them to hell!"
"Copy that. Strike in—"
Jace's sprint ended with a chill. A vast shadow fell over him. Something enormous exhaled—a wet, sinister sound like a throat ripping open—and in the same heartbeat he realized escape was impossible. He spun, trembling, raising his submachine gun toward the creature's throat. Aim. Fire.
Before the thought finished, the world folded around him.
A keening crack announced his bones shattering. Jace's scream was swallowed whole as the thing—an obscene, coiled gargantuan—retracted and swallowed him alive.
[Drop! Mission completed. Reward: 4 Life Potions.]
The beast belched. "Ugh—so full." The serpent's voice was almost bored. "Nice contract. If you find anything tasty later, you call me."
"Sure. Thanks," the soldier's mangled radio sputtered, if such a thing could count as thanks.
The colossal snake—an aberration the team later whispered about as the Vorax Serpent—slithered off into the trees. Ryuuto watched the blood on the tarmac and the smoking police cruiser with a face that didn't register surprise, only cold, amused distance.
"Ryuuto, this is bad," Professor Charles' voice threaded into his mind without ceremony. "Human prejudice against mutants is thick. Many want us eradicated. Killing them now—if you break that line—will only make them more terrified. Expect worse reprisals."
"They opened fire first," Ryuuto said flatly. "I warned them to evacuate. They shot. How am I supposed to entertain 'peace talks' with people trying to murder my class?"
"Magneto pulled strings in the past," Charles said. "But he didn't order this direct strike. Still—escalation is inevitable."
"If they keep coming here, I'll send them on the same road," Ryuuto snapped. "This is mutant ground. I don't allow it to be defiled."
"Enough—listen." Charles' tone changed, tight with alarm. "Two missiles are inbound. Northwest approach—Shark-class warheads. Impact in roughly sixty seconds. One would level the academy—two would be catastrophic."
Ryuuto's eyes tracked the sky. Two bullet-streak contrails burned blue-white toward Axville, closing fast.
"Evacuate!" Charles ordered. "You're my most promising student—get out of there!"
Ryuuto looked back at the campus—Qin, Guy Di, the others—small figures scrambling. He did not leave. Not when his classmates would become ash.
He exhaled, summoned the grit that lived under his ribs. "No. I stay."
Earth Style — Light & Heavy Rock Art.
Ryuuto hovered a hundred meters up, muscles braced against the wind. The missiles were already too close for a slow plan. Even if he weighed them down, inertia might carry them forward to detonate in the grounds. He couldn't gamble with millions of pieces of blazing metal.
Charles hissed into his head again, frantic, "You can't stop both! Leave!"
Ryuuto shut out the panic and felt for the technique he'd translated from another life: a fragment of his old world's reality-warping art. He clenched his fists, then opened them. Between his palms the air condensed into a small, white-glass cube. A faint light pulsed inside it.
"Dust Shield—Primordial Stripping Technique!" Ryuuto roared.
The cube leapt forward like a hungry box. It slipped between the two missiles, then expanded—fast, impossibly fast—engulfing both warheads.
The interior of the cube filled with a denser-than-dark fog. Not smoke. Not vapor. It was molecular decomposition made visible: the Primordial Stripping in action, tearing the missiles' structures down into raw arrangement and then…unmaking.
Outside, every sensor in the strike zone went blank.
Radar operators at the command post gaped. "Colonel—two missiles just vanished off the feed!"
"Impossible. Did they detonate on impact?" the colonel demanded.
"No! No thermal signature—no explosion. They—just—disappeared." The operator's voice was a flat, stunned thing. "It's like someone evaporated them. The positioning chips are gone. The chips—won't respond. I've never seen anything like it."
"Mutants," the colonel spat, voice hard as flint. "Call the military department. Now."
Ryuuto, perched and breathing easily, let a small grin creep across his face. The cube shrank back into his hands and dissolved into dust.
He heard, faint and irritated like a roommate who'd been woken up for chores, Shion's voice.
[Ding! Skill Learned: Primordial Stripping — Rank: Unique.]
Shion: "Hnn—finally. Took you long enough, Host. Don't get full of yourself. But okay—useful. Don't ruin the campus next time, got it?"
Ryuuto snorted. "Noted, Shion. Try not to be so smug."
His mind flickered with the taste of victory: not the showy, headline kind, but that precise, hard thing that comes when you stop someone from claiming your existence with a missile. He glanced down at the school—the faces of his classmates, the ruined cruiser, the aftermath—and felt the old certainty tune itself into something hotter.
Those who ride my path climb. Those who stand against me fall.
Ryuuto folded his arms, eyes glittering. The war had a new note now. And he was finally, undeniably, on stage.
[Ding! Achievement Unlocked: "Evaporator"]
Shion, whispering: "Cute name. Don't get a swelled head, Ryuuto-kun."