Last Line Recap: Ren smiled. It wasn't a human smile. It was the smile of the Abyss. "Welcome to my world," Ren whispered. "Now... vanish."
The violet sky of the Null-Zone didn't just darken; it curdled. As the first wave of Hunter Association elites and the Monarch's Hounds phased through the shimmering rift, they weren't met with a cowering glitch. They were met with a wall of absolute silence.
Standing fifty yards away, Ren stood with his arms hanging loosely at his sides. He wasn't radiating a massive aura like Thomas Andre or Jin-Woo. Instead, he seemed to be absorbing the very light around him.
"Target spotted!" a voice crackled through the Association's tactical comms. "It's the Glitch. And... wait. Is that the Shadow Monarch beside him?"
"Hold your fire!" a higher-ranking officer shouted, but it was too late.
The Hounds—monstrous, multi-limbed beasts made of twisted shadow and malice—didn't care for human politics. They leaped forward, their claws scraping against the calcified ground with a sound like grinding teeth. They were faster than any S-Rank hunter, a blur of teeth and dark mana.
Jin-Woo didn't move. He didn't even draw his daggers. "Ren. Show them what you've learned."
Ren took a single step. He didn't use [Void Step]. He didn't need to. He simply willed the space between him and the Hounds to stop existing. In an instant, the lead Hound found its claws passing through Ren's chest as if he were a ghost. But it wasn't because Ren was intangible; it was because he had erased the 'collision' between them.
"My turn," Ren whispered.
He didn't punch. He simply placed a palm against the Hound's snout. A ripple of translucent violet energy expanded from the point of contact. There was no explosion, no gore. The creature simply began to unravel, its shadow-matter turning into fine, grey ash that floated upward into the violet sky.
The other Hounds skidded to a halt, their primitive instincts screaming in a language of pure terror. Behind them, the Association hunters—men and women who had fought S-Rank disasters—stood frozen. Their mana-detection goggles were malfunctioning, the numbers spinning into infinite zeros.
"What is he doing?" one hunter stammered, his hand shaking on his mana-rifle. "He's not even using mana... he's just... deleting them."
"Enough!" A voice boomed from the back of the Association ranks. A man in heavy, reinforced plate armor stepped forward. It was Siddharth Bachchan, an S-Rank hunter from the Indian branch, hired as a consultant for this hunt. "You're an anomaly, kid. And anomalies get purged."
Siddharth unleashed a massive wave of telekinetic force, aiming to crush Ren's internal organs. The air distorted under the pressure, enough to flatten a tank.
Jin-Woo's eyes narrowed, but before he could intervene, Ren raised a finger. The massive telekinetic wave hit an invisible barrier—a thin line of Void energy—and simply ceased to be. The momentum didn't redirect; it vanished.
"Purge?" Ren asked, his voice echoing with a haunting resonance. "You're trying to purge a hole in the universe. Do you know what happens when you push against nothingness?"
Ren closed his fist.
Suddenly, the ground beneath the Association hunters began to liquify. Not into water or mud, but into a swirling vortex of black ink. Several hunters screamed as they felt their boots, then their legs, being 'unwritten.'
"Igris! Beru!" Jin-Woo's command was like a thunderclap. "Handle the Hounds. Keep the humans alive—barely. We need answers."
The shadows exploded from the ground. Igris moved like a red streak, his longsword parrying the attacks of the remaining Hounds with surgical precision. Beru, the Ant King, let out a screech that shattered the nearby calcified trees, his claws tearing through the Monarch's minions like they were made of paper.
The valley was now a chaotic symphony of violence. On one side, the Shadow Army was systematically dismantling the Monarch's hounds. In the center, Ren was a calm eye in the middle of a storm, effortlessly negating every high-level spell and physical strike the Association threw at him.
Siddharth Bachchan charged Ren, his fists glowing with the power of a collapsed star. "Die, you monster!"
Ren didn't dodge. He caught Siddharth's glowing fist. The impact sent a shockwave that cracked the very foundation of the Null-Zone, but Ren's arm didn't move. He looked the S-Rank hunter in the eye.
"I'm not the monster," Ren said softly. "I'm the consequence of your greed."
With a sudden surge of power, Ren didn't erase Siddharth. Instead, he forced a tiny fraction of the Void into the man's mana core. It was like pouring liquid nitrogen into a furnace. Siddharth let out a blood-curdling scream as his mana began to implode, his golden aura turning a sickly purple.
"Ren, stop!" Jin-Woo appeared beside him, his hand catching Ren's shoulder. "If you kill an S-Rank hunter from the Association now, there will be nowhere on Earth left for you to hide. We have what we need."
Ren looked at the screaming man, then at the terrified faces of the survivors. The 'Wolf' inside him was howling for more, wanting to erase every single one of them. But he looked at Jin-Woo—the man who had risked everything to mentor a 'glitch'—and he felt his humanity pull back on the leash.
Ren let go. Siddharth collapsed, unconscious, his mana core fractured but intact.
The remaining Association hunters dropped their weapons. They weren't just defeated; they were broken. They had seen the Abyss, and the Abyss had blinked.
From the shadows of the trees, the Remnant watched, a faint smile on his ashen face. "The weapon is learning," he whispered, before vanishing into the mists.
But high above, in the stratosphere, a single satellite—not owned by any nation—recorded everything. In a dark room filled with screens, a man with white hair and glowing blue eyes watched the footage of Ren.
"The Error has stabilized," the Architect murmured, a cold, calculating smile playing on his lips. "It is time to initiate the Final Patch."