Swish
The air whistled violently as Tougo launched his attack. Turned into a massive shadow, he closed the distance in the blink of an eye and threw a straight jab, aiming to shatter Jin's skull.
With Akane trembling, dodging wasn't an option for Jin, but the truth was he had no intention of moving anyway.
Anchoring his feet to the ground like roots, his waist twisted violently, transferring all the force from his legs, passing through his torso, and exploding into his right shoulder.
Even though Tougo had attacked first, he intercepted him with a punch halfway, beating him to the position by sheer power and speed.
Fists collided.
CRACK
Suddenly Tougo was sent flying backward, dragging his feet and staggering to keep from falling, with incredulous eyes and the sharp pain shooting up his arm to his shoulder.
What the hell...!?
His arm was numb!
CLANG
A familiar sound vibrated in Jin's skull, a sound that sounded better than any Beethoven symphony.
It was the confirmation of his skill: [Heartsteel]
His maximum vitality had just permanently increased after the exchange.
He looked at Tougo with hungry eyes. The rapists he had faced were too trashy. But this guy... He was a sturdy punching bag.
He could take a good beating before going down.
He had to take advantage of it.
Without giving him a second to regain his balance, he stepped forward, twisted his hip, and unleashed a roundhouse kick, unloading the full weight of his leg against the coach's chest like a baseball bat.
With the rapid movement, Tougo barely had time to cross his arms in front of his chest...
CRASH
But it was no use.
Swish
The kick sent him flying, crashing through the storage room door.
Lowering his leg, Jin turned toward Akane, whose jaw had dropped.
"Stay here and don't move," he whispered, before walking toward the exit to finish the job.
...
Struggling to get up, Tougo spat out dust, while his right arm throbbed with sharp pain.
Looking up and seeing Jin walk out of the storage room, walking toward him without rushing, he gritted his teeth.
'Today I'm going to have to kill or die...'
'I couldn't lose...' Not after what it had cost him to get here.
In this shitty world, power was rationed. The vast majority of ability users were stuck at Rank 3, doomed to mediocrity. To break that barrier and ascend to "Middle Rank," Enhancers were needed.
But the Government controlled the supply. They were expensive, scarce, and dangerous: even if you got one on the legal market, it was a coin toss. Statistics said the success rate was around 50%. The other half ended up crippled or dead.
And he had been one of those stuck losers until last year.
He remembered perfectly the day he was fired. He was at rock bottom when he crossed paths with that Merchant in the underworld, a sinister guy with a strangely pointed head.
He offered him a way out: "Compound V9".
It wasn't a diluted government potion. It was an illegal combat steroid, designed specifically for physical type users. The deal was simple: no odds, no "maybes". It guaranteed breaking the limit and reaching Rank 4.
At first he thought it was a scam, until he saw the results in others.
Desperate, he spent his last savings and injected it.
And it worked. He had won the bet. His body had mutated, achieving the "Second Awakening" of his ability. He was a Rank 4.
'And I'm not going to let a simple brat defeat me now!'
Taking a deep breath, he forced his lungs to work to the limit.
Beneath his skin, muscle fibers tore and rebuilt in milliseconds, interlacing and hardening to form an impenetrable shell.
This was his true trump card after the Second Awakening: [Bio-Armor]
With a bestial roar, he charged forward like a runaway train, brandishing his fists like spears.
And instead of being worried, Jin laughed and lunged at him.
CRACK! THUD! SMASH!
Dust rose in a violent vortex due to the blows.
There were no dodges, no blocks, no defensive martial arts bullshit. Both planted themselves in front of each other, trading blow for blow.
Fist against face, fist against chest. Non-stop.
But as the exchange continued, panic began to appear in Tougo's mind.
He was hitting with all his might, but his own arms were starting to fail.
He felt the bones in his forearms fracturing and his knuckles were skinless, stained with his own blood.
'This makes no sense!'
He gritted his teeth, horrified.
The scanners indicated that this kid's power level was clearly lower than his.... But his physical durability was absurd!
'Damn you!'
He could already feel his shoulders going numb. 'With a body like that, what the hell are you doing being a normal student? You should be in an elite unit hunting demons or saving the fucking world! WHY ARE YOU WASTING THAT MONSTROUS TALENT HERE?!'
Not caring about what he was thinking, Jin was in pure ecstasy.
Every time his knuckles connected, that CLANG! resonated in his skull like a victory bell.
It was pure dopamine.
His skills, [Pit Grit] and [Heartsteel], were working in perfect synergy. The more damage he took, the harder he hit, and every successful exchange increased his vitality.
He was modulating his punches, maintaining just enough strength to counter Tougo without knocking him out. He was using him as a simple punching bag to "stack" as many charges as possible.
Farming had never been so fun.
But for Tougo, reality was a nightmare.
No matter how tough his [Bio-Armor] was, everything has limits. After dozens of clashes, his arms were jelly. The pain had given way to an alarming numbness; he couldn't feel anything from the wrists down anymore.
And noticing that the intensity of Jin's blows decreased slightly, just enough to keep the rhythm.
In that instant, the horrible truth hit him: 'The kid was holding back...'
Humiliation and rage flooded his brain. Him, a Rank 4, treated like a toy by a student.
"AAAAAAAGH!" His sanity snapped.
Under Jin's surprised gaze, black smoke began to pour from Tougo, enveloping him.
What that Merchant "forgot" to mention is that Compound V-9 had a fatal flaw. It is an unstable mutagen: if the user suffers a violent emotional breakdown, the drug aggressively rewrites their DNA, turning the host into a [Majin]
But Tougo didn't give a shit about the side effects or his humanity. In his mind, only one thought remained:
'Kill!'
When the curtain of black smoke dissipated, his humanity had vanished with it.
Now, towering before Jin, stood an abomination nearly three meters tall: [Majin]
Tougo's eyes, now red, locked onto Jin, and without warning, he unleashed a storm of blows.
THUD! CRACK! BOOM!
Blocking the hits, Jin felt his bones vibrate; Tougo's strength had multiplied by at least... 4.
It was the classic cliché: "Sacrifice your humanity and get a stat buff."
And seeing that Jin seemed to be struggling to keep his guard up under his offensive, the monster that was once Tougo roared with excitement.
"Jin-senpai..."
A few meters away, Akane watched the fight, pale as a sheet.
She had tried to dial emergency services the moment she saw the transformation, but her phone screen displayed "No Service."
Isolated and terrified, she put the phone away with trembling hands.
The only thing she could do was clasp her hands tightly together and pray for Jin to survive.
But what neither the monster nor she noticed was the crimson glow beginning to saturate Jin's irises.
While Tougo thought he was dominating, he was absorbing. He acted like a conductor, redirecting the kinetic energy of every blow through his skeleton and discharging it into the ground beneath his feet, accumulating the trauma.
!
Suddenly, the red glow in his eyes flared up like a flare.
He went from zero to one hundred.
Just as Tougo threw another punch, Jin intercepted his massive wrists, pulled him forward to break his center of gravity, and rapidly slammed his fists against the giant's temples.
CRACK!
[Facebreaker]
The impact was so brutal that Tougo's brain bounced. His vision darkened instantly, leaving him stunned.
And not wasting the chance, Jin crouched, slid his arms around the Majin's waist, and activating every fiber of his strength, he didn't just lift him, he launched himself into the sky with him.
They jumped meters into the air, and at the highest point of the parabola, he spun his body, reversing the position to drive Tougo's head into the ground.
[The Show Stopper]
BOOOOOOM!
The ground exploded, creating a crater.
Lying in the center of the destruction, Tougo's spine was pulverized and his nervous system collapsed.
The pain was so great he couldn't even scream; he could only stare at the sky with glassy eyes.
'What... what happened? I was winning... I had the advantage...'
Reality set in as he watched Jin stand up without a scratch on him.
There was never a real fight.
All the punishment Jin had deliberately absorbed hadn't been in vain. His meter was maxed out, glowing a furious gold in his interface.
His skin began to emit steam, and a crimson aura burst out around him.
Clenching his right fist, he condensed all that accumulated pain into a single point, and unleashed it with a roar.
[Haymaker]
A massive shockwave of energy, vaguely shaped like a dragon, shot out from his fist.
Breaking the sound barrier and the ground, impacting squarely against Tougo's body in the crater.
BOOOOM
Everything shook.
When the dust and debris finally settled, the black mist dissipated as if it had never existed, and in the center of the smoking crater, the monster had disappeared.
Only Tougo's human body remained, bleeding and naked.
He was at death's door.
...?
Puzzled, Jin looked around.
He had expected a fight of this caliber, with explosions and craters, to attract half the school or the police.
But the campus remained silent... No one had peeked out.
'So that's it...' he thought, looking at the remnants of the fading dark mist.
That black mist functioned as a barrier or a soundproofing field.
________
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