….
Just then, a massive acidic tendril whipped out from the sludge, aiming a lethal blind-spot strike directly at Rumi's exposed back.
"WATCH OUT!"
Bakugo yelled, trying to warn her as gravity dragged him back toward the earth.
Rumi didn't even turn around.
Spinner stepped into the gap in the blink of an eye. With a brutal, two-handed swing of his massive sword, he cleaved the acidic tendril cleanly in half before it could breach Rumi's personal space.
"Don't even dare to touch our second Boss." Spinner warned, his reptilian eyes locked onto the bubbling sludge as the corrosive acid hissed uselessly against the flat of his oversized blade.
But the sludge merely bubbled, and the severed tendril regrew instantly, multiplying its mass.
Rumi scowled, punching her fist into her open palm with a loud, echoing crack. "This thing is so annoying."
But before she could launch herself into the purple mass to dismantle it, she stopped and looked around the battlefield again. "So again, where is Patchwor–"
She didn't get to finish the name.
From up distance, a blinding flash of ultraviolet-blue and pure white light suddenly eradicated the shadows of the entire mountain range.
Every single person in the clearing; heroes, students, and the villains who were tied down and unconscious, froze in place.
Heads snapped in unison toward the northern ridge.
Five kilometers away, hovering high above the distant tree line, a massive sphere of impossible, paradoxical energy was expanding into the atmosphere.
The sheer thermal radiation reaching them across that massive distance was enough to make the ambient air in the clearing instantly dry and suffocating. The moisture evaporated from the air in seconds.
Midoriya's breath caught in his throat as he stared at the second sun illuminating the night sky, his green eyes reflecting the terrifying, beautiful light.
"Dabi-sensei…."
He whispered, absolute awe and primitive terror bleeding into his voice.
Unaware of the current proceeding, within Dabi the system interface flickered and locked into place.
====
| [ARACHNID GENOME] – 88/100%
====
Now at 88% integration, everything changed about Dabi.
He could still feel the unsettling threat from some unknown location, but the conflicting temperatures raging within his own body no longer fought each other; they bowed to his command.
And he knew exactly what to do.
The sphere between Dabi's hands was actually a mimic of something he displayed to Bakugo and Shoto during their final exams, but it is far more complex and stronger in unrecognisable magnitude.
Far below him, Gigantomachia stood paralyzed by the sheer, existential dread radiating from the sky; the mountain-sized beast's pinky finger twitched.
It was a tiny and completely involuntary moment; a pure frantic response from a monster engineered to feel nothing.
Dabi's head snapped down.
His expression; what was left of it visible beneath the soot, dried blood, and severe thermal burns, went completely blank…. and–
Empty.
There was just absolute certainty of victory in it.
"I said..."
The sphere in his hands began to violently condense suddenly. It grew smaller, denser, and only brighter.
"...don't move."
Before the sentence even finished echoing across the valley, he threw it.
The sphere fell like the fist of god.
Gigantomachia tried to dodge; it was too late.
The beast tried to activate its [Mole] quirk to burrow into the earth, and also tried to activate its multiple defensive and shock-absorption quirks.
However, all those attempts seemed irrelevant.
Just as the attack had made an impact–
Seventy tons of bombs exploded in every single direction.
A crater of a thousand meters wide appeared instantly in the bedrock, as the resulting shockwave leveled the forest for another two kilometers in all directions.
The attack had almost replicated a small scale nuclear detonation.
The flash of light was so bright that the people at the training camp; five kilometers away, had to physically cover their eyes. Some of the younger students from Class 1-B clamped their hands over their ears and started shouting from the sheer, overwhelming intensity of the pressure wave rolling over the camp.
When the blinding light finally cleared, it was followed by a thunderous sound that nearly raptured their eardrums.
And the silence followed by that?
It was deadly.
….
.
Near the impact location, Gigantomachia lay at the absolute center of the crater.
Frozen solid.
It was not surface ice, but a complete cellular freeze. Every single molecule, every atom in the beast's colossal body was suspended in a crystalline stasis that approached absolute zero.
But it was still burning from within.
Ultraviolet-blue flames were clearly visible roaring through the thick, impossible ice, furiously consuming the beast's organs but completely unable to melt the ice, trapping them because the cold was absolute.
Fire and ice were locked in an eternal contradiction, neither able to overcome the other, both maintaining a perfect, horrific stasis.
The giant's eyes were wide open; aware, conscious, and terrified.
But unable to do anything.
And still, his enhanced senses could feel everything; the absolute zero cold freezing his cells, the white-hot fire consuming his flesh from within, and the complete, agonizing inability to move even a single muscle.
He was trapped in Dabi's creation of Hell.
High above the devastated crater, Dabi descended slowly through the ash-choked air.
The blue flames pulsing from his boots were sputtering, nearly extinguished. His chest heaved as the massive, unprecedented surge of adrenaline finally began to recede, leaving behind the crushing, agonizing weight of his injuries.
The last reserves of his power were used to brim.
He hit the vitrified earth hard, his boots sliding against the slick, melted glass before his knees buckled and he dropped heavily into the dirt.
His body was a ruin of fractured bones and extreme shock, while also slowly healing them. And even with all these, the same translucent blue interface flickered across his vision.
====
| [ARACHNID GENOME] – 90/100%
====
With just this one paradoxical, catastrophic attack, his evolution progression had skyrocketed.
He just needed ten more percent to complete the genome evolution entirely.
Right now, though, he was beyond exhausted. While his injuries were severe; cracked ribs, torn muscle fibers, his body also gained more accelerated healing factors that were already doing their work.
And the current pain was nothing he couldn't deal with. He just needed to sit in the dirt, close his eyes, and take a breath for a few hours.
And then, weirdly enough, as the absolute silence of the ruined forest settled around him, his stomach gave a loud, hollow rumble.
Dabi blinked, staring down at his soot-stained boots.
Amidst the destruction around him, his secondary sensation was that he felt intensely hungry. And incredibly sleepy.
"Beat a literal godzilla..." Dabi muttered, a dry, bloody chuckle escaping his cracked lips. "...and I am gonna die of starvation."
….
.
Five kilometers away at the U.A. training camp, Aizawa stared at the northern mountain ridge where the blinding sun had appeared and then slowly faded into the black night.
"That was definitely Dabi..." Aizawa concluded.
Beside him, Mandalay pressed both hands to her temples, her face going stark white. She stumbled backward, gasping as if the air had been knocked out of her.
"Eraser... I can't... I lost him."
Aizawa snapped his head toward her. "What do you mean?"
"The telepathic link." Mandalay panicked, her eyes wide with terror. "I was tracking his general direction, but the moment that blast went off... his thoughts just vanished! I can't sense him anymore!"
"Hm, I see." Aizawa nodded.
"You see? Is that it? The student might be unaware of what Dabi is fighting, but you know what a monstrous creature he was fighting, while risking his life…. and that's what you got to say?"
"What do you suggest then? We couldn't abandon our duty to protect the students in mid-battle–"
"Of course we couldn't. But don't you feel anything? He might have… di–"
"Could you please not finish that?" Aizawa interrupted firmly, his voice cutting off the panic before it could spread to the rest of the Pussycats. "Mandalay. Dabi is most probably safe."
"How can you be sure?"
"I just have a belief…. Dying is against his policy."
Of course Mandalay couldn't have known how many times Aizawa had also been exactly in her position over their Underground Hero work. However, she did not press, spotting the undeniable worry in his tone.
"Where is Mirko?" Vlad King suddenly asked, looking around the secured perimeter. "And Stain? The rest of them?"
Aizawa didn't need to look back to know the heavy hitters were already gone. "They didn't even wait for the dust to clear." he muttered.
The absolute second the explosion had leveled the horizon, Rumi Usagiyama, Stain, Spinner, and the rest of Dabi's crew had abandoned the camp perimeter.
They were already on a dead sprint through the dark woods, tearing toward the blast zone to find him.
Behind Aizawa, Midoriya, Todoroki, and the rest of the conscious students were staring in the direction of the explosion, the sheer scale of the shockwave leaving them breathless.
Bakugo stood alone near the edge of the tree line. His ruined, bleeding hands were trembling faintly at his sides, his chest rising and falling in jagged bursts.
"Dabi-sensei..." Bakugo muttered under his breath. Then, shaking off the vulnerability, he scowled, kicking a rock into the brush and raising his voice. "Tch. Showing off. Always has to be the dramatic one."
Kirishima, leaning heavily against a nearby tree, heard him. "You're shaking too, Bakugo."
"Shut up, Shitty Hair!" Bakugo snapped, refusing to look at him. "It's just the damn cold wind!"
.
….
[To be continued…]
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