….
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!"
But it was clear to anyone looking at him. Bakugo, Midoriya, Todoroki, Uraraka, and the rest of class 1A, and even 1B are worried.
Even though they have only caught small glimpses of the creature, they could imagine its size just by the earthquakes it had created.
And now that, in the center of the camp clearing, the immediate battle had finally ended, they could only hope their teacher would come out just as he always did.
How did they manage to defeat Mineta?
Well, since the other villains are dealt with, the Pro Heroes only had to dodge the incoming attack from the acidic tower, and no matter how potent the quirk-enhancing serum was, the user couldn't create matter from nothing forever.
The creature was finally out of fuel.
The expanding acidic spheres had slowed, bubbled, and collapsed into a smoking, inert puddle of corrosive sludge.
Aizawa walked forward, and stared down at the epicenter.
Lying in the center of the steaming crater, completely stripped of the purple spheres, was Minoru Mineta.
He looked like the very life force had been sucked out of his stretched, warped body. He was skeletal, unconscious, and barely clinging to life.
Aizawa stared at the boy he had expelled on the very first day of school. Instantly, he wanted to take his reassuring words to Mandalay back.
The physical battle for tonight had ended, yes.
But looking at the broken, mutated remains of this boy, and knowing that Yuga Aoyama was currently secured in the lodge storage room after his betrayal as a spy was exposed, Aizawa realized the true horror was just beginning.
His students were about to go through a psychological defeat that was infinitely more brutal than combat. They had survived the Vanguard Action Squad, but tomorrow, they would have to face the bitter, horrific truth.
One of their current classmates had sold them out to villains, terrified and blackmailed. And a former classmate had been the monster trying to melt them alive.
It was a reality they would have to digest, and it was going to break their hearts.
"....." Aizawa's hands clenched into fists so tight his knuckles popped.
His determination to take down All For One had just doubled.
First, the monster had taken his best friend, Shirakumo Oboro. And now, he was doing the same thing to these children.
"You take my friends." Aizawa looked up from the broken body of Mineta, his eyes locking onto the dark sky above the forest. "...now my students. You twist everything good into a weapon."
The capture scarf drifted around his neck like agitated serpents.
"I will make you answer for this, and then I will tear your empire down to its very bedrock, even if it is the last thing I do before drawing my final breath."
But before his vow could fully echo into the night, the world held its breath. The oppressive, suffocating heat that had been choking the forest for the last hour suddenly vanished.
….
Meanwhile, deep within the scorched remnants of the forest.
The reason Mandalay's telepathic broadcast had lost its grip on Dabi wasn't because he was dead.
It was something entirely unprecedented. Something neither the heroes, the League, nor Dabi himself had fully anticipated.
A metamorphosis.
Deep in the ash-choked clearing, Dabi's glowing blue eyes suddenly went blank.
The world around him faded into a muted, ringing hum.
The trigger wasn't a physical blow, nor the brink of exhaustion. It was a silent, internal chime of his System; a sound like a celestial anvil striking deep within his marrow.
====
[ARACHNID GENOME] – 90/100%
====
To bridge that final ten percent, his body could no longer just adapt. It needed to undergo a radical, forced evolution.
Instantly, the raging inferno devouring the surrounding trees halted.
As if the fire had suddenly become an extension of him, the scattered blue flames snapped backward, imploding with a deafening crack. They coalesced, dragging the very oxygen out of the air, swirling into a massive, blinding sphere of plasma that swallowed his entire body.
The sphere rapidly condensed, shrinking down into a dense, vibrating shell. A chrysalis of pure, volatile energy.
But it wasn't just fire.
Jagged, absolute-zero ice crystals erupted across the surface of the shell, crawling over the swirling blue heat in organic, fractal patterns.
It locked the blinding inferno in a state of flawless, impossible equilibrium. The chrysalis was freezing and burning in the exact same breath; an impenetrable fortress of thermal absolute that warped the very air around it.
Inside the glowing, crystalline egg, suspended in a void of perfect, painless balance, Dabi closed his eyes peacefully.
He wasn't just mutating.
The system was tearing up the blueprints of his destiny and writing something entirely new.
….
….
….
[Unknown Dimension]
Far beyond the burning forest; across dimensions and millions of lightyears away from the physical universe, lay a realm built purely of glowing, interconnected cosmic threads.
The domain of the Great Weaver.
As the highest-ranking active Spider-Totem, the Great Weaver was a deity of immense, ancient power.
Its infinite, shadowy legs rested upon threads of spun starlight that vibrated with the past, present, and future of infinite universes.
Its purpose was absolute: to spin and maintain the Web of Life and Destiny. It alone selected the worthy avatars. It alone bestowed the totemic blessings.
But recently, the Great Weaver had sensed a disturbance.
A parasite.
A faint, almost imperceptible trace of spider-power had manifested in an entity it had not chosen.
It hadn't been bitten, cursed, or blessed.
It was a glitch, carving out its own space within the Web without permission, forcefully rewriting its own totemic code.
Now, the Weaver could no longer ignore it; and this unauthorized thief stealing the sacred totemic power needed to be excised.
And the perfect opportunity had just presented itself.
As the anomaly entered its state of metamorphosis, its connection to the Web of Life and Destiny flared like a supernova.
The Weaver raised a massive, razor-sharp appendage, preparing to pluck the glowing thread. A single pinch of its cosmic mandibles, and the anomaly's existence would be snapped out of reality before evolution could hit 100%.
But just as the Great Weaver prepared to strike… its infinite, timeless territory began to violently shake.
A sound like shattering glass echoed through the cosmos.
High above the glowing tapestry of the Web, a massive, jagged crack tore through the very fabric of the Weaver's dimension; a phenomenon that should have been cosmically impossible.
The unbreakable threads of destiny violently snapped, whipping through the void like severed power lines.
Through the splintering void, the Weaver caught a glimpse of another being. Or rather, a glimpse of its eyes.
Twin suns of burning cobalt fire, staring out from an endless abyss.
The cosmic fracture widened, violently tearing open as giant, clawed hands gripped the edges of the rift.
The creature that pulled itself through was of unfathomable scale. Its massive, armored scales were a deep, abyssal blue. Jutting from its spine and maw were colossal ice crystals that burned with an unearthly, blinding fire.
It was a Dragon….
And it didn't merely enter the dimension but bled frost and plasma into a realm composed entirely of fate.
The beast forced its jaws through the rift and unleashed a roar; a sound that didn't just shatter the Web, but screamed of broken chains and defied destinies.
Devastating shockwaves rippled through the Great Weaver's domain, wiping out millions of threads in an instant.
For the first time in its eternal existence, the Great Weaver froze. The ancient deity felt an emotion it hadn't experienced since the dawn of creation: primal fear.
The totemic god was dwarfed by the sheer, overwhelming presence of the intruder. This was no mere spider avatar begging for power.
The anomaly hadn't just tapped into the Web of Life; his soul had manifested as an apex predator, a sovereign entity of fire and frost, coming to claim the power by absolute force.
The Dragon's burning blue eyes locked onto the Great Weaver.
Deep within its throat, absolute zero and absolute heat began to swirl together into a terrifying, apocalyptic light.
The message was clear:
I am not your avatar.
You are my prey.
….
….
.
Back in the ruined forest of the physical world, the icy-blue chrysalis pulsed like a dying star.
As the cosmic beast in the realm above opened its maw to devour the threads of fate, a rapid series of chimes echoed through Dabi's mind, loud and absolute.
========
[GENETIC MILESTONE SYSTEM]
| LIFE SPAN LEFT: 69 DAYS
| THREE EVOLUTION PATHS:
>[BREATH OF THE SUN] - 100%
>[SUPER SOLDIER] - 100%
>[ARACHNID GENOME] - 100%
….
[DING! Congratulations to the host on completing all three evolution paths…]
[CRITICAL ALERT : Terrestrial parameters exceeded.]
[Host physiology has successfully breached mortal limitations.]
[Initiating System Recalibration...]
[Scanning cosmic framework for higher-dimensional catalysts...]
[Directive : Transcend biological vessel.]
[Directive : Elevate Host to Apex Entity.]
[ SOVEREIGN CATALYST FOUND ]
[ OVERRIDING DESTINY PROTOCOLS... ]
>> [ THE PATH OF THE DRAGON ] <<
[Assimilation Sequence Initiated. Loading...]
========
.
….
[To be continued…]
★─────⇌•★•⇋─────★
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