He tore a hole in space. The portal opened onto the fields outside Veldara, where the Confederation army was assembled and waiting.
The surrendered soldiers filed through. Then the supply wagons. Then the siege equipment. Then the warhorses — five thousand of them, led through in strings. Then the mountains of abandoned weapons and armour.
The Veldaran commanders on the other side went through the same cycle of alarm, confusion, and stunned acceptance that the harbour guard had experienced that morning.
Yuki stepped through last, dragging the legless general and his second-in-command. He deposited them at the feet of the nearest Veldaran officer.
"Prisoners. They'll want to be questioned."
Then he teleported to the palace.
The king's guard drew weapons when Yuki materialised in the audience chamber. He pulled off his mask before anyone did something regrettable.
"It's me. Stand down."
The king was on his feet. Officials surrounded the table — maps spread, contingency plans half-drawn. They'd been war-planning. Preparing for a siege that wasn't coming.
"The fleet is captured. The army is defeated. Over three thousand prisoners are in your custody. Five thousand warhorses, ten warships, and enough weapons and supplies to equip a second army." Yuki set the mask on the table. "Veldara is safe."
The room was silent for three seconds. Then it erupted. Officials cheering, guards slamming fists on breastplates, the king standing with his eyes bright and his jaw tight with something between relief and awe.
Yuki didn't stay for the celebration.
"I'd like to keep a few of the warships," he said. "For a merchant trading venture."
The king stared at him. "The ships, the horses, the materials — they're all yours. Everything you captured. If you don't want something, we'll buy it from you."
"I'll send someone to negotiate the sale then. Right now, I need rest."
"Let me call the royal healers—"
"Not necessary. Just tired." He was already moving toward the door. "I'll be in touch."
He left before anyone could stop him.
The front door of his house opened and Yuki walked inside and the mask he'd been wearing — not the porcelain one, the invisible one, the one that held everything together — fell off.
He made it three steps into the hallway before his legs gave out.
He hit the floor. Not gracefully. Just — down. Knees, then hands, then flat on his back, staring at the ceiling of the house he'd bought for his family.
The flood was still coming.
Seven thousand men on the field. Five thousand more in the lake — the last of the drowning, the ones who'd held on longest. Twelve thousand human souls, their mana and life energy pouring into him in a continuous river that had been building for hours.
He'd hidden it. Through the battle, through the teleportation, through the palace audience — he'd diverted parallel minds to managing the intake, compressing the energy, keeping his body from tearing itself apart. But now, home, safe, surrounded by his people — he let go.
His body burned. Not pain — transformation. Muscle fibres condensing. Bones restructuring. Cells dying and being reborn stronger, denser. His mana reservoir — already incomprehensibly vast — expanded again. And again.
Running footsteps. Voices.
"YUKI—"
"He's on the floor—"
"Is he hurt? Is he—"
Lira was there first. Then Bella. Then Kana and Hana, both in their pajamas, eyes huge. Elena was behind them with Miri.
Yuki grabbed Lira's hand with his right. Bella's with his left.
"I'm fine." His voice was strained but steady. "I just fought a lot of men. Feeling the aftereffects. I just need to rest."
Lira's hand tightened on his. "How many?"
"A lot."
Bella was looking at him with her magic eyes. He could tell — the unfocused quality, the slight glow in her heterochromatic irises. She could see it. The dense flood of mana flowing into him from every direction, pouring through his body like a river through a dam.
He squeezed her hand. Looked at her. Silently: Don't worry. Don't say anything.
She held his gaze. Her jaw tightened. She was frightened, she didn't know what she was witnessing but the incomprehensible amount of energy flooding into his body scared her. But she stayed quiet.
While they fussed over him — blankets, water, Kana trying to feed him grapes — something pinged in the back of his mind.
A parallel mind. The one he'd tasked months ago with an impossible problem: How do I transfer absorbed energy to other people?
The thread had been working in the background through every fight, every absorption, every quiet evening. Modelling the mana intake process. Analysing the conversion mechanism. Designing a containment and transfer system.
It had just finished.
Solution found. What are the odds that it solved that problem now? It's likely due to the upgrade all of my parallel minds received after the naval battle.
Yuki lay on the floor, surrounded by his family, with a river of death energy flowing through him, and started to smile.
He reached out — not physically, mentally — into the river of incoming energy. Following his parallel mind's newly completed blueprint, he separated a thin stream from the flood and began shaping it.
The energy condensed. Compressed. Solidified under the pressure of his mana, forming a tangible shell around a core of concentrated life force. The shell hardened. Stabilised. Became physical.
A capsule. The size of a blueberry. Sitting in his palm.
He stared at it. Dense, warm, pulsing faintly with contained energy. A human life's worth of mana and vitality, compressed into something you could swallow.
He made another. And another.
The process was fast — the river was massive and the capsules were small. Each one took seconds. He filled a jar. Then another jar. Then another.
Lira watched him produce glowing blueberry-sized capsules from thin air while lying on his back. "What are those?"
"Strength pills. If I'm right — and I think I am — these can make you all stronger. More mana, more physical ability, faster recovery. Maybe even longer lives."
The room went quiet. He decided now might be as good a time as any to tell them his deepest secret.
"Every time I defeat an enemy, I absorb their energy. It's involuntary — I can't stop it. But now I can capture a fraction of that energy before it integrates into my body and package it for someone else." He held up a capsule. "If you take one of these daily, you'll get stronger. Steadily. Over time."
He kept producing. The flood was still flowing and would be for hours. He split his attention — parallel minds managing the intake while others shaped capsules at maximum speed.
Five jars. Then ten. Then he switched to a more concentrated formula — denser capsules for later use, when the standard ones became less effective.
After three hours, he had ten thousand capsules stored in barrels in his dimensional storage. Five thousand standard. Five thousand potent.
My family's growth, secured for years.
The river finally ebbed. The last trickle of absorbed energy settled into his reservoir and went still.
Yuki closed his eyes.
He was asleep in seconds.
Hana found him first.
She'd been watching from behind Lira's leg throughout the capsule-making process, dark eyes tracking every glowing blueberry with silent intensity. When Yuki's hands finally stopped and his breathing deepened into sleep, she padded forward.
She curled up against his side. Her head on his arm. Her tail tucked around her legs. Her face pressed into his sleeve.
Both of them asleep. Both of them smiling.
Bella went to the palace that evening.
Lira and Elena stayed with Yuki. Kana stood guard — literally, sitting cross-legged at the foot of his makeshift floor-bed with her ironwood sword across her lap. Nobody was going to disturb him on her watch.
Bella returned two hours later with the full story.
Ten warships captured. The naval force's command structure eliminated. Over five thousand sailors lost in the lake. The land army — ten thousand strong — defeated. Seven thousand killed. Three thousand surrendered. The general and his second captured, minus legs. Five thousand warhorses secured. Enough weapons and supplies to equip the entire Confederation army twice over.
One man. One afternoon.
Lira sat at the kitchen table and listened. Elena stood behind her, tea untouched. Kana had abandoned guard duty to listen. Hana was still asleep against Yuki's side.
They all looked at the man on the living room floor. Seventeen years old. Silver-blue hair spread on the carpet. A fox child curled against him. Jars of glowing capsules on the table beside him.
He'd defeated an army. A fleet. Thousands of men.
And he'd come home and collapsed because the weight of it — not the fighting, but the absorbing, the killing, the prayer he always said — was too much to carry standing up.
"He's going to need us more than ever," Bella said quietly. "Not for protection. For everything else."
Lira nodded. Elena nodded.
Kana looked at the sleeping Yuki with her amber eyes. Then at her sister, curled against his side. Then at the women around the table.
"He always protects us," she said. "So we protect him."
Nobody disagreed.