Something hot sweeps through my insides.
It begins as if my blood is boiling, and then, soon, a deeper layer turns over. Not flesh, but beneath it—a sensation as though unseen pathways are splitting apart. A feeling both familiar and strange climbs my spine and shakes my brain.
My vertically slit pupils widen ever so slightly.
The moment I see that gap, my vision flips upside down, and instead of looking outward, I am sucked into it. Into the inside of the pupil, into a deeper place where not even light can reach, I fall endlessly.
And I see.
Darkness. Without end. Countless lights are embedded within that hollow expanse. Constellations. Ancient stars that human eyes could never observe, flickering only in the depths of the soul.
The scattered lights connect to one another. Lines are drawn, and meaningless points take shape. One among them slowly turns red.
At first, it is faint. No more than a distant point that, for some reason, catches my eye. But as I watch, that light grows deeper and deeper. It pulses like a heartbeat. Yet it is different from the beating of a heart. It resonates somewhere farther within, neither beneath flesh nor beneath bone, striking sharply.
Devour.
Leave nothing behind.
It is not a sound. Nor is someone speaking inside my head. The instinct that had sunk to the very bottom of my body accepts it first. That is not a thought, but a principle of survival. It thrusts upon me, as if it were only natural, the fact that I am already no longer human, the conclusion that there is no longer any reason to maintain reason.
Everything before my eyes is prey. I need only tear, shatter, chew, and swallow. Thirst burns my throat. The things I had tried to protect until just moments ago, the things I had agonized over, scatter like worthless specks of dust.
My senses twist. As my vision stains red, the forms of objects collapse, and everything that had been distinct moments before is drawn to the same side. Can it be eaten or not? Will it be left behind or swallowed? That merciless dichotomy becomes the whole of the world.
It is then.
Something that had been pressed into one corner, lying still, stirs faintly. It is weak. Like a lamp in a storm, nearly an extinguished ember. And yet it is certainly there. The power drawn up from my past life, the Dao power that had been suppressed for so long, rises with a scream.
It collides head-on.
It interlocks with the rampaging demonic power and becomes tangled with it. They grind against each other wildly, as if they might burst at any moment, yet strangely, they do not scatter. The Dao power does not push it away. It does not break it. It simply wraps around it in silence, holds it there, and little by little turns the flow that had been stretching out madly back inward.
Eat.
No.
Swallow.
Not that either.
Circulate.
Different wills clash, and at some point, their direction changes. The power that had been bursting outward, tearing everything apart, bends and returns, beginning to spin in a circle as if biting into itself. It bites its own tail. As though it might break, yet it does not; as though grinding each other down, yet they do not completely collapse.
Demonic power and Dao power interlock in that state.
They gnaw at each other, endure, and bite down again. The center that had been colliding madly slowly finds its place within. The blurred boundary comes back to life. Instinct does not disappear. It still writhes inside, sharpening its edge as though it will spring back up at any moment if I let down my guard. Even so, it cannot swallow everything.
I stand in the gap of that boundary.
My breath continues. Heavy air enters deep into my lungs, and my scattered vision gathers back into one.
Only then do I open my eyes.
The golden light settles. It does not spread; it condenses inward.
The long, vertically slit pupils are fully revealed. Deep within one eye, a pattern turns. Lines biting one another as they revolve, an unbroken ring of eternity.
A serpent.
Biting its own tail, it continues without end. It rotates slowly and overlaps my vision. What I see changes. Before the outward trappings of objects, I grasp their essential flow, and the severed cross-sections of space connect.
For a moment, I maintain that state and look inward.
Demonic power and Dao power are interlocked by a hair’s breadth. They gnaw at each other and release energy. Yet they do not collapse. They continue as if about to break, and bite at each other again as if about to merge. They are not completely the same, but now they cling together like a single mass that can no longer be separated.
At this level, by the standards of my past life, it is one-fifth.
I let out a short breath. To break through the current situation, that much is enough.
I lift my gaze. From above the severed vertical passage, a faint light descends. It is far away. Originally, it was a distance a human body could never reach, a height that my previous body would not have dared even consider as an option.
But now is different.
I lower my body. I do not forcibly gather power. I match my flow to the vibrations of the surrounding space. I spread the Dao power thinly and lay it over the space ahead.
What was far becomes near. The coordinates twist, and I see the gap between them. This sensation continues. The unreachable distance shrinks as if folding like paper, and I step across it just like that.
Ground Shrinking.
I push my body into that gap. My vision cuts off briefly, then immediately connects. I am already one section higher. The light grows a little closer. For the first time, the blocked path connects.
Something in my chest leaps lightly. This works. It is not my head calculating it; my body is already reading the next coordinates.
I connect once more. This time faster, folding space again in tune with the flow. My vision cuts off, then connects. My position rises again.
The light draws closer. As I continue ascending along the unbroken flow, the air above changes subtly. The blocked boundary no longer continues. The moment I cross an unseen line, space itself changes.
It is no longer below. It is above.
The pressure that had been bearing down on me releases, the sensation of water cuts off, and in its place, dry, rough air brushes between my scales. The light that had been faintly descending now pours down from above.
I push upward along that gap. As I climb past the vertical structure, the pressure gripping my body releases all at once. The sensation grazing my scales changes. This is no longer the heavy, sunken space underground.
It is open. Vast. Beyond the fishy stench of blood, air from the surface, mixed with exhaust fumes, opens my lungs.
I do not stop. Following the direction where the light reaches, I drag my body up.
And I cross the boundary.
—-
Silence flows.
Karin’s body, impaled on the rebar and motionless, looked as though it had already ended.
Even where blood had dried and clotted, no flow could be felt anymore, and even the muscles that had been trembling faintly had gone completely rigid. Only that distinct, heavy silence left behind after breath ceases had settled over the surroundings. The chill seeping through the collapsed debris lingered as if cooling a corpse.
That state continues for a while. Just when time seems to stretch without anything changing, somewhere very faintly inside, something shakes as though being scraped. Not the surface, but deeper within the body, machines on the nanoscale begin to scream.
Emergency nanobots belatedly activate. They forcibly drag halted organs back into function and cover ruptured blood vessels with temporary membranes. It is not a method of reversing death, but a bizarre and desperate intervention that forcibly reconnects what has been severed, preserving only its form.
Thump.
The inside of her chest jerks once as if twisting, and immediately after, the heartbeat is forced to continue.
The rhythm is completely wrong. Each time the mismatched beat continues, the torn interior splits open again, and the forcibly sutured areas tremble faintly. Rather than being alive, it is closer to a state that has not yet been allowed to let go of life.
At that moment, Karin’s body jolts violently.
“Kuh!”
Fixed in place by the rebar, only her upper body spasms upward as her mouth opens. Dark-red blood boiling up from inside pours out all at once. Air rushes into her lungs, but before it can continue to the end, it cuts off midway. Her torn lungs make a metallic sound.
Just as her consciousness is about to sink again, fragments of a shattered drone fall from above to the floor. A loud metallic crash tears through the silence, followed by footsteps. Light, but without hesitation.
“Ah, seriously. This is so damn annoying.”
A silver-haired woman walks in with the light pouring from above at her back. Her silver hair, flowing between dust and afterglow, is so neat that it seems out of place in these ruins, and there is not the slightest disorder in her gait.
Her gaze sweeps across the floor. Marks torn and ground away, the corpses of mercenaries, and the remains of a monster. The woman’s eyes narrow ever so slightly.
“No matter how much cheaper mercenaries are than drones these days, isn’t this a bit excessive?”
She tilts her head faintly. The traces are strange. The flow that had been continuing is missing entirely midway. A void that cannot be explained by any physical chain of cause and effect. Her eyes gleam sharply.
Then, in the middle of the pool of blood, Karin lets out a suppressed sound. The woman’s gaze slowly turns.
Karin’s distorted figure, pierced through by rebar. The woman approaches, checking the embedded rebar, torn flesh, and clotting blood one by one as if appreciating them.
“Ah. You’re dragging the Roen family’s dignity through the mud.”
Her uninterested gaze turns toward Karin’s chest. Seeing the unstable, erratic heartbeat and the faint energy roiling within it, she twists the corner of her mouth.
“So they did implant something like this in you, since you’re a direct descendant in name at least. Half-baked is still half-baked, isn’t it, Karin?”
She takes another step closer. The sound of her heels stabs into Karin’s eardrums.
“It’s a skill in itself to hold out in that state, but it’s not exactly useful tenacity. Don’t you think it just looks ugly instead?”
Karin, struggling to hold on to the thread of consciousness, barely opens her eyes. Beyond her unfocused vision, she sees a familiar silver light.
“...Rin?”
The corner of Rin’s mouth twists. It is the smile of a predator, without the slightest trace of affection.
“Where did you hide it?”
There is no rise or fall in Rin’s voice. Karin’s bloodless lips tremble.
“Haa... I don’t... know. It was blown away... in the explosion...”
“I see.”
Rin nods obediently. Then, without asking anything further, she slowly begins to walk around the area. Her gaze turns toward the collapsed abandoned building.
“Is it this way?”
“......”
Karin bites her lip and forces her gaze downward. The flow of magic power that had been continuing precariously is faintly, but undeniably, calm.
Rin’s steps change direction. This time, she heads toward the enormous pile of concrete debris that has collapsed in layers.
In that instant, Karin’s breath stops.
She tries desperately to maintain an expressionless face, but the suppressed magic power unique to a mana maladapted individual surges like a scream and bursts in every direction. Before a First Tier, it is an unmistakable answer that cannot be hidden.
Rin’s footsteps stop. She turns her head and lifts the corner of her mouth briefly.
“I heard your answer loud and clear.”
“No... Ugh...!”
Invisible magic power clamps around Karin’s throat. Without even allowing her to scream, Rin applies pressure and cuts off Karin’s consciousness.
Leaving Karin collapsed unconscious on the floor with a thud, Rin passes her by as if looking at trash and walks straight toward the pile of debris she had indicated.
An unseen force seeps beneath the rubble. Layers of scrap metal twist and scream, and slowly, a gap opens. A dark, damp crevice where light does not reach.
Rin’s gaze drills into it. A small body drenched in blood lies crushed beneath. The vessel that had held the “core” she had been searching for so desperately. But the immense energy that should have been pouring out cannot be felt. Only the traces that should have been left there remain, while the inside is empty.
Rin’s brief calculations cut off there. The ease vanishes at once from her cool face.
“......Ha.”
Rin chews out the words in a low voice.
“Fuck.”