Chapter 12: Metsuri Ebonveil
"I was hoping I was wrong." Metsuri's hand blurred as cold steel whispered from its sheath.
A blade slightly shorter than a katana slid free in one smooth, uninterrupted motion—a weapon forged strictly to kill without excess.
The black-wrapped hilt settled naturally into her palm while the matte sheath hung empty at her hip.
"And you already know where we are…" she said quietly, her pitch-black eyes locking onto the monster, cold and unwavering. "Vulcan. You die today."
The Vulcan's grotesque grin stretched even wider. Using its thick tail, it lowered Albion onto the dirt floor behind it, handling the infant with a careful, almost mocking deliberation.
"Let's see how long you last, pretty human," it growled, its glowing, pupil-less eyes fixing entirely on Metsuri.
They stood several feet apart, but the distance meant nothing.
The beast crouched low, its massive thighs tensing, and then it launched. The ground cracked violently beneath its weight as it shot into the air.
Mid-flight, its massive arms came together, interlocking its thick fingers into a single, crushing hammer.
Then, it dropped. It wasn't a mere fall—it descended like a kinetic missile. The impact hit with the force of an earthquake.
But Metsuri was already gone.
She had stepped back at the absolute last fraction of a second, the crushing force tearing past her as the ground where she had stood collapsed inward.
The stone shattered instantly. The cave floor spider-webbed into a jagged crater, sending a violent shockwave ripping through the cavernous space.
'Vulcans are a high-tier species of magical beasts,' Metsuri thought, completely calm even as jagged debris rained down around her. 'Not only do they possess superhuman physical strength…'
The Vulcan didn't stop to admire its destruction. Using the raw momentum of its missed strike, it twisted its torso, swinging its locked arms upward in a brutal, sweeping follow-up.
Metsuri shifted her weight, taking a single, calculated step. The massive fists missed her chest by mere inches.
'…But, unlike most mindless beasts, they possess an intellect advanced enough to speak the human tongue.'
The Vulcan separated its arms and swung wildly, a massive, fur-covered limb cutting a deadly arc through the air toward her.
This time, Metsuri ducked low, letting the heavy strike howl harmlessly past her head.
In that exact microsecond, she found her opening.
Moving with terrifying agility, Metsuri's blade shot forward. The ninjatō drove clean into the Vulcan's exposed flank.
"GRRRAAAOOOHH!!" the beast roared, the sound deafening within the enclosed cave.
Unfortunately for the Vulcan, Metsuri didn't hesitate. Her wrist turned, shifting the angle of her weapon. The razor-sharp steel carved upward in a clean, vertical slash, splitting through thick muscle and flesh as she fluidly stepped through the motion.
Another agonized roar tore from the monster's throat.
Taking immediate advantage of its staggered stance, Metsuri pushed off the ground, vaulting high into the air.
Twisting her body mid-flight, she delivered a vicious, snapping kick. Her heel slammed directly into the Vulcan's face with a sickening impact.
The sheer force sent the massive creature skidding backward across the rubble. But before it could even recover its balance, Metsuri was already waiting for it—hovering in the air directly in front of its face, ninjatō held high.
"Die, Vulcan," her voice slipped through the cloth mask, cold, flat, and absolute.
She brought the blade down in a lethal executioner's strike, fully expecting the battle to end.
Instead, steel screamed against something incredibly solid.
"What?" Her eyes widened just a fraction.
The strike had been stopped. No—it had been perfectly blocked.
Disengaging instantly, Metsuri flipped backward through the air, sliding gracefully across the fractured ground before coming to a firm halt.
Her gaze snapped forward.
The Vulcan stood there, its muscular tail raised high in front of its face. The lethal edge of her blade had been caught flush against its dense, reinforced hide.
"…So that's it," Metsuri muttered, her expression settling right back into an unbothered calm. "You use that tail like a shield."
Magical beasts, often called magical creatures, are unique lifeforms that exist in direct alignment with Mahō.
Their physical bodies are naturally saturated with it, making their raw strength, durability, and biological traits far superior to ordinary animals.
They aren't unnatural anomalies, nor are they separate from the world; they are simply creatures that evolved under the direct influence of ambient magical particles.
Compared to common wildlife, they exhibit monstrous physical capabilities and can even manifest abilities that closely resemble structured caster magic.
Yet, they never study or learn these arts; they are born with them. Each species possesses its own inherent form of Mahō.
It was their ultimate, natural weapon.
The Vulcan moved. It brought both hands to its massive mouth and spat violently. A dense mass of white magical substance shot outward, roughly the size of a basketball.
It hovered in the air for a split second before shifting, morphing, and flowing along the creature's arm like liquid armor before hardening into a heavy, jagged gauntlet over its hand.
The Vulcan bared its fangs in a wide, toothy grin. Snapping its arm forward, it hurled the hardened mass at full speed.
The projectile tore through the air like a cannonball.
It collided directly with Metsuri's raised blade.
The sound exploded through the cave—sharp, violent, and echoing like a gunshot.
Though her guard held and she successfully blocked the mass, the sheer kinetic force lifted her clean off her feet.
The ground beneath her shattered into loose rubble and billowing dust as she was driven backward through the air.
'That wasn't a structured spell,' she realized, her teeth gritting as she stabilized her footing mid-air.
'That was raw Mahō, highly compressed and fired as a solid kinetic slug!'
Her boots touched the earth, but she didn't have a single second to recover. The moment she landed, the Vulcan materialized directly in front of her. Its massive fist was pulled back, tightly coiled, and then it launched.
The punch slammed violently into the side of her head.
"GRAAAHHH!! BREAK YOU!!"
The devastating force sent her flying like a ragdoll. Her body crashed hard into the stone cave ceiling, shattering the rock, before dropping like a stone and slamming brutally against the ground below.
A heavy, resounding thud echoed through the chamber.
"HUMAN DOWN!! VULCAN KING!!" The beast pounded its massive chest with its remaining hand, jumping in place like a triumphant brute.
"ROOOOHH!!" it roared, its voice booming through the cavern.
When its fist had connected with her skull, it had heard it distinctly—that satisfying, cracking sound. For most prey, that was the absolute end.
That was more than enough to turn bone to powder.
But this wasn't prey. Standing up from the settling dust was a kunoichi.
"—Ughhhh…!" The groan echoed through the cave—loud, drawn-out, and thoroughly annoyed.
The Vulcan turned toward the sound, utter confusion flickering across its glowing, pupil-less eyes.
From the clearing debris, Metsuri stood up, dusting off her white cloak as if nothing had happened.
"…Damn. That actually hurt like a bitch…" she muttered, rolling her neck slowly. She rubbed at her joints with both hands, casually working out a minor inconvenience.
The Vulcan stared, its jaw dropping in complete bewilderment.
"…Oh," Metsuri sighed, catching the stunned look on its grotesque face. "You're wondering how I'm still standing, right? There's something you should understand."
She straightened her posture, exhaling lightly. "I am a kunoichi—a female shinobi. I've been trained to survive since I was a toddler. Dislocating and snapping something as simple as my neck is absolutely nothing to me."
What the Vulcan's primitive mind couldn't comprehend was that it wasn't just a matter of resetting her joints.
There wasn't a single visible mark, laceration, or bruise anywhere on her body. That was simply the baseline durability of Metsuri's physical frame, conditioned to withstand superhuman levels of trauma.
"But don't get it twisted." She slid her ninjatō back into its matte sheath with a soft, definitive click. "I don't even need a weapon to slaughter you."
A faint, mocking curve touched her lips beneath her mask. "You're kinda weak."
"GRAAAAHH!! YOU CHEAT!!" the Vulcan shouted, stomping its feet in place like a toddler throwing a tantrum. It pointed a massive, trembling finger at her. "CHEAT HUMAN!! I ALREADY WON!! YOU JUST DON'T STAY DOWN!!"
Despite being terrifyingly strong, Vulcans were notoriously immature creatures, particularly when it came to their cognitive development and emotional intellect.
"Mm… mmm… slrp… slrp…" A soft, rhythmic sound suddenly cut through the heavy tension. It was small, innocent, and thoroughly eager.
The Vulcan froze.
"…shluuup…"
Hearing the noise again, the beast slowly turned its massive head toward the corner of the cave. What it saw left it completely paralyzed with confusion.
Albion was leaning casually against the discarded basket of fruit, his tiny hands holding the bottle of goat milk as he happily drank from it.
"…mmh… mm…" the infant hummed softly, tilting his head back in pure contentment.
The Vulcan stared at the sight, utterly baffled.
Although it didn't know much about human civilization or customs, it knew with absolute certainty that small, young prey in a dark cave surrounded by violence was supposed to cry.
"…bup." A tiny, polite burp escaped the infant's lips, followed by a soft, satisfied sigh.
"…?" The Vulcan blinked, completely unable to process the situation.
While the beast was distracted, Metsuri continued speaking. "I gotta admit… I'm actually impressed you tracked us this far, Vulcan."
Her hand rose, casually pulling down the matte-black cloth mask from her face. At the same time, her oversized hood slipped back, revealing her features entirely.
The Vulcan snapped its attention away from Albion, turning its gaze back to her.
Metsuri stood there, her head slightly tilted, looking down at her monstrous opponent with supreme disdain.
Her lips parted slightly, as if the creature standing before her barely deserved the breath required to speak to it.
"…I'm actually shocked," she said flatly, her voice dripping with cold arrogance, "that you ever possessed the delusion that you could beat me… with this weak, loser shit."
"NO ONE STRONG!! ONLY VULCAN!!"
The beast roared, raw, unbridled rage completely overtaking what little cognitive sense it had left.
Its massive hands slammed together, and a volatile surge of white Mahō began to gather between its palms, swelling rapidly into that same compressed kinetic sphere.
But the attack never finished.
A white streak cut through the dim cavern air. It was fast—far too fast for the beast's primitive nervous system to even register.
"I told you, I don't need a weapon to kill you."
Metsuri's voice drifted calmly from directly behind the beast. Her hands were raised in a precise, dual-chopping form. A radiant, high-frequency white energy clung to her skin—highly condensed, perfectly stable, and razor-thin.
A single second later, a thin, flawless crimson line appeared across the Vulcan's shoulder.
"For I am the weapon."
SHHKK!
The Vulcan's entire arm separated from its torso in a clean, effortless bisection. The severed limb spun high into the air, a thick trail of blood following it in a violent arc.
"URRRAAAAGH!!"
The Vulcan staggered heavily, a broken, agonized roar tearing from its throat as it clutched desperately at the empty, spurting space where its right arm had just been.
Blinding pain crashed into its nervous system all at once. It buckled backward, its eyes squeezing shut as it tried to process the sheer trauma.
Turning fully around, Metsuri's hands—still engulfed in that hum of dense magical energy—performed a brutal, downward slicing motion.
A crescent blade of white Mahō peeled off her fingertips and tore through the air.
The Vulcan couldn't react; its body was still reeling from the initial shock.
SLASH!
The energy arc carved straight across its broad chest, splitting open a deep, horizontal fissure.
Blood erupted outward in a violent spray, splashing against the stone walls.
"GRRRAAAOOOHH!!" The second roar was entirely desperate, laced with the sudden realization of its own mortality.
Its massive body trembled, utterly overwhelmed by the sheer velocity and precision of the attacks. It was trapped in a loop of agony, feeling mortal wounds open seconds apart.
Ethernal Infusion.
It is the highly advanced martial process of concentrating raw Mahō into a specific biological target to artificially enhance one's physical capabilities.
When applied directly to the body, magical particles are forcefully directed into the muscle fibers, bones, and limbs.
The result is an exponential surge in raw strength, speed, and overall physical performance.
It doesn't alter the fundamental nature of the user's body; instead, it reinforces the existing structure, allowing it to withstand immense external G-force and produce catastrophic physical output, pushing the human frame far beyond its natural evolutionary limits.
Unlike other prominent mages of this era, Metsuri Ebonveil did not possess an innate, caster-type magic. Nor was she trained by a mythical dragon.
Yet, ironically, her absolute, flawless mastery over Ethernal Infusion gave her a unique, terrifying property—one that allowed her to project localized kinetic force fields and cut through solid matter with her bare hands.
Her mastery had reached a point where her physical vessel itself was the ultimate weapon.
"I would've loved to actually fight you," Metsuri said, a faint, predatory grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. "If you were fully grown, that is."
She purposely paused, granting her mutilated opponent a brief moment to breathe.
"A real fight," she continued, her voice dropping into a low, amused purr. "Where we both go completely all out… and the loser ends up as nothing but scattered ashes."
She stepped forward, standing over the Vulcan as it fell to its knees, panting heavily while clutching its ruined torso.
"I'll tell you a little secret before you expire." She tilted her head, gesturing lightly with her thumb toward the corner where Albion sat, calmly draining the last of his bottle.
"He's a bit special, you see. He is the descendant of an ancient, forgotten bloodline—one that traces all the way back to the dawn of the age of dragons and humans."
A distant, mythical era. A time that existed over 400 years ago, steeped in secrets that even she didn't fully comprehend.
"Grr… not right…" the Vulcan muttered, its body trembling violently as life began to slip away. "Not right…" It wasn't listening; its primitive mind couldn't care less about history lessons.
"Do you understand what that means, beast?" Metsuri continued anyway, her eyes flashing with a dark intensity. "His kind… shouldn't even exist in this current era of magic. But that's not all. His race is known by another name entirely across the ancient texts."
"ROOOAAARR—!! VULCAN WIN!!" The monster snapped, its primal survival instincts refusing to accept defeat at the hands of a human woman.
Its remaining arm flared with a desperate aura of white Mahō as it lashed out, throwing a final, suicidal punch aimed directly at her chest.
Metsuri caught the planet-cracking punch with a single palm. She didn't flinch. She didn't slide back an inch.
"They're called…" she whispered, her extended right hand beginning to glow with a blinding, hyper-compressed density. "…the natural enemies of God."
In that exact instant, she moved, swinging her arm down in one final, definitive hand-chop.
SHHKK!
A vertical blade of absolute white energy cleaved straight through the Vulcan's skull and torso, splitting the massive creature cleanly in two.
Immediately following the strike, a torrent of white-hot flames erupted from the bisection, instantly consuming the severed flesh and reducing the monster's remains to a pile of drifting ash.
Metsuri watched the combustion with cold, unblinking black eyes.
'That's right. Burn. Burn until there isn't a single cell left to regenerate.'
Leaving the shattered, smoke-choked battlefield behind, Metsuri turned her back on the ashes without a second glance.
The flames continued to quietly devour the remnants of the Vulcan, but she couldn't care less. Her steps were entirely rhythmic and calm as she made her way back to the corner of the cave.
The cavern, which had just been filled with deafening violence, fell completely silent once more.
When she reached the child, she crouched down and picked up the basket of fruit first, inspecting the rations as if a life-or-death struggle hadn't just occurred around them.
Then, her gaze shifted down to the baby. Albion was still sitting there, completely unfazed, sucking the last few drops of milk from the glass bottle.
"…So even a monster bursting into flames didn't scare you, hm?" she murmured, a genuine, albeit faint smile touching her lips.
Reaching out with her free arm, she effortlessly scooped him up, cradling him securely against her white cloak. He did not understand the concept of fear. He did not understand the concept of death. And so, because his primal nature demanded sustenance, he simply drank.
Metsuri stood up, adjusting her grip on the basket, and turned around. Together, the rogue shinobi and the infant walked out of the mouth of the cave, leaving behind nothing but blood, fading embers, and absolute silence.
What rested safely in Metsuri's arms was a force that this current era of wizards was entirely unprepared for.
It wasn't just a child. It was the genesis of a quiet, inevitable reckoning—one that would, one day, bring the entire world to its knees.