Chapter 14: The First Sensation II
High above the battlefield, suspended in the open air, a baby rested within the perfectly formed geometric confines of a hexagonal barrier.
His skin was soft and pale, his short black hair falling in smooth, delicate strands over his forehead. But his most striking feature, by far, was his eyes. They were a vivid, luminescent fuchsia hue—a color that felt entirely unnatural for a human infant, yet undeniably his.
Albion tilted his head, staring curiously at the transparent barrier surrounding him. He had never seen anything like it inside the dark, sterile metal facility where he had spent his existence.
"Bweoo…?" a small, confused sound slipped from his lips.
Slowly, with unsteady coordination, he reached out. His tiny hands pressed flush against the smooth surface.
The high-density magic shimmered instantly.
The midday sun reflected off the crystalline barrier, scattering light across its geometric edges like a web of fractured glass.
To Albion, it was beautiful—a dazzling spark of color in a world he was seeing for the very first time. It was something worth remembering.
Tap.
Tap.
He tapped the surface again, a soft, toothless smile spreading across his face.
"Bwee…!"
His fuchsia eyes shone like fading embers, filled with the joy of discovering entirely new sensations. He pulled his tiny hands back and clapped them together lightly in pure contentment.
Then, with unsteady curiosity, he began to roll his small body along the inner surface of the barrier.
He reached out, grabbing at the air and the geometric walls, climbing and fumbling—exploring his miniature world without any real direction.
Thud!
His head bumped lightly against the solid perimeter. He dropped back onto his stomach, clutching his forehead as a soft, pathetic whimper escaped him.
"…mmh…"
Slowly, Albion blinked through a tear and looked up. Something was out there.
It was massive. A towering, grotesque beast stood just beyond the boundary of his glass-like shell.
Its body was absurdly exaggerated, its broad shoulders stretching unnaturally wide before tapering down into thick, pillar-like arms and a dense, stone-hard torso.
He had never seen a creature exactly like this before.
…No. That wasn't entirely true. He had seen something like it.
The titan smiled. In that instant, a wide, unnatural grin stretched across its monstrous face, revealing a full, jagged set of teeth. Then, it casually walked past his floating barrier, heading toward the clearing below.
Where was it going? Albion's infant mind didn't even possess the capacity to wonder. But that smile…
Something deep inside his developing consciousness stirred.
The suppressed memories of the Vulcan surfaced all at once. Its wide fanged grin. Its muscular green tail wrapping around his fragile body.
The chaotic way it had moved. The brutal way it had fought. Even if he hadn't possessed the cognitive ability to understand what had happened, that didn't mean his eyes hadn't witnessed it.
He remembered the sound of its deafening scream. The strange, viscous red liquid stains its green fur.
(Blood.)
He remembered its massive arm being torn away by a flash of light. Its body being cut, systematically destroyed, and eventually being burned away into nothingness by a roaring fire.
One memory. Then another. Then another.
They flooded his fresh mind all at once, overlapping in a chaotic rush.
In a single afternoon, he had been pulled from a tank, given a name, experienced the warm taste of goat milk, and had even obtained a protector—a parent.
All of these rapid, intense experiences, combined with the lingering primal trauma of the Vulcan's demise, suddenly coalesced into a brand new, overwhelming psychological sensation.
His small body began to tremble violently. His breathing hitched, catching in his throat. Large, uncontrolled tears welled up in his fuchsia eyes, spilling over his pale cheeks.
For the first time in his brief life, he felt it.
Fear.
It was a sensation born from everything he had just experienced—everything he didn't understand, but still felt with absolute clarity.
All of the extreme trials he had been through in such a short span of time had forced his mind to develop at an accelerated, unnatural pace.
Ultimately, this trauma added a sudden, definitive depth to his emerging sense of self, causing him to experience the agonizing dread of abandonment.
His tiny lips trembled. His voice—fragile, unsteady, and raw—finally broke through the silence of the upper air.
"…Ma…"
"…ma…"
"…mama…"
His very first word. It wasn't born from joy or comfort, but from absolute terror and the desperate, primal need to not be left alone in the dark.
Down in the fractured forest below, Metsuri drew her straight-edged ninjatō with a lethal rasp.
"What a massive pain… It seems the entire forest itself is deemed a threat." She pulled her black mantle mask back over her lower face, her dark eyes locking onto the grid. "What I need to do… is systematically take them down one by one."
Even as she spoke, several massive humanoid beasts were closing the perimeter. Each one shared a similar 15-meter towering frame, yet every single one possessed a slightly different mutation.
Metsuri lowered her gaze to the matte blade of her weapon, watching her own cold reflection stare back through the steel.
'Normally, dismantling them one at a time from the shadows would be the safest tactical option…' Her thoughts shifted rapidly. 'But would it be smarter to just flee entirely?'
Time. That was the one resource she completely lacked.
The mere possibility that the elite tracker shinobi of Metsugakure were already hot on her trail left a cold, faint unease in her chest.
Of course, there was a minor chance they hadn't discovered her treachery yet—that she was simply operating on hyper-vigilant paranoia.
But that paranoia alone spoke volumes about how ruthlessly dangerous her former village truly was.
'But how would I even escape efficiently?' Her strategic thoughts sharpened. 'I physically cannot utilize my Floating Magic freely to run while I'm already sustaining Albion's suspension… and maintaining his high-density barrier while engaging in a high-speed escape isn't exactly viable.'
"Think, Metsuri. Think," her breathing steadied, her heart rate dropping back into a professional rhythm. "What is the absolute highest percentage path for me to survive this ambush?"
Then, a dark, realistic thought crossed her mind.
"…I could always just leave Albion behind.
"
A heavy, ground-shaking stomp echoed just yards away.
"…Damn it," her eyes hardened as she abandoned the thought. "I'm completely out of time."
She lifted her gaze. Standing a short distance away was another twisted variation. It wasn't the maximum 15-meter size; this one stood at roughly five meters tall.
Where a normal face should have been, there was an absolute void. Only a massive, crown-like cluster of jagged antlers erupted from its head, twisting and branching like the ancient roots of a dying oak—gnarled, uneven, and jutting outward at sharp, unnatural angles.
Its torso was violently split open from chest to abdomen. A vertical rupture exposed a completely hollow interior—dark, empty, and endless. It held no biological organs, only an eerie, localized void.
From its elongated arms and neck, long, threadlike green tendrils hung loose, swaying faintly in the wind.
'There's zero point in attempting to reason or talk with it. I learned that much from my earlier battles. If I want to see tomorrow… I'll have to slaughter it. Just like the others.'
"Eeeh—hehehehehe…!" the antlered creature let out a high, piercing, eerie laugh. It raised its long palm, and a sphere of pure white Mahō formed instantly above its skin.
Slowly, the energy began to swell, compressing into a tight sphere.
"What the hell is that?" For the first time in the engagement, Metsuri's black eyes widened slightly. "…That Vulcan utilized the exact same technique."
Just then, a stark realization struck her analytical mind. '…But I thought that specific kinetic compression ability was an innate property unique to its species.'
Innate Abilities. Much like human mages who are born with specific magic attributes, high-tier magical beasts possess Innate Magics. However, unlike humans who must study, their abilities are fully instinctual, species-specific traits developed without formal training.
Each species typically exhibits its own uniform style of magic—an example being that deep-sea octopus aberration utilizing Light Magic. That was the baseline rule Metsuri had always operated under.
*If that Vulcan wasn't using a species-exclusive power… then that implies all advanced magical beasts share a universal method of manipulation.'
As the white sphere in the monster's hand steadily grew in volume and density, she watched the process closely. It was shaping raw magic power entirely without a fixed spell structure.
It wasn't casting a formulaic spell—something she had done multiple times with her barriers. It was commanding the raw energy freely through pure, unadulterated will, shaping it and giving it a tangible, destructive form.
'That should be impossible… shouldn't it?'
Before she could process the theory, the monster launched the kinetic sphere.
Metsuri was caught completely off guard—a tactical error that, under normal circumstances, her shinobi training would never have allowed.
The massive sphere tore through the air like a meteor. A devastating explosion completely engulfed her coordinates, a wall of scorching smoke and stone debris erupting outward in all directions.
A long, heavy silence settled over the clearing. Slowly, the thick smoke began to part.
Metsuri still stood at the epicenter of the impact crater, her arms raised in a textbook defensive guard. Her bodysuit sleeves were entirely gone, burned away to ash by the intense thermal flash, exposing her pale, toned arms.
"I don't know what type of manipulation you just performed," she said coldly, a faint, dangerous smile forming beneath her cloth mask. "…But whatever that was, it requires an exceptional, monstrous control over your internal flow of magic."
Her pitch-black eyes sharpened to a lethal point. "It seems… You insects are far more dangerous than my training led me to believe."
Metsuri slammed her boot into the earth and vanished.
The ground shattered beneath her heel as she launched forward, her body blurring into a streak of white and black motion.
She didn't charge the antlered beast head-on; instead, she angled her trajectory away, darting directly toward the dense treeline.
Her foot struck a thick oak branch and she kicked off instantly, redirecting her momentum without losing an ounce of velocity. Then she hit another tree trunk. Then another.
She transformed into a total phantom within the canopy. She became a white flash ricocheting violently from trunk to trunk, each step sharper, each rebound stacking kinetic momentum until her speed reached an all-time maximum.
The beast's hollow face dragged behind her trajectory, its reflexes far too slow to keep pace with her movement. All its void-like gaze could register was a line of white light skipping through the timber.
Then, she vanished from sight entirely.
In the next microsecond, she was already occupying its personal space. Utilizing a final tree trunk as solid footing, Metsuri launched herself straight at the titan's head.
She hit its leg and didn't stop, her feet finding perfect purchase against its thick hide as she literally ran vertically up its massive frame, defying gravity through sheer velocity and muscle control.
In a heartbeat, she reached its face.
High-density white energy surged over her right leg, condensing and sharpening into a razor-thin edge around her shin.
Then, she executed the strike. Her snapping kick slammed into the side of its gnarled head with explosive force.
The kinetic impact jerked the five-meter creature violently sideways, its entire upper torso snapping back despite its overwhelming physical mass. The earth screamed beneath its feet as its heels dug deep into the soil, carving massive trenches into the dirt to arrest its momentum.
But the beast recovered fast—terrifyingly fast. Its massive, clawed hand rose instantly and came crashing down over her position like a falling wall.
Because she was currently airborne and unable to channel her Floating Magic without dropping Albion, Metsuri had no choice but to take the absolute brunt of the physical strike.
The heavy palm drove her straight down into the dirt, the impact blasting out a deep crater as dust, mud, and splinters erupted upward in a violent geyser.
A heavy silence followed, the thick smoke swallowing her form entirely. The beast stared down into the crater, a low, rumbling, wet chuckle slipping from its split torso.
"…khh…!" It slowly lifted its massive foot, preparing to stomp downward and crush whatever broken bones remained.
Just then, a stark light appeared. A small, hyper-luminous orb of white magic rose slowly from within the settling dust.
The beast paused. It tilted its gnarled, antlered head slightly, staring at the unfamiliar, drifting glow. The orb drifted higher, right to its eye level.
The moment it reached alignment, a blinding, solar-grade flash of light detonated directly in its face.
"SKRRAAA—YEEEEEE!!!" A shrill, agonizing screech tore from the beast's void-like throat as it staggered backward, both of its massive hands flying up to shield its blinded eyes.
"I bet your primitive mind didn't think Light Magic could be used as a flashbang, did you?!" Metsuri's mocking voice cut sharply through the clearing smoke.
Above her raised palm, a complex crimson magic circle ignited into existence.
High-intensity thermal energy began to gather instantly, the surrounding air warping and rippling as raw flames condensed into her palm.
"This specific magic attribute," she explained, her voice remaining perfectly steady despite the chaos of the battlefield, "is an attribute-based discipline. It manifests through both Caster-Type incantations… and Holder-Type applications."
The smoke peeled away from her frame as the thermal energy intensified to a blinding orange glare. She raised both hands toward the sky, channeling the heat. "With it… I can create, shape, and manipulate its destructive elements entirely at my own whim."
The magic circle flared to twice its size. "Fire Magic—"
"Enkō Rasenshō!"
From the center of the magic circle, an absolute inferno erupted. A spiraling column of condensed flames burst outward, twisting violently as it surged toward the target like a blazing vortex.
The heat roared through the clearing, embers spiraling as the inferno expanded.
The blinded beast couldn't calculate the trajectory in time. The vortex crashed directly into its upper torso. A violent, concussive explosion of fire completely engulfed its upper body.
But it wasn't a total kill. The monster's thick arms had come up instinctively, shielding its hollow core at the absolute last second.
This resulted in its left arm taking the absolute brunt of the thermal blast. The white-hot fire clung to the hide, greedily devouring the flesh as flames roared across the limb.
"SKREEEE—!!!"
The beast staggered backward, its entire frame shaking from the sheer agony of the burn. Yet Metsuri didn't pause for a single second. Her grip tightened on her ninjatō as she drew and swung in a single, fluid motion.
A white crescent of compressed kinetic energy tore free from the arc of her strike, slicing through the air with lethal, mathematical precision.
SHLAAASH!
For a single fraction of a second, the entire forest seemed to still. Then, the beast's massive left arm was cleanly separated from its shoulder.
Severed completely, the limb tore free and crashed to the ground with a heavy thud, nearly sending the creature completely off balance before it barely caught itself.
Metsuri exhaled a measured breath, lowering the tip of her blade slightly. "That…" she said calmly, "…was Suntetsu."
Her cold eyes remained locked on the writhing monster. "Suntetsu and Sesshoku-zan—through these advanced applications, I don't merely swing a piece of sharpened steel… I replicate—and vastly surpass—the very concept of what a blade is meant to achieve."
A faint, high-frequency hum lingered around her weapon. "Bisection. Severing. Decapitation. Dicing. These aren't structured caster spells; they are the direct mechanical result of my advanced mastery over Ethernal Infusion."
The beast clutched the smoking stump where its left arm had once resided. The damage was absolute—deep, ruinous, and cauterized by her flames.
Then, something shifted within its magical signature.
A pale, tangible green energy began to leak out from its open pores, resembling a dense mist forced through cracks in solid stone. It wasn't a gentle release. Its entire five-meter frame tensed up violently, its muscles locking and trembling under immense physical strain as the ambient energy gathered at the shoulder.
Seconds later… a new arm forced its way into existence.
Bone, sinew, muscle tissue, and hide knit themselves together in a rapid, grotesque display of biological rebirth until, at last, the limb flexed—completely whole once more.
"I see…" Metsuri murmured, her expression dropping back into complete boredom. "You're one of the rare variants. A magical beast that's evolved far enough to possess high-speed regeneration."
The creature responded by pulling back its lips into a wide, toothless grin of pure malice.
She exhaled lightly, her fingers tightening on her hilt. "Clever, aren't yo—"
😭😭
The entire world shook. A thunderous, concussive quake split the air directly behind her back.
Metsuri turned her head, and her dark eyes finally met something far, far worse than a five-meter mutant.
It towered over the entire clearing, blotting out the midday sun entirely—fifteen meters of sheer, monstrous, unadulterated mass. Its massive silhouette cast a shadow vast enough to swallow the entire clearing beneath its weight.
Its shoulders stretched outward like the flying buttresses of a dark cathedral, holding up a torso that wasn't soft flesh, but something rigid, compact, and armor-plated.
From that colossal frame hung two arms that weren't merely limbs—they were solid stone pillars, corded with thick, dense muscle fibers.
In a slow, deliberate, terrifyingly heavy motion, the 15-meter titan raised its hand.
Its massive fingers curled tightly into a fist the size of a carriage.
Then, it let the fist fall.
Snapping her fingers together, a brilliant magic circle flared to life directly beneath Metsuri's boots.
She raised both of her bare hands toward the sky just as the colossal fist came crashing down over her skull.
A violent, catastrophic shockwave exploded outward from the point of impact. Massive oak trees were torn free from the earth, their thick roots snapping like twigs as they were hurled into the sky.
The ground fractured instantly, deep spiderweb cracks racing out across the entire sector.
But the fist never reached her skull.
A transparent, high-density barrier held perfectly firm, locked in a direct kinetic collision with the beast's overwhelming physical strength.
Metsuri's teeth ground together, a sharp ache running down her spine. 'What absurd power…!' The sheer downward pressure alone was monstrous. 'This specific variant! It has poured every ounce of its evolutionary Mahō into pure physical strength.'
Then, something changed within the titan's aura. A volatile white glow erupted around the beast's descending fist. The energy surged upward, flowing along its arm like a raging river current, and the physical weight of the strike seemingly doubled in an instant.
Metsuri's knees buckled under the sudden, crushing shift. A sharp, metallic taste of blood flooded the back of her mouth.
"To think…" she rasped, her voice straining under the absolute weight, "that I—Metsuri Ebonveil—would actually struggle… against mindless, unrefined insects…!"
The ground beneath her boots gave way further, collapsing into a deep, jagged crater as the force pressed down harder, threatening to shatter her barrier into dust.
"Every… last one of you…!" she groaned through clenched teeth.
As the pressure mounted, a repressed memory from her youth suddenly surfaced in her mind.
◆ ◇ ◆
"Look at her… a female ninja born into the Ebonveil main line. Yet she possesses absolutely zero talent for innate caster magic whatsoever."
A veteran shinobi from the village had spoken in open disdain, his voice echoing off the cold stone training grounds.
At the time, she was only a young child, undergoing the grueling, lethal daily training regimen of Metsugakure.
Within those hidden walls, blood ties and lineage meant absolutely nothing if a child could not manifest a structured magic deemed acceptable or useful by the clan elders.
Those who failed to meet that rigorous standard—children included—were cast out into the wilderness without a second thought, their very existence erased from the scrolls as if they had never belonged to the shadow.
"What else did you honestly expect? She's a woman. At absolute best… she's just a tool to be utilized." another assassin had added, turning his back on her bleeding form.
The women of the hidden village were stripped of all personal autonomy,
systematically reduced to reproductive tools meant to sustain the shinobi population through childbirth.
Some, if they displayed exceptional physical promise, were trained rigorously as kunoichi to act as infiltrators—but even then, their ultimate value was measured no differently than a common blade: by how useful they could become to the state before they broke.
Compassion was a fatal weakness the village could not afford to harbor. Those who grew up within the shadow were conditioned from an early age to accept the act of killing without a single shred of hesitation, even if the target standing across from them was one of their own classmates.
And Metsuri had learned that lesson perfectly. If you were weak… you couldn't protect a single thing in this world. Not your autonomy. Not your dignity. Not even your own life.
◆ ◇ ◆
"Every single one of you village shinobi…" Metsuri's voice began to tremble—not with fear, but with a pure, unadulterated fury that burned hotter than her fire magic. "Every last one of you mindless beasts…"
Crack.
A thin fracture began to spread across the surface of her defensive barrier.
Metsuri Ebonveil did not possess an overwhelming pool of raw magic power. She never had, and she never would.
But the one thing she possessed in limitless supply—the one trait that had allowed her to slaughter her masters and escape the shadow—was an unyielding, unbreakable willpower.
"All of you are just pathetic pigs, fawning over structured magic formulas like it means a single damn thing!!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH—!!!" Her feral scream tore through the roaring winds of the forest.
The high-density barrier suddenly surged with a blinding white light. For a single microsecond, the shield held the weight—and then it forcefully pushed back.
The massive 15-meter fist was violently deflected upward, forced away by a sudden kinetic pulse as the towering titan staggered backward, its physical balance completely shattered.
Metsuri stood at the center of the crater, breathing heavily, her chest heaving. Her long black hair had come completely undone from its high ponytail, the thick shaggy strands spilling freely down past her waist, framing a face twisted with raw, unhinged intensity.
Her physical body swayed slightly from exhaustion, but she stepped forward anyway, her dark eyes locked onto the remaining monsters like drawn blades.
"I am Metsuri Ebonveil," her hand rose, settling back onto the hilt of her ninjatō. "A kunoichi of the Ebonveil Clan. The true terror of Fiore."
SHHKK!
Something razor-sharp cut through the air. It was fast—far too fast for her current, exhausted state to counter.
Metsuri barely had time to turn her head before a blunt force collided with her ribs. Her body was launched violently backward through the air, smashing face-first through a massive oak tree.
Then another. And another.
The ancient wood splintered like cheap paper as her body tore through five massive trees in total before the sixth, thickest trunk finally arrested her momentum.
She hit the dirt hard, rolling across the rubble before finally coming to a ragged halt on her side.
"W-what… the hell was that…?" she groaned, coughing up a spray of crimson as she forced her trembling upper body up. Her eyes dropped to the clearing.
Embedded deep into the soil exactly where she had been standing was a long, white staff constructed entirely from hyper-condensed, solid magical energy.
"…a Khakkhara?" She instantly recognized the traditional weapon's shape.
Her gaze snapped forward, locking onto the five-meter antlered beast. It stood at a distance, its arm missing but its stance unmoving, watching her with that same wide, toothless grin stretching across its blank face.
"It was you… wasn't it?" Metsuri pushed herself up to her feet, gripping the shattered, bleeding bark of the ruined tree behind her for support. "I don't know how your primitive mind is achieving it…" she said slowly, her voice laced with a mixture of awe and disgust. "But you're shaping raw magic power itself into a solid object. No structured spell formula. No spoken chant."
Her strategic mind raced, recalculating the threat level. "Giving energy a physical form… a dense weight… absolute tangibility… and successfully maintaining that construct completely outside your own physical body."
That went against every fundamental law of modern magic. Even highly trained, veteran mages required complex, structured caster formulas to achieve that specific level of external physical consistency.
"Which means…" she whispered, the horrifying realization finally creeping into her chest, "you magical beasts… don't require spells at all to manifest weapons."
"They simply willed it into existence."
"Eeeeeh—heheheheheheh—" the antlered creature's distorted, echoing laughter echoed through the ruined forest.
Metsuri glanced down at her right hand. A thin line of fresh, warm blood traced across her palm, trembling slightly with each shallow breath she took. "…This is an absolute worst-case scenario," she muttered under her breath, her survival instincts screaming at her.
'I need to abandon this sector. I should run.'
The tactical thought had barely formed in her mind when the ambient air pressure changed entirely. A faint, vibrant green hue began to bleed into the wind around her.
At first, it was subtle—barely noticeable. Gentle currents of air brushed along the dirt, circling her boots like something ancient stirring from a long sleep.
Suddenly, the pressure deepened. The wind thickened, tightening around her frame like a physical vice.
The localized currents began to spiral at a terrifying velocity, drawing in heavy debris, shattered leaves, and blinding dust.
What had started as a gentle whisper became a crushing presence. What was once completely invisible now churned into a massive, visible vortex of compressed, green-tinted air.
And then, the spell erupted. A full-scale, violent tornado roared into existence within the center of the forest.
The vortex tore through the landscape without an ounce of discrimination, ripping century-old trees straight from their roots and hurling them skyward like weightless twigs.
Metsuri dug her boots deep into the fractured earth, desperately trying to hold her physical position, but the sheer aerodynamic force was completely overwhelming.
The vacuum of the wind seized her frame. Her body was lifted clean off the ground, dragged violently into the rotating air currents.
She twisted her torso mid-flight, reaching out desperately for anything solid. Her fingers latched onto a thick, deep-rooted tree branch, her body whipping wildly beneath the force as she hung on using the raw grip strength of her left arm.
"What the hell is going on now?!" she shouted, her voice completely swallowed by the roaring winds. "Another high-tier beast?!"
Her dark eyes darted across the swirling chaos.
Trees, multi-ton boulders, and shattered terrain—everything was being violently devoured by the center of the storm.
The oak branch beneath her fingers groaned under the tension and cracked. The entire tree was ripped free from the earth by the tornado's vacuum. She was dragged along with the mass, pulled straight into the eye of the storm.
"KRAAAAAA—SKREEEEEE!!!" A piercing, avian cry split the roaring gale. High within the spiraling vortex, a colossal shape materialized.
Its fundamental appearance was strikingly similar to an eagle—though on a nightmarish scale.
Measuring a massive ten meters in size, its magnificent body was draped in pristine, alabaster feathers that shimmered with a pearlescent sheen under the sunlight. Toward the tapered edges of its massive wings and its long, flowing, phoenix-like tail, the coloration deepened into a slate blue and charcoal gray.
Its legs were thick, powerful, and covered in a golden-brown down that hardened into heavy, scaled talons as black as obsidian.
A crown of soft, ethereal feathers flowed from its brow like a ghostly mane, contrasting the blade-like sharpness of its wings.
And its eyes were molten amber, locked with absolute predatory focus directly onto her coordinates.
"So it's you," Metsuri muttered, narrowing her dark gaze despite the wind pressure forcing her eyelids shut. "You're the one manipulating the atmospheric pressure."
The winds howled louder, the G-force threatening to rip her limbs from their sockets. Instead of wasting energy fighting the rotation, her shinobi training told her it would be smarter to go along with the current.
Metsuri twisted her body mid-air, aligning her spine with the aerodynamic flow. She let the storm carry her body, moving fluidly with the wind instead of wasting strength against it.
Her hand shot out, grabbing a floating chunk of stone debris to stabilize her flight path.
Across the eye of the storm, a massive, violet magic circle ignited into existence directly before the eagle-like beast's chest.
Its ancient runes rotated with controlled precision, glowing brighter as energy condensed into the center.
From its core, the air itself took physical form—thin, razor-sharp constructs of compressed wind materialized one after another like a wall of blades.
With a single, powerful flap of its alabaster wings, the beast launched the volley.
The wind blades sliced through the tornado with high-pitched, deafening shrieks, cutting through everything in their path—shredding floating tree trunks and solid stone alike into dust.
Metsuri's eyes sharpened to a lethal pinpoint. She angled her ninjatō defensively.
SLASH!
CLANG!
SHHKT!
Each atmospheric blade met her cold steel in rapid, blinding succession. She moved purely on perfected muscle memory and raw instinct, deflecting, parrying, and slicing the compressed air currents apart one after another.
She wasn't utilizing any special named school of swordsmanship—just her raw, unadulterated skill with a piece of metal.
SHHK!
A thin, crimson cut traced across her left cheek. Another wind blade tore cleanly through the black mantle covering her lower face, shredding the fabric away entirely and exposing her features to the storm.
"…Tch." Her expression hardened into a mask of pure coldness.
With a final, desperate swing, she dispersed the remaining atmospheric blades, sending them scattering harmlessly into the outer storm.
Not slowing down her momentum for a fraction of a second, she slid her ninjatō back into its sheath.
She spread both of her bare arms wide, and a torrent of compressed flames erupted from her open palms.
The fire coiled violently around her skin, twisting and roaring as the local air distorted from the sheer, sudden thermal heat.
The blaze intensified rapidly, growing brighter and denser by the millisecond.
"Let's see your feathers handle this temperature—!!!"
With a powerful, twin-palm upward thrust, she unleashed the inferno. A massive torrent of flames surged forward, cutting through the green tornado like a blazing spear.
The fire devoured everything in its path, swallowing the wind currents and vaporizing the debris alike.
Then, it detonated. A massive thermal explosion of fire consumed the vortex, burning the tornado apart from the absolute inside out.
The green storm collapsed instantly, replaced by a towering, expanding cloud of black smoke.
A white figure burst through the smoke—the eagle-like beast. Its alabaster wings were heavily scorched, patches of burned, smoking feathers marking its left side, but it still maintained its flight path.
It circled the airspace once, then turned its amber eyes back toward the smoke cloud.
Moments later, another figure emerged from the haze—falling rapidly toward the earth.
"…Holy crap, I am way too high!" Metsuri's steady voice finally cracked as she tumbled through the open sky, clouds drifting around her silhouette.
"Kof—kof—!" The thick smoke burned her throat, causing her to cough mid-fall as gravity reasserted its hold.
"SHRRRRAAAAKK—!!!" That avian cry echoed again.
Her head snapped to the side. There it was—the scorched eagle beast, still diving directly toward her position.
'…It actually survived a direct hit from my high-output fire magic?' Metsuri was genuinely surprised by its durability.
In one smooth, automated motion, she unsheathed her ninjatō mid-fall. "I can still end your life… with a maximized Suntetsu."
Suntetsu was Metsuri's primary ranged slashing application.
By channeling high-density Mahō directly through a physical weapon—in this scenario, her ninjatō—she was capable of releasing the compressed energy at the exact moment of a swing.
This resulted in a hyper-compressed blade of energy getting shot forward, typically manifesting as a crescent-shaped arc.
These slashes were solid constructs that traveled at high velocities toward a target, carrying the exact cutting force of the original physical strike.
The overall size, speed, and raw power of the slash could be adjusted depending on the volume of magic infused and the physical force of her arm swing.
However, Suntetsu was entirely dependent on a physical medium.
Without a weapon to act as a conductive catalyst, Metsuri could not properly shape, compress, or release the ranged attack.
It was the exact polar opposite of her close-range slicing application, Sesshoku-zan.
High above her falling trajectory, a massive, purple magic circle suddenly formed in the sky, stretching wide across the clouds.
Its ancient runes rotated slowly as an immense volume of energy gathered, static electricity crackling through the atmosphere.
The entire local air pressure grew heavy, violently charged with static.
"Let me guess… your species is evolved enough to utilize both Lightning AND Wind magic attributes simultaneously." Metsuri exhaled a sharp breath, staring up at the purple glow.
She clicked her tongue in raw frustration. "And I can't even activate my Flight Magic right now without dropping the kid's barrier…"
Her body continued to plunge toward the treeline. The sky above her flashed with a dangerous violet hue. "This entire situation is such a—"
She inhaled sharply, a thick vein pulsing violently at her temple.
"—fucking pain!!!"
Without a shred of warning, multiple massive bolts of jagged lightning descended from the purple circle, relentless and blinding.
One after another, the electrical strikes struck her mid-air, completely engulfing her physical frame in searing light and explosive kinetic force.
The very atmosphere screamed. The world flashed a brilliant white.
And then, a heavy silence fell over the forest.
◆ ◇ ◆
The ground below was completely ruined—charred, smoking, and deeply fractured.
A massive crater marked the final impact point of the lightning strike, its jagged stone edges still pulsing with residual electrical current.
At the dead center of the crater, Metsuri lay completely motionless on her back.
Her pale skin was covered in severe electrical burns, faint trails of white smoke rising from her torn bodysuit.
Her clothes were shredded to rags. Her breathing was shallow, ragged, and uneven. Not a single muscle moved.
Then, the heavy, rhythmic sound of footsteps could be heard approaching the crater's edge.
More towering silhouettes emerged from the burning treeline—massive, 15-meter-tall titans, identical in build to the physical specimen she had faced earlier.
Humanoid in shape, each one carried a massive weapon forged entirely from raw, compressed magic power, their solid forms flickering with unstable energy.
They said absolutely nothing. Slowly, deliberately, they began to close the perimeter around her broken, injured body.
But to Metsuri, the approaching monsters didn't even matter anymore. As she lay there staring up at the canopy, her vision began to blur rapidly, her surroundings quickly dissolving into an empty, peaceful darkness.
'I have to run… I have to survive,' her internal thoughts echoed within her skull—distant, yet razor-sharp. 'No matter what the financial or physical cost… I will have my absolute vengeance on that man. That goal will never change.'
'This entire world… every single part of its society… is entirely to blame for what I was forced to become.'
'No matter what it takes to survive. Betrayal. Deception. Even slaughtering my own allies… none of it is off-limits to me.'
A looming shadow suddenly fell over her face. One of the towering 15-meter titans stood directly above her, its brutal physical mass blotting out the sky.
It raised its weapon high into the air—a colossal mace formed entirely from condensed, pulsing white magical energy.
The titan swung the mace down with crushing velocity, aimed squarely at her chest to end her life.
CLANG!
At the absolute last possible millisecond, Metsuri's body moved. Her torso snapped upright with terrifying speed, pivoting sharply on her hip as her left leg whipped around in a flawless arc.
Her bare foot intercepted the descending energy mace mid-swing, halting the multi-ton strike dead in its tracks with a ringing, metallic impact that echoed across the entire sector.
Behind her back, a second 15-meter titan materialized. It raised its own energy mace, already bringing the weapon down toward her absolute blind spot.
Metsuri's eyes flicked to the side. She didn't hesitate for a fraction of a second—she let go of her block.
Pushing off the first beast's weapon with her heel, she leaped backward through the air, her body twisting fluidly mid-flight.
The second titan's mace came crashing down with immense force, completely missing her and striking the first beast's weapon instead.
The heavy impact knocked the first titan completely off balance, sending its massive 15-meter frame stumbling sideways into the trees.
Metsuri landed on the dirt in a low, controlled slide, her boots grinding against the fractured earth for several feet before she came to a firm halt.
'That is the absolute way of a Metsugakure shinobi. We exist solely to serve the efficiency of the village… nothing more.'
Heavy, thunderous footsteps approached her from the left.
'Anyone in this world can and will betray you. If you are weak, you are deemed entirely expendable to those who possess more power…'
Another 15-meter titan stepped forward from the smoke. It raised its pulsing mace high and brought it down in a vertical executioner's strike.
Metsuri calmly lifted her right hand toward the sky. A small, dome-shaped barrier formed instantly around her crouched frame.
The massive mace collided violently with the shield, brilliant sparks bursting outward from the point of impact.
But this time, not a single fracture formed across the surface.
Metsuri's dark gaze remained perfectly calm behind the glass-like wall. 'So I will always prioritize my own physical survival above all else…'
The high-density barrier flickered slightly—just enough of an intentional opening for her hand to slip through.
Her bare palm reached out and caught the beast's massive energy mace mid-contact.
'Above anyone else.'
A soft, hyper-compressed white glow spread across her palm. For a single second, all movement stilled.
Then, the titan's massive energy mace completely shattered into thousands of fragments of fading light, dissolving into harmless ambient particles.
The titan staggered forward under its own lost momentum, staring down at its now-empty hand in absolute, primitive confusion.
Metsuri didn't bother to look back at its face. '…Even if that explicitly means abandoning Albion's vessel right here.'
She turned her torso and ran.
A sudden burst of speed carried her deep into the dense forest, her agile figure weaving through the thick trees without a single shred of hesitation.
'This is simply how the universe operates. There is nothing to change or fix,' branches snapped beneath her rapid steps as she pushed deeper into the safety of the woods, putting distance between herself and the titans.
'I will simply start over from nothing… from scratch.'
Her pace didn't slow down for a single heartbeat. 'And if I truly have to—'
She darted into a denser, darker cluster of old-growth trees. '—I will simply locate another unique child to shape into my tool.'
"WAAAHHH—!!!"
The piercing sound cut through the forest, completely bypassing the rustling wind and the crackling flames.
It was a loud, distinct, and intensely familiar cry.
Metsuri stopped dead in her tracks. Her entire physical body froze mid-step, her boot hovering just inches above the dirt. Slowly, deliberately, she turned her head back toward the sky.
"…Albion?"
High above the shattered treeline, still safely encased within the glowing hexagonal barrier, Albion was sobbing uncontrollably.
"Ahhhh—waaahhh!!"
His tiny, pale fists slammed repeatedly against the transparent geometric walls of his shell, over and over again with all the strength his small frame could muster.
"MA—MAA!! MAMAAA!!!"
His high-pitched voice broke with each desperate cry—raw, terrified, and utterly exposed.
The entire forest seemed to fall still. Even the rampaging titans stopped their advance. The four towering, 15-meter-tall humanoid monsters slowly turned their attention upward, their glowing eyes focusing entirely on the source of the acoustic noise.
They looked directly at him.
Metsuri stood completely motionless in the shadows of the trees, her expression entirely unreadable beneath her shaggy black hair.
'Does he… actually care about my existence…?' The very concept felt entirely foreign to her mind. It didn't make logical sense.
They had only been together for a matter of hours. Yet, during that brief window, his fragile life had been constantly placed in extreme jeopardy because of her actions.
Even now, his loud cries had drawn the absolute focus of the remaining titans directly to his position.
The monsters began to shift their weights. Heavy, ground-shaking steps echoed as they approached his suspended form.
At seven meters above the ground, his barrier was well within the physical reach of a 15-meter giant.
"I left you entirely alone inside a dark cave," Metsuri whispered to herself, her voice sounding completely hollow in the quiet forest. "I slaughtered the head scientist who raised you inside that tank. I even assigned you a completely fabricated birthdate…"
She stared at the crying infant. "So how…?"
"How can you sit there in the sky and call a monster like me your mother…?"
[Albion… It symbolizes purity. Innocence. How deeply ironic… a name so completely clean, forced into something so utterly corrupted. I quite enjoy that contrast.]
The memory of the moment she had chosen his name surfaced clearly. But she hadn't done it out of a sense of love or maternal care.
She had treated his very existence like a rare, legendary-tier weapon meant for her long-term utility.
She hadn't felt a single shred of guilt about it either. She had never once intended to be a proper, loving mother to him.
"M-MAMA!! MAMAAA!!!"
His desperate cries tore cleanly through her clinical thoughts, still reaching out for her through the trees.
"…Why…?" Metsuri asked the empty air. Was the child simply stupid? Or was his developing heart truly that pure?
As Albion continued to sob, his fists beating against the glass-like shell, one of the 15-meter titans stepped directly in front of his barrier.
Unlike the others, this specific monster held no weapon; its energy mace had been shattered by her palm moments earlier.
Reaching out its massive, clawed hand, it opened its fingers, fully prepared to grab the floating geometric shell and crush it.
'…My long-term goal will never change,' Metsuri's entire muscular frame tensed up, her core locking into place.
'But… perhaps… just this one single time…' She moved before the thought could even finish forming in her brain.
"WAAAHH!! MAMAAA—!!!"
The titan's massive hand closed tightly—clutching absolute nothingness.
A white and black blur streaked across the battlefield at a velocity that defied human sight.
A single heartbeat later, Metsuri landed gracefully at the far edge of the clearing. Her boots skidded slightly across the dirt as she stabilized her balance, her shaggy black hair swaying around her shoulders.
In her arms, she held the small, glowing hexagonal barrier. Inside the shell, Albion was safe, his tear-filled fuchsia eyes staring up at her face.
She looked down at him. Her hardened, cold expression softened—just a fraction.
"Just this once… alright?" a weary, self-deprecating half-smile formed on her lips beneath the rags of her mask.
She turned her torso back toward the wall of 15-meter titans, her right hand settling firmly onto the hilt of her ninjatō.
"I'll fight for the survival of the both of us."