The Shockwave's Adjustment Turned the Tide; Twin Blades Pierced the Heart and Slew a Powerful Foe

The moment the red light erupted, the air filled with a nauseating smell of scorched flesh. The mission scroll was unstable. The blood-red chakra sealed inside it had completely slipped out of control under Wildcat's forced activation, like a keg of gunpowder squeezed to its limit.

It flew toward Mizuki Han. It was less an attack than a signal that they would die together.

Mizuki Han was still in midair, his center of gravity completely suspended. As he watched the red light, shrouded in an aura of destruction, his pupils shrank to pinpoints. Fear didn't take over his mind. Instead, it entered a state of intense, focused calculation: the scroll was three meters away, its estimated blast radius was five meters, and directly below it was Wildcat, off balance.

Dodge? Too late.

Take it head-on? Suicide.

In that split second, Mizuki Han made the only choice available. Ignoring the scroll flashing red, he put all his strength into his right hand and hurled the kunai bound with an Explosive Tag at a tricky angle, straight toward the scroll's rear flank.

"Fsssh—"

The kunai cut through the air with a sharp whistle.

"Boom!"

The two forces collided in midair. The Explosive Tag's detonation and the out-of-control sealed chakra inside the scroll violently amplified each other. A blinding fireball exploded inside the narrow cavern, and a scorching shockwave swept through the entire space like an invisible giant hand.

Mizuki Han didn't try to resist the blast. Instead, he used its force to his advantage. He harnessed the terrifying push to twist his falling body around. Like a kite with its string cut, he tumbled backward in the rushing wave, avoiding the heart of the explosion, then landed behind Wildcat on an unbelievable trajectory.

"Cough..."

The instant he hit the ground, a searing pain in his lungs made Mizuki Han spit out a mouthful of blood. He had avoided the heart of the blast, but the enormous force had still badly damaged his internal organs. He didn't bother wiping the blood from his lips or even steadying his breathing. He sprang forward like a hunting leopard.

The shockwave from the exploding scroll had hurled Wildcat to the ground. Already disoriented by his blindness, he had now completely lost his sense of direction. Clutching his chest, he groaned in pain, his one good left hand flailing as he tried to sense anyone approaching.

"Are you there?!" Wildcat roared. He gathered the last of his chakra in his left hand and slammed it toward the empty space behind him.

But his hand hit nothing but air.

Mizuki Han moved like a phantom. A full second before Wildcat had swung, he had already slipped to the side. The two Ice Blades in his hands gleamed with a cold, eerie light in the dim glow. No words, no mercy, not even the slightest hesitation.

"Schhk!"

The Ice Blade in his left hand precisely sliced through Wildcat's carotid artery.

The Ice Blade in his right hand slipped between his ribs and pierced straight through his heart.

The two blades sank into flesh with a sound that overlapped, crisp as snapping dry branches.

Wildcat froze. His left hand, still raised in the air, dropped limply to his side. His once-fierce features twisted with unbearable pain and resentment. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a bubbling "Hh... hh..." A torrent of blood spilled from his mouth and dripped from his chin onto the filthy ground.

"You... you..."

Wildcat's pupils quickly clouded over. At last, he realized that from beginning to end, the boy before him had never treated him as an opponent, but as a precise, fragile mechanism that needed to be dismantled.

Mizuki Han released his grip and let Wildcat's corpse collapse heavily to the ground. He stood beside it, gasping for breath, his chest heaving with every inhale as though each breath tugged at his broken ribs.

Silence settled over the cavern once more. Only the underground river in the distance continued to wash ceaselessly against the rock walls.

Mizuki Han looked down at his hands.

His fingertips had begun to turn an unnatural bluish white—a warning sign that he had overused his chakra and Ice Release was rebelling against him. His chakra pathways were under more strain than ever before. A faint pain, like steel needles piercing his marrow, crept up his arms toward his heart.

He bent down and quickly searched Wildcat's body. Besides the shattered mask, he found several scrolls and a packet of Soldier Pills that Wildcat hadn't had time to use.

"More."

He wasn't satisfied with that. Crouching down, he placed a hand on Wildcat's chest, which had not yet fully cooled.

[High concentration of residual chakra detected. Extract with system?]

The system's cold prompt rang in his mind.

"Extract," Mizuki Han repeated silently. He desperately needed energy. Even the slightest bit of chakra could be his ticket to survival.

A stream of warmth was drawn from Wildcat's body, flowing into Mizuki Han's chakra pathways. The cold, stabbing pain eased slightly under its passage, but it was only a drop in the bucket.

He stood and looked toward the depths of the cavern. That was the route he and Haku had planned to take out.

"Brother Han..."

A timid voice came from the darkness. Haku peeked out from a concealed crack in the rock. She looked at the corpses scattered across the ground and Mizuki Han, covered in blood. Her eyes held a mix of emotions: fear, dependence, and a trace of awe she hadn't even noticed in herself.

Mizuki Han didn't turn around. He merely wiped the blood from his face, tossed the Soldier Pills he'd scavenged into his mouth, and chewed hard. Their dry taste spread across his tongue, but it couldn't mask the ever-intensifying sensation of his chakra pathways tearing apart.

He could feel that his body had reached its limit.

That fierce battle—using Ice Release to forcibly alter his surroundings, control the shockwave with precision, and launch a lethal surprise attack—had nearly drained him of every last reserve. His chakra pathways were raising the alarm not only because his chakra was depleted, but also because his excessive use of Ice Release had begun to crystallize them.

It felt as though the blood vessels inside him were freezing, stopping his blood from flowing. Every heartbeat was like walking along the edge of a blade.

"Go."

Mizuki Han uttered a single word, his voice as hoarse as sandpaper scraping together. He didn't look at the corpse or the wreckage scattered across the ground. Before his body could completely give out, he had to find somewhere absolutely safe.

He set off, every step painfully slow, yet unyielding.

But the instant he turned, his chakra network suddenly spasmed. The chakra he had just extracted met some indescribable obstruction the moment it entered his pathways.

A stabbing pain shot from his left arm straight to the crown of his head!

Mizuki Han's face turned deathly pale. He grabbed the rock wall beside him to keep from falling. In plain sight, a strange, transparent layer of ice crystals spread over his left hand.

[Warning! The host's Ice Release bloodline is not sufficiently compatible with his body. Excessive use has caused crystallization backlash in the chakra pathways.]

[Damage to chakra pathways detected: 35%.]

[If the host continues to force chakra, his left arm is at risk of permanent necrosis.]

The system's warning rang through his mind like an alarm bell. Mizuki Han stared at his left hand, completely numb and encased in thick ice, his pupils contracting sharply.

Permanent necrosis?

He gave a cold laugh, a reckless, desperate madness flickering in his eyes. In this world, without power, he didn't even have the right to stay alive. Necrosis? As long as he could win, he didn't care if it cost him a hand—or turned his entire body to ice.

But before he could make another move, the rocks above the cavern suddenly began to crack with a teeth-grating sound.

"Crack—"

Several enormous stalactites fell without warning, crashing down on the area where they had just fought. Through the swirling dust, a massive shadow slowly appeared at the far end of the passage.

It wasn't an Anbu ninja.

It was a huge summoned beast, its body covered in slime. Its blood-red eyes fixed on Mizuki Han as it let out a low growl, as though declaring that the new hunt had only just begun.