"Can I try mine?"
Shengu Xuan looked down at the boy who only reached his waist. The smile on Daemon's upturned face had already gone far beyond anything a ten-year-old child should have, and something stirred in the depths of his dark blue pupils.
"Try."
Shengu Xuan's reply was a single word, his tone as casual as if he were agreeing to lend a neighbor's child a pencil.
Ada stood beside them without moving, but her gold-pink pupils turned toward Daemon. Her lips moved as though she wanted to say something, but she ultimately remained silent.
At the very instant his sister turned her head, some kind of switch occurred in Daemon's dark blue pupils. The bottom of that deep well lit up, and the extremely fine vertical line between his brows began to give off a faint blue glow.
His mouth opened.
"Squat down."
Two words, spoken in a childish voice, sounding just like a child making a petulant demand of an adult.
But the moment those words left his mouth, something invisible to the naked eye appeared in the air: an absolute command acting on the target's nervous system and the depths of their subconscious, bypassing rational judgment and the filtering of the will to directly overwrite the motor commands issued by the target's brain.
This was Shinjutsu.
The person commanded would carry out the instruction on a physiological level while believing, on a cognitive level, that it was a choice they had made of their own accord. Not even the awareness of resistance would arise.
A pale blue command wave spread out from between Daemon's brows, crossed the three meters between them, and reached Shengu Xuan's body.
Shengu Xuan stood where he was with both hands in his pockets, the grass stem at the corner of his