"My... swords..."
As the metal fragments dancing across the sky slowly drifted down, like a final elegy played for a king of the old era, Golden Lion Shiki's mind went completely blank.
The weapons he took such pride in, parts of his body, symbols of his status as a king... had simply shattered?
A single finger had casually... shattered them with a touch?
This sight, beyond the limits of his comprehension and akin to divine punishment, utterly broke his will and spirit at that moment!
Yet the nightmare had only just begun.
The finger Yas had used to shatter Sakura Ten and Kogarashi did not pause in the slightest amid the shattered flashes of steel. It continued forward along its original path.
Finally, it lightly-one could even say "gently"-touched Golden Lion Shiki's two bare legs, now stripped of their Famous Swords.
There was no terrifying eruption of energy.
There was no bloody scene of flesh flying everywhere.
That finger merely gave the lightest tap.
Then withdrew.
As though it had done something utterly insignificant.
Golden Lion Shiki's body jolted violently, and the vacant expression left by his mental collapse was instantly replaced by indescribable, excruciating agony!
"Urgh..."
His mouth opened wide, but he could not even scream.
He looked down in horror.
Black-and-red destructive energy, more violent than lightning and hotter than magma, instantly burrowed into his legs from the spots Yas's finger had touched, like venomous snakes with lives of their own!
That energy was overbearing to the extreme!
It did not destroy them from the outside. Instead, starting directly at the most microscopic cellular level, it began the most savage, unreasonable, and thorough erasure of the bones, muscles, and nerves in his legs!
Crack! Crunch! Crack, crack, crack!!!
A dense series of teeth-grating cracks, like beans popping in