As the White Salt Snake abruptly collapsed into fine salt crystals that drifted through the air, glimmering in the sunlight, Finn's giant python form likewise seemed to have its bones pulled out.
His dark green scales rapidly receded, and his enormous body shrank and transformed, finally returning to human form. Covered in constriction marks and bruises, Finn lay with his eyes tightly shut and a trace of white foam at his lips. Completely unconscious, he slumped like a heap of mud onto the cold salt-crystal ground.
In the distance, Luca, still struggling against the white Salt Giant, almost instinctively held his breath. While desperately blocking its heavy punches, he kept the black figure in the corner of his eye-the man still seated on his salt chair, leisurely sipping juice. He was waiting to see what the man would do with Finn now that he could no longer resist.
This would determine his own fate-fight to the death, or... kneel and surrender? If the man killed Finn without hesitation, he would have to do whatever it took to escape this deathtrap surrounded by white salt crystals, even at the cost of serious injury.
Yet the bloody scene he anticipated never came.
After Finn lost consciousness, the deadly White Salt Snake had dispersed on its own as though its mission were complete, without making even one unnecessary attack on the unconscious man. Boer did not so much as spare Finn another glance, as though he were merely an irrelevant passerby.
The tension in Luca's heart abruptly loosened, and a complicated mixture of relief and humiliation welled up inside him. At least the man did not seem to be a bloodthirsty lunatic. That offered him the possibility of negotiating, or even surrendering.
Inside the Royal City, an entirely different scene unfolded.
In stark