The bell's echo faded, leaving a silence in its wake that was deeper and more absolute than before. The world outside Class 2-F might have moved on to lunch, but inside, time was frozen. The air was thick enough to chew, each student a statue in a tableau of disbelief. Mr. Tanaka, who had been hiding behind his lectern, peeked over the top, his eyes wide with a terror he hadn't felt in a decade.
For Riku Sato, the world had narrowed to a single point: the back of Ravi Sharma's head.
Boring.
The word replayed in his mind, each repetition a spike driving deeper into his pride. It wasn't the insult itself that cut so deep. He'd been called worse. It was the way Ravi had said it. With the finality of a judge passing sentence. With the weariness of a being who had witnessed the birth and death of stars and was now forced to endure a gnat buzzing in his ear.
Humiliation was a foreign poison to Riku. His entire identity, his place in the world, was built on a foundation of strength and the fear it inspired. He was the hammer, and everyone else was a nail. But this boy… this boy looked at him and saw not a hammer, but a triviality. A boring, predictable toy.
That single realization ignited a new kind of fire within him. It was no longer the hot, arrogant rage of a king asserting dominance. It was the cold, desperate fury of an alpha whose entire reality had been threatened. If he backed down now, if he accepted this judgment, he was finished. His legend, his reign, everything he had built with his own two fists would crumble into dust. The jackals would smell the blood in the water and move in.
He had to break him. Not just defeat him, but break him. He needed to shatter that infuriating calm and see fear in those dead silver eyes.
"Nobody…" Riku's voice was a low, guttural rasp, dredged up from the deepest well of his fury. "Nobody calls me boring."
He took a deep breath, his massive chest expanding. The oppressive energy in the room, which had momentarily dissipated, came roaring back, tenfold. This was different from the aggressive aura he'd projected before. This was darker. It was the raw, unrestrained killing intent of a cornered beast.
The students, who had been frozen in awe, now recoiled in genuine terror. They knew this aura. This was Riku's berserker mode, the state he entered when a fight wasn't about dominance anymore, but about annihilation. The last person who pushed him this far had ended up in the hospital for three months, breathing through a tube.
"Riku, stop!" one of his lieutenants finally stammered, his voice trembling. "You'll kill him!"
Riku didn't hear him. He was already in motion.
He lowered his stance, planting his feet wide, his right arm pulling back. The muscles in his arm, back, and shoulder coiled like a python, his uniform straining at the seams. A visible shimmer, like heat haze, began to rise from his fist. This wasn't just a punch. This was his ultimate technique, the one that had earned him his moniker.
"Take this!" he roared, his voice shaking the very walls. "FANG BREAKER!"
He unleashed the punch.
It was a perfect, straight strike, all the power of his body, all his rage, all his wounded pride focused into a single point: the brass knuckles on his fist. The air in front of it compressed, creating a visible shockwave. It moved with the speed and force of a freight train, aimed not at Ravi's face, but at his chest. Riku wasn't trying to knock him out anymore. He was trying to cave his sternum in.
In the hallway, Reina's eyes widened in horror. She knew that move. It was unstoppable. There was no dodging it at this range, no blocking it without having your arms shattered. The boy was going to die. Her hand flew to the hilt of her whip, an instinctive reaction to intervene, but she was too far, too late.
The class collectively shut their eyes. The impact was going to be gruesome.
But Ravi didn't try to dodge. He didn't try to block.
As the devastating punch, a fist that could shatter stone, was about to make contact with his chest, he finally moved his hand from his lap. His movement was not fast. It was slow, casual, almost lazy. He raised his right hand, his fingers relaxed. He watched the incoming fist, his silver eyes as calm as a tranquil sea.
And then, he flicked his index finger.
It was an impossibly small, simple motion. The kind of flick one would use to send a breadcrumb flying off a table. It looked weak, insignificant, utterly absurd against the cataclysmic force of the Fang Breaker.
The tip of his finger met the brass knuckles on Riku's fist.
BOOM.
It wasn't the sound of bone hitting metal. It was the sound of an explosion. A deafening, concussive blast that was more felt than heard. A wave of pure kinetic energy erupted from the point of contact.
The grimy windows of the classroom didn't just rattle; they bowed outwards before shattering, spraying glass into the courtyard below. The floorboards beneath Riku's feet splintered, and the desks around them were blasted away as if hit by an invisible hurricane. The students were thrown back in their seats, their ears ringing, the wind knocked out of their lungs.
And Riku…
He was no longer there.
For a split second, he was airborne, his body rigid with shock, his eyes wide with utter, soul-crushing disbelief. He had felt it. The moment Ravi's finger touched him, a force beyond all comprehension, an irresistible, alien power, had surged up his arm. It hadn't just stopped his punch; it had reversed it, amplifying it a thousandfold and sending it back into his own body. He felt every bone in his arm scream in protest, shattering into powder. The force then lifted him off his feet and launched him backwards.
He flew.
He flew across the entire length of the classroom like a ragdoll fired from a cannon. He sailed past the stunned faces of his classmates, a silent testament to a power that defied all logic.
His flight ended when he connected with the back wall.
The impact was cataclysmic. CRACK-BOOM! The concrete and plaster wall, which had stood for fifty years, exploded outwards. Riku's body was the epicenter of the destruction, creating a man-shaped crater as he was driven into the wall, his momentum finally arrested by the reinforced structural beams within.
A cloud of white dust and debris filled the room.
And then… silence.
A silence so profound, so absolute, it felt like the world had ended. No one breathed. No one moved. Their minds simply could not process what they had just witnessed.
Slowly, the dust began to settle, revealing the aftermath. The shattered windows. The splintered desks. The looks of shell-shocked horror on every student's face. And the back wall, which now had a gaping, jagged hole in it, with Riku Sato embedded in the center like a fossil. He was unconscious, his limbs hanging at unnatural angles, a thin trickle of blood running from his mouth.
In the center of the devastation, Ravi Sharma sat in his chair, which hadn't moved an inch.
He slowly lowered his hand back to his lap. He looked at his index finger, a flicker of something—annoyance? regret?—passing through his silver eyes for the briefest of moments.
"I told you to sit down," he murmured to himself, his voice barely a whisper, lost in the ringing silence. "Now I have to find a new quiet place."
He sighed, a sound of genuine weariness, and turned his head to look out the newly created hole in the wall. The view was much better now.
In the hallway, Reina stood frozen, her hand still on her whip. Her mind was a blank slate. The logical part of her brain was screaming that what she had just seen was impossible. It violated every law of physics, every principle of martial arts, every rule of reality itself. A finger flick. A single, casual finger flick had done… that.
Her gaze shifted from the hole in the wall back to the boy. He was just sitting there, calm, as if he had merely swatted a fly.
The teacher, Mr. Tanaka, slowly slid down behind his lectern until he was in a pathetic heap on the floor, his eyes glassy, whispering the same word over and over again. "Monster… monster… monster…"
He was right.
Reina Kurozawa, the Ice Queen of Black Fang High, the woman who feared nothing, finally understood. This boy wasn't a delinquent. He wasn't a fighter. He wasn't human.
He was a monster wearing human skin. And he had just been disturbed.