Chapter 138: The Furnace and the Fabric
Moon's eyes, sharpening through his pain, followed the faint, golden thread connected to Ken's shattered forehead. His gaze traveled upward, into the gloom of the tunnel ceiling. There, he saw it—a massive, translucent black hand.
The fingers of this spectral hand twitched minutely, and below, Ken's body began to move with jerky, unnatural motions.
It was a grotesque spectacle. Ken's torn muscles writhed like living things. His ripped-off limb slithered across the floor, reattaching itself with a wet, sucking sound. The shattered bones in his skull knitted together with audible pops and cracks. Within moments, he was standing again, whole and seemingly unharmed. He raised his hands, and from his fingertips, dozens—then hundreds—of golden threads erupted, weaving through the air in a complex, shimmering pattern. In seconds, the entire section of the tunnel around him was filled with a dense, deadly spiderweb of golden light.
Moon's instincts screamed. He didn't have the energy for a fancy move. He simply lunged, grabbing a barely-conscious Ryo by his tattered collar and shouting at Kuro. "MOVE!"
With a strength born of pure desperation, he dragged Ryo and himself backward, Kuro leaping beside them just as Ken's fingers made a closing motion.
ZZZTTT! CUT! CUT! CUT! CUT!
The sound was like a hundred lasers firing at once. The space they had just occupied was instantly shredded. The golden threads didn't just cut; they erased. A massive, cubic section of the tunnel—concrete, rebar, and all—was cleanly excised from reality, collapsing into a pit of nothingness behind them. One second later, and they would have been atomized.
Ken stepped calmly out of the dust and debris, his face now devoid of its earlier amusement. It was a mask of cold, focused intent. He spread his hands, and a faint, shimmering distortion enveloped him, like heat haze on a desert road.
Ryo, fueled by nothing but rage and fighting spirit, was the first to attack. He roared, hefting the mammoth tusk and charging. Moon was right beside him, fists clenched, while Kuro lunged low, aiming for Ken's legs.
Their attacks never connected.
It was the most disorienting feeling they had ever experienced. Ryo's tusk, instead of smashing into Ken, suddenly veered to the left in a smooth, impossible curve, as if sliding along an invisible, curved wall. Moon's punch followed a similar arcing path, harmlessly swinging around Ken's head. Kuro's fangs snapped shut on empty air, his body twisting unnaturally to the side. There was no impact, no shock of collision. It was as if space itself was bending around Ken, making him untouchable. And strangely, they felt no pain—their own bodies were simply being guided along this new, warped geometry.
Ken's voice was calm, lecturing, as if explaining a simple scientific principle to children.
"Many people assume my element is gravity," he stated. "No. It is not. It is space fabric. I can control it. Gravity is merely a side product of this element, a consequence of large masses bending space. So, I simply bent the space fabric around myself. Your bodies, existing within this fabric, must follow its new curvature. You will curve around me. I remain untouched."
Again and again, the trio attacked. A flurry of fists, a sweep of the tusk, a pounce of fangs. Each attempt was futile. Their movements were rendered useless, their power diverted into empty, curved paths. They were exhausting themselves against a fundamental law of the universe that Ken had rewritten for his own defense.
Fatigue was finally beginning to crush them. Their breaths came in ragged gasps, their movements slowing.
It was then that Ryo had had enough.
"Enough holding back," he growled, his voice a low rumble that promised an eruption.
The spiritual pressure that exploded from him was unlike anything Moon or Ken had ever felt. It was a physical weight, a suffocating heat that made the very air difficult to breathe. Ken, for the first time, grunted in effort, his knees buckling slightly under the onslaught. Maintaining the precise bend in space was suddenly like trying to hold a shape in hardening steel.
"Never thought you were that strong," Ken managed, a flicker of genuine surprise in his eyes. "My master was right all along."
Ryo didn't listen. He was beyond words. He released the full, unrestrained power of his Hale bloodline.
It was not just his hair that ignited. His entire body began to glow with the incandescent fury of a newborn star. Golden, orange, and yellow flames wreathed him, not just as an aura, but as a second skin. The heat radiating from him was immense, warping the air and causing the concrete at his feet to blacken and crackle. His spiritual pressure acted like an anti-catalyst to Ken's space manipulation, disrupting the fine control needed to maintain the bend.
The mammoth tusk in Ryo's hand began to glow with the same solar energy. With a world-splitting roar, he charged for the final time.
This time, Ken's bent space flickered. The perfect, smooth curvature wavered like a disturbed reflection in water. The fabric of space, under the overwhelming, anti-manipulative pressure of Ryo's transformation, struggled to maintain its artificial shape.
BOOM! DHAM! BOOM!
The tusk connected. Then Ryo's fist. Then his elbow. The attacks rained down on Ken, no longer curving away. They landed with the full, devastating force of a solar flare. Ken was pummeled, his body battered into a bloody, broken pulp against the tunnel wall. He had made a fatal error in underestimating Ryo's sheer, unadulterated power and his indomitable fighting spirit.
Ryo stood over the pulverized form, chest heaving, his glowing form the only source of light in the dim tunnel. He paused, drawing in a ragged, searing breath.
But then, the translucent black hand above twitched violently. A surge of golden light, far brighter than before, flowed from the hand down an invisible tether into Ken's ruined body. The pulp began to restructure itself, flesh weaving back together, bones snapping into place at an alarming rate.
Moon and Kuro stared, a sinking feeling in their guts. He's immortal.
Suddenly, Ryo laughed. A loud, booming, triumphant laugh that echoed through the tunnel.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA! So that's your weak point, you scornful idiot!"
While Ken was still mid-restructuring, his form half-pulp and half-man, Ryo acted. Instead of attacking Ken again, he pivoted. He put every last ounce of his fading solar energy into a single, upward leap. He soared through the air, the glowing mammoth tusk held high, and brought it down in a devastating arc not on Ken, but on the massive, translucent black hand controlling him.
CRRRACK-SHATTER!
The sound was of shattering glass on a cosmic scale. The black hand, caught completely by surprise by this direct assault, fractured into a thousand shimmering fragments before dissolving into nothingness.
As it vanished, the immense energy sustaining Ryo's final transformation vanished with it. The solar glow around him extinguished, and he dropped to the ground, landing on his knees, his body returning to its normal, battered state. He was utterly spent.
Ken, now fully restructured, climbed to his feet. He looked at the space where the hand had been, then at the exhausted Ryo, Moon, and Kuro. A strange, almost respectful smile touched his lips.
"Ryo," he said, his voice quiet. "You truly are something. My master would cherish you. Therefore, I offer you a place working with him. Your worth will be truly acknowledged there."
Ryo, bent over and breathing heavily, managed to lift his head. He looked Ken dead in the eye, then spat a glob of blood onto the ground between them.
"Can't beat me, so you resort to these tricks now?" he rasped.
"It is your choice," Ken said with a shrug. "But the offer remains open." With that, he took a step back. The air around him shimmered. From his back, a magnificent, shadowy pair of wings, woven from the void itself, erupted. With a powerful beat, he lifted into the air and shot down the tunnel, disappearing into the darkness.
The moment he was gone, the immense will that had been holding Ryo upright vanished. His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed, unconscious. Moon and Kuro rushed to his side, catching him before he hit the ground and laying him down softly.
The battle was over. They had survived. But the cost was written on their broken bodies.
To be continued…