The arrival of Sung Jin-Woo was a fundamental violation of the laws of nature.
One moment, the world was composed of smoke, fire, and the stench of ozone. The next, he was simply there. The universe had not made space for him; he had imposed himself upon it.
His quiet declaration—"You broke my toy"—sucked all the heat and noise from the rooftop. The crackling fires seemed to dim. The groaning of stressed metal fell silent. It was as if reality itself was holding its breath.
Every soldier on that roof, hardened veterans who had faced down skyscraper-sized monsters, froze solid. It wasn't a conscious decision. Their bodies simply locked up. Primal, lizard-brain terror, an instinct buried since the dawn of humanity, screamed that they were in the presence of an apex predator so far up the food chain they weren't even considered food. They were just… in the way.
Mina Ashiro, kneeling by Kafka's body, felt it most acutely. The ambient temperature around Jin-Woo was a perfect, soul-deep cold. His gaze wasn't just a look; it was a physical weight, a judgment.
Only two people on the roof could force themselves to move.
Soshiro Hoshina, his every instinct honed to a razor's edge, pivoted with fluid grace, his twin blades humming as they came up to a defensive stance. Sweat beaded on his brow, but his eyes were sharp, analytical, alive with a terrifying battle-focus. "Identify yourself!" he commanded, his voice tight but unbroken.
Kikoru Shinomiya moved with him, planting her feet and raising her massive axe, positioning herself between the stranger and her Commander. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drum against the suffocating silence. This pressure, this absolute void of an aura… it was him. The being from Yokohama. The one they called Sovereign.
Jin-Woo's cold gaze shifted, landing on Hoshina's blades, then on Kikoru's axe. An expression of profound, almost pitiful, contempt flickered across his face.
"Your toys are sharper than his," he observed, his voice a low, vibrating hum that seemed to come from all directions at once. "It won't make a difference."
He took a step towards Kafka's unconscious body.
"Hold your position!" Hoshina barked. His voice was a command, but his internal monologue was a frantic scream. 'Pressure is off the charts! This is a different league from the Jumper! His mere presence is warping the air! What is this thing?!'
Jin-Woo ignored him, continuing his slow, deliberate walk. He was the center of his own universe, and their world was merely a temporary intersection.
"I gave you one command, trespasser!" Hoshina yelled, and with a burst of pure, desperate resolve, he blurred into motion. [Blade Dance: Sixth Form - Swallow's Reversal]. He moved so fast he seemed to be in multiple places at once, a whirlwind of strikes aimed to hamstring, to cripple, to test.
It was the pinnacle of human speed and swordsmanship. A technique that could dice a Honju to ribbons in seconds.
To Sung Jin-Woo, it was a child throwing a tantrum in slow motion.
He didn't even turn to face Hoshina. As the storm of blade strikes was about to connect, Jin-Woo's own shadow on the ground—unnaturally dark and sharp under the fires of the rooftop—lashed out.
Two thick tendrils of pure, solid darkness erupted from the ground with impossible speed. One wrapped around Hoshina's leg, the other around his arm, jerking him to a dead stop mid-attack. The precision was absolute.
Hoshina hung there, suspended in the air a meter from his target, his eyes wide with shock and disbelief. He struggled, but the shadow-tendrils were infinitely strong, completely immovable. He was caught like a fly in a web of night.
"Vice-Commander!" Kikoru screamed, and swung her axe. This was no calculated strike; it was a desperate, full-power release. The axe's jets roared, and the massive blade descended with the force of a falling meteor, aimed to cleave Jin-Woo in two.
[Ruler's Authority]
Jin-Woo glanced at her.
The colossal axe, which could tear through a Kaiju's hide, stopped dead in the air a few feet from his head, held fast by an unseen, unbreakable telekinetic grip. Kikoru was still attached to it, her arms straining, every muscle in her body screaming as she tried to force it down against an invisible wall of force. Her suit's hydraulics whined and sparked, overloaded by the strain.
"Your growth is noteworthy," Jin-Woo said, his voice holding a hint of academic interest as he studied her. "I can feel the echo of my energy within you. A… parting gift from our first encounter. It makes you stronger. But it also makes you a beacon. That is how I found you."
Kikoru stared, her mind short-circuiting. His energy? The surge of power she had felt, the strange new abilities she'd been developing in secret… it came from him?
In the space of three seconds, Jin-Woo had effortlessly, contemptuously neutralized the Third Division's two finest close-combat specialists. He had treated their ultimate techniques like a minor nuisance.
He now stood over Kafka's ruined form. He knelt, his black coat pooling around him. The armed troopers surrounding them stood like statues, too terrified to even pull a trigger.
Mina Ashiro, still kneeling, finally found her voice. It was trembling, but it was there. "What are you going to do to him?"
Jin-Woo didn't look at her. He placed a hand, glowing with a soft, restorative light—a power completely at odds with his terrifying presence—on Kafka's burned back. He surveyed the catastrophic, life-threatening injuries with a critical eye.
"The Architect overplayed its hand," he mused to himself. "It used an attack designed for a being on my level. For this child to have survived, even in his monstrous form, is a testament to his own tenacity."
His glowing hand moved across Kafka's wounds. Where it passed, the charred flesh sizzled and began to mend. Tissues knitted back together, skin reformed. It wasn't the fast, raw regeneration of a Kaiju; it was a higher order of healing, a re-writing of reality on a small scale.
"What am I going to do?" he finally replied to Mina, his eyes still on Kafka. "I am repairing what you broke. This one has potential. He learns quickly. He is a useful, if clumsy, tool. It would be… inefficient to allow him to die before his purpose is fulfilled."
Tool. Toy. The dehumanizing words struck Mina harder than any physical attack.
"He is not a tool!" Mina snapped, a surge of protective fury overriding her fear. "He is Kafka Hibino! He is a human being!"
Jin-Woo stopped the healing process for a moment. He finally turned his head, his cold, violet eyes locking onto hers. The sheer weight of his gaze made her feel like the smallest, most insignificant creature in creation.
"He was a human being," Jin-Woo corrected, his voice dropping to a whisper that cut to the bone. "Then he ingested a power he could not understand and made a bargain he could not afford. The moment he became my student, he sacrificed the right to be anything else. He belongs to me now. And I do not tolerate others breaking my possessions."
The absolute, unquestioning certainty in his voice was the most terrifying thing she had ever heard. This wasn't a monster seeking conquest. This was a king, an eternal sovereign, stating a simple, unalterable fact of his existence.
He turned back to Kafka, the healing light intensifying. Kafka's breathing, which had been a ragged death-rattle, began to even out, becoming deeper, stronger.
Jin-Woo looked up at the night sky, his gaze seemingly piercing through the atmosphere, searching for the source of the attack.
"Tell your Architect," he said, his voice now a quiet, global threat, meant for an audience far beyond the roof, "that by targeting one of my soldiers, he has not declared war on a man, or on this world."
A crown, made not of light but of pure, swirling shadow and violet energy, began to form above his head, a manifestation of his true authority. His killing intent, which he had so far kept on a leash, began to pour out of him, a biblical flood of annihilating pressure that made the whole base groan and creak under its weight.
"He has declared war on a Monarch."