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Koron Wasteland.
Sparse, straw-yellow shrubs shivered in the dry wind. Far off, lone giant trees clawed at the dim sky like titans at dusk, their ancient trunks casting long, mournful shadows.
Huff… huff—
A heavy breath rolled across the flats, stirring a veil of dark dust. Beneath a crown of shade, a massive brown shape lay sprawled claws long and razor-keen, stained a dried rust from too many kills. The air around it stank of iron.
On its belly, a perfect yellow ring rose and fell with each breath. Scars latticed its bulk like medals of war.
A wild Ursaring slept.
Already temperamental by nature, infection by the Nightmare Seed had twisted what remained magnifying every slight into wildfire rage.
Leaves whispered down through the boughs. One, no bigger than a hand, drifted lazily… and landed on Ursaring's black, sensitive nose.
Its nostrils flared. Lids lifted, revealing eyes gone wrong pupils drowned in a hellish red.
"ROOOAR!"
The bellow rolled across the plain. Grass bowed in submission. Claws punched into dirt as Ursaring surged upright, fury hunting for a target.
Its gaze swept the scrub, then fixed on the trunk of the nearest giant tree.
[Hammer Arm].
Muscle swelled, skin threatening to split. Red-brown energy armored its forearm like a living gauntlet.
KRUMPH!
Air ripped, Bark atomized, Deep within the trunk, fibers shrieked and a man-thick bole sheared clean through. Leaves sighed, a century of growth undone in a heartbeat as the giant toppled with a grinding crash.
Ursaring snorted, anger cooling. It started to crouch, ready to sink back into its dream—
Footsteps. Light. Unhurried.
It turned.
A lean man strolled into view: gold hair under a black round-crown hat trimmed with gilt; sea-blue eyes bright and clear; a dark red coat over a crisp white shirt; mirror-polished shoes ticking against the hardpan tock, tock as if he were crossing a garden path.
Hunger spiked. Saliva dripped from Ursaring's jaws, hissing where it hit the thirsty soil.
The man didn't look up. He studied a leather map, frowning.
"It should be around here… Why can't I find it?" a mild voice complained. "Honestly move a base and suddenly I'm the courier. What is the chairman thinking?"
He kept walking. Kept talking.
Ursaring could no longer wait.
It stepped forward—
Time thinned.
A hair-fine seam of light gathered in the air itself, edges warping as if the world were a wrinkled cloth being pulled taut.
krick.
Like an eggshell cracking, spiderweb fractures laced the empty space, revealing a breath of deeper black behind.
The line flashed—
—and was gone.
Ursaring's raised foot slammed down. Dust leapt. So did blood.
For a heartbeat it didn't understand.
Then its body did.
Szzzt—
A quiet sound, like silk tearing. From crown to groin, a neat line opened. Hot scarlet fountained across the ground. The great beast folded in on itself and fell in two, thudding beside the freshly felled tree. As still as when it slept. As quiet.
tock… tock…
The man's steps never faltered. He folded his map and walked on, now accompanied by a figure of living steel.
Humanoid. Silver-white forearms honed to perfect edges, the air bending minutely around each blade with every motion.
A Gallade its presence like the world's sharpest knife.
Rebellious by nature, yet at the man's side it moved with leashed grace, a predator turned housecat until the next order called the blade back out of space.
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