"It’s over? Just like that?"
Rynne’s voice came out quieter than she expected.
She felt strangely out of place.
From the moment Michael activated the enhancer, everything had changed too quickly. One instant he had been not too far from her, coated in silent black flames. The next, he was gone.
Not vanished.
Just... beyond her ability to follow.
What followed had not even felt like a battle.
It had felt like watching an exorcism.
She had seen flashes of movement, distortions in the air, tentacles disintegrating before they could even plete an attack. Black fire spreading in controlled lines. The writhing metal collapsing inward piece by piece.
There had been no struggle.
No stalemate.
Just suppression.
And then silence.
Rynne stared at the aftermath, her thoughts tangled.
Was that... Michael’s real strength?
Her fingers curled slightly.
If it was, then the gap between them was far larger than she had been willing to admit.
Her chest tightened faintly.
How was she supposed to catch up to that?
For a brief moment, doubt crept in.
Then she steadied herself.
No.
That wasn’t fair.
He had used the enhancer.
A degraded epic-grade amplifier that boosted Law output by two hundred percent. Anyone would bee monstrous under that kind of amplification.
If she had her previous armor, her plete set before it was damaged...
If she had activated the enhancer herself...
She would have been just as overwhelming.
Just as dominant.
The thought settled her breathing.
Yes.
That had to be it.
Her path had never been weaker. Her foundation was still intact. Once her armor was restored, once her resources caught up, she would stand on equal footing again.
She was still thinking when a voice pulled her out of it.
"Rynne."
She blinked and looked up.
Michael was walking toward her from across the cavern.
The abyssal flames were no longer raging around him. What remained were faint traces, coiling tightly along his arms as if being forcibly restrained.
In his hand was a sphere.
Rynne’s eyes focused instantly.
A red-silver ball, roughly the size of two clenched fists, hovered just above his palm. Its surface was smooth but layered, metallic veins of crimson and silver intertwining beneath a translucent outer shell.
But what drew her attention most was the heat.
A deep, smoldering heat that coated the sphere like a thin shell.
Rynne’s gaze sharpened immediately.
She could see what he was doing.
The red heat was not the treasure’s aura.
It was Michael’s mysterious, eerie fire, pressed and suppressed to the absolute minimum, thinned to the brink of extinction so it would not devour the core.
He was restraining it with terrifying precision.
Forced down into a controlled thermal layer that burned only the outermost corruption still clinging to the treasure.
She sensed it then.
The breathing metal was not fully purified.
The corruption was still there.
Dormant.
"That’s..." she murmured.
"The core," Michael said as he stopped in front of her.
He held it out slightly so she could see more clearly.
"Still corrupted," he added calmly. "And still regenerating."
Rynne stepped closer unconsciously.
Without the outer flesh-metal mass, the treasure’s true structure was visible, but so were the dark veins threaded faintly between the red-silver lines.
"You didn’t erase it pletely," she said.
"I could," Michael replied simply.
Rynne looked up at him.
There was no arrogance in his tone. Just fact.
"But it’s a treasure," he continued.
He lowered his hand slightly, the suppressed red heat tightening instinctively around the sphere as the corruption twitched.
"If I burn everything," he said, "there’s a risk of destabilizing the core."
Rynne nodded faintly.
That was true.
Michael did not have enough confidence in his control to use the Abyssal Pyre to purify the treasure, nor did he want to use any kind of related ability.
Though he would not admit it outright, his first experience with Jester had left a mark on him, making him extremely sensitive to demonic creations that possessed a consciousness.
Michael continued.
"And if anything goes wrong midway, it bees my responsibility."
His gaze shifted briefly to the sphere.
"I have methods to destroy the consciousness entirely," he said. "But using them on something this valuable would be experimentation."
He paused.
Then added quietly,
"It’s better to leave things to professionals."
Understanding dawned in Rynne’s eyes.
He was not avoiding the task out of inability.
He was deliberately handing it over.
Avoiding unnecessary risk and blame if purification damaged the treasure.
Michael extended the sphere fully toward her.
"You handle the rest," he said.
The suppressed abyssal heat receded slightly at his mand, thinning until it formed only a faint protective film.
Rynne accepted the core carefully with both hands.
Her fingers tightened slightly around the sphere.
The suppressed heat coating its surface thinned further under Michael’s control, stabilizing as it passed fully into her grasp.
For a brief moment, neither of them spoke.
The cavern was quiet now, the violent presence that had filled it earlier pletely gone. Only the ruined space remained as evidence of what had taken place.
Michael was the first to break the silence.
"So," he said calmly. "What next?"
Rynne blinked, pulling her thoughts back to the present.
She looked down at the red-silver core in her hands before answering.
"I’ll seal it first," she said. "The corruption is still active, even if it’s suppressed. I need to prevent further regeneration."
Thin arrays of sealing light began forming around her palms as she spoke, stabilizing the treasure’s fluctuating aura.
"Full purification will have to wait until we return to the academy," she continued. "I can’t do something like that properly out here."
Michael nodded.
"That makes sense."
He fell silent afterward.
Outwardly, his expression remained neutral.
Inwardly, however, his thoughts were moving.
He found himself staring at the core for a fraction longer than necessary.
Its potential was obvious.
For a fleeting moment, a thought crossed his mind.
Was it possible to duplicate it?
If its core structure could be replicated, even imperfectly, the applications were endless.
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