Yuto coughed violently, the sound sharp and broken, as if his lungs were being forced through a narrowing space.
Pain detonated through his chest the mont he hit the ground.
The impact dragged breath out of him in a harsh rush, then refused to let it return properly. Each inhale ca shallow and jagged, his ribs screaming with every attempt to expand his lungs. Sothing inside felt wrong, misaligned, like bone or cartilage had shifted under the force of the blow. He tried to draw a deeper breath and imdiately regretted it, the pain flaring hot and imdiate, forcing him to pause between gasps.
"Yuto!"
Shinny’s voice cut cleanly through the roar of battle.
Without hesitation, Shinny broke off from the vine beast, disengaging in a sharp retreat that left his previous position exposed for a split second. He ignored it completely, sprinting back across fractured stone and shaking ground, boots kicking up dust and debris as the battlefield raged behind him.
The beast continued to thrash and regenerate in the distance, limbs sweeping and vines whipping through the air, but Shinny did not look back.
He dropped beside Yuto and imdiately took hold of him, pulling him up with controlled urgency.
Yuto clenched his jaw hard enough that it hurt more than it should have.
"I’m fine," he forced out, voice tight, breath uneven, every word pulled through pain.
Shinny didn’t respond, didn’t waste ti arguing. He simply adjusted his grip, anchoring Yuto’s weight against his shoulder as Tami staggered closer through the chaos, bruised, dirt-streaked, and breathing heavily as if every step cost him sothing.
For a mont, all three of them struggled just to stand upright amid the shaking ground.
Ahead, the vine beast remained fully active, its form still shifting, still healing. Wounds closed over almost as soon as they were made, vines tightening and reweaving in relentless cycles. It did not tire. It did not slow. It only adapted.
Tami wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, saring dirt and a thin trace of blood.
"This is impossible," he said hoarsely. "We can’t beat this thing."
Yuto kept his eyes on the beast for a long mont, chest rising in uneven rhythm, each breath still cutting too deep.
"...Yeah," he admitted at last, voice quieter than before. "It’s too strong."
Maya landed nearby in a controlled drop, boots hitting stone with a steady impact that contrasted the chaos around them. She straightened imdiately, shoulders squared, posture unchanged despite the exhaustion pressing into all of them.
"We need to go again," she said.
Tami turned toward her sharply. "Again?"
Maya’s gaze tightened, focused and unyielding.
"I will try to turn it up this ti."
Yuto’s brow furrowed slightly through the pain.
"What do you an?"
He didn’t have to wait for an explanation.
Maya moved.
They charged again.
This ti, her presence on the battlefield changed the rhythm entirely.
The ground responded the mont she advanced, subtle ripples of earth shifting beneath her boots. Each step beca a forceful acceleration, as if the terrain itself was pushing her forward. Stone compacted and released under her weight in controlled bursts, launching her into faster movent. Uneven ground smoothed or reford just enough to keep her montum uninterrupted, while sudden rises and angles ford beneath her to redirect her trajectory without slowing her down.
Her sword ca alive with the change.
Each strike landed heavier than before, faster too, cutting through air with increased force as her movent speed compounded the power behind every swing. The vine beast was forced into imdiate, constant reaction, its limbs snapping up to block, redirect, and absorb impacts that now ca in tighter, more punishing intervals.
Tami’s eyes widened slightly.
"Woah..."
He glanced briefly toward Yuto despite everything still collapsing around them.
"She is insane."
Yuto nodded once, still watching Maya’s movent pattern through strained focus.
He dragged himself upright with visible strain, every muscle in his body resisting the motion as if it had already decided it was finished. Pain tightened across his chest in slow, suffocating waves, each breath scraping deeper than the last, but he pushed through it anyway, forcing his spine to hold for just a mont longer.
The world around him felt unstable, like it had been rattled loose from its own foundation. Dust hung in the air in broken swirls. Heat shimred across shattered ground. Every sound carried too sharply, too close, as if the battlefield had collapsed inward around them.
Still, he stood.
"Shinny. Tami."
His voice ca out rough, strained at the edges, but steady enough to cut through the noise.
"Yeah?" Tami answered imdiately, too fast, like he had been waiting for sothing, anything, to anchor him.
"What are you waiting for?"
Yuto’s gaze lifted fully then, sharp and unflinching, the exhaustion still there but buried beneath sothing harder. Sothing that refused to slow down. His eyes locked forward, slicing through the chaos in front of them as if he could force order back into it by sheer focus alone.
"Charge."
There was no hesitation after that.
No space left for doubt to settle.
All three moved at once, bodies snapping into motion as if the command had finally released sothing coiled tight inside them.
They surged forward, re-entering the fight alongside Maya as the battlefield broke open again, violence and movent flooding back into the air like it had been waiting just beneath the surface for permission to resu.
Stone cracked under the beast’s shifting weight. Massive vine limbs carved through the basin, tearing up rock and root alike, forcing constant separation and regrouping. Every advance ca with a retreat, every strike with imdiate repositioning just to avoid being crushed or caught in its expanding reach.
Maya remained at the core of pressure, her earth-enhanced speed keeping her constantly inside the beast’s reaction threshold. She forced it to respond, not to act, shaping the tempo of the fight through relentless acceleration and terrain control.
Tami and Shinny coordinated tightly, slipping into openings as soon as Maya created them, striking exposed gaps in the vine armor with precise timing before those gaps could close again.
But the damage never stayed.
Vines reknit instantly, sealing wounds as if they had never existed, erasing their progress in real ti.
Maya pushed harder, accelerating her movent further, forcing sharper directional shifts, tighter angles, and faster re-engagents that kept the beast locked in near-constant defense.
Yuto called out timing between strained breaths, voice tight but steady, guiding attacks as best as he could while everything around him moved faster than pain allowed him to fully process.
Then it changed.
A subtle opening ford in Yuto’s awareness, a gap where there should not have been one.
His guard shifted a fraction too late.
The vine beast reacted instantly.
A massive limb shot forward with brutal precision.
It struck Yuto squarely in the chest, shredding so blood vessels.
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