Fragnts of abyssal tissue scattered throughout the chamber.
Three complete segnts were entirely destroyed.
The other 15 remaining, now headless, collapsed with a dull thud.
But the monstrosity was far from defeated.
Before Han's horrified eyes, the beast began to reorganize itself once again. What remained of its original twenty segnts, after losing five in battle, began to restructure.
The last segnt at the front started to swell and transform, translucent mbranes stretching as a new structure ford: a grotesque mouth with rows of triangular teeth arranged in concentric rings.
All remaining segnts began functioning in coordination again, like independent control centers forming a collective organism, each capable of directing the whole. The abomination wasn't a creature with multiple vital organs; it was multiple creatures fused into a single modular consciousness.
Ren fell to one knee, completely exhausted. The light had diminished to a faint glow, barely enough to illuminate his exhausted face.
Despite his condition, Ren extended his arms in front of Han, determined to continue protecting him until the end.
Han observed this boy, so different from anyone he had t before. Soone with genuine concern for others.
A mory, so vivid it almost hurt, erged from the depths of his mind.
"Why do you try so hard?" Han rembered asking, his childish voice filled with genuine curiosity as he watched his sister nding their worn clothes by the light of an almost consud candle.
Hedda had looked up, her fingers montarily stopping their ticulous work. Her eyes were reddened from fatigue, but her smile never faltered when she spoke to him.
"Because I love you, silly," she had answered with that particular mixture of toughness and tenderness that only she knew how to combine.
"But the adults say we're pests," Han had insisted, repeating the cruel words he had heard whispered in the alleys. "That there are too many like us, that we consu resources..."
Hedda had put down the needle and taken his face between hands calloused from work, forcing him to look at her directly.
"Listen to , Han," her voice had beco intense, almost fierce. "No matter what they say, no matter our situation. I want you to be a good person, I promised our mother. You must be soone who knows what's right, even when it's difficult. Especially when it's difficult."
"But..."
"No buts," she had interrupted. "Promise . Promise that you'll always try to do what's right, no matter what happens."
And he, too young to fully understand what he was promising, had solemnly nodded. "I promise, sister."
The mory faded, but left sothing vital in its place.
A certainty.
A decision.
Ren deserved to live.
This boy, who had been willing to sacrifice himself defending him, who represented exactly what Hedda had wanted for him, deserved to have a chance.
'If I use my second beast, he'll discover ,' Han thought, anxiety tightening his stomach. 'And if I'm discovered, Hedda will pay the consequences.'
But as he watched Ren, still trying to protect him, sothing changed inside him. A crystalline resolution ford, displacing years of fear and conditioning.
'No,' Han decided. 'Hedda wouldn't want to be different. She would want to do what's right, especially when it's difficult.'
With a certainty he had never felt before, Han activated his beast.
It wasn't a normal manifestation. It was Yino's extre style, where human and beast not only fused but intermingled.
His fractured leg dissolved into a mass of pulsating tissue that quickly reconstructed itself, but no longer as a human extremity. Instead, a chitinous leg with additional joints ford, characteristic of the abyssal Carrion Queen.
The transformation didn't stop there. His torso expanded, chitinous plates erging through the skin, his bone structure reconfiguring with wet cracking sounds. Translucent wings sprouted from his back, mbranous and veined with patterns that seed to absorb light rather than reflect it.
In seconds, where a child had been before, now stood a monstrous abyssal wasp.
The creature that had been Han moved with unnatural fluidity, positioning itself protectively in front of Ren. Multiple compound eyes glowed with intelligence as they evaluated the abomination, which surprisingly had halted its advance.
The abyssal beast seed to detect sothing familiar in the energy emanating from Han. Its movents beca slower, almost cautious, its multiple sensors vibrating as it analyzed this new presence.
Han felt the connection imdiately.
Concentrating intensely, Han began releasing specific pheromones. The air around his transford form distorted slightly.
The pheromones reached the abomination, which reacted with a visible shudder. Its segnts tensed, its tentacles retracted, and the multiple cores pulsed in a different rhythm, more harmonized.
It was ti.
With a movent that combined physical gestures and chemical signals, Han issued an unequivocal command: go down. To the natural level of us abyssals.
Slowly, the beast began to retreat. With a final roar that seed to contain as much frustration as resignation, the abomination launched itself toward one of the openings in the chamber floor, disappearing into the depths with a sound similar to a train entering a tunnel.
When the abomination finally withdrew, plunging into the depths where it belonged, Han turned toward Ren.
He ntally prepared himself for what would co: the look of betrayal, the horror, perhaps even contempt. The reaction any inhabitant of Yano would have upon discovering a Yino infiltrator, a monster with an abyssal beast.
But what he found was sothing completely unexpected.
Ren was standing, yes, but barely. His body swayed dangerously, his unfocused eyes staring at an indefinite point in the void.
A few threads of residual light still traversed his skin, but they were rapidly fading.
"Ren?" Han took a cautious step toward him.
Ren seed to hear him through a great distance. His eyes tried to focus, his lips moved but emitted no sound. And then, like a puppet whose strings are cut, he began to collapse.
Han barely had ti to catch him. He examined him, noting with growing alarm the evident signs of mana poisoning.
Ren's skin was pale, with an alarming grayish tint. Purplish veins marked his neck and temples, pulsing with an irregular rhythm. His pupils were dilated, and cold sweat covered his forehead. His breathing was rapid and shallow.
'He absorbed too much mana from the environnt to generate that last ray,' Han understood, recognizing the symptoms from his training. 'His body couldn't process it correctly.'
Ren needed imdiate dical attention.
Just when he had saved himself from being discovered, he would have to stand firm.
Han made an instant decision. He would use his transford form to fly and take Ren to the surface. Once he delivered him to the professors, especially to Lin who seed to have such appreciation for him, Han would simply disappear.
Perhaps he would fly directly to Yino, trying to reach his sister Hedda before it was too late, before the consequences of his betrayal fell upon her.
His mission had ended, his cover would be sacrificed to save soone who inexplicably mattered that much to him.
He prepared to ascend.
But then he felt it.
A powerful presence was descending through the tunnel at great speed. Soone or sothing was approaching, and the force emanating was considerable, clearly beyond a student's level.
Han retracted his transformation imdiately, the instinct ingrained by years of training taking control.
If it was a professor, perhaps he still had a chance to maintain his cover...
There was no ti for speculation. With supre effort, Han forced the Carrion Queen to retreat completely, ignoring the searing pain of his returning broken leg.
In seconds, his body returned to its normal student appearance, though exhaustion hit him like an avalanche.
He let himself fall beside Ren, feigning unconsciousness just as a figure landed gracefully in the center of the chamber.
Through his half-open eyelids, Han saw Zhao.
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