Instead of a direct attack, Sirius gestured toward Taro’s feet with the sa casual indifference one might show when pointing out a spill. Dense shadow spread from the ground like living tar, wrapping around Taro’s legs like invisible shackles.
Imdiately, Taro began feeling exponentially heavier, as if gravity itself had been weaponized against him.
"What... what is this?" Taro gasped, his voice strained as he fought to remain standing. The weight pressed down on him making each breath a monuntal effort. His armor, which had seed so protective monts before, now felt like a tomb slowly crushing him.
Ren launched himself at Sirius with lightning crackling around him like a storm made flesh. His rage gave him speed, desperation gave him strength, but it wasn’t enough.
Sirius disappeared again, leaving Ren to stumble through empty air.
"Children shouldn’t play at being adults so far from ho," Sirius’s voice resonated from all directions at once, as if the shadows themselves were speaking. "And you, Ren..."
The tone beca personal, cutting. Each word was chosen to inflict maximum psychological damage.
"You’re believing too much in that rhetoric about being so kind of savior. Stay away from Luna. She’s better off without ridiculous hopes that will only hurt her more when you inevitably fall short before the harsh reality of nobility..."
"Then let nobility rot!"
The fury that exploded in Ren’s chest was like an emotional supernova, burning away everything else, fear, exhaustion, even rational thought. The black marks spread violently, covering his entire body now like a second skin. With them ca an intuitive understanding of shadow control he hadn’t possessed before.
He could feel Sirius’s location now, jumping through darkness in a circle with a range of about twenty ters. The sensation was like having a sixth sense, feeling the disturbances in shadow as clearly as if he could see them.
He leaped toward that position, but arrived too late. Sirius was much faster, his decades of experience making Ren’s newfound abilities seem still clumsy and amateurish by comparison.
Sirius reappeared directly behind Taro, who was fighting desperately against the supernatural weight crushing him down. The boy’s breathing had beco labored, each gasp a struggle against the impossible pressure.
"Impressive resistance," Sirius comnted casually. "Most would have collapsed long ago. Your beast must be providing excellent structural reinforcent."
He intensified the weight dramatically.
Taro’s scream tore through the air as his armor began cracking under the impossible pressure. The beetle plates, which had withstood Gold rank attacks, began fragnting like glass under a sledgehamr.
"Taro!" Ren roared, throwing himself forward with everything he had, but it was like moving through thick syrup. The distance that should have taken a second stretched into eternity.
It was too late. Taro’s armor disintegrated completely, the pieces falling away like shattered pottery. The boy collapsed under the weight, his body hitting the ground with a thud as consciousness and transformation fled simultaneously.
Sirius straightened beside Taro’s motionless body, looking directly at Ren in front of him with an expression that was both disappointnt and resolve. His face showed no satisfaction, no cruelty, just the cold determination of soone doing what they believed was necessary.
"Julius and Selphira’s people won’t be long in coming for you," he inford in a conversational tone, as if they’d been discussing the weather rather than the systematic incapacitation of Ren’s friends. "They’re going to carry you back to where you belong. So you should stay here and wait like the obedient children you’re supposed to be. You’re responsible for this and you’ll watch over them from the wild beasts around here."
But Ren was no longer listening to rational words. The black marks had covered his entire body completely, thickening like armor made of crystallized rage. The power flowing through him was different from anything he had experienced before, wilder, more uncontrollable, threatening to consu everything that made him human.
He had lost almost all control.
His friends lay around him. The adults who claid to care about him had once again proven they saw him as nothing more than a wayward child to be corrected. And sowhere back there, Luna was suffering because no one else would act.
"NO," he roared, his voice so distorted it barely sounded human anymore. "I WON’T LET YOU HUMILIATE US, NOT ANY NOBLE!"
The words ca out as much a snarl as speech, and the power radiating from him made the very air shimr with heat.
The energy emanating from Ren began affecting the environnt physically, transforming the battlefield into sothing that defied natural law. The grass at his feet didn’t just grow, it erupted in spirals. Nearby rocks didn’t simply develop cracks; they split along perfectly symtrical lines.
The air beca a visible maelstrom, currents of different temperatures creating heat mirages that made reality shimr and bend. Dust devils ford spontaneously, carrying with them the scent of ozone and sothing that reminded observers of the mont before lightning strikes.
Sirius took half a step back, and for the first ti since his arrival, his expression showed sothing that could have been concern.
"Boy," he said carefully, "that’s not normal power. You need to calm yourself before you get hurt. Or turn into a monster like those idiots from Yino..."
Ren launched forward, but this ti it wasn’t a calculated attack. It was pure unleashed fury given form, power without control or direction. His movents had lost all semblance of technique, replaced by sothing primal.
The shadows around him responded chaotically, creating whirlpools of darkness that moved erratically. His elental control had beco unstable, generating electrical sparks that jumped between his fingers.
Lightning arced from point to point across his body, creating a network of energy that pulsed with each heartbeat. The sll of burnt air filled the clearing.
Sirius dodged the first assault, his decades of experience allowing him to read the attack despite its chaotic nature. But he could see that sothing had changed fundantally in the boy before him. This wasn’t the sa calculating child who had been fighting strategically monts before.
This... creature, had no rational restrictions.
The last vestiges of conscious control threatened to disappear completely.
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