...
Jain scratched the back of her neck, a gesture that betrayed a slight embarrassnt, despite her usually relaxed deanor. Boss's words had hit ho.
"Ahem!"
She cleared her throat, trying to cover it up.
"We ca here to stop Cheok from doing sothing that could endanger his offspring. So, no lectures, boss."
She hastened to change the focus, pointing out the real reason they were there, before the conversation took a turn where she would be corrected to the core.
"Let's go."
Without further ado, Jain jumped ahead, leaving the black-haired woman behind, who seed lost in thought, a subtle wrinkle marking her forehead.
"Hey! Your disguise."
Boss's voice cut through the air, causing Jain to stop mid-stride, her brow furrowed in confusion. She turned her face over her shoulder, a shaless smile, but with a touch of irony, playing at the corners of her lips.
"Oh! I forgot to ntion... But it was your kid who blew my cover."
"Huh?!"
Boss stopped abruptly, his eyes widening for a second in pure astonishnt as he quickly approached to stand beside Jain. The disbelief was evident in his voice.
"He saw through your Gift?"
Jain turned completely toward Boss, the relaxed smile still present, but now with a hint of sothing else, a mixture of admiration and a twinge of sha.
"It's a little embarrassing to say, but not only did he see through it, he was able to render it useless as well."
The admission ca out in a whisper, an acknowledgnt of unexpected vulnerability.
For Jain, who had mastered the art of camouflage, having his Gift nullified was almost unheard of and, in a way, humiliating. The embarrassnt was evident in his posture, his slightly hunched shoulders, and his gaze, which for a mont averted from Boss's.
It was surprising, to say the least. Boss found himself doubting those words for a few seconds. It had crossed his mind that perhaps this was just another one of Jain's countless jokes, one of her usual pranks. But when he noticed the genuine embarrassnt of the woman next to him, the way she scratched the back of her neck, Boss kind of accepted the truth.
"...Did you see how he did that?"
Boss's question was laden with intense curiosity, his mind already working to unravel the mystery behind such a feat.
"Uh! Not really..."
Jain seed a little thoughtful, her eyes lost in the void as she tried to relive the mont.
"Wait... I saw his eye look a little different when he looked at ."
She paused, as if trying to capture a fleeting mory.
"Different?"
Boss prodded, his voice low, almost a whisper, so as not to break Jain's train of thought.
"Yes. His eyes flashed a little, but it was so quick that I didn't pay much attention to it. And also, when I was about to ask him what he had done, poof! He disappeared with Cheok."
Jain gestured with her hands, illustrating how quickly it all happened.
Boss frowned, a deep crease forming between his eyebrows as he processed the information.
The ability to nullify a Gift as powerful as Jain's—a Gift that didn't just change appearance, but altered the very frequency of magical power, making it nearly impossible for anyone to detect her under such a disguise—was sothing she had only encountered once in her entire life.
The implication that Theo Sagan possessed such an ability was, at the very least, alarming and at the sa ti hopeful.
'How did he do that?'
Her mind raced, theories and assumptions coming to her as she tried to understand how he had done it.
'Is it possible that his Gift has so way of directly interfering with other people's magical power'
"Boom!"
A muffled bang echoed in the distance, interrupting Boss's thoughts.
Instinctively, she and Jain exchanged glances, and in less than a second their bodies were already in motion.
After skirting around a few rocks, their light, precise footsteps finally ceased when they saw the scene ahead, in the clearing of fine sand between the woods and the open sea.
Cheok was standing.
Or at least trying to.
His unbalanced posture, trembling knees, and heaving chest showed that the effort to remain upright was a losing battle.
Blood dripped from his mouth and nose in dark streaks that already stained part of his chin. His shirt was completely gone, perhaps torn, revealing a torso covered in scratches, bruises, and superficial cuts.
But the worst was his arm.
His left arm hung at a grotesque angle, bent where there should be no joint. His fingers were still clenched into a poorly ford fist, trembling but clearly determined not to let go of sothing.
The sand around his feet seed to vibrate, as if the earth itself rejected the presence of that unbalanced body. Small stones trembled, and the air around his torso rippled with the heat of red energy escaping from him like boiling blood vapor.
Jain swallowed hard.
"...Shit."
Boss remained silent, paying little attention to Cheok... His black eyes were searching for soone else.
The beach wind blew through their hair, but the sll of salt had been overpowered by sothing tallic.
"He's about to lose his mind, isn't he?"
Jain muttered, his eyes still fixed on the image of Cheok.
"No."
Boss replied, dismissing Jain's thoughts.
"But he's one step away from it."
The red aura around him flickered like flas in a vacuum, expanding and contracting in an unstable pulse.
"There's only one reason he's like this. That boy must be very strong."
Jain comnted, pressing his forehead. Dealing with Cheok when he lost control of his rationality was truly a pain; it was like dealing with a monster with the instincts of a wild beast and completely obsessed with fighting.
"Jain! Go help Theo. I'll take care of him."
Boss pointed with a quick gesture to a set of boulders ahead, where fresh marks in the sand ford an irregular, deep trail, as if sothing, or soone, had been violently thrown in that direction.
"There. He must be there."
Boss said, pointing.
"Leave it to ... Uh!?"
As Jain was preparing to run, the ground beneath his feet shook.
Boss and Jain narrowed their eyes.
Jain froze in place, his instincts heightened. And then...
"Clack!"
A loud crack tore through the air, and rocks, heavy blocks, so the size of a cart, were thrown into the air as if they were nothing more than sticks. Jain instinctively protected himself with his arms, while Boss steadied his body, his eyes fixed on the point of origin of the explosion.
The rocks fell into the nearby sea with a thunderous impact, raising columns of water and startling a flock of birds that took flight in synchronized chaos.
When the dust finally began to settle, the two could see Theo, standing in the afternoon glow that was fading on the horizon.
Standing among the wreckage, the boy slowly erged, walking toward the beach as if nothing had happened. His shirt was torn at the shoulder, but other than that, his body remained intact. His clean skin contrasted sharply with Cheok's deplorable state.
Theo looked toward Jain and Boss, his gaze lingering a little longer on the black-haired woman before turning to the brute.
He stretched out his arm, adjusting the torn sleeve, and said loudly, with a hint of irony:
"Hey! That was my favorite shirt, big guy..."
The silence that followed was as heavy as the previous crack.
Jain was speechless for a second, her eyes going from Theo to Cheok and back again. The difference was striking.
One looked like he had just co out of a war, the other like he had just been for a walk on the beach.
Jain broke the heavy silence with her relaxed voice, laden with irony and amazent:
"Wow... You're sothing else, huh? Now I understand why the Boss has her eye on you."
With a broad, carefree smile, as if there weren't a bloodied brute a few feet away, she approached Theo and, in an unexpectedly light gesture, put her arm around the boy's neck, pulling him aside as if they were old friends who had just finished a ga of cards.
"What was that, huh, kid? Has the world changed so much that I see a first-year Cube cadet beating up a high-level hero in broad daylight?"
Theo let out a short, awkward laugh and raised an eyebrow, still caught in Jain's improvised embrace.
"Hey, it wasn't a beating. He gave a hard ti."
"Oh, sure!"
Jain rolled her eyes with a mocking smile.
"It was the ground that fell out from under his feet, right?"
"Thud!"
As if to prove her point, Cheok fell face-first onto the ground. The impact of his heavy body against the damp sand elicited a muffled sound from the ground.
"Pehehe! I think I got it right."
...
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