He opened his mouth, trying to shape the right response, sothing biting, sothing to reassert control of the mont, but the boy spoke again, quicker this ti, not giving Gon the chance.
"Guess I’ll dial up the power a bit now," he said breezily, as though adjusting a volu knob, as though pain was just a mild inconvenience.
Then, with deliberate slowness, the boy straightened his spine. He winced, barely, but his expression didn’t change.
That grin only deepened. He looked taller now, sohow. Bigger. As if shaking off the injury had peeled back a layer of performance and revealed sothing rawer beneath.
And then it happened.
A sudden, sickening movent stirred beneath his clothes.
From under his tunic, from the folds of his sleeves, even from the tops of his boots, they ca. One after another, snakes began to slither out from his body like nightmares pulled into daylight.
The first one dropped from his sleeve with a wet plop, hitting the sand and coiling instantly. Then another, and another, until it was like his entire body had beco a nest.
The creatures poured out in waves, writhing, twisting, hissing, green and black and glistening in the sunlight, their scales shimring like polished armor.
So were thin and whip-like, their movents so fast they blurred; others were thick and heavy, their bodies rippling with corded muscle.
Gon took a single step back, involuntarily. His eyes darted from snake to snake, counting without aning to.
One. Two. Five. Eight.
Eight snakes now coiled around the boy in a tight, nacing ring, tongues flicking, heads swaying with hypnotic rhythm. They moved in sync with him, as if connected to the rise and fall of his breath. Living armor.
The boy tilted his head, his pink hair swaying gently in the breeze, and grinned wider, his teeth white against the crimson sar across his cheek.
"Let’s see if you can handle this," he said.
His tone was almost playful. Almost. But underneath the lightness, buried beneath that sing-song lilt, there was a dark edge, like a razor tucked into velvet.
Gon’s hand tightened on his sword hilt, knuckles whitening. His heart pounded in his chest, louder now, matching the slow, deliberate sway of the snakes. Each beat echoed in his ears like war drums.
The boy stepped forward, slow and deliberate, the hissing of the snakes around him now silent, as if they, too, were holding their breath.
His boots crunched softly against the sand, blood still trickling from his wounded side, though he seed not to notice.
His eyes, sharp and glittering, stayed locked on Gon like twin daggers. There was no more grin this ti, no trace of the charming nace he’d worn like a mask.
"This ti," he said, his voice low and oddly calm, "there’s no room for surprises."
The words carried weight, like a spell uttered in a forgotten tongue, final and cold. Then, without another breath of warning, he lunged.
The movent was a blur, almost too fast to follow, his cloak snapping behind him, sand exploding in his wake. Gon reacted on instinct, twisting his body just in ti, the air splitting beside him as the boy’s strike missed by re inches.
A gust of pressure skimd past his cheek, and Gon could feel the heat of it, close enough to burn.
He didn’t have ti to recover.
The boy ca again, a second lunge even faster than the first.
Gon moved to dodge, shifting his weight to one side, but sothing felt off. Too smooth. Too clean.
His heart dropped.
It wasn’t real.
The second strike hadn’t been a follow-up, it was bait. A trick. A shadow cast to force Gon into the open.
And then ca the real attack.
It swept in from the opposite angle, sudden and vicious, a flicker of movent low to the ground, aid not at his chest but at his legs. A serpentine motion, all speed and venom.
Gon barely managed to twist his body mid-dodge, throwing himself sideways with a grunt, his arms flailing as he fell.
His side scraped harshly against the sand, grit digging into his skin through the cloth of his tunic.
Pain sparked, sharp, stinging, but he ignored it. He hit the ground hard, breath knocked from his lungs, and rolled instinctively, coming to a crouch with his sword still clenched tight in his hand.
A beat passed. Dust settled.
The boy’s voice ca again, maddeningly steady.
"You’re doing it again," he said, walking slowly toward him, face unreadable. "Running instead of fighting."
There was no mockery in his voice this ti. No arrogance. Just a quiet certainty. And sohow, that made it worse. It was a judgnt. A sentence. A truth Gon didn’t want to hear.
Sothing in him snapped.
Heat surged up his spine, hot and imdiate. His hand trembled, not from fear, but from sothing deeper. Rage, pure and searing, clawed its way into his chest and exploded outward.
He wasn’t running.
He wasn’t a coward.
Mana flared in his veins, crimson and wild. It raced through his limbs like fire licking through dry parchnt, thrumming with power and fury.
His fingers closed into a tight fist around the hilt of his blade, the pulse of magic spreading outward. His eyes locked on the boy, no fear, no hesitation.
He activated Crimson Pulse, and then he let it go.
The spell tore from him like a wave breaking through a dam. A bolt of red light surged from his hand, bright as fla, streaking across the arena with a roar that echoed against the stone walls.
It lit up the air between them in an instant, a blinding arc of raw power.
The boy barely had ti to react.
The pulse struck him square in the chest, lifting him off his feet with the force of it.
His body flew backward, limbs flailing, his expression frozen sowhere between disbelief and pain.
He hit the ground with a thud, skidding through the sand before coming to a stop in a crumpled heap.
Silence fell.
He lay there, groaning faintly, dazed eyes blinking up at the sky.
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