Chapter 68: Family Reunion 6
"You damn bra—"
His father froze mid-word.
Sothing shifted behind those yellow eyes. Not anger, but sothing worse. Realization.
And then he just burst out laughing.
Not the nacing kind. Not the villain-about-to-monologue kind. The caught-off-guard, didn’t-see-that-coming kind. Which was sohow more unsettling than everything else he’d done tonight combined.
"That explains everything," he said between breaths, like he’d just solved a riddle that had been bothering him for years. "The fluid control over multiple artifacts. Being able to command them without even summoning them."
His body grew. Fur covered every inch of him, now turning silver white. His mouth snapped forward, elongating, jaw reshaping into sothing that belonged in a mythology textbook under the heading DO NOT APPROACH. Lightning crackled through his body in jagged veins of white and blue, arcing between his muscles like his skin couldn’t contain what was inside him anymore.
"What is your true na?" he asked, voice deep and guttural.
"Oh, now you want to know your grandchild?" Shiro tilted his head. "After you killed my parents?"
He blinked.
And appeared right in front of Shiro.
’Oh, that’s not—’
His claw ca down. Fast. But the masked man was already there—deflecting it with his sword just enough to throw the beast off balance.
Shiro didn’t waste it.
He drove his fist into his father’s gut, folding that massive body forward like a chair. Landed two more before his brain caught up with his fists. Left. Right. Each one sinking deep enough to feel ribs snap.
His father’s other hand ca swinging down from above, but Shiro grabbed the massive arm, feet sinking into the ground as he braced himself against the weight. And in that half-second window, they moved together—both driving their fists into the beast’s stomach at the exact sa ti.
The impact sounded like a thunderclap having a bad day.
They followed up with a barrage of strikes.
Blows from every direction. There was no pattern. Just violence with a purpose. One defended while the other struck. One drew the beast’s attention while the other carved in from the blind spot. They traded roles without speaking, without signaling, like two instrunts playing the sa song from mory.
’This is actually working. If we keep this up we might actually—’
And because the universe had never once let Shiro finish a hopeful thought in peace, it went wrong.
A massive electric discharge erupted from the beast’s body—lightning exploding outward in every direction, raw and blinding. Both of them were thrown back like ragdolls in a thunderstorm.
Shiro’s feet scraped against the ground. Every nerve in his body was buzzing. His teeth ached.
But he recovered fast.
Gritting his teeth, he shot forward.
His father t him head on.
They clashed—arms locked, fingers crushing, each one trying to break the other through sheer stubborn force. Power against power. Almost even.
Almost.
The masked man ca down from behind, sword ablaze with dark red fire that burned like it had a personal grudge against everything it touched. And right now, Shiro hoped it was his father. And not him.
Shiro held his grip on the beast while lightning ripped through his body like it was trying to cook him from the inside out. Teeth clenched. Muscles screaming. Every fiber in his body begging him to let go.
And sucks to be his body, because he never listened to it no matter how much it complained.
At the last possible mont, he jumped back.
The strike connected.
The explosion shook the island. The ground cratered. The air turned white.
Mid-air, Shiro pulled. Every grain of dust. Every shard of rubble. Every fragnt of broken stone. All of it swirling toward him, compressing, hardening into one massive arrow that humd with enough mana to crack the sky.
He fired.
Clean hit.
It struck dead center, detonating against the beast’s chest in a flash of blinding gray.
The mont his foot touched the ground, Nocturne materialized in his grip.
He shot forward.
The masked man, from the opposite direction, charged at the sa speed.
Shiro’s blade hit first, biting deep into one side of the neck. But it couldn’t cut all the way through, because of course it couldn’t. Nothing about this fight was allowed to be easy.
As the masked man struck from the opposite side, Shiro put everything he had into one final push, and the combined force drove the neck clean through his buried blade.
His head ca off clean.
’Teamwork. Beautiful, disgusting teamwork.’
They stood there gasping, chests heaving, as his father’s body dropped to the floor with a thud.
"Damn," Shiro muttered, wiping his blade clean. "That was easy."
He turned toward the direction of Boris and Noris, hoping they were doing fine. But sothing felt odd. He could only feel two mana signatures.
There should have been three. Because there was no way they could have beaten Kuro.
Realization crept up his spine and wrapped around his throat without his permission.
He turned toward the masked man. "You can’t be—"
Just then, his father’s headless body rose, looming above them both like a nightmare that hadn’t gotten the mo it was supposed to be dead. His hands shot forward—claws out, fast, brutal, still carrying enough force to kill.
’Move. MOVE—’
His muscles were still fried from all the shocks, nerves screaming static, legs responding about as well as two wet noodles with attitude problems. But at the last mont, the masked man shoved him out of the way of sothing he should have seen coming and didn’t.
Shiro’s gaze froze.
The masked man’s body hung suspended in the air—claws buried through his chest, punching out the other side. Crimson ran down in thick, steady lines that caught the moonlight.
His feet dangled. His arms went limp. And for one terrible, endless heartbeat, he just hung there. Like a puppet soone had decided to break.
Then the beast flung him aside.
Like he weighed less than the dirt under its claws.
Shiro moved, closing the distance before his body hit the ground, catching him mid-fall, arms wrapping around a body that was suddenly way too light and way too still.
His boots slid across the dirt. The montum dragged him backward.
He dropped to his knees.
The body cradled against his chest. Warm.
But getting colder.
With shakey hands, he reached for the mask.
And pulled it off.
His eyes widened.????????????????????????????????
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