Akira stood before dozens of werewolves, their snarls rumbling through the night. One stepped forward from the pack.
It towered above the others, with mottled ash grey coloured fur and a jagged scar splitting its chest. Its eyes glowed with cold intelligence, heavy with malice earned over the years.
"Well, well," the giant werewolf growled, its voice deep and gravelly. "We finally meet, brat."
It raised a clawed finger, pointing directly at him.
"Today is the day you die."
Akira gently lowered Haruna to the ground and took a step forward, looking at them with calm eyes.
"Yeah, I should have known things wouldn't always go as planned. Looks like their real target is me," Akira thought with a sigh. "But I just have to be calm and analyze the situation first."
"I am…"
"Don't bother," Akira interrupted flatly, waving a hand dismissively. "I'm not gonna remember the name of some random mob boss."
The werewolf growled in surprise, taken aback by Akira's calm audacity.
Akira maintained his usual light tone, but internally, his thoughts raced, "He doesn't look like anyone I recognize from any anime, which means he's either from an anime I haven't watched before or someone original to this world".
"Coming after me while the parents are out of town, separating Iori, and trapping me in this barrier… that means you've been watching me for a while, right? Like those creepy stalkers," Akira said with an exaggerated expression of disgust.
"Brat, you are courting death," the werewolf leader growled in anger.
"Courting death? Now you're talking like a third-rate cultivation novel villain. But I guess that's just who you are. What's your motive anyway? Isn't it time you go on a monologue and explain your evil plan? Come on, impress me," Akira said in a condescending tone.
The werewolf leader's eye twitched. "You bastards from the Starlight Family… You're all the same. Arrogant bastard, you'll know pain when I…"
"Ohhh, so it's a generational family feud?" Akira interrupted again, mock surprise on his face. "That's just sad, man. You've had all this time, and you're still hung up on what my great-great-grand-uncle might've done?"
The leader snarled louder, fangs bared, but Akira kept going, his tone as light as ever.
"And instead of going after my parents, you're too afraid to face them, so you wait until they're out of town to jump me. Kind of cowardly, don't you think?"
"You dare mock me!"
"I mean, this setup is suspiciously overkill," Akira continued, looking around at the shimmering dome. "An isolation barrier and an anti-magic barrier? You really expect me to believe a bunch of half-naked howlers whipped that up all by themselves? Let me guess, someone handed you a shiny bone and said, 'Go bite that boy.' And you wagged your tail and ran off thinking you were the top dog."
The werewolf's eyes blazed with fury.
Akira smiled wider, "From his reaction, he didn't come up with the plan to use this barrier trap, which means someone else was behind this. Someone's testing me or my family's bottom line".
He subtly tapped the ground with his foot, seeing the flow of mana with his mystic eyes. It wasn't vanishing, it was being pulled away, absorbed somewhere else.
"Not destroyed. Collected. That means if I condense my mana into a denser form, maybe it won't get sucked out right away…"
It would be impossible for any other magicians, but Akira had been using the mana circulation method and infusing mana into his blood and body ever since he was a newborn baby, so his body was closer to something like a magic artifact and could conduct magic easily. So for him, it should be possible.
"You've talked enough, boy!" the werewolf leader snapped. "Rip them apart! Make sure there is nothing of him remains."
With that final command, the lesser werewolves howled and lunged.
Akira exhaled slowly.
"Girls," he said, stepping forward casually like he was going for a walk, "just stay here for a moment, will you? It should be over soon."
"Akira…!" Erika's voice cracked.
"Don't worry, I will be back." He turned to look at Erika and gave her a confident smile before turning back to face them.
His hand twitched slightly, mana beginning to pulse through him, denser, heavier than ever before, like the first time he had unleashed everything, and the flood of power had burst out of him like water breaking through a dam, but he didn't release it. He condensed it, forcing it inward, binding it to himself.
"Let's see if this works…"
The first werewolf came within striking distance, and Akira's expression sharpened.
"Alright then, this is where the fun begins!" he said with a smile on his face. He always wanted to say that line, after all.