Jin stood there, holding Lyraena easily. He had not been there a second ago. He looked at the bear, his usual lazy smile still there.
"Yo, am I late?"
He gently placed a stunned Lyraena on her feet. "Stay back," he said, his voice calm.
The bear beast, its rage now focused on this new target, let out a deafening roar. It charged at Jin.
The students panicked.
"Watch out!" Ivan screamed. The bear was about to smash Jin.
But Jin did not move. He just stood there, his hands in his pockets, that same lazy smile on his face.
At the last possible second, as the bear's massive claws were about to rip him apart, he moved.
He did not dodge. He stepped forward, into the attack. He raised one arm.
He caught the bear's entire descending limb with his forearm.
The impact created a shockwave. The ground under Jin's feet cracked. But he did not move back an inch. He had stopped the full force of the monster's attack with one arm.
The bear's eye widened in shock. It tried to pull its arm back. It was stuck.
"My turn," Jin said.
He gripped the bear's arm with his other hand. He planted his feet. He pulled.
There was a sound of tearing muscle and snapping bone. With a single, brutal motion, Jin ripped the bear's entire arm off its body at the shoulder.
Blood sprayed across the clearing.
The bear let out a shriek of pure, unimaginable agony. It stumbled back, clutching the bloody stump of its shoulder.
Jin looked at the massive, fur-covered limb in his hand. He tossed it aside like it was a piece of trash. "Useless," he muttered.
The students stared, frozen in horror. Marcus felt his own arms go weak. That was not strength. That was something else.
Ivan's mind went blank. 'He... he ripped its arm off?' he thought, his brain struggling to process what he had just seen. 'With his bare hands? Is that even possible?'
The bear, now driven by a mad frenzy of pain, charged again. It tried to bite Jin with its massive jaws.
Jin sighed, looking annoyed. He did not dodge. He just punched it.
It was a single, straight punch to the side of the bear's head.
The sound was like a tree trunk snapping. The bear's head whipped to the side. It was lifted off its feet by the force of the blow. It flew sideways through the air and crashed into a group of trees, shattering them on impact.
It lay there for a moment, dazed and broken.
"Get up," Jin ordered, starting to walk toward it. "The fun is just starting."
The bear struggled to its feet. It was crippled. It was terrified. It tried to run.
In a blur, Jin appeared in front of it, blocking its path. "Hey, where are you going? I didn't say you could leave."
The bear swiped desperately with its one remaining arm. Jin caught the paw in his hand. He squeezed. The students heard the sound of every bone in the bear's paw being crushed at once.
The bear howled, a pathetic, gurgling sound.
Jin did not let go. He started walking backward, dragging the massive, struggling beast by its broken hand. He dragged it back to the center of the clearing.
"You made a mess over there," he said, pointing at the broken trees. "We'll finish this here."
He kicked the back of the bear's leg. The knee bent the wrong way with a wet snap. The bear collapsed onto the ground, unable to stand. It was now a helpless, whimpering wreck.
Ivan watched, a cold dread washing over him. This was not a fight. It was torture. 'How?' he thought. 'How can a human be this strong? Is this what the top of the academy is like? If we had just one soldier like him in the war... would we have lost?'
The question was a poison in his mind. He thought of his brothers, of the kingdom's greatest knights, all dead. He thought of their strength, which had seemed so immense. It was nothing compared to this. This was a different level of existence.
'Are the Sins... even stronger than him?' The thought made him feel sick.
Jin walked around the fallen beast, inspecting it like a farmer inspecting livestock. He kicked its ribs. Another crack echoed through the clearing. The bear flinched.
"Still alive? You're tough," Jin said, his voice completely flat.
He then did something that made no sense. He sat down on the bear's back, crossing his legs. He looked at the terrified students.
"So," he said, as if they were in a classroom. "Any questions so far?"
No one spoke. They could not speak.
"No? Okay." He stood up. "Let's finish this."
He crouched down in front of the bear's head. He looked into its one good eye. The eye was filled with nothing but pure terror.
"You know," Jin said conversationally. "You have a nice face. It's a shame it's so asymmetrical now."
He reached out with both hands. He grabbed the bear's upper and lower jaw.
"Let's fix that for you," he said, his smile returning, wider and more terrifying than before.
He pulled.
There was a final, sickening, wet tearing sound. He ripped the bear's jaws apart, splitting its head open.
Blood and gore spilled onto the muddy ground. The bear's body gave one last, violent spasm, and then went still.
It was over.
Jin stood up, wiping his bloody hands on his pants with a look of mild annoyance. "Ugh. So messy."
He stood over the dead monster for a long moment. He noticed something on its forehead. Hidden beneath the matted, bloody fur, a faint symbol was glowing, pulsing with a weak, fading light.
Jin's eyes narrowed. He reached down and brushed the blood away, getting a clear look at the mark. It was a complex, jagged symbol he recognized.
"I see," he whispered to himself.
"A marked beast," he said, his voice quiet. "I wonder who your owner is."