got a good news!!!!!!!!!!!! As my summer break has started.. daily chapters will be starting too!!!!!!!
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Meanwhile, back in the jungle, Muscular roared.
The sound hit as if it were physical. It hit the fire barrier like a battering ram, sending ripples across the wall of red flame, distorting the heat haze, shaking the scorched earth beneath Akira's feet.
Akira stood his ground and stared at the creature in front of him.
Three metres of black membrane with massive white eyes. A mouth full of teeth that belonged in a nightmare. Every inch was covered in the material that his flames couldn't damage.
And above all..... no weak points.
Muscular's white eyes focused on Akira. Whatever intelligence drove the Nomu modifications could still see him, still read him, still process combat data at a speed that shouldn't have been possible for something that used to be a mindless brute.
The monster grinned at him.
"I'LL SHOW YOU REAL POWER, KID!!!!"
Saying that he charged.
The ground exploded beneath his feet. Not cracked.... exploded. The force of his launch cratered the scorched earth and sent shockwaves rippling outward. He crossed the twenty-metre gap between them in less time than it took Akira to process what was happening.
He was faster.
Not just faster than before. Faster than anything Akira had fought. Faster than the USJ Nomu. Faster than Mei in training.
Akira couldn't track him.
One moment, Muscular was twenty metres away. The next second, there was a fist in his face.
The impact hit like a train.
Akira's head snapped back as he was launched off his feet, spinning through the air, his vision whiting out from the force. He hit a boulder and went through it. The stone shattered around him as his body carved a path through the rock and came to rest in the rubble on the other side.
For a moment, he didn't move.
The fire barrier flickered. The wall of red flame that had been burning steadily for the past five minutes stuttered, dimmed, and wavered. Without Akira's conscious control feeding it, the barrier was weakening. Cracks appeared in the flame wall.
The barrier was breaking.
Inside the rubble, Akira's blue flames ignited across his body.
The Overdrive's regenerative function kicked in, mending the cracked ribs, closing the cuts on his face, and reducing the swelling around his left eye. His body knit itself together rapidly.
He pulled himself out of the rubble, as his legs were shaking. Not from fear. From the raw physical force that had been transmitted through his skeleton by a single punch.
What?
One punch. One punch had done this. Before the transformation, Muscular had been strong but manageable. But now?
He's faster than my reactions. His durability is beyond anything my red flames can penetrate. And he hits hard enough to break me in one shot.
The healing finished. Akira stood straight, gripped his blades.
It didn't matter.
He had made a promise inside this ring of fire, and he was going to keep it or die trying.
He charged.
Akira came in low, both blades trailing red fire, aiming for Muscular's legs. He swung both blades in a scissor pattern, crossing at the knee.
Muscular didn't move. The blades hit his legs and bounced. The red flame edges scraped across the black membrane and slid off as if they had hit diamond. The fire sizzled against the surface and died without leaving a mark.
Muscular grabbed both blades with one hand.
The red flame constructs shattered in his grip. Fragments of compressed fire scattered like broken glass, dissolving into sparks before they hit the ground. Akira's hands were suddenly empty, his primary weapons destroyed in less than a second.
Muscular's other fist came down.
Akira twisted sideways. The fist hit the ground where he had been crouching, and the impact crater that resulted was two metres wide. The shockwave launched Akira sideways. He recovered mid-air, fired a burst of flame from his feet to stabilise, and landed ten metres away.
He created new blades instantly. Red flame condensing in his palms, solidifying, taking shape. He rushed in again.
This time, he went high. A leaping strike aimed at Muscular's head, both blades driving downward in a piercing motion. If he could hit the eyes....
Muscular swatted him out of the air.
One arm. A casual backhand that caught Akira across the torso and sent him spinning. He hit the ground, bounced, rolled, and came to a stop twenty metres away. His blades dissolved again.
He got up. Created new blades. Charged again.
And again.
And again.
Each time, Akira came with a different approach. Different angles. Different combinations. He threw flame projectiles to create openings, used burst movement to attack from blind spots, and tried to overwhelm with volume the way the wave one students had tried against him in the battle royale.
Nothing worked.
The membrane was impenetrable. His red flames could not do anything at all.
Whatever they had done to Muscular, they had engineered him specifically to resist Akira's fire.
And his speed was devastating. Every time Akira committed to an attack, Muscular was already inside his guard, already swinging, already landing hits that Akira's healing could barely keep up with. The blue flames worked overtime — mending broken bones, sealing cuts, reducing internal bleeding — but the damage was accumulating faster than the healing could clear it.
Akira was burning through his stamina at an unsustainable rate. Dual-layer flame output was draining his reserves twice as fast. The meditation training, the stamina management that Mei had drilled into him, was the only reason he was still standing. But even that had limits.
He was losing.
And Muscular knew it.
The monster stood in the centre of the arena, watching Akira pull himself up for the eighth time. The boy's clothes were gone — burned away completely. His body was covered in bruises, cuts, and scorch marks from impacts against the ground. His breathing was ragged. His blades flickered in his hands, their edges dimmer than before.
Muscular tilted his head with a crazed smile on his face.
Then he moved.
He appeared in front of Akira.
Akira raised both blades to block.
The fist hit the blades.
And shattered in a second. His arms buckled. And the follow-through of Muscular's punch continued past the broken guard, past Akira's attempt to twist away, past the blue flames that tried to form a protective shell around his body.
The fist connected with Akira's left shoulder.
And kept going.
Akira felt it before he understood it.
His left arm separated from his torso.
The force of the impact had shattered the shoulder joint, torn through muscle and tendon, and ripped the limb free from his body. His arm — still covered in flickering blue flame — flew through the air and landed ten metres away in the ash, fingers still twitching.
Blood sprays from the severed shoulder, bright red against the ash-covered ground. It lasted half a second before blue flames surged to the wound, cauterising the stump, sealing the blood vessels, and stopping the blood loss.
"AGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!"
Akira screamed in agony.
He staggered sideways, his remaining hand clutching the sealed stump, his vision tunnelling.
His eyes burned red. Darker than before. Almost black.
The pain was immense. But worse than the pain was the realisation that came with it.
If I stay on the ground, I will die here.
I have to do it now.
Muscular was already winding up for the finishing blow. His fist — still stained with Akira's blood — cocked back, the muscle fibres in his arm stacking to maximum density, preparing to deliver the hit that would end this fight permanently.
Akira didn't give him the chance.
Red flames erupted from his body. Every ounce of fire he had left, pouring out of him in a tidal wave of crimson energy that forced Muscular back a step.
In that half-second of space, Akira transformed.
The phoenix formed around him. Not the composed construct from the battle royale. This was desperate. Ragged. A phoenix built from pain and willpower and the absolute refusal to die in this clearing. One wing was smaller than the other — the left side, where his arm should have been, couldn't form properly. The construct was lopsided, unstable, and burning unevenly.
But it flew.
Akira launched upward. Through the weakened fire barrier, through the canopy gap above, into the open sky. The phoenix climbed, trailing red embers and droplets of blood that evaporated before they hit the ground.
Higher. Higher. Until the fire arena was a circle of light below him and the stadium was a distant glow on the horizon.
He opened the phoenix's mouth.
Solar Radiance!!!!!!!!!
The beam fired downward. A column of concentrated light and compressed flame that shot from the sky like a lance thrown by a god. It hit the fire arena at terminal velocity, striking the exact centre where Muscular stood.
The explosion was visible from the stadium. Light consumed the arena. The fire barrier — already weakened — was obliterated. The ground zero point was vaporised to a depth of three metres, creating a crater that dwarfed anything that had been made during the Sports Festival. The shockwave flattened trees for a hundred metres in every direction. The sound reached the stadium two seconds later — a deep, rolling boom that shook the remaining windows.
Akira fell from the sky.
The phoenix dissolved. He had nothing left. His body dropped through the smoke and ash, one-armed, burned, empty. He hit the edge of the crater and rolled to a stop.
Blue flames crawled across his body. Healing what they could. Which wasn't much.
He lay there, breathing. Each breath was filled with agony. His left shoulder was a sealed stump of cauterised flesh. His ribs were cracked. His vision was fading at the edges.
But he was alive.
I should have done this earlier, he thought. Should have opened with solar radiance instead of trying to outfight him. I am so fucking stupid. Mom is going to kill me.
He rolled onto his back. Stared at the sky through the smoke.
It was over. Nothing could survive a direct hit from solar radiance at maximum output. The crater was three metres deep and thirty metres wide. The temperature at the impact point had exceeded anything his quirk had ever produced.
It was over.
.
.
.
.
.
Or was it?
STEP!
A sound from the centre of the crater. Not a roar. Not a scream. A sound that was worse than both — the wet, grinding noise of something pulling itself together.
Akira turned his head.
From the centre of the crater, from the deepest point of the blast zone, a shape emerged from the smoke.
Massive. Missing chunks of membrane that were already regrowing. One arm gone — reforming. Half its jaw missing — rebuilding. Its white eyes, cracked and leaking fluid, were already clearing.
Muscular stood up.
Akira's eyes went wide.
His strongest attack was not enough.
The monster looked at Akira.
And deep inside the membrane, buried beneath layers of engineered tissue, something that used to be Muscular was laughing.
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HOLY SHITTTTTTTTTTTTTT... Guess it's ggs....
Anyway.. hope you enjoyed it.. And trust me when I say this, you are not ready for what is to come.
Bye!!!
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