The colony didn't revolve around Ren.
While he trained and clashed under crushing pressure, the others were bleeding for every meter outside his sight.
Mirai wiped blood from her cheek—not her own this time—as another low-grade curse dissolved into red mist in front of her. Her constructs reformed instantly, sharp and precise, but her breathing was heavier than she let on.
"Left side!" Yuji shouted.
She reacted without turning. A ribbon of hardened blood shot sideways, piercing through a crawling curse that had slipped between shattered cars. It pinned the creature to a concrete pillar before detonating from within.
Yuji landed beside her, fists still smoking faintly from impact. "They're getting bolder."
"They're getting smarter," Mirai corrected.
Across the intersection, Midoriya vaulted off a collapsed bus, using controlled bursts of power to avoid destabilizing the area.
He drove a focused strike into a winged curse, sending it crashing into a building façade without collapsing the entire structure.
He landed lightly and scanned the surroundings. "Energy density spiked again when Ren's fight started."
Mirai didn't respond immediately.
She had felt it too.
That moment earlier—when the air compressed unnaturally, when the entire district felt like it was being measured. The killing intent had reached even beyond Ren's isolation.
Yuji flexed his fingers. "You think he's okay?"
Mirai's jaw tightened. "He's alive."
That wasn't the same as okay.
A tremor ran through the street. Sewer grates burst upward as three evolved curses clawed their way out—larger than the previous wave, their bodies partially humanoid now, marked with Culling Game sigils burned into their skin.
"Players?" Midoriya asked.
"No," Mirai said. "Former ones."
They moved fast.
The first charged Yuji, jaws unhinging. He met it head-on, driving his fist forward with raw force. The impact snapped its head sideways, but it didn't go down.
Its arm elongated unnaturally and slashed across his shoulder.
Yuji gritted his teeth and countered with a second strike, this time reinforced with cursed energy. The torso collapsed inward and dissolved.
Midoriya intercepted the second curse mid-air, redirecting its momentum upward before slamming it into the asphalt. The street cracked, but he controlled the force tightly.
Mirai focused on the third.
It moved differently—calculating angles, targeting her specifically. It had learned from the others.
"Fine," she muttered.
She didn't launch a wide attack. Instead, she narrowed her construct into a thin spear and let it circle slowly, baiting movement. The curse lunged at what it thought was an opening.
She redirected instantly.
The spear pierced through its core from behind.
The body fell.
Silence returned briefly.
Midoriya adjusted his gloves. "We can't just keep reacting. The colony's adapting."
Yuji looked toward the distant skyline where Ren had been isolated earlier. "He's fighting monsters. We're fighting leftovers."
Mirai turned sharply. "Don't say that."
Yuji blinked.
She softened slightly but didn't look away from the skyline. "The Game doesn't care who's important. It will kill any of us the same way."
A notification flickered across all their phones at once.
New Rule Proposal Under Review.
They exchanged glances.
"That's not Ren," Midoriya said immediately.
Mirai felt it too. The energy signature attached to the proposal wasn't chaotic. It was controlled.
Calculated.
Yuji clenched his fists. "You think that guy's moving again?"
Mirai didn't answer.
Instead, she extended her senses outward, scanning for large-scale shifts in cursed energy flow. The colony felt like a tightening web.
Somewhere, high above, someone was adjusting the board.
She exhaled slowly. "We're not background characters," she said quietly. "If Ren's being sharpened, then so are we."
Another roar echoed from deeper within the district.
Yuji cracked his knuckles. "Good. I was getting bored."
Midoriya nodded, eyes steady. "We adapt. Same as him."
Mirai summoned her constructs again, but this time she altered their structure—thinner, faster, more efficient.
If Ren was learning scale control under a Special Grade, then she would refine her own precision here.
The Culling Game wasn't centered on one fight.
It was a war of simultaneous evolutions.
And while Ren faced monsters that bent space, Mirai and the others were ensuring there was still something left worth protecting when he came back.