The silence following the battle was a lie.
The obsidian-hard bark of the Fik Tree didn't just crack; it detonated. Mu exploded from his prison, a jagged shard of bedrock catching Uri squarely in the temple.
"Uri-kun!" Tori's scream pierced the clearing as Uri tumbled into the dirt.
He scrambled to his feet, blood matting his hair, his left eye clouded and pulsing with a dull, bruised black while the right flared a menacing crimson. He lunged to re-engage the seal, but his focus was fractured. The magma filaments didn't cage Mu; they snapped like whips, shattering the man's legs with a sickening crunch.
Mu collapsed, his bandaged body mangled, but he still tried to crawl toward Tori. Blyna stepped forward, his face pale. "Why?" he whispered, his voice trembling. "Why go to such lengths for a girl? Who sent you?"
Uri didn't wait for an answer. His gaze was cold, a death stare devoid of the warmth Tori had worked so hard to plant. Without a word, he manifested a jagged Magma Spear. With a singular, brutal thrust, he drove the molten point through Mu's chest, pinning him to the earth forever.
"He deserved it," Uri said, his voice a flat, terrifying monotone.
Blyna backed away, horrified by the casual execution. "Uri... that's enough."
Uri ignored him, ripping a piece of his own cloak to bandage his darkened eye. He turned his gaze toward Tori, who was trembling. "Something is fishy. Mu was a high-level specialist. He wasn't after the academy's secrets. He was after you. Why?"
Tori looked at the ground, her shoulders shaking. "My grandmother... she's a vessel master. She doesn't want to see me, Uri-kun. She wants to take my body. The academy... they didn't know. They just thought it was a family escort."
Uri went still. "We aren't going."
"We can't do that!" Blyna snapped, stepping between them. "We have orders! We have a mission report to file!"
Uri turned on him, his single good eye burning. "You... you use that pressurized water without a single doubt in your soul. You're Michiru's son, aren't you?"
The air in the clearing turned to ice. Blyna's jaw tightened, his fingers twitching. "So what if I am? My father was a monster, but I'm a soldier of the city! If you have a problem with my blood, say it to my face!"
"My problem," Uri hissed, "is that we aren't taking Tori-san to her death."
"SO WHAT?! YOROZU'S DEATH WAS IN VAIN?" Blyna roared, his grief finally exploding. "She died for this mission! If we turn back now, her life meant nothing!"
Uri didn't answer. He simply reached out, took Tori's hand firmly in his, and began to walk toward the dark treeline.
"Don't you walk away from me!"
Blyna slammed his palms into the earth. A towering wall of pressurized water erupted between Uri and Tori, forcibly separating them. The roar of the water was like a physical barrier of rage.
"I won't let you throw away her sacrifice for a girl," Blyna growled, his arms coated in a shimmering blue aura.
Uri didn't look back. His hand ignited, the viscous magma bubbling with a heat that threatened to turn the forest to ash. "Move the wall, Blyna. Or I'll burn through you too."
The water wall hissed as the first droplets hit Uri's radiating heat, turning the forest air into a choking, humid fog. Blyna stood on the other side, his face contorted in a mask of grief and duty.
"If you walk away now, Uri, you're not a hero," Blyna roared, his Conquerors Energy surging until the water wall turned into a crushing tidal wave. "You're a traitor! You're making Yorozu's sacrifice a joke!"
Uri didn't flinch. His bandaged eye throbbed with a dull, black ache, but his right eye remained fixed on the liquid barrier. "I'm saving the only person who ever saved me. If that makes me a traitor, then I'll burn the title into my skin."
As the two prepared to clash, the "corpse" of Mu began to twitch. The magma spear had pinned the body, but instead of blood, a pale, ethereal light leaked from the wound.
"Stop..." a hollow, feminine voice echoed from the bandaged husk.
Uri and Blyna both froze. Through the gaps in the bandages, the hollow eyes of Mu were no longer vacant. They were filled with a weeping, maternal sorrow.
"Tori... my daughter..."
Tori gasped, her knees hitting the dirt. "Mother?"
The truth spilled out like a poison. The grandmother wasn't just a vessel master; she was a parasite. She had already attempted the reincarnation once before, forcibly displacing the soul of Tori's mother. That soul hadn't vanished—it had been shoved into the artificial, bandaged shell known as Mu, a byproduct of a failed ritual. The man they had just "killed" was the hollowed-out remains of Tori's own mother, bound by the grandmother's will to retrieve the next "vessel."
"She... she sent my own mother to kidnap me?" Tori whispered, her voice breaking.
Blyna's hands trembled, the water wall flickering. The weight of the mission, the "duty" he had defended, was suddenly a rotting carcass. But the Academy's orders were absolute. In the city's eyes, a mission was a mission.
"It doesn't change anything, Uri!" Blyna screamed, trying to force himself back into the role of a soldier. "The High-Rankers... they'll hunt you! They'll label you a Rogue! Is she worth your life?"
"She's worth the world," Uri replied.
He lunged.
Blyna stood his ground, his arms coated in a shimmering, high-pressure aquatic armor, his eyes flooded with the grief of Yorozu's death and the betrayal of his only friend.
"I can't let you do this, Uri!" Blyna roared, his Conquerors Energy turning the surrounding mist into a crushing, localized typhoon. "If you walk, you're a dead man! The Academy will hunt you to the ends of the earth!"
Uri didn't offer a rebuttal. His bandaged eye throbbed with a rhythmic, black heat, and his right hand began to churn. He didn't just manifest magma; he compressed it into a dense, howling Uzumaki Sphere, the centrifugal force pulling in the scorched dirt and debris from the forest floor.
"Then let them hunt," Uri whispered.
The two lunged simultaneously. It was a collision of absolute opposites—the unstoppable pressure of the deep sea against the immovable, tectonic heat of the earth's core. The Magma Sphere slammed into Blyna's Hydro-Cannon, creating a cataclysmic steam explosion that leveled every cedar tree within fifty yards.
The shockwave threw Tori-san back against a stone, the white-hot light blinding the forest.
When the mist finally began to settle, the clearing was a graveyard of scorched mud and cooling obsidian. Blyna was on one knee, his breath coming in ragged, wet gasps, his water armor shattered and his clothes shredded. He tried to raise his hand, but his energy was spent, his muscles twitching with exhaustion.
Uri wasn't much better. His purple blazer was a charred rag, and blood leaked from the corner of his bandaged eye. He swayed, his vision blurring, but the seal on his heart—the one Tori had placed there—gave him one final pulse of strength.
he forest was no longer a sanctuary; it was a tomb. The air, thick with the scent of boiled mud and the metallic tang of blood, hung still over the ruins of the clearing.
Blyna slumped against a scorched cedar trunk, his water-armour shattered into a few pathetic, dripping beads. He watched through blurred vision as the silhouette of his best friend flickered against the dying embers of the forest floor. Every muscle in Blyna's body screamed, his Conquerors Energy completely drained, leaving him hollow.
"Uri..." he gasped, his voice cracking. "If you cross that treeline... there's no coming back. They'll put a price on your head. They'll send the High-Rankers. They'll send Isagi-sensei."
Uri didn't turn around. He stood at the edge of the shadows, his tattered purple blazer hanging off one shoulder, his hand gripped tight around Tori-san's. His bandaged eye pulsed with a rhythmic, obsidian heat, a physical manifestation of the trauma that had finally broken the seal of his peaceful life.
"Let them come," Uri said, his voice a low, jagged rasp that sounded nothing like the boy who had smiled in the academy hangar. "The city was just a prettier cage, Blyna. I'd rather be a monster in the woods than a puppet in their 'order'."
Tori looked back at Blyna, her eyes swimming with a mixture of terror and a heartbreaking gratitude. She knew what this meant. She knew that by saving her, Uri had just executed his own future.
With a final, agonizing step, Uri pulled her into the dense overgrowth. The foliage swallowed them whole, leaving Blyna alone with the cooling body of Yorozu and the shattered husk of the mother who had been turned into a weapon.
As the first grey light of dawn touched the mountain peaks, the Academy's high-altitude surveillance drones flickered to life, their red lenses scanning the canopy. Across every screen in the city of Oukoku, a red "X" was struck through the file of the National Exam winner.
NAME: AKASAKE URIEL
CRIME : KILLING YOROZU , DESTRUCTION OF HIS HOMETOWN AND FLEEING OF A MISSION
STATUS: ROGUE.
LEVEL: B-RANK FUGITIVE.
ORDER: TERMINATE ON SIGHT.