Renji's pulse throbbed in rhythm with the chaos that surrounded him. Dust and fragmented earth danced in the air as blasts of kinetic energy warped the battlefield, and the battlefield's once-clear terrain was now nothing more than a jagged wasteland of scorched rock, fractured barriers, and collapsed platforms.
From the center of the havoc, Mika Ishida stood like a tempest in human form—her silver hair swirling, eyes glowing with a fierce light. Telekinetic waves pulsed from her outstretched hands, lifting bodies into the air and smashing them into each other with frightening precision. She was no longer merely channeling kinetic blasts—she was manipulating the very space around her.
Renji, half-crouched behind a broken stone column, narrowed his eyes as he watched her.
"Damn… That was close," he muttered, panting slightly. "She turned the tide."
Mika's outburst had done more than just shake the ground. It had broken the synergy of the opposing factions. The Smiling Rats were falling like dry leaves in a gale, their lines collapsing as Takeshi Mori, Kaito Nakamura, and Yumi Takahashi capitalized on the sudden gap in formation.
Yet, Renji's sharp eyes caught the tremor in Mika's legs, the flickering glow in her pupils that wasn't there before.
She's pushing past her limits, he thought, alarm beginning to crawl into his spine. Her mutation... it's getting unstable.
He leapt from cover and landed beside her just in time to catch her as she staggered. Her breath was ragged. Blood trickled from her nose.
"Mika!"
"I'm fine," she snapped between clenched teeth, but even her voice was trembling. Her hands shook uncontrollably, and the next wave of telekinetic force she tried to conjure sputtered into a weak pulse that barely rippled through the dust.
"You're not. If you lose control now—"
"Then finish it, Renji. While I still can hold out. End this!"
His gaze turned toward the battlefield, cold calculation overtaking concern. The rules were clear: the elimination stage ended with the complete defeat of any participating faction. One kill-triggered retreat or collapse, and the round would be over.
His amber-glowing eyes zeroed in on Vera Corbin.
She looked like a broken porcelain doll caught in the middle of a whirlwind. Her short, messy auburn hair was drenched in sweat, her heavy breathing visible even from a distance. Her clothes were torn and singed, her once-confident smirk long replaced by something dangerously close to terror. Her remaining faction members were retreating behind her, beaten and bloodied. Desperation colored every move she made, every step backward she took.
She had become the weak link. The Smiling Rats were teetering at the edge of total elimination.
Renji's predatory instincts surged to the forefront. His muscles tightened, the monster inside him howling in satisfaction.
Yes. That's the break.
"Mika," he said, gently but firmly placing her behind a slab of broken marble, "just hold out for a bit longer. Don't push it further."
Without waiting for her response, he launched himself forward with inhuman speed.
Takeshi, who was grappling with two enemy combatants, glanced up in surprise as Renji blitzed past him in a blur.
"Oi! Renji—what're you planning?!"
Renji didn't respond.
He tore through the crumbling front line of the Smiling Rats like a blade through rice paper. One unfortunate combatant raised a wall of concrete with their mutation in a desperate bid to halt him—Renji shoulder-charged straight through it, reducing it to gravel. Another swung a chain of acidic slime, only for Renji to duck beneath it, twist, and deliver a spinning back-kick that shattered the mutant's jaw.
Vera's eyes locked with his—and in that instant, she knew.
"No, no—wait!" she screamed, retreating.
But Renji was already on her.
He struck with a vicious elbow that cracked the barrier she barely managed to summon. The force hurled her backwards into a crumbled column. She collapsed to her knees, coughing blood, trying to summon her mutation again.
Renji didn't let her. He was a force of nature now—half-man, half-beast. His claws extended, eyes alight with primal fury, aura thick with hunger. But even through the chaos, he still held back his absorption ability. He dared not trigger that part of himself. Not yet. Not unless absolutely necessary.
He rained down strike after strike with brutal precision, never aiming to kill, only to incapacitate. Vera screamed as a crack echoed from her ribs. She tried to fight back with her limited manipulation of corrosive vapor, but he simply dodged it, danced through it, and kicked her hard across the battlefield.
Her faction tried to respond—
—but Takeshi intercepted them with a devastating overhead slam that cratered the ground.
Kaito's electric fists surged through their defensive line like a lightning storm. Yumi's shadows coiled around their feet, pulling them into darkness, disorienting their senses.
---
The stench of scorched ground and ionized blood lingered like a poisonous fog above the arena floor, and Vera Corbin could barely hold herself upright. The leader of the Smiling Rats was covered in gashes, her breath sharp and shallow, skin pallid from overexertion. Her once pristine, form-fitting battle attire was torn and caked in grime and blood — some of it hers, most of it her subordinates'. The taunts, once dripping from her lips with arrogant pride, had long dried up. Now, survival was her only goal.
She ducked under Takeshi Mori's overhead punch — the force of it crushed a patch of reinforced stone where she'd stood a moment before. Before she could recover, Yumi Takahashi's shadows darted like fanged serpents toward her, forcing her into a desperate roll. Static laced the air as Kaito Nakamura followed with a brutal punch, wrapped in arcs of electricity that shattered her balance. Vera's legs buckled. Her boots scraped against debris as she skidded backward.
Every second was a painful gamble.
More than half her faction — talented mutants with vicious instincts — had been utterly annihilated by Mika Ishida's outburst. Telekinesis. Vera's jaw clenched at the memory. She had watched, helpless, as her people were tossed like rag dolls through stone and steel, ripped from consciousness in waves. The woman Mika was a storm in human skin.
Hatred festered in Vera's chest like molten glass.
They'd all believed Renji was the sole anomaly in that cursed team. He was the wild card — the dangerous outlier who'd needed to be put down fast. But Mika's ascension, that terrifying evolution of her kinetic abilities into telekinetic destruction, had shaken that assumption. The entire faction strategy had centered on containing Renji. Now they were being torn apart by multiple threats.
As she scrambled away from another burst of electric force from Kaito, Vera's mutation — her heightened olfactory sensitivity — kicked in. It was subtle, a shift in the tang of Mika's bioelectric aura, a sudden flux in the mental scent Vera could pick up from all living beings. Something had changed.
Mika was weakening.
The telekinetic attacks had dulled — they were still dangerous, but no longer overwhelming. Vera could smell the strain in Mika's sweat, the volatile instability in her aura. A few more minutes…
Hope returned like a breath of clean air in a choking fire.
If they could just hold out, Mika would collapse. Without her, the cohesion of Renji's team would falter. Renji himself would be outnumbered — distracted trying to protect the others. The pressure of four factions would be too much for even him.
Vera's hands trembled, but her lips curled into a shaky grin.
She turned her gaze toward her remaining allies, issuing the silent command: endure.
And then she felt it.
Like a switch being thrown in her spine, every nerve in Vera's body screamed. The air thickened, chilled and heavy, as though drenched in invisible blood. Her lungs stopped. Her pupils dilated.
He was behind her.
Renji Kuroya — the man whose name now echoed like a death sentence across the tournament — stood within arm's reach.
Golden eyes glowing like molten metal. Hair shifting in waves of unearthly movement, the edges of his form distorted as though the very space around him recoiled from his presence. His chest rose slowly, calmly, while a monstrous pressure rippled from his skin. It was not just mutant energy.
It was hunger.
Predatory. Infinite. Agonizing.
Vera turned slowly, the last fibers of her pride trying to mask the tremor in her limbs.
"You should've stayed hidden," she hissed.
Renji didn't speak. He didn't need to.
He moved.
A blur of motion, a sound like rending metal as the wind behind him fractured under the speed of his dash. Vera raised both arms to defend — too late. Renji's palm struck her sternum, sending her flying back through two of her own faction members, cratering into the arena wall.
Before the dust cleared, he was there again.
This time, she saw it. The mutation rippling through his arm, black veins glowing faintly beneath the skin. His form was human, but barely. It was the restraint — the refusal to fully unleash that monstrous self — that made it even more terrifying.
He grabbed her arm mid-counterstrike and twisted. Her elbow shattered with a sickening crunch. Before she could scream, he hurled her into the air. Shadows streaked by as Yumi's tendrils wrapped around her midair form, yanking her violently back toward the ground — right into Takeshi's waiting fist.
Her body bounced twice against the cratered arena floor before she lay still, gasping.
Pain blinded her. Blood filled her mouth. Her mutation tried to stabilize her vitals, but even it was weakening.