Not forced but chosen.
The crowd—various elders with their breaths stuck in their throats, mouths agape in disbelief, and surrounding guards whose jaws dropped even farther.
They were close to the scene. They saw everything, and disbelief filled their eyes.
All the gaze moved between the scaled young man cradling the unconscious Chosen in his hands to the pathetic-looking one who kneeled before him, with half of his upper body missing, his head drooping low in defeat.
Ryuk's raised right hand, which gradually recoiled back to his side, sent another reality that shook their hearts.
A mighty Elder from the mighty Dominare family had been defeated with a single move.
But to Ryuk, there was nothing.
It was like his ability to feel anything had been burned off his heart, leaving just rage that had shifted into absolute indifference.
He willed to move, and all the crowd saw was him fading into the thin void.
A moment later, he was just a few centimeters away from the kneeling Elder Nogara, as if he had been standing there since the beginning of time.
His hand reached forward, his palm resting on the elder's head.
Then his fingers shifted into sharp claws that gripped the Elder's head, raising him into the air, his feet dangling above the ground.
The realization rang through the elder's minds, right after which:
Explosions erupted from the top of each building.
Powerful waves of aura burst into the sky as various Elders unleashed their full strength, bursting forward toward Ryuk with incredible speed.
But then, without lifting his head, his lips moved.
The moment those words were uttered—
Everything came to a crashing halt.
The Elders, flying furiously toward Ryuk to save Elder Nogara, all froze in mid-air, stuck in their charging positions.
The various guards who tried to back off, knowing full well the chaos that was about to ensue, also halted in their retreating poses.
But even though they were halted, their minds and eyes still worked perfectly, enabling them to see the scene before them.
One attack had been enough to utterly break through the defense of Elder Nogara, rendering him motionless, and following after Ryuk's claw began sinking into his skull.
The clear sound of a skull being steadily shattered rang out—an even more horrific scene to the Elders, whose aura blasted outward with even more power as they tried to escape the hold of the technique, yet failed.
Teeth clenched in anger and helplessness, but all eyes were forced to watch the slow execution of an Elder of the Dominare family.
"m..e...Pl...ea...se...for..."
The words rang out through the lips of Elder Nogara, who felt life slipping silently from him.
Even though rendered motionless, he could still feel his brain gradually being turned to mush by the aura leaking from the claws piercing into his skull."
No amount of begging could reach this Ryuk.
The sound of cracking skull continued, and just when a vein popped on through his scales, giving him the final vestige of strength to completely blow the head into mush—
A hand stretched forward.
In an area where all motion apart from his was locked down, the sight of its appearance was more than eye-catching.
And that hand belonged to the one he held in his arms.
The whisper rang out from none other than Morgaine, who woke up to the scene of Elder Nogara's head about to be crushed.
Her hand stretched out, grasping onto Ryuk's outstretched hand, watching as his motion stopped.
His whirlpool-blue eyes turned to look at hers.
"Let him go... please."
She uttered once more, and in that instant—
It danced through the whirlpool of blue, which, for a heartbeat, stopped spinning.
From within those cold blue eyes, she felt that familiar gaze of his return.
And like one electrocuted—
Ryuk's claws released, resulting in Elder Nogara crumpling to the ground.
The world, which had been halted, shattered, as the various elders found themselves able to move once more.
In an instant, one of them burst forward with speed, grabbing Elder Nogara before they all quickly retreated 500 meters into the distance, watching Ryuk from afar.
They had decided not to engage him in the end, choosing to save Elder Nogara and retreat.
Without wasting another moment, Ryuk's feet hovered off the ground, Morgaine in his arms, and half a second later, a pillar of milky white light burst through the sky as he vanished into the clouds, fading completely from view.
All that was left was absolute silence, as two of the elders instantly disappeared with the wounded body of Elder Nogara—and the others stared at each other, wordlessly.
The unimportant existence whom they had planned to kill to let their Chosen find a "better" partner of their choice had ended up defeating—and almost killing—one of their Elders.
And he had done it with just a single move, while also halting them in place with a simple command that, even with all their strength, they were unable to overcome.
Now, they had an inkling.
An inkling into how monstrous a being the one in a relationship with their Chosen truly was.
Ryuk had not traveled for a kilometer when it caught up to him.
A sudden weakness that gnawed at his soul.
In the next instant, his body paused in the air, his hold on Morgaine wavering before his eyes slowly shut, and he fell from the sky.
But he hadn't gotten far when her arms caught him.
Heart pounding, Morgaine looked at Ryuk in her arms.
The shards hanging around his head quietly slipped into the void, and the various scales on his skin began to withdraw, leaving bare his white, glassy skin once more.
But then, her breath halted when she noticed something abnormal.
Her fingers reached for his neck.
She waited silently, but two seconds later, her mouth hung agape. ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ novel fire.net
The clouds parted backward, whistling as Morgaine flew forward with speed, rushing toward a particular building in the Dominare Royal Ground.
The realization echoed continuously in her head—
"He's not breathing..."
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