Fragments of abyssal tissue scattered throughout the chamber.
Three complete segments were entirely destroyed.
The other 15 remaining, now headless, collapsed with a dull thud.
But the monstrosity was far from defeated.
Before Han's horrified eyes, the beast began to reorganize itself once again. What remained of its original twenty segments, after losing five in battle, began to restructure.
The last segment at the front started to swell and transform, translucent membranes stretching as a new structure formed: a grotesque mouth with rows of triangular teeth arranged in concentric rings.
All remaining segments began functioning in coordination again, like independent control centers forming a collective organism, each capable of directing the whole. The abomination wasn't a creature with multiple vital organs; it was multiple creatures fused into a single modular consciousness.
Ren fell to one knee, completely exhausted. The light had diminished to a faint glow, barely enough to illuminate his exhausted face.
Despite his condition, Ren extended his arms in front of Han, determined to continue protecting him until the end.
Han observed this boy, so different from anyone he had met before. Someone with genuine concern for others.
A memory, so vivid it almost hurt, emerged from the depths of his mind.
"Why do you try so hard?" Han remembered asking, his childish voice filled with genuine curiosity as he watched his sister mending their worn clothes by the light of an almost consumed candle.
Hedda had looked up, her fingers momentarily stopping their meticulous work. Her eyes were reddened from fatigue, but her smile never faltered when she spoke to him.
"Because I love you, silly," she had answered with that particular mixture of toughness and tenderness that only she knew how to combine.
"But the adults say we're pests," Han had insisted, repeating the cruel words he had heard whispered in the alleys. "That there are too many like us, that we consume resources..."
Hedda had put down the needle and taken his face between hands calloused from work, forcing him to look at her directly.
"Listen to me, Han," her voice had become intense, almost fierce. "No matter what they say, no matter our situation. I want you to be a good person, I promised our mother. You must be someone who knows what's right, even when it's difficult. Especially when it's difficult."
"No buts," she had interrupted. "Promise me. Promise that you'll always try to do what's right, no matter what happens."
And he, too young to fully understand what he was promising, had solemnly nodded. "I promise, sister."
The memory faded, but left something vital in its place.
Ren deserved to live.
This boy, who had been willing to sacrifice himself defending him, who represented exactly what Hedda had wanted for him, deserved to have a chance.
'If I use my second beast, he'll discover me,' Han thought, anxiety tightening his stomach. 'And if I'm discovered, Hedda will pay the consequences.'
But as he watched Ren, still trying to protect him, something changed inside him. A crystalline resolution formed, displacing years of fear and conditioning.
'No,' Han decided. 'Hedda wouldn't want me to be different. She would want me to do what's right, especially when it's difficult.'
With a certainty he had never felt before, Han activated his beast.
It wasn't a normal manifestation. It was Yino's extreme style, where human and beast not only fused but intermingled.
His fractured leg dissolved into a mass of pulsating tissue that quickly reconstructed itself, but no longer as a human extremity. Instead, a chitinous leg with additional joints formed, characteristic of the abyssal Carrion Queen.
The transformation didn't stop there. His torso expanded, chitinous plates emerging through the skin, his bone structure reconfiguring with wet cracking sounds. Translucent wings sprouted from his back, membranous and veined with patterns that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.
In seconds, where a child had been before, now stood a monstrous abyssal wasp.
The creature that had been Han moved with unnatural fluidity, positioning itself protectively in front of Ren. Multiple compound eyes glowed with intelligence as they evaluated the abomination, which surprisingly had halted its advance.
The abyssal beast seemed to detect something familiar in the energy emanating from Han. Its movements became slower, almost cautious, its multiple sensors vibrating as it analyzed this new presence.
Han felt the connection immediately.
Concentrating intensely, Han began releasing specific pheromones. The air around his transformed form distorted slightly.
The pheromones reached the abomination, which reacted with a visible shudder. Its segments tensed, its tentacles retracted, and the multiple cores pulsed in a different rhythm, more harmonized.
With a movement that combined physical gestures and chemical signals, Han issued an unequivocal command: go down. To the natural level of us abyssals.
Slowly, the beast began to retreat. With a final roar that seemed to contain as much frustration as resignation, the abomination launched itself toward one of the openings in the chamber floor, disappearing into the depths with a sound similar to a train entering a tunnel.
When the abomination finally withdrew, plunging into the depths where it belonged, Han turned toward Ren.
He mentally prepared himself for what would come: the look of betrayal, the horror, perhaps even contempt. The reaction any inhabitant of Yano would have upon discovering a Yino infiltrator, a monster with an abyssal beast.
But what he found was something completely unexpected.
Ren was standing, yes, but barely. His body swayed dangerously, his unfocused eyes staring at an indefinite point in the void.
A few threads of residual light still traversed his skin, but they were rapidly fading.
"Ren?" Han took a cautious step toward him.
Ren seemed to hear him through a great distance. His eyes tried to focus, his lips moved but emitted no sound. And then, like a puppet whose strings are cut, he began to collapse.
Han barely had time to catch him. He examined him, noting with growing alarm the evident signs of mana poisoning.
Ren's skin was pale, with an alarming grayish tint. Purplish veins marked his neck and temples, pulsing with an irregular rhythm. His pupils were dilated, and cold sweat covered his forehead. His breathing was rapid and shallow.
'He absorbed too much mana from the environment to generate that last ray,' Han understood, recognizing the symptoms from his training. 'His body couldn't process it correctly.'
Ren needed immediate medical attention.
Just when he had saved himself from being discovered, he would have to stand firm.
Han made an instant decision. He would use his transformed form to fly and take Ren to the surface. Once he delivered him to the professors, especially to Lin who seemed to have such appreciation for him, Han would simply disappear.
Perhaps he would fly directly to Yino, trying to reach his sister Hedda before it was too late, before the consequences of his betrayal fell upon her.
His mission had ended, his cover would be sacrificed to save someone who inexplicably mattered that much to him.
He prepared to ascend.
A powerful presence was descending through the tunnel at great speed. Someone or something was approaching, and the force emanating was considerable, clearly beyond a student's level.
Han retracted his transformation immediately, the instinct ingrained by years of training taking control.
If it was a professor, perhaps he still had a chance to maintain his cover...
There was no time for speculation. With supreme effort, Han forced the Carrion Queen to retreat completely, ignoring the searing pain of his returning broken leg.
In seconds, his body returned to its normal student appearance, though exhaustion hit him like an avalanche.
He let himself fall beside Ren, feigning unconsciousness just as a figure landed gracefully in the center of the chamber.
Through his half-open eyelids, Han saw Zhao.