Ren carefully laid Lin on the ground, ensuring her head was supported by a small elevation of soft earth he created with his elemental control. Her breathing was stable and deep, the kind of rest that came after complete exhaustion.
He collapsed heavily beside her, and it was then that he began to notice something alarming.
The black marks on his chest hadn’t disappeared with the end of the battle. If anything, they seemed to be slowly expanding, like ink spilling on wet paper. The filaments branched beneath his skin, creating intricate patterns that radiated from his heart toward his arms and neck.
With each beat of his heart, he felt the power increase. It wasn’t really unpleasant, not exactly. It was as if every cell in his body was being overcharged with pure energy. But along with the power came something more concerning: guilt intensified proportionally.
It was no longer just remorse for the recent situations that had kept him awake... now even having hurt Lin. It was everything. Every wrong decision, every person he had disappointed, every unforeseen consequence of his actions. Guilt accumulated like an emotional avalanche that threatened to crush him.
The weight was suffocating.
He gritted his teeth and tried to breathe deeply, seeking the calm he used to find with the usual common solutions. But this time it was useless. His emotions had become uncontrollable, as if someone had broken the emotional regulator in his brain.
Like when someone tells you an incredibly funny joke and you can’t stop laughing even though your situation isn’t the appropriate moment.
Or like when a loss saddens you so much that you cry without being able to help it. Sensations that seemed almost impossible to control or suppress by force of will.
’Why do I have to feel ?’ he cursed internally. ’I completely underestimated my parents’ warnings about adolescence.’
Although, of course, neither of them had referred to something so extreme when they had warned him about "emotional and hormonal changes". He was clearly a special case, with mystical powers amplifying what was already a naturally turbulent period.
The biological and magical were intertwining in ways no textbook had prepared him for.
The black marks continued expanding, and with them, his power kept growing. He could feel his elemental capacity multiplying, his perception sharpening, his physical strength increasing.
But he could also feel his mental stability crumbling.
That’s when he remembered his little friend.
His fungus had spent years being his voice of reason, his emotional anchor, his constant companion who helped him process complex situations. And at the most critical moment, it had sacrificed itself to protect him from exactly this.
The memory hit him like a physical blow.
’I can’t let him down,’ he forced himself to think, concentrating on the image of the small 9-centimeter creature that had been his first companion. ’I can’t let his sacrifice be in vain.’
With an effort of will that felt like lifting a mountain, Ren compelled himself to calm down. He thought about his fungus complaining about its size, its sardonic comments about Ren’s questionable decisions, the way it always guided him even when he was too proud to listen.
’It protected me,’ he reminded himself firmly. ’I can’t fall back now. Not .’
Slowly, the black lines began to recede. They didn’t disappear completely, but they stabilized in a very small pattern around his heart. The power and sensation diminished to much more manageable levels.
But with the emotional improvement came a different problem: now that the battle’s adrenaline was fading, all his wounds began to hurt him with vengeance.
His right shoulder throbbed with a dull pain that radiated toward his arm and neck. The wound on his head had stopped bleeding thanks to his huge natural regeneration, but the resulting headache was brutal. He had bruises all over his torso where he had absorbed impacts from being thrown around, and his left leg protested every time he tried to move it. The source of thɪs content is NovєlFіre.net
Yet pain was the body’s way of reminding him he was still human.
’I should have fused immediately after getting up from the kick,’ he mentally scolded himself.
The blow to his head had knocked him out of partial fusion, and he had been too distracted by the sensation and power of the black marks to think about summoning again.
’Although maybe I was lucky not to do it... Lin attacked me with much less force at the end.’
Ren supposed his teacher hadn’t wanted to hurt him too much when he was in his normal mode, and underestimating him had given Ren the perfect way to get in range to touch her.
An oversight born of caring too much.
Now that he was more emotionally recovered, reestablishing the connection with his wolverine was fast and easy.
The regeneration thanks to the transformation was instant relief. Pain began to fade at a perceptible rate.
Carefully, he stored his golden dagger in his wolverine’s dimensional space. Normally he preferred to summon his beast and give it to it directly, because the sensation of "eating" objects while fused was strange and a little nauseating. But circumstances required efficiency to recover in time and flee.
He observed Lin once more. Her breathing remained stable and deep.
Even so, Ren knew he couldn’t underestimate her tenacity. He didn’t want to be around when she finally came to.
Exaggerated concern perhaps...
His teacher was incredibly resilient, but she had also used her complete fusion for a somewhat prolonged period. She wouldn’t wake easily.
Ren rose silently and began advancing toward his objective.
For a moment he considered the possibility of traveling underground to exit the school grounds and the city. It would make him harder to track by someone like Zhao.
But it would also be enormously costly in terms of energy, and the underground vibrations would be more detectable by Mako and Shizu if they decided to search for him... Not to mention the hundreds of Guards containing the mutants and rotating underground.
His mana signature would still be trackable even underground too.
So the mana signature was undoubtedly the first problem to solve.
He put on his concealment artifacts and dressed completely. The cloak made from Shadow Stalker skin was the last piece, designed specifically to hide small mana signatures. It wasn’t perfect, but it would help the artifacts and significantly reduce his detectability while also hiding his red hair.
The familiar weight of proper equipment brought comfort...
He had walked barely a few minutes when a familiar voice called him from behind.