Kazu didn't waste a second.
He pulled Ethernano into his fist—far more than he preferred to use in one hit—and drove a punch straight ahead.
'One Hit Ko: 25 Per cent'
The air detonated.
A shockwave ripped through the hallway, flattening the nearest chains and blasting them backwards in a spray of cracking stone and twisting metal. Levy stumbled from the pressure, but Kazu caught her with one arm, pulled her close, and sprinted into the gap he'd carved, rushing forward.
"Hold on," he muttered.
"I am holding—Kazu, that was—!"
"No talking."
He felt the chains ripping out of the floor behind them, scraping across the walls like hundred knives dragged over stone. They took a sharp turn past a broken archway.
From the corner of his eye, Kazu noticed a flash of movement—two silhouettes deeper in the temple—ducked behind a collapsed pillar right as the shockwave thundered past.
The chains stopped chasing.
The hallway shuddered. Dust drifted from the ceiling. Kazu didn't slow until the glow of the blue stones thinned and the architecture shifted, the corridor opening into a broader hall thick with fallen debris.
He set Levy down.
Levy bent forward, hands on her knees, drawing in harsh breaths. Sweat ran down her temple; her hair stuck to her cheek in loose strands. Kazu wasn't better—his pulse hammered loud enough to echo in his ears. He gave the hallway a quick sweep, then finally let himself relax enough to breathe normally.
"That," Levy said between breaths, "was close."
Kazu nodded, rolling his shoulders back as his body unwound from fight mode. "Too close."
He touched his chest.
THUMP THUMP THUMP
'How long has it been since I came this close to death?' Kazu hadn't expected that those chains were capable of tearing through his strongest barrier and so quickly at that. The guy had intentionally held back to surprise him later, and he almost succeeded.
If Levy had not dispelled the effects of the curse at the right time, he might have already been dead. One touch from the chain was enough to kill a human instantly.
'Those two's threat combined is comparable to an S-rank. If we count the ambush, then they could successfully assassinate an S-rank easily.'
"Those two were scary. Can we even defeat them?" Levy asked with a nervous expression. Though guarding against the curse guy wasn't that difficult. In fact, Levy had already put a solid script, which prevented any outside sound from entering.
What she was terrified of was the chain magic. It was easily able to break through Kazu's defences.
"Don't worry. Give me some time. His magic is similar to Mira's, so I should be able to analyse it." He said in a reassuring tone as he got to work immediately.
One thing Kazu was confident about was that as long as he had seen the enemy's magic once and it was not too complicated, then he could analyse it and use Destructive Interference on it, making it useless from next time.
Though not everyone had an effective countermeasure like this, in this world, if information about your techniques is public, then you should expect many to have countermeasures prepared against those techniques if they are approaching you.
After all, information is power. For the same reason, everyone worth their salt generally has one or two hidden trump cards for such situations.
***
Far from the corridor Kazu and Levy escaped through, a round chamber pulsed with pale blue light. Layers of coral-metal panels floated in the air, rearranging themselves with soft mechanical clicks. Sigrid stood at the centre, adjusting the formation with slow, precise movements of her fingers. Each plate shifted a little closer to alignment.
Urdan dropped into a nearby seat carved straight out of the wall, stretching his legs out like he owned the place.
"Well," he said, flicking dust off his sleeve, "that kid put out enough force to snap the defensive artefact. Didn't expect that from someone barely tall enough to see over a counter."
Sigrid didn't look up. "So much raw power. That's uncommon. He might be an S-rank."
"Understatement of the year." Urdan leaned back, letting his head thump softly against the stone.
"And the girl broke my curse. So quickly." Sigrid commented.
"Not him?" Urdan asked, mostly to confirm his earlier reading.
"No pulse-back from his magic. It was her." Sigrid smiled, a lazy, satisfied curl of the mouth. "She's sharper than she looks."
Urdan finally turned away from the floating panels. "Both of them exceed the minimum thresholds, especially the boy. The ritual will respond well."
"Two teenagers," Sigrid said, hands folding behind her head. "Stronger than half the mercenaries Guiltina shipped us last season. Convenient."
Urdan checked a shifting line of runes on the panel. "They'll struggle in the maze to get to this location. That buys us time to tune the binding circles."
"You're worried they'll reach too quickly?" Sigrid asked, though her tone made it clear she wasn't.
"No. But I'd rather they reach the central chamber tired." Urdan tapped one of the plates, and the entire array brightened. "Less to clean up...Though I am worried that the boy might have some more hidden cards up his sleeve."
Sigrid's grin widened, not malicious — just entertained. "Then, let's test them again. Once they reach near here, we will make our move."
The lights dimmed as Sigurd continued making the array. "Their Ethernano will be ours. Ours to take," She muttered with a fanatic expression.
***
After an hour, Kazu had Levy start moving through the underwater temple.
The deeper they went, the quieter the temple felt. Not peaceful—just wrong. Every step echoed. Even their breathing sounded too loud. It might be just paranoia or a gut feeling.
Levy kept close, fingers lightly brushing the markings carved into the stone. "These aren't Fiorean runes. They're older than the ones I saw at the entrance."
Kazu gave a low hum. "Anything about… whatever's sealed in here?"
She halted, tracing a symbol shaped like a split circle. "Yeah. A warning. Something about a 'full-power demon.' And a note about keeping breath away from its heart."
"Reassuring."
"I'm just reading what's here."
He didn't comment. His instincts had been prickling since they entered—same pressure spike he felt during their last encounter with the chain mage and the woman with the cursed voice. The memory of that near miss was still a cold knot in his spine. Both of them had nearly died because he had underestimated how quickly the duo adapted.
This time, he walked like the floor might split open.
A corridor led them down a slight decline. The air shifted—warmer, stagnant. Cracks in the walls leaked thin trickles of water that evaporated before hitting the ground. The magic density was rising.
Levy whispered, "You feel that?"
"Yeah."
He raised a hand, layering several barriers into a thin film across their surroundings—small, precise, nothing flashy.
They reached the next chamber. A mosaic lay shattered across the floor, patterns broken into jagged lines. Bits of it still formed a rough shape—teeth in a ring, maybe a maw. Not exactly encouraging.
Levy knelt to get a closer look. "This place is definitely a sealing temple. The architecture matches the warning scripts."
Before Kazu could answer, he felt it—a ripple, faint but focused. Not pressure. Not Ethernano from the ruin. A localised distortion, like movement in the air that didn't belong.
He shifted instantly. "Levy—move."
The floor erupted.
Chains shot up in a dozen jagged lines, fast enough to blur. Last time, they'd nearly been skewered before Kazu even reacted. This time, the barrier flared before the chains reached them.
A clear ring of impact. Magic scraped. The barrier held.
Then it didn't hold—it erased the chains.
Each dark link dissolved into particles the moment it touched his reinforcement layer.
A figure standing at the far end of the hall stiffened. The chain mage.
"…What?" Urdan sounded genuinely offended. "No. No, that's not right."
***
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