"Buzz—"
An invisible circle dissolved into nothingness.
The world vanished.
Hell's Kitchen—its neon glow, its grime-streaked rooftops, its distant sirens—disappeared from Joren's sight.
Only darkness. Only silence.
Then—
"Hahahaha… hahahaha!"
Muse's laughter echoed—not in the air, but directly inside Joren's skull, sharp as shattered glass.
"How does it feel, my dear 'soulmate'?"
"In this world… I am a god."
To Muse, Joren was no longer a boy. He was a silhouette—human-shaped, faintly warm, humming with bioelectricity. Fragile. Lost. Like a child cast adrift in the Black Sea, thrashing in ink-black waves with no shore in sight.
And Muse? She was the sea.
"You can't see me. You can't hear me. You can't feel me!" Her voice dripped with morbid ecstasy. "Your five senses—your sixth, your seventh—all devoured by me!"
"This absolute injustice… this total control… isn't this the purest form of art?"
She savored the moment, drunk on dominion.
"Now… let's begin the creation."
"I've decided to give you the finest treatment. I'll remove every bone from your body—every last one."
"I'll take the finest sandpaper and spend months polishing each until they gleam like ivory."
"Then I'll reassemble you with silver wire… and display you at the heart of my museum."
"Right where that crude 'Broken-Winged Angel' stands now."
A pause. A breathless whisper.
"I've even chosen a title…"
"'The Fool's Pride.'"
From the void, a cold glint emerged.
A scalpel.
It drifted toward Joren's nape—the nexus of his spinal nerves—silent, precise, final. One cut, and the arrogant critic would become raw material, shaped only by her will.
Closer.
Closer still.
A cruel smile curled beneath Muse's mask.
But then—
Cafeteria hot sauce!
The sensory vortex could consume all physical data: sound, light, heat, scent, texture…
But it couldn't touch what existed only in the mind.
In Star Platinum's perception, the world remained untouched. Crystal clear.
Before her, the masked lunatic lunged with a scalpel, eyes wide with rapture—movements sluggish, almost dreamlike, as if trapped in syrup.
Clang!
The sound shattered the perfect silence of the void.
Impossible.
Muse froze.
Her treasured "paintbrush"—a blade forged from an unbreakable alloy—had struck something solid. Something real.
The tip hovered less than three centimeters from Joren's neck.
No matter how hard she pushed, it wouldn't budge.
"What…?"
Her thoughts stuttered. Blank.
Sound? In my domain?
What did I hit? Air doesn't stop steel!
She yanked her hand back as if scalded, leaping away.
There stood Joren—eyes closed, motionless, untouched.
Yet something had defied her.
Something else was in the dark with them.
The boy remained unchanged—shrouded in darkness, utterly alone.
Was it an illusion?
Was that voice just now a hallucination?
Was the resistance in his hand merely a trick of his muscles?
"It has to be an illusion!" Muse shouted to himself.
Nothing in this world could possibly counter his "Absolute Stillness"!
He must have used some unknown method to erect a force field around his own body—
Yes. That's it.
He clung to the thought like a lifeline.
The madness in his eyes flickered, then hardened into greed once more.
"Fascinating… truly fascinating material," he murmured.
"Your body is even more exceptional than I imagined. I'm growing more excited by the second!"
Muse shifted silently, gliding like a shadow toward Joren's side.
The scalpel arced downward—aimed at Joren's knee.
He intended to cripple the other's mobility first, to pin this unruly "specimen" firmly in place.
Clang!
Another collision—crisper, louder, more real than before.
His wrist was seized.
Muse felt a cold, iron-hard grip clamp around his lifeline.
"Impossible… this is impossible!"
Panic swallowed him whole.
His Sensory Vortex was his greatest weapon—within its radius, he was untouchable, omniscient, godlike.
So why—?!
Why could this man withstand it?!
"You… what are you?!" he screamed, voice cracking with terror.
"I told you," Joren said calmly.
"Your 'art' is garbage."
"And you yourself… are even less than that."
A chill shot from Muse's feet straight to the crown of his skull.
He saw me.
In pure darkness—inside my own domain—he actually saw me!
The truth struck like a blade: his proudest creation, his so-called "Divine Domain," was nothing but a joke before this man.
He was a naked monkey locked in a transparent cage—exposed, pathetic, and utterly powerless.
Muse wanted to run.
He wanted to collapse the vortex, vanish into the night, flee this incomprehensible monster—
—but it was already too late.
An invisible hand locked around his wrist, freezing him in place.
"Ugh… really," Joren sighed, tugging his hat brim lower.
"It's time to clean up the mess."
Star Platinum's gaze fixed on its target.
Then—the roar.
Long suppressed, now unleashed: a thunderclap of absolute power that shook the rooftop itself.
"ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA—!!!"
The first punch shattered Muse's right wrist—the one clutching the scalpel.
Bone snapped like dry kindling.
The blade spun through the air, glinting once before clattering to the ground.
The second punch obliterated his left wrist.
Symmetry—that's art.
The third and fourth strikes hit his shoulder joints with surgical precision.
Scapulae and humeri dislocated, then shattered under the sheer force.
His arms hung limp—useless.
Then came the elbows. The knees. The ankles.
Star Platinum moved with chilling clarity—
not a butcher, but a master surgeon wielding brutality as a scalpel.
It targeted only the joints.
No bones were broken beyond recognition; none were lost.
(Not a single one—Muse's precious collection—was missing.)
Agony flooded Muse's nerves.
Yet consciousness remained—sharp, cruel, unrelenting.
He felt every tendon tear, every ligament snap, every joint grind into dust.
Pfft—!
Blood sprayed from his mouth.
His black clothes shredded under the onslaught, fabric whipping away like ash in the wind.
Even his porcelain mask cracked—then splintered apart.
Beneath it lay a face ravaged by fire and acid:
lips burned away, blackened gums bared, eyes sunken in warped sockets.
A visage of ruin.
"ORA—!!!"
A final blow slammed into his gut.
He didn't die.
But every joint in his body was now pulp.
Muse collapsed onto the concrete—a shapeless heap of boneless flesh, twitching faintly.
The world rushed back in: sirens wailing, wind howling, distant shouts from below.
Joren stepped forward, boots echoing against the silence.
There he lay—the self-proclaimed artist, his "divine realm" reduced to rubble, his arrogance to dust.
Before Star Platinum, his entire existence had been less than a footnote.
The source of the trouble must be eradicated completely.
No loose ends
. No future threats.
As Star Platinum reappeared, coiling energy humming in the air—
a strange, muffled sound tore through the surroundings.
Like fabric ripped by unseen hands.
Like reality itself had split open.
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