Levi had read how those anime characters casually shrugged off a punch to the guts, a sword strike, or even a cut limb.

Yet here he was, ready to quit because of a single, small pebble. The grinding pain as the stone slammed into his bone was unlike any pain he had ever received.

After a short period, the pain lessened just enough for him to think. He could still sense the massive tiger nearby— a valuable threat he could have used.

'If I had known'. He thought bitterly. 'I would have used the tiger's invisibility to follow the group from afar and escape the forest'.

But in his desperate genius, he had left the powerful predator behind and foolishly gone alone.

Raising his upper body from the shallow water, the pain from his ankle surging as he stared at the embedded pebble.

He swallowed hard, forcing the burning stomach acid— two days' worth of channeled origin energy— down his throat. It was his last, desperate trump card, but there was no pill for the gnawing regret of his poor decisions.

Just as he was contemplating his next move, Ed, the young man, slid down the slope. His face was twisted with superiority.

Levi watched the transparent green energy surrounding Ed.

'He is preparing a technique'. Levi realized. The leaking energy was a clear sign of an amateur; his origin energy was leaking out of his body due to lack of opening the necessary nodes.

"You insolent pest! Witness the power of gods!". Ed roared, the energy surging.

Astral Crest: Evil Shackling Technique. He roared.

Levi immediately avoided eye contact. He knew that all G1 (Grade 1) techniques— which was all Ed could possibly use at his age— required visual contact to ensnare the mind.

As expected, a cold burst of energy washed over him, but without eye contact, no illusion took hold.

Ed's face immediately drooped with exhaustion; the complex technique had drained nearly all his power. But then he noticed that Levi could still move and was actively avoiding eye contact.

His body trembled with anger at being thwarted, he abandoned the technique and poured his remaining energy into a simple physical attack.

Ed's hand instantly encased itself in a transparent, crackling green energy. He brought the fist down in a powerful, heavy arc aimed right at Levi's head.

Levi didn't even try to dodge. He was too slow, his ankle useless. Instead, he forced his body to tense, and with a grunt of immense effort, he vomited.

The supercharged stomach acid erupted from his mouth not as a stream, but as a thick, blinding yellowish-red cloud. It was a concentrated biological weapon, instantly filling the air between them.

The moment the corrosive cloud touched Ed's face, the young man's scream became a gurgling shriek. The powerful green energy around his fist instantly vanished as he staggered back, clutching his face.

But Levi wasn't done. Using the strength in his uninjured leg, he launched himself forward, tackling the stumbling young man into the shallow water.

He didn't stop, emptying the entire, burning contents of his stomach onto Ed's face and neck.

By the time the horrific yellow shower came to an end, all that was left of Ed's skin and flesh on his face and neck was a horrifying, exposed reddish bone.

Levi collapsed next to Ed's smoldering body. The searing heat from the concentrated stomach acid burned his own throat and stomach. He immediately began gulping the slow-moving river water to quench the internal fire.

He stopped abruptly when he saw the water around him turn a sickly red tint. It wasn't his blood; it was Ed's.

Just then, the massive Siberian Tiger arrived, materializing from its partial invisibility. It actually managed to flee for that short moment when Levi was trapped in Leon's illusion.

Levi desperately needed to escape fast, but he knew the moment the traffickers found Ed's body, they would rush after him with murderous intent. He had to cover his tracks.

Taking a deep, ragged breath, he gave the tiger a cold, mental command. A moment later, he felt the tiger's sharp claw sink into the flesh of his ankle. Before he could scream, the pebble was brutally ripped out of his skin.

Levi sank his teeth into the tiger's thick fur, muffling his scream into a choked gasp. Once the agonizing pain subsided enough to think, he plucked the bloodied pebble from the tiger's paw.

He then used the tiger to drag Ed's body away from the immediate scene. After moving the corpse, Levi carefully placed the bloody pebble into the patch of red-tinted water where he had first fallen. It was a perfect, gruesome diversion.

Finally, he summoned his next pawn: the antelope, bit down on Ed's feet and began dragging the body slowly down the stream, pulling the evidence further away from the initial ambush point.

Without wasting a second, Levi used his mental link to issue a command to his pawn. The tiger instantly obeyed, lowering its great head. It bit down carefully, its jaws wrapping around the collar of Levi's shirt.

With Levi dangling from its mouth like a ragdoll, the tiger turned and bolted, disappearing downstream.

****

Leon brought down his foot on the last three-eyed cat, trying to crush its head but his strength was clearly not enough. The sound of the blow echoed, and then he collapsed onto a nearby rock, desperately trying to catch his breath.

He scanned the chaotic battlefield. The remaining cats had fled. In the distance, he saw Cliff slapping one of the escaped men, likely questioning who had started the riot.

Leon chuckled weakly, a rush of pride flooding him. He thought of his son. 'He was pretty good today'. Ed's casting time was getting faster.

Then a chilling thought wormed its way into his mind. Where is Ed?.

'He chased after that kid'. Leon reasoned. 'But why isn't he back by now?'

A sudden, cold dread settled in his chest. He had sent Ed away early in the fight; his son should have been back minutes ago.

Without a word, Leon stood up. He walked toward the direction he had seen Levi and Ed run, climbing the short, steep slope. He looked down and breathed a sharp sigh of relief. He had feared seeing the worst— his son's body— but the slope was empty.

'Get a grip'. He told himself, trying to calm his frantic heart. 'There's no way that powerless brat could do anything to Ed'.

He jumped down the slope. His head snapped immediately toward a patch of river water that had a faint, sickly red color. Walking over, his heart hammered against his ribs.

He wanted to believe in rationality: there was no possible way the powerless brat could have taken out his son. But parental instincts.

Just as he reached the water's edge, he saw a blooded stone in the center of the red-tinted pool. His mind flashed back to Cliff throwing the pebble at Levi's ankle.

Leon let out a shaky sigh of relief. It was just the pebble, covered in the brat's blood. Ed would be fine.

Leon's momentary relief was short-lived. A sudden chill, a parental shiver of dread, cut through the humid farest air.

He walked to the river's edge and began tracking the faint red tint in the water. The blood hadn't stopped at the pebble; it continued downstream, leaving subtle, dark trails on the smooth stones beneath the slow-moving current.

Leon frowned. 'How could a kid with a severely injured ankle— a kid who had just been pebbled by Cliff— have traveled this far?'.

He was well away from the slope now. It didn't make rational sense, the air grew heavy and damp, and the silence of the deep woods felt oppressive.

Towering mahogany trees blocked the sun, plunging the riverbank into a perpetual twilight. The bad feeling in his chest surged, hammering against his ribs.

He fought the urge to break into a full sprint, forcing himself to scan the dense undergrowth where the trail seemed strongest.

The blood trail, faint yet persistent, suddenly veered sharply away from the water and into the woods. Leon picked up his pace, crashing through the brittle ferns and vines that clung to the forest floor. He ignored the thorns and the wet mud that slicked his boots.

The bad feeling surged when he realized that the trail seems as if something was dragged through. Causing him to pick up his pace and eventually ended running.

He ran until his eyes caught a piece of cloth sticking to a low-hanging branch. He crouched down. It was soaked through, stiff with thick mud. Though the color was distorted by the mud, he saw that it was a fragment of a blue shirt.

His heart skipped a beat, a sickening thump against his ribs. His son, Ed, had been wearing a shirt that exact color.

Panic broke the last of his composure. He abandoned all pretense of tracking and sprinted through the trees, blindly following a growing path of broken brush.

The forest became a blur of frantic green and shadow. He ran until the sight he dreaded— and somehow expected— slammed into him.

There, half-submerged in a shallow tributary, lay his son. Ed.

The young man's body was mangled like it was tore with a sharp object, tossed into the muddy water like trash.

But the focus of the horror was his face and neck, which were fused into a grotesque mask of exposed, bloody bone.

Leon stumbled to his knees in the muddy water, his mind utterly shattered.

Then a shrill scream rang out.

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