Aurora Over a Dead World

"Aaahhh!!" Eirwen is shoved back by the pressure of the blows as she keeps trying to defend herself with ice, forming walls and barriers to face the monster attacking her violently.

Now that only one target remains, the monster can focus properly on that target, which has made its attacks far more aggressive and powerful, forcing Eirwen to stay one hundred percent on the defensive.

She fights desperately to stay alive. Even with the extreme cold of the environment allowing her to generate ice without much trouble, it’s still difficult when the monster simply shreds massive blocks of ice as if they were glass.

And the extreme cold doesn’t even affect the monster. The electricity keeps its body stable and warm on the inside, regardless of the fact that inside the dome the cold has already reached negative seventy-one degrees Celsius.

"!!!" Eirwen leaps onto an ice platform, narrowly dodging a wave of lightning that pierced completely through the ice and the dome walls. The enclosed space ends up protecting the outside, but gets in Eirwen’s own way.

Having been at this for several minutes now, she’s covered in blood, debris, and countless small wounds across her body. Despite the difference in power, she’s managed to hold her own on the defensive thanks to Zenith’s training.

Zenith never focused on making her students specifically stronger, but rather on using what they already had. Each of Zenith’s students kept the exact same power they had before arriving at the academy, but their usage became more stable, balanced, and strategic.

Which gives the impression that they’ve all gotten much stronger than before. This gives Eirwen some confidence. She believes she’s gotten stronger, so instead of staying on the defensive, she tries to shift to the offensive.

’Professor Zenith...’ Eirwen thinks of her teacher, of what she said about fighting monsters. It’s not something she should hold back on, much less think about morally.

"..." Eirwen does something she would never have done in the past. She generates small ice fragments around her, and when the monster leaps up, reaching her like a bolt of lightning, the fragments that touch its skin expand, slamming it into the ground.

The ice begins to grow, sinking into the flesh and starting to freeze it from the inside. What would be an extremely brutal and violent death for a human ends up being an acceptable situation against a monster she’s being forced to deal with alone.

"..." The monster, still silent as ever, begins to emit an electric field so intense that even the ice of the dome starts to melt.

"...N-No way!?" She stares at the melting ice. She’s never seen her ice melt before. Unlike turning into water, when her ice melts, most of it dissipates and only a much smaller portion actually becomes water.

Something she still doesn’t understand and doesn’t even have time to analyze or find interesting.

"N-No!!" She tries to reinforce the dome, since she’s using it to keep the cold contained without affecting other areas and accidentally killing people, but even using everything she knows, the dome and the ice holding the monster melt away.

"Urghh!!" She takes a punch that throws her against the ground while a bolt of lightning strikes her leg. The lightning raining down furiously from the sky has wounded her leg.

"Haa... haaa..." She gasps, sighing in pain as she creates a layer of ice over it to protect the leg. The monster drops from above trying to crush her, and she barely dodges by rolling to the side and getting up with a limp step to the right.

"!!!" She takes a punch to the stomach, lightning being released and searing her skin while she barely manages to form ice in the area to reduce further damage.

She takes a sequence of punches to the face. The monster’s hand-to-hand combat is simple, but clearly "human" in the way it functions, even if it has no complex movements—just kicks and punches.

"Aaahhh!!" Eirwen is thrown into the debris, falling to the ground with tears of pain. The monster charges electricity in its hand, preparing to fire another electric attack. She weakly tries to stop it, but can’t do anything in time.

The lightning approaches at extreme speed, but before it can hit Eirwen, she’s protected. The lightning is redirected and the monster steps back.

"...P-Professor?" Eirwen looks up with swollen cheeks and an eye bleeding from the punches she took.

"...Heh, not bad. I’ll give you credit for that, though it’s frustrating seeing you fight alone," Zenith says with a hint of sarcasm while Eirwen smiles at her.

"I’ll have a serious talk with the others who aren’t here. For now, rest and shield yourself from the lightning or get out of here. I’ll handle this alone," Zenith says with an extremely cold expression, cracking her fingers.

’Her prosthetics... they look darker...’ Eirwen forms a small ice platform that she begins to control with difficulty to leave the combat area.

...

...

...

"You look pretty different from what I saw through the window," I say to the monster with mockery. Unlike its reaction to Eirwen, the monster seems cautious of me.

"Great Disaster Class, Classification 8... not bad, not bad at all." It’s a monster my students could never defeat without having to sacrifice something for a chance. But for me? This is nothing. It’s a Tuesday morning in the army during a hunt mission.

"Everything that makes a monster of your type dangerous is power, and what an irony—your power is electric." That destroys any chance it has of beating me. It might have had a chance with my old prosthetics, which didn’t handle intense electric discharges well, but now with the Cube serving as prosthetics, this will be easy.

"!!!" The monster, on alert, fires lightning at me, but I easily redirect it with a mere wave of my hands as I walk toward it. The monster keeps shooting lightning, trying to keep me away, but controlling electricity is easy.

"If this were merely an attack, it would be much harder..." It’s literally using real lightning instead of manipulating vectors.

’A monster born from the fear of lightning or storms, huh... but this was supposed to be a human before? Who did this?’ Nexus said this was human, or at least that’s what he implied.

"...!" The monster coats its leg with electricity and tries to kick me. I easily grab it.

"Aren’t you a little slow for a monster that uses electricity? You like beating up little girls who are still in school sucking their thumbs, huh?" I punch the monster in the stomach. The difference in strength makes the eye on the monster’s face bulge with veins popping forward.

"...!!" I punch that eye, slamming the monster’s face into the ground.

"Come on, get up. I know you’ve got more than that." The monster stands and tries to fire more concentrated electricity at me. I move a finger, redirecting the bolt straight into its head, which opens a hole allowing me to see through to the other side. But it regenerates quickly, as if nothing happened.

"You know, I think my students underestimate how strong I am. I know I’m nowhere near the top one, but I’m not below the top fifty." I sweep the monster’s legs, landing three punches to its stomach and an elbow to the throat.

I use my tail to grab its throat and slam it against the ground. The monster grabs my tail with its hands, trying to break it, but it can’t.

"GYAAAHHHH!!" The monster screams when I grab its eye and yank it out, revealing a mouth full of teeth that had been holding the eye socket.

"There we go. Now I can find out if you actually feel pain." From inside the mouth, a bolt of lightning fires at my face, but I manage to reflect it because it’s too slow.

"..." I look at the flesh of this thing, noticing that ever since I arrived, the flesh beneath its skin has been writhing. I throw it aside against the ground and kick it into the debris.

’Even so, this thing is pretty durable.’ I’m not merely playing around. These blows would have killed most weaker monsters. My punch should have gone straight through this thing’s stomach from one side to the other.

"It’s going through a metamorphosis," I deduce based on its flesh. I’ve seen monsters change appearance before. Nightmare herself is a good example. When monsters undergo metamorphosis, their flesh usually tends to pulse and writhe grotesquely, preparing to rearrange itself.

"Not going to kill it?" I look up at a piece of building debris and see her again—the hooded girl.

"You’re arrogant to show yourself in front of me like this," I say in a serious tone while the monster screams in pain, touching its own face.

"Do you really have time to waste on me, Zenith? Shouldn’t you kill it before it enters its third phase?"

"...How about you explain your plans like a generic villain?" When I say that, rolling my eyes, she lets out a laugh.

"I’m not that type of person. Only idiots reveal their plans. But I am confident enough to reveal a few things. Are you really that curious about your past? Nadir doesn’t seem to want to know," she says with a condescending tone that irritates me.

’I figured as much. She did something, didn’t she?’ There’s no Kaira here, and I don’t see anyone approaching. She somehow made sure no one else is here.

"...Let’s trade information? How are you here? As far as I know, your prosthetics should have failed," she proposes confidently.

’How would she know that...?’ I look at the monster writhing on the ground as its bones begin to show beneath its skin. She also looks at the monster, and I see a smile on her face.

"Fine. First, tell me what this thing is."

"...Hmmm... it’s a human, transformed into a true monster of fear." Those words alone give me every answer I needed about this thing.

"Will you try that with me?"

"Tempting, but it wouldn’t work."

"...?"

’Does it depend on compatibility?’

"No, Zenith. It could work on anyone. I know what you’re thinking, but you and Nadir are special cases. With you two, it doesn’t work."

"...They’re new prosthetics. That’s all the answer I need to give," I say with a tone of contempt.

"Hmmm... well, I think I’ve said too much, and I’ve heard what I needed. That thing there looks pretty angry about being humiliated. You should kill it, right?" she says as the monster finishes its metamorphosis.

Now its appearance is far more grotesque. Much of its bones are exposed like a bone armor covered with eyes. There are several small cavities in the armor where electricity visibly circulates.

A form suited for conducting, storing, and releasing energy. This is probably the final stage of this thing.

"Now you look like a complete monster," I say with sarcasm while the hooded girl has already vanished.

’Damn... I missed my chance...’ She must have come to make sure I wouldn’t crush this thing with spatial powers until it had transformed.

"..." The monster looks at me with all its eyes, while I prepare myself for this—and for a reclassification if necessary.

’The first phase looked completely like a monster, the second looked very human, and the third made it a monster again. I wonder if it takes time for someone to become a true monster...’

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