Blind Box World - SSS-Rank Eye of Truth

Laira stood on the low section of the factory roof, arms folded across her chest. She had no intention of joining the fight, but her eyes never left Ryan. The moment Ethan was in real danger, she would be the first one down.

Ryan crawled out of the crater, blood already running from the corner of his mouth. The Void Flame around him flared even more violently, reacting almost directly to his fury.

He looked at the Thunder Wings behind Ethan and ground his teeth. "You still just rely on what other people give you. Without that dragon, without those treasures, where do you think you’d be better than me?"

Ethan looked at him for a few seconds.

Then the Thunder Wings slowly retracted.

Fifteen hundred feathers turned into streaks of light and withdrew into the Primordial Armor.

Laira raised an eyebrow but didn’t intervene.

Ethan walked toward Ryan, both arms hanging loose at his sides. "You want to know what happens if we set all that aside? Fine. I’ll show you."

Ryan snarled and charged.

This time the two of them truly collided body to body.

Ryan’s Void Flame-wrapped fist struck Ethan’s right shoulder and pushed him half a step back. Ethan took the hit, his right hand immediately locking around the opponent’s wrist, his left hand sheathed in the Primordial Armor driving straight into Ryan’s nose.

Crack!

Blood sprayed out.

Before Ryan could lift his head, the second punch drove into his stomach. The third caught him under the chin and sent him staggering backward.

Void Flame swung horizontally.

Ethan ducked low, closed the gap that had just opened, and drove his shoulder hard into Ryan’s chest. Both of them crashed into a steel column. Ryan’s back hit first, the sound of warping metal screeching through the air.

He tried to raise his arm.

Ethan blocked it and slammed his elbow down onto the shoulder.

Ryan dropped to one knee.

Ethan immediately kicked him across the face.

Ryan’s entire body was lifted off the ground. He tumbled across the concrete several times before coming to a stop.

The Void Flame was still powerful.

But Ryan wielded it like someone trying to cram a hurricane into a body too small to hold it. The more his emotions spiraled, the more chaotic the energy became. Ethan didn’t need lines of text pointing out weaknesses; just watching the way the flames spasmed before each time Ryan channeled power gave him all the reaction time he needed.

Ryan stood up again.

One side of his face was swollen, his breathing labored.

"Luck..." He spat out a mouthful of blood, eyes still burning with hatred. "You’re just luckier than me. Give me Laira, give me your opportunities, give me the things you’ve picked up, and I could be stronger than you too!"

Ethan looked at him, then stepped forward.

Ryan threw a punch.

Ethan tilted his head to dodge, seized the arm and wrenched it downward. His right elbow struck the back of Ryan’s neck and knocked him off balance, followed by a kick to the knee that dropped him fully to the ground.

Ethan grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled Ryan’s blood-covered face up.

"Still talking about luck?"

This time, real emotion surfaced in Ethan’s voice.

Not a shout.

It was fury compressed for too long, finally spoken through cold, steady calm.

"You had a mother to shelter you, the family’s resources, an S-rank ability, someone to teach you how to fight before you ever had to risk your life over anything. I had to earn every coin for school, fell behind by two years, and after awakening I had my arm burned off by Void Flame. After all of that, the one who keeps complaining about lacking luck is you?"

Ethan let go of his hair, but the instant Ryan tried to push himself up, a kick sent him right back down.

"You know what your biggest problem is, Ryan? You’ve never actually wanted to become stronger. What you want is for everyone else to be weaker than you. I get stronger, you blame me. People pay attention to me, you blame me. Laira chose me, and you treat that like something stolen from you. Even after you deleted Mira’s testimony and pushed me to the brink, it still somehow becomes my fault inside your head."

Ryan braced both hands against the ground, veins standing out on his neck. "You took everything from me..."

Ethan laughed with open contempt.

"I’ve never taken anything that belonged to you. You just can’t stand the idea that someone else is above you."

He looked at the Void Flame burning around Ryan’s body, then leaned down slightly.

"Even this is the same. You really think the Void values you?"

Ryan went rigid.

In that instant, the rage on his face was replaced by a flash of unease.

Ethan saw it.

He didn’t let it go.

"The Void has been hunting me since the day I awakened. It left fire inside my body, watched me through the cracks, tried to pull me in over and over again. And you? It came to you after you’d already been backed into a corner, gave you a taste of power, and led you here."

The corner of Ethan’s mouth curved.

"Ryan, you’re not even the one it actually wants."

Ryan’s face went white.

Ethan spoke word by word, slowly enough that each one sank like a nail into the deepest part of Ryan’s mind.

"The Void is hunting me. You’re just the pawn it’s using to find me. Even after selling yourself to that thing, you’re still just chasing my shadow."

Ryan was trembling.

"No..."

Ethan looked at him, his gaze cold.

"You and I were never in the same class."

The last thread inside Ryan’s head snapped.

"SHUT UP!"

He roared, forcing every ounce of Void Flame to explode from his body. Dark purple cracks raced across his skin. The blood that seeped out was instantly burned to smoke by the flames. The ground around him caved in, and a massive stream of fire shot straight at Ethan.

Laira immediately spread her wings.

But Ethan had already raised his hand to stop her.

The Thunder Wings opened behind his back once more.

He charged straight into the sea of fire.

Lightning and Void Flame collided, detonating in a chain of explosions. The Thunder Wings tore most of the flames apart, but a stream of dark purple slipped through a gap and swept across Ethan’s left arm.

The Primordial Armor blazed bright at once.

A layer of silver-gray metal sealed over the section of arm that had once been burned away, stopping the fire from spreading to the shoulder.

Ethan faltered for only a single beat.

Ryan saw it.

He poured every last drop of Void Flame into that exact spot with frenzied desperation.

"You lost a hand to this once, didn’t you?! Then carry it for the rest of your life!"

The stream of dark purple fire clung to the Primordial Armor.

Ethan clenched his teeth, but his speed didn’t drop.

He punched through the sea of fire and drove his right fist straight into Ryan’s stomach.

BOOM!

Ryan doubled over.

The second punch caught him under the jaw and launched him off the ground. Ethan opened the Thunder Wings, appeared above, and slammed Ryan’s entire body into the concrete floor.

CRASH!

A deep crater appeared.

The Void Flame around Ryan went out almost entirely.

He lay amid the rubble, chest rising and falling weakly, one arm twitching a few times before it finally lacked the strength to push up.

Ethan landed in front of him.

Void Flame still burned on his left hand, but the Primordial Armor kept it pressed to the outside. He ignored it for now. A single Thunder-Iron Feather had already extended into a spear in his right hand.

Ryan looked at the spear.

For the first time, genuine fear appeared in his eyes.

Ethan was about to finish it when the space behind Ryan suddenly distorted.

A familiar chill crawled down his spine.

Ethan stopped.

He had felt this before.

The day the Eye of Truth awakened.

During the times he was pulled into the Void’s dreams.

The sensation of a distant existence laying its gaze upon him.

A dark purple tear slowly opened behind Ryan.

He turned to look, his expression changing at once. "What is this?"

There was no answer.

The Void Flame on Ryan’s body suddenly betrayed its own master. The dark purple streams stretched into cords, wrapping around his wrists, his ankles, then tightening around his entire body.

Ryan clawed frantically at the stone floor.

"Let go of me! Ethan, do something!"

His voice had lost every trace of the madness from seconds before. All that remained was the terror of realizing the power he had claimed as his own had never truly been his.

Ethan stood still.

Ryan was dragged inch by inch toward the rift. His ten fingers scraped against the concrete until they bled. Finally he turned to Ethan, screaming in desperation, "SAVE ME!"

Ethan only looked at him.

"You chose it."

One second later, the pull surged.

Ryan was wrenched straight into the tear.

Space closed.

Everything went suddenly quiet.

But in that same instant, Ethan’s expression changed.

A vicious stab of pain shot through his left arm.

The Void Flame Ryan had left behind, the one clinging to the outside of the Primordial Armor, suddenly burrowed deep through the seams in the metal. It no longer tried to burn through the armor. It drove straight toward the severed section of arm sealed inside.

And something that had been dormant for far too long answered.

Boom!

Dark purple Void Flame erupted from within the Primordial Armor.

Ethan stiffened.

The familiar agony, the same pain he had endured as Void Flame slowly burned his left arm until everything below was destroyed, lanced through bone and flesh once more. The fire from back then had never truly vanished. It had only been suppressed by his stronger body, by Laira’s Solar Flame Seal, and by the Primordial Armor, pushed down until it was nearly dormant.

The flame Ryan left behind was like a match thrown onto embers that were still hot.

Dark purple lines immediately crawled across the Primordial Armor.

The purple-silver lightning from the Thunder Wings reacted violently, clashing with the dark purple fire around the severed section, locking the two energies in a temporary stalemate.

"Ethan!"

Laira appeared in front of him in a flash.

The moment she saw the Void Flame, her expression changed. The memory of those days holding Ethan in a stone cave, painstakingly using the Solar Flame Seal to force the fire away from his upper arm bit by bit, was still far too vivid.

She grabbed his shoulder, and Solar Flame erupted from her palm at once.

"Don’t push too hard." Ethan ground his teeth, cold sweat breaking out across his forehead. "It’s reacting with what’s inside the Primordial Armor."

Ruo Yan also ran over. She looked at the arm simultaneously crackling with lightning and burning with dark purple fire, her expression turning grim. "You already had Void Flame inside you before?"

Laira didn’t take her eyes off Ethan, her voice taut. "It was what burned his left hand off. I only managed to suppress it. I never fully extinguished it."

Ruo Yan immediately understood why the current reaction was this severe.

Ethan took a deep breath and forced himself upright.

The strange thing was that this time the Void Flame didn’t keep spreading toward his shoulder the way it had before.

The Primordial Armor was holding it inside.

The Thunder Wings were also continuously discharging electricity, colliding with the dark purple fire around the severed section, keeping the two energies temporarily locked against each other.

Ethan felt it out for a few seconds, then said, "It’s not out of control yet. We leave first. Ryan is gone, but I can’t be sure whatever pulled him away isn’t still watching this place."

Laira clearly wanted to deal with the fire immediately, but after a brief hesitation she still nodded. She held Ethan tight, keeping the Solar Flame at just enough intensity around his left arm to prevent the Void Flame from flaring further.

Ruo Yan called the Necromancer back.

The three of them quickly left the industrial complex.

Behind them, the dark purple scorch marks Ryan had left still smoldered quietly among the wreckage.

Somewhere else, Ryan fell out of the Void rift.

His body slammed into the ground, rolled through a dark alley, and crashed into a concrete wall.

He lay motionless for a long time.

The sound of traffic echoed from the distance. Artificial light spilled in from the alley’s entrance, and overhead hung the familiar glow of a protective barrier.

Ryan slowly opened his eyes.

Safe Zone No. 7.

He was back.

Ryan braced himself and sat up. His entire body hurt so badly that every breath felt like his ribs were grinding against each other, but even that pain was nothing compared to the sentences repeating endlessly in his head.

The Void is hunting me.

You’re just the pawn.

You and I were never in the same class.

Ryan clenched his fists.

His nails dug into his palms until they bled.

He had lost.

No Victor or Nolan left to blame.

Laira hadn’t even joined the fight.

Ethan had retracted the Thunder Wings for most of the battle.

And Ryan had still been beaten until he could no longer fight back.

A hoarse laugh slowly echoed through the alley.

Ryan lowered his head, his shoulders trembling faintly.

But it wasn’t the laugh of someone who had accepted defeat.

The humiliation was grinding away the last shreds of reason, then transforming into something far more vicious.

If he couldn’t beat Ethan head-on...

Then why keep fighting head-on at all?

A face surfaced in Ryan’s mind.

Mira.

The woman who had saved Ethan, witnessed the truth firsthand, and nearly ruined his plans with a single testimony.

Then Claire.

The one who had been by Ethan’s side for a long stretch of time.

Ryan slowly pulled himself to his feet, one hand braced against the wall. The Void Flame inside his body had weakened considerably, but a few dark purple threads still flickered between his fingers.

He looked at the city lights beyond the alley, the corner of his mouth gradually pulling upward.

"Mira... Claire..."

The two names came out very softly, as though he were selecting the first pieces to place on a board.

"Ethan, you really love protecting the people around you, don’t you? Then I won’t bother looking for you just yet."

The dark purple glow in Ryan’s eyes slowly brightened.

"I want to see, when they get dragged into this one by one... how long you can keep that face you had just now."

He stepped out of the shadows.

And what lingered in Ryan’s eyes no longer resembled the ordinary jealousy between two brothers.

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