Violet crashed into a pile of grasses, her chest rising and falling in shallow bursts. She was quite out of breath, but obviously drained. The kind of exhaustion that showed someone had stressed themselves physically.

  Laying a few feet opposite her was something that almost resembled a corpse

  Telling what it was, wasn't exactly what one would call an easy task It was hard to say what exactly it was. The figure was twisted unnaturally with its limbs looking shriveled like a dried up leaf.

  What remained of its face was just dried up lips and clenched teeth. The only features that hinted at it probably being a human figure at the very least was the faint trace of a nose, and a single intact eye.

  Beside it, half-buried in the dirt, was the remnants of a plasma spear. Its energy core flickered weakly in the broken shaft.

  Letting out a heavy breath, Violet pushed herself upright. Maybe it was instinct, but her hand pressed against her side where the stab wound had been. But the wound wasn't there anymore. It disappeared like a moment that had now become a mere memory. All that was there was a ripped hole in her clothe.

  She stood and walked over slowly to the shriveled up figure and crouched beside it. She scanned it from head to toe like a scientist examining a strange occurrence.

  “Artificial…” she muttered under her breath. “So these things really are artificial humans.”

  Her fingers hovered just above the dried skin of the corpse, “If only—”

  A sharp rustle broke the silence.

  Her head snapped to the side where there were a couple of bushes, seven meters off. It shook with fast movements, then suddenly stopped.

  Without a moment's hesitation, she was on her feet. She took a gentle but sharp leap towards the broken spear, yanking both halves from the ground.

  The plasma blade manifested from the half in her right hand. She held her breath and fixed her eyes on the brush ahead but there were no sounds or movements coming from it anymore.

  Then suddenly she twisted, creating a clean arc on the ground with her feet and slashed backward with the plasma blade of the spear like a sword.

  “Hey, wait. Whoa!”

  Violet froze, her weapon inches from a neck she recognized.

  Her shoulders dropped as she sighed, long and annoyed. “Can you stop picking the worst times to pull this kind of crap on me?”

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  Kyle stood there with his hands raised by his sides. “Just... being cautious,” he said, smiling like there wasn't a hot blade of light hanging inches away from his neck. "For all I know, it could've been some imposter just disguised as you."

  He lifted a finger and gently nudged the plasma blade away from his neck.

  “Right,” Violet muttered.

  She loosened her grip, letting the two pieces of the broken spear fall from her hands. She relaxed her body, turning fully to face Kyle.

  Her eyes traced the bruising along his jawline and the thin cut just beneath his lip, already beginning to scab.

  “Looks like you also had your own form of trouble on your side?” she asked, tilting her head slightly.

  Kyle let out a low groan and stretched his arms above his head, the movement making some of his bones pop like he just woke up. “Surisingly,” he muttered, exhaling. “These guys really aren't amateurs.”

  The dried-out corpse lying a few feet away, drew his attention. From the black jumpsuit, he recognized it was on of the attackers that separated them earlier.

  “And looks like you, on the other hand, got a little too excited.”

  Violet’s lips twitched slightly before she let out a nervous chuckle. “Well, it’s not like I meant to.” She ran a hand over her forearm, where a faint scar was still glowing dull red. “She just wouldn’t stop attacking. And I needed to recover my wounds too, so..."

  “So you sucked out every drop of blood and magic in her.” Kyle said in an amused tone, teasing Violet

  Violet shrugged, brushing a few loose strands of hair from her cheek. “Well... if you put it that way.”

  “I wonder what Levi would think about this.”

  “Oh, give it a rest Kyle" Violet muttered, rolling her eyes.

  However, that tense free moment was only fleeting. As Violet took a look back towards the trees, he demeanor grew more serious.

  "In all honesty... things are getting really rough out here. The barrier might have messed up by senses, but earlier I felt something..."

  Kyle’s smile faded. “Felt what?”

  She frowned. “Like... a shift. Something heavier entered the field. A few of them, maybe. I don’t know. Just... more oppressing presences than before.”

  “So most likely… the real deal finally arrived,” Kyle muttered, his voice low.

  But Violet wasn't the only one who felt it. She might have had a deeper perception about it, but Kyle felt a change too. They didn’t need to say it aloud. Whatever just stepped onto the island didn’t belong to the class of enemies they’d been dealing with so far.

  And worse—there was still no sign of Levi.

  “This is bad,” Violet finally said, sighing heavily. “The Homonculi were already unpredictable, and now we’ve got this? I can barely feel anything through the barrier, and even I could tell something shifted.”

  Kyle nodded slowly. “Yeah, we can’t keep standing around. We need to regroup with Levi. Fast.”

  “At least, before things get any more out of control…”

  ***

  With each slow step he took steadying himself from the crash earlier, Levi's shoes made the dry grass and twigs beneath them crunch softly.

  In front of him stood one of the attackers that chased him down.

  Levi instinctively reached for his side, fingers moving in muscle memory toward a sword that wasn’t there. But all his fingers met was thin air.

  He clicked his tongue and lowered his hand with a sigh. "Of course. No sword..."

  He had been caught up in the events happening so far, he forgot this whole mess had started while they were in the middle of school, and not a monster hunt—he hadn’t come armed. And yet here he was, face-to-face with someone clearly dangerous.

  “What a drag…” he muttered under his breath, rolling his shoulders back and setting his feet.

  He didn’t know this one’s abilities. Their presence was calm, and there was no reckless bloodlust.

  His original plan had been to test the waters with swordplay—stay on the outside, probe for weaknesses. But that strategy was dead now.

  He didn’t have much in the way of formal hand-to-hand training, and this was a terrible time to start experimenting.

  All things considered the odds were completely against Levi.