Levi's chest was still under unbearable pressure. It was like his ribs were slowly being grinded into shards, by a boulder.

  A high pitched whistling sound filled his ears, blocking out everything else in the world around him. His fingers twitched weakly against the ground as a futile and desperate attempt at resisting. But he could feel it, he was slowly going numb.

  "Am I dying?" He thought, letting out a hollow laugh that barely escaped his throat. "I guess I am."

  But he felt something else at that moment. It wasn't physical pain, just a bitter emotion that swelled in his chest.

  What exactly was this feeling?

  Levi tried to make sense of it as his vision began to blur around the edges.

  It was non other than regret. And emotion he was quiet familiar with, but hadn't felt since he got to Astrovia.

  "My good old friend, Regret..."

  Once he acknowledged it, the thoughts flooded in.

  Maybe if he hadn't spent his whole first year in Astrovia doing something. Maybe if he didn’t rely so much on the system always bailing hin out. Maybe if he didn’t keep running from everything he knew he had to face.

  But all he really wanted was peace. Was that too much to ask?

  His blurry vision caught movement from figures, dressed like the man still crushing his chest. His brain tried to make sense of them, but the image was already slipping. Like water running through cracked hands.

  And then everything went dark.

  But the island didn’t grow quiet. Because something else had awakened.

  "It’s not the system."

  Those were Lyra's words when she had spoken to Levi about the special power he possessed. The special power the system had identified as a foreign entity and had suppressed.

  But unlike heroes who possessed powers that gave warmth, Levi's was different. It wasn’t a warm ray of light filled with hope.

  It was an agent of terror.

  And as for the men standing there? They were about to come face to face with the nightmare they had awoken in ignorance.

  They had unknowingly brought another monster onto the island.

  "Take care of it fast," one of the masked men ordered. “Stop playing with the kid.”

  The man pinning Levi down didn’t budge immediately. He left his foot placed firmly on Levi’s chest as he glanced at the others and scoffed.

  "Sure..." he sighed then looked down at Levi with narrowed eyes. “There’s just something about this one that annoys me.”

  He gazed down at Levi in disdain “You’ve got this look... Even now, you're not completely worried about yourself... Those friends of yours. Tch..."

  And then it happened. Everything suddenly shifted.

  Without warning, an oppressive wave of pressure exploded outward in form of a crimson and violent wave. Like a dam breaking.

  The air thickened instantly. The masked figures froze, every one of them struck still like statues, their instincts screaming.

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  They couldn’t explain it, not in words. But in that moment, each one of them felt it.

  A suffocating monstrous presence.

  Like ants suddenly becoming aware of the foot looming above them.

  And that pressure? It was coming from Levi.

  The man standing over him stumbled back, eyes wide with sudden unease. “What the hell is that...?” he muttered, staring at Levi’s limp body now cloaked in a rising red aura.

  Then Levi’s voice came deep, and resonating through the atmosphere.

  Low at first, like a whisper rising from a pit. “Impure element”

  The red aura pulsed once, and Levi's body began to rise.

  Bones cracked audibly, resetting themselves. Dislocated joints shifted back into place. The bruises along his skin turned black, then vanished. His arms dropped limp at first, then flexed subtly as life returned to his limbs.

  It seemed like a resurrection of his body had taken place.

  One of the masked men began to step forward but froze again when Levi’s head slowly turned toward them. His eyes were still dull but something else looked out from within them now.

  “I don’t know what kind of trick you’re pulling,” the man who had stomped on him barked, trying to force bravado back into his voice. He vanished in a blur of speed, reappearing just inches in front of Levi, palm cocked back to strike.

  And then he was gone.

  His upper body burst into shreds, a fine red mist spraying the ground. The explosion was silent with no fire, or sound.

  An invisible force had met him before he could get close.

  Smoke curled faintly from Levi’s raised hand, his palm outstretched in the direction where the man once stood. The air where his attack had landed shimmered faintly, like heat distortion. And then it settled again.

  The remaining Homunculi stood frozen. Not out of caution or discipline, but out of fear.

  They couldn’t move. Even breathing suddenly felt like a gamble.

  But it didn’t matter anymore. Not to the thing now standing before them.

  A suffocating stillness now overwhelmed the clearing, broken only by the brief pulsing sounds made by the red energy surrounding Levi like a curse.

  His eyes, now burning with the red energy swept across the ten masked figures. He didn’t move but the atmosphere twisted around him, warping the very air, like the world itself recoiled in dread.

  One of the Homonculi finally cracked.

  “Screw this—!” the man barked, stumbling back and whirling around, but he never made it more than three steps.

  With a sickening crack, his body folded unnaturally in mid-air, as though caught by an invisible hand that crushed his spine like paper.

  Blood sprayed from his mouth as his torso caved in, bones snapping like twigs before his lifeless body dropped to the floor.

  “Fall back! Fall the f—!”

  Another tried to bark an order, but his words were drowned in a gurgle. His head was gone—ripped clean off by the hands of Levi who suddenly appeared before him.

  It was sent tumbling through the air like a tossed fruit.

  The remaining Homonculi scattered in panic, with their instincts kicking in.

  One darted toward the jungle, but the moment his foot touched the treeline, his body jerked then bloated grotesquely from the inside out and with the passing of a second, his body burst, spraying blood on the ground and those close to him

  The others weren’t so lucky.

  One of them charged screaming as he slashed downward with the twin blades in his hands, aiming for Levi’s skull. But before metal could hit Levi, a red tendril of energy curled around the man's arms and legs like a serpent.

  He was yanked into the air, limbs stretching and then sbsi

  He fell in four different directions.

  Another dropped to his knees, pleading in broken gasps, mask long discarded to reveal eyes wide with raw terror.

  But what stood before them didn't know mercy.

  The man’s skin began to blister, then peel, as if his soul itself was being burned away from the inside. He let out a scream that never ended cut short by silence as he slumped over, his body reduced to a hollow, scorched shell.

  One Homonculus managed to raise a plasma gun firing beam after beam. The laser beams simply vanished off the red veil that cocooned Levi. None made it through.

  With each pull of the trigger, the shooter grew more frantic, until his magazine clicked empty.

  Then Levi moved.

  He didn’t walk. He simply appeared behind the man, hand stretched out. The Homonculus tried to scream, but his body collapsed inward like a dying star imploded, reduced to a compact mess of bone and no larger than a soccer ball.

  Two more tried to attack at once. One launched a spike of Ki-infused energy. The other spun in mid-air, aiming a spinning kick at Levi’s temple.

  Levi turned his head slightly.

  And that was it

  Their movements froze. Eyes wide with horror, they both began to tear apart, not from the outside, but from within.

  Bones ruptured organs, skin split, and their bodies collapsed like puppets cut from their strings.

  One man was left.

  The last of the Homonculi stood trembling, knees buckling beneath him. His mask had cracked down the middle, revealing part of a pale, terrified face soaked in sweat.

  He didn’t run, he couldn’t. He had seen enough to know how futile it was.

  "Purge... impure..." Levi was in front of him now—floating, mouth closed with a blank expression on his face.

  The man opened his mouth to scream.

  But before the deathblow could land, Levi's body shuddered. The red energy flickered in and out like a dying bulb, then his eyes rolled back and his body collapsed.

  The aura vanished and dissipated like a whisper.

  Once again, the environment was silent, broken only by the trembling breath of the last man, staring at the unconscious monster lying in front of him.