The underworld tournament arena had devolved into a theater of escalating chaos. Blood mist hung in the air, rising like steam from a battlefield where mutant powers clashed with unrelenting fury. Roars echoed across the stone-clad coliseum, mutated bodies clashing with unholy precision. And in the eye of that savage storm stood Renji Kuroya and his teammates, their backs to one another, forming a desperate circle of resistance against the pressure of four faction leaders and their elite warriors.
Mika Ishida gritted her teeth, her body trembling not from fear but from the sheer kinetic force building in her palms. Her arms shimmered with unstable waves of pressure, her kinetic blast ability crackling and vibrating with far more intensity than usual. It was as though the battlefield had unlocked something dormant within her. She thrust her hands forward, unleashing a concussive wave that shattered the stone floor, sending a pair of Crimson Pact elites flying back with shattered ribs.
"Something's wrong—or right," she muttered breathlessly. "My power—it's spiking."
Beside her, Takeshi Mori roared, driving his fist into the gut of a Forgotten Dawn enforcer. The impact was thunderous. Bone snapped. The enemy flew backwards like a ragdoll, crashing through two others behind him. Takeshi's muscles surged unnaturally, veins pulsing like thick cables beneath his skin. His enhanced physical abilities had reached a terrifying peak.
"No. It's not wrong," Takeshi said through gritted teeth. "We're adapting. We're evolving. Just like Renji."
Yumi Takahashi's form melted into the shadows, reemerging behind a Black Crow attacker who hadn't even seen her coming. Her blade, forged from her own shadow, slashed with surgical precision, incapacitating her target in a single blow. Her control over the shadows was more fluid, instinctive, no longer requiring focus. They responded to her will like extensions of her soul.
"I can feel it too," she whispered. "The pressure's making us stronger. But for how long before it breaks us?"
Kaito Nakamura's fists crackled with bolts of white-blue lightning. He shot forward like a human thunderbolt, punching through the defenses of a Smiling Rats brute. Sparks erupted as flesh sizzled and metal mutated armor combusted on contact. His electric punch, once limited in range and intensity, now lanced across multiple targets like an arcing chain of destruction.
Amid them, Renji was a storm given form.
His movement blurred, his blows disjointed from natural motion—fluid, almost animalistic. His eyes glowed with a predatory amber hue, and faint, scale-like patches danced beneath his skin. The monstrous hunger within him hadn't left—it gnawed at his core with growing insistence—but Renji had made a decision. He wouldn't give in to full absorption. Not yet. He knew what lay beyond that threshold. And he feared it.
Instead, he drew upon the raw instincts granted by the partial mutation. His combat awareness was almost precognitive. He dodged a combined attack from Dante Varek and Kiyoshi Takeda, sidestepping with impossible grace before driving his foot into Kiyoshi's shoulder. Bone shattered. Kiyoshi staggered backward, stunned by the power Renji had just delivered.
Across the battlefield, Vera Corbin—leader of the Smiling Rats—was faltering.
Her mutation, once a grotesque advantage of toxin-infused tendrils and unpredictable darting speed, was beginning to fail her. She gasped for breath, her movements slowing. Her tendrils lashed out, but the force was weak, the range scattered. The other faction leaders were too deep in their engagements to notice.
Renji did.
With a growl, he turned his gaze toward Vera, and in that moment, the beast within him smiled. She was the weak link. The chink in the armor. If he broke her, the synergy among the factions would splinter. The chaotic unity they had built against him and his team would collapse into discord.
He lunged.
Vera's eyes widened as Renji closed the distance with terrifying speed. Her tendrils shot forward defensively, but he tore through them, spinning mid-air and hammering down a crushing blow on her left shoulder. The impact drove her into the ground. Dust and blood burst outward. She coughed, wheezing as the mutated muscle in her arm twitched involuntarily.
"You shouldn't have come to this round," Renji growled.
Before she could retaliate, Mika fired a kinetic blast that drove her deeper into the stone floor. Kaito launched a crackling bolt of lightning that scorched her remaining defenses. Takeshi seized one of her flailing limbs and slammed her into a nearby pillar.
Yumi's shadows wrapped around her tendrils like shackles, restraining her remaining strength.
The Smiling Rats faction—watching from the sidelines—froze in disbelief. Their leader, the ruthless Vera Corbin, was being broken piece by piece.
One of them, a spindly mutant with compound eyes, muttered, "Should we intervene?"
Another shook his head. "If we move now, we'll be eliminated too. Look at them… they're not fighting fair. They're dismantling us."
The other factions began to shout commands, trying to rally around Vera's crumbling defense. But it was too late. The precision, unity, and ferocity with which Renji's team descended upon her was surgical. There was no hesitation. No wasted movement.
---
The battle had descended into madness—a flurry of violence, sweat, blood, and raw, mutated power. The elimination stage of the underworld tournament had become less a contest and more a war, and Vera Corbin, leader of the Smiling Rats, found herself drowning in its merciless tide.
Her breaths were shallow, ragged. Her once-confident sneer had dissolved into a pale mask of disbelief. Around her, the remaining members of her faction were being torn apart—figuratively and literally—by Renji and his increasingly fearsome team. The elegant chaos that Vera usually commanded with a flick of her fingers had become frenzied disarray. Her mutation—once a deceptive toxin mist that could disorient and debilitate—had been completely outpaced by the brutal display of evolution that Renji's team embodied.
She stumbled back, panting, her heels scraping against the arena's cracked floor. Her vision flickered. She could hear the roar of the crowd above, not cheering for her, but screaming in awe and anticipation for her downfall.
"No... this can't be it," Vera muttered, her voice trembling. She turned desperately toward the other faction leaders, her pride shredded by the sheer desperation clawing up her throat.
"Help me!" she shrieked. "Asano! Kiyoshi! Dante! Don't let them wipe us out!"
Her plea echoed across the blood-soaked arena.
Asano of the Black Crow stood at the edge of the fray, his black coat fluttering like the wings of a predator preparing to strike. His eyes narrowed at the sight of Vera, reduced to a trembling shell of the ruthless woman who had once commanded entire underworld zones. The request for aid grated against his ego.
He clenched his fists. His jaw twitched. "How?" he growled under his breath. "How are they still standing?"
His superiority complex—an immovable pillar of his identity—was buckling under the weight of what he was witnessing. Renji's team, supposedly a band of wildcards, had survived the orchestrated assault of four top factions and were not just surviving, but dominating. Asano's mind rebelled against the very notion.
Near him, Dante Varek of the Crimson Pact arched an eyebrow, curious but amused. Kiyoshi Takeda of the Forgotten Dawn stayed silent, watchful.
In the eye of the storm, Mika Ishida stood completely still, her chest rising and falling as she stared down one of the Smiling Rats. Her kinetic blasts had already carved ruin through Vera's forces—but now, something else stirred within her.
Something greater.
She shut her eyes for one long breath, and then the mutation surged. Her body trembled—once, then twice—as if her very bones were rearranging. The kinetic aura that normally surrounded her palms flared into something sharper, more focused.
It was no longer just kinetic force.
It was control.
Objects around her shivered. Broken debris, discarded weapons, fragments of stone and steel all began to hover as if gravity had become optional.
Her eyes opened, glowing faintly. "...Telekinesis?" she whispered, stunned by her own evolution.
There was no time for hesitation. In a single fluid motion, Mika raised her hand—and a dozen chunks of shattered terrain flew like bullets toward the Smiling Rats. They struck with precision and brutal force. Bones cracked. Screams tore the air.
One of Vera's lieutenants—a hulking brute named Gantz—tried to charge her, but Mika's focus did not waver. She clenched her fist mid-air, and Gantz was yanked upward, then slammed into the ground so hard the arena floor cratered beneath him.
"GET OUT OF THE WAY!" Vera screamed at her subordinates, trying to retreat behind the remaining vanguard. But Mika was relentless. Her telekinetic field lashed out like invisible chains, snatching weapons from enemies, turning them into missiles, crushing opposition without mercy.
Half of the Smiling Rats were down within seconds.
The crowd went wild.
Thunderous cheers exploded through the stands. Some spectators were on their feet, mouths agape. Others pounded their fists against the barrier walls, lost in primal excitement. In the underworld, power was religion—and Mika Ishida had just become a deity in their eyes.
Renji, blood splattered across his mutated arms, looked back to see her floating forward like a ghost wrapped in force. His heart swelled—not with hunger, but with pride. Whatever this tournament had awakened, it had made them stronger.
"Tch..." Asano spat, slamming his fist into a nearby wall fragment, splintering it. His lips curled. "She's a threat now too."
"Correction," Kiyoshi murmured behind him. "They all are."
As the dust settled around Mika, Vera dropped to her knees, bleeding, her fingers twitching. She looked up, broken and disoriented, her eyes catching the storm of power reflected in Mika's shimmering silhouette.
She'd never felt this humiliated. This powerless.
And now, for the first time in her life... she was afraid.