"Arua...!!! W-What have you done... YOU JUST KILLED HIM!!!"

  His voice cracked. Gio's scream was no longer a panic shout, but a roar of absolute fury. His grief had mutated into raw vengeance.

  Erinn took a step back, trembling. Her posture shrank. Eyes wide, mouth sealed shut by sheer fear and panic. She gasped in rapid, erratic breaths.

  Her vision spun. The ground felt like it was collapsed. I... just killed someone?

  "No—" The demon went feral. Muscles tensed to the absolute limit, trying to rip the bindings apart.

  Gio attempted every method. First, direct electrical discharge from his skin. Failed. Next, he shed the copper plating on his gauntlets, exposing the high-resistance steel core. The electrical current drastically increased the metal's temperature, burning Erinn's bindings from the inside.

  But the bindings still held.

  "C-Calm down!" Erinn threw her hand out, struggling to maintain the Nexus. But her head was spinning. Her focus split between maintaining the strap and fighting the urge to vomit.

  "I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU...!!!" Gio’s sheer killing intent hit Erinn harder than any physical blow. Seeing those bloodshot demon eyes glaring from beneath the hood, her courage vanished. Add the massive guilt over Arua’s death, the immense mental pressure began to corrode her sanity.

  It drastically weakened her bindings. The moment Gio's applied load surpassed the strap's tensile strength, the bonds snapped. Spontaneously, Gio launched himself, charging straight toward Erinn.

  In his right hand, a new Nexus materialized. Not a gauntlet this time. A machete blade surged with high-voltage current.

  Panic hit. Erinn instantly transmuted the leftover amber straps back into Thyreos shields. Her body trembled violently, refusing to die.

  The tables had been turned. Gio now seized the offensive, while Erinn was forced into a desperate defensive.

  Gio rained down a barrage of brutal attacks upon the girl. Vertical, horizontal, diagonal—zero pattern, just pure destructive intent. Explosive movement of a street brawler entirely unbound by dojo rules. The demon eyes—which ironically—always carried a humanity were gone, replaced by pure feral instinct.

  Erinn tried hard to parry every strike. Amidst her crumbling mind, she kept backpedaling, desperately maintaining a safe distance.

  Until finally, she gave in. The pressure and maxed-out anxiety triggered a panic attack. No more room for rational thought. Pure survival instinct took the wheel.

  Erinn launched into the sky, flying away from the arena and abandoning the fight. "DON'T YOU RUN AWAY!" Gio roared, sprinting to chase her.

  Erinn landed at the coordinates where she hid her physical body: a neighborhood guard post near the “Budget Butcher” food stall. Her body was supposed to be safely hidden behind a rolled-up carpet in the corner.

  But it was empty there. Erinn’s panic escalated. Losing physical vessel while astral projecting was the worst nightmare for any Spirit User.

  Erinn froze for a moment. She closed her eyes, fighting the vertigo, and desperately performed a sensory input switch. She deactivated her spiritual tactile senses and shifted her focus to the Proteum one.

  A signal pinged, though it fluctuated due to her poor concentration. Location: (approximately) twenty meters north. Erinn moved toward it. Right next to the post was a single-story house with a lush backyard.

  It was a neat mini-garden. Medicinal herbs in the soil, rows of potted lime trees, and a PVC hydroponic rig mounted on the wall.

  Erinn arrived. But the sight was nowhere near as picturesque as the garden. The primadonna's true body lay on the grassy ground, leaning against the wall of the house. Remained unconscious, with her torso tilted and the head hanging limply.

  Hands were shackled behind her back. Wrists and ankles tied by blue nylon rope. Meanwhile, sitting casually on a plastic chair beside was a teenager wearing an identical school uniform as her true body.

  Erinn layered her uniform with a loose, oversized cream-colored hoodie. Hood pulled up to hide her glaring blonde hair, and white cloth mask covering her mouth and nose.

  And the guy next to her? Uniform and hands smeared with black engine oil. It was Arua.

  Erinn's heart stopped a second. Eyes locked onto him in absolute horror, ignoring the hostage situation of her own body. "Impossible..." Erinn hissed, her voice shaking. "He's... alive?"

  Logic and memory crashed. She saw it with her own eyes less than five minutes ago, Arua's Ophema body pierced by an arrow, collapsing, and disintegrated back into the Existentiuum.

  Death in Ophema meant death in Proteum. If a soul was destroyed, the physical brain would die permanently. No respawns. No continues. So what the fuck was sitting in front of her now?

  Arua greeted Erinn's spirit with a sly smirk. His greasy hands reached toward her physical body. "Surrender... Or I'll start messing with your body..."

  With an agonizingly slow movement intended to provoke, Arua pulled back Erinn’s cream hood. He lifted the hidden blonde hair beneath, exposing them to the sunlight.

  Erinn's reaction was unexpected. "DON'T!" she screamed. A split second later, she did something specific: she tightly covered both of her eyes with her right palm.

  "Huh?" Arua frowned in confusion. But before he could process the psychological anomaly, a heavy gust of wind blew in from the side.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Gio arrived at the location. The demon had lost her trail due to the speed gap, but pure hunter instinct dragged him straight to this backyard. He scanned left and right until he found the target: a Valkyrie in white-and-gold combat suit.

  "FOUND YOU!" Gio lunged forward. Electrified machete raised, ready to cleave the target right while she was standing there, vulnerable, with her eyes covered.

  However, the execution was aborted the exact moment Gio's eyes caught another figure chilling on the plastic chair. His feet gripped the dirt for braking, carving small trenches before he stopped right behind Erinn.

  Gio’s jaw dropped. His reaction was same as Erinn's. "A-Arua... Still alive...!?" The murderous intent evaporated instantly, replaced by sheer confusion. The electric machete faded away.

  "Like hell I'd die from that," Arua chimed in casually. Gio stood frozen. Brain failed to process the input data. Was this... a prank?

  Then, his eyes shifted onto Erinn's physical vessel, snoozing and tied next to his cousin. This time, the data was processed successfully. "She hid her body here...? But how did Aru know? No—...More importantly, how is he alive!?"

  "L-Let me return to my body..." Erinn pleaded. Slowly and hesitantly, the girl walked toward her physical form while keeping her eyes tightly shut. Left hand feeling the air like a blind person. Arua and Gio exchanged confused glances.

  "Is my face so ugly you refuse to even look at it?" Arua quipped, slightly offended.

  "That's not it!" Erinn snapped, still keeping her eyes closed.

  Unsure of what to do, Arua just let her pass. Erinn stepped slowly, guided by the Psion-wave connecting her soul and body. She finally arrived in front of her physical vessel.

  Erinn initiated the re-entry. Three seconds flat, Ophema consciousness fully transferred to the Proteum. Her spiritual body just dropped to the dirt. Without a "pilot" to control, its existence dissolved. Degradation process began. Exactly like Arua's previous fake "death": the form faded, shattered into particles, and vanished into thin air.

  Then, Erinn's eyes opened. Her blue iris stroma flared back to life. But she wasn't a flying Valkyrie anymore. She was just a captured teenage girl, hands tied behind her back.

  "Hey! Let me go!" Erinn groaned. No attempt to break out. She knew it was futile.

  Arua remained seated. Head down, pretending to clean his fingernails. "Nope," he said casually.

  Erinn growled. Gio, brain still colonized by thousands of questions, finally spoke. "I... Sorry, I really don’t understand what is actually happening..." Gio stared at his cousin, begging for an explanation. "How can you be alive again!?"

  Erinn dropped a hypothesis. "Don't tell me all of that was just an illusion?" Made sense, but nope. Arua didn't have the illusion ability.

  "Nah," Arua answered lightly, turned to Erinn. "I just side-stepped a few inches." He pointed the gap between his left chest and his arm. "Then I created a silicone pouch full of red paint here, right before your arrow hit." Arua grinned. Yeah, Erinn's arrow just pierced the silicone, not the body. The Assassin costume hid the pouch perfectly. The 'blood' they saw? Just thick red paint bursting from the punctured silicone. All crafted via material transmutation Nexus.

  "LMAO, you guys are so damn fool!" he mocked, pointed back and forth between Gio and Erinn's dumbfounded faces.

  Gio just rub his forehead in silence. He was used to being the victim of his cousin's mischief, but this was way out of bounds.

  Erinn, meanwhile, shot Arua a cynical gaze. The explanation was incomplete. "Impossible..." she argued. "I saw you disintegrated. Spiritual degradation can’t be faked with a cheap trick."

  Arua ceased his laughter, looking at Erinn with an obnoxious smile. "Oh, that part? Not a trick. That was real."

  "Huh?" Erinn froze, her brain buffering. Beside her, Gio's eyes lit up. "Oh!" He remembered. Arua indeed possessed a primary ability about “quick displacement”. Just like back in Chapter 2—when he dropped from the power line and reappeared right next to Gio. But to do that, he had to self-destruct. He didn’t die; he just relocated. That whole atomic degradation show? Just a visual side effect of a complex, controlled Nexus.

  Arua pushed himself off the chair. "Oi, Blondie... Ah, what was your name again—" he casually asked, strolling over to Gio's side.

  Erinn's eyes widened a little. As the school's primadonna, the existence of Purwokerto High School student who didn’t know her was a statistical anomaly. "You don’t even know me?"

  Arua stroked his chin. "Hmmm... Ririn?"

  "Who the hell is Ririn!?"

  Erinn let out a long sigh. With her hands still tied behind her back, she used her knees—leveraging her curled-up position—to slide down the medical mask hiding her face. Her soft lips finally caught some fresh air.

  She initiated the official Association introduction protocol. "Elyna Liselotte Erinn. CodeName: Valkyrie. ID: D12/S/20/00647. Class: Disciple IV. Rank 16 of Purwokerto City Association." Erinn recited the line with perfect articulation, much like soldier reporting to their commander.

  "ID coin in my wallet," she added. Not actual currency coin, but a tin Nisaga plate stored a unique code in both Proteum and Ophema simultaneously. Basically an unhackable, un-replicable guild member ID.

  Arua nodded slowly, acting like he gave a damn. "Alright, my turn. Ahem. Aruna The Harem King. CodeName: Yo Mama's Ass Destroyer. ID: XYZ12345. Class: 11-C. Rank 1 The Most Handsome Man in Purwokerto."

  A gentle breeze blew, carrying a dry leaf across the awkward silence.

  "Huh?" Erinn blinked. "Is that... your Association ID?"

  "Hell no. I'm not a member," Arua answered casually. No point of lying; he didn't have a fake ID coin anyway.

  Instantly, Erinn's expression flipped, from confused to full alert. "What—Hey! You're an illegal Spirit User...?!" she snapped. "You should’ve been imprisoned by now!"

  "Prison for what?" Arua scoffed. "I'm not an Association member. Your stupid rules and red tape don't apply to me."

  "It’s not about bureaucracy! Association is responsible for all Supernaturalists across the globe, including this city, including you!"

  Gio felt the temperature rising and tried to play peacekeeper. "Umm, sorry to interrupt—"

  "Demons don’t speak!" Erinn snapped fiercely, cutting him off with a glare.

  "Cruel..." Gio sulked. "I already told you I’m a Demihuman!”

  Erinn stared at Gio with utter disgust. "Damnit, I didn’t know demons these days have evolved this fast. They use 'demihuman' alibi and hijack human bodies to infiltrate the school! Unforgivable!"

  "Tch," Arua interrupted, sounding annoyed. He thumbed at Gio beside. "Listen, Miss Rank 16. Yeah, he's a demon. But trust me, he's harmless. I bet you he's more 'human' than you."

  Gio's eyes sparkled. "Aru... You can actually praise me?"

  "—Even if he's an idiot, reckless, and a walking embarrassment."

  Scratch that. Gio instantly canceled his gratitude. Back to deadpan.

  Erinn remained unconvinced. She looked between Arua and Gio, scanning for a lie. "Then explain to me," she demanded. "How does he have a human body? Must be a forbidden ritual, right?"

  Arua answered calmly. "I’m the one who transformed him into demihuman. I take full responsibility for him. No weird rituals whatsoever. It’s just science."

  Erinn’s eyes narrowed, trying to run a simulation on this "science" logic, but failed. This completely broke her common sense. Even if it was true, she spotted a massive moral red flag.

  "Then... Where did you get the physical body?" Erinn asked, full of suspicion. "Don't tell me you killed the original owner just to—"

  "Shut the fuck up." Instant silence. Arua's voice dropped with cold and heavy intonation.

  Arua glared dead into Erinn's blue eyes. The playful expression from a second ago wiped clean. "Saying I killed him... Is equivalent to insulting him."

  Erinn was struck muted. She knew she just stepped on a massive landmine. Meanwhile, Gio gulped hard as a memory flashed through his mind.

  Arua had once told him that the original owner was his close friend. Someone precious. Probably some heavy trauma backing that up. No wonder he was mad.

  But Erinn lacked the lore context. She chose to stick to the protocol. Her fear got overridden by her sense of justice—or maybe just stubbornness.

  "I'm still reporting you to the Association."