My Tribrid System: More than a Monster

Chapter 144

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

Kai continued to masticate his apple with rhythmic unconcern, his eyes tracking the two guards rushing toward him.

Even as the distance closed, he remained unhurried, his demeanor characterized by a chilling sort of tranquility.

He remained unperturbed, continuing to chew until the men were well within striking range.

Then, like a binary switch being flipped, his expression sharpened.

He twirled the half-eaten fruit between his fingers and hurled it at his approaching adversaries.

The apple cut through the air with impressive velocity, but a synchronized wave of the guards’ hands conjured a gust of wind that redirected the projectile harmlessly into the distance.

’Oh. Wind abilities? How interesting.’

With a sharp, focused exhale, Kai reached up and adjusted his bandana, pulling one side down to cover his left eye while leaving the right one wide open to track his targets.

’I suppose I’ll take this somewhat seriously.’

Swooosh—!

Two pressurized wind spears, one from each guard, lanced through the air at blazing speeds.

They aimed directly for the tall boy, who watched their approach without so much as a flinch.

Lifting his lead hand, crystalline structures began forming at an astonishing rate, wrapping around his knuckles and forearm like a jagged second skin until his entire limb was encased in a translucent, reinforced gauntlet.

Positioning the guard in front of his face, he allowed the wind projectiles to strike.

Bam—!

The force of the impact managed to shove him a few inches backward, but the wind blades shattered against his crystalline defense, only managing to chip away a few minor shards of the construct.

’Hm. Quite potent. They must be Grade 5 metas at least... which implies their total Meta-Force pool is significant enough to compress atmospheric air and charge it with energy to maintain those blades. Still, their efficiency is rather mediocre... ten-second time lapse.’

As he analyzed their capabilities, the meta-humans manipulated the air currents around their own bodies, boosting their movement speed to impressive heights until they became a dual-colored blur.

Kai readied himself, his single visible eye darting between the two as they successfully flanked him.

Pointing his free hand toward the attacker on his left, Kai discharged a jagged crystal shard that whistled through the laboratory with lethal speed.

In that same breath, he executed a precise slide backward, narrowly dodging a concentrated wind gale at point-blank range.

He snapped his guarded arm up, allowing another wind-based strike to smash into the crystal with the force of a battering ram, causing spiderweb cracks to immediately manifest across the surface of the shield.

Before Kai could even lower his defense, the first guard was already upon him, launching a vicious roundhouse kick.

Kai dipped his head beneath the arc of the strike, reaching out to seize the man’s extended leg.

However, the guard reacted instantly, releasing a violent burst of pressurized air that bashed into Kai’s chest and sent him sliding several meters away.

The second meta rejoined the fray, conjuring a miniature wind tornado that spiraled toward Kai with destructive intent.

More crystals formed around the soles of the boy’s boots, and with a minimal, fluid movement, he skated across the floor to the side, evading the vortex.

The tornado collided with two heavy tables, instantly pulverizing them into splinters.

Twisting his foot against the tile, Kai triggered two crystalline spikes that erupted from the ground, shooting forth with deadly speed toward the tornado-user.

With a sharp clap of his hands, the guard summoned two wind swords, desperately parrying the spikes away, though he clearly struggled against the raw momentum of the crystalline growth.

The first guard took advantage of the opening, crossing the distance to appear before Kai.

He threw a punch heavily boosted by trailing wind currents.

Kai raised his already fractured crystal shield to intercept the blow, but the punch detonated against the surface with explosive force.

The impact widened the existing cracks, sending a shower of translucent shards raining onto the floor.

Right in front of the man, the crystalline shield around Kai’s hand surged, shifting at an incredible velocity to reform.

Then,

Tchakkkk—!

A spinning saw of jagged crystal tore through the air, moving faster than the guard could react.

The concentrated edge struck the man’s fist with devastating precision, lancing through the limb.

Crimson splattered into the air as the man let out a guttural scream of agony, staggering forward as the force of the strike nearly severed the connection from his knuckles down toward his elbow.

Bryce whipped around at the sound of that harrowing cry to assess the collapsing situation.

His breath hitched immediately, his composure finally starting to crumble.

His elite guard was mangled? Bested by a mere student?

Who—who exactly was this kid?

The aura spilling from Kai shifted, turning cold and sinister.

As the second meta-human closed in with a spinning, wind-enhanced kick, Kai didn’t even flinch.

Before the strike could connect, a massive crystal spike erupted from the tiled floor with explosive force.

It intercepted the attacker mid-air, smashing into the man’s butt and ripping through therefore prompting a fresh chorus of screams to burst from his throat.

Bryce gulped loudly, his skin turning a shade of sickly pale.

This- This was brutal.

Despite the heavy damage, the guard with the mangled arm remained defiant.

Desperate and likely knowing this would deplete his entire reservoir of Meta-Force, he poured every remaining drop of energy into a final, suicidal gambit.

Two gargantuan claymores made of compressed, howling wind manifested around him.

With a violent thrust of his remaining good hand, he sent them shrieking toward Kai.

The blades broke the sound barrier, the sonic boom rattling the light fixtures in the laboratory.

Blood leaked from the guard’s nose as he pushed his physical limits to the breaking point; it was clear his Meta-Force was now nearing its limits.

Kai watched the approaching wind swords with an unsettling, glassy calmness.

With a weary sigh, he twirled his hands in a circular motion.

Instantly, a pair of heavy, reinforced crystal gauntlets encased his arms from knuckles to elbows.

Shifting his weight, he exploded forward, propelled by crystalline growths manifesting at the soles of his boots.

Meeting the wind swords head-on, he swung his fists with all his might.

Boooom—!

A violent blast of pressurized air, mixed with a visible shockwave, rippled across the room.

The impact tumbled heavy worktables and spiderwebbed the reinforced floor.

Kai was visibly straining, his muscles tensing as he struggled against the sheer momentum of the wind swords, unable to shatter them immediately.

At that exact moment, the other meta-human—ignoring the spike wound that bled continuously—weaved through the gale.

He used the cover of the swords to get directly into Kai’s personal space.

His teeth ground together in a feral snarl of humiliation and rage; he had been embarrassed in front of his employer, and his pride was as wounded as his body.

If he didn’t neutralize the boy in front of him now, he would never be able to look at his own reflection again.

His fist blurred through the air, boosted by a spiraling tail of wind that culminated in a sharpened, visible spike of air at the apex of his knuckles.

This was a strike intended to be lethal.