Standing on the vortex, Ryuk exhaled deeply as Isha disappeared back into the Pet world. The blue-haired lady also rose, the vortex beneath them spinning, but then—
PTTTCCHHH
A sizzling sound, as if water had been thrown into fire, rang out.
Ryuk looked beside him, feeling his hand grabbed by the blue-haired lady.
But just before he could voice out his confusion, his body suddenly became wobbly, as if he were jumping onto water.
The entire world froze for a couple of seconds before everything came to a stillness, and Ryuk felt his feet touch solid ground.
Beside him were the towering trees of the forest, the chirping of birds filling the air. He almost jumped in joy.
"We’re back at the forest..." Ryuk mused, looking around. Immediately, his eyes locked onto the distance, where he felt the connection to the wormhole he had used to arrive here.
Without hesitation, he shot forward toward the area.
"You! Wait for me!"
She called out as she rapidly ran after Ryuk, whose body weaved through the trees with ease.
Soon, he arrived before the teleporter, but his gaze dimmed when he saw it.
When he had first arrived, Ryuk had torn apart the castle the hurayga bees had built over the wormhole. Now, another castle—this one even grander—had been reconstructed in the same position.
"Guess I’ll be crashing through their castle twice," Ryuk mused to himself before shrugging away any pity he had for them.
These things had almost stung him to death the first day he arrived. He was already being merciful by not wiping them out of existence entirely.
"Huuu!"
"Hey! Can you slow down a bit?" she asked. Ryuk turned to look at the blue-haired lady.
She had somehow lost that aura of high-profile elegance that usually surrounded her. Her hair was in disarray, branches of trees clung to her hair, and hot air puffed out of her lips.
Ryuk looked at her oddly.
"It was just a simple run," he replied innocently.
"Simple run!? Since when was the last time I even ran? Just tell me before you sprint off next time..."
"Okay, ma’am, will do," Ryuk replied sarcastically before dipping his consciousness into his spatial ring, quickly retrieving a vial.
His gaze turned toward the buzzing bees, who had started noticing them and were immediately swarming forward in attack. B
ut Ryuk’s expression didn’t change in the slightest as he slowly strode out, stepping toward them with a simple will—
"HARDEN!"
All of the bees paused mid-flight, their wings held in a frozen stillness.
"Seems like my Will Control has really improved," Ryuk mused as he began walking forward through the silent swarm.
What he had done was simply harden the space around the bees in a circular format, causing each of them to become completely motionless—a clever way of shaping space into something tangible. Now, he was using it to form a barricade around the bees, one they couldn’t cross.
Arriving before the bees’ newly built structure, he slowly raised his leg and delivered a single kick, sending the entire thing flying thirty meters straight before it shattered into pieces.
"Ahhh, so refreshing," Ryuk mused with a bit of a chuckle before bending down to the teleporter.
He popped the vial’s cap and poured the blue-red liquid onto its surface.
Immediately, the liquid spread through all the intricate rune lines before fading into them.
Everything remained silent as Ryuk watched on, but the same couldn’t be said for the lady beside him.
"Hey, that’s it!? Where’s the teleporter?" she asked, but Ryuk kept his gaze fixed on the teleportation platform, though even his heart was hammering like a gong within his ribs.
The last thing he wanted was to get stuck here after all his troubles.
But his worries were for nothing. A dark pillar of light suddenly burst forth, piercing through the sky. Ryuk flashed a smug grin.
"Quick, it won’t be open for long," Ryuk stated as the light slowly coalesced back onto the surface of the teleporter, and a vortex slowly spun to life.
"What’s your name, anyway?" the lady suddenly asked as Ryuk watched the vortex take form.
"Ryuk," he replied curtly.
"I’m Asterylaxia," she said, rolling her eyes at Ryuk.
As the vortex fully formed, Ryuk signaled to her, and without hesitation, Asterylaxia jumped in, disappearing into the vortex.
Ryuk followed right after, and quickly, the vortex closed behind them.
The moment they disappeared, the space around the bees lost its hardened state, and they immediately flapped toward the teleporter, trying to chase down the one who had destroyed their home.
But the vortex suddenly closed on the fastest ones, severing their necks and waists in the process.
The rest of the surviving bees buzzed in anger before they reluctantly restarted their home-building.
’Hopefully, that evil white-haired thing never visits again...’
---
The sensation was just as Ryuk had felt before—
The world coming to a frozen stillness, yet his insides being filled with the sensation of flying rapidly through something.
Through this pitch darkness, he could faintly sense a figure flailing around near him. Ryuk stretched out his hand into the dark space, grabbing her and stopping her from tumbling any further.
He didn’t know why she wasn’t balanced like him, but the last thing he wanted was for the teleportation to fail.
The silence stretched longer than usual, sizzling sounds ringing out curiously, before finally, light was revealed once more.
Ryuk felt himself being thrown outward, but he skillfully rolled in the air before landing crouched on the ground.
THHHUUUUUMMMPPPP
A louder impact resounded nearby. He turned to the side—
Two legs wobbled in the air, and ahead, half-buried in the rocky ground, was Asterylaxia.
CRACKLE
PUFFFFFF
Asterylaxia finally pulled her head out of the ground, her face swollen in anger. Slowly, she turned to the side, finding Ryuk standing there, completely unharmed.
"You... How!?"
"You cheater!" she exclaimed as she stomped toward Ryuk and threw a punch— which stopped midway.
It froze five centimetres away from Ryuk’s chest, the space around him having hardened.
"It’s not my fault you seem to have a bit of bad luck, is it?" Ryuk smirked.