Chapter Text
[Dungeon Rewards:]
- 1. +50 Stat Points
- 2. The Key to Heaven’s Gates
- 3. Rune Stone Part 3/7: Patience
- 4. Rune Stone Part 4/7: Temperance
- 5. Rune Stone Part 5/7: Kindness
- 6. Rune Stone Part 6/7: Diligence
- 7. Rune Stone Part 7/7: Humility
*******
[The Seven Virtues have been assembled]
[You have obtained Rune Stone: Order]
[You now have both Chaos and Order Rune Stones]
[Chaos and Order have merged to created Rune Stone: Soul Manipulation]
[Hidden Quest Rewards:]
- 1. Crown of the Monarch
- 2. Crown of the Empress
*******
The System was handing out quite a few unique trinkets, but neither Izuku nor Momo were focused on it, because they were busy freaking out.
“Where’s the gate?!” Izuku asked no one in particular.
“Do you think it’s because Ava killed themself?”
“I do not believe that I am powerful enough to affect the functionality of a Gate. Whether alive or dead, my Lady,” Deep Blue clarified.
Izuku and Momo were less concerned about being trapped inside the Gate forever, though that was a concern, and more worried about the Raid on Jeju, which should’ve been starting any minute now.
[Keys of Heaven and Hell have been combined to forge: Key of the Monarchs.]
*******
[Key of the Monarchs:]
- Item Class: National-Rank
- Item Type: Artifact
- Gem Slots: 0
- Description: Whomever shall hold this key has access to all Floors of both the Lux and Tenebris territory at any time.
*******
[Crown of the Monarch/Empress:]
- Item Class: National-Rank
- Item Type: Artifact
- Gem Slots: 0
- Description: Despite the name, these two items are small rings to be worn by the Monarch and Empress. Any Lux or Tenebris within the Dungeon shall recognize it as the symbol of their leaders and should submit to the rule of the Monarch and Empress.
*******
“Wait… does that mean…”
“We have a new base of operations,” Momo finished with a smile. She was less excited about having a domain to rule over and more excited about the extensive magical data within the Lux computers on the top floor. There were a few things she would’ve loved to start researching right then and there, but Jeju came first.
Equipping the rings and pulling the key out of the inventory, they saw that all three items were made of the same black obsidian of the Tenebris and the white marble of the Lux, blended in an aesthetically pleasing way.
“I believe the exchanging of rings is a momentous occasion amongst humans, my Lady,” Deep Blue said, gesturing to the matching jewelry.
Momo balked and recalled Deep Blue into her Shadow immediately. “Ahem. We should uhm… get going.” She swept her arm, her entire outfit dazzling and refitting itself. When it was complete, Izuku wasn’t sure where to look.
Izuku’s Shadow Monarch outfit had always been dark jagged armor, intimidating and kingly. But Momo’s had basically just been a mask and a cloak. Now, she had a more royal appearance. It was certainly more alluring, to say the least.
In a way, it almost resembled the erotic ritual dress her parents had put her in, but much less sheer. Trails of fabric fell from her back. The same dark mask hid her face, but her onyx-black hair was allowed to run down her back.
And even though it looked bad for combat, it operated on the same illusion magic as her public Hero outfit. She still had the same Vitality Stats, and most of the fabric was an illusion, so it wouldn’t impede her in battle. Basically it was a makeover, and it worked, because it made her look like a true Queen of the Dead.
She snatched the key from a somewhat flabbergasted Izuku, who was doing his best not to gawk, as it was a rather… “fine” outfit that would draw many eyes.
“Have you… been speaking to Midnight?” Izuku asked.
Momo caused a Gate to appear, a portal back into the real world, under the bridge that they had left through. “Well… I did get some fashion lessons from her.”
“Oh god…” Izuku smiled in spite of himself. “Don’t let her into your head too much, she’s a bad influence.”
Momo chuckled and turned back to the reunited family behind them. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back soon. We-”
“We’re coming with you!” Esil declared.
“What?!” Izuku looked over in shock. “But you guys just got your family back together! There’s no way you can just run into a war zone!”
“You did the same for us,” Merrix responded. “We never would have made it here, we never would’ve seen Esil again if not for you.”
“But… we didn’t do it out of sheer altruism…” Izuku admitted shamefully, referring to the System. “We had something to gain.”
“It doesn’t make what you did for us any less impactful. And I feel like we’ve gotten to know each other a fair bit. I know you also helped us because you wanted to. It’s okay to have more than one motive,” Quorra said with conviction in her eyes. The same was true of Merrix.
Esil on the other hand, Izuku wasn’t sure about. He had expected her to be little more than a toddler, but in reality she looked older than him. And she probably was. Time was weird for long lived beings.
She still looked a little out of it, likely because of a mix of her stasis and watching Ava kill themself. But she didn’t look any less sure of the decision than her parents.
“Izuku, unless they get ganged up on by multiple S-Ranks, they’ll be fine,” Momo assured him, looking more appreciative for their offer than worried. “I can have Takashi send an alert about them so no one targets them. Whatever you felt on the island,” Momo’s eyes burned with fire behind her mask, “We’ll handle it ourselves.”
Izuku almost felt nostalgic for a moment. The old Momo was a soft spoken delicate girl. It wasn’t like Momo wasn't kind now. She still had a lot of what made her attractive to Izuku in the first place.
Rather he felt like he did back when he was an E-Rank, looking up to the powerful A-Rank that was Momo, wondering how he could ever be like her. She had grown just as strong, if not stronger, than Izuku. He has never really stopped looking up to her.
But now he felt like they were truly equals, truly walking alongside each other. Izuku’s hesitancy faded.
Throughout the Dungeon, Momo had been the confident one. Izuku had been full of fear and concern, uncertainties and nerves. It was the remnants of his E-Rank status, hanging in the back of his mind like a ghost. Some of those E-Rank instincts had kept him alive, kept him going, but the rest of it was just holding him back.
No matter what he thought of himself, no matter what others thought, he had been reborn. He was still Izuku, but he was also more. He was a humble king, who ruled an army of loyal soldiers… alongside a queen who loved him dearly, now with her own loyal subjects of shadowy steel.
There was no longer room to be afraid of losing what he had gained. All that was left was to fight to keep it.
Izuku smiled, a pounding excitement in his own heart. “You’re right. Let’s go.” He turned to the small family, “All of us.”
The second they emerged from that Gate, hidden beneath that underpass, both Izuku and Momo’s phones began to ring as their functionality was restored.
“How did Takashi get my phone number?” Izuku asked in disbelief. Then he smirked in satisfaction as a realization crossed his mind. “I knew it!”
Momo was the first to answer, “What’s-”
“GET TO JEJU NOW!” Takashi’s voice blared from the phone, even though he wasn’t on speaker phone.
Izuku didn’t question the order, grabbing Momo and the three beings of heaven and hell. And he triggered his Dark Magic, teleporting them to Jeju. There was just one issue. Izuku emerged in the scorched forests of Jeju alone.
It appeared that Dark Magic teleportation only worked for the person wielding it.
But Izuku cast aside that concern. Momo had Kaisel, she’d get them to the island within minutes.
He scanned the area, looking for whatever the source of that concentrated evil had been. All he saw were two bodies.
One was relatively intact, belonging to Ryukyu. Her bones were bent and her internals were likely damaged, but her heart still had a strong rhythm to it. Izuku didn’t have healing magic, and the System’s Store didn’t sell any sort of healing items so he couldn’t do anything but wait for Esil, who apparently had immense potency with barrier and healing magic. As an S-Rank, Ryukyu would last until they got there, but the other body was far more mangled.
“Lady… Nagant…” Izuku gasped as he knelt next to her, not recognizing her until he did so. Her body was so lacerated, so torn up, that Izuku wasn’t even sure if she was still alive.
But somehow… she spoke.
“Ah…” She tried to take a breath, the sound not dissimilar to the tearing of paper. Her lungs were in bad shape, same as her throat. “It’s… you… right?”
“Yea, it’s me,” Izuku answered without hesitation. He wasn’t sure if she was hallucinating and seeing a past relative or loved one or something else entirely. He just knew that in times like these, it was best to give the dying peace of mind.
He scooped up her remaining hand in his. The other arm was hanging by little more than a few strands of sinew.
“Ah… you saw them too… the dreams?” Izuku didn’t respond, because somewhere in his subconscious, the pieces were clicking together. A woman laying in a bloodied heap, a sniper rifle next to her. This wasn’t the same visage as the dream itself, but it was remarkably similar. “You’re the boy… with green… hair?” Izuku was still wearing his armor. There were no identifiable features one could glean from that alone.
“How…?”
“You saved… me… I wanted… to thank you…” Her lips moved into an ugly shape, but in reality, she was smiling. “Now… go save them…” Her eyes were directed at the mountain, wherein Izuku felt the heart of darkness that was poisoning the island. He could also feel a familiar aura, fighting for her life.
“Miruko…” Izuku looked back down at Nagant. “Just hold on… please! Help is coming, just stay awake!” It tore into him to get up and leave her. He had questions, lots of questions, but there was literally nothing more for him to do… aside from fight.
*******
10 Minutes Earlier:
“Dammit hurry!” Sung Jin-Woo roared as the Korean team, plus Miruko and Mirio, rocketed through the caverns. As soon as the Nomu Queen had felt their presence, she began to shriek a horrible sound and flee deeper into the caverns.
The Queen was a fat disgusting blob of black ooze, but it managed an impressive speed despite that, walking on spindly legs made of dark flesh. To an outside observer it might look like the Venom Symbiote, from Marvel comics.
However, in these tight passage ways, where every angle was a surface for Miruko to springboard off of, she was the real Queen.
“Hiyah!” She yelled, her armored shins slamming into the side of the Nomu Queen.
The blob of inky goop went flying, ricocheting off the tunnel's walls a few times like some disgusting pinball, until the cavern opened up. It was a massive dome, which also housed a good deal of Nomu. She had led them here, likely by chance.
The Queen scuttled to one of the cavern walls, her body malformed.
Although Nomu Queens were essentially highly evolved slimes, they still had some internal structures that could be damaged. They were invertebrates, and lacked a brain, unlike the Nomu that the Queens birthed. Essentially, they were jellyfish, which was why the idea of a Nomu Queen leading them into a trap was so absurd.
The innermost structure of the Queens was a singular nerve cluster wrapped in muscle, surrounded by a massive layer of gelatinous goop, which itself was surrounded by the final membrane of the Queen. When the nerves and muscles went to create and move a limb, they tensed up in order to force rigidity.
If that was all, then the Queen would be a formidable opponent. However, the slime that surrounded the muscles and nerves was made of special cells, the equivalent of stem cells, but for Nomu. And because they pumped out Nomu so quickly, the cells were extremely prone to react to outside influences.
So when Miruko kicked the beast, she sent so much power through the shockwave that the cells reacted violently, but without a unifying goal to birth a Nomu, the cells created a strange hard mass around the muscle and nerves, forcing the Queen to cut it off so as to not be slowed down by the tumor. It was all an instinctual reaction that the Queen had no control over. She was just there to create monstrous Nomu, not to fight.
Had the past Jeju Raid teams managed to reach the Queen and survive the onslaught of Nomu, they would’ve easily been able to kill it. But as far as the team knew, they were the first human eyes to lay on this particular Queen.
“Let’s end this,” Choi Jong-In, The Soldier, declared. Out of all the men and women there, he was certainly the most patriotic for his homeland. He lamented his late Awakening, his failure to be there for his brothers and sisters who lost their lives to these abominations.
Of course, there was a problem with his noble declaration, he couldn’t sense the thing outside, tearing the Japanese to pieces. Sung Jin-Woo could, same with Baek Yoonho, the Wolf.
They both knew that this was now a suicide mission. Even ganging up on the monster was a long shot. They could’ve ran, they could’ve tried. But both The Reaper and The Wolf had family back in Korea. If they fled now, they might’ve escaped with their lives, but the Queen would continue to spawn more and more evolved Nomu, and that swarm of flying A-Ranks would consume their country whole. If they ended it now, they felt that their was hope for their families. At the very least, a National-Rank would kill whatever was outside the cavern walls.
If there was one thing Jin-Woo regretted, it was that his wife, and the two kids, Mirio and Miruko, were there with them.
“Yeah,” Jin-Woo smiled, “Let’s end this.”
With Death breathing down his neck, Jin-Woo felt something within himself trigger, his Quirk - Till Death Do Us Part.
The closer The Reaper came to death, the stronger he became. A sense of impending doom was enough to expand his Mana past even Endeavor’s raw energy. Any injuries he received, anything that could bring him closer to the afterlife, would make him that much harder to kill.
With a strength that was approaching the limits of what an XS could do, Jin-Woo shot through the cavern, drawing both of his shortswords, carving through hordes of swarming Nomu, now returning to the nest to defend their Queen.
Choi Jong-In lit his ten fingers with individual balls of fire, letting them lift from his hand and take off. He telekinetically controlled them, throwing them around like bouncy balls, each one burning a hole through whatever it touched.
Lim Tae-Gyu, The Archer, and Eunseok, The Cursed, each began hurling their own magic into the frey. Arrows made of pure energy, and Dark Magic spears. Eunseok may have been able to use Dark Magic, but compared to Izuku’s it was pitiful. It couldn’t even be classified as S-Rank. She was merely elevating A-Rank Dark Magic by pouring more Mana into each attack.
While the Queen lacked a brain, her subordinates did not. The second they realized that Jin-Woo was just the frontline attacker and a nimble distraction, they turned their attention to the ranged fighters.
Min Byung-Gyu, The Doctor, and the trio of ranged combatants backed up as the wave approached, taking cover behind the bodies of Cha Hae-In, The Dancer; Ma Dongwook, The Wall; and The Wolf.
They also stood behind one extremely feisty bunny, who was raring to tear into the Nomu, but waited.
“I thought you’d be gone by now,” Cha said in broken Japanese, referring to her readiness to fight moments ago. Now she was staying calm to ensure her comrades were safe.
“The mission comes first,” Miruko responded, exchanging a glance with the swordswoman. It was one of resignation. They too had sensed the immeasurable power through their ability to smell Mana. Both were just barely holding back their churning stomachs at the disgusting odor.
They may have accepted their approaching deaths, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t fight. It just meant that they were even more prepared to give everything they had… until the bitter end.
Miruko raised her right leg high, until it was almost parallel with her body, swinging it downwards with all the power she had, the momentum causing her body to do a flip, building up even more power until she brought the magical reinforced heel of her armor onto the cavern floors.
To say that it exploded would be an understatement. The ground was shredded into oblivion. But even small objects, moving faster than the speed of sound, were deadly, especially the magical rich stone that had grown denser every passing year.
About a hundred Nomu were wiped off the face of the planet within a fraction of a second. And some of the shrapnel even continued onwards, pelting the Nomu distracted by Sung Jin-Woo, or Mirio, who was fighting alongside him, phasing in and out of reality to avoid any hits.
The Wall’s massive frame and enormous shield absorbed anything that came their direction, and The Doctor’s Enhancement Magic caused everyone in the room to get that much stronger, faster, and durable.
Finally taking her turn, The Dancer began weaving through the colony. Even Miruko had to admit it was brutally beautiful. She twirled and quite literally danced between the Villains, lopping off heads with every step.
Baek, The Wolf, somewhat comically stood in place, not moving an inch from his team. Anything that even got close had its head wrapped in his massive hands, now covered in fur and bearing fangs. He crushed their skulls like eggs.
To the A-Rank cameraman that was behind them, watching the show, it was like a perfect orchestra, not a single thing could be amiss.
“Ready!” The Archer called, a massive bolt of energy hovering above his head. Both Eunseok and Choi added to the bolt with Dark and Fire Magic. By now, it was the size of a ballista.
In sync Sung Jin-Woo and Mirio slammed the ground, causing the Nomu to be flung into the air by the shockwave. At the same time The Archer let the bolt fly.
On its way to the Queen, the bolt incinerated every Nomu it came into contact with, barely even touching the massive amounts of energy built up within the magical attack. It was like a miniature sun engulfing nearly half of the remaining Nomu.
It pierced the Queen with little effort, shredding the gelatinous shell and driving itself into the bundle of nerves and muscle, deleting it from existence.
The Nomu Queen collapsed, a smelly, slimy, dead hunk.
“This is the assault team to all points,” Baek said into his comms, “The Queen is dead!”
“...”
There was no reply. It was expected, but the report was standard procedure.
With the Queen dead, her subjects stopped, beginning to move away from the Heroes and skittering back into whatever tunnels they could find. There were likely still hundreds, if not thousands of Nomu outside the mountain, but right now, the team had other things to worry about.
“Well that wasn’t too bad…” Lim Tae-Gyu said to Eunseok on his right… who was now also missing her head.
“Shit!”
He spun in all directions to find the culprit but there was nothing to be seen. Although, it wasn’t like he had to look hard. After all, the thing was standing near the back of the room, facing the body of his fallen Queen.
For a moment, they stood like that. With the Nomu’s back to them, and the eerie silence, the tension became that of a horror movie right before a jump scare. But the sound that broke the barrier was a pitiful chirp from the monstrous ant-like creature.
“M… Mother?” Its voice blended between Japanese and Korean, a strange harmony that caused The Archer to let loose another magic arrow, this one far weaker than the last.
The ant didn’t even have to turn around to snatch it out of the air. One of its antennae was cut short, and its body was all scraped up, but there was no denying that this beast was a threat reserved for people like Thomas Andre or All Might.
“No… NO!” Mirio shouted as his body began to fade away. “AEIC DON’T DO THI-” He never got to finish his sentence, as the boy phased into another dimension… and didn’t come back. The Heroes couldn’t even process his sentence before he disappeared.
“You killed… mother…” It wasn’t even disturbed by Mirio’s vanishment.
Jin-Woo looked around in a panic, hoping Mirio’s strange disappearance was some sort of trick. But he’d felt magic surrounding the Hero, a magic that was not Mirio’s, before he disappeared. Whatever had happened, it had nothing to do with the Team of Heroes or this Nomu. It was just shit luck.
“You were a threat to our people!” Choi declared proudly, thinking that since the creature could speak human languages, it cared for what they had to say. It didn’t.
Choi and Lim were flung into walls so fast that the resulting shockwave blew out their eardrums. Their internals, like Ryukyu, were damaged, and they immediately fell down unconscious. Even though Min Byung-Gyu could heal them, and he did so, they wouldn’t instantly wake from a blast like that.
“YOU!”
The ant delivered the same blow to Byung-Gyu. He could’ve instantly ripped their heads from their bodies, but instead he bashed them side to side. He now knew his own strength, he knew it surpassed these pitiful excuses for warriors here. He was going to toy with them, tear out every last fiber of their being, and leave them with nothing but a hollow corpse. Slowly, painfully, he would rend them apart.
Like a blur, he went one by one, knocking all of them aside, dispatching them like a toddler throwing their toys around. He carved deep wounds into Ma Dongwook, as the massive tank would not fall unconscious until some of his blood had been drained from his body.
“NO!” Jin-Woo yelled as his wife was thrown to the side like a ragdoll. Not even her immaculate movements could save her. He rushed to her side, shielding her body from any further harm with his own.
At the end of the ant’s spree was Miruko. She was no stronger than anyone else, but her reflexes, her sense of smell, and her powerful hearing allowed her to jump the instant the ant rushed her. It was a close call, but she managed to make it to Sung Jin-Woo’s side
“What’s the call boss?” She asked, hiding the tremors in her voice.
Everyone, aside from Miruko and Jin-Woo, were either unconscious, or had such grievous wounds that moving was a far-fetched idea.
“We try not to die,” He tightened his grip on his shortswords.
“Well that’s always been my motto!” Miruko replied with faux bravado. She began bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Let’s live until we die!”
Unlike Ryukyu, Dabi, or Nagant, Miruko had something that could compete with the Nomu, speed.
Shooting off the ground, bouncing off the walls at every angle, she became a blur, like a cartoon character moving at a ridiculous pace. The ant, with his antenna damaged, couldn’t properly locate her. By the time he had found the point she jumped off of, she was gone.
It was pure chaos, and it was the only reason she was still alive. Animals and their instincts were great at recognizing patterns. It was a cornerstone of their survival. But Miruko defied that. She didn’t have any idea where she was going next. She was just following her instincts.
And while the ant became distracted by the bunny woman, Jin-Woo rushed forwards, his daggers getting close enough to carve a shallow divot into the exo-skeleton of the ant.
Unfortunately before it could do any real damage, the ant reacted, attempting to hit Jin-Woo with the same raw strength that had crippled his wife.
Jin-Woo went sliding back through the cavern, his soles digging into the soil. One dagger was outstretched from the attack on the ant, but the other was in front of his chest, the flat end absorbing the massive amount of power.
Those two daggers were all that the ant couldn’t break. But the ant could break Jin-Woo.
Though his bones held strong, even through the handle of the dagger, his tendons began to stretch and tear from just one blow.
At the same time, Miruko threw all her weight into a roundhouse, right into the ant’s head.
She probably could have blown a hole in the side of the mountain if she tried, but all she managed was to make the exo-skeleton creak from the exertion on it.
Thankfully, Miruko managed to bounce away once more, keeping away from the menace. As long as she could distract him and Jin-Woo could cut him there was a chance for them.
But the monster was undaunted. Instead of trying to repeat the process until he wore out the Heroes, he pulled a play out of Miruko’s book.
Using his wings, he rose to just a few meters off the ground and dropped. Exerting force on his own home, his own nest, hurt him, but it was to avenge his queen.
The explosion, much like Miruko’s earlier kick, caused shrapnel to pepper the entire cavern. Most of it bounced harmlessly off the Heroes’ skin, but there were two wounds that were serious.
One especially sharp piece of rubble tore through Miruko’s right ear, tearing apart the flesh and ruining her sense of hearing as blood trickled into the canal.
Jin-Woo’s wound was far more serious. Instead of an ear, it was his eye that the rubble pierced.
To his credit, he only grit his teeth, attempting to slash forwards as the ant rushed him, taking advantage of the moment.
Unfortunately, Jin-Woo’s depth perception was off. He missed by mere centimeters. Had it been on target, enhanced by his Quirk, now running even harder thanks to his wounds, he might’ve actually cut the Nomu in half.
Instead, the ant’s claws tore into his abdomen. But the second the claws withdrew, and blood spewed forth, the ant’s instincts told him to run.
His wings flapped and he buzzed backwards just in time to avoid a decapitating blow.
Jin-Woo was still standing strong, his daggers leveled at the beast.
“How…?” The ant chirped.
“Because I get stronger the closer I get to death. You can cut me up however you like, but it just makes me more powerful. The only thing I have to manage is the pain. And if it’s just pain…”
“Then you’ve underestimated us!” Miruko yelled, kicking the ant squarely in the back, where his wings were supposed to meet. The right side of her face was drenched in blood, but the grin was still on her face.
She wouldn’t have told anyone. Not in a million years. But All Might was her hero. Not because he was strong, or even kind. It was that smile. If Miruko smiled just like him, she believed she could get through anything.
The delicate area bent, not enough to cause permanent damage, but enough to hurt. Enough to remind the ant that he was toying with these people, and that it would cost him if he didn’t take them seriously. It had already cost him his mother.
That thought alone was enough to ignore the pain, and spin around, grabbing Miruko by the shin and crushing it like it was a dry leaf. He flung her aside, allowing her to smash into a wall next to Cha Hae-In. She just barely managed to stay conscious.
Without her leg, she was worthless, and she knew it. She tried to stand on one leg, but her entire body was shaking. She couldn’t hold herself up, and so she fell back down.
“Dammit… I wanted to go out in a blaze of glory… not a fucking whimper…”
She resolved herself to, no matter what happened, at least kick with her uninjured leg one last time if the Evolved Nomu got close enough.
In the end, Jin-Woo stood alone. With each drop of blood that fell from his abdomen, he could feel his Mana growing stronger. But he could also feel his vision darkening.
There was a limit to this Quirk. It could propel him into National-Rank for a few moments if he was on death’s doorstep. However, in the end, he was still mortal and he still relied on the blood in his body to keep him going.
The ant’s next slash never reached Jin-Woo, he managed to deflect it with his daggers. His arms and wrists ached, begging for Jin-Woo to just give up and let Death take him.
But he couldn’t. Not with his wife behind him. Not with the hopes and dreams of everyone in his homeland still watching. After all, the cameraman, still frozen in fear, was the only person the ant had yet to touch.
Of course, with his vision impaired and still fading, he was an easy target for the ant, his power continuing to expand beyond what it had been moments ago. It was as if life was just now reaching the creature. He felt on fire.
The next blow would be the last. He’d tear the Hero’s neck from his body, and end it so he could play with the other weaklings and enjoy their screams of torment.
His claws and body blurred, becoming an afterimage that no S-Rank would ever be able to come up with.
The tips of his razor sharp talons approached Jin-Woo’s neck, and… they stopped.
“No.” Was all Izuku said, his gauntlet wrapped around the ant’s thin wrist.
“I… we, won’t let you hurt anyone else.” He declared as Shadows emerged from his back, spreading across the cavern. “Isn’t that right?”
A certain knight Shadow had slain a few of the ant’s brethren on the way in, and gotten just enough experience to evolve.
“That’s right my Liege,” Igris declared, his voice deep and reverberating. “It is the duty of a knight… to slay the beast.”
The ant ripped his hand out of Izuku’s grasp, fleeing from the collapsing Jin-Woo to take a more advantageous position away from the Shadows.
Izuku turned back to the only two still conscious S-Ranks in the cavern, his face still obscured by his dark armor. “It’s okay now… For I am here.”