The man looked completely unhinged.
His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and twitching, like they couldn't stay still.
His jaw clenched and twisted into a disturbing expression.
His whole expression radiated instability. It was unnatural and deranged.
Madness wasn't just bubbling beneath the surface. It was literally spilling out from him.
But his crazed expression wasn't the only thing that set him apart.
It was the way his body healed. It was like time itself bent for him.
Flesh that had been mangled and torn beyond recognition simply folded back together.
With a sickening squelch, the shredded meat of his arm reattached as if it had never been severed.
Veins reconnected, muscle knit back together, and skin rewrapped itself over the exposed wound like a zipper being pulled shut.
He placed the limp, falling-apart flesh of his arm back onto the stump where Kouhei had sliced it clean off, and in seconds, it was whole again.
Not even a scar was left behind.
"I'm going to kill the both of you!" he snarled, voice guttural and dripping with venom.
His freshly restored arm clenched into a fist, veins throbbing as his muscles flexed with unnatural strength.
The regeneration was terrifying in its speed.
However, the elegant suit he wore had been shredded along with his arm. The fabric hung in tatters, blood soaking through the seams like ink on paper. It didn't heal. Neither did the dark red stains that clung to him.
"Even your puny lives won't be enough to pay for this," he growled, his voice deep and crackling, as if the rage was burning inside his throat.
Raw mana surged out of his body like a tidal wave.
It pulsed violently in the air, shaking the ground beneath their feet.
The pressure of it alone made Kouhei's skin crawl.
It was dense—nearly overwhelming—and rivaled even someone like Hina, whose mana pool was known to be vast.
"Can we win?" Kouhei asked, stealing a glance at Hina.
His grip tightened around his sword hilt. .
"Of course," Hina said, cool and collected. "We just have to do what we practiced. Nothing more, nothing less."
Kouhei gave a firm nod, forcing his nerves into focus.
"You're both dead!" the man roared, voice sharp like a beast's howl.
Without warning, he lunged at them, the air splitting as he moved like a cannonball fired at full force.
Kouhei stepped forward without hesitation, taking the offensive head-on.
Hina stayed in the rear. Her battlefield was from afar.
Kouhei's bond with Aria allowed him access to her sword techniques, and because of that, he had strength equal to hers.
Every muscle in his body was coiled and ready, trained for this exact moment.
He surged forward like a streak of lightning, sword drawn back, eyes locked onto his target.
Hina stood firmly at a distance, calm as ever.
Her role was artillery, and she knew how to bring destruction from afar. That was her domain.
As a ranged fighter, she could launch devastating attacks from long range. They were explosive, widespread, and precise. The rear line was where she belonged.
This was the plan they had trained for.
Together, this duo could shift the tide of battle. They could tip the scales. And right now, those scales were tilting dangerously against their enemy.
Kouhei had pushed himself hard, driven by the desire to fight on equal footing with the girls around him.
He had endured grueling days and nights, bloodied his hands, and carved his way forward with relentless discipline.
He could stand beside them, not as someone protected, but as someone who could fight for himself.
Kouhei blurred forward, crossing the gap in an instant.
His movements were fluid, practiced, and deadly.
At the same time, Hina's fingers glowed with swirling dark energy.
She conjured a ball of darkness—a sphere that pulsed with crushing force—and hurled it at the enemy with a sharp flick of her wrist.
The black orb screamed through the air like a bullet.
But the man didn't even flinch.
He raised his fingers and flicked.
Just like that, the dark sphere was swatted away as if it were a fly.
It crashed into the distant wall and exploded into nothingness.
Hina narrowed her eyes.
She'd always wondered how he managed it, but now—watching carefully—she could see it clearly.
Her attacks were landing. They were taking effect.
But his regeneration was so rapid, so violently efficient, that it erased every trace of damage the moment it was inflicted.
"That's not gonna work on me!" he bellowed, laughing with unhinged delight. "You think something that puny could do anything to me!? Even Souichiro-sama couldn't put a scratch on me! And you think you can!?"
"…What a troublesome opponent," Hina muttered under her breath.
Yes—this was a real problem.
How were they supposed to win against something that couldn't stay damaged?
Kouhei gritted his teeth and attacked again, pouring everything into his swordsmanship.
His feet slammed hard into the earth.
Dust kicked up as he launched himself forward with explosive speed, blade arcing through the air like a flash of silver lightning.
He closed in fast—too fast for the eye to follow—and slashed.
But it wasn't enough.
The man raised his arm to block, and even when Kouhei's blade sliced through it cleanly, the flesh immediately began to re-form.
The severed muscle and bone came back together, seamlessly regenerating, as though time itself refused to let him be wounded.
But there was a detail—small, almost insignificant—that Kouhei caught.
Each time the man regenerated, he had to physically grab the severed part of his body and reconnect it to the stump. Only then did the healing take effect.
'He can't regenerate unless he reattaches the part', Kouhei realized, eyes narrowing with focus.
Stop the reattachment, and then stop the healing.
"Hina-san!" Kouhei shouted as he quickly moved to her side.
Hina didn't look at him—her gaze stayed locked on the battlefield—but she listened, her fingers still conjuring black spheres of mana and hurling them toward the target.
Each one was dismissed by the enemy with the same effortless flick.
"I'm gonna make sure he can't regenerate," Kouhei said. "The moment I slice off his hand, block him from reaching it. Don't let him get it back."
"And once I've put some distance between us, I'll toss it to you—then you disintegrate it."
Hina responded immediately.
She didn't hesitate, not even for a second.
There was no room for doubt between them. Her faith in Kouhei wasn't just confidence. It was an absolute conviction.
To her, Kouhei's words were as good as a guaranteed outcome. She trusted him more than she ever trusted herself.
With their silent resolve shared, the two launched into action.
Hina's hands glowed faintly with power as she conjured another massive dark sphere, its dense aura swirling with ominous energy.
She hurled it with full force, only for it to be casually slapped aside again, like an annoying gnat.
Kouhei didn't falter.
He kept his distance at first, his eyes narrowed, locking onto the enemy's every movement.
And then... it happened! A brief lapse. An opening.
Without wasting a heartbeat, Kouhei burst into motion, the ground cracking slightly beneath his feet from the sheer force of his sprint.
His sword, drawn back like a loaded spring, gleamed under the flickering battlefield light.
In one swift motion, he closed the distance.
The man's arm, just moments away from deflecting another of Hina's attacks, was sliced clean off, its flesh and bone parting with terrifying ease.
The enemy's roar echoed.
And then—just as the severed arm fell—Hina's black sphere slammed into him directly, the explosion of dark energy sending ripples through the air.
It knocked him off balance, and that moment of recoil gave Kouhei the chance to snatch up the freshly cut limb.
Without hesitation, Kouhei hurled it skyward.
"Now!" he shouted with urgency, voice laced with adrenaline.
Hina didn't miss a beat.
Her hands lit up once more, forming another black sphere pulsing with volatile energy.
She flung it toward the flying limb, and the instant it connected, the severed arm was engulfed in darkness.
The limb disintegrated instantly.
It didn't burn or explode. It simply crumbled.
The flesh and bone turned to fine, weightless ash, carried off by the wind like dust from a ruined monument.
'It worked!' Kouhei's thoughts rang in silent victory.
The arm was gone. It was completely annihilated.
Not just cut off. It was erased from existence.
That meant they had discovered his weakness.
"You really are trying to mess with me..." the man growled, his voice laced with rage and something… off. "What the fuck did you two do to my hand, huh!? Are you seriously that pissed about something that you keep going after it!? Now you've completely ruined it! That was my favorite hand!"
Kouhei and Hina exchanged glances, but neither spoke.
The man's reaction was strange.
He wasn't even particularly worried.
Instead, his tone almost bordered on… annoyance.
"I haven't replaced that hand in centuries... and now you've gone and destroyed it."
Then—without warning—something horrifying began to happen.
The stump on his shoulder started to twitch violently.
Veins bulged. Flesh bubbled. Muscles convulsed.
It was grotesque, like watching meat being molded back into a limb by invisible, frantic hands.
Kouhei's eyes widened. The process wasn't slow. It was terrifyingly fast.
Within seconds, something resembling an arm began taking shape.
"Oh well..." the man muttered, voice deceptively casual, though his eyes burned with madness. "Guess I'll just have to repay the two of you threefold for that."
This man… was a relentless monster with regeneration that defied logic.
He was was turning out to be an even more troublesome opponent than they had imagined.