CHAPTER 91: CHAPTER 12

The sudden appearance of the school nurse, Shirohara Retsu, stopping the brutal assault on Seijirou, caused a wave of paralyzing shock among the spectators.

Touka, Rei, Suzune, Rindou, Haruka, Emi, and Yukina all stared, their mouths slightly agape.

Never in their wildest dreams would they have imagined the sweet, soft-spoken school nurse—a figure of health and gentle care—to be the one who decisively intervened in a high-stakes street fight.

Even Yukina and Emi, who knew that Retsu was far scarier than she let on, never imagined this. They don’t even know why she would interfere, or how she could easily stop the guy who defeated Seijirou!

Ayano, who was using the power of Karyoku, was equally bewildered. He stared at the delicate woman who had appeared and caught his Karyoku-infused arm.

Who is this? He has no idea, but he needed to deal with her first.

He tried to move his captured limb, attempting to shrug off her grip, but the arm wouldn’t budge.

What the hell?

He stared at Retsu with a mixture of shock and growing wariness. I’m using Karyoku! The full power of my technique! Yet this woman can easily overpower and restrain me!? Who the hell is she?!

Retsu looked down at the hand she was holding, her expression a mix of distaste and mild revulsion at the sweat and the subtle, lingering trace of Karyoku energy.

Without hesitation, she immediately let go of his wrist.

Ayano quickly seized the opportunity to leap backward, creating distance and observing the woman who moved with such unnerving silence.

His eyes widened slightly.

He actually hadn’t noticed it during her initial arrival, but now, seeing her full body, and concentrating his senses, he saw it: a faint, almost invisible golden energy seemed to be radiating from her entire body.

It was distinct, different, and far more refined than the aggressive, crude force of Karyoku.

What is that? Is this another more advanced form of Karyoku?

Retsu, however, didn’t bother to pay any attention to him as he retreated. Instead, she simply knelt beside the unconscious Seijirou, who was her absolute priority.

Her heart aches seeing the state he was in. This boy, even without a shred of supernatural power, actually dared to confront these supernatural forces.

"You didn’t lose, Seijirou..." She whispered, as if trying to reassure him, "Once you get in touch with supernatural powers, I am sure, there will be no one who can beat you. This time, consider it a draw."

"Who are you?" Ayano demanded, his voice strained and wary, the adrenaline of the fight replaced by a cold dread. "You shouldn’t get involved in this battle!"

Retsu ignored him completely. She caressed Seijirou’s hair gently, then with a feather-light touch, she slowly lifted Seijirou’s limp body and gently moved him several feet to the side, positioning him behind the relative shelter of a discarded wooden crate to ensure he wouldn’t be harmed any further.

Only then did she turn back toward Ayano.

Her eyes, those beautiful, blue eyes, widened slightly, her pupils dilated, turning dull and flat, void of any recognizable human emotion, and her face became a perfect blank slate.

A chill run down Ayano’s spine and he immediately went into combat stance.

He doesn’t know why, but his instincts are screaming at him to run away. It is telling him that this woman is absolutely dangerous!

Retsu reached inside her white coat and took out a pair of sterile surgical gloves, which she smoothly snapped onto her hands.

And, along with the gloves, she simultaneously produced a fan-like spread of ten silver acupuncture needles, holding them expertly between her fingers.

Ayano blinked, "Needles?"

Without warning, she launched one needle toward Ayano’s head.

"Fu—!?" His eyes widened as he immediately tilted his head.

He barely managed to dodge the projectile, with the needle whistling past his ear and embedding itself in the concrete wall behind him with a small ping.

’What was that?!’

But before Ayano could recover his focus, Retsu had vanished from her spot.

In the next instant, she was already standing directly in front of him.

Ayano tried to jumped back, but Retsu grabbed his wrist, preventing him from escaping.

Then came the first strike.

Stab!

"Aaahhh!" Ayano screamed, a sound ripped from deep in his lungs, as Retsu plunged one of her acupuncture needles deep into the center of his palm, simultaneously tightening her hold on his wrist to lock the limb in place.

"This is the hand that hurt him, right?" she asked, her voice a flat, like a dead whisper, with her dull eyes never leaving his face.

Then, without waiting for his words, she plunged a second needle, with clinical precision, into the base of his thumb.

Ayano swallowed his scream this time, driven by shame, and lashed out with his free hand, attempting to land a desperate punch on Retsu’s face.

But Retsu met the attack with terrifying ease, as if such attack couldn’t be more than a bother.

She simply raised a third needle to block the punch, plunging the entire length of the needle through the soft webbing of his striking fist.

"Aaahh!" This time, Ayano screamed in a desperate mix of pain and hot anger. "Damn you! Die you bitch!"

He tried to retaliate with a powerful kick, but the moment he lifted his leg, Retsu—without even as much as looking—tripped his supporting leg with a subtle, impossibly fast motion of her foot, sending him crashing to the ground.

Retsu immediately followed up, driving a needle toward his forehead.

Ayano, reacting on pure combat instinct, forcefully rolled his body to the side, dodging the life-threatening attack by millimeters.

He breathed heavily, scrambled backward, and quickly standing up, his eyes wide, staring at Retsu in raw, undiluted fear.

This woman is completely different. He was certain she was not using the power system he knew as Karyoku, yet he was being utterly suppressed.

Every part of his body screamed that he was fighting something fundamentally stronger, something that felt like death itself.

Ayano had been in many fights where his life was threatened, but this was the first time in his life that he truly felt his existence flashing before his eyes.

Watching Retsu turned towards him, eyes dull, make Ayano finally realized this reality: she was not here to beat him, she was here to kill him.

And that fact sent shiver down his very soul.

Just as he was struggling to regain his calm, Retsu made her move.

She unleashed a blinding flurry, throwing dozens of silver acupuncture needles, and they all struck Ayano’s body in rapid succession, all hitting specific, non-lethal pressure points.

The sudden, severe shock completely immobilized him, his body frozen solid, like a paralyzed prisoner on his feet on the ground, his arms and legs twitching uselessly.

Retsu, her face still utterly emotionless, suddenly broke into a thin, predatory grin.

She walked slowly toward the immobilized Ayano, stepping lightly over the cracked concrete.

"Don’t worry," she cooed, her voice eerily gentle. "You are completely immobilized right now. I have precisely hit your movement pressure points. You won’t be going anywhere."

Retsu took out yet another needle, smaller and finer than the others, "You want to know what else I did to you? Oh, you are going to love this. I know I do."

Without another word, she poked it lightly into a sensitive area of his skin near his ribs.

Ayano instantly convulsed as he felt a pain so intense, so profound, immediately shot through his body that his eyes rolled back in his head, saliva and snot dripping freely from his mouth and nose.

He thrashed weakly, and then, mercifully, his consciousness began to fade.

Retsu observed the reaction, her smile widening, then, acting as if he can hear her, she explained the effect, like she was delivering a biology lecture.

"I have just hit a sensory pressure point. I have successfully heightened your senses of pain by a hundred times. For you, now, even a gentle flick would feel like getting smashed by a massive boulder."

She then inserted a specific needle into a different pressure point, deep into his neck, and Ayano suddenly woke back up, his eyes snapping open wide, only for the renewed, hundredfold pain to immediately threaten his consciousness again.

Yet, this time, he couldn’t pass out, and he felt the pain in full force.

Retsu leaned in, her smile now openly psychotic. "I hit a specific neurological point, my darling. I wouldn’t allow you to fall unconscious when I haven’t even gotten my revenge for what you did to my Seijirou."

Then, under Ayano’s horrified, terrified eyes, Retsu took out a small, gleaming surgical case.

She flipped the lid open, revealing a collection of scalpels and medical tools, including a thin, precise surgical knife.

Retsu smiled, showing the surgical knife mere inches away from Ayano’s face.

"As a direct revenge for what you did to my Seijirou-kun," she whispered, her blue eyes gleaming with maniacal intent, "I am going to perform an emergency, awake nephrectomy. That means I will remove one of your kidneys. You will be completely awake, and thanks to my special treatment, your pain will be enhanced by one hundred."

She chuckled softly, a sound of pure madness, as Ayano desperately tried to move, his paralyzed limbs failing him, his eyes screaming silent terror.

"Don’t worry, dear. I’m a professional doctor. I’m good with my hands."