The balls passed through the space where Zoro had been standing a fraction of a second earlier.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Shattered concrete scattered across the opposite wall and a thin dust cloud rose in the narrow alley.
One of the Shiketsu students froze mid-movement. He looked at the empty space in front of him. Then to the right. Then to the left.
No trace of Zoro. No sound of footsteps. No visible movement. The space that had been occupied simply stood empty, as though no one had ever been there.
Seiji closed his fist slowly. "Where..."
He stopped.
A cold pocket of air moved against the back of his neck.
His entire body locked up. Only his eyes moved, toward the right.
Zoro was standing directly behind him.
Close enough that Seiji could hear the quiet of his breathing. His hands rested inside the kimono's pockets and his shoulders were completely relaxed, the look of someone who had been standing in this exact spot for a long time and found nothing worth noting. He hadn't raised a sword. He hadn't touched Seiji. But something weighted the alley in that moment without anyone moving.
One student opened their mouth and then closed it. Another stepped backward without registering the movement.
Zoro's rough voice reached Seiji's ear.
"Shishi Kage (Lion Shadow)."
Beep.
One electronic sound cut through the silence.
Seiji blinked slowly. Then looked down.
One ball. Attached to his target. Precise. Clean.
His pupil trembled. How? When?
He spun around.
Zoro had already moved past him. His back to Seiji. Walking at the same unhurried pace. All three swords at his hip, entirely undisturbed.
"Insolence." The word pushed itself through Seiji's teeth.
Zoro stopped without turning. He raised his head slightly.
Seiji controlled his voice and spoke evenly. "To treat an official exam this way..." He raised his eyes. "It is utterly disgraceful."
Zoro gave him one sideways glance with nothing behind it. "One was enough."
He paused.
"The rest would be pity."
Silence held for one full second.
Then the space detonated.
"Grab him!" "Right side!" "Don't give him room!"
Projectiles launched from every direction at the same second. Flames. Ice. Metal spheres. Air bursts. The alley became pure chaos.
But through all of it, Zoro didn't move backward.
He stepped forward.
He tilted his head slightly and a fireball passed beside his cheek by less than a centimeter. One more step and his body lowered, and a metal sphere passed exactly above his hair. He jumped over a broken wall and rose into the air.
Crack. The wall exploded behind him in the same moment.
"Did we hit him?!" "We didn't hit him!"
He appeared on top of elevated ruins with no warning. Then he swung his arm in one simple motion.
Boom.
A sharp air current drove through the incoming attacks and bent their trajectories. Projectiles curved off course. Angles shifted completely.
One student's eyes went wide. "Wait!"
Too late.
Crack. The ball attached to their chest. A second student launched an attack that rebounded off the wall directly back at them.
Crack. Their chest too.
Breathing started breaking rhythm. One of them stepped back involuntarily and shouted with a rattled voice: "He's using our attacks against us."
"Don't fire randomly!" "Where is he?!"
In the monitoring room, Miss Joke stopped smiling. She stepped close to the screen and narrowed her eyes. "Wait. Has he drawn his sword yet?"
Aizawa lifted his coffee cup. "No."
She turned to him. "No?"
He took a small sip. "That's the bad part."
Below, Seiji stood in the middle of the chaos and his eyes swept every direction. No sign of Zoro. No trace. No sound. Just his classmates dropping one by one from no visible origin.
Then.
Click.
A shoe on the ground behind him.
Seiji's body locked entirely.
Zoro reappeared. This time his hand rested on Sandai Kitetsu's hilt. A small smile on his face. A smile that held no joy in it.
"Done playing."
His body lowered slightly.
Then he was gone.
Boom.
The air inside the alley detonated. His shape became overlapping black lines moving between the students at a speed no eye could honestly track. Broken shouts. Consecutive impacts. Bodies spinning. Balls flying in every direction.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
The electronic sounds followed one after the other at a terrifying pace.
Dust filled every corner of the alley and swallowed everything.
For several seconds, no one moved.
Then the cloud began slowly dissolving. In the middle, Zoro stood and returned Sandai Kitetsu to its sheath with one definitive sound. Around him, Shiketsu students on the ground. Wide pupils. Broken breathing. Not one of them trying to rise.
Seiji stood alone, looking straight ahead, saying nothing.
Zoro walked past him. Past him and gone. He never looked at him.
"You're a monster." The words left Seiji's chest quietly.
Zoro didn't stop. "I told you."
One step.
"I never said..."
Another step.
"I was a hero."
In the monitoring room, the automated alert filled the space. "Sixteen students eliminated in the urban zone simultaneously."
Miss Joke came out of her chair and nearly knocked over her coffee. "Sixteen at once? Who did that?"
She looked at the main screen. One green point standing alone in the middle of a sea of extinguished red points. She turned slowly toward Aizawa, who was watching the screen with half a smile he was working very hard to conceal.
Aizawa spoke in a low voice. "It seems scattering my heavy hitters wasn't tactical suicide after all, Joke." He paused for a moment. "Some wolves are only dangerous when they separate from the pack."
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