The movement of the giant flesh mass intensified. The holes on its surface that were previously just gaping and releasing fluid now began to pulse faster, rhythmically like a heart beating in panic.
The disgusting wet sounds grew louder—the noise of flesh rubbing against flesh, boiling fluids, and some kind of unnatural hissing. The creature's surface undulated, forming large protrusions that extended further toward the train.
"Kazuki..." Hannah whispered anxiously, her eyes fixed on the horrifying movements before them.
In a motion too fast for the ordinary eye to follow, several parts of the flesh mass suddenly spurted out—like thick tentacles made of slimy pink flesh. These tentacles not only elongated but also transformed at their tips, forming structures like heads with mouths full of sharp teeth.
In seconds, the flesh tentacles had transformed into dozens of disgusting small creatures—the size of large dogs with asymmetrical bodies, too many crooked legs, and heads dominated by gaping mouths without eyes. The creatures hissed and growled, thick saliva dripping from their mouths filled with irregular sharp teeth.
With surprising speed, the horde of creatures darted toward the train, charging at the already cracked front glass of the locomotive.
Kazuki swiftly pulled Hannah's hand a few steps back, avoiding direct attack from the horde of creatures now breaking into the carriage. His face remained calm.
The creatures crawled in with jerky, unnatural movements, like broken puppets manipulated by unskilled hands. They growled and bit at empty air, slimy saliva dripping onto the carriage floor. Their senses clearly didn't rely on sight, because even without eyes, they could accurately detect Kazuki and Hannah's presence.
The horde of creatures surrounded them, preparing to pounce. But just before the attack began, something strange happened. Without Kazuki making any visible movement, the creatures suddenly stopped. Their bodies trembled momentarily, then began attacking each other brutally—biting, clawing, and tearing each other's flesh.
Some even bit their own bodies, ripping apart their extremities with their voracious mouths. Blackish blood sprayed in all directions, staining the walls and floor of the carriage.
Hannah watched this brutal scene with a mixture of disgust and amazement. She knew exactly what was happening—Kazuki was using his power to control these creatures. Just like what he did to the snakes in the forest.
"Hey, are you just going to keep doing this?" Hannah suddenly asked, slightly frustrated seeing Kazuki who appeared very passive in facing the threat.
Kazuki turned to her with a slightly surprised expression.
"I can fight too, you know," he answered casually, almost sounding lazy. "I'm just too lazy to fight."
"Too lazy" to fight?
"What do you mean saying that?!" Hannah shouted, her voice pitching high with emotion. "Now is not the time to be lazy, you know!"
"Yeah, yeah," he mumbled, scratching the back of his head. "I guess I'll fight."
What happened next was so fast that Hannah could barely process it with her eyes. In the blink of an eye, Kazuki, who had been standing beside her, disappeared. The next second, he was already outside the train, right in front of the giant flesh mass that was the source of all this chaos.
"When did he get there?" thought Hannah, her eyes widening as she witnessed the inhuman speed Kazuki had just displayed. That wasn't normal running speed—it was like teleportation, or at least speed that exceeded the ability of normal eyes to follow.
From a distance, Hannah saw Kazuki standing casually in front of the giant creature.
"Yo, you know you've given me a lot of trouble," Kazuki's voice was clearly audible despite being quite far from the train where Hannah was. He spoke to the creature as if it were an intelligent being that could understand his words.
As if responding, part of the giant creature's body suddenly moved quickly. Dozens of flesh tentacles shot toward Kazuki from various directions, trying to grab and absorb him into the main mass of its body. The attack was so fast and came from so many directions, it seemed impossible to avoid.
But what happened next made Hannah gasp again. The tentacles, instead of hitting Kazuki, attacked each other and turned back to attack the main body of the creature itself. Some tentacles pierced vital parts of the creature.
"Alright, let's end all this," said Kazuki in a casual tone.
Suddenly, something began to form in his right hand. Initially just small sparks, then quickly growing into a blazing fireball. But this wasn't ordinary fire—it was reddish-black with a bluish aura at its edges, radiating heat that Hannah could feel even from her distance.
The fire blazed wildly in Kazuki's palm, yet strangely didn't burn his hand at all. Its unnatural light illuminated the surrounding area.
"Wow, looks like you're afraid of this fire, huh?" Kazuki asked.
The creature did appear to be reacting to the fire in Kazuki's hand—its entire body trembled violently, its tentacles moved wildly and irregularly, and the holes on its surface released more thick fluid in response to the threat.
"But don't expect me to forgive you," continued Kazuki.
With a motion like a professional baseball pitcher, Kazuki threw the black fireball toward the giant creature. The fire shot like a comet, leaving a trail of reddish light in the air. As soon as the fireball touched the creature's body, something extraordinary happened.
The fire didn't just burn the affected part, but as if having its own intelligence, spread with illogical speed throughout the creature's body. In seconds, the entire giant flesh mass was engulfed in fiercely blazing reddish-black fire.
The creature's howl of pain filled the air—a sound unlike anything Hannah had ever heard before. Not a human scream, nor an animal's roar, but something primitive and cosmic, like a scream from an entity that shouldn't exist in this world.
The creature's body writhed and bubbled under the black flames, its tentacles wildly reaching in all directions. But Kazuki's fire showed no mercy, burning every inch of the flesh mass with increasing intensity.
In less than a minute, the entire giant creature had turned into a massive pile of black ash. Kazuki's black fire slowly extinguished itself, leaving the smoking remains of the creature. Nothing remained of the terrifying entity except ash and evaporating fluid creating a thin fog around the area.
"Done," mumbled Kazuki, dusting off his hands.
"It's been a while since I used this magic," he said to himself.
Hannah, who had been fixated watching this extraordinary display of power, finally snapped out of her shock. She hurried out through the broken window, carefully stepping over glass shards and remains of small creatures still scattered about, then walked toward Kazuki.
"You can use magic too?" Hannah asked once she reached Kazuki's side, her voice full of wonder and a bit of undisguised admiration.
Kazuki looked at her with a slightly puzzled expression. "Isn't it obvious?" he answered casually. "I can manipulate or make my body able to use magic. My body couldn't use magic before, but with my power, I can make my body able to use magic." He paused briefly, as if thinking. "I guess anyone who has manipulation powers like mine could do all this too."
Hannah stared at Kazuki with her mouth half-open, trying to process all the information and scenes she had just witnessed. Kazuki's reality manipulation power was already shocking, but his ability to use magic—and magic so powerful it could destroy a giant creature in an instant—that was on a completely different level.
"Isn't your power way too strong?!" Hannah finally exclaimed, half protesting, half amazed.
Kazuki shrugged slightly, returning to his familiar indifferent attitude. "Is it really?" he asked lightly.
Hannah could only shake her head, not knowing what else to say. On one hand, she felt immensely relieved that they had survived such a horrific situation.
They both stood in silence beside the train tracks, surrounded by the remains of ash and fragments from the defeated creature.
"So..." What do we do now? Our train is destroyed, we're still far from our destination, and..." she glanced toward the train full of horror remnants—body parts, pools of blood, and traces of the brutal battle that had just occurred. "It seems no other passengers survived."
Hannah couldn't hide the desperation in her voice. They were in the middle of train tracks, surrounded by an alien landscape with no signs of the nearest settlement. Their destination, Zyranthia City, was still tens—perhaps hundreds—of kilometers from their current position.
Kazuki followed Hannah's gaze, his eyes narrowing slightly as he observed the destruction around them. Unlike Hannah who appeared shaken, the young man still looked calm—too calm for someone who had just faced and destroyed a terrifying entity.
"Can't be helped," said Kazuki after a moment. "Looks like I have to use my power again."
Hannah turned to him quickly.
"What do you mean—" Her sentence was cut off as Kazuki suddenly raised his hand toward the destroyed train.
And then, something completely illogical happened.
In seconds, the passengers who were just scattered corpses now stood or sat in their places, alive and breathing as if nothing had ever happened. Their clothes were neat again, their expressions back to normal—some laughing, some chatting, some sleeping peacefully—without the slightest memory of the horror that had occurred.
Even the giant creature that had turned to ash was now completely gone, as if it had never been there. The train tracks that were severely damaged were now straight and smooth again.
The landscape around them also changed. The ground that was scorched and dirty with blood and flesh pieces was now green again with grass and wildflowers.
This entire process took less than a minute.
"Let's go inside," said Kazuki casually, lowering his previously raised hand. He shook his head slightly.
Hannah stood frozen for several seconds, her brain still trying to process what had just happened. Then, with staggering steps, she followed Kazuki into the train.
Inside the train, the passengers appeared normal and calm. There was no sign that a few minutes ago they were mangled corpses or mutated monsters.
"What happened? Why can't I remember anything?" Hannah heard a lavishly dressed woman say to her friend as they walked through the carriage.
"I don't know, it feels like I just fell asleep for a moment," her friend replied, shrugging casually. "Maybe the train stopped for something, but I don't remember anything."
The train began to move smoothly. Hannah and Kazuki returned to their seats—the exact same seats where they sat before all the chaos began. Their food and drinks were still on the table, intact.
Once they sat down, Hannah immediately leaned toward Kazuki, her voice lowered to an urgent whisper. "Kazuki, what did you actually do?" she asked.
"It's kind of hard to explain," Kazuki began, his voice lowered so other passengers couldn't hear. He sipped his drink for a moment. "I've copied this place, the place is back. I've seen everyone on this train so I can use my power to manipulate space and time."
He paused briefly, his fingers tapping lightly on the table, as if searching for the right words to explain a very complex concept to someone without a background understanding of quantum physics or dimensional matter.
"Only this part is repeated again, like nothing happened," he continued, making a circular motion with his finger to indicate the area he meant. "I can manipulate time and now I've returned time to when humans hadn't transformed into those strange creatures."
Kazuki's fingers moved in the air. "And I can also arrange to make that creature no longer exist in this time, so our journey will be safe."
Hannah slowly shook her head. Time manipulation? Copying places? That sounded like terms from a computer program or video game, not something that should be possible in reality.
"Did you like... turn back time?" asked Hannah, trying to understand. "Like turning the clock backward and preventing that tragedy from happening?"
Kazuki seemed to think for a moment before answering. "Not exactly like that. I didn't rewind global time, just changed local reality—like returning this area to its state before the attack, and ensuring that in this timeline, that creature never appeared to attack the train."
As if reading the confusion still clearly visible on Hannah's face, Kazuki continued: "You might want to ask, why didn't I do this to go back before we were summoned to this world. "Unfortunately I can't do that, that's because at that time I was sleeping in class so I didn't copy everything in the classroom which makes me unable to do that."
Kazuki took a deep breath before continuing, seeing that Hannah still looked confused. "This power requires me to 'see' and 'recognize' the area and people I want to manipulate. When in class, I wasn't paying attention to my surroundings because I was sleeping, so I didn't have enough 'data' to manipulate that event."
He looked at Hannah with a questioning gaze. "Do you understand now?"
Hannah stared at Kazuki with an expression that was a mixture of amazement, confusion, and a little frustration.
"I don't understand what you're explaining at all! "Your power is too crazy for me to understand!!!"