On the top floor of the grand Ritsuzen estate lay one of the most heavily guarded and important rooms in the entire compound: the Clan Head's office. It was the absolute centre of power, where the clan's most crucial decisions were discussed, approved, and executed.
Currently, the heavy silken curtains were drawn tight, allowing only a few thin slivers of sunlight to seep through the glass. It provided just enough dim illumination for the Clan Head to read through the documents on his desk.
In the centre of the room, blending perfectly into the gloom, a black-clad shadow knelt respectfully in front of the grand mahogany desk.
"Was there anything of note?" the Clan Head, Ritsuzen Kyora, asked without looking up from his papers.
"Hai!" the masked shadow answered sharply before beginning the report. "The Successor is currently experiencing severe emotional turbulence. It seems..." The shadow hesitated, knowing how dangerous this topic was.
"Continue," Kyora commanded, his voice perfectly flat.
"...It seems the Successor's emotional state has entered the danger zone. There is a chance she may soon snap," the shadow finished, bowing his head lower.
Hearing this, the Clan Head finally paused his reading. He looked up, staring intently at his subordinate in the dark. "How did this happen?"
Kyora had long since figured out that Kaguya was a highly dangerous element within the clan. She was one of those terrifying, once-in-a-generation geniuses whose immense magical talent was intrinsically tied to highly volatile emotions. Because of this, he had secretly assigned his elite shadows to monitor her every move.
"She had an encounter with Ritsuzen Ren in the library just moments before her outburst, My Lord," the shadow answered.
"Hmm." Kyora leaned back in his chair.
Truthfully, Kyora didn't care about Kaguya's emotional wellbeing at all. In fact, he actively hoped that she would snap sooner rather than later. Once her fragile mind finally broke under the pressure, it would be incredibly easy to wipe her consciousness entirely and control her like a puppet, permanently securing a flawless, overpowered trump card for the Ritsuzen clan's arsenal.
Not so long ago, Kaguya had performed exceptionally well during the clan demonstrations and looked up at him with desperate, hopeful eyes, he had known exactly what she wanted: a father's validation. And so, he had deliberately chosen to remain silent. He hadn't even acknowledged her existence, systematically starving her of affection just to accelerate the chance that she would mentally shatter.
In his cold eyes, Kaguya was not his daughter. She was merely a weapon for him to wield. But he certainly hadn't expected his weapon to suddenly latch onto his other, completely useless son to fill that emotional void.
"Ritsuzen Ren..." Kyora murmured the name softly into the quiet room.
"My Lord, on the topic of the boy, it seems Elder Gensai and Ritsuzen Ren have come to some sort of agreement," the shadow informed him.
"Hm? Elaborate."
"It appears Ritsuzen Ren recently offended the Elder's son. Elder Gensai has used that slight as an excuse to force the two boys into a formal duel next month."
"Hmm... It seems this presents a unique opportunity," Kyora murmured, deciding the matter without any further elaboration. "Return to your observation. And do not worry about Kaguya. She will not snap so easily."
**********
Buried deep beneath the sprawling Ritsuzen estate lay rows upon rows of private clan workshops.
To the untrained eye, they looked like a simple, mundane hallway of plain walls and wooden doors. In reality, the entire subterranean level was saturated with countless, overlapping Bounded Fields. These invisible, lethal traps were designed to instantly obliterate even a high-class powerhouse intruder before they even realized they had crossed a threshold. The magical security was so flawlessly woven that not even a stray fly could penetrate the barriers unnoticed.
Right now, locked safely inside one of these heavily fortified workshops, Elder Ritsuzen Gensai was poring over a heavy, ancient tome.
The decaying cover of the book was etched with archaic, mind-bending symbols, specifically enchanted to violently confuse the mind of any unauthorized reader who tried to discern its contents. The dense text within the fragile pages was also written entirely in a dead, unknown language.
Behind him, hidden in the darkest corners of the workshop, sat rows upon rows of glass jars, stacked high in meticulously neat order. Faded parchment labels were affixed to the glass surfaces, detailing the grotesque contents suspended within the murky, preservative liquids.
One such label read: "Stray Devil Heart, 4/3/2001." Judging by that single jar alone, it was clear that the rest of the shelves were packed with forbidden, exotic ingredients horrifying enough to make an ordinary person faint on the spot.
"Hmm... It seems a full dose of Kitsune cerebrospinal fluid is simply too potent for a young boy's vessel," Ritsuzen Gensai murmured, his chilling voice completely devoid of empathy. "The dosage must be halved. It seems Riku will have to wait for his intelligence-enhancing potion a little longer."
"One-Zero-Seven," Gensai called out without turning around.
"My Lord," a gelatinous, slime-like creature responded intelligently. Its amorphous, shifting surface was studded with hundreds of tiny, unblinking eyes.
"Dispose of the corpse."
"Yes, My Lord."
The monstrous slime wiggled its way toward a heavy iron operating table in the centre of the room. Firmly strapped to the bloodstained metal lay the lifeless body of a boy no older than eight. His face was a canvas of pure agony, warped and pulled tight into terrified wrinkles that forever froze the unimaginable horror he had experienced in his final moments.
Where his eyes should have been, there were only hollow, empty sockets staring blankly up at the ceiling. The top of his skull had been sawed open, exposing the inside of his cranium. The cavity where his brain should have rested was completely, clinically empty.
Resting on a silver surgical tray right beside the iron bed sat two freshly sealed jars. The hastily scribbled notes pasted to the glass read: "Human Eyes" and "Human Brain."
Without so much as a second glance at the slime or the butchered corpse on the table, Ritsuzen Gensai called out again. "Two-One-Three."
Click-clack.
The hollow sound of heavy wood striking stone echoed across the floor. Stepping out from the shadows was a life-sized wooden mannequin. Its joints groaned and popped as it made stiff, unnatural movements toward Gensai's desk.
"Go to the black market. Procure more Kitsune cerebrospinal fluid for my next batch."
Without a voice to answer him, the faceless wooden mannequin simply bowed stiffly, indicating its absolute compliance.
It turned and lumbered toward the heavy wooden door of the workshop. Just as it reached for the handle, the construct paused. It tilted its smooth, featureless head from side to side in a jerky, unnatural motion, producing a series of sharp, splintering noises.
Click. Click. Click.
Suddenly, the wooden body began to shimmer. A translucent, glowing silhouette of an ordinary human man projected outward, perfectly superimposing itself over the crude wooden frame. Slowly, the magical projection shifted from transparent to solid, wrapping the construct in a flawless layer of artificial flesh and fabric.
Within seconds, the horrifying wooden puppet had vanished completely. In its place stood a perfectly normal, unassuming man, ready to slip unnoticed into the bustling city of Tokyo.
With his grim orders finally dispatched, Ritsuzen Gensai slowly set down the heavy, ancient tome he had been studying.
Closing his tired eyes, he pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a long, heavy exhale of pure mental fatigue. The gruelling research was exhausting, and the sacrifices were steep, but the ultimate goal was finally within his grasp.
"Close... I am very close..." he murmured into the deadly silence of the bloody workshop. "...the perfect human..."
**********
Locked safely inside her luxurious bedroom, Kaguya paced the floor. With her earlier outburst finally gone, her terrifyingly analytical mind had returned to normal.
After painstakingly replaying the memory of the library conversation and analysing every single word she and her brother had spoken, a devastating, belated truth finally dawned on her: she had terrified Ren again with her monstrous Mana.
Furthermore, she realized that she and Ren weren't even remotely close enough for him to trust her yet. Of course he wouldn't tell her all of his deep, dark secrets! They had barely had two actual conversations!
'AHHHHH!!! I MESSED UP!' Kaguya screeched mentally, tossing herself onto her bed and burying her flushed face into a pillow in pure, agonizing embarrassment.
'I-I-I have to make it up to him, don't I?' Kaguya reasoned with herself, quickly nodding in frantic affirmation into her mattress. 'Mmm, I absolutely need to make it up to him! But what should I gift him tomorrow? Maybe a high-tier mage's robe? No, no, no, Ren doesn't use magic. He used Ki just now, didn't he? Um, maybe a martial arts training gi? Hmm, no, just a plain gi isn't nearly enough to show my sincerity. Oh! I know! I should personally enchant it, too! And maybe... a lovingly home-cooked meal from his dear older sister?! He will surely LOVE it!'
With her guilt completely overwritten by her obsessive affection, Kaguya's thoughts became increasingly frantic and jumpy as she began to plot out her extravagant apology.
With her apology plan finally mapped out, Kaguya's racing heart began to calm down.
Slipping off her bed, she walked over to a heavy bookshelf tucked into the corner of her room. Arranged neatly on the shelves were several high-tier magical tomes that she deemed personally important. Trailing her pale index finger across the worn spines, she searched for a moment before finally pausing on a specific, thick volume titled: The Art of Scrying and Divination, Vol. 1.
Without a single moment of hesitation, she pulled the heavy book down and eagerly began to peruse its forbidden contents.
'Renny, don't blame your big sister for spying on you,' she reasoned with herself, completely abandoning any sense of boundaries. 'It is strictly for your own good. I just want to protect you.'
A dark, deeply unsettling smile slowly crept across her flawless, doll-like face as she flipped open to the first chapter.
'Hehehehehehehe... Rennyyyyyyy...' Kaguya giggled internally, her thoughts spiralling right back into absolute, terrifying obsession.
**********
n a secluded courtyard on the other side of the Ritsuzen estate, Ritsuzen Riku was currently pointing both of his hands toward a scorched wooden target. Holding his breath until his cheeks puffed out beet-red, Riku squeezed his eyes shut and intoned mentally:
'FIREBALL!'
Puff. A pathetic, wispy trail of smoke drifted out from his palms. It seemed Riku was attempting to cast high-tier magic without a verbal chant, and he was failing miserably.
This was exactly why Elder Gensai was so desperately trying to brew an intelligence-enhancing potion for him. Even his own father felt that Riku was simply too stupid.
How could a spell possibly be cast just by mentally screaming the name of the attack? All of the spell's parameters—temperature, trajectory, mana density, and atmospheric combustion—needed to be meticulously calculated in the mind first before even a single spark could be formed. But the foolish son of the Ritsuzen Elder lacked the mental capacity to calculate anything internally. He was entirely reliant on the clumsy crutch of verbally chanting the magical equations he had rote memorized.
Sigh. It seems our protagonist, much like his terrifying half-sister, likes to overthink things entirely too much. Against such a foolish, inept opponent, even a completely normal, basic sword technique would be more than enough to dismantle him.