The sky clouded over, animals fell asleep where they stood, and people worried about their pets. From the darkest depths of a garbage truck's load, a figure slowly climbed out. He wore a black shirt with gold buttons, black pants with a silver belt, and had gray eyes and straight dark hair. His body was muscular, and his knees were plated with iron. He looked around and watched the garbage trucks pull in. He held his hand out flat like a knife, and with a single sweep he destroyed every truck that had arrived. One driver ducked just in time to avoid the blow. His heart pounded, and he crept away slowly, hiding among what was left of the trucks. The figure glanced at him and simply shook his head. The driver found a phone and called the police.
"Help, come help me right now, he's going to kill me any second!" the driver pleaded, his voice urgent and desperate.
The figure walked up to him, grabbed him by the back, and lifted him off the ground with ease, raising his hand like a blade. The man shut his eyes and waited for the end, but when he opened them, he found himself safe and alive, wondering why. He looked up and saw a figure standing in front of him, with white hair as sharp as swords. A thousand questions raced through his head, but then a voice spoke.
"Don't worry, you're safe now, but I can't protect you forever. Right now I have to face this creature, who I assume is 'a Boss' like the others who keep showing up," Sebastián said, his voice serious and gentle.
The man nodded and ran off. The figure watched him go but made no move to stop him. His main target at that moment was Sebastián. He sighed, clenched his fists, and dropped into a fighting stance.
"Let's get this over with," the Boss said calmly.
"Fine, but first I want to know what number you are," Sebastián said, serious and calm.
"I'm Number 17, though it doesn't matter, since I have more abilities than Number 18," the Boss said with a sigh.
Sebastián nodded and closed his eyes, but before he could do anything, the Boss grabbed him by the shirt and hurled him into a streetlight, which snapped on impact. Sebastián opened his eyes and punched the ground, splitting it open, and a spray of stone shot out of the crack at supersonic speed. The Boss caught it with one finger and disintegrated it. In that moment, Sebastián closed his eyes and chose Level 5 Fury.
Fury took control of his body. His fists burst into flame, and he drew a circle of magma and touched it. The Boss leapt backward, and in that instant a magma spike four meters tall and ten centimeters wide erupted where he had stood. Sebastián spun his hands in circles and hurled a fireball, but the Boss had already anticipated it. He spun his own hands in circles and whipped up a fierce blast of wind that disintegrated the flames. Behind Sebastián, many apartment buildings were torn apart, and people and animals died.
"I see. So you know how to fight," Sebastián said, calm and respectful.
The Boss tilted his head and charged, driving a kick into the protagonist's stomach. Sebastián was shoved backward, but he caught the ground with one hand and stopped himself at once.
"Good strength," Sebastián said, his expression grave.
He quickly got to his feet and fired a fire energy attack. The Boss narrowed his eyes and slipped to one side. The attack kept chasing him, but he had expected that. Sebastián was a little surprised to see that the Boss had already worked out the attack's pattern.
Sebastián sighed and began moving his hands in sync, shaping a four-meter dragon of fire. The beast shot toward the Boss with its jaws wide, but the Boss leapt over it and slammed the fire attack into the dragon, then flipped backward to gain even more height in the air, dodging the explosion the collision set off.
"You're smarter than I thought. You're different from the other Bosses," Sebastián said.
The Boss simply relaxed his shoulders and prepared a new technique that he called "Piercing Blood Stream." The technique concentrates on red blood cells, which can be fired like a multi-shot attack, with the added ability to channel them through his five fingers. Once focused, he can shoot to deal minimal or tremendous damage to an enemy, depending on how perfected the technique is. Every cell counts, and so do the technique's perfection and mastery.
The Boss aimed all five fingers at Sebastián and began to fire. A stream of blood raced toward the protagonist, and he dodged it. It wasn't enough. Another stream struck his back, tearing away most of his shirt and burning his skin slightly. Sebastián studied the attack and realized that each stream had a clear purpose, and that he didn't have many directions left to dodge in.
The attacks kept chasing and hitting him, and our protagonist no longer knew what to do. Then an idea crossed his mind.
*What if I copy the ability, or at least try?*
He copied it quickly, aiming at the streams of blood chasing him, and it worked. His technique collided with the Boss's own, but it couldn't stop it, since his version was only half-perfected, nowhere near its maximum. Sebastián took the opening and ran at the Boss, preparing a magma punch. Boss 17 sighed, and from his back came streams of blood: the "perfected version of the Piercing Blood technique."
The attack hit Sebastián and he could do nothing. It drove him backward and pierced through his bones. In response, the protagonist seized one of the streams, though it injured his hand as he touched it, and yanked it backward. That pulled the Boss toward him, and Sebastián landed a fire punch, then hurt him with his own technique. The streams tore through the Boss, but he already knew what Sebastián had planned.
He began to spin, making the streams stop and settle. With a flick of one eye, he leaned backward and dodged a punch from the protagonist. Sebastián drove his fingers into the ground and lifted up the entire city, splitting the earth as buildings began to topple. The Boss hung suspended in the air for a single millisecond, and that moment played into the protagonist's hands. He hit him dead-on with a dragon of fire. The dragon carried the Boss up to the clouds, almost to space, while his skin burned. Activating his technique again, the Boss made the streams of blood shove the dragon back with tremendous force.
The Boss pressed his fingers together and launched an ultimate attack, "Piercing Blood Circle." A giant sphere of blood, six meters tall and twenty wide, was fired at the dragon and at Sebastián.
The attack hit the protagonist and the nearby cities, and Sebastián vanished inside it. Our protagonist was driven through the Earth down to its second layer and lay there unconscious.
In his mind, the real Sebastián could no longer see what was happening outside. Level 5 Fury returned to its place. Sebastián looked at it and sighed deeply, not knowing whether his team would be able to stop the Boss.
But a stillness remained. Level 3 Sorrow looked at Sebastián and smiled a little. A new level of sorrow had been unlocked: the state of "Forbidden Sorrow," also known as "Corrupted Sorrow."
This sorrow is unstable but extremely powerful, capable of destroying planet Earth if it wished, and it moves at about eight times the speed of light. Its abilities are water-based, with new techniques: one called "Stream" and another called "Tsunami."
Worh was watching the news on television, where a reporter in a helicopter narrated what was happening. Our protagonist switched off the TV and texted Kiro and Sone: "Go to this location. We have a new fight." Then he stood up, pulled on a pair of black gloves, left the apartment, and took off running at 600 kilometers per second, ready to fight.