Agni's enhanced vision kicked into maximum overdrive, every sensation in his body amplifying to an almost painful degree. Time seemed to slow as his unique perception processed information at superhuman speed—he could see individual dust particles floating in the air, hear the assassins' heartbeats, even track the subtle shifts in their mana signatures.
In that crystalline moment of hyper-awareness, Philip made his move.
Three bullets fired in quick succession—but something was wrong with their trajectory. Agni's enhanced sight tracked each projectile's path, and none of them were aimed directly at him.
They were aimed at Walton.
"What the—" Agni started to say, then understood with horrible clarity what was happening.
Walton raised his curved sword with practiced precision, using the flat of the blade like a mirror to redirect each bullet toward Agni's position. It was a technique that required incredible skill and perfect timing—these weren't just random assassins, they were professionals with years of combat experience.
The first bullet came screaming toward him after bouncing off Walton's blade. Agni threw himself to the side just in time, but the redirected projectile slammed into the rock he'd been using as cover. The stone exploded in a shower of sharp fragments, leaving him completely exposed.
The second bullet was already incoming.
"I need to call out the spell name," Agni realized, remembering his magic theory lessons. "Named spells are always stronger than silent casting!"
"Phase Burst!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, thrusting both hands forward.
The enhanced version of his Atomic Pulse tore through the forest like an invisible hurricane. Trees splintered and toppled, undergrowth was ripped from the ground, and even the air itself seemed to ripple with distorted energy. The redirected bullet disintegrated completely, along with a good portion of the forest around them.
Walton hissed in pain as the shockwave hit him, but instead of being thrown backward like before, he dug his heels in and held his ground. Some kind of protective aura shimmered around him—he'd been ready for this attack.
The young assassin burst forward through the dissipating energy wave, moving faster than should have been humanly possible.
The third bullet was still coming.
Agni dodged desperately to his left, but Walton was already on top of him, curved sword arcing through the air in a deadly slash aimed at his neck.
"Flame Burst!" Agni shouted, trying to replicate the attack that had killed Sasha.
But Walton wasn't his sister—he'd seen that technique already and was ready for it. The assassin twisted away from the expanding fireball with fluid grace, letting the flames burst harmlessly in the air beside him.
Then his blade came down.
The curved sword bit deep into Agni's right wrist, slicing through bone and tendon with sickening ease. Before the prince could even scream, Walton followed up with a horizontal slash that severed his entire arm at the elbow, then completed the combination with an upward cut that took off most of his right shoulder.
Blood sprayed in all directions as Agni's severed limb hit the forest floor with a wet thud.
"Definitely easier when it's a sword instead of magic," Walton grinned, his chocolate-brown eyes gleaming with sadistic pleasure. "You can really feel it cut through bone by bone."
That's when Philip's bullet punched through Agni's chest, tearing into his left lung with a sound like ripping fabric. The impact drove him to his knees, blood frothing from his mouth as his punctured lung struggled to function.
Any normal person would have died from shock within seconds. But Agni wasn't normal—his enhanced perception was forcing him to experience every sensation in excruciating detail, keeping him conscious through sheer overwhelming input.
He could feel his life bleeding out through multiple wounds. Could sense his heartbeat becoming irregular as his body went into trauma shock. Could even perceive his own cells beginning to shut down from oxygen deprivation.
But he could also see something else—something neither assassin had noticed yet.
His left hand was still functional. And more importantly, there was still mana flowing through his system.
"Recognize this sensation," he muttered through blood-frothed lips, his voice barely audible. "Remember how it feels to be cut apart bone by bone."
Agni gripped the air with his remaining hand, focusing not on creating something, but on removing it. Instead of generating fire or force, he reached out with his mana and simply... deleted a line of air molecules.
The effect was a blade made of absolute nothingness—a cut in reality itself.
"Slash," he whispered.
Philip sneered in disgust at what looked like empty posturing. "Is he trying to swing an invisible sword? This kid's lost too much blood—he's hallucinating."
But Walton's expression suddenly changed from arrogant confidence to confused shock. He coughed once, then again, and a thin line of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
"What—" he started to say, then looked down at his chest.
A perfectly straight line had appeared across his torso, like someone had drawn on him with a red marker. For a moment, nothing happened. Then blood began gushing out in a steady stream as the wound opened wider.
"Dual casting?" Walton gasped, falling to his knees. "Or was that spell too quick to see?"
The cut wasn't deep enough to be immediately fatal, but it had sliced through several major blood vessels. The young assassin pressed his hands against the wound, trying desperately to stop the bleeding.
Philip realized the danger immediately and raised his mana-gun toward Agni's head.
"He's too dangerous to leave alive!" the bald man snarled, taking careful aim.
But Agni was already moving, his enhanced perception tracking the gun's targeting trajectory with mathematical precision.
"More fluidly this time," he groaned, his voice becoming clearer and more focused despite his injuries. "Sharper."
He swung his left arm in a horizontal arc, and another Void Slash cut through the air.
This one was perfect.
The black line of nothingness sliced through Philip's bullet first, splitting the projectile in half harmlessly. But it didn't stop there—the void cut continued its path, passing through the mana-gun, Philip's hands, and finally his neck in one clean motion.
For a heartbeat, Philip stood there with a confused expression, as if trying to figure out why his gun had stopped working. Then his head slid sideways off his shoulders and hit the ground with a dull thump.
Walton, still on his knees and bleeding heavily, stared at his partner's headless corpse in horror. He grabbed for his fallen sword with shaking hands, but his strength was fading fast.
Agni looked down at the dying assassin and felt... nothing. No anger, no satisfaction, just a cold emptiness that seemed to match the void in his attacks.
"This is for Big B," he said quietly, then flicked his finger toward Walton's forehead.
"Flame Burst."
At point-blank range, there was no dodging this time.
"Impossib—" Walton started to say, but the word was cut short as his head exploded in a shower of superheated blood and bone.
The forest fell silent except for the crackling of small fires where Agni's magic had ignited fallen leaves and broken branches.
Prince Agni swayed on his feet for a moment, looking down at the carnage he'd created. Three people were dead because of him. Three people who'd had names, families, reasons for doing what they did.
He touched his chest where Philip's bullet had punched through his lung, feeling the warm stickiness of blood soaking through his clothes.
Then his legs gave out, and he collapsed face-first onto the blood-soaked forest floor.
Darkness claimed him as his body finally succumbed to blood loss and trauma, leaving only the sound of distant wind rustling through the damaged trees.