For a guy who spent a massive chunk of his past life thinking about nothing but sex, now coupled with the raging instincts of the Blood Tribe, fighting against my own carnal desires was never going to be a walk in the park. Ever since this body hit puberty, there hasn't been a single night without some seriously wet dreams. I had to give my right hand a rigorous workout every single day just to function like a normal human being.
Recently, as I gradually got used to it and my hormones stopped acting like completely deranged maniacs, I managed to live somewhat normally. I emphasize 'somewhat', not completely. But even that was more than enough. It wasn't that much different from who I was in my past life anyway. The only real difference was that I had learned how to rein in my animalistic urges and sheer stupidity. Truth be told, I was actually pretty proud of myself lately.
And then, I got slammed by the effects of that damn thing called the Lust Eye. The feeling was no different from chugging down a heavy-duty bottle of extreme aphrodisiac. To put it in terms easily understood by anyone who's ever relied on coffee or Lipovitan: it was like downing ten cans of Monster Energy at the exact same time. An absolute, extreme euphoria hijacked my entire body. Every sense was dialed up to eleven, but all strictly to serve a single, singular purpose: finding a way, or someone, to quench this maddening thirst for lust.
The only target available at that moment? A pretty, adorable girl tied to a pillar. Clearly the easiest prey imaginable, right? An all-you-can-eat buffet laid out perfectly for a starving beast.
For a fleeting moment, I honestly surrendered to the temptation.
I genuinely thought there was a high chance I'd die here. So, figured I might as well die having finally lost my virginity. A phenomenally scummy and immoral thought, I know, but I definitely thought it for a split second.
"No… Don't…"
Only to immediately snap back to reality the moment I saw Shierra's pained, tear-soaked, utterly despairing face. It acted like a literal chain yanking me straight back out of hell. I had seen a face like that before. I had made a terrible mistake once. And now, I was about to do something even worse?
Whether I was being manipulated by magic or poison didn't matter. I would still be the perpetrator. The monster who broke Shierra into pieces.
Was this going to be my ending again? Destroying yet another girl...
No. Absolutely not! God fucking damn it!
It wouldn't last. I knew damn well that the lust would clamp its jaws onto me again and drag me back into that suffocating darkness. I figured I had about exactly one second.
But what the hell can you even do in a single second? Even if I could bust out a Longsword of Light, I wouldn't have enough time to take the stance and actually execute the strike. In other words, hurting Velma was completely off the table.
Maybe the only viable option was to hurt myself?
The tragic flaw in that plan was that I'd just regenerate—Blood Tribe perks, you know? Beating me into submission might be easy, but actually killing me was a monumental task almost no one could pull off, unless they chucked me out into the sunlight or impaled me with something large and sharp enough to obliterate my brain or heart in a single blow.
Short of chopping off all four of my limbs to guarantee I couldn't move, there wasn't much else. And executing a quadruple amputation on myself within a second was a bit of a tall order.
So, I arrived at a completely psychotic idea.
Gouging out my own eyes. Both of them, just to be thorough. Right after that, I even considered rupturing my own eardrums so I wouldn't be able to hear anything either. The logic was simple: if I lost my mind but couldn't perceive my surroundings properly, I'd essentially be rendered harmlessly incompetent.
It was a batshit insane idea, undeniably idiotic. Yet, I did it anyway. I decisively drove my fingers straight into my sockets, scooping out both eyeballs like it was just another Tuesday. For a guy who used to literally set himself on fire on a regular basis, this level of pain barely even registered.
Who would've thought that the second I yanked them out, I'd feel every single chain binding my body instantly shatter? Just like that, the Demon Eye's spell was completely broken.
In hindsight, maybe just castrating myself would've been faster. But hey, what's done is done. Besides, I'd rather go blind than become a eunuch.
"What a manic..." Velma clicked his tongue.
Which brings us to the present: sword drawn, ready to throw down, that's me. Meanwhile, Velma—the esteemed leader of this twisted 'Cult of Pleasure'—didn't seem in any particular rush to engage. Even without my vision, I could easily tell he was staring a hole right through me, scrutinizing my every twitch with extreme caution.
And I wasn't in any hurry to charge in either. A Water God Style swordsman never strikes first, after all. The longer I stalled, the closer backup got to arriving, and it bought me precious time to let my regeneration kick in.
Not to mention, I still had a few loose ends to tie up first.
Thump*
I took one step forward; Velma immediately took three steps back. Perfect. That meant I could freely stroll wherever I pleased.
I took slow, deliberate strides toward the ridiculously massive bed. Velma instantly relocated, circling away from my trajectory to maintain a paranoidly safe distance. Weirdly enough, there were moments when the sound of his footsteps seemed to glitch and scatter, but I still managed to pinpoint his location.
Neither of us uttered a single syllable during this little dance. Just two predators sizing each other up.
Upon reaching my destination, I draped the dress shirt I had violently discarded earlier over Vierra's unconscious, naked body. I had no clue why she was suddenly out cold, but frankly, being unconscious was vastly superior to the depraved act she was putting on earlier. Shierra immediately scrambled over, applying some healing magic while properly buttoning my shirt around her older sister.
"Miss Shierra," I spoke up only after the mage finished her task. "You know where my cat is, right?"
Larry wasn't dead. I had no idea how I knew, but I was absolutely certain of it. As for his actual location, though? Literally in the dark.
"Yes..." Shierra nodded. That's all I want to hear.
"Then I need you to grab your sister and my cat, and get the hell out of here. I'll take out the trash."
Shierra hesitated. She stared at me in sheer bewilderment. She cast a fleeting glance at Velma before quickly looking away. But the mage clearly knew she was dead weight in a fight like this. Hell, if she accidentally locked eyes with Velma's Demon Eye, all my effort would have been for absolutely nothing.
"P... Please be careful!" Shierra urged.
She immediately hoisted Vierra onto her shoulder and bolted, her gaze glued firmly to the floor, refusing to look back even once. Throughout her escape, I kept myself firmly anchored in the optimal position to intercept Velma if he tried to pull anything.
Yet he did absolutely nothing. He just stood there, watching. It wasn't until the sound of Shierra's footsteps completely faded away that the cult leader finally opened his mouth.
"Hmm... he did mention you were perfectly capable of fighting without your sight. I didn't believe it at first, but it seems he was telling the truth. If I had gotten careless and rushed in, I might have suffered a nasty counterattack."
"He? Who the hell is 'he'?"
"You don't need to know."
Had some rat been tailing me all day? Maybe the guy watched my scuffle with the Millishion knights. I couldn't remember every minor detail of that brawl, but it was highly likely I had fought with my eyes closed after getting a face full of dirt. Still, deducing that I could fight completely blind purely based on a brief skirmish was pretty damn observant.
Regardless, having a little bit of intel leaked wasn't the end of the world.
"In that case, you must be shaking in your boots, right? When I threw down with the Immortal Demon King Atoferatofe, I literally blew her to pieces with my bare hands." I taunted. "Get on your knees and beg, and maybe I'll let you keep your miserable life."
"Haha. I truly didn't expect you to be cracking jokes in a situation like this. Astounding. Truly commendable."
Honestly, the commendable one here was Velma. The guy was unbelievably calm and composed. Even now, he hadn't even bothered to draw a weapon. Perhaps annoyed by my absolute refusal to make the first move, Velma spoke up again.
"Are you genuinely going to stand there and do nothing, Hero? Not going to attack? I am quite the vulnerable target, you know. Is a man with no armor and completely empty-handed really that terrifying?"
To be more accurate, there wasn't a single thing resembling a sword in this entire room. It was exclusively stocked with BDSM equipment. Maybe he left his weapon upstairs? The only piece of clothing on Velma's body was a silk drape that had long since hit the floor. Meaning, the man was currently buck naked. If I were a Sword God Style practitioner, I would have blitzed him and chopped him into mincemeat by now.
But hypothetical scenarios aside, I wasn't going to pull a stunt like that. Because I still had zero intel on his actual capabilities. We were standing right in the middle of his lair. Velma had intel on me, while I was utterly blind (both literally and metaphorically) regarding his combat style. All things considered, the enemy held way too many cards.
I gave him the silent treatment. The smartest play was keeping my mouth shut; the more I talked, the more I risked giving away crucial information. If I accidentally blabbed my true intentions, the whole game would be over.
"Let me guess," Velma casually continued anyway. "You're trying to stall for time, waiting for a rescue squad to burst in, aren't you? If so, you're going to be severely disappointed."
"Huh?"
"Oh, don't act so surprised. It wasn't just a random fluke that Fauna was left perfectly healthy and lucid upstairs. I left her like that for a very specific reason."
He was right. Fauna was the 'only' one who returned to her senses after I used detoxification magic. The rest had already been brainwashed by his Lust Eye up to the point they can't even talk, rendering my magic completely useless on them. At the time, I chalked it up to incredibly good luck. Turns out, this smug bastard had orchestrated the whole thing?
"But why the hell would you do that? Are you that desperate to get caught?" I was genuinely forced to ask. "Or are you just mentally deficient?"
"Woah there, that's hurt. But you sure know that I must have a plan right? You noticed it when you came down here, didn't you? The fragrance permeating this place. I assume you pegged it as an aphrodisiac, but that's only half the truth. Its primary function is actually a toxin specifically designed to erode mental defenses."
"Cut the villain monologue and get to the point."
"In short: if the lovely backup you sent for actually manages to reach this chamber, they'll simply fall victim to my Lust Eye. Wouldn't that create quite the massive headache for you?"
Oh shit. Oh yeah. I hadn't even factored that in.
Breaking into this cult's hideout had been suspiciously easy. The perimeter defense was a total joke, guarded by two grunts so weak it was almost insulting. The only real hurdle had been Analona, and sneaking past her was entirely feasible. Yet this massive, depraved operation had functioned flawlessly right under the nose of the Millishion authorities for God knows how long. There had to be a secret behind it.
And that secret was an psychological defense mechanism so incredibly insidious that no one would ever see it coming. Even employing comically weak bouncers was a deliberate smokescreen to lull intruders into a false sense of superiority.
I absolutely hated to admit it, but this Velma guy was terrifyingly competent. Which made sense, I suppose—you don't successfully run a massive underground cult by being an idiot. And he was dead right. If my backup charged in here only to get permanently hypnotized by the Lust Eye, it would be an absolute disaster. Which meant I had a strict time limit: I had to crush Velma before they arrived.
So, spotting a momentary lapse in Velma's attention, I instantly exploded forward, unleashing the fastest slash I could muster.
Swish*
Clang*
"Huh?"
My blade had definitively struck the target, yet for some inexplicable reason, it collided with something incredibly solid. Almost as if it were a statue... No, scratch that. It was literally a solid bronze statue.
When the hell did—
"So your speed is actually quite impressive."
How in the name of Millis was his voice coming from directly behind my back?
"What the hell?"
I immediately spun around, whipping my sword in a lethal horizontal arc aimed directly at neck height. But the result was a perfect repeat of the last strike. My blade bit deep into solid metal, not flesh. I had just decapitated another damn statue. Velma remained entirely unscathed.
"And your reflexes are exceptionally sharp." Right on cue, Velma's voice echoed out again. But this time, it came from a completely different direction, at least ten paces away from my current position.
I don't care how fast someone is, pulling off movements like this was practically teleportation. The sounds of Velma's footsteps were becoming incomprehensibly erratic. One second he sounded right next to me, the next he was on the far side of the hall, and the next he was directly behind me again. The sickening moans from the brainwashed cultists aggressively going at it in the background only made pinpointing his location infinitely harder.
"What kind of cheap parlor trick are you pulling now?"
I didn't blindly lash out this time. Robbed of my vision, I had absolutely no grasp on what the hell was actually happening. Thrashing around wildly would only serve to walk me straight into whatever trap he was setting.
"I'm merely utilizing my Path," Velma happily explained. "Ah, but you're a practitioner of the North God Style as well, so surely you understand."
Oh, I understood perfectly well.
'Path'—the ultimate, defining, and utterly exclusive technique belonging to Saint-rank-or-above North God swordsmen. It functioned exactly like a superpower; it was their absolute trump card to pull off reality-defying bullshit. Take Calina, for instance: her Path was 'Survival', granting her an innate sixth sense to flawlessly detect and reflexively dodge incoming danger. Peridot's Path revolved around seamlessly weaving magic into his swordplay. Arcantos's Path was the ability to summon and fight in perfect tandem with his pack of wolves. And so on and so forth.
Since Velma was a genuine North King, there was zero doubt he had a terrifyingly potent Path of his own. Maybe on spar with those in the Ultimate Four.
"So your Path completely scrambles my sense of direction? Is it some kind of specialized poison?" I probed.
If my hypothesis was correct, Velma's Path was poison-based. I had preemptively cast detox magic before the fight even started, so logically, I should have been immune. *Unless* my Intermediate magic was too pathetic to neutralize a North King's unique toxin. If that worst-case scenario was true, I was genuinely screwed.
"Perhaps." I could perfectly picture that smug bastard shrugging. "Perhaps not. I'd have to be quite the fool to casually lay all my cards on the table, wouldn't I?"
"Fair point."
Ever since leaving Fortress Necross, I hadn't even used my own Path a single time. It was the ultimate 'hail mary' button in a life-or-death battle, and I flat-out refused to use it unless I was backed completely into a corner with zero alternatives. So, I couldn't exactly blame Velma for keeping his lips sealed.
But something was fundamentally wrong here.
If Velma truly specialized in poisons, why wouldn't he immediately deploy his most lethal concoction to melt me from the inside out and end this right away? Why bother using a supposedly weaker hallucinogen just to screw with my orientation?
Was there a chance this narcissistic psycho just wanted to play with his food? True, time was entirely on his side, but after witnessing the lengths I'd go to (like literally ripping my own eyes out), any rational person would prioritize putting me down instantly.
Or maybe he was in the exact same boat as me: completely terrified of whatever hidden aces his opponent still had up their sleeve. Even profoundly blind, I was clearly capable of moving and fighting normally. That isn't a parlor trick any random thug can pull off. Plus, I hadn't shown him my Path yet either.
Therefore, the mathematically correct play here was to stand my ground and wait him out.
"My, my, giving up after a few mere words? What a shame. Aren't you terrified that more innocent people will suffer because of your cowardice?"
He got me there. If I recklessly resumed the offensive, there was a high probability I'd just drain my stamina swinging at shadows. But if I just camped out here doing nothing, the rescue squad would eventually walk right into his trap.
It was a textbook 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' scenario.
"If that's how you want to play it, I suppose I'll have to take the initiative."
A violent shiver instantly violently shot down my spine. Every instinct screamed that something devastating was coming. Was he launching an attack? But from where—
"Halt."
Boom!*
An unbelievably massive force abruptly slammed directly into the side of my head, hitting with the kinetic impact of a two-ton sledgehammer. Utterly blindsided, my feet left the ground entirely, and I was violently thrown backward, my head smashed onto the stone floor.
The pain was unmeasurable. It rapidly spiderwebbed from my skull outward, violently numbing my entire body.
"Son of a... bitch!"
I immediately used all my force onto my feet and jumped away from that spot.
"Trying to run? How utterly pointless. Halt!"
Another devastating blow, this time directly into my chest. It was like getting hit by an invisible, impossibly strong cannonball, catapulting me through the air until my spine violently wrapped around another inanimate statue.
"Gah!"
"Oh, I'm just getting started! Here's another! Halt!"
Yet another invisible sledgehammer crashed squarely into my gut. White-hot pain and overwhelming nausea completely hijacked my nervous system. I aggressively vomited up whatever was left of my last meal before crumpling helplessly to my knees.
What in the literal fuck? Don't tell me this is...
"Voice magic...?" I croaked out, my throat raw. My feet trembled, trying their best to stand.
"Precisely. And exactly why I was once feared as the Sonic North King," Velma boasted.
"Sonic The Hedgehog?"
"What? Wait, did I hit your head too hard? I know I might not look the part, but I am actually a hybrid of the Demon Race and the Beast Tribe. Ah, with a dash of Human and Elf blood thrown into the mix, of course, haha. A literal embodiment of racial perfection, wouldn't you agree?"
No. Not even remotely. You're an abomination of a mutt that desperately needs to be euthanized.
"Now that I've graciously revealed my Path to you, do you honestly still think you have a prayer of winning?"
Frankly, I didn't know anymore. It's true that Ghislaine had rigorously trained me on how to counter voice magic, but we only covered the basic, low-tier stuff like minor concussive blasts which could stun you at best. Even so, the voice magic is still something very complex according to Ghislaine. It was capable of absurd, highly abstract applications, requiring decades of maniacal study to truly master. It could destroy a whole squad of swordsmen or kill a whole pack of monsters with a single strike. Encountering someone who had actually reached the pinnacle of this magical branch was a dead sentence no less.
Yet here I was, having hit the absolute worst jackpot in existence by running into a guy who had done exactly that. And he just so happened to be a North King on top of it.
But that didn't mean I was ready to roll over and die just yet.
"Still planning on standing around?" Velma's voice echoed out from an entirely different direction once again, but I didn't have the luxury to care about that right now. "Then choke on this! Halt!"
A familiar chill spiked my adrenaline. I instantly executed a backflip, a colossal shockwave violently roaring through the exact space my torso had occupied a fraction of a second prior.
"Oh? You dodged that? Pure luck. Halt!"
Another invisible sonic blast tore toward me. I calmly sidestepped it.
"What?" Velma sounded genuinely dumbfounded. "How is that even possible?"
"Mind-blowing, isn't it? But get this through your head: you're never going to land another hit on me. Your speed is pathetically slow."
"..."
Dodging an invisible, supersonic attack once could absolutely be written off as a lucky guess. Dodging it twice in a row, however, shattered the realm of coincidence. Because that was the universally fatal flaw of Voice Magic: its speed cap. No matter how devastatingly powerful the spell was, it could never physically travel faster than the speed of sound. And I had been reliably dodging the Longsword of Silence since I was a nine-year-old.
Simply put, as long as I knew the exact microsecond Velma initiated the attack, all I had to do was casually step out of its trajectory. The real trick was *how* I knew when he was attacking. The secret was painfully simple: the sound of him drawing breath. The moment Velma inhaled to cast the spell, I moved. It was really that brain-dead simple.
"It seems I have tragically underestimated you," Velma conceded. "However, if that's the case— Halt!"
A sneak attack huh? I effortlessly sidestepped it again. Too damn easy.
"Missed me b—"
Boom!*
"Gah!"
Before the words even left my mouth, a completely separate sonic blast materialized out of absolutely nowhere, violently slamming into my flank from a completely blind angle. It broadsided my ribs with a sickeningly dry crack.
What the flying fuck? Velma had clearly only chanted a single attack!
"Hah..." I wheezed, immediately dialing my guard back up to absolute maximum, anticipating a follow-up strike.
"It appears I was overly anxious for nothing," Yet, no subsequent attack came. Velma simply sighed. "Kinda disappointed I must admit."
His voice was now clearly broadcasting from the direction of the giant bed. Had he teleported again?
Wait a damn minute. If I had only picked up a handful of actual footsteps earlier, could it be...
Ah. Now I get it.
"You're bouncing the sound waves, aren't you?"
"Good heavens! How did you deduce that so quickly?" Velma sounded genuinely appalled.
"Because I'm a certified genius," I deadpanned.
"Oh, please."
Sorry, old habits. Oh well…
"Honestly, the acoustics in this room have been pissing me off since the second I walked in," I elaborated, dropping the smug act. "We were comfortably holding a conversation while I was still standing out in the goddamn corridor. Yet I couldn't hear a single peep from your disgusting little orgy unless I stood in very specific, hyper-focused spots—like right near your bed."
Not to mention the wildly schizophrenic footsteps echoing from every corner of the room, making it physically impossible to track Velma's actual location through sound alone. And just a moment ago, even though I perfectly dodged the primary attack, I still got nailed by a secondary shockwave that packed significantly less punch than the first three. You know why? Every single one of those anomalies can be flawlessly explained by the physics of acoustic reflection.
"The other dead giveaway? The interior decorating."
I blindly reached out and flicked the statue directly beside me. It rang out with a sharp, hollow *tink*. I then walked over and struck a different statue nearby, which responded with a dull, heavy *thud*.
"You've got two completely distinct types of statues in here. One is entirely hollow and coated in a highly textured finish. The other is cast completely solid. They serve one singular, incredibly nerdy purpose: aggressively manipulating sound waves."
When a sound wave collides with a highly textured, hollow object, its kinetic energy is violently dispersed and absorbed, deadening the sound until it essentially ceases to exist. It's the exact same rudimentary science behind soundproofing panels.
Conversely, the solid, dense statues act as perfect acoustic statues mirrors, ricocheting and redirecting the kinetic energy to transform a highly predictable, linear attack into a completely unpredictable, multi-angled nightmare.
"Every single statue and pillar in this oversized sex dungeon was meticulously calculated and placed to transform this entire hall into your own personalized acoustic kill box," I concluded. "The two statues I decapitated earlier? Both were solid acoustic statues mirrors reflecting your voice, perfectly baiting me into attacking nothing beside those statues itself. And it was another one of your goddamn mirrors that caught the attack I had just dodged, instantly bouncing it right back into my ribcage."
I knew definitively that it wasn't a freshly cast spell because the kinetic impact was noticeably weaker than the first three blasts that had initially beat the shit out of me. Sure, it still snapped a rib, but the degradation in power was undeniable. I only sustained damage because I had stupidly dropped my Battle Aura defense, assuming I was in the clear.
The physics behind the power drop were elementary: every time a wave bounces, it bleeds energy, rapidly degrading its overall velocity and stopping power. However, getting hit by an 'attenuated' high-tier sonic blast is still roughly equivalent to getting hit by a speeding truck.
"So this is the true terrifying nature of your Path. It isn't just spamming voice magic—it's your absolute mastery over manipulating those waves within a pre-constructed acoustic labyrinth."
Put simply, his true Path was this very room. A hyper-lethal arena where Velma dictated every single vector of attack. Truly fitting for a North King; his technique was so absurdly complex it gave me a migraine just thinking about it.
"Your deductive skills are marvelous, but ultimately irrelevant," Velma smugly confirmed my entire thesis, remaining infuriatingly unfazed. "You lack the functional eyeballs required to map my physical location, let alone memorize the geometric layout of my acoustic statues mirrors. Knowing the theoretical mechanics behind your imminent demise doesn't actually stop it from happening. Checkmate, wouldn't you agree?"
He was completely right about that. If I had my eyesight, I would have ended this fight ten minutes ago.
But that didn't mean my brain had completely shut off. I still know what I should do. I do have a plan, of course.
"Why don't you throw another tantrum at me and find out?" I smirked.
"Oh, I like that, haha! Halt!"
The initial blast fired. As usual, I effortlessly sidestepped it. A microsecond later, it ricocheted off a pillar and aggressively homed back in on me. Still entirely manageable; I twisted my torso out of its path.
"Halt!"
The bastard immediately fired a second blast. Now I was dodging two heavily ricocheting shockwaves intersecting from completely different vectors. Significantly trickier, but my reflexes were still holding up.
"Halt!"
Then a third, a fourth, a fifth. Velma ruthlessly spammed his incantations without breaking a sweat. To my massively superhuman perception, it just sounded like regular breathing intervals, but to any normal person, the North King was basically firing a high-caliber machine gun straight out of his mouth.
I threw myself into evasive maneuvers, burning through every last drop of adrenaline I had. But eventually, the math caught up with me. I took a grazing hit. Then a solid strike. Then another. I desperately tried to hyper-analyze the trajectory of the blasts, purposely face-tanking the heavily degraded, multi-bounced waves to save myself from the lethal, direct hits. But you don't always get to cherry-pick your poison.
Boom! Boom!*
"Gah!"
Deafening explosions violently rocked the hall in a relentless staccato. With every thunderous impact, my body accumulated more massive, purple contusions, accompanied by the horrifying chorus of my own bones fracturing and snapping. With every successive hit, my body rapidly degraded, my movements growing agonizingly sluggish.
Until inevitably, dodging was no longer physically possible.
Boom!*
Another apocalyptic blow—easily the heaviest yet—crashed directly down onto my skull while I was already sprawled helplessly on the floor. The bedrock beneath me violently cratered and splintered. My body was completely paralyzed. The only conscious action I was still capable of was violently flaring my Battle Aura to the absolute maximum, desperately using it as a meat shield to survive the unending artillery barrage.
But with every single syllable that left Velma's lips, another sledgehammer slammed into my spine. I was a literal nail being systematically driven into the earth by a pneumatic hammer.
This excruciatingly violent torture dragged on for agonizing minutes. By the time Velma finally ceased fire, all that remained on the cracked floor was a grotesquely mangled, blood-soaked pile of meat.
"Phew. It's been quite some time since I've had to expend that much effort," Velma audibly exhaled. "But an amateurish beating like that wouldn't be enough to actually kill you, would it? Do hurry up with your little regeneration trick and get back on your feet."
He was right, I wasn't dead. But my physical vessel was entirely incapacitated. Gritting my teeth, I forced my pulverized muscles to twitch, agonizingly dragging my hand upward until it rested weakly against my shattered chest.
Heal.
The blinding agony slowly receded as my shredded flesh forcefully knit itself back together. I drunkenly staggered upright, my brain still swimming in a severe concussion, practically dripping buckets of my own blood as if I had just waded through a torrential downpour.
I must have looked like absolute shit.
"So you still manage to stand, just like what he said. Truly admirable," Velma nodded in begrudging respect. "However, I must admit I'm terribly confused, Hero Atur. Do you not realize the absolute futility of your actions? Oh, I don't mean enduring physical trauma is futile. Plenty of folks have quite the penchant for extreme masochism, after all."
I completely ignored him, continuing my sluggish, zombie-like trudge forward. Velma clearly didn't give a damn about my silence; the man was entirely focused on finishing his pretentious villain monologue.
"What I mean to ask is: don't you find it utterly exhausting to constantly chain yourself to the arbitrary, suffocating 'morals' that society violently forces upon you?" He asked, smoothly retreating as I advanced. The paranoid bastard was still meticulously maintaining his optimal combat distance. "Whereas, if you simply joined hands with me, you would be utterly free to indulge in every dark desire you possess. By combining my vast resources and intellect with your terrifying brute strength, we could acquire literally anything in this world."
"I already told you, I don't give a fu—"
"I am not strictly talking about sex, come on, think more than just that will ya? When I said 'everything'. I mean 'everything'," Velma aggressively cut me off. "Do you truly possess zero ambition, Atur? Or even something you desired? Is there absolutely nothing your black heart fiercely yearns for? An unforgivable injustice you desperately wish to correct? A specific target you intend to violently slaughter for revenge?"
"..."
I maintained my silence, relentlessly pressing forward.
"Aha! That stoic silence confirms it perfectly," Velma kept retreating, and unfortunately, kept talking. "Then abandon your ridiculous crusade and ally with me. Together, we could orchestrate things on a truly magnificent scale. Don't you see the limitless potential? You can do anything you want. That's how power is used right?"
Objectively speaking, with Velma's absurd abilities, he could easily orchestrate geopolitical chaos on an apocalyptic scale. Overthrowing and hijacking a minor kingdom would be a complete walk in the park for him. I highly doubted adding my sheer brawn into the mix would be enough to cripple a global superpower like the Asura Kingdom, but waging a highly destructive, decentralized shadow war? We could absolutely do some catastrophic damage.
I can even bring peace and freedom for all the captured slaves from Fittoa with a a flip of my hand. Or I can just kill any high rank noble with ease as well. Not to mention I can do whatever I want, with complete freedom. Yep, that's what I always want to do. That's the reason why I want to be stronger in the first place.
But at what cost?
"I don't partner with scumbags who treat people's emotions like disposable garbage."
In the end, what matters most to me isn't what I want to do. It's what I have to do. Fighting side by side with a maniac isn't one of them. I can't become a better man by accepting this offer. And how many good deeds I did, my name will still be a stain in history.
"Tsk..." Velma clicked his tongue in extreme annoyance. "Failing to see the world beyond elementary black-and-white morality is the height of human stupidity my dear hero. Furthermore, only a complete imbecile would arrogantly reject a highly lucrative offer from the man currently holding their life in the palm of his hand."
I finally stopped walking, perfectly positioning myself directly beside the very first bronze statue I had cleanly bisected earlier.
"You're absolutely right; you really are a complete imbecile," I flashed a bloody, menacing grin. "I generously offered you a chance to surrender earlier, and you stubbornly rejected it. Truly foolish."
"Haha. That suicidal arrogance is precisely what I find so endearing about you, Atur." Velma also anchored himself, exactly as I had mathematically predicted. "Then allow me to permanently terminate your existence! Halt!"
...
Let's hit the pause button on the imminent violence for a second and take a highly educational detour into the fundamental physics of sound.
At its core, sound is nothing more than a mechanical wave. It's exactly like dropping a massive boulder into a completely still lake. The kinetic impact creates violent ripples that continually expand outward from the point of origin.
And because it operates as a wave, it firmly obeys the universal laws of wave mechanics. Exactly like light. The acoustic reflection trick Velma had been aggressively spamming this whole time functioned on the exact same physical principles as adjusting the rearview mirror in your car so you can watch the bumper of the guy tailgating you.
It's just light waves traveling in a straight line, striking a highly reflective surface, and bouncing directly into your optic nerve. In Velma's highly convoluted setup, the sound waves were his headlights, and the dense bronze statues were his carefully angled mirrors on well… my car.
Let's drag this metaphor all the way across the finish line. I'm the extremely pissed-off driver currently getting completely blinded by Velma, the asshole riding my bumper with his high beams permanently welded on. I'm stuck staring into a blindingly painful glare, while Velma just comfortably sits back and enjoys watching me furiously squinting in the mirror. Highly unfair, don't you think?
If only there was a highly effective method to aggressively return the favor and make Velma eat his own high beams.
And drawing upon my extensive background as both a highly educated scientist and an unapologetically vindictive driver in my past life, I knew the exact solution. You simply grab your own mirror and violently reflect that blinding light straight back into the asshole's retinas.
So, I'm sure you can all figure out exactly what I was about to do.
Perfect Reverse!
Boom!*
"Wh— Gah!"
And just like that, the smug North King was instantly laid out flat on his back, his nose violently caved into his skull.
Velma's supersonic blast violently collided directly with the perfectly smooth, flat surface of the bisected bronze statue I had violently hoisted up as a shield. It resulted in a mathematically flawless 180-degree ricochet. Work exactly like how you stand right in front of a mirror. Sure, it wasn't exactly a textbook execution of Water God Style's Secret Art since I didn't use a sword, but the underlying physics were flawlessly applied. In short, it was a Perfect Reverse.
"How in the hell... were you able to... find me?" Oh, look at that, Velma was still conscious after the strike.
"Did you genuinely believe I was utterly braindead enough to purposefully act as your punching bag for five straight minutes for absolutely no reason? Newsflash, asshole: you aren't the only one capable of using voice magic. I was passively aggressively pinging your exact coordinates the entire time you were beating the shit out of me."
I had been actively using echolocation for the entire duration of the fight. Velma remained completely oblivious to this fact, and it all boiled down to acoustic frequencies. I'll spare you the highly technical lecture and just give you the blunt truth: Velma's eardrums were too old to pick up extremely high-frequency pitches just like every adult when they reacted a certain age. My ears, however, were delightfully youthful, allowing me to flawlessly track the micro-echoes of my own ultrasonic clicks to perfectly map out the exact geometry of the entire room.
To summarize: I had successfully mapped the exact coordinates of every single statue, categorized them by material density, and triangulated Velma's precise position purely by analyzing the acoustic reflection of his footsteps in just 5 minutes.
That sluggish, zombie-like trudge from earlier? Entirely calculated to herd Velma into my highly specific kill zone. I forced him into an angle where he could only hit me by bouncing a blast off one specific, single mirror. That guaranteed the reflected shockwave retained enough kinetic velocity that, once I bounced it back a second time, it still possessed enough stopping power to instantly KO a full-grown rhinoceros.
"I see... Haha... Hack, cough, cough."
Velma weakly chuckled, violently coughing up blood before finally went into a coma.
I wasn't faring much better. Despite aggressively regenerating my injuries, my mana and physical stamina had completely redlined.
My knees finally buckled, and I face-planted into the broken floor, slipping rapidly into unconsciousness. Right before the world faded entirely to black, I distinctly heard the faint meow of a cat.
So, everything was going to be alright eh. At least I won.