Five points of lethal impact converged on Cain simultaneously.
There was no gap to slip through. The spatial pressure exerted by the Divine
Executors was absolute, locking the air around him into a crushing vice. His
hyper-pressurized blood screamed against his veins, failing to overcome the
sheer weight of divine law.
Death was less than a tenth of a second away.
And the survival instinct buried at the base of his spine reacted.
Black mist erupted from his pores. It didn't form a spell or a diagram. It
simply flooded his muscle fibers with raw, violently unstable force.
For a single microsecond, the 50% lag in his soul vanished.
Cain's body moved with terrifying, frictionless speed. He didn't just block; he
shattered the spatial lock. He swung his dual blades in a blinding, continuous
arc, the steel wreathed in pitch-black mana.
Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang!
Five heavy strikes were parried in the span of a single breath. The kinetic
backlash of the black mana sent all five Executors skidding backward, their gray
cloaks whipping violently in the displaced air.
Cain burst upward, launching himself out of the kill box and landing heavily on
a jagged outcrop of petrified wood fifteen meters away.
The moment his boots hit the wood, Cain clenched his jaw and forced his mana
inward.
He slammed the cage shut.
The black mist violently retracted, sinking back into his skin. The sudden
suppression felt like swallowing broken glass. His lungs burned, and a sharp,
hollow ache radiated from the center of his chest.
He glanced at the upper corner of his vision.
[ Soul Integrity: 49.6% ]
Cain exhaled a ragged breath.
A fraction of a second. One single, desperate reflex to survive, and it had
permanently burned away 0.4% of his soul. The math was brutally clear. If he
relied on the Black Veil to fight all five of them, he would be erased from
existence before the battle was even over.
He had to fight them manually. And he couldn't do it in an open field.
"Target's physical parameters exceeded projected limits," one of the Executors
stated, his voice an eerie, emotionless drone. "Adjusting suppression laws."
"Maintain perimeter," the leader commanded. "Do not allow isolation."
Cain didn't wait for them to reset their formation.
He dropped from the petrified wood and sprinted deeper into the ruined mana
zone. The terrain here was a chaotic mess of shattered stone pillars, deep
ravines, and dead, crystallized trees. It was a nightmare for organized
formations, which made it the perfect battlefield for a lone operative.
The Executors pursued immediately.
They didn't run like men. They glided over the uneven terrain, using spatial
manipulation to ignore the jagged rocks and steep drops. Their gray cloaks moved
like phantoms in the dim light of the wasteland.
Cain kept his breathing strictly regulated, using Blood Manipulation in short,
controlled bursts to maintain his lead. He weaved through a dense cluster of
stone pillars, breaking their line of sight.
"Spread out," the leader's voice echoed through the ruins. "Maintain visual
links. He is attempting guerrilla separation."
They were smart. They didn't blindly chase him into the narrow gaps. They fanned
out, moving in a wide, sweeping net to flush him out of the rocks.
Cain crouched behind a massive slab of broken slate.
He listened.
He couldn't sense their mana—divine law didn't leak energy the way human magic
did—but he could hear the faint crunch of gravel beneath their boots.
One was approaching from the left flank. Another from the center. The remaining
three were circling the perimeter to cut off his escape.
Cain drew two of the short knives from his belt.
He waited until the footsteps on his left flank were exactly ten meters away.
Cain stepped out from behind the slate and threw the first knife straight up
into the air, over the stone pillars, aiming toward the center of the ruins.
The Executor on the left instantly snapped his attention upward, tracking the
projectile. He raised a hand, preparing to crush the space around the knife,
anticipating that Cain would use Exchange to teleport to the high ground.
But Cain didn't trigger the skill on the knife.
He threw the second knife low, skipping it across the dirt directly toward the
Executor's boots.
The Executor realized the misdirection a fraction of a second too late.
Exchange.
Cain routed his mana perfectly. He swapped coordinates with the second knife.
The world blurred.
Cain materialized in a low crouch, less than two feet away from the Executor.
The gray-cloaked enforcer tried to step back, raising his hands to manifest a
gravity seal.
Cain didn't give him the time.
He drove his left shoulder forward, slamming into the Executor's chest to
disrupt his center of gravity. As the Executor stumbled, Cain brought his right
blade up in a brutal, rising slash aimed directly at the man's throat.
The Executor raised his forearm, a dense layer of spatial pressure forming over
the sleeve to block the steel.
The blade struck the barrier. It didn't cut through, but the sheer kinetic force
of Cain's swing knocked the Executor's arm wide, leaving his torso completely
exposed.
Cain didn't hesitate. He dropped his left blade, grabbed the Executor by the
collar of his gray cloak, and hurled himself backward into a deep, narrow ravine
carved into the stone.
Both of them tumbled over the edge, plummeting into the darkness below.
"Contact lost with Unit Four," a voice echoed faintly from the surface.
Cain and the Executor crashed into the bottom of the ravine, kicking up a
massive cloud of toxic, gray dust. The narrow walls of the trench completely cut
them off from the others.
Cain rolled to his feet instantly, his right blade raised, his breathing steady.
He had successfully isolated one.
Now, he just had to kill a divine vessel manually.