Chapter 87: Six Arms Annihilated
The fingers holding the wire-whip tightened slightly. The metal gave a faint sound under his grip.
Then Zero's voice came again.
"'Undying King' Davernoch. You're up too."
Undying King.
Hearing that title snapped Sebas back from his grief.
What replaced it was a fury with no bottom to it.
Davernoch stepped forward.
He wore a long dark robe, the hood pulled down over most of his face, leaving visible only a pair of eyes that gave off a dim light. Eyes that belonged to the undead, carrying a coldness that had nothing to do with the living.
A naturally occurring lich, Davernoch possessed intelligence and power far beyond ordinary undead. He could fire continuous [Fireballs] and had mastered a range of spells that were genuinely rare in this world.
More significantly: he was suppressing his inherent hatred of the living by choice, maintaining a working arrangement with humans like Zero, for the sole purpose of learning magic he didn't yet know. That level of self-control was exceedingly rare among undead. Given enough time, and the unlimited lifespan that came with his nature, he might genuinely have grown into something capable of wiping out all life.
Sebas moved.
The transition from stillness to full speed looked like every intermediate step had been removed.
His right hand closed into a fist.
A straight punch, nothing elaborate. Force gathered to a single point and released.
The instant the fist made contact with Davernoch's head, the skull came apart the way an egg does when a large hand closes around it.
The sound was brief and clear.
Davernoch's body stayed upright. His skull had become fragments spreading in every direction, cutting arcs through the dim lamp-light.
His false life was gone.
At the very end, Davernoch had not understood what happened.
The headless body swayed, then fell backward. The magic items on his person scattered across the floor with a collection of light, clean sounds.
Sebas remained where he stood, right fist still extended.
"There is only one master in this world who has the right to bear that title."
His voice reached every person in the room.
The tone bore no resemblance to his usual composure. It carried open contempt, nothing softened.
He turned his hand and shook it, clearing Davernoch's fragments from his glove.
"That most exalted master. You, a low creature of the undead, hadn't the slightest right to that name."
The space fell into a silence like death.
The Six Arms members who had been dismissing this "old man" moments ago were all frozen in place.
"Blood Dance" Edström's curved blades were still suspended in mid-air, but the effortless ease that had been on her face was gone entirely.
"Space Severing" Peshurian's hand around the wire-whip was trembling. "Thousand Kills" Malmvist's eyes were round, his lips moving without sound.
Zero stood at the back. That face of beast tattoos, for the first time, showed something other than contempt.
As Eight Fingers' strongest fighter, Zero had faced a great many powerful people. He believed he had a clear enough understanding of what powerful meant.
That understanding was collapsing now.
He hadn't seen Sebas's attack.
Not only him. Not a single person present had seen the punch.
They had seen Sebas standing still. Then Davernoch's head was gone.
What happened between those two moments had been cut from the record as though removed by hand.
This wasn't a fight. It was an erasure.
Sebas gave them no time to process the fear.
He turned and walked toward Edström. Each step fell as though it were landing on the chests of the Six Arms members.
Edström clenched her jaw.
Five curved blades, each carrying an enchanted [Dance] effect, answered her will and descended on Sebas from different angles at once. Against an ordinary warrior, handling even two of them simultaneously would have been a genuine challenge. She, through an abnormally developed neural architecture, could direct each blade as though it were being wielded by an independent fighter, each performing entirely different movements.
Sebas stepped into the ring of blades.
He swung a hand-blade horizontally.
The same motion with which one sweeps a cobweb out of the way.
It passed across Edström's neck.
The ring of blades collapsed in an instant. All five lost their master's direction and dropped from the air, hitting the stone floor one after another.
Edström's head slipped from her neck and rolled.
Her body remained standing. Blood from the neck traced a dark red arc through the air.
A very faint sound of disturbed air came from behind him.
Succulent.
Acknowledged as the weakest of Six Arms. Known as "Phantom Demon." His direct combat ability fell far short of the others, but he had secured his place in Six Arms through illusion and ambush.
From the moment Sebas stepped inside the building, Succulent had been eliminating every sign of his own presence. His form went transparent, his breathing reduced to nothing, his heartbeat slowed until it barely registered.
He had been waiting for a single instant: the moment Sebas's attention was fully committed elsewhere.
Succulent struck from Sebas's back, his dagger aimed for the back of the neck.
A small smile rose on his face. Fighters far stronger than himself had gone down to exactly this. The coward's method. The only method that worked on people it shouldn't work on.
The dagger fell.
Two fingers caught its tip without moving.
Sebas didn't turn.
Succulent's smile locked on his face. He tried to pull the dagger back. Tried to dissolve back into shadow. The dagger might as well have been welded to Sebas's fingers. It did not move.
Sebas still didn't turn around.
He simply swung his other hand backward, a careless flick.
The fist-wind passed through.
Succulent's head, smile still fixed on it, became a cloud of blood.
The headless body held the posture of its thrust for a moment, then folded softly to the floor.
From beginning to end, Sebas had not looked at him once.
Sebas's gaze moved across the remaining members.
Peshurian was still holding the wire-whip he claimed could "sever space."
If Sebas hadn't released it when his anger shifted to the "Undying King" Davernoch, Peshurian holding a weapon at all would have been beyond him.
His lips were shaking. Beneath the full plate, his legs might as well have been nailed to the floor.
He wanted to swing. Wanted to do whatever it was a warrior was supposed to do in a moment like this.
But Sebas's fist was already there.
Peshurian's head came apart under it. Blood and fragments scattered in every direction, throwing dark red across the walls.
The headless body swayed and hit the ground with a crash. The wire-whip slid from the loosening fingers and rang against the stone.
Malmvist clenched his jaw and thrust, putting everything into his "Thorn of the Rose." The strongest thrust in the capital, carrying an attached Martial Art and a lethal contact poison on the blade's tip.
Sebas didn't move. Didn't raise his hand to deflect. His fist simply went through the line of the thrust and through Malmvist's skull at the same time.
"Thorn of the Rose" fell from its master's hand.
Zero turned and ran.
Facing this, he had lost even the will to raise his fists.
Sebas glanced at him.
One step. His fist struck Zero from behind.
Zero's body left the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut and hit the wall. Then slid down.
Disbelief was fixed on that tattooed face.
Cocco Doll tried to run as well.
His slender figure had barely made it around the corridor's corner when Sebas's fist caught up with him.
A dull impact. Then quiet.
Sebas stood among the wreckage and blew once across his palm.
[Steel Skin] had ensured he hadn't taken so much as a scratch. But the sensation of having touched these inferior creatures was unpleasant in its own right.
At any rate, Lucian had given his authorization. With no requirement to collect intelligence from them, there was no particular reason not to kill them directly.
The space was completely quiet.