Chapter 205: Hitman Vs Master
The rhythmic whisper from Joan’s lips hung suspended in the stagnant air of the pavilion. Before Nicholas could reach out toward the open manuscript, a slow, measured applause echoed from the shadows behind the stage’s shattered canopy.
Malik Vance stepped into the pale violet light.
He was entirely unhurried, his posture straight and regal amidst the ruin. He tossed aside his tailored outer coat, letting it fall onto the dusty boards.
Beneath the fabric, his physical form was revealed. His right side was that of an ordinary man in peak physical condition, clad in a sleek combat vest. But his left side was a grotesque, terrifying marvel of forbidden bio-engineering.
His left arm was completely mutated, swollen with dense, corded muscle beneath plates of obsidian, chitinous armor that ended in sharp, elongated black talons. Embedded directly into his upper shoulder and neck was a luminescent mechanical manifold, glowing with a venomous crimson light. A heavy, armored catheter coiled down from the manifold, piercing straight into his primary subclavian artery.
With every mechanical pulse of the device, a glowing, concentrated mutagenic fluid pumped directly into his bloodstream. The veins along his neck and the left side of his face flared with deep crimson light, humming with raw, synthesized power.
Malik was not an impure. He possessed no supernatural plague gift for Joan’s script to strip away. His overwhelming strength was entirely artificial, forged through chemical fusion and biological horror.
With his unmutated right hand, Malik smoothly drew a custom ceremonial blade from a scabbard at his hip. The steel was dark, etched with ancient geometric engravings along the fuller, razor-sharp and balanced to perfection.
"Fascinating," Malik said, his voice smooth, resonant, and dripping with intellectual curiosity. "I spent three years mapping the Hero Association’s psychological profiles. I accounted for their arrogance, their dependence on elemental bursts, their obsession with public spectacle. Every single one of them walked into my parlor and knelt like cattle."
He tilted his head, his sharp eyes locking onto Nicholas’s solitary visible eye.
"Yet here you are. No glowing aura. No dramatic declarations. Just tripwires, suppressed lead, and the cold discipline of a butcher." Malik smiled faintly, taking a slow step forward, the ceremonial blade tracing a lazy circle in the air. "I know who you are, Phantom. I have read the classified underworld ledgers. You are a mercenary. A man who calculates human lives in currency and ledger balances. Tell me, why would someone like you bleed for this rotting corpse of an association?"
Below the stage, Selena sprinted up the northern steps, her combat blade drawn and her sidearm held tight. Behind her, Dana struggled to her feet, supporting her bruised ribs as she followed close behind, their eyes locked on Joan’s trance-like state in the pavilion.
Malik did not even glance at the approaching women. His attention remained entirely fixed on the hitman standing before him.
"You know what they are," Malik continued, his tone mocking and sharp. "They are hypocrites who trade human misery for brand deals and television ratings. They let children burn so their capes look pristine in the morning press. Why throw your life away to protect their fragile dignity?"
Nicholas stood perfectly balanced, his weight centered, his right hand resting casually on the hilt of his reinforced carbon-steel blade while his left remained loose at his side.
His expression did not shift. There was no outrage in his face, no righteous fury, and no heroic indignation. His gaze was as flat and cold as a winter grave.
"I don’t give a damn about the association’s dignity," Nicholas said, his voice quiet, steady, and cutting clean through the stillness. "I didn’t take this contract to save their reputation. I took it because my rent is due, my sisters need dinner on the table, and you made the mistake of putting a war zone within driving distance of my home."
Malik’s eyes narrowed, the mockery fading into cold intrigue. "A family man with a butcher’s hands."
"I get paid to finish the job," Nicholas replied coldly. "And right now, Vance, you’re the only thing standing between me and my paycheck."
The mechanical manifold on Malik’s shoulder hissed violently, venting a thin cloud of superheated vapor.
The crimson fluid pulsed through the catheter into his bloodstream. The mutated muscle in his left arm swelled, the ground beneath his boots splintering under the sudden surge of artificial kinetic force.
"Then let us see what your paycheck is worth," Malik whispered.
Malik vanished from his spot in an explosive blur of physical speed.
He closed the distance in a fraction of a second, his ceremonial blade whistling through the air in a decapitating horizontal slash, backed by the raw, crushing momentum of his mutated frame.
Nicholas did not back away.
He stepped directly into the pocket, drawing his carbon blade in a fluid upward parry.
CLANG!
The impact of the two blades rang out like a church bell, sending a shower of bright orange sparks across the pavilion. The sheer kinetic shockwave blew the surrounding dust into a violent ring, cracking the wooden platform beneath their feet.
As Nicholas locked the Master’s blade in a lethal test of steel and leverage, Selena and Dana threw themselves past the clash, diving into the pavilion toward the young girl sitting in the chair.
"Joan!" Selena shouted, reaching out toward the yellowed pages of the open manuscript. "Wake up!"
The metallic screech of steel grinding against steel screamed across the shattered stage.
The crimson fluid within Malik’s manifold pulsed violently, hissing as excess thermal pressure vented from the cybernetic valves along his neck. The raw, artificial horsepower surging through his mutated left side was monstrous, threatening to splinter Nicholas’s wrists under sheer, unrelenting pressure.
Yet Nicholas did not yield an inch. His stance was set wide, his center of gravity driven deep into the reinforced timber. Every ounce of brute force Malik pushed into the blade was redirected down Nicholas’s forearms, through his locked core, and straight into the cracked platform beneath his boots.
"You have technique, mercenary," Malik hissed, his mutated obsidian talons twitching with lethal hunger, "but technique breaks beneath absolute force."
"Only if you let it hit you," Nicholas replied through gritted teeth.
With a lightning-fast pivot of his hips, Nicholas released the blade lock, letting Malik’s ceremonial steel slide harmlessly off the carbon edge. He twisted inside the guard, whipping his left elbow in a vicious upward arc aimed directly at the glass casing of the Master’s crimson arterial manifold.
Malik jerked his head back, dodging the strike by a millimeter as the displaced air whistled past his ear. He countered with a backhand swipe of his mutated claw, the black talons tearing a deep, jagged furrow through the front of Nicholas’s tactical vest.
Nicholas rolled backward with the impact, absorbing the kinetic shock across his shoulders and springing back to his feet in one continuous, predatory motion. His blade snapped up into high guard, his breath steady, his lone eye tracking the rhythmic, mechanical pulse of the red chemical feeder.
A few yards behind the clash, the violet glow radiating from the open manuscript pulsed with erratic, frantic waves.
Selena dropped to her knees beside the carved wooden chair, her hands hovering inches from Joan’s trembling shoulders. Dana was right beside her, supporting her bruised ribs with one arm while reaching toward the child’s glazed, unfocused face.
"Joan! Look at me!" Selena urged, her voice cutting through the mechanical hum of the dome. "You are not trapped in his story! You don’t have to keep reading!"
The young girl’s lips continued to move in that chilling, hypnotic rhythm, her voice shivering through the air.
[And the walls held firm... and the champions fell... and no one could escape the end...]
"She’s locked in a deep hypnotic cycle," Dana gasped, her fingers brushing the girl’s cold cheek. "Malik used neuro-chemical conditioning to tether her voice directly to the manuscript’s resonance. If we just yank the book away, the sudden mental snap could rupture her psyche!"
"Then we don’t yank it," Selena said, her mind working at lightning speed as she analyzed the intricate ink lines scrawled across the yellowed parchment. "We redirect it. We give the narrative a new ending."
Selena grabbed a tactical stylus from her breast pocket, thumbing the mechanical cartridge.
"Dana, hold her steady and break the vocal cadence," Selena commanded, her eyes burning with fierce determination. "I’m going to write over his words."
Across the stage, Malik saw the movement out of the corner of his eye. A flash of genuine fury cracked his composed facade.
"Do not touch that book!" Malik roared.
The manifold on his shoulder shrieked as it dumped a double dose of crimson mutagen into his bloodstream. His veins burned a blinding, violent scarlet, and with an ear-splitting crack of breaking timber, he launched himself toward the pavilion to butcher the two women.
A dark blur cut off his path.
Nicholas stepped squarely into the Master’s trajectory, his carbon blade coming down in a blinding, two-handed executioner’s slash aimed dead at the armored catheter pumping life into Malik’s heart.
"Your fight is with me, Vance," Nicholas said, his voice dropping into absolute zero. "Don’t look away."