Chapter 100: lethal symphony
The pulverized cobblestones under Vince’s boots didn’t settle. Instead, the Death Crows shifted with terrifying, seamless fluid precision—not a single second wasted on shock or hesitation.
Vesper’s cold eyes narrowed as he flipped his blood-red coin, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp command. "Shift to Formation Delta. Don’t throw reckless strikes at him! He isn’t just tanking hits—his body is absorbing and kineticizing physical impacts. Every mindless blow you feed him charges his next burst. Aim only for blind spots and vital joints!"
Smart bastard, Vince thought, his jaw tightening slightly. He read my kinetic absorption loop in less than ten seconds.
Before Vince could adjust his stance, Kira leaned over the roof ledge, cackling wildly as she hurled three dark crimson vials directly at his feet.
"Let’s see you bounce around when your boots are glued down, little ghost!"
The vials shattered, bursting into a thick, tar-like resin that instantly hardened across the cracked basalt, swallowing the kinetic recoil of his boots.
`[WARNING: Environmental Hazard Detected - Kinetic Damping Resin]`
`[Movement Speed decreased by 25%. Kinetic Absorption Efficiency reduced.]`
Vince gritted his teeth, shifting his weight forward, but the ground refused to give him leverage.
"REAPER’S IRON DOMAIN!"
Gideon slammed the butt of his colossal scythe into the alley floor. A heavy, dark-purple gravitational field expanded outward, instantly doubling the air pressure around Vince’s shoulders. The air grew suffocatingly dense, dragging down his arms like lead weights.
Tsk. Vince didn’t hesitate. Even with his feet bound and gravity crushing him, he drove his left fist forward, detonating a concentrated micro-burst of kinetic energy straight at Gideon’s chest.
BOOM!
The shockwave slammed into Gideon’s heavy chestplate, forcing the iron giant to take a heavy step back, his boots grinding against the stone. But before Vince could capitalize on the opening, Brian rushed in from his right flank like a runaway train.
"CRAG-SPLITTER!"
Brian roared, his dark bull tattoo burning bright blood-red as he swung his massive war-cleaver in a murderous horizontal arc.
Vince snapped his right arm up, vibrating it at a frequency to absorb the shock and block the blade.
CLANG!
Sparks erupted as the massive cleaver slammed into Vince’s forearm. The sheer, overwhelming brute force drove Vince back two inches, his boots tearing through Kira’s sticky resin. A sharp, stinging pain shot up Vince’s arm, the sheer weight of the impact rattling his bones.
"What’s wrong, boy?!" Brian bellowed, pressing his full body weight against the blade, grinning savagely into Vince’s face. "Arms getting tired already?!"
He’s holding me in place, Vince realized, his eyes widening slightly as he scanned the environment.
A whisper of displaced air rustled high above his left shoulder.
Sara dropped from the shadow of the wall like a striking cobra, her twin rapiers humming with lethal precision. "Phantom Viper Thrusts!"
She didn’t aim for his chest or head—she targeted his blind spots. Her rapiers blurred into ghostly afterimages, bypassing his front guard entirely. Vince twisted his torso violently to dodge, but the combination of Gideon’s gravity domain and Kira’s resin delayed his movement by a fraction of a second.
SLASH! SLASH!
Stinging lines of pain erupted across Vince’s cheek and left shoulder as blood sprayed into the dim air.
`[ALERT: Kinetic Storage Integrity at 42%]`
`[LPhysical Strain Escalating. Structural Damage Impending.]`
Vince spat a spray of blood onto the wet cobblestones, his breathing growing heavy for the first time since stepping into Malgrath. They were dissecting him piece by piece—layering crowd control, heavy suppression, and high-speed precision strikes to bleed him out without feeding his kinetic engine.
They’re really good, Vince thought, his heart hammering against his ribs in a surge of dark excitement. They aren’t just high-tier Assassind for hire. This is a synchronized hit squad.
"You’re fast, kid," Sara whispered, her voice echoing from the shadows behind him as she reset her stance on a narrow window ledge. "But fast isn’t going to cut it."
Vince wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand, his purple eyes burning with an unholy light. He planted his back foot, channeling every accumulated drop of kinetic charge into his left palm, and drove a palm-thrust straight behind him into Sara’s direction.
The blast shattered the window ledge into stone dust, but Sara had already vanished, her laughter fading into the mist.
"Looking the wrong way, Vince," Vesper’s cool, mocking voice purred from the darkness in front of him.
Vesper flicked his wrist. Three shadow-infused needles shot through the air, embedding themselves deep into Vince’s shadow pinned against the basalt wall behind him.
"Umbral Pins."
An icy, paralyzing numbness instantly locked down Vince’s upper body. His arms froze mid-air, bound by dark shadow-mana that bound his physical movement directly to the wall behind him.
"Did you really think Duke Owen’s military was the peak of this world?" Vesper asked softly, stepping forward as his bat tattoo pulsed with a lethal crimson aura. "Welcome to the bottom of the food chain."
Vince was pressed hard against the stone wall, blood dripping down his arm and cheek, his body immobilized by shadow pins while Gideon’s gravity weighed on his chest like an anvil.
Gideon raised his massive scythe overhead for a crushing executioner’s blow. Brian raised his cleaver to bisect him from the left. Sara poised her rapiers over his throat from above.
All five Death Crows closed in at once, their faces lit by the crimson glow of their executioner marks.
"I must say I expected more from you seeing as you took down Balthazar and Rin, from the look of things guess it was a farce. This is the end of the line" Vesper said confidently
`[CRITICAL WARNING: Lethal Damage Imminent.]`
`[System Safety Parameters Compromised.]`
`[Override system protocols? Y/N]`
Surrounded by death, pinned to the wall with blood running down his neck, Vince slowly lowered his head. A low, raspy chuckle began to rumble in his chest, growing into a cruel, unhinged laugh that echoed through the dark alley.
He looked up through his messy dark bangs, his purple eyes glowing like two dying stars in the pitch-black shadows.
Yeah, Vince thought, his thumb flicking the mental prompt.
" Don’t be disappointed yet " Vince said with a grin