Chapter 99: Solid setup Vesper
The air in the narrow basalt alley was so dense with dark mana it felt like submerged iron. Shadowy tendrils crept up the stone walls, completely blotting out the neon glow of the city streets beyond.
Vesper stood at the alley’s mouth, resting a hand casually on his belt as he flipped his blood-red coin.
"I have to admit, Vince," Vesper purred, his razor-thin smile widening in the dim light. "I wasn’t sure if a disgraced Vice Principal would be enough to pull your focus. But back at Oakhaven, I noticed something about you. You’re brilliant, yes... but you can’t resist watching people who cross you suffer. You just had to watch him squirm."
On the cobblestones between them, Alden pulled himself up onto his knees, wiping blood from his mouth with a shaky, tremor-filled hand. "We... we have him cornered, Vesper!" Alden rasped, a desperate, manic grin spreading across his face. "Finish him! Cut him to pieces!"
Vesper didn’t even look down. "Shut up, Alden."
Before the former Vice Principal could process the tone, Brian stepped out from the darkness behind him. The giant bare-chested warrior didn’t even draw his cleaver; he simply swung his massive, boot-clad foot, kicking Alden square in the ribs like a sack of trash.
Alden gasped for air, skidding across the wet cobblestones and crashing headfirst into a side alcove full of rusted iron scrap, where he slumped unconscious.
"He was annoying anyway," Brian grunted, cracking his knuckles as the dark bull tattoo on his shoulder flared with crimson heat.
Vince didn’t look at the alcove. He slowly rolled his shoulders, a subtle clack-clack of popping joints echoing off the stone walls. His dark cloak rustled in the draft as he adjusted his footing, purple kinetic energy humming beneath his skin.
"Solid setup, Vesper," Vince said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "Using a pathetic dog to draw me into a tight space. But putting five assassins in a narrow alleyway with me doesn’t mean you trapped a target... it just means none of you have room to run."
"Big words for a guy in a cage!" Kira shrieked with wild delight from high above.
She flicked both wrists. Three heavy glass vials plunged from the rooftops, shattering on the wet cobblestones at Vince’s feet. Instantly, a thick, violet-tinged fog erupted, hissing violently as it ate into the stone. The toxic mist was laced with mana-dispelling agents designed to blind a target and melt their lungs from the inside out.
Vince was already immune to toxins of this kind thanks to the absorption of Rin. He closed his eyes, instantly shutting off his reliance on sight and switching entirely to his passive perception. He could feel every shift in spatial pressure around him and see everything around like he were using normal sight.
CREAK.
Above the fog, a faint whisper of displaced air alerted him.
Sara dropped from the high ledge like a falling needle, her serpent tattoo gleaming. She didn’t make a sound as she fell, her twin silver rapiers extending downward in a lethal, dual-piercing strike aimed directly for Vince’s collarbones.
Vince didn’t draw a blade. The moment her rapiers broke through the smoke, he snapped both hands up.
CLANG!
Micro-bursts of kinetic sparks exploded from his palms, catching the flat sides of her rapiers mid-air. The shockwave shattered the trajectory of her strike. Sara’s icy blue eyes widened in shock as the sudden kinetic rebound rattled her wrists, forcing her to twist mid-air and backflip out of the mist, her leather boots scraping against the cobblestones as she landed beside Vesper.
"He didn’t even look," Sara hissed, her hand trembling slightly against her hilt. "He deflected my attack with just his palm"
"I told you," Vesper warned, his red eyes narrowing. "He isn’t normal. Gideon! Brian! Drop him now!"
The sky above Vince went completely dark.
Gideon, the iron titan, fell from the roof like a falling meteor. Hundreds of pounds of dark iron armor plunged directly toward Vince, his massive scythe materializes held downward to crush Vince into paste against the basalt floor.
Simultaneously, Brian roared from the front, charging through the toxic fog like a rabid beast. He swung his massive, blood-stained war-cleaver in a horizontal arc, aiming to bisect Vince at the waist while Gideon pinned him from above.
Two high-tier executioners. Zero room to dodge.
Vince opened his eyes. They burned with a bright, terrifying purple light.
Instead of retreating, Vince planted both boots into the cobblestones and threw his arms outward, driving every ounce of stored micro-kinetic force in his body straight into the surrounding space.
BOOM!
A massive, violet kinetic shockwave detonated outward in a three-hundred-sixty-degree sphere.
The wet cobblestones shattered into thousands of airborne stone fragments. The corrosive toxic smoke was instantly blown out of the alley like paper in a hurricane. Brian’s massive cleaver hit the kinetic barrier and bounced backward with a deafening CRACK, sending the giant warrior stumbling back three steps.
Mid-air, Gideon’s heavy iron descent collided head-on with the upward explosion of force. The iron giant was halted dead in the air for a fraction of a second before being hurled violently backward, his heavy boots crashing into the alley wall with enough impact to spider-web the stone.
Silence slammed back down over the alley.
The smoke was gone. The cobblestones were pulverized into a crater.
In the center of the destruction, Vince stood completely untouched. Purple kinetic sparks danced along his knuckles and shoulders, flickering off his dark cloak like miniature lightning strikes.
Vesper’s slick smile completely faded. Sara’s hand tightened around her hilt, Kira stopped tossing her vials, and Gideon slowly pulled his iron frame out of the cracked wall, his visor glowing a fierce, agitated red.
Vince slowly turned his head, his glowing purple eyes scanning all five Death Crows one by one. A cold, dark smirk touched his lips.
"Is that all you got?...it better not be seeing all the trouble you went through to get me here."