Chapter 272: The strongest
Chapter 272: The strongest
The night was mild. Luke’s body flew like an arrow in a straight line, piercing through dark clouds at impossible speeds.
His telekinesis, now capable of moving up to 35 tons, allowed him to fly faster than ever before.
He was a human projectile, surpassing the speed of sound. About 2,000 kilometers away, at his current speed, he estimated it would take around thirty minutes to arrive.
If he increased the thrust pressure with precision, thanks to his total awareness of the environment, he could reduce it to 15 minutes. But he didn’t believe the situation was dramatic enough to go at full speed.
Once he was close enough to detect the town with his expanded domain, he felt it: death.
Many dead.
’More than half the population dead?’ thought Luke, frowning.
According to what Wednesday had told him, the town was called Davenport Hollow. It didn’t appear on tourist maps. It was very remote, in hard-to-reach areas. With luck, it might have a population of around five thousand.
Even so, the internet exists, and if suddenly more than 50% of a town is dead, it would clearly draw attention.
’This will bring a lot of trouble with the normie government,’ thought Luke, irritated by the problems to come, and also by the slaughter of innocents.
He never considered himself a hero, but witnessing such a massacre did stir fury toward the perpetrators.
When he arrived, he flew low, noticing that there were no lights on the main street. Normal. The houses were small, there were closed factories, a police station, a high school, and a cemetery atop a hill.
He descended slowly, landing soundlessly in the middle of the asphalt, in front of the welcome sign:
[Welcome to Davenport Hollow — Founded in 1883. Here, we are family]
The sign was split down the middle and stained with dried blood.
Luke had his domain expanded almost entirely in every direction. Thanks to his mind, enhanced by the blue aura and clairvoyance itself, he could process hundreds of thousands of data points in seconds.
’Two thousand three hundred sixty-six normal people alive…’ he thought.
All these people were in their homes. Hiding. He could feel their fear like a constant hum.
But his focus wasn’t on the normies, but on five presences that didn’t belong. Five individuals on the hill near the town cemetery. Outcasts. No doubt about it, their energy was powerful.
’Always the cemeteries,’ thought Luke with a grimace, narrowing his eyes.
He noticed they’d been on alert since he arrived in the town. They were aware of his arrival, and still, they didn’t flee. They were ready.
Maybe they even knew it would be him.
They hadn’t run. That was unusual.
In recent months, his mere arrival had been enough for his enemies, even entire groups, to flee before the first blow.
Luke launched himself without hesitation. The air exploded behind him as his body tore through the sky at supersonic speed.
In less than two seconds, he was already flying over the hill.
The trees swayed violently in his wake. He dropped sharply, floating barely a meter above the ground, arms slightly spread.
His gaze was a cold, cutting line. His feet never touched the earth. Eclipse appeared in his right hand, summoned with a simple gesture.
The sword was already loaded with dozens of telekinetic tons, ready to be unleashed or used to take heads.
Three of the five outcasts, whose identities were hidden behind masks, were already on the move.
The pressure all five of them felt in front of Luke was monstrous. Everyone knew: he was the living weapon of the Council.
The young man with four auras.
Many already considered him the strongest psychic, at least naturally. Stronger than Fester, Gómez, Stalin… even stronger than leaders of werewolf and vampire clans. Not to mention other races of outcasts considered weaker.
Luke’s battle record was already bordering on legendary.
Even so, they didn’t hesitate. The five positioned themselves and, in a choreographed movement, drove five metallic pillars of a dark bluish tone into the ground, etched with glowing electric runes.
The symbols vibrated upon touching the earth.
A hum filled the air. Bluish electricity shot out between each pillar, connecting them as the vertices of a massive hexagon that enclosed the entire area.
Luke frowned slightly. With his free hand, he barely moved his fingers, trying to use Shambles to swap the stakes’ positions and disable whatever they were attempting.
But nothing. They wouldn’t budge, which meant they clearly weren’t ordinary objects.
He wasn’t an expert, but they were anchored into the ground, and it seemed like removing them would be difficult, they looked like some kind of dimensional seal.
Each stake was activating, as if charging energy. Luke could strike them with a telekinetic slash from Eclipse, and he doubted that, no matter how mystical, they could withstand a cut from his sword.
As if they’d guessed what he was thinking, two of the hooded figures lunged at him from opposite angles.
But Luke moved faster than they did. “I see you,” he muttered, his voice low and almost mocking.
Eclipse struck, just once.
A spiraling slash, and one of the attackers was sliced in half mid-air.
The second, against all odds, managed to dodge it by a fraction of a second. The blade passed within centimeters of his neck.
Luke smiled. It was rare for anyone to evade one of his slashes at such close range.
And yet… that smile wasn’t one of respect. It was a cold, almost mocking smile. Like someone who already knows the other’s fate.
With his free arm, he threw an elbow. But it wasn’t just any blow, his physical strength alone had reached ten tons, and he layered telekinesis around his elbow at the moment of impact.
The strike collapsed the enemy’s torso with a sickening crunch.
Blood. Ribs. A choked groan.
The outcast flew like a broken puppet, landing several meters away, twitching for a few seconds before dying.
Five seconds. Two dead.
However, the sacrifice of these two outcasts, who were by no means weak, managing to last five seconds against Luke, was not in vain. The stakes had finished charging.
The hexagon shone like an artificial sun, and in a blink, the space inside it collapsed.
Luke felt his body being pulled by the distortion. Gravity twisted. The air shattered like glass.
The energy from the stakes was forcing a teleportation.
Luke tried to use Shambles to teleport away, but it didn’t work. He tried flying in a straight line at full speed in the opposite direction, but it was useless. It was as if reality itself was sucking him in.
“Tsch. Cowards,” he muttered in frustration, realizing he wouldn’t escape.
But in that instant, as he was already being swallowed by the distortion, he launched one last attack.
A final telekinetic slash. An invisible strike, charged with all the power he had stored in Eclipse’s edge.
The three remaining outcasts, seeing the attack, stepped back.
“Dodge it!” one of them shouted.
And they did, or so they thought.
Because midway, the slash split into two. As if Luke had programmed it with his clairvoyance.
One of the blades flew like a serpent of energy, cleanly decapitating the nearest outcast.
The head spun through the air, a look of horror frozen on its face, unable to believe it had died this way, with the mission technically a success, before crashing to the ground.
The other blade twisted violently and severed the right arm of another outcast, who fell to the ground screaming, soaked in his own blood.
The seal closed. Space collapsed in on itself, and Luke vanished without a trace.
Only two outcasts remained alive.
One of them, illuminated by the faint blue glow of the still-smoking stakes, gasped on his knees, not a single drop of blood on his body, yet his eyes bulged in shock.
The other writhed on the ground, clutching the stump where his arm used to be.
The one who had survived unscathed had a pale complexion. They hadn’t even faced Luke for a full minute, and they were nearly wiped out, barely able to dodge or activate their abilities.
Just a few seconds of confrontation, and three elite outcasts were dead.
He couldn’t understand how a seventeen-year-old boy could carry such overwhelming pressure with every step he took.
Everyone had heard the rumors about him. The whispers, that he possessed four auras, something never seen before. Many said that meant he wasn’t human, and tried to explain it by invoking demons like the Spellmans themselves.
But it was hard to believe that a boy, the last of his bloodline, had gotten his hands on a demonic book and amassed so much power so quickly. Usually, such paths required dirtying your hands, murdering countless innocents, and it was known that Luke had never committed such acts.
So the only option left was to accept it: he was a genius. Some kind of chosen one.
Now that he had faced him, he understood why so many considered Luke the strongest psychic alive.
At least, without counting the demonic psychics of the Spellman family, especially Edward. But even then, Luke had already proven capable of killing several demonic elders on his own.
So in a hypothetical battle between those two, no one knows exactly who would emerge victorious.
“We did it… You think he’ll die?” asked the one missing an arm, gritting his teeth to hold back a scream of pain.
“I don’t know…” the other murmured, still trembling. “But going up against that many demons… it should be dangerous, even for him…”
A brief silence followed. They both stared at the space where Luke had once stood.
“Let’s go,” said the uninjured one with a tense voice. “Now that he’s out of the way, we need to join the final assault. Our part is done.”
And without looking back, they disappeared into the shadows of the hill, with the blood of their fallen comrades still fresh on the ground.
The final battle had just begun.