Chapter 63: A Maniac (2)

Maeve stumbled back, catching herself as the force pressed against the silver protection field of Niccolo, around her. She looked through the field at Marcellus.

He hadn’t moved.

His black overcoat fluttered in the wind. The pink flames around his shoulders bent with the currents, and their fine strands stretched sideways, fluttering in the pressure of force.

He just...stood in front of the Cutter, watching him. No force reinforced his body against the pressure.

The Cutter raised his remaining machete. The weapon’s edge began to vibrate.

He swung it once.

A thin arc of condensed force departed from the blade. It crossed the runway, cut through the remains of abandoned vehicle, and carved a long trench into the concrete beyond.

Marcellus titled his head.

The next strike came from the opposite direction.

He shifted one foot.

The blade of condensed force passed beside him.

The Cutter’s expression hardened.

"You f---You’re no child!" He screamed, and brought both arms into motion.

His remaining machete sweeped through a sequence of tight arcs. The weapon gathered momentum with every rotation. Its movements compressed the surrounding force into increasingly fine edges.

*Shinnn-nn-nn-nn-nn-nn-nn---!*

The air began to sing. Hundreds and thousands of sharp blades made of condensed force appeared around him.

They were scarcely visible, thin planes like blade formed from redirected momentum. Each possessed a sharp edge, and each angled toward the same target.

*VWWWHHHHH!*

The blades launched.

For less than a second, the runway disappeared behind a storm of silver edges.

A thousand blades crossed the distance in a single concentrated barrage.

They struck the ground, sliced through metal, and tore into the remaining wreckage.

The fractured runway came apart beneath them, concrete split into slabs and cubes.

Maeve’s eyes widened. She couldn’t see Marcellus. The space where he had been standing was buried beneath the crossing blades.

Then the barrage passed, disappearing into the path.

Rain returned to the space between the scattered fragments.

Marcellus stood several paces from his original position.

But his coat was still intact, down to its last strand. A narrow pink flame curled beside his cheek before disappearing beneath his collar, and the earrings still swayed gently in the air.

"!" The Cutter couldn’t believe himself. He had released enough force to turn the runway into a field of blades. The attack could render world’s top hundred begging for their lives, and Marcellus had...simply moved through it.

There was no visible defensive technique, no barrier, or an attempt to overpower the barrage.

In fact, he wasn’t even able to touch him.

"..." Marcellus lowered his gaze to the broken ground.

He looked at it for a moment and then nodded, looking at the destruction around him.

As if the challenge had shifted to long range, he accepted it with a nod, and then looked back at the Cutter.

Marcellus raised one hand toward the Cutter.

*Ba-THUMP!*

Then the whole airfield had a sudden shift in pressure. Every person in his radius felt something vile, with the same heartbeat they’ve felt before Marcellus had woken up.

Wind that had been tearing sideways around the Cutter flattened into dead stillness. Clouds above the ridges darkened in a hard, unnatural roll.

The rain...stopped slowly as the last of its droplet hit the ground to preserve the silence.

*...Tap. Tap.*

Silence took over the field.

Beneath the broken tarmac, something vast displaced the ground from below.

*RRRHUMMM---*

Concrete heaved, and fractured slabs lifted, and slid. From the dark under the runway, shadow pushed upward in eight separate columns.

Serpant heads broke the surface one after another, rising until each onoe cleared the size of an aircraft and kept going.

They were enormous.

Their scales were of pure black. Thick pink veins ran through the shadow-flesh like lit channels. Those veins pulsed as the heads settled into the air.

Their eyes opened along the line of each skull. They were pink, had no pupil or irises.

Eight mouths, eight set of teeths, with each teeth being bigger than a human body itself.

They towered over the ruined airfield, like pure constructs that seemed to be pulled out of some nightmares.

The Cutter’s remaining machete lowered a little as he cranked his head up looking at the eight serpants.

"What...the..." Maeve whispered under her breath.

She knew those shadows. Her fingers curled into a fist. She knew how difficult it was to maintain a shadow manifestation while controlling its movement. Every additional shadow demanded more capacity, more concentration, more control over the structure itself.

Gumiho had taken her years to develop, and even then she had never managed to bring out everything she wanted from it. Marcellus had derived his serpent from her technique but this...

Eight heads. Each one larger than a whole aircraft. All eight controlled independently.

She had dreamed of reaching heights like these, she had never imagined them looking anything like this.

Then all eight serpents opened their mouths.

Tiny black orbs appeared before their jaws, and as the previous surprises weren’t enough, she was yet again left with eyes wide open.

She knew what those orbs were. That orb, that single orb was the one she used against Kate Magnar.

A technique that she created on the field in need of desperation. Shadow blank. But this one was more refined, and they numbered in eights.

The compressed shadow force gathered into each orb, growing denser by the instant. The eight heads angled toward the Cutter.

Then...the serpents roared sharply.

***KKKRRRAAAAAAA---!***

All eight mouths unleashed their Shadow Blanks simultaneously.

The beams swallowed the runway.

Black shadow Force tore through the air in eight concentrated beams.

The first struck the ground before the Cutter. The second crossed its path, obliterating the remaining concrete. The others descended upon the space where he stood, converging from different angled until the entire stretch of runway disappeared beneath the destruction.

The Cutter moved, but no amount of movement could stray him off the path of destruction.

For moments, the entire world seemed to turn black. Then the shadows receded.

The serpent’s mouths closed and they dissolved back into the shadows.

Silence followed as the runway had been reduced to a vast stretch of barren land.

Maeve and the hostesses were moved before they could even react. Niccolo had driven them past the destruction radius.

He threw Rafferty beside them like he was a bag of meat, and then got back at admiring the duel.

’It’s not everyday one gets to witness a duel of world rankers,’ Those...were his thoughts.

But he knew, the show for him was coming to an end. He could feel the force of several significantly powerful individuals right outside the tornado barrier, flooding it to break.

"Miss Maeve," he then turned around and looked at Maeve.

"Huh?" Maeve didn’t even look at him, she was all interested in what was transpiring ahead of them.

"For the record. If anyone asks, I’m an agent from Union," Niccolo had to make sure she remembered that.

"..." Maeve looked at him in the eyes with furrowed brows, and without a response, turned her head back to the duel.

Her eyes moved across the ruined runway.

There was nothing left of it.

And then she saw Marcellus.

He stood beyond the destruction, still untouched by the collapse.

The Cutter lay beneath a fallen slab of concrete. One of his arms was trapped beneath the wreckage. His lower body had disappeared into the broken ground, and blood ran from the wound on his head.

He tried to move, the slab shifted, and his face contorted with pain.

He raised his head only to see Marcellus standing right above him. He stared at him.

His remaining machete lay several feet away. It was also half-buried beneath the fragments of the runway.

Marcellus turned and walked toward it.

The Cutter tried to drag himself backward, but his body just wouldn’t cooperate.

Marcellus puled the weapon free of the rubble.

He came back.

He then bent down, and set the machete on the ground in front of the man’s face. It’s blade was placed upward, tip was angled, and hilt braced against a chunk of concrete so the steel would not wall.

Then he stepped in, closed his fingers in the Cutter’s wet hair and lifted his head.

"You motherless fucker!" Cutter’s whole body screamed in pain, but he still managed to maintain his composure.

"You’re a fucking maniac, you know that?" Cutter scoffed as blood traced from the side of his lips.

He clawed once at Marcellus’s wrist. "A MANIA---"

Marcellus drove the head down.

*SHUNK---*

The machete entered the screaming mouth of the Cutter, and out the base of the skull. His teeth split, and bones snapped as the blade stopped only when the hilt met resistance.

Marcellus stood up straight.

Every movement, every strike, every death.

Marcellus wasn’t in control of his own body.

But he was forced to watch. Observe it all.

He had felt his own body move, shifting his limbs, tightening his fingers around a weapon, and the pressure of his feet against the ground. Yet not one of those movements had belonged to him.

He couldn’t lift a finger, turn his head, or even close his eyes.

He had been awake for all of it.

He straightened up, the pink flames drifted around his shoulders. His earrings swayed beside his face, and their petals still burned.

It wasn’t him. But...it didn’t make any sense. If it wasn’t him, who was it? The question etched in his mind.

Maeve swallowed, and did what every assistant should do. She moved forward, passing over the broken and uneven ground.

She passed fragments of concrete, twisted metal, and the remains of dead bodies. But whenever she was about to come across a dead body, she’d bring her hand in front of her eyes to avoid looking at it.

Marcellus hadn’t moved at all.

She approached cautiously.

"Young... Master?"

He didn’t answer. Maeve leaned in close. Those earrings still bothered her.

She was about to reach her hand and touch them, when Marcellus lowered his gaze toward her.

She went still.

Then the earrings began to burn away. She noticed the change immediately.

The fire at their edges began curling the petals inward before they turned into small as fine sparks and drifted away from his ears.

Within moments, both earrings had vanished, leaving only a few fading sparks.

Marcellus finally relaxed. He felt as if he had been freed again. He felt that he body belonged to him now.

He stood there, breathing in the cold air as the pink flames around his shoulders receded.

His shoulders relaxed, and his eyes again shifted toward Maeve.

"Goodness---" he then whispered.

"Huh? Wh-what happened now?" She asked him.

"I’m really good at this, aren’t I?" Marcellus smiled.

"..."

Behind them, the atmospheric veil that still churned over Tatsumisaki was beginning to disappear.

Beyond it, powerful awakeners were gathering to break through the veil set up on the sacred land of Tatsumisaki.

"And..." Marcellus shrugged his long overcoat off his shoulders, stepped in, and settled it around her. He drew the front closed with one neat pull so the wet red hoodie disappeared under the coat.

"Wh--" Maeve was confused. He adjusted the collar once, and then moved past her.

"I thought it was me who loved the rain, not you."

.

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[Combat Grade Recalibration: Complete.]

[Combat Grade: 4]