I strode toward that screaming voice as Assassin dissolved behind me, his outline melting into the surroundings, heartbeat, breath, and footsteps all vanishing into nothing. But the threads inside his heart still told me his exact position, even under [Presence Concealment].
Within a minute, we passed the Fuyuki bridge's edge and into the city that stretched ahead. Streets split off from us in different directions, deserted shops and ruined buildings stretching along parallel paths.
Turning left, I took a road lined with still-lit, dust-covered vending machines illuminating asphalt, set just beside a house whose front wall had caved in, the furniture untouched inside.
"Help!" A micro-vibration from the distance whispered against my heels, alongside the sound of frantic running. "They're going to kill me, LEV! Actually murder me! Tell everyone I—OW!—tell everyone I went down fighting! Heroically!"
I glanced back at the empty space behind me, then tipped my chin forward. "Go and don't let her die, Assassin."
Her wailing continued, echoing across the street. "...Is that a rock? Oh god, they're throwing ROCKS?!"
Sensing Assassin surge ahead, I increased my own pace and broke into a sprint. At the far end of this street, a group of skeletons chased after a woman's silhouette. She had long white hair with a side braid, eyes the shade of amber-gold.
And under my gaze, her high heel snapped, sending her tumbling down, knee scraping against the road, a sob slipping from her lips. "It hurts! Lev, I know you're out there, stop hiding and get over here, that's an ORDER!"
A skeleton reached her, sword pulled overhead, the crunch of shifting bones resounding as it slashed down. Its weapon was halfway through its arc and still swinging when a dagger flashed, sparks erupting along its neck, and its skull tore off, spinning away.
The woman had wrapped her arms around her face, shivering in a way that suggested she was waiting for pain. More skeletons charged at her, rusted swords and knives slicing through the air, aimed at her vitals.
One skeleton swept its sword in a low arc. The same dagger whipped up from a shadow on asphalt, wheeling forward, and punched into that skeleton's empty eye socket.
Its whole frame left the ground and flipped with the weapon's momentum, crashing into another skeleton mid-strike right behind it.
Both dragon tooth warriors rolled over one another, ribcages snapping together in a cascade, and a cloaked hand took shape above their sprawl, snapping around the dagger's hilt, wrenching it free, and vanished right after.
Then a metallic edge flashed two meters away, slamming pommel-first into the spine of another skeleton rushing at her. Its vertebrae groaned, body launched over her and smashing into a leaning street pole.
She peeked out from beneath her arms, watching a weapon vanish and reappear with every kill, and a shriek wrung out of her.
"IT'S A GHOST! LEV, THERE'S A GHOST FIGHTING THOSE SKELETONS, AND I'M THE DIRECTOR, SO SOMEONE BETTER EXPLAIN THIS TO ME BEFORE I DIE!"
My lips twitched as I finally reached her, stopping at her side. She heard the sound of my footsteps and lunged up blindly, arms clamping tight around my waist, burying her face in my chest.
"Uwaah! You're finally here, Lev!" She pushed her face deeper in, words muffled. "Do you know how scared I was?! I even thought you had abandoned me!"
Her arms roamed around my waist, voice dropping. "Huh? Lev... Why do you feel different? Your chest is warmer, and your muscles are more defined, and gosh, are those abs?"
She trailed off, then stiffened, craning her neck back to look up, eyes going wide.
I looked back down at her, expression flat and unimpressed.
"EHHHH!? You're not Lev! W-who are you!?"
...
..
.
A purple blur rammed into a five-story building's foundation, and its face folded inward from bottom to top, curling around her spine, paint shearing off in long stripes, concrete exploding in a cloud of shattered fragments and dust.
Three streets away, a bell hanging from a house's ceiling trembled, swayed, then swung into a full pendulum arc, rising in a continuous chorus of metal striking metal.
Dust obscured everything for a breath, silence reigning over the whole area, quiet enough to catch a whisper of that ringing bell.
Then the sound of a heel touching ground broke it, and Medusa walked out of that cloud.
Blood dripped from her forehead and down the left side of her blindfold, dyeing it a mix of crimson and violet. A long gash ran along the side of her leg, warmth slipping out of her through it and leaving a chill behind.
One laceration stretched along the curve of her waist, the black mini-dress there shredded, revealing muscles visible through the rent skin.
Her palms were locked around her stakes, their chains stretched back over her shoulders and trailing off into the dust cloud behind.
Nearly a hundred meters ahead of her, Heracles dragged himself out of the park, weapon resting on his shoulder.
Countless new scars marred his form. Three perforations on his chest sat alongside the earlier wound, one of them still weeping blood. Chain-link grooves were carved into the skin of his wrist, raw enough that the muscles around it still spasmed.
He limped on a single foot, the other hanging broken, leaving a smear of red in his wake.
Medusa took another step forward, shoulders rolling back, fingers tightening around the stakes. Her chains went rigid, links stretching taut behind her, humming with tension as she arched her back, heels driving down until cracks spider-webbed beneath her feet.
She pulled.
That five-story structure blasted through the dust cloud.
It came up foundation-first, stretches of concrete and twisted pipes dangling from its underside like roots. Shattered glass cascaded from its windows in sheets, catching moonlight in a waterfall of glittering shards before raining onto the street below.
That whole building rotated as it lifted, walls groaning, floors separating at their joints with snapping bolts and shearing steel.
It crested its arc above Medusa's head, hanging in the sky for a single breath, a floating monolith trailing dust and debris.
She held it a moment longer, then let it fall.
An enormous shadow drowned Heracles, and half the park behind him.
His broken ankle touched the ground, bones groaning, more blood spilling out.
He pulled the sword-club off his shoulder, both hands wrapping around its grip, a blade carved like a sword but the size of a club, its edge jagged like shark teeth. Heracles drew it sideways, one leg sliding forward, sole bracing against a fallen tree that pulverized beneath his stance.
Legs tensing, muscles swelling and biceps straining, he coiled.
The building descended.
So he swung.
The air ahead split. A pressure wave detonated outward, visible as a distortion that flattened all the suspended dust into ground. Crumbled trunks wrenched up from soil, spinning away end over end, bark shearing off them in splinters.
The leftover trees, those still standing, buckled. Every one of them, trunks whipping away in unison, branches snapping backward, leaves stripping from them in bursts.
Above Medusa, a broken building slamming down.
Behind Heracles, the whole park flattening, trees and all.
Between them, glass fell, dust climbed, and from somewhere farther away, a bell rang.
And then Fuyuki quaked.
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[15 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Author's Thoughts]
Olga, how scandalous! Checking someone else out without shame, tch, tch, tch.
In her defense, the man does have abs. In Lev's defense, he does not, sorry buddy, no take backs on that one, should've hit the gym instead of those archives.
Meanwhile Medusa's out here throwing five-story buildings like she's returning a library book that's mildly overdue, and Heracles just took a swing at a falling apartment complex like that one baseball pro, what was his name again?
... Forget it, point is, he's definitely getting drafted. Imagine, a Heracles wearing a cap and jersey, his home run clearing the whole field and sending it straight into orbit!
Muhawahaha!
Anyway, anyway, no one in this chapter has heard of "de-escalation", everyone's solution to "I am injured and upset" is "destroy the nearest architecture."
Genuinely and truly inspiring urban planning.
That bell's still ringing three streets over, by the way. It has seen things. It will never be the same. Neither will the park.
Anyway, uh, quick recap. Fuyuki now has one fewer building and several thousand fewer trees. See you next chapter, assuming the ground stops shaking long enough for me to type.
Have a wonderful day, see ya soon!
And yea.. curious about this personality? Well I'm trying to act like our boy, the protag of our new Danmachi fic to write him better. Progress so far: I now instinctively want to throw a building at my problems. My therapist says this is "not the growth we discussed."