Pierce had just regained control over his body when Sylar appeared before him like a phantom of pure wrath, striking him across the face once more. Bone cracked under the blow, and Pierce was blasted through the ground as if his body weighed nothing.
Sylar did not stop there. One strike followed another—relentless, merciless—each hit driving Pierce farther away. In less than three seconds, Sylar had forced him across more than three thousand meters (3280 yd), the landscape tearing apart in the wake of their violent passage, until they reached the edge of a massive cliff overlooking an endless forest.
It was there, suspended over that sea of green, that Sylar lunged with all his strength. He tackled the True Apostle, and together they plummeted down the cliffside. Their bodies broke the sound barrier repeatedly, bursts of thunder exploding behind them as they fell. After a drop of more than fifteen hundred meters (1640 yd), they crashed into the ground with the destructive force of a small meteorite.
The impact zone vanished, obliterated in an instant. Earth ruptured and lifted into the air, shattering outward in a violent spray of stone and soil. A shockwave expanded from the point of collision, a circle of devastation ripping the surrounding forest to pieces.
Trees snapped like twigs. Roots torn from the ground. Xeno beast scattered in blind panic. A military stronghold could have been completely annihilated by such a fall. That was the power of a Grade 2 battle.
Only after the trembling earth settled did two figures struggle up from the crater.
Sylar's bones shook with pain, even with Logos awakened. Falling for over a thousand meters (1093 yd) at hypersonic speed was dangerous, even for him. Yet the pain was worth enduring; he had needed to drag the battle somewhere far from prying eyes. No one could witness what he intended to do.
Pierce, however, was in far worse shape. The abomination of dark-pink muscles that composed his body convulsed uncontrollably, vomit-like splatters of blood dripping from his mangled mouth.
The True Apostle had taken the brunt of the impact, and even his bio-armor could not withstand such brutality. His entire body was riddled with internal damage, cracks, ruptures, and fractures. But none of it compared to the deeper pain he felt as he stared at Sylar.
The young man before him was everything Pierce was not, his opposite, his antithesis made flesh. Sylar was someone who had overcome despair and tribulation through his own will and strength. Someone who did not rely on stolen or false power to escape his problems. Someone who built real bonds, who forged a brotherhood so loyal and so pure that his comrades would willingly risk their lives for him, because they knew Sylar would do the same in return.
"You… you are just a—" Pierce couldn't finish the sentence.
Sylar flashed forward and slammed a ferocious blow into Pierce's chest. A fresh mouthful of blood sprayed from the True Apostle's lips.
"I'm tired of hearing your excuses." Sylar's face showed nothing but disgust and contempt as he swung a hook into Pierce's jaw, blasting him sideways.
Before Pierce could hit the ground, Sylar appeared above him and delivered a brutal downward kick straight into his face, driving him into the shattered earth and cracking it further.
"You were given talent and opportunities others could only dream of." Sylar pressed his foot against Pierce's head, increasing the pressure. The ground around Pierce's skull split. "You were offered a chance to belong to something greater than yourself. A family of brothers in battle. A path to gain the strength needed to stand firm against the horrors of the universe. And what did you do? You whined. You blamed others for your own failures."
Sylar stopped speaking then. He didn't need to continue; the truth was already obvious. He could see it in Pierce's face, eyes filled not with regret, but with the same stubborn arrogance that had defined him from the start.
Even now, even as his skull cracked beneath Sylar's foot, Pierce refused to admit he had made mistakes. Everything that had happened, every atrocity he had committed, was someone else's fault. He was never to blame. Never responsible.
A heartbeat later, Sylar stomped the ground hard. The shockwave launched Pierce upward several meters. Sylar twisted and delivered a roundhouse kick with perfect precision, sending the True Apostle crashing into the cliffside. Rock fractured under the impact, the force embedding Pierce deep into the stone.
Sylar's eyes glowed. He extended his right arm, and every metallic component around him began to tremble, drawn toward him by an overwhelming magnetic force. They spiraled around his arm at blistering speed, transforming it into a massive drill of rotating steel. At the same time, his dark-blue aura burned hotter, rising with renewed fury and further amplifying his physical might.
Pierce stared at him, confusion and terror warring in his gaze. The power Sylar had summoned… it felt eerily similar to the corrupt energy that surged through Pierce's own body and twisted him into what he had become. But there was also something fundamentally different about it—pure where Pierce's was foul, alive where his was parasitic.
There was no time to ponder it. His life was seconds away from ending.
Like all cowards who finally stand face-to-face with the consequences of their actions, Pierce began to beg. "Please… my family—"
But Sylar was already moving.
He shot forward like a falling star, appearing before Pierce in an instant. The drill-arm plunged into Pierce's chest, grinding through mutated flesh and twisted muscle. The rotating metal tore everything in its path, while Sylar's strengthened fist pushed deeper and deeper. Pierce's bio armor shattered, his internal defenses crumbled, and finally the drill burst out through his back.
"CRACK"
The cliff trembled violently as the tip of Sylar's drill-arm connected, the massive geological structure barely able to endure the force behind the strike. The sheer pressure radiating from the impact made it clear just how devastating Sylar's attack truly was.
Pierce's eyes widened in horror. He felt every internal organ inside his chest being pulverized by the spiraling force tearing through him, darkness closing in at the edges of his vision. It seemed certain that this was the end… until something stirred.
From beneath the ruptured flesh of Pierce's skull, the face of the strange figurine, the very entity that had triggered his transformation, emerged. The moment Sylar saw it, something within him recoiled. Instinct screamed in warning, a primal alarm ringing through his mind.
Without hesitation, Sylar tore his arm free from Pierce's chest, leaving behind a gaping, fist-sized cavity that poured blood like a ruptured dam. He leapt back, instantly widening the distance between them. Yet even from afar, he could feel the figurine's eyes locked onto him, eyes that didn't seem bound by space or time.
In the next heartbeat, those eyes ignited with a dark pink energy, pure, corrosive, and wrong. The very air around it seemed to rot. A blast of that corrupted power erupted toward Sylar, its speed so overwhelming he had no hope of dodging.
The energy hit him.
Or rather—it entered him.
A foreign force pushed into his mind, invasive and cold. But to Sylar's shock, the moment it made contact, it simply… vanished. Snuffed out. Disintegrated into nothing.
And then, blood.
The figurine's eyes began to weep streaks of thick crimson, as if it had suffered a catastrophic backlash.
"What the hell is happening?" Sylar thought, stunned. He could feel it, the figurine possessed the power of Paradise, the Antiverse. But nothing explained the sudden reversal. It had attempted to connect with him, yet the instant it touched his mind, it was as if a fire had plunged into an ocean, instantly annihilated.
There were still too many things he didn't understand about Paradise, too many secrets he needed to unravel. He couldn't rely on luck forever to face its horrors. But those thoughts vanished the moment the figurine's face flashed again.
This time, the power didn't lunge toward Sylar. Instead, it poured back into Pierce's ravaged body.
A torrent of dark pink energy surged through the True Apostle. The massive wound in his chest sealed over at a speed visible to the naked eye, muscle knitting and twisting like living ropes. The broken tentacles and warped flesh reorganized themselves, reshaping, hardening, evolving.
It happened too fast for Sylar to intervene. Within seconds, Pierce had transformed completely.
The abomination of loose flesh and tentacles was gone.
In its place stood a towering, demon-like figure with obsidian-pink skin, carved by glowing, vein-like lines of power. A mask-like carapace encased its face, ridged and angular, with predatory eyes burning beneath the shell. Massive hands, ending in long, black, clawed talons, extended outward, as if eager to seize or crush whatever stood before them.
The Nemesis System erupted in Sylar's vision.
[Nemesis Detected!!!]
[Quest #009: Kill True Apostle Pierce — Alone
— Mission Grade: –2
— Status: INTERRUPTED
— Reward: 45,000 XP]
[Special Quest: Kill Pierce, the True Apostle of Masyrian — Alone
— Missing Grade: +2
— Reward: First Eternal Seed / 50,000 XP
— Status: ACTIVE]
Sylar lowered his stance, fists clenching as the information burned before his eyes.
For a mission of that level… Pierce's strength must have risen to that of a veteran Shooting Star.
He had grown powerful, but even now, there remained a massive gulf between him and monsters like Captain Benjamin.
Unfortunately, the time to worry about that had already passed.
Whether he wanted it or not—
Sylar would have to fight.