The Executor did not bleed like a man.
The golden, luminous fluid leaking from the deep gash in his side didn't spurt
or flow. It moved sluggishly, like liquid light, sealing the edges of the wound
almost as quickly as it had been opened.
Cain watched the regeneration with cold, calculating eyes.
A war of attrition was impossible. If he kept landing shallow strikes, the
Executor's divine physiology would simply repair the damage. He needed a single,
catastrophic blow. He needed to sever the head or destroy the core entirely.
But his physical strength wasn't enough to drive the wooden blade through that
petrified, law-reinforced flesh.
"Target mobility relies on spatial manipulation and aerial anchoring," the
Executor stated, his voice echoing flatly across the ravine. "Adjusting
suppression parameters."
The Executor raised both hands.
The gravity didn't just pull downward this time.
The air itself thickened.
It felt as though the entire ravine had been submerged in deep water. The
atmospheric pressure spiked violently, pressing in on Cain from all sides. It
wasn't just heavy; it was a spatial mire. If Cain tried to use Mana
Materialization to step on the air now, the dense atmospheric pressure would
shatter his platforms instantly.
His aerial mobility was gone.
He was grounded.
The Executor lowered his arms, drawing a long, straight blade of condensed
spatial energy from the palm of his hand. He stepped forward.
His movements were no longer slow. With the environment locked down, the
Executor moved with terrifying, frictionless efficiency.
Cain didn't retreat.
He couldn't.
He tightened his grip on his right long blade.
If he couldn't use the air, he had to use the ground. If his normal physical
strength wasn't enough to cut through the divine reinforcement, he had to
multiply his strength.
He didn't reach for the Black Veil. He kept the heavy, dark reservoir locked
securely at the base of his spine.
Instead, he reached inward, focusing entirely on his own biology.
Blood Manipulation.
Cain forced his heart to accelerate.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump.
He didn't just pressurize his legs this time. He pressurized his entire body. He
restricted the blood flow to his non-essential organs, forcing massive, violent
surges of highly oxygenated blood directly into his arms, his shoulders, and his
core.
The physical toll was immediate and agonizing.
The veins along his neck and forearms bulged, turning a dark, bruised purple
against his skin. The capillaries in his eyes burst, turning the whites a stark,
terrifying red. His muscles swelled, artificially hardened by the extreme
hydraulic pressure building inside his own body.
It felt like his skin was going to tear open.
"You are destroying your own vessels," Elios's voice noted quietly in his mind.
A simple, factual observation.
I know, Cain thought.
The Executor lunged.
The spatial blade swept horizontally, aimed directly at Cain's neck. The strike
was flawless, carrying the crushing weight of the modified gravity field.
Cain didn't try to dodge. The air was too thick.
He stepped directly into the swing.
He brought his wooden blade up, channeling Mana Blade a fraction of a second
early to compensate for the 50% soul lag. The condensed mana edge formed just as
the Executor's spatial blade crashed into it.
The impact was deafening.
The ground beneath Cain's boots cratered instantly, the stone shattering under
the dispersed kinetic force.
But Cain didn't fly backward.
His hyper-pressurized muscles held the line. The sheer, biological force pumping
through his arms matched the divine weight of the Executor's strike.
The Executor's emotionless eyes widened by a fraction of a millimeter.
Cain didn't give him time to process the resistance.
Using the locked blades as a fulcrum, Cain twisted his wrists, redirecting the
Executor's spatial blade downward into the dirt.
With the Executor's guard broken, Cain unleashed the pent-up hydraulic pressure
in his right arm.
He didn't swing. He thrust.
He drove the wooden blade forward with every ounce of force his artificially
enhanced muscles could generate. The Mana Blade edge screamed as it met the
Executor's chest.
This time, the divine reinforcement didn't hold.
The sheer kinetic mass behind Cain's strike shattered the spatial barrier. The
wooden blade pierced the gray cloak, tore through the petrified flesh, and
buried itself hilt-deep directly into the center of the Executor's chest.
The Executor froze.
Golden light erupted from the wound, blinding and erratic. The spatial blade in
the Executor's hand dissolved into nothingness.
"Law... destabilized," the Executor murmured, his voice finally losing its
resonant echo.
Cain ripped the blade out, spinning on his heel to deliver a brutal, sweeping
kick to the Executor's knee. The joint snapped. As the divine vessel fell
forward, Cain brought his blade down in a final, decapitating arc.
The head separated cleanly from the shoulders.
The body hit the dust.
The golden light flickered violently before fading completely, leaving behind
nothing but a hollow, empty corpse.
The crushing spatial pressure in the ravine vanished instantly.
The moment the gravity lifted, Cain released Blood Manipulation.
His heart rate plummeted.
The sudden drop in internal pressure hit him like a physical blow. Cain dropped
to his knees, his sword slipping from his trembling fingers. He clutched his
chest, a violent, tearing cough ripping through his throat.
He spat onto the stone.
It wasn't saliva. It was thick, dark blood.
His internal organs were hemorrhaging. The artificial pressure had torn
micro-fissures through his muscle tissue and blood vessels. His vision swam, the
edges of the ravine blurring as his body screamed in agony.
He had won the one-on-one.
He had killed a Divine Executor manually.
But the cost was severe.
Cain forced himself to take a slow, rattling breath. He reached out with a
shaking hand, gripping the hilt of his fallen sword, and used it as a crutch to
push himself back up to his feet.
He wiped the blood from his chin, his red, bloodshot eyes staring down the
length of the ravine.
He wasn't done.
A shadow fell over him.
Cain slowly lifted his head.
At the top of the ravine, silhouetted against the pale sky of the ruined mana
zone, four figures stood looking down at him.
The remaining Executors.
They didn't look at their fallen comrade. They didn't show anger. They simply
stared down at the bleeding, exhausted human standing in the dirt.
"Unit Four erased," the leader's voice drifted down, cold and absolute. "Anomaly
poses critical physical threat. Cease individual engagement."
The four Executors raised their hands in perfect unison.
"Initiate synchronized suppression."
Cain tightened his grip on his sword, tasting copper in his mouth.
The 1v1 was over.
The 1v4 had begun.