Bang! Bang! Bang!
Blobs of flesh and blood exploded outward in every direction, turning into a cascade of fleshy bombs that detonated all around.
Stephen kept generating Distortions in rapid succession, twisting the trajectories of the flying flesh so they veered off course. Then he warped his enemy's behaviour and perception, and in the next instant he flickered into existence directly behind the humanoid mass of flesh, the dagger in his hand erupting into a blade of golden flame over a metre long, which he brought down in a devastating slash.
Schick.
The golden flame cut through the creature like a blade through candle wax, splitting it cleanly in two. The extreme heat instantly ignited the flesh at the cut, scorching it black and filling the air with a foul, charred stench.
But the flames were snuffed out almost immediately — absorbed directly into the flesh. The wound sealed itself shut with a nauseating speed, and a thick wave of sulphur erupted outward. Pale blue fireballs reeking of brimstone came hurtling toward Stephen.
Stephen tried to use Distortion to redirect the fireballs — but his thoughts lurched violently, and instead of twisting the balls away, he found himself charging straight into the densest cluster of them. The sensation was intimately familiar to him: it was Distortion — someone had turned his own power against him.
This Shepherd has at least one Baron of Corruption in his flock.
Stephen crossed both arms in front of himself. The bracer on his left wrist flared to life, and a suit of refined armour condensed over his entire body in an instant, glowing faintly.
He took the barrage of sulphur fireballs head-on. The Dawn Armour was left scarred with cracks and dents across its surface. He immediately chained together Bribery, Arrogance, Corrosion, and Association to lock the target in a brief standstill — and then the golden flame on his dagger erupted once more. His expression twisted into something manic and fierce.
"Praise the Sun!!!"
Scorching, blazing light illuminated the entire stretch of street — then immediately compressed inward, condensing into a sphere of light roughly the size of an egg, which he hurled straight at the flesh-blood creature.
The air itself distorted and shimmered from the heat as the sphere passed through it. An instant later, it struck the creature squarely, burning it rapidly down to ash.
Crack!
But at that very moment, the half-incinerated creature shattered like a broken mirror into countless fragments.
"It had a Witch in its flock as well!"
The creature rapidly put distance between itself and the light sphere. Its form then materialised from within Stephen's own shadow — both hands instantly conjuring a massive greatsword of molten lava, which it swung in a savage diagonal arc.
The Dawn Armour crumbled apart. Stephen himself was sent flying, a deep, scorched wound carved across his torso.
He coughed up a mouthful of blood and swore under his breath. "Right, this is not working — fighting a wounded Shepherd is already this much of a nightmare. Time to leave."
He had no shortage of Beyonder items on him, but every single one came with negative side effects. Unleashing all of them at once would make escape impossible.
He didn't hesitate. He plunged through the Spirit World and materialised back at the carriage. Then he threw open his arms dramatically.
"Ladies, come to me — we need to run for our lives."
"???"
All three women stared at him.
A heartbeat later, the carriage exploded in a ball of fire. The horse was incinerated on the spot. But the four occupants had already vanished.
"Aaaaah!!!"
The flesh-blood creature roared in fury, sweeping the lava greatsword through the road, carving a gouge several metres long into the cobblestones. Then it squeezed the hilt and the sword dissolved back into liquid rock, scattering as ash and embers. The twisted mass of flesh across its body rapidly regenerated, and as it turned, it shed its horrible form — becoming a strikingly beautiful man, naked, with unnervingly delicate features.
Mr. A.
He walked back into the pub, his expression dark. Tonight had been his first operation since the official Beyonders had nearly destroyed him. His plan had been to devour flesh and blood to recover, and to offer a sacrifice to his Lord, seeking guidance.
Instead, he'd been set upon by a complete stranger, his plans thrown into chaos, and his injuries made worse.
He grabbed a piece of clothing from one of the ruined corpses and shrugged it on. He turned to leave — and stopped cold.
Not far away, standing motionless in the shadows, a tall figure was watching him in silence.
When had she appeared?
Mr. A's heart seized. His spiritual senses had not given him the faintest warning.
By Vincent's count, this was the third time he had laid eyes on Mr. A. The first two times he'd known him only through the original story — a fanatical devout, a terrorist, a lunatic. That had been enough to form an opinion.
But seeing him now in the flesh made it even clearer.
Every single member of the Aurora Order deserves what's coming to them.
"Run."
Mr. A made the decision in a split second. He immediately attempted Shadow Shift to disappear — and failed. His body was encased in a vast, transparent amber, solidifying around him without warning, and every flicker of his spiritual power became sluggish and unresponsive, like trying to move through deep water.
Then a blood-red spear, dripping with crimson, tore through the amber and pierced straight through Mr. A's body, dissolving into nothing — without leaving him even a sliver of time to react.
Mr. A's expression collapsed into despair. He opened his mouth — as though trying to speak — but his body was already fracturing, splitting apart along countless lines, like porcelain dropped onto stone.
Boom.
He shattered into pieces and scattered across the floor.
Mr. A — whose deeds had filled pages of the original story, who had brought Klein to the edge of death more than once — was dead.
It wasn't surprising. The gap in power between him and Bernadette had simply been too great.
Vincent let out a quiet sigh. The plot has well and truly gone off the rails now. The infamous 'Five Pound Ambassador Incident' probably won't happen at all anymore.
"Shouldn't we move? The official Beyonders will be here any moment."
Vincent said, pulling himself back to the present.
Bernadette frowned. "Something's wrong here."
She looked at the space the pub's patrons had been cleared from — a deliberate, empty area, surrounded by bodies stacked in a specific arrangement. Symbols had been drawn across the floor and the corpses in blood.
And at the very top of the pile of bodies, an inverted cross with a single eye was stabbed into the heap.
Glub.
A sound — low, wet, wrong.
In an instant, Bernadette and Vincent felt it simultaneously: a wave of cold, creeping dread. Then they saw it — the single eye on the inverted cross... had moved.
"!!!"
The next second, infinite shadow descended, radiating outward in every direction like a tide.
Before Bernadette could react, an enormous curtain fell from the sky, and behind it lay a pair of cold, indifferent eyes watching the whole world.
Then the shadows covering the walls and the floor split open — crack by crack — and from every fissure grew a pair of brass-coloured eyes. Dozens. Hundreds.
Watched by countless eyes, a figure took shape in the air before Bernadette.
Black hair. Black eyes. The robes of a wizard — the exact appearance of Vincent in the Harry Potter world. For a few seconds the figure sharpened into clarity — then it wavered, faded, and dissolved into a blurring silhouette, golden mist bleeding out from within.
Vincent stared at his own "body" in shock. "I... came out?"
To be continued…
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