Amadeus had forgotten the extent of violence Aurelius was capable of. His duty had been to provide an opening for Aurelius. However, he forgot whatever next steps that had been agreed upon as stared at the crater in the wall. It had suddenly just appeared there while the man who had stood in front of him had had his existence annihilated in a blink.

What he then saw was Aurelius walk toward Orpheus' entourage which was composed of a hundred men in black masks. They were a fearsome elite that would have rivaled any army in the world, and Aurelius walked alone. All their work had been to get here while the final encounter had been taken for granted. His breathing turned irregular and his hands trembled. At last, Damian's nervousness had caught up to him as he realized what a mountain of a task it was in reality.

Aurelius had taken his enhancers already. Damian could feel it in the air. It set him at ease to know Aurelius had become something more. His presence wiped away logic and turned men into chaotic animals. He wasn't a cursed beast. No. More like a cursed human.

He was the darkness of light.

And as Orpheus managed to gather himself in a roar of command, the dreaded combat began. Damian watched, standing still in the same spot just tens of strides away from the first collision. It didn't!t matter. He could do nothing in any case.

The flashes and crashes of essence overwhelmed his senses and he felt as if he was watching it from behind his own eyes.

Moving at speeds far too fast for him to perceive, Aurelius clashed with the soldiers before Damian saw either leave their spots and then someone was dead. And it was never Aurelius.

Orpheus' guards had been in formation as it began, but it was broken soon enough. They encircled Aurelius and rushed him from all sides, but they could not touch him. Aurelius did not move. He appeared and disappeared.

The guards had just lost their commander and nobody could take his place in such a situation. Some tried. But their barking of orders turned into screams of pain soon enough.

Stone shattered, blood-spattered, metal clattered. On and on. They kept going at him, even as he avoided every single attempt from all sides simultaneously only to shoot off a hundred slashes that sent heads and limbs hurling through the air.

In his daze, something landed at Damian's feet. He looked down as it rolled over to reveal a pair of hollow eyes. Damian recoiled and felt bile rise in his throat. He held it back but then came to his senses. He needed to leave.

He turned and rushed to the window that Aurelius had shattered and enhanced his legs before jumping up onto the wide windowsill. Only then did he remember the plan again.

But he looked back once more if only to marvel at Aurelius' art. In the midst of black masks, he parried, spun, and lashed out. Every time he did someone died. Some tried to hit him with balls of compression only to explode themselves. Others shot beams only to be slashed. Most waited for an opening that never came in anything but their imagination, which is when they struck. All just to have their lives of harsh training and brutal combat spat upon by a lethal attack that didn't even require Aurelius' attention for a split second.

The sight made one question existence. It was a thing that, once witnessed, could not be unwitnessed. Nor could one take their eyes off of it. Even Orpheus just stood there. The carriages behind his had been annihilated by Aurelius' intentional slashes. The only way out was on feet or through Aurelius. But in reality, there was no escape. If Aurelius willed it, Orpheus would have already been dead.

He was just occupied with passing judgment on the ones whose selfishness had allowed Orpheus to come so far doing what he did. While doing so, he looked like he was born to do nothing except that.

However, Damian could peek under the surface and glance at the truth of the situation. The truth about Aurelius and those he surrounded himself with.

He was not a man. They were not men. And this... this wasn't life.

***

Amid bloodshed was where Aurelius felt most comfortable.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The enhancers opened his being to the world and he was free to express his nature. Blades aimed at him cut through the air and whistled in his ears, but they posed no danger. Not when he was like this.

He grabbed a man by the wrist and sensed two more attacks in the same. However, the coordination of elites was nothing to him. He simply twisted around, yanking the soldier he had grabbed so fast seemed to almost lose consciousness. Then he did lose it, as Aurelius used him as a meatshield. In the same, he dodged the third strike from behind and elbowed his assailant in the face before slitting his throat without turning around. After that, he swept his hand and slashed through the meatshield into the man behind him, bisecting both.

Then new ones took their place. Five people struck at him and all lost their hands or hearts before they knew what happened. Some even seemed to have taken enhancers, but that didn't matter.

Only Aurelius could wield two enhancers in such a way. Only he was able to comprehend their power and feel as their darkness swelled inside him.

He'd been afraid of darkness once upon a time. The unknown had made him shiver and reject even the forests he thought of as his home.

But now he had become the unknown. Unknown to others and even more to himself. So what replaced his pure love was a perverse fondness for what he once shied away from on the single basis that he was similar to it. He needed to grasp something. And the only thing he could was vile. Because how could he have loved the pure any longer after having his purity swept away so thoroughly?

A monster, by definition, was outside of nature. Such was Aurelius' fate.

And in due time, only Aurelius was left, his whole frame stained in gore as he stood alone amid the pond of mutilated corpses. His company was the sound of blood dripping into the pool at his feet and that of the carriages' wheels spinning on air.

He turned to look away from it all and met the eyes of that scum. A man with dirty blonde hair and a dark gaze of disdain that made Aurelius boil with rage. He was a large man but shrunk in comparison to Aurelius and grew smaller still in his paralysis.

Aurelius stepped towards the man, foot splatting in blood. "You killed my friend," he said in his Rykian tongue.

"You're—" Orpheus tried, his voice weak at seeing his invincible guard shattered by a single man who took no injuries.

"You threatened my mother," Aurelius growled, doing his best to articulate every syllable so that the man would understand why he would die.

"I didn't!" Orpheus objected. He dared to object! "Gadreel did! It was Numen. They are your enemy."

Orpheus stepped back. Aurelius made a movement forward and found Orpheus in arm's reach, so he grabbed the man. He grasped the man's collar so hard his hands turned white. Then he shook the man violently and let loose a roar that he had been keeping in, suffocating for this very moment.

When his voice ran out, Orpheus' legs had gone loose. He was held up purely by Aurelius. And once he let the man go, he slumped to the bloody ground like a fucking worm. He lay on his back as he pushed himself away in panic. He moved only his hands like his lower body had been paralyzed.

Aurelius looked down at him with narrowed eyes and blinked slowly before beginning to take measured steps toward the whinging man on the ground.

"The palace guard will be helpless against me. Stop thinking about stalling. Think about me." He stopped in front of the man and crouched, whispering. "What do see?"

"I— I see a man..." the man talked in shock, growing paler by the second. He breathed like he was trying to bite the air. "that— that I could make... v— v— very rich."

"Really?" Aurelius glared at the man with wide eyes. Orpheus nodded profusely. The Aurelius showed his hand, having taken a glove off. In it grew a ball of essence. There was a flash of terror in Orpheus' eyes as they reflected the blue light, but before he could react, Aurelius had struck. The ball of essence sunk into his thigh and acted according to its nature of destruction. The leg exploded with a meaty sound and Orpheus burst out into sound. It was a deep sound, but his growl, turned to a roar, and the roar turned to a scream, and before he knew it, Orpheus' voice was but a high-pitched whine as he cried the loss of his leg.

He still did not realize. Aurelius put his glove back on and jumped up before hopping on Orpheus, digging his knee into the man's chest. He grabbed the man's sweaty, fleshy face with both his hands. "Think about what you did!!!"

The man cried, but Aurelius only felt more angry. The same pit in his stomach as always when he realized the extermination of evil brought back no lost good. "Think about what kind of life you led! Regrets you have! Realize your misery before you die!"

"Fuck you!" the man groaned as he squirmed in agony. "I don't even know you."

"That's your mistake." Aurelius seethed. Then he rose and lifted Orpheus by his throat the life was fading from the man. It was time to end it.

He drew back his arm and firmed his hand straight, staring straight into Orpheus' eyes. Then, from the toes of his backfoot to his waist and finally, his torso, Aurelius twisted in an act of violence before shoving his hand through Orpheus' heart.

His hand went through and the life faded from Orpheus.

But he wasn't done. He walked to the wall, dragging Orpheus' corpse behind, grabbing a piece of metal from a broken carriage on the way. At the wall, he slammed Orpheus into it and shoved the pipe through his chest to keep him still.

Lastly, he wrote a message in blood above the head of the world's largest criminal organization's head. He left the scene when the palace guard arrived, leaving them to marvel at his work. By that time, he was growing dizzy and sick. His time with the enhancers would last him for his escape. Then it was up to Damian.

His mission was done. And in his success, on the wall, it read with large, sharp letters: "The liveD lives."