Chapter 210 - A Counter To Healing
Through his meticulous mapping of the area, Vern confirmed that only these three adversaries were present in the surrounding space.
Surely, this bunch won't try to attack us while we're going up against these blighted, right? He wondered, squinting at the group behind him.
He cast a warning glare at the group behind him before turning away. It was frustrating having to worry about his own 'allies' backstabbing him. Alas, it really was a possibility today.
Haytham had an unreadable look on his face, refusing to cross an imaginary line—as if coming too close would incriminate him or something. The rest, however, seemed simply cautious.
They didn't expect Vern to actually find a purer source of the plague, but now that he'd led them here, their mouths were finally shut.
I'll need to keep an eye on them at all times, he concluded. While their demeanor seemed serious for now, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was off.
Fortunately, his ability made this simple—the longer he perceived an area, the clearer his mental map became, each footstep's vibration or rustle of the wind adding to his understanding of the surroundings.
Well, it is what it is. Time to get this going.
That's when Haytham whispered in a low voice, "Be ready, all of you. Sorry if I don't trust these…gentle men to actually handle the trouble."
The rest of the group nodded, their hands heading to their sheaths. Vern didn't mind it. This wasn't him trying to show off anyway. It was better to be prepared if something went downhill on his end.
Not that it would come to that. He was actually quite confident about this battle.
Walking up to the phasing silhouette that was the invisible Lucian, he asked, "How do you want to approach this?"
A glitching face turned towards him, phasing back into reality before speaking incredulously, "What do you mean? I'm just going to whack it until it can't regenerate anymore."
Vern stared back with an empty gaze before shaking his head.
That wasn't a good idea. Whacking one thing was not the same as whacking three different things that were trying to rip you to shreds. Even in the best-case scenario, it would be a pyrrhic victory.
Yeah, my fault for asking, I guess.
"No. Let's do it methodically," he overruled, "We take out the minions first. You take left. I take right. You've seen what they can do, if you can't end it swiftly, just kite it away from their leader, and I should be able to help you finish the other one by then."
Lucian raised his half-transparent eyebrows but nodded after a second.
At least he has sense. If Lucian also chose to rebel, then this whole thing would become doubly painful.
"On your cue," Lucian answered back, as the sound and the face melted into the wind.
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Swift and decisive, Vern reminded himself. That's what was needed right now.
With a sching, he slotted Duality onto the sheath on his back. Taking a couple of measured steps, he stopped the moment the right blighted was in a straight line in front of him.
He could ‘see’ the whole situation clearly. The leader was in the back of the warehouse, smashing crates one after another as if looking for something, while the other two acted like perimeter guards outside.
Given they've yet to react to our group at all, we must be out of their detection range—assuming they use anything other than sight.
Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and leaned forward on one leg.
His arms streamlined to his sides as he snapped his neck back up. Everyone turned silent for that instant, subconsciously holding their breath.
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CRUNCH!
The ground burst beneath Vern's feet as his body shot out like a blur—propelled by releasing the compressed tension of his limbs on the cobblestone underneath.
Thump!
Thump!
One long stride after another, he covered over fifty meters in but a few seconds. Every step brought with it a mini explosion on the ground whose power caused frowns to descend on the spectator’s faces.
“Captain, weren't these observers supposed to be weak? Even you'll have to expend a lot of energy to wreak such havoc in your path.”
Haytham squinted before waving his hand, “Mere parlor tricks. Don't get distracted.”
Vern kept pushing on like a demon-possessed. He'd never been so fast. Previously, he dared not overly manipulate tension in his body parts.
But now? He could see the balance restore in the blink of an eye.
It's the healing effect the old blood has on my body. Proper Kingsmen had powerful self-healing, and while this wasn't that potent, it was close.
Crack! Thump!
He pushed even faster, subtly stabilizing the tension in his limbs as they coiled, only to explosively release it with Instability when he let go.
This created a feedback cycle allowing him to accelerate non-stop such that he was already upon the blighted before it even had the chance to fully turn around and face him.
Hand on the hilt of Duality, Vern finally opened his eyes back up. A white ring shone within them, making him seem divine in this field of white blooming flowers.
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Zinggg! Duality's edge screamed.
However, the purple aura flaring from his blade radiated a terrifying heat that distorted the air itself, changing his demeanor from an ethereal being to that of a grim reaper.
And he acted like one, too.
Not giving the blighted even a single moment to react, he slashed out Duality in a one-handed overhead attack.
Skreee! It shrieked, barely swiping its claws in Vern's general direction as the blade sliced through its body at an angle, detaching its torso from the lower body.
In an instant, the crowd watching this unfold stepped back. They knew how robust of a physique these blighted were gifted with. Slicing an arm clean had required their teammate to exert all his power, and even then, it regenerated in a moment.
“Could he be as powerful as a second infusion Kingsmen?”
“Tchk!” Haytham snorted, “Do you think that a single attack puts him on an equal footing as us? The fight's not nearly over.”
Others nodded, “Yea, he's probably dug his own grave by slicing it clean in two. It's going to regenerate as two blighted, both to be controlled by their lead—”
Skreeee!
At that moment, another screech resounded as the blighted on the left flew into the air—no, flailed into the air, its chest pierced through by a giant metal tip.
The phantasmal sword swerved towards the ground in a sharp swing, impaling the blighted into the cobblestone alongside the weapon with a loud smash!
Woah, gasps escaped the lips of a few while others watched in silence.
The ambush had begun, but with their ungodly regeneration, these enemies were the worst matchup for such a tactic.
Unless you ended them in one hit like their Kingsmen trio had done previously, they would keep coming back no matter what.
Hrrrarghhh!!! growled the blighted in the back, clearly alert and enraged.
Vern, however, ignored that one and focused all his mental capacity on the cleanly severed pieces in front of him. Duality stained the flowerbed underneath him with pale red blood, reflecting strays from the moonlight.
He intently watched the wound. The innards wriggled, merging and intertwining again to form muscle and bones. Yet, his cut wasn't just a simple slash.
It was imbued with a structural instability so chaotic it turned any and all new mass into smoke and debris—completely outpacing the regeneration.
"Wait…" shouted Rubel, pointing at that phenomenon. "It…it can't heal…?"
Haytham's expression turned dark this time as a hubbub went around the group.
"I heard that he used some sort of purple magic in a public duel, but no one said anything about it being able to hamper regeneration."
"Captain, are you sure antagonizing him was a good idea? We all heavily rely on healing, too. Who's to say he can't counter that as well?"
"Shut up," Haytham yelled. "He already knew the strengths and weaknesses of this enemy because of our previous battle. He's just making it seem like he can counter it."
Vern perceived the commotion in the Kingsmen group but squarely ignored it as he took hold of the Instabilities in front of him and widened them further. This was the nature of his vision. It created a vicious cycle of exacerbating the instability over and over until nothing was left.
He knew going in that he had an upper hand in this interaction. No matter which fundamental facilitated the regeneration, as long as his insights about structure were of a higher tier, he would overrule them.
Even if his insights didn't supersede the insight behind this regeneration, structure was a more physical and practical concept—second only to dissolution in terms of causing corporal destruction.
There was a time when the second Axiom of Observation had given him quite a headache. He couldn't exactly register the structure of most enemies in his perception because they held a unique representation.
Then how was he supposed to harm them? Especially in open spaces where there wasn't a ceiling to collapse? After all, he wasn't strong enough to cause earthquakes and landslides.
This was where Duality came in. It allowed him to inject a hint of known and malleable representation into the foreign and unknown, giving him control where he should've had none.
Instability Inducement, he thought, and with a spark in his thought space, the purple sheen around the cuts began consuming the flesh at a terrifying pace. The skin, bones, and even the blood evaporated up from the torso, devouring the neck in the next second.
HRRRARGHH! This seemed to anger the blighted in the back even more, and it shot something from its overblown arms.
With a swish, a white needle-like projectile cut through the air towards Vern.
He swiftly moved out of the way, only to realize the darting object wasn't for him. It headed for the struggling head beneath him. Vern couldn't stop it in time.
The eyes of the near-corpse in front of him suddenly flared, its veins bursting with newfound vigor. The tug of war between the creeping instability and regeneration turned tides once again as a spine formed out of nothing—overpowering and dissolving the purple chaos.
"Cap—captain, are you sure we shouldn't help him?" chimed Rubel, a sense of urgency in his voice, "A combatant with inherent anti-heal could be great for this excursion. We might really be able to find the source of the plague and save the city with him fighting alongside us."
Haytham snapped his head toward the timid young lad, an unreadable expression adorning his face. After a while, he coldly spoke to the whole group, "If anyone wants to help, feel free to do so. Just remember that you'll be on the wrong side of the history…"
The rising emotions in the crowd instantly settled down as some in the group exchanged knowing glances.
Vern, unaware of the exact exchange, cracked his neck as Duality blazed purple in his hand another time. Taking a firmer stance, he began—one wide slash, two, then three, then ten.
Streaks of purple colored the space around him, mincing the growing torso into many pieces, each of their edges laced with purple sparks that continued their relentless invasion—outdoing the enhanced regeneration.
I really do counter these things… he concluded.
Seemed like the concept of structural instability was a bane to any healing that relied on the reconstruction of mass. Makes sense for an Entropy Manipulator, I guess.
Hrhrarrgh!! Shrieked the somewhat petrified entity as it suddenly turned towards Lucian, clearly giving up on the bits and pieces that were left in front of Vern.
His enemy was dead. There were no two ways about it.
Vern quickly shifted his focus and assessed the other battle. It was going…well?
Bam! Bam! Skree! Bam! Bam! SKREEEEE!
The spectral giant sword flickered in and out of existence as it repeatedly pummeled the impaled creature, its shrieks fading midway as its vocal cords turned into meat paste.
One hole, two holes, three, five, ten. The ground quaked with every hit as the colossus blade descended again and again, smashing everything that regenerated and some more.
The petrified entity charged towards this commotion, its claw suddenly turning…
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What…?
Vern wasn't sure what just happened. He looked at the claw and…
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The fuck? he wondered, an uneasy feeling spreading through his body.
Something was wrong with that claw. Every time he looked at it, he lost his train of thought.
Vern frowned as his mind rejected a lot of prior assumptions. This isn't creation fundamental.
He tried to analyze the claw, and as expected, it was inscrutable by his perception. But that's when he noticed something. The claw left a trail of…freezing? A trail of frozen structure in its path?
It was hard to describe, but it was as if wherever the claw passed through, it…umm, petrified that space?
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Wait!
That's when it hit him like a bolt of lightning, and gears clicked into his mind. A look of terrible realization dawned on his face, and he instantly burst forward.
"Beware of that claw!" he yelled as he rushed to intercept at a breakneck pace.
With a tch-tching, he split duality into its two blades before envisioning a drastic change to them…Stability Inducement!
The blades turned matte black, devoid of any and all sheen, complimenting his dark outfit that contrasted against the blooming white flowers.
Hrrarghh! The petrified yelled again, jumping up high, ready to smite everything in its path with that bizarre claw.
All this while, Lucian continued grinding the blighted down with his sword—throwing it away from the leader like meat on a skewer as he squarely ignored the petrified even after Vern's warning.
Lucian clearly thought he would be safe in his phantom form.
He isn't! Vern screamed to himself. But there was too little time to explain his line of thought.
So he plunged right in, bursting in from an angle between Lucian and petrified as he swung his arms into a cross guard.
CLANG!!