As Lay’mel crept slowly up in the thick shadows of Evick Swacc and his cronies, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the confident smile that hung on Randidly Ghosthound’s face. Their plan to ambush him had even benefited from coincidence; almost as soon as they had arrived, the space had shattered and locked them in a small area alone with the Ghosthound. Providence was giving them the opportunity they had hoped for.

Yet the whole situation stunk. Lay’mel face twisted as he scrutinized the Ghosthound. Why the hell is he so confident…? He possesses capability, sure, but...

Evick Swacc paused and put his hands on his hips as he looked over toward their target. “Heh, even if you know we are here, what does it matter? Today is the day you die, Randidly Ghosthound. But since we have some privacy… why not have a long and painful talk? Don’t think your transgressions have been forgotten, no matter what the ‘official’ story is. We will flay the skin and muscles from your back until you spill what truly happened to Ileot Swacc.”

The Ghosthound didn’t even bother to answer. He simply flexed his hand and produced a long and elegant spear whose blade looked like a leaf. The Ghosthound leveled the spear at Evick Swacc and smiled.

It was an unequivocal challenge.

“Bahahah! This is how it should be! It’s no fun if I don’t get to play around a bit first,” Evick chuckled. He produced his own weapon, a massive ax with a crimson blade. As he leaned the weapon against his shoulder, slow and heavy drops rolled off of the stained metal; Lay’mel had heard that this token cretin of the Swacc Family soaked his ax in blood when he wasn’t using it, just for this effect.

But for all that this cretin was the bluntest instrument that the Swacc Family possessed, he was still a true member of the Swacc Family; his strength was real. The Ghosthound just lowered his stance and waited, with his half-smile still intact.

Evick’s mouth twitched. His opponent’s silence was starting to annoy him. Instead of continuing to speak to Randidly Ghosthound, he placed both hands on his massive ax and raised it above his head. Lay’mel could practically see the slow machinery of the man’s mind labeling the Ghosthound of a fool, and therefore not deserving of the pearls of wisdom that dripped from his lips.

The only language all fools understood was violence.

Evick stomped and accelerated forward, leaving drops of blood in his wake. He arrived in front of the Ghosthound and swung his weapon in a sharp horizontal sweep. The Ghosthound smoothly moved the head of his spear to meet the attack.

BOOOOOOOMMMM!

The two weapons smashed into each other and impact shattered the ground beneath their feet. Cracks snaked outward and weakened the already sundered Nether Pinion. But Lay’mel felt a quiver of fear in his chest; in the conflict, Evick Swacc was sent stumbling backward off the Nether Pinion but the Ghosthound remained firm. The smile on the Ghosthound’s face widened as he looked down on Evick. “Heh, is this it? Well, it will have to do.”

A single step. The Ghosthound took a single step forward and it felt to Lay’mel like that barefoot pressed down on his fluttering heart. At that moment, Lay’mel was completely sure that they were all going to die on this day.

Then something very strange happened.

The Ghosthound’s right arm exploded in a mass of gore like his skin was a balloon filled with so much liquid that it could only pop. Flaps of skin and torn muscle were flung in every direction. His torso and chest were covered and sprayed gore. The Ghosthound paused after that one step and looked down at his arm with obvious confusion. There was a somewhat awkward silence as Evick Swacc regained his balance and looked up to see the spectacle.

At first, Lay’mel thought that he had underestimated Evick Swacc’s attack. But Evick looked just as confused as the Ghosthound for a few seconds. Then his face twisted into a smug smile of self-satisfaction. “Hoh? You surprised me a bit. Even if you had to rely on exceeding your body’s limits to do it… it’s impressive you could block my blow. But playtime is over; come on boys, let's beat this shit stain into the ground.”

Seven thuggish but lesser versions of Evick Swacc spread out around the still befuddled looking Randidly Ghosthound. As one, they began to clamber onto the Nether Pinion. They produced their various clubs and cudgels and slapped them against the meaty flesh of their palms in order to demonstrate the threat they represented. Yet the Ghosthound’s confusion was impenetrable. He was still staring down at his ruptured limb with a frown on his face.

The flesh was visibly knitting back together, but the bone of his forearm and elbow was still bare. Lay’mel could see the Ghosthound experimentally tightening his hand around the shaft of his spear and more of the muscles of his arm tore.

Evick’s snort was the signal of the attack. He moved forward, lowering his weapon so the metal blade skittered across the Nether material and threw up sparks as he charged forward. This time, he came prepared; his image of a metal-masked butcher manifested in the air with its cleaver raised. When he reached Randidly, he planted his foot and spun around, whipping his large crimson ax upward in a diagonal cut.

Finally, the Ghosthound snapped back around to notice the oncoming threat. His spear flashed upward and deflected Evick’s slash with a resounding clang. And somehow, it seemed that all the Ghosthound needed to do was glance sharply upward and Evick’s image turned blurry and harmless.

Once more, that sense of fear came pounding back to the forefront of Lay’mel’s mind.

And once again, it departed in the next instant.

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One of Evick’s goons charged forward from the side and whipped his weapon around. The Ghosthound noticed and pivoted to deal with the new threat, but something happened in the movement. Either he truly had pushed his body’s limits or perhaps he was just unlucky with the movement, but the speed at which he twisted ripped open the skin of his left thigh. Another gushing pop of blood threw gore everywhere and set the Ghosthound stumbling. As he forced himself to complete the movement, the tears began running higher up the leg, underneath his shorts.

The Ghosthound planted his other foot and brought his spear up to defend against the attack, but when the weapons smashed into each other, the calf of his planting foot was shredded as one of his bones seemed to collapse and splinter. Wheeling backward, he managed to regain his footing. But as Lay’mel watched, those same tears seemed to be spreading upward, past his waist and across his midsection. The wounds began to seep blood.

Most strangely of all, the Ghosthound continued to just look down at his body in confusion, completely unresponsive to his steady degradation. There still wasn’t even pain in his eyes. It was just a blank curiosity.

Like sharks, Evick’s minions inhaled deeply through their noses to catch the scent of blood. Then they charged forward and unleashed a flurry of blows toward the Ghosthound to try and secure the honor of incapacitating this foe of the Swacc Family.

A muscled individual brought a heavy iron rod down at the Ghosthound in an overhand blow that the Ghosthound noticed at only the last second, lost as he was in the color of his own viscera. Yet such was the current unstable state of the Ghosthound’s body that the block whipped upward so fast that it passed through the impact point before the goon’s attack could make it. In the process, the Ghosthound’s back and shoulder erupted in a bloody mist.

It looks like… his body cannot handle his movements…? Lay’mel blinked.

Due to the Ghosthound’s miscalculation, the heavy iron rod smashed into his shoulder. But it appeared the rumors of his physical prowess weren’t exaggerated; he didn’t even stagger after getting hit by such a heavy blow. His skin and muscle continued to shred as the Ghosthound shifted, but it was almost like… receiving the attack hadn’t inflicted any damage at all.

“Bahaha! This almost isn’t even fun!” A goon with a wide smile across his face cackled as he pounced to right behind the Ghosthound. The Ghosthound swept his spear around with enough force that the ground began to rumble, but the blow again was almost helplessly prescient. It cut the air a short distance in front of the triumphant goon so quickly that Lay’mel realized that the man hadn’t even noticed.

A shallow cut appeared across the bridge of the man’s nose.

The goon smashed his cudgel against the Ghosthound’s unguarded side and was rewarded with an explosion of blood. Those tears spread so that his entire torso began ripping like paper soaked in water. The goon steadied his stance and raised his weapon for another strike, but another goon was faster.

This attack was the most bombastic and exaggerated of the assault on the Ghosthound thus far; this man had built up a head of steam then leapt into the air to deliver a dropkick toward their target’s back. The Ghosthound jerked around and knocked the man backward with his left arm, but the man’s display was rewarded with the largest explosion of blood.

Shredded skin and blood splattered across the surface of the Nether Pinion.

The goons smiled at each other with a knowing look, enjoying how helpless the Ghosthound was under their combined assault. The Ghosthound, for his part, now stood on the shattered Nether Pinion with his shoulders heaving. His torso was bare and slick with blood. Yet the worst of it was the hanging masses of mangled flesh around the locations where he had been struck.

With that strange look on his face, the bloody Ghosthound reached over with his metal left arm and began to tear off large chunks of his flesh. He ripped from his arm, from his stomach, from his back, his waist… then he reached down and began to rip away at his legs. Evick Swacc and his henchmen were more than willing to allow him to do so; in their minds, watching their prey struggle was half the fun.

To their eyes, this was desperation.

Yet the Ghosthound’s face didn’t convey even the hint of pain. The confusion had slowly receded, revealing only a steely determination. He didn’t flinch as he methodically ripped away the torn flesh of his body and tossed it to the ground. Yet strangely, the Ghosthound didn’t appear to have lost any of his muscle mass even as he tore himself to shreds.

If anything, he seemed even more ominous than he had previously. And Lay’mel couldn’t help but notice that although he was slick with the blood from the earlier strikes, there were no wounds that he could see. As the Ghosthound tore away the broken excess of his flesh, what remained beneath was smooth and whole.

“I can’t believe we fucking shelled out the money to hire Velio Dunn for you,” Evick Swacc hissed. He advanced slowly, as though he was simply going for a stroll, with his ax raised. “That some shit like you could really- keh!”

Evick Swacc swayed. Instinctively, he dropped his ax and brought both hands to his neck, where a spearhead had just flicked up and out so quickly that he hadn’t noticed that the wound until he realized he couldn’t bleed. Evick staggered, looking at the Ghosthound with disbelief on his face. The next second, his eyes flared with fury and life.

The air trembled and the metal-masked butcher flared to life, its arms raised and its cleaver bloody. Even looking upon its back, Lay’mel couldn’t help but tremble. The raw power the image possessed was enough to crush him.

The Ghosthound simply shrugged, the wide smile creeping back across his face. “Sorry. My body hadn’t caught up to my improvement yet; I had to adjust a bit. But now that I’ve lost the rust… time to get serious.”

Light began to ebb and run around his left eye. A milky and bright event horizon appeared there, and within that boundary was a deep and endless blackness. The metal-masked butcher screamed in fury, but all those emotions were sucked away. Soon its fury turned to fear as its edges blurred and the visceral colors of its shape began to vanish. Before the pull of that darkness, nothing could endure.

Evick Swacc gestured frantically for help right before his image vanished and he collapsed. The goon stood around with blank expressions on their face, unable to believe what they had just witnessed.

Was Evick Swacc… someone who could really be so easily suppressed…?

The Ghosthound spun his spear and then snapped it to a stop in a horizontal position. Then he crouched down so he was closer to the ground and then slowly raised his spear. And quite ominously, a giant, sideways stone pillar rose with the spear.

“What the-” One goon gasped, just before the Ghosthound thrust his spear forward and that stone pillar accelerated so quickly that one second that goon was a person and the next he was just paste.

The other goons finally began to panic, but the Ghosthound’s movements were so quick that it was impossible for them to react. His spear swam gracefully in front of him, cutting through air and flesh without any perceivable change in difficulty. In his wake, he left a trail of slumped bodies. As the last goon turned to flee, the Ghosthound cut from afar and used the brutality of the stroke to bisect the man with air pressure. The torso kept falling forward while the legs stumbled and collapsed.

The Ghosthound chuckled and turned to the frozen Lay’mel. “And you… what should I do with you…?”