Chapter : 1087
The effect was instantaneous and absolute. The creature froze mid-motion. The violent, bone-snapping convulsions stopped. The thrashing limbs went rigid. It was not the paralysis of a physical binding; it was a conceptual stasis. Lloyd had not trapped its body. He had reached into its corrupted, nascent consciousness and had placed a perfect, unbreachable seal on the very concept of its motor control. The monster was a statue, a fly trapped in the amber of his will.
One down. Five to go.
But before he could turn his attention to the others, his spider-self sent a jolt of urgent, critical intelligence. In the cottage, Graph’s ritual had reached its climax. The captain opened his eyes. They glowed with a faint, malevolent green light. He reached into a small leather pouch and produced a single, dried black bean, a thing that looked as dead and inert as a pebble. He held it over the bowl of water, his lips forming a final, sibilant word of power.
And then, he dropped the bean into the still, clear water.
As the spider watched, a single, tiny ripple spread from the point of impact. And in the exact sa instant, in the village square a mile away, the corpse that Lloyd had just frozen in a state of absolute, conceptual lockdown… let out a silent, psychic scream of pure, frustrated rage. The puppet master had just pulled the strings, only to find that his puppet was no longer his to command. The link was made. The proof was absolute.
The connection was as undeniable as it was horrifying. The precise, one-to-one correlation between Graph’s ritual action and the reaction of the reanimating corpse was not a coincidence; it was a clear, unassailable chain of cause and effect. Lloyd’s mind, the part of him that was a scientist and an engineer, saw it for what it was: a remote activation signal. Graph was not just a spectator; he was the puppeteer, the field operative triggering the curse’s final, monstrous stage. The black bean was a catalyst, a focal point, the key that turned the ignition on the engine of undeath.
A wave of pure, cold fury, as clean and as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, washed through Lloyd. He had his proof. He had his target. The ti for observation, for subtle gas and veiled threats, was over. The ti for a reckoning had co.
His focus narrowed to a single, absolute point of murderous intent. He had to neutralize the threat. Now.
He turned his attention back to the village square. Five more bodies lay on the cold stones, five more demonic ti bombs waiting for their signal. He could not leave them. He looked at the first creature, the one still frozen in the perfect, conceptual stasis of his Blue Ring Eyes. The seal was holding, but it required a sliver of his concentration, a constant, low-level expenditure of will. He couldn't afford to be distracted during the coming confrontation.
He made a swift, brutal calculation. With a final, silent command, he did not release the seal on the creature’s motor functions. He tightened it. He focused the constricting power of the blue ring not on the body, but on the corrupted spiritual core within. The creature, still frozen, let out another silent, psychic shriek, this one of pure agony, before the red light in its eye sockets winked out. The spiritual engine had been crushed. The body slumped, once more an inert, soulless pile of at and bone.
It was a clean, silent, and terrifyingly efficient execution.
But it was also draining. To do the sa to the other five would take ti and a significant expenditure of his energy, energy he would need for Graph. He needed a faster, cruder, but equally effective solution.
He gave a single, whispered command into the darkness of the mill office. "Iffrit."
The demon king materialized beside him, not in his full, nine-foot glory, but as a smaller, more contained avatar of fire and shadow, his presence a silent promise of annihilation.
"The bodies," Lloyd commanded, his voice a low growl. "Incinerate them. All of them. Leave nothing but ash."
Chapter : 1088
Iffrit gave a slow, pleased nod. He raised a hand, and five small, crimson fireballs, no bigger than his fist, blood in the air. They shot from the window with the speed and precision of a sniper's bullets, crossing the square in a silent, fiery arc. They struck the five remaining shrouded corpses, and in a series of soft, wet thumps, the bodies were not set on fire; they were simply consud, vaporized in a burst of clean, absolute heat. In less than three seconds, the threat of a new wave of Curse Knights was reduced to five smoldering black patches on the cobblestones.
With the imdiate threat neutralized, Lloyd’s full, undivided, and now utterly wrathful attention turned to his true target.
He took a single, deep breath, and the world seed to slow down. He reached into the core of his power, not the raging inferno of Iffrit or the crackling storm of Fang Fairy, but the strange, cold, and reality-bending power of his own bloodline. The movent art he had practiced to the point of instinct in the ti-dilated hell of the Soul Farm. The shunpo of pure will.
He took a step.
And the world broke.
He was in the mill office, and then, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, he was not. He was outside, in the cold night air, moving through a world of fractured, blue-white light and distorted space. He took another step, and the entire village of Oakhaven, the cottages, the square, the dead woods, all of it beca a blurry, insignificant streak in his peripheral vision.
He took a third, final step.
And he was there.
He rematerialized in the dead, silent space directly in front of the small cottage where Graph was performing his unholy ritual. The air snapped back into place with a sound like tearing silk.
He didn’t give the man ti to react. He didn’t give him ti to process the impossible, reality-defying arrival. Before Graph could even register the fact that the man he thought was a mile away was now standing three feet in front of him, Lloyd’s body, still moving with the residual, explosive montum of his Void Step, uncoiled.
His leg shot out in a perfect, brutal, and utterly devastating side kick. The heel of his boot, reinforced with a subtle, contained pulse of his Steel Blood, connected with Graph’s chest with the force of a battering ram.
There was a sound like a sack of wet logs being hit with a sledgehamr. The captain’s eyes went wide with pure, uncomprehending shock. He was launched backward, his body a ragdoll, flying through the cheap wooden wall of the cottage in an explosion of splintered wood and shattered plaster.
He landed in a heap in the darkness outside, the ritual bowl on his table shattering, the last black bean skittering across the floor. The puppet master’s strings had just been violently, and irrevocably, cut.
The aftermath of the attack was a tableau of shocking, instantaneous violence. A gaping, man-shaped hole yawned in the side of the small cottage, the splintered wood of the wall still trembling. Outside, in the cold, damp grass, Captain Graph lay in a broken heap, a low, pained groan escaping his lips. The sheer, brutal efficiency of Lloyd’s attack had been absolute. It was not the opening of a duel; it was the conclusion of a hunt.
Lloyd stepped calmly through the hole he had created, the dust and splinters settling around him. He was a figure of pure, cold, and righteous fury, his face a mask of serene, unforgiving judgnt. He looked down at the man on the ground, the spy, the saboteur, the demonic puppeteer who had used the bodies of his people as weapons. He felt nothing. Not pity. Not even satisfaction. Just the cold, clean emptiness of a task nearing its completion.
Graph pushed himself up onto one elbow, his breath coming in ragged, painful gasps. His breastplate was dented, a spiderweb of cracks radiating from the point of impact. Lloyd’s kick had shattered several of his ribs and likely bruised his heart. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. He looked up at Lloyd, and his eyes were no longer the cool, analytical orbs of a professional soldier. They were wide with a mixture of pain, shock, and pure, uncomprehending disbelief.
“How…?” Graph rasped, his voice a wet, gurgling sound. “The periter… my sentries…” He couldn’t process it. The man had been a mile away, in a sealed-off village. To cross that distance, undetected, in the space of a few seconds… it was not just impossible; it was a violation of the very laws of reality.
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