"Interesting trick," John growled, conjuring another fireball. "But can you keep it up?"
He unleashed a barrage, throwing fireball after fireball in rapid succession. The ground floor beca a storm of fla as Draziel moved through the assault like a dancer through rain. His blade flashed repeatedly, cutting apart each projectile with minimal wasted movent. Droplets of fire scattered across the area, turning the ground floor into a scene of controlled chaos.
John watched with growing frustration. Each fireball consud energy, and while his Super Soldier physique gave him far greater reserves than a normal human, they weren't infinite. This opponent was neutralizing his ranged advantage with pure skill.
"You can't keep this up forever," John snarled, but there was an edge of uncertainty in his voice now.
"Neither can you," Draziel replied calmly, not even breathing hard despite the intensity of his movents. With his strength doubled he wasn't having any problem.
The captain's aura shifted, the flas around his body intensifying. His machete, which had been sheathed at his side, ca free with a rasp of tal. As he drew it, flas erupted along its length, turning the blade into a beacon of scorching heat.
"I didn't want to use this so early in the battle," John said, his voice tight with concentration as power built around him. "But you've earned it.
"Inferno Slash!"
He moved with explosive speed, faster than he'd shown before. The flaming machete traced a arc of pure destruction through the air as John crossed the distance to Draziel in an eyeblink.
The technique was devastating not just for its power, but for the way it compressed and focused fire energy along the cutting edge, allowing it to slash through nearly anything.
Draziel's eyes widened, the first sign of genuine surprise he'd shown. He brought both his combat blades up in a cross-guard, activating Tesla shield in the sa instant.
His muscles bulged slightly as the technique amplified his strength output, and he t the Inferno Slash head-on.
"KA-BOOM!"
The force of the impact created a shockwave that shattered nearby windows and sent cracks spider-webbing through the floor. Draziel's blades held against the machete, but the flas were another matter entirely. They exploded outward from the point of contact, washing over Draziel in a wave of searing heat.
Even with his enhanced Physique, the flas were agony. They seared his skin, and Draziel could sll his own flesh burning. The force of the blow drove him backward, his boots leaving twin furrows in the concrete floor as he slid nearly ten ters before he could arrest his montum.
John pressed his advantage, the flas around him blazing even brighter now. "You're outmatched! Surrender and I'll make it quick!"
But Draziel simply ignored him. The burns on his arms and chest were already beginning to regenerate.
The captain charged again, machete raised for another devastating Inferno Slash.
As John entered his range, Draziel suddenly moved forwards, stepping directly into the attack.
John's eyes widened as he realized what was happening, but it was too late to adjust mid-technique. The Inferno Slash ca down, and Draziel made no attempt to block it this ti. Instead, he angled his body so that the burning blade, rather than taking his head, carved a deep gash from his shoulder diagonally down across his chest.
Blood sprayed, and the flas cauterized even as they cut, filling the air with the sickening sll of burned flesh. But Draziel had traded that wound for position. He was now inside John's guard, closer than the captain's machete was optimized to fight at.
Draziel's blade flashed upward, driving toward John's throat with his entire strength.
John tried to pull back, but Draziel's free hand shot out, grabbing the captain's vest and pulling him forward even as the blade struck ho.
The combat knife punched through the advanced tactical mask and into John's throat, severing the carotid artery and windpipe in one strike. Blood erupted from the wound in a crimson geyser, and John's eyes went wide with shock and the beginning of understanding that he'd lost.
Draziel didn't stop there. With cold look, he twisted the blade and drew it sideways, the shadp edge completing the job. John's head separated from his body in a spray of blood, tumbling to the concrete floor with a wet thud.
The body collapsed a mont later, flas flickering out as the life force sustaining them vanished.
Draziel staggered, his own wound grievous. The diagonal slash had cut deep, exposing muscle and bone. Blood poured from the injury, pooling beneath him. Blood Asura deactivated and suddenly he was exhausted.
He lay there in a spreading pool of his own blood, his breathing shallow and rapid.
Through blurring vision, he could see the elevator shaft, and beyond it, the secure door that led to the underground laboratory where the Nano Cells was floating.
After a few minutes, he stood up from where he laid as energy returned to him.
When he finally sat up, the wound had closed enough that he was no longer in imdiate danger of death, though it would be hours before he was fully healed.
He looked at John's headless corpse, then at the severed head lying a few ters away.
Draziel retrieved John's machete, studying the weapon with interest. Even with its wielder dead, he could feel residual heat emanating from the blade. It was actually a ranked weapon.
He probably got it from killing a Type I beast.
Draziel stepped into the underground laboratory, his eyes adjusting to the clinical brightness.
The space was enormous, easily the size of a warehouse, filled with sophisticated equipnt that represented years of illegal research. Examination tables, centrifuges, gene sequencers, and dozens of other machines whose purposes Draziel could only guess at.
But his attention was imdiately drawn to the center of the laboratory, where a massive transparent tube stood like a monunt to scientific ambition.
The tube was easily three ters in diater and stretched from floor to ceiling, filled with so kind of clear preservative fluid.
And floating within that fluid, suspended by so unseen force, was a silver orb about the size of a pumpkin.
The orb wasn't simply a solid sphere. Its surface rippled and shifted like rcury, forming patterns that seed almost alive. Occasionally, tendrils would extend from its surface before retracting, as if the orb was testing the boundaries of its containnt.
Draziel approached slowly, srized. He'd read about Nano Cells in theory, but seeing them in person was sothing else entirely. The orb wasn't just nanotechnology—it was billions of microscopic machines working in perfect coordination, creating the illusion of a single organism.
His bionic lens activated automatically, scanning the orb.
[Nano Cell Cluster]
[Status: Active, Awaiting Host Integration]
[Warning: Integration Process Has low Survival Rate Among Baseline Humans]
[Note: Enhanced Individuals May Have Marginally Better Survival Odds]
Draziel's lips curved into a strange smile.
He wasn't baseline human anymore. He'd pushed his attributes to fifteen, far beyond what normal Awakened humans achieved. His Physique attribute in particular should help him survive the cellular replacent process.
He examined the containnt tube more carefully, finding the control panel mounted on a nearby console. The interface was complex, but his bionic lens helped translate the technical jargon into sothing more understandable.
His hand hovered over the open button.
Draziel pressed the button.
The tube began to drain imdiately, the preservative fluid cycling out through hidden tubes in the floor. As the fluid level dropped, the silver orb descended with it, its surface rippling.
When the tube was empty, a door on its side hissed open. The Nano Cell cluster floated out, It hung in the air for a mont.
Then it moved.
The orb shot toward Draziel with startling speed, faster than he could have dodged even at his peak. It hit his chest and simply… rged.
There was no impact, no collision. One mont it was separate from him, and the next it was flowing into his body like water soaking into a sponge.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the pain began.
It started in his chest, where the Nano Cells had entered, but spread with horrifying speed. Every cell in his body was being invaded, evaluated, and replaced. It felt like his entire body was being dissolved and reconstructed simultaneously.
Draziel had experienced pain before. He'd been shot, stabbed, burned, and broken.
His threshold for pain was extraordinary, honed through years of injury and torture during his mysterious past. But this was beyond anything he'd ever felt.
His legs gave out and he collapsed to his knees.
"Hmph!!!"
A scream tore from his throat. His muscles spasd uncontrollably as the Nano Cells infiltrated them, his bones felt like they were being dissolved and reford, even though the Nano Cells were actually coating them, reinforcing their structure.
His skin rippled as billions of nanobots spread through his dermal layers. His organs cramped as they were infiltrated and enhanced. Even his brain wasn't spared, and that was perhaps the worst part. He could feel the Nano Cells spreading through his neural tissue, the sensation like ice picks being driven into his thoughts.
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