"Hey kid! Not that I don't find what's happening here fun, but I have quite a busy schedule, you see. I'm gonna have to ask you to die here," said Sirius, a devilish excited grin appearing on his face. "After all, my only real target is the girl."
While the weather started to shift into a rainy and thunderous night, Emilia rose from the ground as if led by pure instincts that even she couldn't comprehend. Her body stopped trembling, and with a single lightning strike which illuminated her face, her once fearful eyes filled with tears were now replaced by a broken and unsettling bloodthirsty gaze.
Ace's eyes slightly widened at the sight while Sirius felt a shudder run down his spine for a moment.
'Seems like she's made her choice,' Ace thought as he simply turned his back to Sirius and walked away.
"And where do you think you're going!?" said Sirius as he darted towards Ace who slowly turned his head to give him a glance while uttering only a single sentence.
"Since you're going to die today, I simply decided to excuse myself from a battle that's not mine."
"Huh?" Sirius was surprised as the next moment, a big torrent of water closed in on him. 'Shit!'
In a split second, he stopped midway and leaped backwards in a backflip.
'That attack just now… don't tell me it was the girl!' Sirius glanced at Emilia who was looking down on him with that completely broken and cold killer look in her eyes.
As he gritted his teeth, 'How dare you look down on me…' with an angered tone, he rushed towards her as his fists got covered in wind which grew stronger and stronger by the second. "YOU BITCHY BRAT!"
'Letting your emotions get the better of you was your first mistake,' Ace's thoughts developed as he halted his march momentarily, looking back at the scene while his gaze settled on Sirius. 'Now what do you think was your second mistake?'
His gaze then turned towards Emilia as a cold smirk appeared on his face. 'On average, the human body is comprised of 60% of water. Of course, this number can vary from person to person, but… what would happen if a water-attribute mage could control the water in the human body? Emi said that no one ever did something like that when I asked her, but she never said it was impossible. And if she's the kind of mage I think she is, the kind of person I think she is, then…"
"Huh?!" Sirius stopped unnaturally and launched the attack on himself the moment Emilia directed her hand towards him.
Landing brutally on the debris, Sirius's thoughts raced on what had just happened to him. 'What… What happened just now? I hit myself with my own attack? But why? Why did I do it? Was it her? But how did she do it?"
During that time, Emilia was lost in a daze as she focused on her hand and the feeling she had.
'The answer is that you could control the body of anyone like a puppet in your grasps. Well then, while she handles that guy, how about I go hunt down the pesky little flies that are flocking towards this place,' Ace dispersed into a trail of foggy shadows.
"Just… just what kind of monster are you!?" asked Sirius infuriated yet scared of Emilia's unnatural power.
"You're right. Exactly what am I. That man took me in, gave me food, a bed, and shelter. But at the same time, he turned me into this," Emilia answered, her broken down expression devoid of any humanity. Her eyes, dark and deep, had a blue glow capable of making anyone feel unsettled and threatened.
Emilia then chuckled.
"Guess I should be thankful to him. He gave me the hope of surviving in this world that was cold and harsh. Yet at the same time, he gave me the despair that comes from having any hope of freedom crushed without mercy," her smiling expression, distorted in tears and pain, turned towards Sirius as lightning struck again, illuminating her face with an eerie sense of dread that made Sirius feel something sinister… the feeling of death slowly grabbing your neck.
"Get… GET AWAY FROM ME!!!" desperately yelled Sirius as he extended his arm, calling forth wind magic to kill Emilia. 'Who cares about the mission anymore? I can tell! If I don't kill her now, I'm going to die here!"
"JUST DIEEEE!!!" screamed Sirius, preparing to fire off his spell.
As she saw that, Emilia took a step forward, and in a moment's breath, Sirius's arm distorted and broke apart, his bones piercing out of his skin as blood dripped on the ground and his last action got dispelled.
"AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!" he screamed, the pain unbearable.
"It's time to put an end to this," Emi said, her voice cold and composed as she raised her hand and started gripping the air, slowly trying to clench her fist.
"No… no way. No! No! No! No! No! No! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! STOP IIIIIIT!!!!!" yelled Sirius, feeling his head being squeezed like a melon as blood started dripping from his nose, ears and eyes.
"Goodbye," as Emilia said those words, Sirius's head exploded like an air balloon, the skull, organs and other membranes splattering on the ground in a bloody mess.
"What… what should I do now?" Emilia dropped down on her knees, the weight of the situation and what she had just done adding to the trauma and memories that were already burdening her mind.
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"AAARGH!" screamed a group of armed people and Realizers that Ace was killing one after another. With a single knife only, Ace pierced their eyes, cut their throats, and stabbed their vitals without hesitation.
No matter how much they tried to fight back, their attacks only seemed to pass through Ace as if he was a ghost. And at the end of the one-man massacre, only a few of the men Ace had attacked were still barely holding on to dear life.
"In the end your mission was a real failure, right?" said Ace with a cold tone as he tortured one of the men who was the closest to him. "Now, I want you to tell me who sent you."
"Why… should I?" the injured man asked, a glint of revolt still shimmering in his eyes.
"Why should you? Isn't it already evident? I'm the one who holds your life in my hands. Isn't that enough to convince you?" Ace replied, coldly twisting his knife in one of the wounds.
"Argh!" the man skirmished in pain as he gritted his teeth before a twisted victorious grin mixed with pain appeared on his face. "I'll… never… tell you… anything."
"Is that so?" said Ace with a doubtful tone as he leaned closer to the injured man with his usual aloof expression. "In that case…"
"Don't expect to die a fast and easy death," said Ace, now staring coldly at the injured man with a piercing and frightening look in his eyes. "From now on, you're gonna serve as a guinea pig for a little experiment of mine."
"Wha?"
The next moments were ones of agony as Ace used a certain technique which made the mana in the man's body flow at such a high rate that it overloaded him. And it didn't end with just him. His other comrades also suffered from Ace's experiment, becoming a bloody pile corpses that seemed to have been tortured by the devil himself.
"S-stop! Please… I'm… argh!!!" the last man remaining screamed and stammered repeatedly while Ace stopped and resumed his experiment continuously, making him live a living hell.
"Why should I? Your friends refused to talk so as a student, I'm now simply trying to understand how mana works," Ace explained his motives playfully with his usual aloofness before his tone and expression went cold again. "And anyway, negotiations are only done between humans of equal standings. Whether it'd be your friends then, or you right now, you're no longer humans. You're just guinea pigs."
"You… bastard…" the man tried to curse while his angered expression was drowning in tears. "I'll…"
"Shut up already and just die," Ace resumed his experiment, making the man writhe in pain even more as he had now increased than intensity.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!"