For a moment, Gregory didn't react.
His eyes flicked once—not in surprise, but in recalibration. The mana scalpel still trembled in the air, held by that single finger. And then he recoiled with a snap, his feet scraping the floor like an animal backing up for a leap.
Seth lowered his hand.
"Want to try again?"
Gregory growled.
The dagger shattered into particles and gave way to three thin blades, which floated around him like lethal satellites. Dark mana snaked between them, hissing like liquid smoke. The air around them began to ripple, distorting the light, as if reality were being cut into invisible strips.
He advanced.
Fast. Inhuman.
The first blade came straight at him—a precise thrust to the heart.
Seth moved his body just enough. The blade passed millimeters from his chest, cutting through the air with a sharp buzz.
Gregory spun with the momentum, firing the second in a horizontal arc, aiming for the neck.
Seth leaned back, and the blade passed where his face had been a second before. His coat was torn — nothing more.
The third came from above, vertical, like a guillotine.
Seth turned his body sideways, almost lazily, and it stuck into the ground with a dull thud, cracking the stone beneath his feet.
Gregory backed away again, panting. The three blades floated around him again, spinning faster.
"Stop playing with me!" he growled.
Seth shrugged, still standing in the same place.
"Are you done yet?"
"Fuck you!" Gregory exploded, and the floor shook under a brutal pulse of mana. Crystal spikes sprouted from the walls and ceiling, falling like murderous stakes. Black flames spread across the room, trying to consume everything—including the air.
But Seth was no longer there.
Or rather, he still was — but moving between the attacks like a shadow among the flames. Each step was a cut in predictability. He didn't run. He glided. Bent at the right joints, out of rhythm, out of time. It was as if he danced around death.
Gregory yelled, desperate. The blades flew with increasing fury. More thorns. More bursts of mana. The world around them shook, imploding under the excess of force — but nothing hit Seth.
Not a scratch.
"Why don't you FIGHT BACK?!"
Gregory's voice was a mixture of rage and panic. Like a child who doesn't understand why his toy doesn't break the world.
Seth finally stopped.
"The problem, Gregory..." he said, with frightening calm, "is that you still think this is a fight."
He raised his eyes, now cold as ice.
"But you've already lost. You just haven't realized it yet."
Gregory was panting. Sweat mixed with blood ran down his chin, his glasses now cracked, fine cracks running across the lenses like veins of glass. Anger had given way to something more primal. More desperate.
He looked at Seth.
Then at Eliza.
And smiled.
It wasn't a smile of triumph. It was survival. It was cowardice. It was calculation.
"So you hide behind him, huh?" he hissed, his voice scratchy with corrupted mana. "Let's see how fast you really are."
Before Seth could respond, Gregory spun on his heels.
The three blades shot forward.
Straight toward Eliza.
She barely had time to widen her eyes. The world seemed to sink around her. The sound of the blades cutting through the air was too sharp, too fast.
But Seth was already in motion.
In a flash.
In a blur.
Time seemed to bend around him. A sudden twist in the fabric of reality. One step forward—and he was between Gregory and Eliza, arms outstretched.
Two of the blades collided with an invisible barrier in front of him, exploding into sparks and fragments of mana that dissipated into the air like glittering dust.
The third?
Seth caught it.
With two fingers.
The blade trembled, struggling against the force holding it, until he simply snapped it in half with a dry crack.
The piece fell to the ground, dead.
Eliza, still in shock, could barely process what had happened. Seth didn't even look at her.
He looked at Gregory.
Now, yes, his eyes were different.
It was no longer coldness.
It was judgment.
"You messed with the wrong variable."
Seth's aura changed. It didn't expand—it collapsed. Like a black hole pulling everything around it. Gregory's black flames flickered, as if deprived of air. The crystals that had previously vibrated with power began to crack.
Gregory staggered backward.
"No... no... you can't..."
Seth took a step.
The ground gave way under the weight of condensed mana. Not as brute force — but as an intolerable presence. As if the world itself rejected his existence there, at that moment.
"You don't understand," Seth said, his voice low, effortless. "This isn't even about you."
And then he disappeared.
He didn't teleport. He didn't run.
He vanished.
Gregory tried to turn.
Too late.
A sharp blow. An elbow to the base of his skull.
His body sank to the ground, crushed, as if struck by an invisible wall. The surrounding stones exploded into splinters. The remaining blades flickered and fell, like broken toys.
Gregory coughed up blood. He trembled. He tried to get up.
Seth grabbed him by the collar, lifting him with one hand.
"You had your chance."
Gregory tried to conjure something. Mana glowed in his throat, desperate, fickle.
Seth opened his hand.
And the air around them bent.
Gregory fell like a puppet without strings, hitting the floor with a thud.
Silence.
Seth stood still for a moment, breathing deeply. His gaze was still hard.
Eliza fell to her knees behind him, panting.
"...What are you?" she whispered.
Seth ignored her and went to the traitor.
Gregory moaned, but it was a low, almost imperceptible sound—the kind of noise the body makes when the mind is already gone. His limbs were limp, disconnected, as if his motor control had been turned off. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth, staining what remained of his dignity red.
Seth approached and picked him up as if he were nothing. One hand on his collar, the other on his waist. He threw him over his shoulder with the ease of someone carrying a bag of groceries.
The limp body swung, hanging.
"Are you going to... kill him?" Eliza asked, still on her knees, staring wide-eyed, unsure whether she should feel fear, relief, or some insane mixture of the two.
Seth glanced at her briefly, as if calculating something.
"No. Not with my hands."
She frowned. "So what are you going to do?"
He smiled slightly, cynically, as he adjusted the weight of the unconscious man on his shoulder.
"I'm going to use him as food for the boss."
Eliza blinked, not understanding immediately.
Seth began to walk, his steps calm and determined.
"That way," he added, as if explaining a logistical plan, "we can say he died trying to save us."
Eliza stared at the man hanging from Seth's shoulder, like a grotesque, unconscious offering. Then she looked at Seth again—who was walking as if he were making a routine delivery.
"You... aren't joking, are you?"
"Do you think he deserves better?" Seth replied, without turning his face.
Her silence was answer enough.