Magnus's fist tore through the air toward the back of Heiman's head, flickers of Abyssal Flame dancing around his knuckles.
But just as the blow came within a meter and a half of Heiman, it stopped—no, Magnus stopped it. The script from [Self Body Puppetry] controlling his movements was suddenly overwritten and canceled out by another use of the same ability.
Confusion flashed across his face as he took a quick step back, weaving around Heiman and putting a couple of meters between them in a heartbeat.
His shoes squeaked against the smooth stone floor of the music room as he came to a halt. That was when he noticed—and heard—the steady drip of blood from his hand. His eyes dropped to the fist he'd just thrown at Heiman. The knuckles were gone, as if something had sliced them clean off, exposing smoothly cut bone and raw flesh beneath.
His hand twitched. He couldn't move his fingers at all.
The music playing for Heiman was different from the songs Magnus usually heard around vampires. For them, it was always a dark classical choir—a rising, booming choir when they fought and launched attacks, falling back into uneasy quiet when they were still. But Heiman's theme was something else entirely. It was orchestral, grander than any other, with soaring violins and nearly inaudible chanting in a language Magnus didn't recognize, threading beneath the melody.
And when those chants finally broke through the layers of instruments, Magnus knew an attack was coming.
In a split second, [Perfective Regeneration] kicked in, and his hand healed completely as he leapt into the air in under [Combat Assistant]'s reflex. There was no gust of wind or gash against the wall behind where he'd been—only a faint distortion in the air, subtle enough that no normal human could ever spot it. But Magnus's eyes were far from ordinary. He could see the way light bent, his brain processing the tiniest refraction, every flicker of motion.
At the far end of the room, one of the watching Hierarchs looked stunned.
"He managed to detect and dodge the Lord's disruption?"
Heiman's sharp red gaze snapped up at Magnus, now hovering a couple of meters above the floor.
He can see my attacks?
Heiman didn't move, but the BGM Glitch and Magnus's own eyes showed another strike coming. This one was even faster—still nearly invisible, but longer than before, slicing vertically and stretching the full length of Magnus's body.
With barely a thought, Magnus vanished from the air, teleporting back down to the ground.
"Huh." Magnus's lips curled into a curious grin as he focused on Heiman, eyes narrowing like he was trying to catch some hidden detail.
"Oh, I see," he murmured, holding out a hand to his side, fingers open as if to grasp something. In a blink, mana condensed, shaping itself into a solid rock javelin that Magnus grabbed out of the air.
He didn't even bother to take aim; he just hurled it with enough force to break the sound barrier. The javelin snapped through the air toward Heiman. The Umbrarch stood perfectly still, not flinching as it came straight for him. But just as before, something happened when the javelin crossed that meter and a half mark.
There were no words for what happened—it simply vanished. Starting at the tip, Magnus watched as the spear unraveled, coming apart at a microscopic level before disappearing entirely.
"So that's it!" Magnus burst out, clapping his hands together, excitement and amazement mixing in his voice.
Heiman raised both eyebrows, surprised by the outburst.
Magnus didn't seem to notice, or maybe he just didn't care.
"I should have guessed the Umbrarch would have an ability that puts all the others to shame. Honestly, I expected something crazy, but this is even better than I hoped. I didn't even catch the way the light was bending around you at first—not until I saw the same weird effect when you attacked."
At first, Magnus had been completely thrown off.
The BGM Glitch usually felt almost all-knowing when it came to detecting attacks, but even it had limits, or rather weaknesses. Some things could hurt you without being a direct attack. Like, if Magnus stuck his hand in a blender that could damage his body, the BGM Glitch wouldn't give any warning. The same went for stray attacks from other Master-levels—if he happened to get caught in the crossfire, there'd be no alert.
In this case, Heiman had some kind of field around his body—not offensive, but defensive. That was why Magnus hadn't been alerted; he had thrown himself against the defense and hadn't realized it was there until his hand suffered.
"Hm, so what is your domain? Melting? No... more like disintegration, I think. Yeah, that fits." It actually made sense, the more he thought about it. Vampires could manipulate matter and energy, as long as they understood the structure of both. Without real magic like mages or a knight's supernatural senses, they had to rely on their own true forms and heightened instincts to learn those structures. They were only born with a deep understanding of living creatures, which helped them feed and grow by absorbing biological matter and energy.
As for Hierarchs?
Who knows how many years—maybe even decades—it took them to find ways to study these things. Spending fortunes on spell catalysts or magic artifices, making deals with rogue mages, or using other methods, Magnus couldn't even imagine. Either way, it took time, patience, and a ton of effort to observe things like the effects of high pressure on the material world, the particle excitement that caused heat, the vibrations that became sound, the way light bent so we could see, or the way our bodies receptors felt anything at all.
If these were the kinds of powers the Hierarchs managed to unlock over lifetimes much longer than the short century or two most Nightborn had lived, then it only made sense that Heiman, who'd been around even longer, would have an even greater ability.
The ability to tear apart chemical bonds directly… disintegration on a molecular level. Heh, even my body can't withstand something like that. No wonder my hand got shredded so easily.
Who knows what Heiman had to experience to unlock an ability like that? Not that Magnus really cared.
He started stretching, like he was just warming up for a run—arms first, then legs.
While he loosened up, Magnus glanced at Heiman.
"Well, now that I know what your ability is, countering it shouldn't be too hard."
Heiman scoffed, shaking his head.
"You wouldn't be the first to think you've figured me out. The fact that I'm still standing should tell you how that usually goes. They all died fools. I hope you don't make the same mistake."
There was a cool confidence in Heiman's eyes as he continued, "But I'll admit, your fighting style is something else. I expected a mage, someone leaning on magic, but physically, you're more like a knight. And since I don't sense any mana under your control, you're not using sensory magic either. So... your senses are really just that sharp. Yes, you're definitely a specimen I'd rather take alive."
Magnus finished stretching and clicked his tongue.
"If you're that eager to play with a handicap, who am I to say no?" As soon as the words left his mouth, he teleported—reappearing high above Heiman, leg already out and plunging downward in an axe kick. Compared to his earlier punch, the kick was twice as fast—just a blur as it fell.
"This again? Speed won't save you," Heiman muttered, looking up at Magnus, his head shaking in disbelief.
But Magnus didn't hesitate. Feeling no retaliatory attack coming from Heiman, he let his kick connect with the disintegration field. The result was immediate—starting at the outer layer of his leg, skin unraveled at the molecular level, then muscle and tissue, even the blood. It all broke down so fast that his leg was disappearing before it even got within a meter of Heiman. But then, suddenly, Heiman's expression changed.
His brows pulled together in surprise.
What...? What is that?
Heiman felt some kind of wall. His ability devoured Magnus's flesh easily, but when it reached the bone and tried to tear it apart, something resisted. Something refused to give, keeping the bones from being completely deconstructed.
The result?
A leg, half stripped of flesh and tendon, smashed down. Heiman reacted instantly—barely shifting back, avoiding the strike by a hair. Magnus's leg hit the floor, and the music room's stone shattered beneath the force of [Self Body Puppetry]. Down on the first floor, the ceiling gave way, and a huge chunk collapsed, leaving a gaping hole connecting the two floors.
For a split second, Magnus and Heiman locked eyes.
Magnus grinned wildly and mouthed, "Told you—easy to counter!"
Magnus took a quick step back, his skeletal foot moving easily even though the muscles controlling it were gone. Then he launched himself forward off that same foot, charging straight at Heiman, whose face was twisted in genuine shock and confusion.
Once again, Magnus spotted it—a distortion in the air, like a slash of Heiman's power tearing through everything in its path. The strange bending of light showed where Heiman's ability was at work, ripping apart the air itself. Nothing made of ordinary matter could survive an attack like that, and Magnus had no intention of meeting it head-on.
Before the slash could reach him, he vanished, teleporting to Heiman's right. A wild gleam lit up his eyes as he drove a strike straight in.
His body hit the disintegration field again. It was like layers being peeled away—skin and flesh breaking apart into something finer than dust, the outer layer of bone dissolving. But just like before, something unmovable within his bones held together, refusing to allow it to come apart. So, with a skeletal fist, Magnus's strike broke through and landed a direct hit to the side of Heiman's face.
The Umbrarch's body rippled unnaturally, then shot across the room like a kite cut loose, never touching the ground until it slammed into the music room's rightmost wall and blasted through. Heiman crashed into the hallway wall beyond, shattering it, and only stopped when he hit the far wall of the next room over.
A stunned Hierarch standing closest to the hole Heiman had been sent through slowly turned to stare, glancing first in the direction their leader had flown, then back at Magnus.
Magnus just stood there, a satisfied smile on his lips, head tilted, and one hand on his hip. His other arm—now stripped to bare bone—and the leg he'd kicked with, both were already healing. Flesh and blood stretched and wove themselves back across the raw white bone in a way that looked almost grotesque, like watching some kind of mutation in fast-forward. It took only seconds, not even a count to ten, for Magnus to recover even from wounds that severe. That was how much his regeneration had improved.
He healed even faster than the vampires.
But maybe the most terrifying part was that those limbs had kept moving—even when they were nothing but skeleton, missing everything needed to function, they still moved like normal.
Fully healed, Magnus set off in the direction he'd punched Heiman, stepping over rubble with an unmistakable spring in his step. The Hierarchs, still gathered in the corners, didn't dare move against him. Fear wasn't even the right word; it was pure disbelief. None of them could challenge Heiman—no one even tried. They'd never seen him truly fight, but when he did, every battle ended in moments.
Now, that record was shattered.
Magnus stepped out into the hallway beyond the wrecked wall of the music room and stopped, waiting as the dust settled. Through the second hole, in the next room, he could see Heiman embedded in a deep dent in the far wall. After a moment, Heiman shifted his head, which had been tilted back, now straightened as he looked forward. There was no anger in his expression, not even the confusion from before. Now, he just looked curious.
Heiman pulled himself free from the wall. His clothes didn't have a single speck of dust on them, and he looked completely unharmed.
That was no surprise. Even if Magnus had only used a miniature version, the fact that only the upper half of Austra's body was destroyed by [Velocity Breaker—Lance] showed how tough Hierarchs were—and an Umbrarch like Heiman should be even stronger.
Magnus's earlier attacks were really just to test the passive field around Heiman, to see if he could break through. Now he knew he could.
"So, what do you think?" Magnus asked, his tone as casual as if he'd just shown off a new toy.
Heiman looked at him while brushing his cheek with his hand, almost in remembrance.
"I think it's been nearly a decade since a human last managed to hit me like that. I wasn't expecting it to happen again—especially not from you."
Magnus grinned.
"I'll take that as a compliment."
The reason Magnus was able to resist Heiman's disintegration field was actually pretty simple. As always, it came back to his use of the Command Console.
When he first started, Magnus could only use [Self Body Puppetry] on one part of his body at a time. If he attacked in sequence, one limb would be moving with absolute force while another would lose it. It was a similar principle as [Bullseye], which relied on the Command Console's most basic ability—[Absolute Movement].
But that had changed ever since Magnus upgraded his brain. Now, he could visualize his whole body at once—at least the outside—without hitting any limits on his mind's processing power.
That meant he could use [Self Body Puppetry] across his entire body.
It wasn't even a fair comparison to how he'd done it before.
The Command Console was built to ignore any logic that got in the way of its function. [Self Body Puppetry] didn't care about things like gravity, air resistance, or the usual rules of force. It didn't use kinetic energy or spatial manipulation. It just moved whatever part of him Magnus told it to—directly, at the most fundamental level, the way only source code could. The only thing that could resist it was another force acting at that same root level.
Back when he could only use it on a limb at a time, he could move at superhuman speeds by relying on the momentum born from [Self Body Puppetry]. It was similar to when he was flying, floating, or stopping near instantly. But there were always limits.
If he flew too fast, the body part being moved would be fine, but the rest of him still had to deal with G-forces and high temperatures without any protection.
Getting tougher didn't fix that. He'd eventually hit a wall and need to improve his body further. But now? That wasn't a problem anymore.
Technically, Magnus no longer had a speed limit—except for what his body could react to and process. He still had to worry about crashing into something if he moved too fast for his own mind to react, but in an open area, he could push close to light speed with no real consequences to himself. He could finally do what he'd always imagined with [Self Body Puppetry]: puppet his whole body, no matter what state it was in. Even if all his flesh was gone or his muscles burned away, he could move any part as long as he could picture it.
Of course, that didn't mean the world around him was safe. A big enough object moving even below Mach speed could still break windows. An example was [Velocity Breaker], which made use of the air around his arm, not the arm itself, to generate force.
Still, [Self Body Puppetry] had one major flaw—it didn't make Magnus invincible. It didn't stop outside forces from acting on whatever it controlled; it just ignored them. If Magnus caught a punch, the force would go somewhere—usually spreading out into the area around his hand, but not his hand itself. But if he tried to block a sword that could cut him, his hand wouldn't budge, but it'd still get sliced through.
Magnus liked to picture it as anchoring something in a game. If you took a random NPC and anchored it in place, it wouldn't budge, no matter how hard a player tried to push it. But that didn't make the NPC invincible—it could still be killed by a sword, burned with magic, or blown up by a grenade if the game was gruesome enough in that regard.
That's how [Self Body Puppetry] worked for Magnus. His body could ignore any kind of blunt force, but it was still vulnerable to everything else. But what if he used [Self Body Puppetry] in a more precise way?
Instead of anchoring his entire arm, what if he focused on just two blood cells? In that case, those cells would become immovable. Even if the rest of him moved, those cells would stay right where they were, ripping free from his body if necessary. They'd still die, but nothing could shift them. Then, what if he did it with more than just two cells?
What if he targeted the cells that made up the muscles of his heart, or the tiny crystals of calcium in his bones?
It was like trying to destroy a single grain of sand.
Its tiny size makes it tough to apply force directly to it. But if you pile up those grains into a sand wall, the wall itself is easy to break apart, because the sand is loose and doesn't stick together. When the wall collapses, you aren't destroying the grains themselves—just the structure holding them.
But now, what if every grain of sand were completely unmovable and couldn't be affected by raw force? In that case, unless something targeted the very structure of the grain itself, or destroyed it in some way other than brute force, that sand wall would suddenly become nigh-indestructible.
That was what Magnus had managed—an ability he could only pull off after upgrading his brain. He couldn't anchor every cell in his body; there were simply too many, and some were too small for him to even picture clearly. But it was enough. Enough that when Austra tried to crush his heart, she couldn't. Enough that, even when his whole body was under intense pressure, he could protect the vital parts he couldn't afford to lose—parts he couldn't just regenerate or wouldn't have the chance to if they were completely destroyed.
It was an idea inspired by the Nullfang's [True Immortality]—the snake that was nothing but bones, yet couldn't be killed.
The name he'd given to this power was simple:
[Absolute Fixation]