The kinetic pressure inside the shattered lobby reached a suffocating peak. Kye was relentlessly pushed onto the defensive, forced backward step by step under Valerina's frenzied, needle-point onslaught.
VOLUME 3RD - CHAPTER 34 - BEGINS...!!
Valerina: "What's wrong, Kye? Getting tired already? This is disappointing... I genuinely thought you'd be far more powerful than this."
Kye: "Shut your mouth. Keep your worthless garbage to yourself."
SWOOSH—!
Veyron materialized from Kye's blind spot like a phantom, vibro-daggers aimed straight for his exposed spine.
Instinct overrode thought. Kye's pupils flared True red, his heightened spatial perception catching the displacement of air a millisecond before impact. He slipped beneath the slash, pivoted with explosive torque, and drove a thunderous straight right punch forward.
BAM!
The blow didn't hit Veyron. It slammed dead-center into the chest plate of Darius, who had stepped in to absorb the momentum. The impact sounded like an artillery shell detonating against solid steel—yet Darius didn't budge an inch.
Kye: "How...?! When did you get in front of me?"
Veyron: "How doesn't matter, Kye. What matters is the force of your punch. Impressive... but my brother is an absolute walking tank."
Before Kye could retract his arm, Veyron countered with equal kinetic ferocity—a crushing hook that caught Kye flush across the jaw!
The blow sent Kye skidding violently across the cracked tiles. Spitting a dark clot of blood, he forced himself back up, his breathing shallow.
Veyron: "Individually, we might scale slightly below you. But fighting as a coordinated pair? You won't touch a single hair on either of our heads."
Valerina: "Hey! You two obnoxious brothers, stay the hell out of my way! Can't you see Kye belongs to me?!"
Darius: "Shut your mouth, woman. You haven't managed to accomplish a single thing since the fight started."
CRASH!
Hollow came hurtling through the air, thrown violently into Darius's bulk. Hollow bounced off like a ragdoll; Darius remained rooted like an iron pillar.
Seraphine: "You two brothers sure are full of yourselves today, aren't you? Looks like you won't learn your lesson until someone puts you in the ground."
Across the hall, Ravik stood tall, holding both Elena and Arisa off the ground by their throats, one in each vice-like hand.
Ravik: "Idiots! Morons! What the hell do you think you're doing turning this into a circus?! Finish the damn job already!"
Ravik tightened his suffocating grip. Arisa was already limp, knocked unconscious from the earlier blow. Elena writhed and clawed desperately at his iron fingers, her face turning pale. Both Kye and Hollow saw the execution playing out, but encircled by four active executives, neither could break away to create an opening.
Then came the flash.
KA-BOOM!
A catastrophic, point-blank detonation erupted directly at Ravik's flank.
The shockwave pulverized multiple structural load-bearing walls in a blinding white flash. The exterior perimeter disintegrated, blowing the facade wide open to the public streets outside. The concussive backdraft catapulted Ravik straight through the crater, sending his massive body tumbling across the asphalt.
Arisa and Elena collapsed onto the rubble inside. Their reinforced blast-dampening suits absorbed the thermal wave, sparing them fatal trauma—they were battered and unconscious, but breathing.
Out on the cracked street, Ravik pushed the concrete chunks off his chest and stood up.
Ravik: "Let me tell you something, insect... I made it into this organization on raw martial arts and physical conditioning alone. But I'll give you credit—tch!—an ordinary human shouldn't have been able to cover me in this much of my own blood."
Ravik wiped a red smear from his brow and turned back toward the yawning breach in the wall.
He froze.
Cowering on the pavement just yards away was a young boy, barely seven or eight years old.
Stranded when the crowds fled the sudden combat zone, the child was paralyzed with terror, staring up at the towering, blood-soaked brute before him.
Ravik: "Huh? What is a kid doing out here? Go home. Get out of here quietly."
The boy couldn't speak. He couldn't even stand—his legs shook violently beneath him.
Ravik took a heavy, slow step forward, his blood-stained fingers reaching down toward the child's neck. The boy squeezed his eyes shut in horror.
Pat.
Ravik's heavy palm rested gently on the boy's shoulder.
Ravik: "Look, kid. I have no interest in meaningless slaughter. I'm not a deranged lunatic like those other four inside, and killing civilians doesn't entertain me. That's why you're walking away today. But if you don't run right now, the falling debris from this building is going to crush you flat. Understand?"
Ravik turned his back and stepped through the dust back into the facility. Behind him, the boy scrambled to his feet and ran as fast as his trembling legs could carry him.
Inside, Kaizen strode directly toward Saito's battered body.
"Useless piece of trash... you can't accomplish a single thing on your own, can you? Just flailing around with desperate little parlor tricks. Did you honestly believe any of that would save you?"
Reaching him, Kaizen drove a heavy, steel-toed boot straight into Saito's ribs. A ragged scream tore from Saito's throat, his battered frame completely paralyzed.
Without breaking rhythm, Kaizen rained down a vicious, methodical barrage of kicks into his chest and midsection, grinding the boy across the cracked floor until his spine slammed hard against the wall.
"Why don't you just die already, you fragile insect? How much longer do you plan on writhing like this? You're nothing more than dead weight to your allies."
Out of nowhere, two death blades sliced through the air, homing straight for the back of Kaizen's exposed neck.
CLASH!
Ravik crossed his reinforced forearms, catching the lethal edges dead in their tracks. Shock rippled through Hollow's face—he hadn't even registered Ravik re-entering the room. Before Hollow could pull his weapons back, Ravik drove a crushing straight punch flush into his jaw, dropping him face-first onto the concrete.
Veyron observed the carnage with a mocking smirk, his eyes drifting over to Kye.
"What's the point, Kye? Your little squad is pathetic. Did you really expect to win with a bunch of walking corpses holding you back?"
"Huh...? When did I ever claim they were my team, moron?" Kye's tone was ice-cold. "I walked through those front doors intending to butcher every single one of you on my own. I don't have a team. I don't need one."
Darius's expression instantly darkened, his veins throbbing with pure fury.
"Oh? So you're seriously standing there telling us that a frail runt like you is going to wipe out all six Special Executives alone? Kid, managing to take down even one of us would be a miracle for someone in your position."
The building's ground floor was in near-total ruin. Structural pillars were fractured, the foundation groaned under the strain, and from the outside, the high-rise looked ready to collapse at any second. The streets outside were entirely desolate, evacuated in the panic. Inside, Darius and Veyron had turned dead serious.
Then, Valerina vaulted through the air, her lethal iron needles aimed straight for Kye.
CLANG!
The strike never reached him. Darius had shifted his massive frame directly into her path, taking the barrage across his armor.
Her rage erupted. "What the hell do you think you're doing, you bastard?! Why are you getting in my way? Do you want to die?!"
In a fraction of a microsecond, Veyron closed the distance, his face hovering inches from hers.
"What did you just say? Did you honestly convince yourself you could kill the Undefeated Brothers?"
BLAST!
A concussive punch slammed flush into Valerina's jaw. The kinetic force was terrifyingly dense—like a needle delivering the concentrated payload of an artillery shell.
The single blow shut Valerina's nervous system down, dropping her instantly unconscious to the floor.
Seeing her sister put down, Seraphine lost all reason, lunging straight for the brothers. Before she could take two steps, Ravik's massive arm clamped around her from behind, hauling her back.
"Are you out of your mind, girl?!" Ravik barked. "Do you think the four of us combined could take those two down? Besides, this is Valerina's own fault. She's been recklessly picking fights she can't finish since the start."
Seraphine forced her body to go still, though the venom burning in her eyes didn't fade in the slightest. "One day... I am going to tear both of them apart."
Kaizen stepped up beside them, wiping dust from his collar with a cynical grin. "You know what I miss? I wish we could see those brothers go up against Grimm again. Or better yet... against that sole monster of an executive. It's been far too long since anyone crossed blades with Aurozabeth the King."
A few paces away, the coordinated nightmare continued. Darius and Veyron moved as an unbreakable cycle of defense and offense. Every one of Kye's strikes was absorbed by Darius's impenetrable bulk, and in the exact microsecond Kye overextended, Veyron closed the gap with supernatural speed, hammering home blows that hit with even greater concussive force than Kye's own attacks.
Kye was being systematically overwhelmed, pinned in an unrelenting crossfire without a single opening to breathe.
Even as he was battered backward, Kye's mind raced through the impossible math of the encounter.
How? How can two fighters maintain synergy this flawless? And that's not even the worst of it—why isn't this bastard Darius taking any damage? Attacks of mine that could level an entire city block aren't leaving so much as a hairline scratch on his frame.
And Veyron... the kinetic density behind his strikes matches my own output—no, it might even exceed it. If this continues, I won't just run out of options. I'll lose.
Still, Kye refused to give ground. He lunged forward with a calculated feint, aiming to drive a pinpoint strike into Veyron's ribs. But the window never opened. Darius and Veyron moved with terrifying spatial awareness, weaponizing the shattered pillars, falling concrete, and the very layout of the room to intercept every vector before it could manifest.
Across the room, Hollow spotted what he thought was an opening and scrambled to flank from the shadows.
CRACK!
Kaizen intercepted him mid-stride, burying a downward fist straight into the back of Hollow's skull and driving his face hard into the rubble.
"I genuinely don't understand how mosquitoes like you can be so stubbornly thick-headed," Kaizen sneered, reaching down to wrench a jagged length of reinforced structural pipe from the debris. "Why won't you just die already?"
CRUNCH—PIERCE!
With sickening force, Kaizen drove the steel rebar completely through Hollow's abdomen, pinning him to the floor.
A blood-curdling scream tore out of Hollow's throat. The agony was so overwhelming that Saito, bloodied and trembling, desperately dragged himself across the cracked tiles with his fingernails to reach him. But Saito was entirely powerless; his body refused to obey.
Hollow clamped his trembling hands around the rusted steel, weeping through clenched teeth until the sheer shock overwhelmed his nervous system. His head fell limp against the dust, unconsciousness claiming him.
Meanwhile, the clash around Kye had deteriorated into a one-sided slaughter.
Realizing that trading blows was useless, Kye stopped attacking altogether. He stripped his movements down to bare survival, slipping, ducking, and giving up ground just to keep the lethal impacts from landing cleanly.
Veyron's laughter echoed over the crumbling ceiling.
"What's the matter, Kye? Terrified? Why aren't you throwing punches anymore? The higher-ups told me Kye Kurasaki was supposed to be a living nightmare for executives... but look at you. You can't even keep yourself in one piece."
Kye offered no rebuttal. He kept his jaw locked, his Pure red eyes tracking every lethal arc, parrying only when evasion was impossible.
From the edge of the crater, Saito could only watch through his fractured visor, helplessly witnessing the inevitable collapse of the battlefield.
Watching the one-sided assault unfold, Seraphine stood motionless among the falling dust, her mind drifting into the past....
There was a time when everything had been entirely different. A time when this organization was fundamentally unrecognizable. Back then, all six of them were unproven rookies. And on that day, every single one of them had been utterly humiliated by a solitary man.
Grimm.
Back then, Grimm was the undisputed apex of all Special Executives.
Years bled into years. Through brutal conditioning, blood-soaked assignments, and endless struggles, they earned their respective authorities. And from that turning point onward, Darius and Veyron never looked back. They grew into an unstoppable force—virtually undefeated, leaving every contract and kill order fulfilled without a single blemish on their record.
They became Lord Bansho's personal favorites. It was the sole reason Bansho kept the rest of them at arm's length, rarely bothering to acknowledge their presence. Bansho wasn't like Null or Fang. He didn't care for women, hedonism, or frivolous wealth. He had his eyes locked onto something far grander.
Perhaps that was why the Undefeated Brothers held his favor. Even Seraphine couldn't fully comprehend the terrifying depth of their authority—why taking them down felt like an impossibility. She and Valerina had carried twisted, violent impulses since childhood, but in this cutthroat hierarchy, their singular driving ambition was simple: to prove their worth to Lord Bansho.
The scene snapped back to the brutal reality of the battlefield.
Kye had still not shifted out of his defensive crouch. Every step, weave, and slip was calculated purely to bleed away kinetic impact, refusing to offer a counter-stroke.
Dragging his pulverized frame upward with trembling knees, Saito forced himself onto his feet. His visor flickered on its last reserves of emergency power as he wheezed a final authorization code.
"Self-Destructive Armament: Eject."
The mechanical modules mounted across Saito's mechanical vambraces decoupled instantly. Rocket thrusters flared, propelling the heavy armor cores through the air at point-blank range straight between Darius and Veyron.
BOOOOOM!
The resulting shockwave eclipsed even the catastrophic detonation from the Cipher engagement. The central load-bearing pillars evaporated in a blinding flash of white fire. The remaining foundational integrity sheared completely, and millions of tons of steel and concrete began collapsing inward in an apocalyptic roar.
Kye didn't waste a fraction of a millisecond. Scooping the unconscious forms of Arisa and Elena over his shoulders, he burst through the perimeter wall, hitting the deserted asphalt outside in a sweeping roll.
Simultaneously, Saito triggered an emergency remote tether across their shared tactical network. Hollow's armored exo-frame locked into autopilot, dragging his pinned, unconscious body out through the dust cloud right behind them.
Behind them, the high-rise folded onto itself in a thunderous avalanche of debris. The concussive shockwave ripped outward across the boulevard, shattering every reinforced window and tearing away the facades of adjacent structures for blocks around.
Saito collapsed against the curb, a faint, bloodstained smile tugging at his lips.
"Kye... I think... cough, cough... I think I finally figured it out..."
Full of blood surged past his teeth, cutting off his breath as he choked on his own blood.
Kye laid Arisa and Elena down gently, not turning back toward the burning ruin.
"Oh? And you honestly took me for an idiot, didn't you, Dr. Saito?" A faint, dangerous smirk formed across Kye's face. "The name is Kye Kurasaki. I spent years studying applied sciences and biomechanics myself. Whatever anomaly you just noticed during that clash... I caught it too."
Before the secret behind the brothers' invincible synergy could be uttered—
[ END OF CHAPTER 34 ]