[The Maestro of Dissection]
Jan stood before us, his pallid skin shimmering under the moonlight like a slab of ancient, weather-beaten marble. There were no more golden wires, no more piano; there was only a gaunt man with unnaturally elongated fingers, each ending in nails as sharp and lethal as surgical scalpels.
He didn't take a combat stance. He simply stood relaxed, his head tilted at a slight, inquisitive angle, while his bulging eyes tracked the frantic pulsing of the veins in our necks. The silence that surrounded him was more terrifying than the collective screams of the hanging corpses outside.
"The strings were limiting my movement..." Jan whispered, his voice a soft rasp. He took his first step toward us with a fluidity that no living creature should possess. "Now, I shall touch your souls with my fingers directly. I want to feel the heat of your hearts as they cease to beat within my palms."
Suddenly, Jan exploded from his position. I didn't see him move; he was merely a pale streak that clove the air. Before Dan could even register the threat, Jan was upon him.
Tchaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!
With surgical precision, Jan plunged two fingers into Dan's right shoulder, withdrawing them with a lightning-fast jerk that pulled out strands of muscle fiber. He didn't stop there. He unleashed a barrage of consecutive thrusts. These weren't punches; they were "punctures" being carved into Dan's frame.
Jan stabbed and stabbed and stabbed. His fingers transfixed Dan's chest, his waist, and his thighs. He moved with a velocity that made his limbs appear as a hundred needles striking simultaneously. Blood began to spray from Dan's body like a fractured fountain, and with every puncture, Jan emitted a soft, melodic hum—as if he were singing a lullaby to his victim.
It was a combat style of profound, sickening cruelty. He didn't aim for a swift kill; he was "dismantling" his opponent while he was still alive. A strike to the knee joint to paralyze, a gouge toward the optic nerve to blind, a thrust into the diaphragm to stifle the breath.
Dan was struggling. For the first time in years, I saw the genuine marks of exhaustion and pain on that demon's face. His body, accustomed to crushing bones and tearing limbs, found nothing to grasp. Jan was like smoke—stabbing and vanishing before Dan's massive fists could connect.
Every time Dan launched a devastating blow, Jan would tilt his body at an impossible angle, utilizing the momentum to drive his fingers into Dan's back or neck.
Yet, Dan… he did not stop laughing. He was gasping for air, blood was bubbling from his mouth, and his white suit was covered in bleeding perforations, but his laughter grew increasingly maniacal. "Yes! Yes!" Dan roared in a raspy voice. "This is the fight I deserve! I want to feel your fingertips shredding my entrails!"
My Red Eye flared to its absolute limit, and I prepared to activate the "Dark Crimson Radiance" once more. I could not allow Dan to be slaughtered this way; we needed his raw power to reach Baron.
I surged forward to close the distance with the blade of "Sin," but Dan, with a sudden, violent movement, slammed his foot into the floor, creating a shockwave that barred my path.
"Stay back, Ray!" Dan bellowed, turning toward me with eyes that burned with a volatile, crimson fire. "He is mine! Do not touch him! If you intervene… I will kill you before I kill him!"
I recoiled a step, looking at Ryo, who stood behind me in total shock. "Master Ray… he's going to die!" Ryo whispered.
"No, Ryo," I answered, tracking the erratic flow of energy. "Dan isn't fighting to survive… he is fighting to awaken."
[The Black Blood and the Void]
The combat intensified with a renewed savagery. Dan finally managed to graze Jan's face with a trembling fist. In that instant, blood seeped from Jan's cheek. It wasn't red; it was a viscous, black ichor that emitted a searing steam, as hot as volcanic magma.
The moment the black blood touched Dan's hand, he let out a roar of agony. The blood acted like a potent acid, melting skin and muscle upon contact. Jan was not entirely human; his body was saturated with toxins and dark sorcery that turned even his lifeblood into a lethal weapon.
"Oh… did my blood hurt you?" Jan mocked, licking the black ichor from his finger, his eyes bulging further. "It boils with the hatred of the thousands I have dissected… and it will boil in your veins soon enough."
Instead of fear, Dan reached a plateau of intoxication I had never witnessed. His body was shivering—not from weakness, but from the raw ecstasy of the danger. He wiped the acid-blood from his gouged eye and stood with a terrifying stability before Jan, who was preparing for the final, surgical strike.
"You've shown me all your arts, Butcher..." Dan said, his voice becoming eerily calm—the silence that precedes a catastrophe. "Now… it is my turn to show you what even Baron fears."
Dan reached into his back pocket with agonizing slowness. In that heartbeat, I felt a constriction in my chest unlike any other. Even the Eye of Sin began to flash with a warning, deep-red pulse.
Dan produced a small black blade. It had no luster; rather, it seemed to actively absorb the light around it. It was an ugly, jagged thing. The moment it appeared, a profound silence fell over the hall. Even Jan, for all his madness, took a step back. I could feel his dread leaking into the air.
Dan looked at Jan with a hollow, empty gaze—the look of a creature that no longer belonged to the world of the living. He raised the small blade to his face.
"Now..." Dan whispered, the twisted grin returning to his face with doubled intensity. "I will show you the meaning of true death."
[The Erasure of the Maestro]
With the emergence of that blade, everything shifted. It wasn't a sword; it was a fragment of the Abyss, a singularity that devoured the very photons in the room. I felt the hilt of "Sin" vibrate violently in my hand. My blade was screaming, not in fear, but with a predatory excitement—as if the soul within my sword had finally found a darkness that mirrored its own.
Jan's eyes widened with a primal terror. The sadist who had been laughing while dissecting us was now stumbling backward. "This… this is not human mana…" Jan whispered, his voice cracking. "What is that thing you carry?"
Dan didn't answer. His silver hair obscured his eyes, but the smile that split his face was enough to freeze the blood in one's veins. "I enjoyed your strings, Butcher," Dan said, his voice echoing inside our skulls. "Now… let me show you how I cut the strings of your life… one by one."
Jan summoned the last of his strength. Black mana exploded from his frame, and thousands of thick, golden wires erupted from the walls and ceiling, intersecting in an impossible web designed to pulverize Dan. The wires moved at the speed of sound, shrieking through the air and marble.
But Dan didn't move to dodge. He walked forward with a lethal coldness. With every flick of his small black blade, the golden strings simply vanished. They weren't just cut; they evaporated the moment the black steel approached them, as if the weapon were devouring the very reality in front of it.
It was a horrific sight: Dan walking through a hurricane of lethal wires, the black blade in his hand drawing circles of void that protected him. Ryo stood beside me, hand clutching his wound, eyes unable to believe the scene. "Master Ray… Dan… he is erasing Jan's attacks just by existing!"
Dan reached zero distance from Jan. Jan attempted to stab him with his elongated fingers, but Dan seized Jan's right wrist with his bare hand.
"This hand… was it the one that played the music of death?" Dan asked with a terrifying calm. And with a lightning flick of the black blade…
Tchaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!
Jan's right arm was severed from the shoulder. No red blood fell; instead, the hot, black ichor exploded, searing the floor, but Dan didn't care. Before Jan could scream, Dan spun and severed the left arm with a backhand strike.
Jan fell to his knees, armless, the black blood pouring from him like broken fountains. He began to scream—a sound that tore through the silence of the palace—but Dan was laughing. A strange, disjointed laugh, filled with a pleasure that did not belong to this world.
"Don't scream, my dear Maestro," Dan said, driving his knee into Jan's chest. "The audience wants to hear the melody… not the wailing."
Then, the true hell began. Dan launched into a series of stabs that even the Eye of Sin could barely track. I saw his hand moving like a black flash. One stab… ten… a hundred… a thousand.
Dan was stabbing Jan's chest with miraculous speed, until the sound of the impacts became a single, continuous drone of tearing flesh and skin. He was stabbing and laughing, stabbing and laughing, the black blood coating his face and his white clothes until he was transformed into a monster from the lowest pits of hell.
Jan was screaming in madness, his body convulsing under the weight of the blade that pierced lungs, heart, and entrails. Then, with an indescribable malice, Dan drove a final, deep thrust into Jan's throat, severing his vocal cords and turning his screams into a choked, wet rattle.
Dan didn't stop. He continued to puncture every inch of Jan's body; the abdomen, the thighs, the face, until Jan's form was reduced to a featureless mass of minced meat. The stabbing continued for several long minutes until Jan's movement ceased entirely, and every sound of his life vanished.
Everything fell still. Dan stood over the mangled remains, panting with intoxication, the blood dripping from his face like rain. He picked up Jan's severed head and raised it to look into those bulging, extinguished eyes.
With absolute coldness, Dan drove his thumbs into Jan's eye sockets.
Tk!
He plucked the eyes out with a strange precision, and in a revolting movement, he pried open Jan's shattered mouth and stuffed the eyes inside, slamming the jaw shut to lock them in place. It was the message I had started with Elena and Ronan, but Dan had taken it to a level of savagery that defied reason.
Dan turned toward me slowly. His silhouette was monolithic and terrifying beyond words; his white clothes had turned black with Jan's blood, and his face was smeared with filth and gore, but his eyes burned with a pure, unadulterated lunacy.
I didn't say a word. My grip tightened on the hilt of "Sin," which had not ceased its savage vibration, as if demanding more of the death that filled the air. Dan approached me with confident steps over the shattered marble, the black ichor dripping from his fingertips.
He stopped directly in front of me, until the distance between us vanished and our breaths—reeking of death and iron—mingled. He fixed his gaze on my Red Eye, the twisted smile on his face reflecting a madness that knew no bounds.
"Do you know why I plucked his eyes, Ray?" he asked in a soft tone that sent a shiver through my marrow.
I didn't wait for an answer, but he continued, eyeing me like a predator that had found its ultimate prize: "Because when I pluck someone's eyes, it means I enjoyed fighting them to the absolute maximum... Jan gave me moments of pleasure in his death, but he was merely an appetizer."
He paused for a second, then leaned in closer to whisper in a raspy voice that caused Ryo to instinctively recoil from the sheer pressure of the aura:
"And I truly hope, Ray... that the day comes when I pluck your eyes... so that I may be satisfied to the highest degree a creature can experience in this existence. I want to see the light in your eyes as it is extinguished between my fingers."
A suffocating silence followed. The threat wasn't just words; it was a bloody vow. I looked at him coldly, my Red Eye flickering in silent defiance, while Dan let out a soft, maniacal chuckle and began to walk through the wreckage of the headquarters, leaving behind Jan's desecrated corpse and a blood-covenant that threatened to burn all of Draka to the ground.