The Gravedigger walked onto the road and the road went quiet.
Not quiet the way a road goes quiet when the firing stops. Quiet the way a room goes quiet when something enters it that should not be in it. The men on both sides stopped firing and turned their heads and stared, and the men in the armoured trucks stopped turning their guns, and the men in the SUVs behind them stopped getting out.
He did not hurry. He walked down the asphalt at the pace of a man going to a market, and the first soldier who came at him was a young man from the warlord's army who had been running toward the wreckage with a rifle in his hands, and he raised the rifle and fired.
The bullets vaporized before they reached him.
The young man stopped firing and stared at the empty air in front of him where his rounds had been, and then the Gravedigger walked past him and touched him on the shoulder, and the young man came apart in white light. No scream. No ash. Just the shape of a man in fire, and then the fire gone, and then nothing.
The men on the road screamed.
"What the fuck is that!"
"What the fuck is that!"
"Shoot it! Shoot it!"
They shot it. Rifles, sidearms, one mounted gun on the armoured truck that turned and opened up with everything it had, and the Gravedigger kept walking and every round that came within three feet of him became vapor and every man who stood in his path became vapor and he moved from one to the next like a man crossing a room to turn off a light.
He was fast.
Not fast like Nia. Not fast like Kin when the System pushed him. Fast like the wind in a storm, fast like something that did not have to be fast because it was already everywhere, and the men who tried to run did not outrun him, and the men who tried to hide behind the trucks did not hide from him, and the men who threw down their weapons and put their hands up did not save themselves, because the Gravedigger was not there to accept surrender. He was there to clear the field.
Kin watched from the ditch.
He watched a soldier sprint for the tree line and the Gravedigger appear behind him and touch him and the man came apart mid-stride. He watched another soldier climb onto the roof of an armoured truck and the Gravedigger reach up without looking and the man fell back down in fire. He watched a group of six men try to form a line and fire together, and the Gravedigger walked into the middle of them, and the middle of them became light.
He was not killing the enemy. He was killing anyone who could be a threat later. The warlord's men were a threat. The general's men were also a threat, because they were men with guns and they had seen too much and they would remember too much, and the Gravedigger did not discriminate between the two. He walked past the men from the general's convoy who were lying wounded in the ditch and left them where they were, and he walked toward the men from the general's convoy who were still standing with their rifles in their hands and took them one by one.
The general's men screamed too.
They screamed the same scream the others screamed, and they died the same way, and the men who had sworn loyalty to Nia an hour ago in a hall with a map on the wall did not get to keep the promise.
Kin lay in the ditch with Nia under him and did not move.
He did not breathe. He did not reach for the katana. He did not tell the System to do anything, because there was nothing the System could do, and he knew it, and the System knew it, and neither of them said a word.
Nia was shaking. He could feel her shaking against him. Her hands were on his chest and her fingers were digging into the suit and she was not making a sound.
The last soldier on the road died in the light and the road went quiet again.
The Gravedigger stood in the middle of the asphalt where the fighting had been.
He looked at the empty space where the soldiers had been and did not move for a moment, and then he turned his head, and he looked at the ditch.
He walked over.
Kin did not run. There was nowhere to run. He lay still and watched the man cross the road and stop at the edge of the ditch and look down at the two of them, and the white of the fire was still faint on his hands, and his face was the same face it had always been, flat and unreadable and without any expression that Kin could name.
He opened his mouth.
And he spoke.
"I have broken the rules," he said.
His voice was not what Kin had expected. Kin had only heard him speak once this was the second time. He had assumed the Gravedigger could not speak properly, that it was not part of the contract, that it was a thing that only did what it did and left. The voice was low and even and it did not belong to any man Kin had ever heard.
"I have broken the rules because this is by far the most action packed fight I have been called to," the Gravedigger said, "and I am not willing to clear up any more of my teammates."
He looked at Kin.
"The rest is up to you, Decapitator."
Then he turned and walked away down the empty road, and the road was empty because everyone else on it was gone, and after a few steps he was not there anymore.
Kin lay in the ditch and did not move.
The road was silent.
Nia was still shaking.
And the System had not said a word.