Chapter 28: Alcides Is Kicked Flying
Top of the church bell tower.
Flat rested his chin on the back of his hand, staring unblinkingly at the battlefield below. Through his Mystic Eyes, he could barely discern the fierce combat between the two.
"Wow..." he exclaimed softly, "Mr. Jack is really moving impressively."
Those demons—distorted, malicious existences—were surging continuously from the mist, lunging at Alcides.
Alcides, meanwhile, was like an untiring slaughter machine, maneuvering through the demonic tide. Every swing of his longbow cleared an entire area.
But there were too many demons.
Those demons were the manifestation of fear; they drew nourishment from the subconscious of the people to strengthen themselves.
For every demon destroyed, a new one was born.
As long as there were people in this city, as long as there was fear in human hearts, and as long as there was sufficient magical energy, this Noble Phantasm was infinite.
As one side waxed and the other waned, Alcides's movements clearly began to slow, and the wounds on his body grew more numerous.
"Miss Olga Marie," Flat turned his head, "are you watching?"
There was no response.
Olga Marie stood with her back to him, arms crossed. Her gaze wasn't on the battlefield; instead, she was staring off in a certain direction in the distance.
It was the spot where Jester had been standing just moments ago.
"Miss Olga Marie?" Flat called out again.
"Hmm?" Olga Marie finally snapped out of it and tilted her head slightly. "I was just distracted by a filthy bug. What is it?"
Her tone was flat, but Flat could hear the suppressed displeasure within.
It was the kind of physiological loathing one feels upon seeing a cockroach crawl across a dinner table.
"A bug?"
"A filthy thing hiding in the shadows that suddenly started going into heat for no reason," Olga Marie curled her lip. "But he's turned to ash now, so don't worry about it."
Flat blinked, not understanding and not caring.
Helplessly, he repeated himself, asking Olga Marie to look down at the battle between Jack and Alcides.
He explained:
"Mr. Jack's Noble Phantasm is more effective in places with high population density because it originates from the fear in people's hearts. Furthermore, due to his legend as a murderer, his attacks have a special conceptual advantage against the concept of 'human'."
"Now that Alcides has voluntarily abandoned his demigod status, as a pure-blooded human, he naturally falls within that range!"
"So Berserker will win!"
Olga Marie glanced at him, her look suggesting she was viewing a naive idiot.
"You've got one thing wrong," she said. "That guy called Alcides certainly claims to be human. But his essence—"
She raised her hand, pointing toward the center of the battlefield.
"—has never changed."
As if to prove her words, the situation on the battlefield suddenly shifted.
Alcides stood atop a mountain of demon corpses, drenched in blood.
His dark red skin was covered in scratches, bite marks, and puncture wounds, some deep enough to show bone. But the hand holding his bow did not tremble in the slightest.
Around him, the corpses of dozens of demons were slowly dissipating, turning into black ash that merged with the mist. But even more demons were crawling out from the fog, letting out ear-piercing shrieks as they prepared for the next wave.
"It's never-ending..." Alcides whispered.
He looked up at the fully demonized Jack hovering in mid-air.
Jack looked down at him as well. That massive maw split open, revealing a malicious grin.
"Tired already?" Jack's voice echoed through the mist. "My clones are nearly infinite; how long can you keep killing them?"
He raised a barbed forelimb.
"But this is where it ends. With the next strike, I will kill you once and for all."
Release of the Noble Phantasm's True Name—Natural Born Killers.
Countless massive humanoid demons circled and swirled, striking Alcides with an extremely rapid offensive that sent him flying into the sky.
Beams of magical energy erupted from their eyes, and claws even pierced Alcides's flesh, nearly puncturing his heart.
One of the demons unleashed an even more violent attack, attempting to finish Alcides by slamming him from the air into the ground.
Alcides: "Ugh aaaaaah!"
The dust from the explosion slowly settled, revealing a massive crater in the ground.
Alcides stood at the bottom of the pit, one hand clutching the head of Demon Jack.
Jack's six wings beat frantically behind him, whipping up gusts of wind, but that hand remained motionless as if welded to his face.
Dark red magical energy gathered in Alcides's palm, forming an ominous vortex. A heart-stopping suction emanated from the center of the vortex, as if it sought to drain everything nearby—magical energy, life, and even existence itself.
"Wuh... ugh..." A muffled roar came from Jack's maw, his crimson eyes bulging beneath Alcides's palm. "So... that's how it is..."
He struggled, firing beams haphazardly from his eyes.
Alcides didn't even dodge, allowing the beams to pierce through him, only to be repaired by the Black Mud.
As the demonic exoskeleton grated against the dark red skin, Jack stopped struggling. His red eyes stared at him, and he asked:
"At that time... were you trying... to steal... Miss Olga Marie's... Saint Graph?"
Alcides let out a "Heh." He neither confirmed nor denied it.
He simply looked down at the monster beneath his palm, his gaze from beneath the pelt cold without a trace of warmth.
The vortex in his palm spun faster, and the surrounding air began to distort. Light was swallowed, forming a dark domain like a miniature black hole.
The Noble Phantasm was about to be released—King's Order.
If this strike landed, it would not only plunder Jack's power but would also tear away his concept as Jack the Ripper and his authority as an incarnation of fear from his Saint Graph, claiming them for his own use.
Demon Jack sensed true peril.
He began to struggle desperately, his six wings flapping at full power in an attempt to pull himself from that hand. The ground cracked further under his struggle, rocks flying and dust rising again.
But Alcides's hand was like the sturdiest of shackles.
"It's useless," he finally spoke, his voice hoarse and low. "Weakling, your fear, your malice, your existence."
"I shall take them."
The suction of the vortex reached its peak.
Jack's form began to blur, as if being pulled and stretched by invisible hands, collapsing bit by bit toward the center of the vortex.
He let out a shriek.
Just at this critical juncture—
"Bang!"
A dull thud of impact.
Alcides was sent flying backward.
As if struck head-on by a train traveling at full speed, his body drew a straight line through the air, crashing through the glass curtain wall of the office building across the street, piercing through the entire structure, and bursting out the wall on the other side, continuing to fly backward.
"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom—!"
A continuous series of impacts.
Like a human cannonball, Alcides plowed a path of destruction across half the city's districts through the buildings of Snowfield City.