The reaction in the line of the Nobodies was instant. The veterans recognized the danger of an enemy who had just shattered his own limits. Beat, Nicola, and Apollo screamed synchronously, their voices completely drowned out by the urgency.
"OH NO… QUICK!"
Then the ultimate, gruesome transformation broke loose. The laws of human flesh were rewritten with brute force to intercept the approaching storm. The purple Enchenkov electricity around Beat's body did not just explode; his own flesh began to mutate on an atomic level into the ultimate Oni form. His skin tightened with a hissing sound, coloring a deep, static purple. The muscles in his arms swelled to monstrous proportions, the veins ripping open and illuminating like glowing, fluorescent neon tubes with pure purple lightning pumping through them. The bones in his jaws cracked audibly as his teeth forced themselves into a razor sharp, psychopathic grin. Blitz, nestled on his shoulder, mutated right along with him; the little creature opened its glowing eyes so wide that the pupils vanished into a blinding, purple discharge. The metronomic war drums in the air shifted into a frantic, terrifyingly high tempo that made the eardrums of the bystanders bleed. This was the absolute Enchenkov speed.
Beside him, Apollo underwent a metamorphosis that radiated pure, divine horror. The ash gray poncho hanging loosely around his shoulders ignited from within with the razor sharp, compressed heat of a dying star. The fabric fused with his skin. His human contours vanished completely into a razor thin, fluid silhouette of an agile sun demon. His eyes transformed into two pits of pulsating, white hot solar light that vaporized the falling blood rain around him in a radius of meters. The heat blasting from his body was so intense that the air molecules began to warp, making his gestalt vibrate as if he were a hallucination. It was the birth of a monstrous solar god.
And Nicola drove his nervous system far past the human limit. His paranoia activated an overload of pure ether. His entire body began to tremble so violently that his bones rattled beneath his clothes. Neon blue power surges, thick as cables, blasted from his fingertips with brute, snapping explosions. His gaze behind his glasses illuminated so destructively bright blue that the lenses cracked but remained in place due to the magnetic pressure of his own aura. For a split second, his physical form faded completely; his flesh became transparent, transforming into a pure, kinetic god of flashing neon energy. Everything went faster. The world stood still, and they moved.
I can see every single atom slowing down, Nicola thought, his mind racing through a billion defensive scenarios in a microsecond. If we do not obliterate them right now, we are nothing but dust.
But the moment they wanted to break out to pulverize Qayin, the ground vibrated with a deep, familiar, yet sickening resonance. No stone shattered. No copper broke. Between the deep cracks of the obsidian floor, a heavy, liquid substance suddenly began to flow upward. It was quicksilver, gleaming, cold, and heavy. The silver pool reacted instantly to the frantic tempo of the drums, pulsating in perfect synchronicity with the rhythm of the Enchenkov speed.
The Chrome Mimic had arrived.
The liquid substance rose weightlessly from the floor, flowing like a silver puddle before rising as a massive, mirrored entity right before them. He had no fixed form of his own, but his presence brought a shock of recognition. This was no enemy. This was the crazy, legendary mentor who had dragged them through their deepest traumas and fears, the one who had forged Jane in her cage of high voltage and broken the rest in their personal dimensions to make them stronger. In his amplified form, he now rose as an impenetrable wall of liquid chrome around Nicola, Apollo, and Beat. His mirrored surface absorbed the purple, white, and neon blue lightning currents of his students, reflecting the bloodlust of the Inquisition directly back into the arena. He stood there as their absolute protector, a living shield of quicksilver claiming the front line.
While Qayin stood ready with his bloodied axe and the rest of the Inquisition sought to strike, the Chrome Mimic looked at them. Not a single word came from the liquid form. No voice was needed. The mirrored chrome formed an arm and made a bone dry, casual no no hand gesture toward the Inquisitors. The message of the crazy mentor was ice cold and completely clear: this far and no further. You do not fight my students as long as I stand here.
The no no hand gesture of the Chrome Mimic still hung like an icy, mirrored law in the red lit arena when gravity claimed its ruthless toll. The Inquisitors ignored the warning completely, already leaping down to trap the Nobodies in the corridors. But their landing trajectories had been calculated beforehand; they leapt straight into an invisible minefield of the absolute highest destructive caliber.
Midway through their fall, the ignition mechanism of the Lotus bomber activated. Space split into successive, geometric shockwaves in a fraction of a second. The Lotus bomb exploded with a terrifyingly pure, compressed expansion of thermal and kinetic pressure. The air pressure imploned for a microsecond first, after which the shockwave sawed horizontally through the arena like a razor sharp, symmetrical ring of white hot light. The sound was a dry, metallic bang that made space shiver into visual shards.
The upward kinetic thrust struck the chest of the monk with the impact of a steam hammer. Sanguis was completely intercepted mid air, his blood barrier torn apart on an atomic level. The shockwave hurled him sideways with a crushing rotation, slamming him with a brute impact deep into the massive copper partition wall. The blinding inferno of white light and torn copper blocked all vision.
The gateway was opened.
Deep within the adjacent, half dark corridors of the colosseum, the ground vibrated so violently that dust rained from the vaults in thick clouds. Cilla, Aurelius, Jane, and Lyn abruptly checked their pace, their weapons drawn and their senses sharp. They were attempting to traverse the paths of this gigantic structure when the heavily dented copper wall right beside them began to crack. Brother Sanguis had already crashed into the wall from the explosion, and now he came crawling out.
With jerking, inhuman movements, he wrenched his limbs from the gaping, dislocated metal. Chunks of debris and glowing metal splinters clattered onto the ground around him as he dragged himself forward. His eyes were wide open, bloodshot and possessed, while the liquid substance from his stigmata wounds flowed hissing over his torn skin to painfully glue the shattered bones in his neck back together. He was completely riled up, trembling from the pure adrenaline and the destructive impact of the Lotus blow he had just crawled out of. He dragged himself over the debris, threw his head back, and roared.
"HAHAHA!! HERE YOU ARE!!"
He snuffed the air deeply, his nostrils trembling with pure disgust and ecstasy.
"YOUR BLOOD STINKS?! HAHAHA!!"
This thing is not human, flashed through Cilla's mind, her fingers tightening around her weapon as her inner monologue went into overdrive. He feels no pain. He breaks down his own body just to get closer. If he gets a grip on us, he will use our own life force to fuel his madness.
The remaining Inquisitors, who had already made the leap down successfully, wasted no time. The dense ash cloud in the corridor cleared with rabid speed, revealing that they were completely surrounded. Sancta Valeria moved as a blur of pure, murderous kinetics. With a terrifying speed, she began to circulate around Jane in a perfect, tight circle, her movements so swift that the air began to howl.
Too fast, Jane thought, as her high voltage aura began to crackle instinctively, searching for a target that was never quite there. She is cornering me. I can feel the vacuum of her speed pulling the oxygen right out of my lungs.
Then space exploded in a bright green flash. From the shadows of the vaults, the raw, piercing sound of a bird of prey echoed in the distance. There he was. Izamaru. His eyes illuminated in the razor sharp, geometric patterns of the Flower of Life. In this amplified state, his body was completely feathered, the green gleaming quills pressed tight against his agile frame. With large, powerful strides, he ran along in the slipstream of the enemy, his senses fully tuned to the movements of the Inquisition. He threw himself into the fray, trying to assist the Nobodies and break Valeria's deadly circle.
On the other side of the corridor, the rest of the Inquisition had already dropped into position after their leap. Master Ometol stood there, his heavy, dominant presence instantly transforming the temperature in the hallway. Beside him, the Fire Lady blocked the passage, her form surrounded by pulsating, glowing powder tails that spit sparks hissing into the darkness. And right behind them moved the Lazy One, who now occupied the rear guard with terrifying speed. The heavyweight turned out to be an absolute speedster; his lumbering gestalt moved with a fluid, almost impossible swiftness that defied the laws of inertia.
The Nobodies stood back to back, enclosed in a suffocating, crosswise ambush. The tension was palpable, the air so thick that it made breathing difficult. Lyn held her breath, her eyes darting between the three massive threats blocking their only escape route.
In the sudden, icy silence, the legends let their gazes glide over the young gods and rebels. There was no more rush. This was the moment of execution. Each of them spoke, their voices heavy with arrogance, as if reading a death sentence.
Master Ometol stepped forward first, his voice deep and vibrating through the foundation.
"I have never given my name to the cattle I slaughter. But here, in the face of your end, you may know who strikes you down. I am the Iron Architect, Malakor."
The Fire Lady let her powder tails brush dangerously close to the walls, the copper plates melting away beneath her heat.
"And I am the Ash Witch, Pyra Vael. The purification that will reduce your sins to ash."
Even the lazy speedster flashed to a halt with a short, hissing braking action, a deep, heavy resonance escaping his chest.
"And I am the Gray Curse, Velox the Slow Death. The wall against which your hope shatters."
The Nobodies listened, their breathing controlled, the adrenaline mutating into pure, cold focus. They knew that every word spoken now could be the last.
Aurelius adjusted his stance, his voice dripping with defiant pride.
"The Iron Architect, the Ash Witch, and the Slow Death. You talk a lot for people who are about to find out why the world calls us the Nobodies. We do not care about your titles."
Jane stepped forward, her lightning sparking violently against the floorboards.
"Let them talk, Aurelius. The louder they boast, the harder they burn when the current hits them."
The solemn introduction of his comrades, however, was the final straw for the manic monk, who had just crawled trembling from the broken copper wall. Brother Sanguis looked at the Inquisitors, and then back at the Nobodies. His ritual was disrupted. His blood had been misled by the Lotus bombs. The fact that these underlings dared to interrupt his glorious slaughter with dialogues and names drove him over the edge of total madness. He snapped finally, irreversibly.
Hysterically, with jerking, unnatural steps, he walked straight toward the line of the Nobodies. He raised his arms, spreading them wide open as if to receive a divine blessing, while the open stigmata holes in his palms shot fresh blood into the corridor like hungry mouths.
"YOU UNDERLINGS!!" he screamed, his voice cracking into a rabid, terrifying fury that made the walls tremble. "DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHOM YOU ARE INTERRUPTING?! MY RITUAL! THE BLOOD OF THE CRUCIFIED IS HERE!!"
With wide open arms and a psychopathic grin splitting his entire face, he stood there, completely unprotected and ready to turn the entire corridor into a bloody hell.
The psychopathic fury of the monk reached its boiling point, but the Inquisitors showed not a single trace of awe for his madness. Velox the Slow Death took a fluid, terrifyingly fast step aside. Without turning his gaze from the Nobodies, he unbuckled his heavy, ash gray overcoat with a single movement of his hand. With a careless, bone dry swing, he hurled the coat straight into the wide open arms of Brother Sanguis.
"Oh, thank you…" the monk muttered with a mechanical, vacant smile.
The heavy fabric settled over his open embrace.
For a single fraction of a second, the entire corridor went completely, unnaturally silent.
KRRAK.
The coat was not made of textile; it was a compressed weave of pure, lead heavy meteorite ore. The absolute weight slammed into the limbs of the monk with the impact of a falling anvil. The underarms of the monk snapped completely in two, the bones splintering audibly through the flesh as his arms collapsed downward under the immense pressure.
Sanguis's suffering body reacted instantly with a rabid, religious ecstasy. His eyes rolled completely back into his skull, until only the gleaming, milk white sclera was visible. Instead of screaming in pain, he began to vomit possessed, cracking prayers, as if speaking in tongues.
"Sanguis Meus… Cruor Domini… Gloriam in excelsis carne!"
As the Latin syllables tore like foam from his mouth, the pressure in his open stigmata wounds exploded. The shattered arteries in his broken arms began to pulsate like high pressure hoses. Thick, viscous black red blood blasted with brute force meters high against the copper vaults, transforming that entire corridor into a hissing, carnal slaughterhouse.
But the Nobodies did not yield a single millimeter to the horror. The threat forced their ultimate evolution.
Let the walls drip with their holy executioners, Lyn thought, her fingers locking onto her hilt until the metal bit into her palm. They think they are reading our death sentences, but they forgot who held the pen in the dark.
Beat stepped into the front line, the Enchenkov speed vibrating so hard that his silhouette created afterimages.
"Let them spill their blood. We have our own power to unleash."