Bloodbound Codex: I Grow Stronger in Secret

[A/N: It’s common sense that Assassins have daggers so please note that]

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Josh moved as his figure vanished from his position. Beside him Mullark vanished at the same time.

Atlas saw both of them disappear and his grin faded instantly.

Spirit Instinct was already active and the moment they moved...it sent danger signals from both his left and right at the same time. Atlas didn’t think about it. His body moved immediately, bursting forward to get out of the space between them. The plan was simple — get out of the space they had boxed him into before they could reappear on either side and close him off completely.

But just as he moved he felt it.

Shhhk.

”Khuu—!”

A blade cut through his torso from the left side. He had avoided most of it because of the burst forward, so the cut was shallow, but it still made his body stumble for just a moment. His movement broke apart and his footing became uneven for that same moment.

That moment was enough.

Mullark was already there from the right, both carved daggers moving at the same time toward Atlas’s neck from opposite angles. The angle of both blades was calculated — one coming slightly higher from the left and one slightly lower from the right, designed so that dodging one would mean the other connected. Against a normal opponent it would have ended there.

Spirit Instinct fired again. What came through it this time was not a warning. Atlas understood from the signal alone, without turning his head or seeing the blades at all, that if those hits connected he would die.

He stopped trying to measure them. He stopped trying to read their abilities and plan around them. He had made that mistake from the start of this fight. When they first moved and vanished he had assumed it was speed because his Agility at 40 clearly outpaced what two A-rank assassins should have. That assumption had been wrong.

They were not moving fast.

They were vanishing from one position and reappearing in another. That was a completely different thing. Speed meant the body traveled the distance between two points. What these two were doing skipped the distance entirely. There was no movement to track, no path to follow, no reaction window to work with. They simply stopped existing in one place and started existing in another. That was what had caught him completely off guard from the first exchange and put him in this position with a blade already in him and two more coming at his neck.

The double slash was almost there.

A thin barrier formed around him at the last possible moment. At the same time Atlas dropped his head downward as fast as he could.

The blades hit the barrier and it broke apart. The slash continued forward and passed through the empty space where his neck had just been.

The barrier was gone. That was the third use of the Condor’s Locket, the relic from the first Veil-Class ruin he had ever cleared. He had activated it by pushing his Spirit directly into his pocket and forcing the relic on through that. He hadn’t been able to reach into the pocket properly with his hands during the fight so pushing Spirit inward through the fabric had been the only option available to him in that moment. It had worked but the locket had no charges left now. It would need to be recharged at a Guild before it was usable again.

Both assassins vanished again and reappeared several meters away on each side.

They didn’t move after that.

’Where did that barrier come from? A relic? But we didn’t see his hands move at all. When did he activate it?’

That same thought had stopped both of them. In their experience a relic required a clear activation motion — a hand reaching for it, a specific gesture, something visible. Atlas had produced a barrier without any of that and neither of them had an explanation for how.

Atlas stood still between them while that pause lasted.

Regenerative Hide activated and the cut across his torso began closing. The flesh pulled back together from the inside and within seconds the wound was sealed and the pain was gone.

While that happened Atlas was focused on one question.

’What technique is that exactly? They don’t move fast. They vanish and reappear. How?’

It wasn’t a Spirit burst technique. A Spirit burst would still show the body crossing the distance, just faster than the eye could follow. What these two were doing left no trail at all. One position, then another, nothing in between. That was a different category of ability entirely and he still didn’t understand the mechanism behind it.

Across from him Josh and Mullark were staring at his torso. They had seen the cut. They were watching it close on its own with no relic activation, no hand movement, nothing visible causing it. They looked at each other once and then back at Atlas.

’He is regenerating with Spirit alone at that speed? That is not possible. Even healing relics don’t work that fast.’

That shock sat on them for a moment. Then their eyes sharpened.

’We cannot let him leave. If he is this abnormal he is a threat to the King regardless of what Veyron originally assessed. We kill him here.’

Both of them moved again. Both vanished. Both reappeared, one directly in front of Atlas and one directly behind him.

Atlas didn’t react. His head was slightly lowered. His hood covered his face.

The assassins saw that he wasn’t moving and assumed their technique was working the way it was supposed to. He couldn’t sense where they were reappearing. He couldn’t track them. That was what the technique was designed to do and that was what they believed was happening. Neither of them stopped to consider why he wasn’t even reaching for the scythe at his side.

They committed to the attack.

Josh drove his dagger horizontally into Atlas’s stomach from the front. Mullark drove his horizontally into Atlas’s lower back from behind. Both at the same time.

Atlas stayed completely still.

”Khuuaggg—! Cough...”

Josh’s dagger went deep into his stomach.

”Gahhh!”

Mullark’s dagger went deep into his lower back.

Both blades were buried inside him.

Atlas did not falter.

Regenerative Hide activated on both wounds immediately. And in that same moment Atlas drove the scythe into the ground beside him with one hand to anchor himself and closed both his hands around Josh and Mullark’s wrists — the hands that were still holding the daggers inside his body. Both of them tried immediately to slash the blades sideways through him but the resistance they felt against that stopped them completely. Neither arm moved. Their combined strength against his grip did nothing.

The reason Atlas had let both hits land was simple. If he had dodged they would have vanished again and the same thing would have kept happening. He takes damage, regenerates, they disappear before he can reach them, repeat until something kills him before the regeneration catches up. The only way to stop that pattern was to catch them while the daggers were still physically inside him. While the blades were in his body their hands were connected to him and that connection was the only moment where the technique couldn’t activate cleanly — pulling away from his grip while vanishing would require taking his hands with them, and that wasn’t how the technique worked.

They tried to force the technique the moment they felt his grip close around their wrists.

It didn’t activate.

They tried to pull free with physical strength next. His grip didn’t shift, Both of them pushed and pulled against it and nothing happened. The difference in raw physical strength between them was too large for either of them to work around.

Atlas lifted both of them off the ground. One hand on each wrist. Both of them in the air at the same time. Then he brought them down.

Josh to the right...Mullark to the left. With Full strength, Both at the same time.

CRACK.

CRACK.

The ground split beneath both of them. Stone fractured outward from where they landed. The sound of it spread through the area around them. It had happened faster than either of them could follow and the impact was already done before their minds caught up to it.

”KHEUGHHH!”

”KHEUKKKK!!!”

Neither of them moved after that. Blood spread slowly from their heads across the cracked stone beneath them. Their eyes were open and looking upward.

Atlas stood between them. He reached down and pulled both daggers out of his body slowly, one from the front and one from the back. The wounds were already most of the way closed. He held the daggers for a moment then let them drop to the ground beside him.

He looked down at the two of them.

His face behind the mask had nothing heated in it. No rage on the surface. Just cold and still.

He spoke quietly.

”Now, you are going to tell me who sent you to assassinate me.”

He paused.

”Or...I promise you I will pull your guts and organs out one by one while keeping you both alive long enough to feel every part of it.”

He wasn’t raising his voice. He wasn’t smiling, His eyes stayed on their faces and didn’t move from them.

The two pairs of eyes looking back up at him were full of horror.

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[A/N: Thought I could write and upload 2 chaps at once, but...it seems I can’t, the next Chapter will come at 3:30 a.m(GMT+8)...sighs...*if there was a super gifts now I would work my ass off and write 4 extra Chapters...But these guys don’t seem to know that..hah...sighs..*]