Bloodbound Codex: I Grow Stronger in Secret

The moment Alberion appeared above the Muxical, his Katana descended from above with a precision that had nothing casual about it, the Gravity he had been controlling throughout the fight now bent around the black blade itself.

Until that moment Alberion had been using his Gravity in two specific ways - the Gravity domain that reduced the pull around his own body and made his speed reach the level it had been at, and the Gravity Multiplication that he had applied outward during certain exchanges, both of which were techniques from the same Fundamental Force but used at different scales, the domain being the foundation and the multiplication being the offensive application, and between those two he had kept pace with the Muxical through the entire half hour of fighting without either side finding a clean opening to end it.

But what he was doing now was neither of those.

He was using the last technique the book on Gravity had described, the one that didn’t spread the force across an area or reduce it around himself but instead concentrated all of it into a single point, and that point was the blade of his Katana, every unit of Gravity he could apply drawn into that one edge while the domain around his body kept his speed at the same level it had been at throughout the fight, meaning he was running both at once and the strain of maintaining that was something only an S-rank carrying this specific Fundamental Force could hold even briefly without losing control of either.

He had no understanding of what the energy around the Muxical was, he couldn’t identify it and couldn’t work out how the Monster had survived his previous attack using it, so he stopped trying to understand it mid-fight and decided instead to use everything he had at once and kill it before it found another counter, because every exchange so far had shown him that the Muxical was not reacting on instinct alone, it was reading the situation and adjusting to it, which meant giving it more time to observe was the wrong approach.

The Muxical beneath him felt that descending force and its Instincts screamed in a way it had never experienced since emerging from the Crucible, every fibre of its body telling it to escape by any means, but the speed of Alberion’s descent and the distance already closed left it no room to move away, so it did the only thing it had left, it pushed Null outward, the same energy that had made it feel untouchable throughout the fight, using it to enhance its right hand and raise it against the incoming blade.

Then... the Katana struck.

The blade came down directly onto the Null-enhanced right hand of the Muxical, and this time there was no CLANG, no shockwave spreading outward, no sound of two forces meeting at equal strength.

Just a moment where both of them felt the same thing at the same time, but both had completely opposite expressions now...Alberion’s expression shifted into a small grin while the Muxical’s face registered something it had not felt once since its emergence.

Then — THUD.

The Muxical’s hand dropped to the forest floor, separated cleanly from the shoulder.

The Null-enhanced hand had still fallen.

How?

The reason was straightforward - the Muxical carried Spirit mixed with Null, which made it a hybrid and crude version of that energy rather than a completepy separate like Atlas had.

And what Alberion had concentrated into the blade was Gravity at its fundamental level, an actual Fundamental Force of Nature, and when that concentration of Gravity struck the Spirit-Null mixture the Gravity simply cancelled the hybrid out, the same way a pure thing tends to overpower a diluted version of itself, which was what allowed the blade to cut through the enhanced hand and separate it entirely from the shoulder, something that had not been possible with any technique he had used in the earlier parts of the fight where the Null had deflected or absorbed everything he sent at it.

Alberion didn’t pause after seeing the result, he blurred immediately and reappeared behind the Muxical, his Katana already moving in a horizontal arc from behind, and this time there was nothing the Muxical could raise against it in time.

SHHHK.

THUD.

The head dropped to the forest floor, its blank eyes facing the empty sky visible through the trees above.

Alberion released his control over the Gravity around himself and the blade, and the moment he did the exhaustion of maintaining that level of concentration caught up with him all at once.

”Huff...Hah...Huff...”

He dropped to one knee on the ground with the Katana still in his grip, ”What in the hell is this Muxical?...That strange thing around it mixed with Spirit, if not for that last technique it wouldn’t have died.”

His breathing steadied slowly and he stood back up, turning to look at the Muxical’s body again, the Null mixed with Spirit around it still leaking faintly into the surrounding air even in death, something that felt wrong because Spirit dispersed naturally after a Monster died rather than lingering, whatever was mixed into it was changing how it behaved even after the Monster carrying it had stopped functioning.

”It also had Intelligence to a certain extent...more than any S-rank Monster should.” He concluded as he thought back through the fight, the counters the Muxical had found within the same instant he had attacked each time, reactions that didn’t come from instinct alone, ”It felt like fighting an S-rank person, not a monster.”

He sighed and looked out through the forest ahead of him.

Then his eyes sharpened as another thought followed, ’There could never be only one Muxical...this species always moves in groups, that has been documented for centuries without exception, so if this one appeared alone then more of them are spread out somewhere nearby... if they have all undergone the same change this one had then...’

He couldn’t sit with that and do nothing, so he turned and walked in the direction of the nearest city without deliberating further, and as he moved through the trees he glanced briefly toward the sky above them and spoke quietly, ”Maybe I could use a little help from them...that would ease this mess considerably.”

Then he kept walking.

- - -

While Alberion moved through the forest, the chaos was not limited to that single encounter or that single forest, across the entire Elven Continent S-rank Monsters were emerging from Abyss-Rank Ruins in numbers that made them feel less like rare exceptions and more like something the world was going to have to deal with as a new reality, and it was not only Muxicals, some of the Monsters had changed so drastically through whatever had been done to them inside those Ruins that their original species was nearly unrecognizable, their shapes altered enough that experienced Explorers who had faced them before in lower forms could barely identify what they were looking at now.

Every S-rank in the continent was engaged, some dealing with a single Monster and some with more than one at the same time, and the cities were already beginning to feel the ripple of it through the routes connecting them as reports came in from different directions at once.

In a completely different location within the same continent, an open grassy field with no forest cover and no ruins nearby, an Elven figure lay flat on his back in the grass with one hand behind his head and his eyes closed, his long hair green and blue streaked, his attire a simple yellow and white combination, the wind moving through both without any urgency, the field around him quiet except for the grass shifting in the breeze, entirely undisturbed by whatever was happening across the rest of the continent.

He exhaled slowly, ”Sigh...I was just about to take a nap and some creature interrupts it.”

He sat up without any urgency, not standing, not even appearing to consider standing, and turned his head to the right.

A few meters away an eight-foot Monster was walking toward him, its skin black, its eyes blank and hollow, its body carrying that same Null mixed with Spirit that every one of these changed Monsters carried, moving with the deliberate pace of something that already considered what was in front of it to be finished.

The figure looked at it and a smile formed, his lips stretching with mild amusement, ”Hoho...you seem interesting, though I don’t particularly care about that right now, I just want a nap.”

He lifted his hand slightly off the grass, raised it just enough, brought his middle finger and thumb together.

SNAP.

The Monster stopped mid-step.

The figure lay back down on the grass, closed his eyes, and said nothing else.

The Monster stood motionless for a moment, then dropped to the field, dead.

The figure was already asleep.

And this figure was also...an S-rank?!