Cleaver Of Sin

Chapter 75: Blind

Before Asher could so much as move, his vision vanished, swallowed whole, as though the very world of Crymora had chosen to erase all color from existence. His body froze, muscles coiling in instinctive tension the instant darkness claimed his sight.

’This has to be another ability... one of the assassins,’ he thought, his mind racing to keep pace with the sudden shift in reality.

An ability that induced blindness would be dismissed by most as trivial, useless, even. But in Crymora, there was an old saying: ”There are no useless abilities, only useless wielders.”

And now, in this moment, that saying rang true.

To strip a combatant of their sight at the height of battle was no mere trick, it was a death sentence cloaked in simplicity. Even seasoned warriors, honed by countless battles, could be reduced to prey with a single, well-timed use.

No matter their experience, no matter their instinct, blindness, when wielded with efficiency, turned veterans into helpless fish laid bare upon the butcher’s board.

’It’s not a mind-based ability, if it were, the system would have nullified it,’ Asher reasoned, his thoughts sharp despite the sudden loss of sight.

The assassins didn’t hesitate, they knew each other’s abilities as they all came from the same organisation, they all pushed forward with immense speed, weapons raised with lethal intent

But Asher was no ordinary opponent.

Under Elowen’s relentless guidance, he had refined his Omni Perception through six months of rigorous motion and balance training. He had fought blindfolded, disoriented, even with his perception sealed, forced to survive with nothing but instinct and muscle memory.

Though deprived of sight, Asher could still see.

His Omni Perception unfolded around him, painting a detailed image of his surroundings within its radius. Whatever ability had robbed him of vision, it could not suppress what lay deeper, his cultivated sixth sense.

’System, notify me the moment this ability fades.’

[Affirmative, Host]

With that thought, Asher closed his eyes.

Almost instantly, he felt the air shift, attacks rained down from all directions, targeting nearly every inch of his body. Deadly strikes meant to overwhelm and dismember. But Asher was no fool; he wouldn’t waste his strength trying to block them all at once.

Instead, Astra surged through his legs.

With a single, fluid motion, his figure blurred, vanishing from his position and reappearing meters away in the blink of an eye, his body gliding backward as if reality itself had bent to accommodate his retreat.

The assassins, momentarily taken aback by the evasion, didn’t falter. Confusion flickered in their movements, but it passed quickly. In the end, it didn’t matter, Asher was still their target.

Asher refused to give them the initiative, this time, he moved.

In a flash, he erased the distance between them, as if space itself had folded at his command. The dagger in his grip swept forward with clinical strokes, slicing clean through the eye of the nearest assassin.

A scream burst from the man’s throat, sharp, panicked, but it was cut short a heartbeat later. Asher’s blade followed through, gliding across his neck in a seamless arc, silencing him with a single, elegant stroke.

Blood sprayed into the air, but Asher was already gone.

His movement was serpentine, fluid and unpredictable. He twisted to the side, momentum coiled into his next strike. In one swift motion, his dagger flashed upward, burying itself beneath another assassin’s chin and erupting through the top of their skull.

With a dull thud, two bodies collapsed to the ground.

Asher moved like a shadow, silent, swift, and devastatingly precise. He never needed more than a strike or two; every motion was calculated, every kill clean.

To any onlooker, the roles would have seemed reversed. Asher didn’t resemble the hunted, he was the predator. The assassin, not the target.

Behind their masks, the remaining assassins frowned. Confusion crept in, sharp and unwelcome. He was supposed to be blind, crippled by the very ability they’d deployed. Yet here he was, navigating the battlefield with fluid grace, as though sight had never left him.

And then there was his weapon.

He was known to wield a rapier. Now, he carved through them with a dagger, as if it had always been his blade of choice.

None of it made sense, and that made him all the more dangerous.

As Asher tore across the battlefield, the massive hammer came crashing down once more.

This time, he didn’t dodge.

Instead, he shifted subtly, seizing one of the assassins and hurling him straight into the weapon’s path.

With a sickening, bone-crushing impact, the hammer collided. The assassin’s head exploded into pulp, reduced to little more than a red smear in the air.

The hammer-wielding assassin faltered, caught off guard.

But by then, it was already too late. Asher was behind him. His eyes remained closed, his breath calm, his steps ghostly in their silence. In a blur, his hand moved, clean, deliberate.

A flash of steel.

A soft whisper of flesh parting.

Then, the assassin’s head soared into the air.

Before it could hit the ground, Asher felt the whip cut through the air once more, its intent murderous.

His body responded instantly. Feet lifted from the earth, he spun, pivoted, and lashed out with a kick that met the airborne head mid-flight. With brutal force, it rocketed toward the whip-wielding assassin like a macabre projectile.

Seeing the severed head hurtling toward her, she had no choice but to retract her whip and evade, the motion sharp and instinctive.

But Asher was already in motion.

His legs carved through the soil beneath him as he surged forward, relentless. From behind, he sensed the whip lash out again, curving toward him like a serpent intent on devouring its prey.

He didn’t hesitate.

With a burst of momentum, he leapt into the air. His body twisted mid-flight with fluid movement, a dancer’s grace wrapped in a killer’s intent. He landed behind her in a single, silent motion, deft, controlled.

His daggers flashed forward, twin arcs of silver, aiming straight for her back.

But she was ready.

Her figure blurred, reacting with speed honed through countless battles. She didn’t dodge, she attacked. The handle of her whip reversed course and shot toward Asher’s neck like a striking fang, aiming to bring him down with her now that he had closed the distance.

But Asher had seen this technique before, the Black Panther had used it.

And no matter who wielded it now, it wouldn’t work on him a second time.

His movement shifted with fluid precision. He stepped back, posture calm, but the air around him crackled with rising tension.

Lightning surged into his palm, forming a spear of concentrated energy.

In the next instant, it launched, an arrow of purplefury tearing through the air with blinding speed and raw force.

The assassin barely registered the thunderclap in her ears before the searing light struck her chest. A heartbeat later, it detonated, an eruption of power that consumed her in a flash, tearing her body apart like a balloon under pressure.

Nothing remained but fragments, scorched and scattered in the air.

Asher could already feel the shift in the air, the faint tearing of space as the assassins moved. They didn’t hesitate. No words. No pauses. Just pure, lethal intent.

His hand closed around the fallen whip, instinct guiding his grip.

In his mind, the memory replayed, how the assassin had wielded it earlier, the flow, the weight, the range. His battle intuition ability filled in the rest.

Lightning crackled across the length of the whip, veins of violet energy pulsing through it like a living thing. Then, Asher moved.

His arm blurred, and the whip lashed out in a storm of arcs, slicing through the air in a sweeping dance of destruction.

The assassins reacted instantly, forms flickering as they stepped back, vanishing from the whip’s immediate reach in bursts of speed.

But not all of them were fast enough.

Three were caught in the tempest.

The whip struck, blunt force laced with elemental wrath. Their heads burst like overripe fruit, exploding into sprays of crimson and shattered bone, painting the air with gore.

For a brief, morbid second, the battlefield gained a flash of color, blood red against a world painted in death.

From the lingering haze of smoke left in the wake of his last strike, Asher emerged, his steps slow, deliberate.

Each footfall echoed like a war drum in the ears of the surviving assassins, steady and unrelenting, as though heralding the end.

[The Host’s vision has returned]

The system’s chime rang clearly in his mind.

Asher’s eyelids lifted.

In that instant, Virelass, who had already claimed the lives of four assassins, vanished from where she stood, then reappeared in her master’s hand as if summoned by will alone.

The air grew heavier.

The hunt had truly begun.