Chapter 25: Destruction

Time Attendant's entire arm was still tingling and aching from the punch he had just thrown. He had thought it powerful enough to move mountains, perhaps even knock Jarvidon in two. He certainly had not expected the man to be able to speak afterward.

Jarvidon looked a sorry sight after that punch, but he had not been knocked away. He still hovered steadily in the air, though he could no longer sustain the force he had been exerting on the other ability users.

True to his word, Time Attendant sent a second punch straight at the reeling Jarvidon's face without a moment's pause.

Still dazed by the first punch, Jarvidon was grabbed by the collar and hit in the face again. This time he finally went flying. His collar tore apart, and his head dragged the rest of his body after it as he plummeted toward Hell Island like a hammer in a hammer throw.

But he still did not hit the ground. Just before he struck the island's surface, Jarvidon clenched his fists, bent his knees, and braced himself, actually coming to a halt in midair. “A bug thinks it can knock me dow—”

He was only halfway through “down” when Time Attendant caught up with him and drove a knee hard into his chest. Jarvidon's heart stopped for two seconds, and his body smashed through rock and soil, hurtling backward into the island.

Time Attendant kept after him, expanding the force field around himself to crush everything in his path and open a passage into the island. He soon caught up with Jarvidon, but when the field touched Jarvidon's body, it could not crush him. At most, it could press him bodily into the rock.

Time Attendant had no choice but to shrink his field and move closer to see whether he could snap Jarvidon's neck. Just then, a strange light flared in Jarvidon's eyes. He roared in fury, and Time Attendant was helplessly pushed back the way he had come.

“Impossible...” Time Attendant tried to advance, only to find himself retreating faster and faster.

“You thought hiding inside that circle meant you could ignore my power...” Jarvidon rose into the air again. “Then I'll just lift you and that force field of yours together!”

Time Attendant was appalled. His ability kept everything in the world outside his field. So far, none of EAS's testing instruments had been able to measure its limit. Even in a nuclear explosion, leaving aside the glare and radiation, he could withstand the full force of the blast. As long as he had the strength to maintain his field, it had never occurred to him that an external force could affect him.

“Energy can't penetrate or break through this field. Your ability can't affect me. This is impossible...” Time Attendant strained with all his might to press the attack, but he was already spent.

“Ha ha... hahahaha!” Jarvidon laughed, raising Time Attendant higher and higher as he himself floated out of the pit. “I told you, I'm not affecting you. I'm affecting you and your force field as a single whole. Your field is merely an immense, ponderous force, something like a continuous outward push on matter and quasi-matter within a certain area.

“Leaving Earth's gravity out of the calculation, the force needed to move you is roughly equivalent to moving three times the combined weight of the island beneath us and the entire artificial prison.

“But that's all it amounts to. You're just another bug with a troublesome ability.”

Jarvidon shouted, “My power has no limit! Kill me?! Dream on!”

At the height of his triumph, a muscular arm seized his ankle again.

“Damn it...” Jarvidon had no idea why he was experiencing such an unpleasant sense of déjà vu.

In any case, a second later he was yanked down and landed face-first.

This was hardly Blood Owl's first time doing this. He could not fly, so his first order of business was to pull his opponent somewhere he could fight standing up.

The light in Jarvidon's eyes grew brighter still. “Get away!”

He meant to use his ability to shove Blood Owl several dozen kilometers away, but before he could act, numbness swept through his body. Two hands were pressed against his temples, sending an electric current through him.

“So all the annoying bugs have come back down...” Jarvidon simply turned and drove an elbow square into Thunderfire's face. The blow gave Thunderfire a mild concussion and sent him flying clear of the island and into the sea.

“He doesn't understand much about using energy, but whether he's attacking or defending, it protects him unconsciously at every moment,” Yan Kong thought as he watched from a distance. “So this is the strength of a w-class mutant whose ability is rated at Mad rank... Now that I've lost my ability, with nothing but energy and a body in this condition, I doubt I could even hurt him. What weakness does he have? If we can't find one, everyone will die...”

Thunderfire had barely been taken out of the fight when another figure appeared beside Jarvidon. The man opened his mouth and shouted without making a sound, but an invisible shock wave promptly flattened almost half the island in front of him.

Even Jarvidon was driven back several zhang by the ultrasonic wave. Before regaining his footing, however, he shot the man a murderous glare. The man was less fortunate than Blood Owl. He flew straight backward into the distance and vanished from everyone's sight. With luck, he might slow to a stop somewhere near the west coast of Central America, rather than end up on a trip around the world.

At that moment, Blood Owl swung his fist at Jarvidon. This time Jarvidon was ready, raising his open right hand to catch the blow.

Jarvidon did not think Blood Owl's punch could be all that powerful. Judging by the motion, it might even be a feint with barely any force behind it. At most, you hit as hard as that fellow just now. Do you really think I can't catch your punch when I'm ready for it?

As it turned out, he really couldn't.

The punch bored through Jarvidon's palm. The bones shattered as the fist, as big as a cooking pot, punched through. Muscle fibers, splintered bone, torn skin, blood, flesh... the mess scattered across the ground. In an instant, only an outer rim of flesh and skin remained of Jarvidon's palm, connecting his five now-useless fingers. Blood Owl's arm had passed right through his hand.

Blood Owl grinned savagely and flexed his arm. His swelling muscles finished off the entire right hand. Only a short stump of palm bone remained above Jarvidon's wrist, with his thumb dangling from a strip of skin off the back of his hand. How much that hurt can only be imagined, not put into words.

Had Blood Owl aimed that punch at Paper Hero, his opponent certainly would not have met it head-on. If he blocked it at all, he would have used paper, because Paper Hero had seen footage of this man punching straight through a thug's torso in a Venice tavern. Any ability user with even a little combat sense who had seen that punch would probably never again rush into close combat with Blood Owl. Unfortunately, Jarvidon had no idea his opponent had such a trick, and paid dearly for it.

“Ah... ah! Aaaaaah!!” Jarvidon roared in pain and shot into the sky.

Waiting for him up there was Time Attendant, who had been gathering his strength for some time.

Time Attendant had come today intending to subdue the escaping prisoners. To that end, he had spent several days hiding here and there inside Naval Fortress One. He did not know when the jailbreak would happen, only that once something went wrong, Naval Fortress One would certainly be the first to receive word.

Now he could no longer worry about his identity or allegiance. Jarvidon was a prisoner too, after all, and essentially an enemy of all humanity. He would cooperate with the prisoners around him for the time being and deal with this man first.

But what he intended and what others saw might be two different things.

Time Attendant did not know that resistance organizations around the globe and the Empire were watching the battle on the island. This oddity in a naval soldier's uniform was soon recognized by certain people on the imperial side. Whatever was going through his mind, there were many things he would never be able to explain away.

That, of course, comes later. Back to the present.

Jarvidon forced himself upward. Time Attendant had had ample time to compress his force field and concentrate it around his fist. With such a rare opportunity falling into his lap, he naturally plunged down from above, intending to finish Jarvidon in a single blow.

But Jarvidon sensed Time Attendant's murderous intent in an instant. He looked up, a strange light flashing in his eyes, and sent Time Attendant, whose body was no longer protected by the field, flying into the sky.

The next second brought Jarvidon no respite. Attacks from the other ability users came blasting into the air one after another. At last, Jarvidon became truly enraged. He looked at his right hand and bellowed, shearing off everything above the wrist.

Immediately afterward, an invisible vortex formed around him and began to spread. Its power was impossible to gauge. It effortlessly crushed and destroyed everything it touched, and Hell Island began to disintegrate from the top down.

This limitless power expanded, invisible to the naked eye, destroying everything around it. Under remote control, the camera robot the Inverted Cross had stationed in the air sped backward into the distance.

At that moment, everyone watching this extraordinary spectacle marveled. Here was a power that reigned supreme over heaven and earth.

Hell Island was now the only reference point for gauging the scale of the destruction. Presumably, once the whole island was destroyed, the sea too would be gouged open and become the new reference point. No one knew when Jarvidon would stop. They could only dimly make out a man at the center of the pulverizing storm, hair disheveled and eyes rolled white, roaring madly. Perhaps this destruction would keep expanding until it destroyed the planet. Perhaps he would die partway through, bringing it to an end.

The situation was out of control. No one knew what would happen next. Perhaps human history would end today.

...

Pinned beneath the ruins of Hell Island, Blood Owl kept sinking. There was nothing before his eyes but endless darkness, and very little oxygen. He knew he had two choices. He could carry on like this, using energy to keep his body from being crushed while the collapsing earth, rock, and steel plates pressed him down until he fell into the sea. Or he could fight his way upward, confronting the force overhead that could tear everything apart, until his strength ran out or the sheer disparity in power got him ripped to pieces.

Imprisonment on Hell Island took an obvious toll on an ability user's body: prolonged exposure to Hades's Divine Mist, torture, cage coffins, food barely sufficient to sustain life, and so on. When Blood Owl encountered Jefferson, he had known that seventy percent of his strength was the most he could muster. That fight had also left him seriously injured, beyond what his own healing could fully repair in a short time.

Although Jarvidon had never actually managed to hurt him during the fight, the punch Blood Owl had thrown, along with the energy he had used to withstand the shocks of the upheaval around him, had exhausted his strength. He no longer had the stamina to fight the monster above. Even staying alive now seemed doubtful.

“I'll die at this rate... Am I really going to die in a place like this... I still don't know... what it feels like to truly live... and I'm going to die already...”

Blood Owl's breathing slowed. He could feel the despair, anger, fear, and bitterness in the hearts of the ability users outside. All those negative emotions pressed upon his mind, but Blood Owl had long since grown numb to them. He also knew that even with these evil thoughts sustaining him, he was still not strong enough.

...

A black submarine surfaced.

The hatch opened, and a young man stepped out. He wore a black suit over an untidy black shirt, his crooked tie fluttering to one side in the sea breeze, his hair a mess and his face listless.

Seen from behind him, the scene ahead was a picture of apocalyptic despair. Heaven and earth shook, mountains crumbled and the sea split apart, while a storm of destruction swept through everything around it.

Yet Tian Yi merely offered a calm, sarcastic comment. “Ah... the way things are these days... You pop your ultimate, I use cheats. It's clear who's better. The match is already decided.”