The Mantis, enthralled by the sensation of a life evaporating under his gaze, allowed Duth and Sird to slip past the lines guaranteeing their survival.
By the time he rose his head to glance at his prey, they were already rejoicing behind the open gates of the Lab.
"Tch! So all of you get to life just like this!?" The Mantis's eyes flickered from dismay.
Dragging his scythe arms, he moved toward the lines with avid anger, "How lucky, no? And here I was planning on letting all of you free from the shackles of life as well!!" A sarcastic grin spread across his face.
The four shivered behind the gates, lost, dazed, and numbed at the sight of Cikus lying motionless. A similar thought flashed past their minds, 'Is that how easily... a life can be lost?'
'Stolen!' Rua's eyes glinted, 'Not lost... but stolen!' He clicked his lips, his gaze secretly glimpsed at the Mantis. 'What the hell does he want now? Just freaking leave already!' As the oddly solemn and languid sight of Cikus's death replayed, his teeth gritted in hate.
'If I could... I would've loved to spill your guts out. Shitty freak!'
Maybe sensing the malice, the Mantis's pupils abruptly pierced into Rua's eyes before shifting toward others.
"My, my! I truly feel heartbroken, you people all dare to kill my kind. But not have the guts to challenge us in a fair fight? Tch! What scumbags!" The Mantis burned from rage, "If you have the guts, come out and face me!"
Duth's face paled, 'You take us for fools?! Fair your ass, you think somebody like you targeting kids like us is fair!?'
'No, no! Something's off!' Rua shook off his thoughts and focused on the Mantis, he had this tingly feeling in his chest as if something was off.
"Oopsi! I-I... How did I step past these sacred lines!? My god!" The Mantis glanced down at his feet in surprise, his toes crossing the tracks. He jumped back hurriedly, but somehow inched further in.
Rua's heart turned abnormally cold.
"Welp! I guess there's no point not taking a peek inside now, is there!?" Shrugging nonchalantly, he swaggered over to the other side, flashing a merciless grin at the rooted four.
'Shit, shit, shit!!' Srid's hair stood on edge, "You! YOU CAN'T COME OVER HERE, NO HYBRID HAS THE RIGHT TO TRESPASS HERE! LEAVE, LEAVE THIS INSTANT!!' In his long thirty-something life, he hadn't seen or heard once a Hybrid moving past the gates. So... why now!? Why!? When his life was on the line?
"Huh!? Are you a fool!?" Smugly trodding over, he responded, "Why won't I step over? There's no human or hybrid rule which forbids me not to. So why can't I? The only reason nobody else comes over is that they fear destroying or harming the sleeping hybrids inside. Nothing else." His words sounded almost melodic. Tuneful and mocking.
The last two words struck Srid's heart like arrows, sapping all his will to resist.
Duth shakily got up on his feet and pointed his finger toward him, fully panicked, he screeched, "Then... Then do you not care? For your comrades!?"
The Mantis froze, his eyes bewildered, "Me? Care!? ...Hahaha! Why would I? What's in there... FOR ME!?" Like a bolt of lightning, his body vanished and appeared right in front of Duth.
Mika's eyes snapped wide, 'No! If things continue like this... I will die!!'
A sudden urgency struck her, 'I must do something. I must do something!!'
"DON'T!!" A strange pattern flickered past Rua's eyes for a brief second, before vanishing without any trace.
The Mantis's claw froze in its tracks for that brief second, but that second alone allowed Srid to escape out of its range.
"What!?" The Mantis glanced back in surprise, "Your power can actually influence me!?" His eyes, with surety, settled atop Rua, "My word! You aren't half-bad kid! ...BUT STILL TOO BAD FOR ME!!"
In the next instance, completely disregarding Rua, he ran for Srid who kept closing in on the Lab's door.
'If only... If only I can reach inside, maybe then this Hybrid wouldn't chase me further.' His eyes burned his last rays of hope.
"STOP YOU BITCH!!" Rua gripped his fists and dashed behind with all the power of his legs, he was fast, but nowhere close to the Hybrid. His desperation grew, and his heart turned heavy, 'This is all because of me. They are dying because of me.'
Rua, himself, would hardly call himself a good guy. But he wouldn't call himself evil either. If he didn't wish somebody well, then he wouldn't wish them harm either.
Realizing full well that they were stuck in this predicament because of him, he labeled himself the cause of every death that occurred amongst them.
"DON'T YOU DARE!!" Rua's eyes burned, his mind raced, 'What can I do to help!? Can I even help? What can I do in front of absolute power!? I have nothing in my arsenal.' His teeth cracked against each other, 'If I could do nothing... then why did I dare to stake everyone's life? It's my fault... It's all my fault.'
Darkness crept over his vision. A mountain weighed down on his chest, his breath began to ache his lungs.
'It's all my fault.' His eyes helplessly tracked the Mantis as it instantly strode behind Duth and prepared to finish everything.
His mind hallucinated about the fate that befall Cikus to now collapse over Duth.
'No,' His nails dug into his flesh, his eyes sizzled from fury, 'NO!!', a soothing envelope of mystical-colored lights donned over him.
Strange words, those that he didn't recognize himself crept out of his tongue, "Craft Mimus," His palm reached out for the Mantis, his brain shunned, "Craft of Authority!"
His fingers pinched the air and pulled, replicating the exact same pattern Rua had the luxury to admire earlier.
Under a gentle flick, the pattern dissipated and reappeared in his eyes - A pattern that had been all too eager to glint in his eyes the past few minutes.
With one blow, he let loose all the air sucked in his throat.
A chill prickled into the Mantis's skin, and a deathly visage clouded his consciousness. Halting him dead in his feet.
It wasn't just him either, Srid, Mika, and Duth, all stood frozen in their places. Even the fights outside were disrupted by the sudden interference.
"Th-This presence... A-A League 4? No, a pinnacle league 3! What's a monster like that doing here!?" Murmurs spread amongst the crowds as they realized that neither the Captain - who held such power from the human's side had been the perpetrator nor the Leader from the Hybrid side had displayed such strength. 'There's another powerhouse here!'
The battlefield erupted into chaos. And the reason for it all stood silently, perspiring heavily as he collapsed to his feet.
'Wha-what just... happened!?' His eyes trembled.
The Mantis, slowly snapping back to his senses, shuddered in his place. 'What the hell was that power? It was terrifyingly close. Very close! Who did it!?'
In despair, his eyes turned back to Rua, seeing his weary gaze, perplexed, affixed at him, he had his suspicions, 'He did that!?'
'No... No way!' Just as he was about to eat his brain away from the thoughts surging like a tide, heavy and crisp footsteps slowly permeated the air.
His head, pulled by the sound, turned forward at the dimmed door of the Lab.
From the shadows cast by the building's body, a figure casually strolled out.
Butt-naked and solid as a rock, his bulging muscles spoke volumes of his hard-core traning.
The Mantis was tall himself, standing right at 6'2 inches. But he towered atop even him. His height neared a whole 7 feet.
Listlessly, his head shifted about, his dim black pupils took in everything in a foreign manner.
His skin was somewhat tanned, but not dark. His wavy light brown hair cast a shadow over his thin eyebrows. His sharp nose slender like a sword.
'He... This-This human was the cause.' The Mantis trembled in his feet.
A jolt suddenly ran down his spine, as he realized that his and the human's eyes had met.
As the two faced off, a figure nimbly landed next to Rua and held him up, "What's wrong? Where's Cikus!? Update me on the current situation."
Rua, hearing the burst of commands, glanced to the side. Seeing Seff, his heart instantly found peace. But as for his questions, he could only, idiotically, shake his head.
"You... YOU!! I WON'T LET YOU LIVE AFTER SUCH AN INSULT!!" The Mantis snapped, his shrill scream hyped the crowd outside whose attention had shifted from their battle to the Lab's.
He entered his refined mantis stance, and instantly blasted over.
This time, not holding back his strength, the ground blasted from where he stood. The relatively clean ground of the Lab scurried with dirt.
With a terrific boom, the Mantis blasted his scythes at the human, destroying the tiles below and whirling a dust cloud into air.
'Shit!' Rua's tongue trembled while browsing for words to utter, 'He had been... holding back his strength? He... He was playing with us!'
Seff's brows tightened, and his eyes glowed under a beautiful pattern as he zoomed his sight onto the cloud.
'They both are-' His expression turned perplexed.
The audience, holding their breaths from such display of power, peeled their eyes as the cloud subsided. The outcome nearly caused their legs to go limp.
The two beasts stood right in their places, not moving an inch. The unharmed figure of the human causally pinched the two scythes of the Mantis in one of his hands, suspending its whole body in mid-air, still in the motion of flying through air.
'Terrifying... that hu- whatever that is...' Seff's gaze shifted to the human, 'It's alarmingly powerful. That Mantis is right near my strength, nearing League 4! A mere step away... and that... human managed to stop him so casually!? Who is he!?'
The Mantis, terrified and numbed, asked, "Who are you!?"
The human's head tilted, bewildered, he replied "Who... am I!? I am-"
The conscious gaze in his eyes suddenly turned lost and dulled. His lips lagged in the posture of uttering something, shifted magically, almost as if influenced by an outside force, "Nein!"