Standing several feet away from the statuesque man in black, his puffy white eyebrows knotted in confusion, proving that the clouds drifting calmly within his sky-blue body did not depict his tumultuos mental state.
"Even with about twice my normal speed, this damn awful thing..." Ikky gritted his teeth, with both his arms held out in front of him as he held onto the sky-man's javelin.
He had caught it, but not before the tip of the weapon had tapped a hole in his shirt and begun biting into his stomach. It was still a win though, since the majority of the force had been stopped. And although the pain was going to be there for a while, the hole on his black shirt soon got closed by his black spiritual essence.
'Huh. It is convenient.' Ikky thought, not oblivious to his clothes repairing itself.
"The speed and strength required to stop my drops must not be as impressive as I thought." The sky-man taunted.
"Oh yeah? Well why don't you give it a try?" Ikky said before hurling the weapon at the sky-man with all his might. But as soon as the weapon got close to the sky-man, the weapon and he switched places, making the javelin appear behind the sky-man.
"Tch!" Ikky clicked his tongue in annoyance.
Letting night mist manifest in the air, the fluid black substance flowed beneath his feet to craft a floating board. As soon as both his feet landed on the board, Ikky suddenly vanished. Or rather, moved so fast, it seemed like he did.
In a single second, the entire gap between them had been closed, with Ikky's fist rushing towards the sky-man and blasting waves of cold wind apart as it flew through the air.
The sky-man's blue eyes opened with surprise, but as soon as the fist got to his face, he disappeared.
"Shoot!" The force from Ikky's punch carried his body forward, rushing him into a tree with pulsing red leaves.
Ikky sunk his fingers into the tree and cursed.
"What gives?" He looked behind him to find the sky-man standing on the same spot he had been a moment ago.
His totem allowed the sky-man a hundred percent hit rate, plus teleportation. Talk about being blessed.
Which was better in terms of effectiveness, Ikky's Totem that burdened souls, or the sky-man's that would seemingly always hit its target?
For now, the obvious answer was the sky-man. Ikky couldn't harm souls unless he stabbed night mist into his opponents. But he couldn't do that on his own since he couldn't get the mist to form anything but stretchy and blunt objects. And even if he could form sharp objects, he would have to stab his victim multiple times before he could deal as much damage to burden the soul and then shatter it.
Whereas, Ivan could have ended multiple lives within that time.
Without a response, the sky-man harvested a phantom spear in Ikky's neck and held it to the side as he took a throwing stance.
Ikky looked down at his neck. If that weapon connects to it, he would be down for sure. It didn't matter if his body was nigh-impenetrable, if the spear hit him with enough force, it could knock the breath out of his throat and make breathing harder.
And by enough force, that would just be the regular for the sky-man.
Once again, the surrounding night mist from the black board flowed into his body, this time, not enhancing Ikky's muscles, but accumulating only in his stomach instead—
"What!?" Ikky exclaimed as the mist flowed on its own, making it impossible for him to spread it around his body.
... To his dismay, Ikky had discovered the first fault of Izel's bracelet charm.
'Shoot!'
Black soon began to flow visibly within his icy skin, moving from his stomach up to Ikky's throat.
And just as the sky-man let go of the spear, the mist in Ikky's stomach followed his unspoken order, it shot. Or rather, he vomitted a tunnel of nearly all of his night mist reserves, the recoil from the blast almost knocking his head off his body.
The forest shook as the massive tunnel of black beamed out of Ikky's mouth like the flame breath of a wrathful dragon... or the puke of a bum with the worst hangover.
This tunnel froze everything in its path before the force also disintegrated the frozen matter, leaving only a line of destruction, as matter burst into snow.
The sides of Ikky's mouth were stained with black as the night mist receeded, quickly spreading out the harm it caused on his body.
Ikky held his head in pain.
Although his hard skin spread pain in smaller portions throughout his body, that pain was still going to affect him since it wasn't being dissipated out of his system. So the pain from the night mist burning out of his chest, throat and mouth were going to have to spread throughout those vulnerable parts first.
The good thing though, was that the pain only lasted seconds because of his special body, giving Ikky an edge in recovery over his opponent.
But what wound did his current opponent have to heal from?
Nothing at all. The blast would have had to hit him first.
"I don't want to you to suffer. So close your eyes and pray."
Ikky froze in place, as the stoic voice reached his ears from above.
A rod appeared, passing right through Ikky's head, plunging through his neck and into his stomach, before it vanished.
And there he was, the sky-man squatting right on top of his head. His toes spread over Ikky's pale hair, as he used the tip of the spear to find the center of the amber-eyed man's head.
Ikky was completely out of spiritual essence.
No, he hadn't reached the limit of essence he could utilise from his Mark, but had run out! Only a tiny white dot of his Mark was at his back, with red patches of impact appearing on his skin and the torn parts of his clothes revealing themselves again. From his feet, his body was also slowly reverting back to its normal strength and durability.
Ikky was in more danger than he'd ever been in this haven, because the sky-man was not joking about wanting to kill him.
His amber eyes shook, trying to recall back the familiar emotions he was gradually leaving behind— helplessness, fear, anger... logic. Anything at all that could dissuade him from crashing his head into the spear himself. But they weren't coming.
Why evade? 'He's right there, grab him by the knees and toss him into the trees! Come on!' A voice screamed in his head— it was his own.
Ikky's Night Chant had been kept on for too long. He no longer knew what pain or death meant, as his last drop of fear was sucked out of his body.
But before his mental state had completely receded, Ikky finally gave the hiding wraith an order.
As the sky-man saw Ikky's Totem fade away, he let go of the tip of his spear, making it rush out of his hands to move just as dangerously as all the other weapons thrown.
Ikky was finally free from his sin.
As the weapon's tip dipped into his head , digging throug Ikky's skull and brain, the sky-man's piercing eyes fell into indifference before suddenly widening in shock.
The wraith had taken advantage of that brief moment of relief the sky-man had fallen to after defeating his foe, to sneak up on him— a feat that would normally be impossible to achieve due to the sky-man's awareness and the peculiar aura of cold the wraith left in the atmosphere to expose her existence.
With that, she ran her own scythe's tip right into the sky-man's head from behind, the sky-man watching as the curved blade peeked out of his forehead.
'That was it. That was it for the both of them', were the sky-man's thoughts. Alas,
*KLANG!
The spear stopped as it hit metal.
His eyes being the only part of his body that could move, rolled to look below him as he continued to float in the air. And much to his bewilderment, the head of the foe he had just slain was no longer there.
Ikky's head was no longer above his shoulders, and the sky-man could see a black metallic circle on the surface of his neck, with symbols of small white flowers carved over it and lines that curved to the same center in a spiral.
The wind began to blow, but the black mist surrounding that decapitated body did not dissipate. Instead, the mist began to cluster around Ikky's neck as the spiral lines on the metallic circle opened like teeth. And as the circle turned into a ring to surround Ikky's neck, the mist had fully moulded into a head.
Ikky gasped desperately for air before stumbling back a few steps.
"No..." The sky-man uttered in disbelief. But he had seen this before— a similar situation where Ikky's body had burst into wreathing shadows after the sky-man was sure that he had killed the man.
Why? Why did Ivan think the man couldn't do it again?
Well, Ikky wouldn't have have even been able to achieve this effect if his fear of death hadn't been sucked out, and the charm around his neck hadn't existed.
Charms could not create their own effects, but mimic or enhance other effects. And the dissipation process of Ikky's Totem was what Izel and Ikky had found to be the most useful.
So Ikky was alive. But what about him?