After about an hour of roaming around the scientist's now abandoned, hidden underground lab, scrounging for whatever clues the madman might have unknowingly left, the duo of Sebastian and Cade step back into the sunlight. Cade is carrying a folder filled with several papers, torn notebook pages, and lab notes. The two played rock, paper, scissors for it.
"Well this was a massive waste of time," Sebastian comments. Benedict ended up sending his two best agents in a ghost town just to fetch some old, probably worthless papers with poorly written gibberish on them.
"I'm bailing, YOU bring that back," he says to Cade.
"Hey," he hears Benedict's voice through his earpiece. "Status report."
"'Status report', jeez. I'm not one of your dumb ass agents that you need to check on every 10 minutes. We just finished. And thanks for the 'S-rank' mission, by the way," sarcastically emphasizing the S-rank part. "Real fun. Very thrilling."
"Good, we need you to provide backup at the Redwood lab. Situation has gone haywire, Rina and the others need a hand quick."
Rina opens her eyes upon hearing the familiar, faint sound that she has heard a million times. She'd recognize it anywhere. It was etched into her brain. She couldn't forget that sound if she tried.
In front and slightly to her right is Sebastian, still immersed in thin, black mist slowly dissolving in the air.
"Seb?" she whispers slowly, faintly. She was overcome with a rollercoaster of emotions.
"Yo," Sebastian replies. He looks at her with a subtle, comforting smile.
Wendy wasn't making any moves. It was befuddled at the sight of this man in front of them who had just appeared from out of nowhere.
The monster turns its gaze to Sebastian. Sebastian returns it.
"What are you looking at," he says to the staring monster before quickly grabbing a blade with his right hand and slicing off its entire hand at a speed so fast, the monster couldn't even react to it.
Sebastian looks at the monster, cold stare and bloodlust in his eyes. "Scram."
The monster froze for a few seconds. It couldn't fathom the thought of a mere human standing before it arrogantly, barking orders. It wasn't about to let this amount of disrespect go.
The enraged monster tries to claw down Sebastian with its other arm. Sebastian grabs his other blade and splits the incoming arm into two pieces. This angers the monster even more. Its antlers light up, Sebastian knew what was coming.
He approaches Rina and carries her. "Close your eyes."
SHHOOM
A large explosion blows up the ground that Sebastian and Rina were standing on.
SHHOOM
Sebastian appears in front of the injured Harley and unconscious Kristoff. They escape the monster's rage-induced beam safely. Sebastian sets down Rina. "You can open them now."
Rina was left speechless at the time. Too much has happened in just the past few minutes.
"Of course you're the special unit," Harley tells Sebastian, his face pale from the blood loss.
"Eva will be here in about 10, think you can make it?" Sebastian tells Harley. No banter from the two this time. "Rina, look after these two in the meantime."
Sebastian turns his back, about to return to the monster and finish the job.
"Hey!" Harley calls on to him. "Kill the son of a bitch."
He didn't respond. He didn't need to.
Rina walks over to him. "Be careful."
SHHOOM
The monster was confused. It didn't see the two running away and yet there were no traces of their remains on the ground that it had just scorched.
SHHOOM. The monster hears footsteps behind it, the sound of a leather shoes' heels clicking. It was getting louder, whoever it was is walking towards it slowly, calmly, taking their time to do so.
It looks behind, turns, and sees the man from before, slowly approaching.
"An 'extreme' healing factor, huh" Sebastian mutters. "Time to test this bad boy out, then."
While walking towards the monster, Sebastian opens his right palm. A black, misty flame emerges from it, soon engulfing his entire hand. He grabs one of his blades with his left hand and proceeds to slowly brush his flame-engulfed hand over the blade. His sword's blade is now coated with a thick, black flame. He extinguishes the flame in his hand and grabs his other sword. He does the same except he uses the already covered blade to coat the other. His dual swords now engulfed in void energy.
Rina and Harley were stunned watching him from the distance. This is the first time they have ever seen him harness the void. Prior to him leaving, this feat was just a working theory. A "what if" scenario. Now, he was about to head into battle with two swords covered in it.
The monster was still just observing him as he approached. They both were. At that moment, there were no hostile aura in the air, but for two different reasons. For the monster, it was gauging its new opponent, sizing him up. It knew that this person was different from the ones before him. Meanwhile, Sebastian was not emanating any bloodthirst because for him, the monster didn't deserve it. Not at the least. An elephant doesn't need to be angry to crush and step down on an ant.
"You know, you're my first real kill since getting back," Sebastian was making conversation with the monster two meters away from him. "You should be honored."
The monster looking at him, tilts its head, seemingly out of confusion.
"Oh don't hit me with that, it's rude," Sebastian continues. "You should say 'thank you'."
The monster has had enough, it attempts to strike him down. As soon as it moved its hand, Sebastian warps on top of it.
SHHOOM. Its entire left limb plops down on the ground. The monster was stunned at how fast its new opponent's movement was. It didn't even see him make a move.
The monster jumps back to create distance. It wasn't afraid of the human, but its instincts screamed at it to back away and its body promptly followed subconsciously.
SHOOM
Sebastian teleports back to where he was previously standing and starts walking towards the monster who had distanced itself just seconds after their first exchange.
"What," he screams at the monster meters away from him. "I told you to scram earlier and you do it NOW that we're fighting? Not cool."
The monster's severed limb is still nowhere to be found. Its extreme regeneration has halted. The monster looks at its chopped arm, there are several residual void energy nearly covering the wound and it was tampering with the monster's healing factor.
"Huh," Sebastian whispers to himself. "It works."
The training room incident taught him two things. The first is his limit for using the void energy. It was purely intentional and the sole reason why he went in the training room in the first place. The second is the aftermath which was accidental. The near-fatal injury he sustained from his test was caused by trying to harness void energy that was more than he was capable of. The excess, uncontrolled energy ended up exploding on him, hence, the injury. Normally, Eva's healing ability even at just 50% output would be insanely effective for the burn injuries he had sustained. The burns he had was large and extremely severe, yes, but it made no sense for the healing to last for over an hour, and at 100% output at that. This would be appropriate for someone whose entire body was completely scorched. Requiring this much effort for the injuries he sustained was highly unusual. He then remembered that Eva had made a comment about it, how his wounds were not just "regular burn wounds". This gave him an idea that the void energy didn't just possess sheer destructive capability.
Apart from possessing raw destructive power, part of what makes the void energy so destructive is that it is also capable of destroying and decaying the cells in any and every living organism. It doesn't matter how tough and sturdy a creature's exterior is, the void energy simply destroys and eats at it.
The residual void energy on the monster's wound wasn't completely halting the regeneration process. With not much residual on it, the void was only slowing down the monster's healing. The strength of the monster's healing factor in contrast with the void energy was much stronger. There would need to be more void energy on its wound to completely counteract its regeneration. But it didn't matter, Sebastian was happy with what he got.
The man with the two, burning black blades start walking towards the monster again, ready for round two. But this time, the monster decides to use its trump card. It starts disappearing from the swordsman's sight.
"Oh, right. It can do that," Sebastian was given a very quick heads-up about the monster's capabilities. He knew going in that it was capable of this and would probably do it. He would've finished the fight quickly so he wouldn't have had to deal with its invisibility but he completely forgot as soon as he arrived on the scene.
"Shit," he whispers, not because this would turn the tide of the battle but because it would be an absolute hassle.
Sebastian puts his swords down on the ground, unbuttons his suit jacket, and proceeds to sit down on the leafy ground, cross-legged. His swords right in front of him, just at arm's length.
"What the fuck?" Harley was utterly confused watching Sebastian just calmly sit down while there was an invisible killing machine just around him.
Rina was just as confused. Knowing Sebastian and how he thinks, she had a gist of what he was planning but she was still shocked.
Sebastian wasn't informed about the nine second reveal delay. He was in a rush and there was no time to ask questions and listen to explanations. He was now just sitting down, hands on his waist, waiting for the monster to attack. There was no reason to run around in circles trying to chase or run away from an invisible enemy. And he for sure was not doing the latter at any case. The only viable option he thought of and went with was to wait and react to the monster's attack.
Three seconds has passed, still nothing. He started contemplating whether the monster had just fled instead. That would be a bad scenario. At that moment, he felt something make contact with his back. "Finally."
His reaction speed and movement was much faster than the monster's. He immediately grabs his blades and teleports facing what he guessed was the monster's claws that tried to impale him. He reaches his left hand in front of him, trying to feel the invisible monster's claws. Jackpot. He slashes at it, cutting off all of its fingers, appearing again after being severed from the rest of its camouflaged body.
Out of panic, the monster cancels its invisibility to use its go-to move. Its skull appears, light charging up at its antlers.
SHHOOM
He teleports right in front of its skull, an evil grin on his face and with his arms and swords in a crossed position, ready to slash the monster's cranium. The monster was startled and shoots out of panic.
SHHOOM
Sebastian teleports again. The beam hits nothing but air. It was just a fake out and the monster completely fell for it.
SHHOOM
He teleports right behind the monster's skull, standing and stepping on the fur behind it. He cuts it off its right antler, wasting no time and cutting off the other. The monster lets out a loud, voiceless wail.
The monster wags it head trying to get the human off but it didn't need to as Sebastian warps back down on the ground. The monster notices him and stops. The man had a condescending smile, as if he was enjoying tormenting the beast. He was looking up and down at it at the same time. It was now overcome with fear and panic. The unstoppable monster felt like it was a helpless deer again. Its survival instinct told it to run to safety, and run it did.
The hunted became the hunter and now the hunter is hunted again. It wasn't even trying to heal anymore, it wasn't shooting out beams defensively, it didn't even try to go invisible, the monster just wanted to run and get to safety, far away from its hunter.
SHHOOM
Sebastian appears right in front of the fleeing mutated deer. "Where do you think you're going?" He cuts off its hind legs, its momentum taking it crashing down on the ground.
The deer is now without its antlers, an entire limb, a set of fingers, and its legs. Its left limb barely regenerated, same with the fingers on its right hand. The monster is now practically just a torso and an arm. But despite this, the helpless, maimed deer was still desperate to survive. It uses its remaining arm to crawl away, slowly.
Sebastian lets it be for a few seconds, observing the monster's perseverance and determination. He was even starting to admire it a little bit. The monster is in his complete mercy.
He throws one of his blades towards the monster's sides at immense strength that it sends the helpless monster flying and rolling away for some distance.
SHHOOM
He teleports beside the monster now laying on its back to quickly retrieve the sword he threw.
SHHOOM
He relocates to its remaining arm to chop it off. It wails again.
At this point, they were out of Rina and Harley's sight. But even so, they can still hear the monster's loud cries of pain.
The monster in agony starts wildly wriggling and writhing on the ground, out of pain and desperation to flee from the hunter. The hunter warps right on top of its chest. Its cries become louder.
Harley felt joy in knowing that Sebastian has avenged them. But part of him felt some unease in hearing the monster's cries. This was the same monster that decimated an entire strike team. The same monster that gave four of the Inner agents a taste of utter defeat that they haven't had in a long time. And here was Sebastian, making that monster literally cry in agony. At this point, he couldn't tell who the monster really was between the two.
"Your boy is fucking crazy," he tells Rina.
The two hear a continuous, high-intensity rumbling, slowly getting louder and settling down at the same time. It was the second unit's jet.
The jet lands in the middle of the razed forest filled with the corpses of fallen agents, the battleground of the earlier skirmish. Izzy, Eva, and Chen step out of the jet and are greeted by countless maimed corpses of Outer Circle agents to the sound of the monster's loud wailing.
Eva looks around, the sight made her sick. She covers her mouth and ears, desperately trying to hold herself back from vomiting.
"Just what was that monster," Izzy blurts out upon seeing the monster's canvas.
"What IS that?" asks Chen – a young Asian man with short but thick, black hair; referring to the loud, voiceless wailing echoing from the distance. The 18-year old is the youngest agent to be employed in Circle history.
Eva sees the gravely injured Inner agents and immediately runs towards them. She looks at both the injured Harley and Kristoff, both already extremely pale from the amount of blood that they have lost. She couldn't choose which one to take care of first and just tries to heal both with one hand each at 80% output.
"Where's Sebastian?" she asks Rina.
"Torturing the monster from the sound of it," Rina answers.
"That's them?" asks Izzy who was just behind Eva.
"Should we go check it out or?" suggests Chen.
"Alright," Izzy affirms. "You guys alright here?"
"Yeah, we're good," Rina answers.
Izzy and Chen follow the loud cries of the culprit behind the massacre that took place in the forest. It wasn't particularly far from where they had landed and where the rest of the team was, only about 50 meters away but deeper in the tree-filled forest which was untouched by the monster's previous laser frenzy.
Walking past severed monster body parts, it started to make sense for the two as to why the monster was shrieking as loud as it was. Around 30 meters in, the wails stopped and briefly after, they only had a glimpse of what looked like the monster laying on the ground and someone standing near it. They couldn't make out exactly what was over there and what was happening but that's what it looked like. The two run over as soon as they saw this.
"That is way too much," Izzy says as they arrive at the scene of the murder.
The monster wasn't just "killed". It was butchered, brutally dissected. What's left of it was just the torso, sliced open revealing its ribcage that looked like it was forcibly cracked open, hanging upward towards the air. The monster's bloody skull missing both antlers was ripped off its body and placed right beside it.
The man responsible for it was cleaning the blood off his swords by rubbing it on the mutilated carcass.
"You guys are late," says the hunter whose suit was covered in blue monster blood, sheathing his disinfected swords.