Sebastian walks across the corpse-filled, dusty, asylum hallway. The walls were adorned with graffiti and monster blood.
"Hey," he calls onto the voice in his ear, now completely silent.
"Do you people just rank missions based on quantity?" he asks.
"I mean, do you just think 'Oh, there's a lot of monsters, this is an A-rank'?" Sebastian walks out of the asylum, heading deeper into the island. He is welcomed by a pathway shaded by trees, vines, and tall grass. An evidence of the island's abandonment.
Normally, he would go on and on with his ranting but considering that no one is responding, he thought that it would be no fun.
"I fucking hate places like this," he whispers to himself.
Traversing the mini forest posed more of a struggle for him than the monsters themselves.
Three minutes of walking over tall grass and curtains of vines was his limit.
"Ah, fuck this."
SHHOOM
He teleports up in the air, just a couple of meters off the ground, enough to just be over the shade of leaves. As soon as he warped in, he focuses void energy on his feet, creating a mass of it thick and solid enough that he can step on it. This process requires only a small window of time to pull off. Nanoseconds. It is a technique that requires him to beat gravity in a competition of who's faster. If gravity wins, he falls down and would require him to teleport back down on the ground to safety and try it again.
It was only small, but he successfully formed a cloud of void energy on both of his feet. Now, the challenge is maintaining his focus on them so it doesn't disperse. He has mastered the use of teleportation, now he has learned the ability to walk on air and although he hasn't tried it yet, presumably on water as well.
Creating solid mass out of void energy was a concept that he saw from Crowe's artificial void monster. Before and at the time, he was only capable of harnessing and enhancing the void energy only in its raw state. Examples of it being the coating he applies on his swords and the improvised, point blank explosion he attempted and successfully performed on Crowe's monster.
Like he assumed, creating solid mass with it was harder, both because of the resource it required and the actual process of doing it. Like the Director said when he talked about the void fragment, the void energy is unstable and difficult to control, especially when one will attempt to create solid mass out of it. This is mainly due to the difference in their raw state. In its natural state, ancient essence is liquid in form whereas void essence is gas.
Sebastian had started practicing this technique only a couple of hours later and he was far from being proficient at it. Although he was able to make it work, the void steps were still unstable and couldn't cover his entire feet 100% of the time. The essence around his soles were faltering, but not so much that it completely disappears. Even so, Sebastian was content with the result.
A couple of meters away, he starts hearing shrieking noises from the monsters again. He was struggling to see exactly where the monsters were as the view from above is obstructed by a roof of vines and tree leaves.
A couple of seconds and an intense eye squinting later and he was able to make out the figure of one of the monsters on the ground, just barely.
He grabs one of his swords and throws it right at the monster, hitting it on the face and pinning it down to the ground.
Sebastian thought of how he was going to go back down, he can't just warp on the ground as it is heavily obstructed. Realizing his only option is to warp on top of the leaves, he lets out a loud groan.
SHHOOM
The sound of rustling leaves followed by a man in a suit falling on the ground, standing on both feet, right beside the pinned monster.
He grabs his other sword to finish the impaled monster off when he hears another one walking towards him. It doesn't approach him all the way, stopping about five meters away. Its sound turns from shrieking to a subtle, airy breath. Shortly after, the monster starts releasing a dark, grayish blue smoke from the hole on its head.
Sebastian wasn't dumb enough to just watch the monster as it finishes doing whatever it was doing. Aside from raw skill, part of what makes him a great agent is his ultra-sharp instinct. He didn't have the slightest clue as to what it was doing, but he knew that it was dangerous. It always is.
SHHOOM
He warps right behind the fuming monster. He palms the back of its head, preventing the monster from moving it, turning around and spewing the unknown smoke right at his face. He grabs his sword with his empty hand and slices the monster's head off, still holding on to it.
He notices the leaves and branches that made contact with the smoke decay as they were exposed to it.
A horde of monsters with deathly breath. He takes back his previous criticism of the mission's classification.
Luckily, the cloud of smoke that the monster was emitting happened to be thin. It didn't take long before the cloud of smoke completely dissipated. Partly due to there only being one monster emitting it. A group of these monsters producing this smoke would be a hassle.
SHHOOM
He warps right beside the still pinned monster and immediately slices it in half, not giving it a chance to spew out the smoke.
He picks up his sword lodged on the monster's head and looks over a long wooden bridge over the horizon, the same bridge connecting the two large islands.
Hands in his pocket, Sebastian calmly crossed the wooden bridge that looks and feels like it would collapse with every step. Even so, he was perfectly calm about it, even stopping in the middle to take in the view of the surrounding like a tourist.
He hears shrieking noises again, this time coming from the island he is heading to. One, two, three, the monsters started appearing one by one. He wasn't planning on waiting for the others. The decaying breath from a group of them would be a pain to handle and he didn't bring a fan.
SHHOOM
He warps in front one of the monsters, slicing it in half, horizontally. As he does, he sees another monster emerging from the forest ahead. Shortly after, another one. He needs to get rid of the monsters as fast as they arrive.
Individually, they don't pose much if any threat at all to him. He was simply leagues better than the monsters in close combat. His main goal is to not let the number of the monsters pile up. Even for him, the death smoke would pose a threat if not dealt with accordingly. A free flowing, harmful gas is much harder to deal with than a fast projectile as it is practically unpredictable.
SHHOOM SHHOOM SHHOOM SHHOOM
Every time he teleports, the cleaved corpse of a monster falls down on the ground. He left about a dozen corpses just right at the end and a meter or two away from the end of the wooden bridge, just right at the entrance of the third island made up of almost entirely trees and grass.
He proceeds deeper into the last island, covered by even larger and thicker shades of grass. The previous island is composed of mainly just overgrown and untrimmed vines and bushes. Majority of what's in front of him now are actual trees. He already knew that this was going to be even more of a pain to traverse.
Sebastian stops and makes a loud, high-pitched whistle. Instead of trying to find the smoke-spewing monsters in hiding, he opted to just let them find him.
Soon enough, he hears a couple of the monsters again, quickly approaching.
"This could've been much more fun if you idiots weren't loud as shit."
His comment was right. The monsters' deathly smoke was a considerable threat. Even more so if they were capable of using it effectively. Had the monsters been silent and let out their fumes while hidden, it would have made for a more challenging mission. But instead, they use it as a last resort or second option.
Sebastian was swarmed by a larger horde of monsters than the previous who came at him from all sides. It was exceptionally easy at first when all he did was stand still and slash away the approaching monsters but soon enough, some of the monsters ended up staying behind and away to spew out smoke while the rest rushed towards him. The horde finally had some sort of strategy.
Only a few seconds later and he was already surrounded by a perimeter of fuming monsters which he let get into formation because he had something in mind.
The fume they emitted combined to make a large and thicker cloud of smoke that covered a large distance. Right before it got to a meter away from him, Sebastian teleports away.
SHHOOM
He teleports up in the air, standing on it with concentrated void energy right at his feet. His plan was to let the monsters keep spewing smoke until it gets thicker and spreads out. Assuming that the monsters had little to no intellect, he was counting on the fact that they would create a cloud so thick that the last thing they see is him right in the middle of it and with that being the case, they would definitely just keep the fumes going until it gets large enough that everyone will eventually be inside it, ultimately killing themselves.
The first part of his assumption held true. The monsters just kept the cloud of smoke going until it got big enough to start reaching them and their fellow monsters. Now, it's all just a matter of watching them decay from their own smoke.
However, this was not the case. The monsters are apparently immune to their own decaying breath. All it withered were the surrounding vegetation. His theory and gamble failed. Now he is left staring at a thick cloud of smoke that will take minutes at the least to disperse.
"Aw, man," he realizes that he only ended up making things more complicated for himself.
"Nice going, genius," Benedict's voice pops in his ear again just to tease him.
"Shut up."
"Impressive new technique and all, but you need to get down," says Benedict. "The last thing we need is a chopper or a drone seeing you and footage of a floating man on the news."
"If you're just gonna nag me, then go away again. I don't need this right now, I'm thinking."
SHHOOM
He teleports closer to the thick cloud. He turns the swords he is holding sideways and crosses them together, raising both in the air, winding them up, and with immense force, unleashes a downward swing towards the smoke cloud. The incredibly strong swing creates enough wind pressure to disperse part of the cloud. "Good enough," he thought. Using his makeshift fan, he blows away the cloud a second and third time, dispersing the majority of it and leaving only small, thin fumes left. A success.
SHHOOM
He teleports back down on the ground clear of smoke and full of dead grass and resumes his attack on the horde, this time much faster, taking out the fuming ones first.
A series of warps and a couple of seconds later and he exterminates the horde, filling the now dead part of the island with even more dead — the monster's corpses.
All in all, he must have taken out at least 30 monsters in total. Although he wasn't tired, he thought that there can't possibly be more. Even for a horde, 30 is already a significant number.
While sheathing his blade, he hears the sound of rustling leaves in the distance, slowly getting louder.