The salt-crusted Louisiana marsh trembled under Owen's roar. "Dunce! Stop now!" Sweat beaded on the old man's brow as he watched his protégé's right fist glow like molten steel. The dense Essence Energy swirling around the teen threatened to detonate like a frag grenade.
But Dunce was beyond recall. Years of channeling the Eternal Heart Method had birthed a beast he couldn't leash. The Mississippi delta seemed to hold its breath as the 18-year-old screamed—not in pain, but in ecstatic release. A searing white beam tore from his knuckles, thinner than a drinking straw yet packing the fury of a .50 cal.
*BOOM-BOOM!*
Twin shockwaves kicked Owen's heartbeat into overdrive. Not at the obliterated limestone reef—but at the *precision*. The energy lance punched clean through bedrock before detonating the brackish water ten meters high like a depth charge. "200% output..." he whispered, catching the collapsing teen. When he probed Dunce's dantian energy core, only hollow silence echoed back.
---
Two nights later, Dunce stirred in their shack overlooking the Gulf. The stench of boiled crawfish hung thick as Cyril barged in, grin wider than a gator's jaw. "Got my granddaughter hitched to your boy yet, Owen?"
Sifi emerged with an iron pot, cheeks flushed like creole tomatoes. But when Dunce murmured "I've got a girl back in Chinatown...", the pot crashed onto cypress planks. Her glare could've flash-frozen the bayou. "*?a c'est fini*, dumbass!"
---
Dunce bled into night as Owen observed Dunce practicing with the artifact they'd named "Celial Edge"—a 167-pound broadsword scavenged from a Civil War wreck. Steel sang through the humidity until Owen stiffened. Six shadows coalesced against the Spanish moss like oil spills on water.
"Netherworld Corps." Owen shoved Dunce behind him. "How'd you track me through the bayou?"
The center figure tapped the gold skull insignia on his tactical vest. "Drones see everything, *Reaper*. Even your Essence drain from the Azure Phoenix poison."
When the Prime Group lunged, Owen moved like hurricane wind. NANO blades drew crimson ribbons across his body, yet he laughed through bloodstained teeth. "You want Death's kiss?"
Vice's sneer froze as spectral frost crackled up his boots. "*Sheathe your weapons! He's manifesting the—*"
Too late.
Owen's chest erupted with ghostfire. The first Primordial shrieked as indigo flames devoured his skull. "*First Flash: Shattered Earth!*" The marsh boiled where the corpse fell.
Dunce's gut wound screamed as he crawled toward the vortex. His mentor spun through unholy pirouettes—each pirouette ending with a cerulean death-kiss. "*Second Flash: Spiritrend!*" Two more assassins crumpled into desiccated husks.
"Third Flash..." Owen's voice gurgled as the remaining Prime Group skewered him like frogs on gigs. "This... is... for..."
The marsh detonated in a cataclysm of swamp gas and blue phosphorescence. When the light died, only a single dagger remained stabbed into tidal mud—its blade weeping liquid shadows where Owen last stood.
Vice staggered from burnt reeds, his tactical vest melted to his ribs. Golden insignia shattered as he rasped into his wrist comm: "Target neutralized. But Reaper's weapon... it *consumed* him."
Dunce's fingers closed on the still-warm hilt. The shriek in his bones wasn't pain—it was the blade *laughing*.