Back at Carriage 7, in the meantime;
Inside the dimly lit four-person sleeper, the air hung heavy after the hijacker subordinates left the cabin. Everyone is looking quite tense.
Ayush wanted to go and fight, but he kept Isolde's warning to his heart. He couldn't let bystanders be a part of collateral damage. Arceus seemed like he was meditating, his eyes remaining closed.
The door slammed open once again.
The same masked bandit from before, the one Isolde had warned earlier, stepped in, more brazen than ever. His cruel eyes darted toward Elysia once again.
"Well now," he drawled, "looks like the pretty one missed me. Hey, come with me, elf. I wanted to have some fun."
Before anyone could respond, he grabbed Elysia by the wrist and yanked her to her feet.
She yelped, struggling.
"Get your hands off me!" she snapped, squirming as his grip tightened.
He leaned in close, his other hand starting to roam her body… Isolde struck.
With a sharp shove, she pushed him away from her sister, standing in front like a shield. "Touch her again and I'll take your hand," she hissed.
The man's face twisted into a grin of mockery. "That so?" He snapped his fingers.
Two more subordinates burst into the room behind him, weapons drawn, daggers instead of their typical energy cannons. "Kill her. These damned elves need to be taught a lesson."
Isolde didn't hesitate. She drew her blade and parried the first strike, but it was three against one.
Ayush didn't hesitate to launch forward with just bare fists.
He ducked under a slash and punched one of them square in the jaw.
A knife grazed Isolde's shoulder. She winced but retaliated with a clean slash across her opponent's thigh.
Arceus stayed seated. His eyes were calm, unreadable. Just watching.
Right then, one of the subordinates had slipped past the scuffle, grabbing the stunned elf by the throat and raising a blade.
That's when Arceus moved.
In one fluid motion, he rose from his seat and threw two daggers. They struck the attacker's wrists, one blade sinking into flesh, the other twisting the weapon from his grip.
The man stumbled back. "You…"
Arceus appeared in front of him like a shadow.
And ended it.
With a reverse grip, he slashed the man's throat cleanly. Blood sprayed the cabin wall. Everyone froze—bandits, the elves, and even Ayush.
But Arceus wasn't done.
He whispered words under his breath.
"Soulbinding: Abyss Echo."
Dark smoke unfurled from the blades like black fire at once, releasing malevolent energy
The daggers glowed with a ghostly violet aura, and behind Arceus, a faint silhouette—like a spirit—loomed for a moment before vanishing into the blades.
He lunged at the remaining two attackers. The first tried to parry, but Arceus moved like flowing water. A slash to the leg, a stab to the side, and a final plunge of both daggers into the chest.
The last man screamed before Arceus twisted the blades, unleashing a burst of dark energy that shattered his body from within.
Silence fell.
Blood pooled on the cabin floor.
Elysia slumped back onto the seat, trembling. Isolde stared at Arceus, chest heaving. Ayush looked between the corpses and the boy, now calmly wiping off his daggers.
"What the hell," Isolde muttered, "was that?"
Arceus didn't answer. He simply slid the daggers back into his coat and got out of the cabin.
Isolde tried to stop him. "Wait. Where are you going?"
Arceus glanced toward him and replied. "To kill the ring leader."
Ayush's eyes narrowed as he watched Arceus' back. "This boy has killed four of them like it's nothing. And what kind of power was that?"
*
Meanwhile, outside the train;
Captain Wave rider shifted his attention to the youngest of the group, "Link, you stick with me. Every time I use the sound wave, you shall amplify it and focus on compressing its range to focus on just the leader."
"Understood."
"Klaus, you have the most important job. Once we secure the targets, you leave with them." "You can leave it to me, Cap."
The captain then turned toward the bubbly-looking woman, "And Slimey, in case the villain tries to act against the targets, I need you to protect them."
Slime Queen replied, "I will cover them with my body, adding a layer of security before our 'Blink Nexus' teleport us away."
"Good," nodded the team leader before finally shifting his attention to an old man, "Master Qian, I'll leave the mana barrier to you."
The old man, aged 65, with freckles and scars all over his body, turned his head to look at the barrier placed all over the train. "The thickness isn't much. I can cut it with my sword."
"How about separating the carriage by cutting the joints to other carriages?" The woman in a jumpsuit suggested. "I can create a boulder and then push it away."
The captain grabbed his chin to think for a bit and shook his head, "We need to keep public property damage to a minimum. Not to mention, you have to capture the bandits in case they flee. Even if it is not our mission, we can still score some bonuses for the service."
"Okay…"
*Clap* Clap*
"Okay, get ready to move. We only have one try. So, don't mess up, guys."
Mary was the first to act, placing her hands on the ground.
After a few seconds of concentration, a 5.5 magnitude earthquake was created on a large scale, affecting the train, media personnel, policemen, and others in the tent.
Inside the train, as Luther Brain, who had just returned to the cabin of the siblings, the train shook for a while, throwing him off balance.
By the time he fell to the floor, a portal appeared right above the cabin, and five heroes jumped out of it.
The old man swung the sword in his hand, using all the mana stored in his body.
The giant arc of energy released from the sword clashed with the barrier, not only cutting it like tofu but also went on cleaving the entire carriages into two halves. It almost injured one of the students in the adjacent cabin of those siblings.
"You damn crooks…" The villain roared in anger as he saw a hole was made on the top of the carriage, revealing five of them.
Following the plan, Slime Queen turned into a large slimy creature and enveloped the siblings, Blink Nexus created a portal to send them away, and Captain Wave Rider released a sonic wave from his palms while Link tried to compress its path to concentrate on one person.
Everything would have gone perfectly as they envisioned, but Luther Brain's timely reflexes caused the sonic wave to hit Slime Queen instead, breaking up the siblings and forcing her to choose one of them randomly.
The boy and Slime Queen were teleported away, along with Blink Nexus; the old man, emptying his reserves, fell to the floor and sprained his back.
"Dammit, we fuc*ed up…" Captain Wave rider let out a curse of frustration and hurriedly passed the orders, "Link, Master Qian, take the girl away. I'll clear the way."
Raising his left hand with his palm facing the window, the captain mumbled, "Sonic Beam."
As mana was concentrated on his palm, Luther Brain, who got up on his feet, acted fast by turning his body into steel and throwing out a punch at the hero.
Captain Wave Rider took a glance to the right and raised his other hand, pointing his palm toward him, shooting out spheres of concentrated mana.
However, those spheres couldn't do any damage to Luther, and the punch successfully connected to the side of his abdomen before he finished with the skill.
The A-class Hero flew a bit and crashed into the wooden wall, making a hole and falling into the adjacent cabin.
Luther didn't pursue him. Instead, he shifted his attention to the other two. With a swift punch to both of them, he defeated the B-class heroes and grabbed the girl of the Qin family.
Captain Wave Rider got out and saw that the girl's throat was grabbed by the villain, and she was flapping her legs as she was raised high. He spoke in a threatening tone, "Leave her now, Brain."
"I knew that this girl was important. My senses are always top notch." Luther let out a grin filled with malice as he increased his grip on her neck. "Do you surrender, or do you want me to crush her… Huh?"
In a sudden turn of events, his hand suddenly freed her, and he fell onto his knees while taking heavy breaths, "What's going on… What…"
Elsewhere, the same situation was happening to his subordinates. Everyone was on their knees, trying to take heavy breaths, their nerves bulging out, and they couldn't move from their spots.
"What the…" Captain Wave Rider was stupefied by the scene.
The air inside Carriage Four had changed.
Something unseen crushed the atmosphere, a dreadful pressure slamming down on every surface, forcing Luther Brain and his men to their knees. Their faces twisted in shock as they clawed at their throats, gasping for breath.
The heroes halted mid-motion. Even Captain Wave Rider narrowed his eyes, sensing an overwhelming presence descending.
From the far corridor, the sound of deliberate, high-heeled footsteps echoed.
She emerged through the half-opened door—slim, draped in a long white military coat dusted with ash and blood.
Her face was hidden behind a haunting demon mask—horned, with thin glowing cracks and black glass where her eyes should be.
A presence like an executioner.
The moment she entered, even the air dared not move.
One of Luther's subordinates tried to rise but was pinned again, body grinding against the metal floor under invisible pressure."Who...?" Luther wheezed. "What... are you?"
The masked woman's voice was low and chilling. "Justice doesn't need introductions."
Without further warning, she raised a hand, summoning forth a weapon from the void—an obsidian-black scythe, nearly two meters long, etched with glowing red glyphs. It materialized like a whisper of death, pulsing with dark energy.
"No! Please…" one of the subordinates shrieked, trying to crawl away.
The blade swept once. A clean, horizontal arc.
A head rolled onto the carriage floor. The body slumped beside it.
A pause. Then another scream.
"No surrender," the masked woman murmured.
She moved like a blur—stepping forward with uncanny precision.
Her scythe arced again and again, each slash impossibly sharp, impossibly fast.
Flesh parted, blood sprayed the walls, and in mere seconds, Luther's gang was nothing more than mangled corpses strewn across the cabin.
Only Luther Brain remained—on his knees, trembling. "Wait! I surrender!"
The demon-masked woman turned to him slowly.
"Sorry but I don't accept your surrender." she whispered.
The scythe came down.
A moment of silence followed as the threats were eliminated just like that by this new figure.
Then—
Click.
A soft sound from behind.
She turned her head slightly, sensing a presence at the doorway.
Arceus stood there, half-shadowed in the flickering emergency lights, his dual daggers still gleaming with violet residue. His face was impassive, unreadable, but his eyes flicked across the scene—the corpses, the scythe, the blood.
Their gazes didn't meet directly. But she noticed.
Her attention drifted briefly—not to his face, but to the weapons in his hands.
She murmured. "There is another weapon in the world that carries the same death energy as mine? Now, that's interesting."
*
A few minutes later, the travelers rushed out of the train to save their lives, leaving behind the suffering villains.
Standing among the others in a crowd, Ayush stared at the police officers and other medical team carrying the corpses of the bodies with no one having an understanding of how it happened. He doesn't have a good look on his face for the moment.