The shadow man moved as the darkness around him coiled like a spring and launched him forward, erasing the fifteen meters between him and Kael in a blur of black. His hand came up, and something materialized from the writhing shadows.

A black spear.

Kael’s hands were already moving.

Two flashes of light from his storage ring. Two short blades materialized in his grip—Tier 3 shadow-steel.

The spear thrust arrived as Kael’s left blade intercepted it.

CLANG!

The impact sent a shockwave through his arm. His boots skidded backward across the cracked warehouse floor, leaving two grooves in the stone.

Not bad.

The shadow man didn’t pause. The spear retracted and stabbed again—aimed at Kael’s ribs. Kael’s right blade swept across, deflecting the thrust upward. The spear tip shrieked past his ear, close enough that he felt the dark energy kiss his cheek like a cold tongue.

A third thrust. Kael crossed both blades overhead and caught it.

Then a fourth thrust. Reverse grip, underhand, aimed at his groin—dirty fighting, Kael almost respected it. He twisted his hip and let the blade slide past.

Fifth. Sixth. Seventh.

The spear became a blur. The shadow man moved like liquid violence, each attack flowing into the next without pause, without breath, without the slightest hint of fatigue. Dark energy trailed behind every strike, leaving black afterimages in the air that faded like bruises.

Kael deflected. Every single one. His gravity sense mapped each trajectory before it fully formed, giving him those precious fractions of a second he needed to angle his blades just right.

He was dancing on the edge of a blade—literally—and loving every second of it.

Eighth thrust.

Kael deflected it.

Or so he thought.

The spear tip twisted mid-flight—as it grazed his left cheek. Just a thin line, but the dark energy seared like acid.

"Tch."

Kael’s eyes narrowed. The gravity field he’d been maintaining around the shadow man compressed instantly—from ambient pressure to crushing weight in the span of a heartbeat.

The shadow man’s knees buckled. His spear dipped.

But he was fast. Faster than Kael had given him credit for.

"Dark Aegis Form 1!"

The darkness around him surged inward, wrapping around his body like a second skin. A dome of solid shadow formed—dense, compact, radiating cold that made the frost from Yenna’s distant battle feel warm by comparison.

Kael didn’t hesitate.

Lightning crackled along his right blade—blue-white arcs dancing along the shadow-steel edge, building, compressing, condensing into something far more dangerous than a simple elemental discharge.

"Lightning Fang."

A supercharged lightning fang was sent towards the shadow man devastating bolt that leapt from his blade and struck the shadow dome like the finger of an angry god.

BOOM!

The dome cracked as hairline fractures were spreading across its surface like a spiderweb. But the force behind the impact was enough. The shadow man and his broken dome went flying—backwards, through two support pillars, as he is sent flying on the far side of the warehouse.

CRASH. Tinkle. Crash.

He disappeared into the slum outside.

Kael lowered his blade and exhaled.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the warehouse—

"You slippery bastard!"

The metal-armored Rank 8—the one who’d launched Yenna—swung his blade in a wide horizontal arc. It would have bisected a normal person. It would have bisected an abnormal person.

Cassian leaned backward.

The blade passed six inches from his nose. He could probably have counted the individual metal fibers in the weapon’s edge if he’d been inclined to try.

"Too slow," he said.

The fire-user threw a fireball. Cassian sidestepped. The war hammer user swung from behind. Cassian ducked.

Three full minutes of coordinated attacks from three Foundation Establishment Rank 8 cultivators working together. And they still hadn’t landed a single hit.

"Gentlemen." He straightened up from his latest dodge, brushing invisible dust from his shoulders. "You can’t tell me you’re done after just a little warm-up. Come on. I can do this all day."

The arrogant smirk hanging across his face could have been literallweaponized.

The metal guy’s eye twitched.

Veins bulged along his neck. His biological steel reinforcement flared, metal plates spreading across his forearms, his chest, his fists.

"You slippery bastard!"

He formed a blade. Liquid metal extruded from his palm, shaping itself into a massive greatsword that hummed with kinetic energy. He launched himself forward with explosive speed, ground cracking beneath his feet, blade raised for a killing overhead strike.

Cassian watched him come but didn’t even bother to move.

"This is getting boring."

The world stopped.

The metal guy hung frozen mid-swing, his blade three feet from Cassian’s head, his expression locked between fury and determination. The fire-user was frozen mid-cast, flames hovering in the air like frozen fireworks. The war hammer user was frozen mid-step, one foot off the ground.

Dust particles hung suspended. Light from the red runic fixtures didn’t flicker. Even the air itself seemed to have forgotten how to move.

Cassian sighed.

"When the fun’s over," he murmured to the frozen world, "it’s over."

He reached into his pocket.

A slim elegant dagger materialized—barely longer than a finger. The blade was coated in something faintly green that glistened even in the frozen light. Poison.

"After all," Cassian continued, walking toward the frozen metal guy, "I can sense you guys have killed a lot of innocent people."

He stopped in front of the suspended figure.

"That means you don’t get to keep breathing."

He raised the dagger.

And stabbed.

The poisoned tip slid between the metal guy’s reinforced ribs—right through the gap where biological steel couldn’t reach—and into his heart with one clean thrust.

Cassian pulled the dagger free and was already moving.

Two steps. The fire-user. As he slabs her heart too.

Three steps. The war hammer user as he slabbed the throat this time.

The whole thing took less than two seconds.

Cassian returned to his original position. Resuming his leaning posture. Fixed his expression into the same bored indifference he’d been wearing before.

Time resumed.

The metal guy’s blade completed its overhead swing—hitting nothing but air. His face was confused for exactly one frame before his eyes widened, his hand went to his chest, and he crumpled.

The fire-user gasped. Clutched her chest. Staggered sideways.

The war hammer user made a gurgling sound, hands flying to his throat, blood spraying between his fingers.

Three bodies hit the ground within seconds of each other.

Cassian cleaned the dagger on the metal guy’s shirt and slipped it back into his pocket.

"Damn," he muttered, rolling his neck. "I hate pausing time. Can still only maintain it for two seconds."

A notification flickered in his vision.

[TEMPORAL CONTROL SYSTEM]

Host is already incredible to control time with such precision. Even "basic" time manipulation is incredibly dangerous. If a person freezes time but air molecules also freeze, they wouldn’t be able to breathe or move because they’d be encased in "solid" air! The host is able to bypass all this with efficiency at such age—even if it is only for 2 seconds. That is enough to change the tide of any battle.

Cassian stared at the notification for a moment.

Then he snorted.

"Yeah, thanks, System. I know. I’m a genius."

He dismissed the notification with a thought and reached into his storage ring.

A chair materialized behind him as he sat down.

Then a bag of popcorn materialized in his hand. He tore it open with his teeth.

The warehouse was in chaos around him—Yenna fighting the plant woman outside, Kael battling the shadow man somewhere in the rubble, three corpses cooling on the floor, dozens of lower operatives either fled or cowering in corners.

Cassian crunched a mouthful of popcorn and turned to watch Kael’s fight through the hole in the wall.

"Bravo, bravo," he muttered, wiping fake tears from his eyes. "What a beautiful show."

He crunched another kernel.

"This is better than theater."

/A.N.: While people are battling for their lives, this nigga is chilling and even has the balls to be eating popcorn. Where did he even get it from. Does he always keep it for cases like this?

Damn, bro is a menace.

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