“You're new”.
“And you're the one who was causing Yun problems”. Peter smirked. “If you're the Solutions Immortal, then I guess that makes me the Remover Immortal”.
“What? I don't...”
“Because I'll remove your existence. Look, shut up. I'm here to kill you, and when I kill people I make sure to do it right”.
“Unlike your oh-so-witty quips then,” Wilbur replied. “Do I get the pleasure of learning your name, or will I have to beat it out of you”.
“You won't be beating anything tonight, I'll make sure of that”.
Wilbur snorted, “Will you now?”
Peter stopped and ran through the words he had just uttered before he realised his error. “Just shut up. My name is Peter Mephisto, the Soul Immortal, and I am going to end you”.
“Peter Mephisto... I recognise that name. You're one of the two devils of the Executioners pen, but not the one I expected to show up. It's a quirk to our plans, but not entirely out of expectations. If you had been with your wife then you could have been more difficult to handle, but I heard about your situation with her. How truly... fortunate”.
A flash of pure, unbridled rage crossed Peter's face for an instant before he returned to the malevolent glower that rested on his face normally. Thousands of murderous thoughts crossed his mind but he voiced none of them. Instead he simply said “If you know about what happened to my Rose, then you know what happened to the Immortals who decided to harm us”. He raised his arm and a trinket made of ten shrunken heads swung out of his voluminous sleeves. They clacked into each other like wooden effigies as the hair that tied them together wrapped around Peter's wrist. A putrid aura spread out from the skulls and began to collect between his fingers before becoming a mass of silently screaming resentment.
As the resentment built it seemed to dim the very light in the area. It weighed down upon Wilbur’s soul and his body slumped in response, but he got off lucky. Around him, the various Saints that were moving too and fro between the backline and the frontline of combat had their bodies crushed. The weight of the resentment snapped their bones and tore their flesh. It dragged their souls out of their bodies and added their own resentment to the thickening cloud and as their mana reservoirs shattered their blind wrath was directed towards Wilbur.
With a single motion, Peter flicked the shrunken heads in the air. They floated above him, spinning like a wheel as they continued to release their pent up energy. Simply twisting his raised hand, Peter ushered the energy into a coil that began wrapping around Wilbur. The resentment twisted and after each rotation it picked up speed, rapidly forming a hurricane of rage from the departed. The screams of the deceased continued as the tornado obscured Wilbur from Peter’s view, but he did not need to see the man to know what was happening to him. He could feel every bite that the deceased spirits took out of the Immortal as he guided them towards a target for their hatred.
“You should have never brought up my Rose”. He stopped. There was a swelling of mana within the hurricane, far beyond that of the average Bookless Immortal. Rather than letting the attack go to waste, Peter pulled a small white packet out of a pouch on his belt with his left hand and closed his right into a fist. The hurricane seemed to grow teeth as it slammed shut over Wilbur before being burst apart by the energy that had been brewed within.
As the dust cleared, Peter saw a bruised and weary, but very much alive Wilbur standing on the stone. His arms were raised and his entire chest was bare, revealing intricate tattoos that covered his entire upper torso. They pulsed with energy as a thick shield of mana continued to surround Wilbur, blocking him from harm.
“I hate doing this, but everyone has trump cards and mine happens to be an impenetrable shield”. Wilbur smiled, before bowing at Peter. “I always hate how Book Immortals look down on people like me. You seem to think because you’ve had an easy route in life that you’re stronger. You’re not, and believe me, you’re not even the first clan member I have shown this to”.
“If you’re saying the Books aren’t the only route to power then you’re right”. Peter threw the red packet in his hand at the thick shield in front of him, and watched it explode into dust. Wilbur smiled as he watched the dust expand, but the moment he felt it touch his shield he gasped in terror. Instantly the shield began to crystalise from the myriad points of contact. Thousands of little points in the the shield became hundreds of small interlinked regions of glass, before linking together into several thick sheets. The speed of transformation was electric and Wilbur only had a split second to think before he severed his connection to the shield. Galvanising the mana only in his muscles, he punched out and the crystal globe that surrounded him shattered upon impact raining the toxic glass down on the battlefield. In the wake of each shard, a glass tree formed following the shape of the errant mana that grew from the earth, and soon enough there was a copse of trees that surrounded the two men.
“You know, your poison plan was smart, but you should have used something I've not seen on this very battlefield. My ability is to find solutions, and just this is frankly belittling to me”. Wilbur stood and wiped the blood from his arms, revealing a solid substance inside his wounds. He scratched at it but it refused to flake away like a scab should. Recoiling in horror, he looked at Peter and frantically began scribbling in the air with a mana infused finger.
“You have about two minutes left before the heartblood invades every part of your body. Enjoy it”. Peter smiled and began walking through the crystal trees in a circle around Wilbur. Every few feet one of his shrunken heads would sink into the ground and begin producing an aura of decay, much like their spirit of resentment. As the circle came closer to completion the aura of decay grew to the point where any action Wilbur or Peter made was like pushing through water.
After drawing thousands of characters in the air within less than a minute Wilbur’s hand fell to his side. His eyes went blank for a moment before a look of comprehension flashed across his face. Bending down, he began to dig in the ground around the point sealing stone. After a moment the base of the stone was revealed and an odd, blue glow reflected off Wilbur’s grimacing face. He pulled a chunk off the base of the stone and stabbed it into his open wound before laughing. “You almost got me there. I’m just lucky I needed to carry a Nereid Aquamarine base to install the point sealing stone. I mean it breaks the stone’s effect, but I don’t exactly need it anymore. As for this array you’re making?” He raised his fist and struck towards the ground.
As he swung his fist, two knives flew out of Peter’s sleeves towards his heart and gut. Wilbur rolled on the ground, deftly avoiding the knives before returning to his knees. Throwing one of his batons at Peter, Wilbur began using his offhand to work out his next steps in the fight. As he did so, blood began trickling out of his nose and Peter smiled. Sinking to the ground, Peter planted in the next skull and moved round to the final position. His mana began churning the air as it linked each skull into the array he was building. He ignored the baton as it flew at him and his guts shattered as the stick pierced through him. The mana burst his entire chest apart, but the moment his heart stopped and his reservoir shattered they began reforming. As his chest knitted itself back together he did not drop a single thread of energy he was twisting to his will before completing his project.
The last thread of mana sank into the ground and the ring lit up while Wilbur was still performing his workings out and bleeding even more heavily from his nose and mouth. Ten sentinels rose from the ground at each of the points that Peter had planted a head, facing inwards. They loomed over Wilbur but he was none-the-wiser. He had noticed the blood dripping from his face and he stopped his workings to raise his hand to his face. As he pulled his hand away and stared at the thick red blood as if it was foreign to him. Looking up at Peter with unfocused eyes, he tried to reach out to the man before his body fell to the ground.
“You only have about fifteen minutes of life left. If that really, and another half hour before your body begins to decay,” Peter said quietly as he sat down behind the ring of revenants. “You see, I only gloat when I’ve won. It’s something I learned from Laurence actually, because gloating before victory makes you feel incredibly stupid when it backfires. Anyway, if you hadn’t brought rose into this then you would have likely lived for a bit longer. Or at least I would have sparred with you more and likely would not have used my trump card.
“You probably don’t even know what killed you, seeing as Bane rots your brain during the gestation period. That white packet I threw? It didn’t have one poison, nor two. It had all three poisons I crafted for this little endeavour, and the entire fight was pretty much a charade to stop you realising that you were infected with Bane. The more mana you used, the more blood you lost, the quicker Bane infected your systems and the harder it became to remove. When it got to your brain you were already dead because it meant you could no longer use your power of deduction or whatever it was you do. As soon as your body dies you will become a ghoul with the sole purpose of propagating Bane which is why I stuck you here. Unfortunately it’ll still be an immortal body, and I don’t want that on the battlefield. So yeah, goodbye Solutions Immortal. You shouldn’t have angered me”.
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