Magical Soul Parade - Chapter 327: Hidden Machinator

Chapter 327: Hidden Machinator

“Stay your hands.”

A voice spoke from the shadows and the command was absolute. It stilled both Jun and the Punisher Paladin in place as if they had been turned to stone.

The two had been bearing down on Finn with fist and sword mere inches away from his face. They had intended to pulverize and cleave him in two with a single coordinated strike.

Whether that would have actually happened looked very unlikely though. Finn remained unconcerned and casual despite the weapons that were right in his face. He didn’t even flinch.

Calmly, he used a single finger to shift the tip of the massive sword away from his view like it was a minor nuisance. He pushed the blade to the side to open up more space so he could see the newcomer more carefully.

Unlike Jun and the punisher soul mass, this new person had his attention fully and wholly. Outwardly Finn was calm and collected, but internally, for the first time since he had returned from the past as the Errant, he felt a true sense of threat. This wasn’t particularly a threat that stemmed from the personal power of the person, but rather from their potential to be a true danger to his existence.

And that was because for the first time, Error Vision had failed him.

Despite scanning the entire library when he first entered and scanning it again during the tension, he had not sensed a single trace of this person the whole time.

The person had been in the room the entire duration of the conversation and his eyes had simply skipped over them as if they weren’t there.

Carefully, he watched as the figure materialized just a few paces away from the table. It was a girl. Finn’s eyes glowed with a fierce green light as he tried to decipher the mechanics of how she had been able to bypass his Error vision entirely.

As the veil cloaking her came undone it felt like he was looking at raw noise. There was a patch in reality where the threads of causality and the laws that governed what was real went haywire. It had not been like that when she was cloaked, but now that she was revealing herself the wrongness became apparent.

Chaos? Finn thought to himself while he maintained the calm smile on his face.

The process of manifestation finished and the girl came into full view. She was sitting on a chair that had also been hidden and she was staring at Finn with a look of lazy humor in her eyes. She appeared to have been watching the entire exchange between Finn and Jun from the very beginning.

“I know you are surprised,” she said with a voice that was light and airy. “You do not have to put on a front for me.”

She stood up and walked forward toward the large oakwood table. Jun and the punisher were still frozen in their attack postures, looking like statues of still with terror.

With a swift and casual movement the girl’s hand pierced straight into the chest of the Punisher Paladin. Her arm went through the spirit flesh as if it were water and her hand burst out of its front just inches from Finn’s face.

In that hand a throbbing and pulsing black orb could be seen. It was a core of some sort and she had ripped it right out of the creature’s center.

Immediately, black blood spurted from the edges of the humanoid creature’s mouth. Its corporeal form began to flicker and fade as the girl ripped her hand back out.

A thoroughly suppressed fury could be seen in Jun’s eyes as he watched her do it. His outstretched fist dropped slowly to his side and he was trembling with a barely suppressed emotion. His cold eyes were leveled at the girl but he did not move a muscle to stop her.

She saw the look on his face and laughed with a mocking tone. “You should be thankful that I cannot touch you directly, Jun… If I could, then that would have been your heart in my hand and not the soul mass’.”

As she spoke, the Punisher Paladin shattered behind her into thousands of flecks of shadow. The dark energy surged toward Jun and disappeared into his soul.

With a commanding voice the girl looked at the old man. “For acting out of hand earlier and nearly jeopardizing our plans for Stratus you are being penalized. You failed to keep your puppet in check and you let your ego get in the way of a potential guest. I am taking the soul core back.”

She made some slight movements with her hand and the black pulsing orb disappeared as if it had been sucked into a different space entirely. Jun looked as if he had aged another decade in a single minute.

Finn watched the whole thing with absolute indifference. He sat in his chair and waited for them to be settled. He was more interested in the girl than the old man’s punishment.

The girl strode forward to Jun’s seat but the old man was still standing there glowering at her with a helpless rage. She smiled again, and this time it was a deeply unsettling and supremely condescending smile. It was a goading look that dared him to speak.

“If you are going to do something then go ahead and do it now,” she said to him. “Give me a reason to kill you. You know I crave to so desperately. And I know you want to do the same… Jun! Make your move! It would be a mercy for both of us!”

She waited for a response… but none came. A look of utter condescension and disappointment filled her eyes.

“If you’re not going to do anything then you should get the hell out of the way. Go and sit in the corner obediently.”

The fire in Jun’s eyes flickered out entirely and his true nature was finally shown. He was not a wise master or a powerful ruler. He was a servant who had forgotten his place.

Promptly and meekly, he scampered out of the way. His old body nearly knocked the chair away in his haste to escape her presence. He went to sit down quietly in the shadows where the girl had been sitting before.

The girl released a deep breath and then her face did a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn. Her expression shifted into a normal and cordial smile as she sat down politely in the chair Jun had vacated. She drew the chair closer to the table and faced Finn with her hands folded neatly.

Finn watched the transformation with a lazy look. His eyes lingered on Jun for a second longer before turning back to the woman.

“My name is Enforcer Sue,” she said brightly. “I apologize profusely for the behavior of the Ossuarist put in my care. Jun has a tendency to forget his boundaries. I apologize for his interruption of your fight down in the arena. I apologize for him trying to gauge your powers with those pathetic subordinates. And I especially apologize for him attacking you just now.”