SSS-Ranked Surgeon In Another World: The Healer Is Actually OP! - Chapter 283: No Escape!

Chapter 283: No Escape!

“I thought he was acting alone,” she said with a quiet sigh, disappointment threading her tone like frost through silk. “But it seems… you’re in cahoots with him.”

Duke lowered his cup gently. Porcelain touched saucer with a delicate click that sounded impossibly loud in the suffocating stillness. He didn’t look surprised. Didn’t look tense. Didn’t look concerned. He looked amused.

He placed the cup aside, then leaned back slightly, posture loose, expression mild, as if watching an interesting play unfold on a distant stage rather than standing inside its climax.

Isolde’s fingers began to curl. A reflex. A preparation. A command forming in muscle before thought.

’Not on my watch’ Duke lifted one hand casually with a smile.

She froze. Completely.

Her body locked in place mid-motion, posture halted as though the world itself had decided she was now part of the architecture. Her widened eyes did not show fear. They showed calculation, rapid and razor sharp, racing through possibilities and discarding each one as reality contradicted it.

“…Impossible,” she said slowly.

Her aura surged. EX-class pressure detonated outward from her core like a star igniting, the force slamming against walls, ceiling, air. And doing nothing.

The lock held.

“…Such strength shouldn’t be possible,” she continued, voice tightening, a thread of strain finally entering it. “Not with SSS authority alone.”

Her gaze sharpened, cutting straight into Duke.

“…Have you broken through?”

Duke smiled faintly. “No,” he said lightly. “Still SSS.” A small shrug lifted one shoulder. “Sadly, despite all my methods, that’s my limit, the restrictions of this world can’t be easily bypassed.”

His eyes glinted, lazy humor masking something far older and far colder. “Unfortunately for you… possessing a vessel has drawbacks. You can only use the abilities of the body you stole.”

Silence pressed down.

“If you were using your original abilities,” Duke added conversationally, “you might’ve broken free.”

The air crackled faintly, tension tightening like drawn wire.

Isolde did not deny it.

Instead she asked quietly, “For you to know all that, this is not your first encounter with an Invader… is it?”

Duke’s smile widened. He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. That silence was the answer.

Then he turned his head slightly and looked at Bruce, who still hung suspended before the Empress like a spear frozen mid-thrust.

“Is that all you’ve got, kid?” he asked lazily. “Don’t disappoint me.”

Bruce’s body remained locked in front of Isolde, suspended in crushing frost pressure. His muscles trembled under the strain, veins rising along his arm like cords as he pushed against the invisible barrier. His palm hovered inches from her chest. Not close enough. Not yet.

Fine.

If force didn’t work—

He would switch methods.

Inside his mind, his voice was steady.

Vaelith.

[I hear you.]

’Teleport me. Now.’

Vaelith acted instantly, no hesitation. No delay. Reality folded that instant.

Bruce vanished. Not moved. Vanished.

The space he had occupied collapsed inward like a snapped thread recoiling into nothing, air rushing to fill a presence that no longer existed.

And then he was beside her.

So close his shoulder brushed her sleeve.

No transition. No travel. Just existence rewritten.

His palm struck forward.

THUD.

The impact landed squarely against her chest, the force of instantaneous teleportation transferring directly through contact, bypassing distance, bypassing resistance, bypassing everything that required motion to function.

Spatial Lock did not stop it.

Light ignited along his palm, not bright, not blinding, but dense, like a star compressed into skin. Power gathered there with terrifying precision, not explosive, not wild, but focused with surgical cruelty.

’Soul Shatter.’

For the first time, the elven soul inside Isolde’s body reacted.

Bruce’s palm made contact.

Soul Shatter detonated.

There was no visible explosion, no burst of light, no dramatic shockwave tearing through marble and crystal. To the physical eye, it was almost anticlimactic, just a young man’s hand pressed firmly against an empress’s chest. But on the spiritual plane, something ruptured.

A shriek tore through the throne hall.

It was high. Feminine. But it did not belong to Isolde.

The sound vibrated at a frequency that clawed at the edges of perception, too sharp for the ears, too deep for the mind. It bypassed flesh and bone entirely and scraped directly across the soul. The air did not echo with it. The walls did not carry it. Instead, it resonated within every spiritual core present, like a blade dragged slowly over glass.

Duke felt it.

Even with Spatial Lock active, even with layers of suppression blanketing the room and isolating movement itself, that scream pierced through him and struck his spiritual foundation. His jaw tightened involuntarily, teeth grinding for a fraction of a second.

“What the hell…” he muttered under his breath.

Across the hall, the maids remained frozen mid-step, faces serene and unaware. The guards were statues carved from discipline and halted time. Frost still hung suspended in the air like shattered stars.

But within Isolde, the Invader convulsed.

Bruce saw it clearly through Life Glance.

The elegant elven silhouette that had coiled with regal poise around Isolde’s soul moments ago twisted violently. Bruce’s mana did not merely touch it, it flooded into it, invasive and merciless. Cracks tore across its spiritual structure like lightning splitting an ancient tree, branching fractures racing outward from the point of contact.

It hadn’t expected this. It hadn’t known that Bruce will have something that can directly strike the soul.

For years it had ruled quietly from within, suppressing, manipulating, refining its control over a sovereign body. It had faced political resistance, assassination attempts, power struggles. It had prepared for blades, poisons, mana suppression, even soul-binding rituals.

It had not prepared for annihilation from the inside. It didn’t want to die, now it knew why it was getting a dangerous feeling from bruce. The Invader tried to flee instinctively.

Its soul ripped itself free from Isolde’s chest in a jagged, translucent surge, tearing upward like smoke forced violently through a cracked vessel. The separation was brutal, strands of its soul snapping and stretching as it clawed for escape.

But it was too late.