Chapter 40: The Silver Needle vs. The Mad Healer

Chapter 40: Chapter 40: The Silver Needle vs. The Mad Healer

​The warehouse fell into an absolute, suffocating silence. Felix stood several meters away, his hands hanging loosely at his sides, shoulders relaxed.

​Across from him stood the cloaked figure.

​Vesper Cruz. The Silver Needle.

​For fourteen months, she had planned every second of her freedom. She had accounted for every conventional methods the Hunter Association used to corner awakened fugitives. Her violet eyes narrowed beneath the shadow of her hood.

​Between her pale fingers, five silver needles materialized out of thin air.

​SHING!

​They vanished from sight.

​Felix tilted his head a fraction of an inch.

​FWHIP.

​A needle of high-density tungsten sheared the air beside his cheek, missing his ear by millimeters.

​FWHIP-FWHIP.

​Another whistled from behind his blind spot. Three more converged simultaneously from distinct angular trajectories.

​Felix moved.

​ZIP.

​His silhouette blurred with a sharp snap as every needle punched into empty dust.

​Vesper’s composure fractured.

​Too fast.

​She flicked both wrists outward.

​SHRRRK—PING!

​The whole interior of the warehouse filled with an intricate, crisscrossing filaments.

Hair-thin, invisible to the naked eye, and capable of slicing bone like butter, the entire hall turned into a lethal web.

​Felix simply stepped straight through it.

​He ducked beneath an angled wire, stepped over a low trip-line, shifted his torso to slip between a crossed pair, and snapped his fingers onto a descending strand.

​SNAP.

​The high-tensile tungsten shattered between his thumb and forefinger.

​Vesper’s pupils dilated. "Impossible..."

​Felix grinned, The black fringe of his hair falling over his eyes. "Your craft is pretty solid."

​VWOOM.

​He vanished.

​Vesper’s survival instincts shrieked. She poured her mana outward, manifesting an impenetrable shell of high-density liquid mercury and titanium over her forearms and chest.

​BOOM!

​Felix’s mana-coated fist detonated against the guard.

​SKRRRRR!

​The concussive force launched her across the concrete, her boots carving two deep, smoking trenches into the stone.

​She looked down at her crossed arms.

​CRACK.

​Hairline fractures spider-webbed across the hardened alloy armor.

​Vesper stared at the damage in disbelief. A single bare-knuckle punch had compromised her High II metal manifestation.

​She snapped her head up.

​Felix was already inside her guard.

​She dragged her arm up to parry.

​CLANG!

​His knuckles slammed against her metallic plate.

​The shockwave rippled through the iron walls of the warehouse, shaking loose decades of dust from the ceiling rafters.

​WHAM.

​Vesper was hurled backward through the air. She twisted mid-flight, drove her magnetic soles into the floor to arrest her momentum, dropped to one knee, and released every reserve in her channels.

​SH-SH-SH-SHING!

​Hundreds of razor-thin metal blades materialized in a dense, swirling cloud, blackening the space between them before firing in an overlapping barrage.

​Felix again disappeared.

​Left—nothing.

​Above—empty shadows.

​Behind—only the settling dust.

​Right—

​TAP.

​A warm palm rested casually on her shoulder.

​"Too slow."

​THUD.

​He struck.

​Vesper was launched horizontally across thirty meters of open floor, crashing violently through a stack of steel crates.

​CRASH-CLATTER!

​Metal containers crumpled around her like tin cans. She rolled into the gravel, coughing a spatter of crimson against the dust.

​Cough.

​She forced herself upright, muscles burning.

​For the first time since her awakening at fourteen, a cold, alien emotion coiled in Vesper Cruz’s chest: Helplessness.

​She was an A-rank prodigy.

​A Tier-1 awakened talent.

​A syndicate executioner whose Metal Affinity had scaled to the rare threshold of High II proficiency.

​She had hunted and dismantled combatants vastly more powerful than herself through ruthless preparation and surgical timing.

​None of that mattered against this man.

​Felix was simply operating on an impossible scale.

​Even amongst the association’s registered S-rank heroes, few possessed raw reaction velocity like this.

Without a pure speed-oriented affinity such as Wind or Lightning, tracking his trajectory was a losing game.

​And this disparity wasn’t even the true horror. Her gaze locked onto his forearms. He was a healer. A combat medic.

​An absurd, unhinged anomaly whose restorative proficiency sat at Ultra III.

​Across the entire continent, only three other living individuals had ever unlocked the Ultra realm of healing proficiency and every single one was an elderly, fragile national treasure, housed in subterranean bunkers, protected like royalty because their lives outweighed entire army divisions.

​Felix was not sheltered. He fought on the frontline. He absorbed damage willingly. And he regenerated in real-time.

​SH-SHUCK!

​Vesper unleashed a desperate, sweeping spiral: spikes, serrated wires, armor-piercing needles, every scrap of metal she could forge from her mana. Felix advanced straight through the squall.

​HISSSS.

​A needle scraped along his jawline; the scratch sealed shut before the drop of blood could fall. A spike gouged through his left shoulder; he casually yanked it free, and the torn tissue knit back together in a wash of pale emerald light.

​Pant... pant...

​Vesper’s chest heaved, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

​What kind of monster is this?

​Her lethality was completely meaningless. Every point of damage she managed to land was undone within the same second. The longer the engagement dragged on, the clearer the bitter truth became:

​Felix wasn’t struggling.

​He was testing her like a sparring partner.

​A freezing chill ran down her spine.

​Felix dropped his arms, his easy grin fading into a calm, level expression.

​"All right." He rotated his right shoulder with a dull pop. "That’s enough."

​Vesper’s pupils contracted.

​ZIP.

​Felix evaporated from reality.

​Her eyes couldn’t track the motion.

​BOOM!

​A mana-compressed fist buried itself into her solar plexus.

​OOF!

​Her spine arched as the air detonated from her lungs. The shock carried her across the open hangar, slamming her violently into the reinforced concrete boundary wall.

​CRACK.

​The wall fractured behind her back. Vesper slumped into the rubble, dark blood pooling past her lips.

​Her legs trembled violently as she dragged herself back up against the cracked stone. She wiped the crimson from her chin with a bruised sleeve, her lips pulling into a faint, bitter smirk.

​"You’re... strong," she rasped, coughing a dark clot into the dirt. "Your name?"

​VWOOM.

​The air sheared.

​Felix materialized directly before her eyes, his fist already locked in a dense, glowing sheath of pressurized mana, that feral, unbothered grin returning to his face.

​"Felix Valerius."

​CRACK!

​The blow caught her square across her chest.

​Ribs shattered instantly under the impact. Vesper’s body bounced off the wall and skidded limp across the concrete floor.

​Silence.

​She lay staring at the rusted ceiling above. Her peripheral vision turned black, tunneled by agony and internal hemorrhaging.

Her heart hammered a weak, erratic beat as consciousness started to slip.

​Then, a sudden, quiet realization flickered in her dimming eyes.

​"Ah..." Her voice was a wet, ragged whisper. "So you’re... the one..."

​She coughed weakly, blood bubbling at the corner of her mouth.

​"The one running... rehabilitation... for prisoners like us."

​The faint, unrepentant smirk touched her lips one last time.

​"Fascinating..."

​Her head rolled to the side and Vesper Cruz went limp.

--

​BANG!

​The reinforced warehouse blast doors were blown off their hinges. Aria led the breach, ice rolling off her boots as the rest of the unit swarmed.

​Darius reached Vesper first, his massive frame over the fallen assassin.. "She’s down!"

​Aria approached with sharp, clinical strides, retrieving two pairs of heavy suppression gauntlets from her tactical belt.

​CLACK.

​A Grade-4 alloy collar locked around Vesper’s neck.

​CLACK-CLACK.

​Suppression cuffs snapped onto both wrists, their indicator runes flashing blue as they violently severed her remaining mana flow.

​Only after verifying that the target’s core was completely neutralized did Aria turn her ice-blue eyes toward Felix.

​Kael walked over, peering down at Vesper’s crumpled, bleeding frame before looking up at Felix in utter disbelief.

​"Damn, Felix." Kael whistled softly, crouching beside the crater. "You almost killed her.""

​"Thought she’d be stronger, honestly." He shrugged, rolling his sleeves back up his forearms.. "Considering the mess she made getting out of Acheron, I expected more of a fight."

​A vein pulsed along Aria’s temple. "You are the anomaly here, Felix!"

​Felix blinked, looking genuinely confused. "What did I do?"

​"Get down here and stabilize her immediately!" Aria pointed sharply at the unconscious assassin. "She has three minutes before her lungs drown in blood!"

​Felix’s face instantly dropped into alarm. "Oh. Right."

​He dropped to his knees beside Vesper, pressing both palms flat over her chest.

​VWOOOOM—HISSSS.

​A concentrated emerald healing mana flooded from his hands, seeping deep into her broken bones. The fractured ribs realigned and knit together with muffled clicks; severed capillaries sealed; ruptured lung tissue regenerated in real-time.

Her ragged, dying wheeze smoothed out into a steady, rhythmic breath.

​Felix poured energy into her for another two minutes until her vitals registered completely out of the critical zone.

​He sat back on his heels, exhaling a long, relieved breath, and rubbed the back of his neck with an embarrassed chuckle.

​"Sorry about that, everyone. Got a little carried away."

​Dead silence.

​Fourteen seasoned combatants stood around the crater, staring down at him with entirely blank, exhausted expressions.

​Felix glanced around the circle. "...What?"

​Nobody spoke.

​Kael dragged both hands down his face with a long groan. "You are an absolute menace."

​Felix just gave a bright, unrepentant grin, brushing the concrete dust from his trousers.

​Mission accomplished.