-Vol 6: Dusk of An Era-

-Doom Fest(8)-

Kenshin wasn’t polite with this man. With a single use of his replication, he copied down his two skills, adding them to his own collection. After it was done, he looked at the man in the eye as his own flashed in yellow color. Before the assassin could understand what happened, he felt his legs, from the foot to his waist, starting to feel numb. Looking down, he saw they were, ever so slowly, turning pristine white like that of a well-made stone statue.

“What… what the hell is this?... how can this happen… you, how can you also have this skill?” The assassin couldn’t wrap his head around anything that happened in the past few minutes. The moment he decided on attacking Kenshin, he felt like his own fate had shifted to this dangerous man’s hands. This was a very different feeling for the man who, until now, always had other’s fate in his hands.

“Now, then…” Kenshin stopped casting the skill he copied. Since he was the one who used the skill, he could very well control when, where, and how much should be petrified. He stopped the petrification process just below the man’s thighs and even petrified his hands, and his teeth, afraid that this man would commit suicide. The precision of the skill was due to his system, which functioned according to his will. Looking at the terrorstricken man, he smiled serenely.

“W..hat do you want?” seeing his own skill being used in a better way, that too on him, the man lost all his bravado and looked at Kenshin as if he was looking at a mad god.

“What I want, eh? I think you already know what I want, no? I won't ask how you figured out my identity, I have my ways to know that. What I want to know is, how do you know where I am going and which train I will pick?” This he had to know. Not even a few hours of being informed, and he already encountered an assassin sent by that guild.

“I, I will not tell you.” The man denied. His words sounded a little out of sorts due to Kenshin petrifying his teeth. However, he could still understand him clear. He, of course, won't say just because Kenshin asked nicely, or else he wouldn’t be an assassin of the guild. He glared at him and said nothing, having already made up his mind to be tightlipped.

“You will not? Why?” Wanting to play with the man, Kenshin tried to play as a psycho villain in a movie he had once seen. As he said so, he walked towards the man as he lightly grabbed his left wrist which was petrified due to the skill, “you are completely in my mercy now. I can literally do anything with you now, for example, this.”

Crack!!

Kenshin tightly clutched the petrified wrist, breaking it to smithereens with his inhuman strength. But, he wasn’t finished. Holding the part he just broke, he undid the petrification process. The moment it was undone, the assassin started to wail loudly, clutching his rapidly bleeding hand.

“Ahhh! Fuck!!! What the hell? ahhh!!! You are a demon!” He howled loudly as the whole compartment painted red with his spray of blood. Kenshin raised his leg and kicked the man in the chest and pressed him down on the train, with a slight of his strength, “demon! Me? Says the one who was here to kill a man he doesn’t even know and targeting the said man’s family while at it? Aren’t you way too selfish?”

He once again petrified his hands, stopping the bleeding. Then he lightly touched it while using Opposites on it. Like a recorder rewinding, the previously broken remains on the ground floated on air and started to attach itself on the assassin’s hand, before long it perfectly attached to the man’s stump. After that, Kenshin undid the petrification. As expected, the hand was reattached to the man’s body.

‘Interesting’ Kenshin pleasantly surprised upon the discovery. The discovery was huge, but since it wasn’t the right time to celebrate, he held back. There was an assassin waiting for his judgment and he, as the judge, couldn’t ignore it for the time being.

“What?” the assessing looked at his hand as his jaws landed on the ground. He tried to wriggle his fingers, they moved. The meaning was clear, this man could reattach what he did to him by a process he wasn’t aware of. Or it might be a function of his skill that this man also seems to possess.

“See! I can undo what I did to you too. You know, there’s still an hour left before this train could arrive at Mito. I can do this the whole time, destroy you, undo your petrification and make you experience hell, then reattach you… I wonder till then if you were still mentally stable or not… or, you can always answer me what I want to know, and you can be on your way.” Then Kenshin sat on one of the coaches, looking at the man in the eye as they lightly glowed yellow, “I promise, I will not announce anyone that I know their ways from you… what do you say? Not a bad offer, is it?”

The man stared at Kenshin with a horrified look and remembered the brief moment of hellish pain he suffered. His mind nearly stopped working, then he painfully stared at Kenshin before letting out a miserable sigh, “do I have an option?”

“Hmm, of course, you do. You can refuse me and be tortured before going insane. Then you will be transferred to a mental asylum for hunters and spend the rest of your days in chains. This way, you will be forever loyal to your organization. Maybe they will let you drink some expensive potion to restore your sanity.” Kenshin was probably enjoying scaring the shit out the man, or he might be serious, nothing was sure from his expression. He still maintained that smiling visage even though he was saying some scary shit.

“You… alright, I will tell you. Just, either kill me or let me go, don’t torture like that. I beg of you.” The assassin said, before explaining how they know his whereabouts. Turns out, they didn’t know Kenshin would come to Mito. They only sent one person to Tokyo to keep an eye on his sister. When they spotted her with him, they instantly formulated a plant to kill him via an assassin, who had followed him throughout the day. There was nothing extraordinary involved like how Kenshin had thought.

It was just a coincidence.

“So it’s just a coincidence, eh? And what about the man who was sent to keep an eye on my sister?”

“She is one of the teachers of Hunters Academy. She is there to mark all the bright ones, your sister is coincidentally in our radar for a long time.” The man said, before letting out a smirk, “Our upper officials love young talents a lot, especially pretty girls. One way or another, your sister is gonna warm bed for one of them, haha, just wait and see.” The man laughed loudly. The intense fear towards Kenshin’s overwhelming strength pushed him to the edge, making him do what he shouldn’t have at that moment.

“Is that so?” but Kenshin still maintained his calm. His four-digit WILL wasn’t for the show, after all. Even though his sister was being humiliated and probably targeted by some powerful group, he still maintained his cool.

Crunch!!

“AHHH!!!”

As he increased the pressure of his leg on the man, the assassin screamed in pain as his ribs broke and made sounds like dried up plastic. Those ribs quickly gave in, unable to stand strong against Kenshin’s power, his legs started to push on the man’s heart and lungs.

Squelch!

A few seconds later, his foot completely crushed his lungs and heart, killing him slowly and painfully. The look on his eye that calm and serene expression didn’t change even though he violently killed someone.