Pietro's face still REALLY pissed me off. Sadly, I was still incredibly drained, and without access to my soul strength my options for dealing with him were limited. Still, I'd just beaten my first F-ranker, having successfully fought up ranks like a true elite, and I was kind of riding high on the confidence.

Glancing dismissively down at the tied up Mordaunt and the still form of Rahm, Pietro sneered. "Trash. Oh, well, I suppose this means I don't have to pay them." He looked around for the four, who were still occupied, and Randall, who was fighting his own F-ranker, and chuckled. "Seems like you don't have anyone to save you this time. It was impressive taking down the zombie, I'll give you that, but there's no way you have much in you after a battle like that."

I stared at him for a second. "How are you not dead?" He looked at me in surprise. "No, seriously, I've known you for all of five minutes and I want to kill you, granted I have a bias against the Black sorrow Cult, but still. Do you have a Skill for pissing people off? I'm not sure how whoever guards you managed to keep you alive, but they're a fucking miracle worker, because I have a hard time believing no one has tried to push you down a flight of stairs. Or into a volcano."

To my shock, rather than get offended, Pietro laughed. "Do they dare? My father is the strongest D-ranker on Ranton. A genuine High Priest of the Black Sorrow Cult. I hold the life and death of everyone I meet in my hands. Killing me would result in the complete extermination of everyone they know and love." He grinned at Callie. "How about you, boy. Are you willing to see everyone you love killed? Not just the girl, either. Even if you manage to successfully kill me, your whole family will die."

I couldn't help it, I laughed. He looked confused, and I choked down the giggles. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that was rude. You're doing this whole spoiled brat villain monologue and I'm interrupting. I shouldn't be so insensitive. It's just...you have no clue how stupid you sound." Honestly I could have interrupted him, but Benny had posted up behind me and placed a subtle hand on my back, letting the spiritual calming flow into me again.

This wouldn't fix the soul strain, not enough to let me use my soul more, but it WOULD let me partially recover and clear my head, which would help. So I wanted to draw the asshole in babbling more and delay the fight so I could get back into fighting shape. Callie and I could take him, I was sure, and just in case I was getting ready to use my Afterburner Skill for this fight to make sure I could keep up with her and put my best foot forward.

Without stacking stored attacks or altering techniques I would be way less deadly, but Afterburner should make up for that somewhat. I also still had a full charge of stored force in the cane, and I could use Mercy Kill, even if I couldn't stack anything on it. Sadly, Pietro, while stupid, wasn't THAT stupid, and didn't have any interest in monologueing for ten minutes in the middle of a pitched battle.

As he concentrated dark power onto his hands, I had a sudden and very unfortunate realization. I'd been thinking about what ability he had, and how to counter it. But I'd forgotten that fucking Black Sorrow Cultists didn't USE the ability system. He'd have one for sure, but it would be treated like a Skill. They used the job system, or something like it, and this asshole would have a whole host of weird powers like Aiden had, though not exactly the same since Aiden had been using a job from the Red Revenant Church somehow.

That meant it didn't matter if he wasn't a descendant of Black Sorrow, he'd have crazy overpowered bullshit tricks anyway. Annoying but still manageable. I spun my cane up, stepping away from Benny's hand begrudgingly, because if he was about to attack I didn't want my friend dragged into it. I gestured for him to back off and go help Jessie and Randall with their fight. The bear was having trouble, and a sucker punch with that hammer would help.

He left without complaint, most likely planning to slip in a shot on Pietro when he had the chance to hit him without being noticed. Pietro, for his part, didn't seem to care about my best friend as he slowly advanced, gathering dark power into his palms. "You seemed so impressive earlier." He said gleefully. "That'll make putting you down so much sweeter. I'll show you that the Black Sorrow Cult aren't people you can easily offend." Without a second of hesitation he hurled his hands forward, unleashing a wave of darkness at us.

Or rather, darkness might have been the wrong word. Rot, corruption, desolation. None of these was right exactly. Rot affected living things, as did corruption, desolation was closer, but still wrong. This wasn't a destructive force exactly. Destruction unmade things, this just changed them. It was like some conceptual blight on the world, altering things to more effectively suit its vision. Sorrow.

As if the world itself was grieving, as if all hope had been lost. Hope of continuance ceased to exist within the wave of darkness. It was, in a word, terrifying. Callie snarled and flicked a hand, and a wall of shadows flashed out to block the progress of the wave. To my surprise, it actually stopped. You couldn't steal the hope of continuance from darkness, because it was already the absence of light.

Pietro cursed. "Shadow touched. I hate dealing with you. No one told me you had a shadow touched." I got the feeling even if they had he'd have ignored it. I was pretty sure he just did whatever he wanted and let the consequences sort themselves out later.

"Thanks." I said to Callie emphatically as I stood. I shivered at the though of that...stuff, touching me. "I doubt that would have been pleasant." We'd gotten insanely lucky that she could block that stuff. It was only a G-rank attack, so I doubted it would instakill us, and it might not even get through my armor, but the idea of letting it touch me made me want to gag. No wonder the Cult were so unpleasant, if that was the force their jobs game them access to.

Still, it did make some sense that even powerful jobs would have counters. Callie's shadows didn't do so well against the Red Revenant Church's light abilities, but she had a natural advantage against the Cult. That was useful to know. Of course, she wasn't some kind of perfect counter or something, just at an advantage. That wave had been fairly spread out, and being able to block it was more a factor of Pietro making stupid ass decisions in battle than some kind of perfect immunity.

I wasn't letting this chance go either way though. I activated Double Trouble, appearing behind him as I triggered Mercy Kill on my weapon and unleashed the force stored in my cane at the base of his skull, hoping to put him down like I had Stricture all those months ago.

That wasn't to be, there was a dark burst of smoke and a shield appeared behind him, clearly the activation of some defensive item. My blow smashed into the thing hard, but sadly wasn't enough to even crack the shield. I activated Leaf on the Wind and danced away from the retaliation. His dark fist swept harmlessly through the space I'd just been in. That wide range attack had taken time to charge up and I wasn't giving him more.

Neither was Callie, as evidenced by the field of dark blades springing up under his feet. The attacks drove him in exactly the right direction to open him up to another blow from my cane at full extension, Balam allowing me to build up a truly frightening amount of momentum for the attack.

His robes, which I had just realized were robes and not some sort of coat, took the blow easily, and I cursed as I realized they were F-rank defensive items. Rich asshole. I conveniently overlooked that I also had those, because now wasn't the time for rational introspection.

With a grimace I triggered Afterburner. Technically using my normal skills did use soul strength, but unmodified and without stacking they were only mildly annoying. Unfortunately when spamming multiple skills one after another that still added up. I was glad Benny had helped me recover because I wasn't sure I could have managed this in the state I'd been in after beating Rahm.

I had enough in me to use a few normal skills though, and triggered healing burst after a slight delay, followed by Mercy Kill, and then painfully, Flurry of Blows. My head was screaming again, but it was enough to make me a serious threat as I lashed out with my still poison fire imbued cane at the vulnerable face of the wildly dodging Pietro, trying to score a hit with the speed Flurry of Blows granted me. I got a glancing blow on his jaw and temple, which since the armor wasn't there, meant the poison fire started to spread.

He got his arms up in front of his face to block the other attacks, not paying enough attention to his surroundings and completely missing that Benny had already sneak attacked the F-ranker and provided an opening for Randall to start really laying into the man. The hammer smashed hard into the back of the Pietro's robes, which while clearly heavily enchanted for defense, weren't up to a hit from a weapon at the same rank enhanced with extra density and triple strength, even driven by the power of a G-ranker early in his Ascension.

Pietro stumbled, face slashed open by the shadow blades, and his eyes widened in panic. "Malachai, help!" He shrieked at the top of his lungs. Throwing his arms over his head in fear to try to mitigate the damage. Unfortunately that was more than enough as every single person in the auction hall was smashed to the ground by the forcefully exerted Impact of an E-rank Ascendant bearing down on us.

I cursed. "I thought you said your E-rankers were holding off the others." I gritted out through the pressure. I was not at all qualified to fight this asshole, considering he wasn't a cloud of red mist right now, pressuring me with his aura didn't count as an attack either. If he made a move on Callie or Benny or Jessie I'd have to throw myself in front of the attack or something.

Snarling in rage, Pietro pointed at me mockingly. "Fool! As if I would ever walk about unguarded. While the others were detained, Malachai is my personal guard. He was specially trained to be able to conceal himself even from those of his own rank! Now that you've forced me to make him reveal himself, I'll have to take it out of your hide." He began charging his power again, getting ready.

My eyes widened in alarm. I wasn't sure this counted exactly. Holding me down like this while his boss killed me. This had to be an attack right? Before I could question further the field suddenly vanished, the aura completely cut off. A man appeared behind Pietro in a white half mask and a hooded black robe. He was looking at me intently, as if curious what had just happened, but he didn't do anything else. Pietro turned angrily on the man. "Why did you do that? I was about to kill him! Pin him down again!" Despite his ranting though, Malachai just stared at me. Seemed like Zeke was already on the move. Something told me I wasn't out of the woods quite yet though.