Keflam was a city that refused to bow.
It rested deep within the bowels of the snowy southern mountains of Lavinsk: one of the kingdom's largest subterranean cities, carved directly into the living rock. It was a haven where dwarves, orcs, fairies, and dragonkin coexisted beneath the gentle, ambient glow of luminescent crystals.
But today, the crystals trembled.
BOOOMMM!
The explosion ripped through the main street like a whip woven of fire and shrapnel.
Thick stone walls shattered in an instant; heavy support beams were violently launched through the air like splinters.
Orcs and dwarves were hurled backward, their bodies slamming brutally against walls and jagged debris, while a suffocating blanket of dust and smoke veiled the ruin in ash-gray.
"They're flanking us! On the rooftops!" a dwarven soldier bellowed, his voice choked by panic and nearly drowned out by the staccato crack of gunfire that echoed like short, vicious thunderclaps.
Dozens of purple plasma beams sliced through the thick haze, striking down the mercenaries advancing by leaping from slate roof to slate roof.
The bodies crashed down heavily, but others immediately surged forward to take their place, an unstoppable tide.
Keflam was the farthest settlement from Castle Virkta, the beating heart of the subterranean kingdom. Because of this distance, it was plagued by insecurity, and betrayals constantly gnawed at its mighty walls.
To the invaders, there were no citizens here: only merchandise.
Orcs, dwarves, fairies, dragonkin—they were all worth an absolute fortune in the Obscure Galaxies, whether brought in dead or alive.
Amidst the relentless gunfire and the screaming, a single figure ran against the fleeing tide.
Guenda.
The orc wore a suit of battered golden plate armor, deeply scored and marked by dozens of impacts that would have instantly felled anyone else.
He dodged energy bursts with heavy yet impossibly swift movements. Purple beams violently erupted against the bedrock right beside him, sending razor-sharp stone splinters flying across his wide, heavily scarred face.
"Watch out, Lord Guenda!" a young soldier yelled, desperately trying to lay down covering fire with his heavy plasma cannon.
Guenda didn't stop, nor did he spare a glance over his shoulder.
His voice rang out with absolute authority, cutting through the chaos like a masterwork blade.
"I'm in one piece! Hold the line at the plaza entrance! Do not let a single one slip past!"
The main plaza was their last remaining refuge.
There, huddled behind makeshift barricades built from overturned tables, heavy barrels, and chunks of ruined walls, were the children, the women, and the wounded.
A few fairies cowered in terror, their translucent wings trembling uncontrollably. Elderly dwarves gripped heavy hammers and war axes, their eyes hardened by the grim resolve to fight to the bitter end if the barricades broke.
"Please... Lord Guenda... protect us," a fairy whispered, her hands tightly clasped in prayer as tears streamed down her small, dirt-streaked face.
"They've never managed to push this deep before," a gray-bearded dwarf muttered, gripping his rifle stock until his knuckles turned entirely white.
On the opposite side of the city, standing atop a partially demolished observation tower, Bartholomew surveyed the battlefield with icy, detached calm.
He watched his mercenaries raid local shops, rip weapons from their mounting racks, pile up looted armor, and load bodies—both living and inert—onto automated conveyor belts that fed directly into the massive cargo ship docked in the central courtyard.
"Take it all," he ordered, his voice low and utterly devoid of emotion.
"Weapons, armor, skins, bones... everything has value."
A mercenary quickly stepped up beside him, offering a hurried, stiff bow.
"Lord Bartholomew! We've just spotted General Guenda rallying at the entrance to the main plaza."
"He's organizing their final defense, rallying the surviving soldiers... They're holding the choke point much better than we anticipated."
Bartholomew slowly turned his gaze toward the plaza.
He was a man of average height, clad in a suit of black tactical armor heavily accented with glowing blue circuits. It was tailored to his frame with millimeter precision—cutting-edge technology explicitly designed for the dirtiest, most brutally efficient kind of warfare.
His snow-white hair was slicked back with surgical precision, and his eyes... his eyes were entirely pitch-black. No sclera, no iris. Just two wells of absolute void that reflected zero compassion.
A thin, deeply cruel smile crept onto his lips.
"So, he finally decided to show his face," he said softly, using the casual tone of a man commenting on the weather.
"It's about time that damn orc ceased to exist."
He took a single step forward, and the very atmosphere around him seemed to grow exponentially heavier.
"Let's end this farce once and for all. Tell Rhodes I'll be pushing the main gate."
"Yes, sir."
The dual thrusters built into his heavy boots hissed furiously as they flared to life.
FWOOSH!
A roaring trail of intense blue flames stretched out behind him like the tail of a vengeful specter.
Bartholomew shot forward, rocketing across the immense subterranean cavern with a velocity that made the air shriek in protest.
Dozens, perhaps hundreds of purple plasma bolts cracked all around him, viciously streaking through the dark, but he didn't even bother activating his kinetic shields.
A slight tilt of his torso.
A hair's breadth shift of his head.
A razor-sharp spin in mid-air.
The incoming shots missed by mere millimeters, harmlessly detonating against the cavern rock or fading uselessly into the darkness far behind him.
Not a single stray spark so much as brushed against his armor.
And right in the dead center of that torrential rain of death, he was humming.
Extremely low, almost entirely inaudible. A simple, ancient melody completely detached from the blazing hellscape surrounding him.
"Hmm... hmm-hm... hm..."
A dwarven soldier foolishly glanced up for a fraction of a second, and the blood instantly froze in his veins.
His eyes widened to their absolute limits.
"Bartholomew! IT'S HIM! HE'S COMING!" the soldier bellowed, his terror-strangled voice slicing straight through the chaos like a sheet of cold ice.
Guenda whipped around in the same instant, his massive muscles suddenly tensing like heavy steel cables.
Here he came: a blazing streak of vivid blue fire violently tearing through the cavern's gloom, leaving the displaced air visibly trembling in his wake.
The orc violently ground his teeth together, and a deafening roar of pure rage and iron resolve tore free from his throat:
"I'M GOING TO KILL YOU TODAY, YOU BASTARD!"
He launched himself forward, driving every last ounce of brutal strength into his muscular legs, leaping upward to violently intercept the invader. He was primed to crush the man in a mid-air collision that would shatter the cavern's bedrock.
But before he could even gain proper altitude, something cold, heavy, and unnatural coiled tightly around his thick ankles.
He looked down.
It wasn't earth, and it wasn't heavy chains.
It was a fine, dark mass, ominously glowing with faint green veins. It moved exactly like living sand, flowing upward with a terrifying intelligence all its own.
Advanced nanotechnology, leagues beyond anything Keflam had ever encountered in its history.
The substance surged rapidly up his legs, tightly wrapping around his shins, his heavy knees, and his thick thighs. It clamped down with an overwhelming, crushing force that shrugged off his every frantic attempt to break free.
A long, piercing whistle drifted out from the deep shadows of a narrow alleyway, easily slicing through the chaotic din of gunfire and dying screams.
A figure casually strolled out.
His armor was practically identical to Bartholomew's—pitch-black, undeniably high-tech, and precisely fitted—but every glowing detail burned with a vivid, sinister emerald green.
The man was dark-skinned, sporting long hair the exact same shade as his glowing armor trimmings. The messy strands tumbled carelessly over his armored shoulders, and he wore a smile that never quite reached his eyes—wide, deeply satisfied, and profoundly cruel.
"RHODES!" Guenda roared, violently fighting against the suffocating mass. But the harder the giant thrashed, the tighter the alien substance constricted, locking him down like a living fist refusing to let go of its prey.
"Guenda, Guenda..." Rhodes sang out, his tone utterly relaxed, almost highly amused, as he casually pressed the heel of his boot against the stone floor.
"You didn't really think beating us would be that easy, did you? Did you honestly assume you'd only have to deal with one of us?"
At the deliberate shift of his heel, the nanotech sand reacted instantaneously. It violently surged into a thick, swirling pillar, rapidly shaping itself into a gigantic, particulate hand that clenched with a bone-crushing pressure. It hoisted the massive orc several meters into the air, leaving him completely immobilized and utterly defenseless.
Bartholomew continued his unhurried approach through the air, his boot thrusters steadily burning brighter by the second.
The blue flames erupting from his clenched fists swelled, rapidly spiraling into a roaring vortex of pure energy that made the surrounding atmosphere hiss and ripple with heat distortion.
He finally stopped just a few meters away from Guenda. His face was a total blank slate, his pitch-black eyes entirely locked onto the captive general.
"Hold still, orc," he said, using the casual tone of someone politely announcing they were about to turn the page of a book.
"This will hurt less... or maybe it won't."
Then, he violently thrust both arms forward. The heavily pent-up energy completely detonated in a terrifying martial art that seemed to tear at the very fabric of space.
"Phantom Strike: Spectral Fire!"
A roaring, concentrated pillar of intense blue flame—one that seemed entirely devoid of heat yet paradoxically burned everything it touched—struck Guenda squarely in his broad chest.
The resulting sound wasn't just a heavy physical impact; it was as if the air itself had been violently split right down the middle.
A blinding blast of azure light instantly flooded the massive cavern, searing the retinas of anyone foolish enough to look directly at it. The ensuing shockwave violently rocked the entire city's deep foundations, sending massive chunks of stalactites raining down from the ceiling like deadly hail.
Guenda couldn't even muster the strength to scream. The sheer kinetic force of the blow launched the giant like a discarded ragdoll, sending him crashing backward through ruins and heavy debris until he violently slammed into the thick stone wall protecting the main plaza.
The entire defensive structure heavily fractured and completely collapsed under his immense, hurtling weight. The massive, elevated water tank supplying the local residents fully ruptured, unleashing a roaring torrent of water heavily mixed with blinding dust and jagged rubble.
He landed squarely in the center of the panicked plaza, violently tumbling for several meters before finally coming to a dead stop.
His heavy golden armor, once a proud symbol of his incredible might and authority, was now brutally crumpled and deeply cleaved open in multiple places. Large portions of it were literally melting down under the terrifying residual heat of the spectral flame, viciously dripping glowing liquid metal onto the cracked paving stones.
Hot blood steadily oozed from between the warped plates, deeply tarnishing whatever pristine gold still remained.
He desperately tried to move, but his broken body felt as though it weighed a thousand tons, and his shattered chest throbbed as if an entire mountain had crushed him flat.
The plaza rapidly plunged into a deeply terrified, breathless silence. It was broken only by the rushing water spilling from the ruins and the low, menacing hum emanating from beneath the two invaders' armor. They were approaching slowly now, exactly like apex predators who inherently knew their wounded prey had absolutely nowhere left to run.
The perfectly synchronized thud of their heavy armored boots marching across the plaza stones echoed loudly, sounding exactly like an executioner's final drumbeat.
Dozens of heavily armed mercenaries swarmed into the area, instantly forming an impenetrable wall of steel and casual cruelty right behind their two leaders.
To the utterly cornered inhabitants, that metallic clatter was the undisputed soundtrack of the end of the world.
"Rhodes," Bartholomew's voice rang out, cold and highly impatient, cleanly slicing through the heavy, suffocating atmosphere.
"Throw the capsules."
Rhodes flashed a wide grin.
From his armored arm, a torrent of black and green nanotech poured out, instantly molding itself into a fluid, highly mechanical extension—a twisted, makeshift claw.
With terrifying, entirely inhuman precision, the metallic limb rapidly darted toward the tactical belts of the nearby soldiers, effortlessly snatching several heavy containment grenades.
In a single, flawlessly fluid flick of his wrist, he tossed them in perfect parabolic arcs, distributing them right into the dead center of the deeply huddled crowds across the plaza.
The spheres gently touched the ground.
There was no fire.
Instead, a high-pitched, tooth-aching electrical whine violently shredded the air.
The grenades suddenly detonated in violent, blinding flashes of energy, rapidly erecting massive, solid domes of bluish light.
The shimmering force fields violently expanded outward and sealed tightly shut at the top, instantly trapping dozens of panicking citizens within impenetrable, instant prisons.
The resulting panic was absolute.
Bloody fists and tear-streaked faces battered completely uselessly against the humming, translucent barriers.
Mothers desperately threw themselves onto the ground right over their crying children, hugging them with every single ounce of strength they had left, trying to bodily shield them as utter, crushing despair took total hold of the crowd.
Sprawled uselessly on the stone floor, Guenda helplessly watched the absolute collapse of his people.
Hot blood steadily oozed from his dozens of grievous wounds, heavily staining the paving stones directly beneath his massive frame.
The broken orc viciously gritted his teeth, digging his thick fingers into the rock and desperately forcing his utterly ruined muscles in a highly pathetic attempt to stand. But his broken body simply refused to obey him anymore.
"Take me... instead of them, Bartholomew," Guenda growled, his hoarse, failing voice faltering as he weakly spat blood onto the floor.
Bartholomew looked down at the general.
His pitch-black eyes overflowed with absolute, unadulterated disgust.
"No, no, no... you damn orc," the mercenary leader murmured, casually adjusting his posture with pure, unbridled disdain.
"My only interest is in seeing you dead."
A loud, highly sadistic cackle happily echoed right beside him.
Rhodes's bright green hair swayed gently in the heavy, smoke- and dust-laden breeze sweeping across the ruined plaza.
"You've caused us so many tedious problems, Guenda..." Rhodes said, his eyes gleaming brightly with perverse, unrestrained malice.
"...that we really don't see any value in you breathing anymore."
Bartholomew slowly turned his head, visibly and utterly bored by the drawn-out scene.
"Rhodes, just finish him."
The careless order was the trigger.
The advanced nanotechnology on Rhodes's arm furiously boiled and writhed.
The living metal rapidly stretched out in a highly lethal fashion, swiftly molding itself into a wicked, perfectly sharpened elongated blade.
With a highly casual, almost lazy swing of his arm, the metallic structure lashed violently through the air exactly like a whip, tearing straight through the wind directly toward the fallen orc's completely exposed throat.
Time seemed to rapidly slow down for Guenda.
He watched death itself rapidly approaching in the form of shifting metal.
He heard the muffled, desperate weeping of his heavily caged people.
Powerless, completely out of options, and entirely unable to even raise his heavy arms in defense, the orc simply relaxed his broad shoulders and softly whispered his final hope to the wind.
"Virkta... help us."
The heavy nanotech spear, which by all physical rights should have easily pierced straight through Guenda's thick neck, suddenly stopped mere millimeters from his skin.
And then… it simply began to dissolve.
It didn't violently shatter or explosively detonate.
It simply separated, particle by microscopic particle, exactly like fine sand being gently blown away by the breeze.
Every single glowing grain drifted peacefully outward, slowly, highly deliberately, until the entire lethal weapon ceased to exist.
"What the hell is this, Rhodes?!" Bartholomew snarled, his posture instantly stiffening into high alert.
"I don't know! The system isn't responding!" Rhodes frantically tapped the glowing panels on his arm, his eyes wide with genuine shock.
"I've completely lost control of everything!"
"Of course it won't respond."
The voice casually drifted out from among the highly terrified crowd. It was calm and crystal-clear, slicing straight through the tense silence exactly like an effortless blade.
"Because everything that moves... only answers to me."
The panicked crowd instantly parted like the Red Sea.
A man confidently strode forward. His tightly bound black dreadlocks swayed heavily with every step, shimmering threads intricately interwoven through the strands.
He wore a highly simple black long-sleeved shirt and unadorned tactical pants, but there was something utterly terrifying about his bearing that made the very air feel incredibly heavy.
Tsukumo completely stopped a few meters away from them, standing tall and perfectly straight, his striking golden eyes glowing with a highly cold light.
"Did you really think you would get away with this?" he asked. He didn't shout, but every single word dropped exactly like a death sentence.
Bartholomew deeply narrowed his eyes, his hand tightly clenching into a fist at his side.
"We should have been thoroughly warned about reinforcements."
"Where were the perimeter alarms?"
"They were up across the entire perimeter," Rhodes frantically replied, his voice highly strained.
"It was completely impossible for anyone to get inside without tripping a sensor."
Bartholomew heavily locked eyes with Tsukumo, rapidly analyzing every single detail of the newcomer.
"Tell me, dreadlocked man... where do you hail from?"
"Does it actually matter?" Tsukumo slowly opened his hand in an almost entirely casual gesture.
Suddenly, all the floating nanotech particles were violently ripped entirely from Rhodes's dominion, rocketing rapidly upwards and outwards, scattering wildly until they vanished entirely into the deep darkness of the cavern ceiling.
Exactly as if they had never existed at all.
Bartholomew offered a slight half-smile, entirely devoid of joy.
"I genuinely didn't want to have to fight, dreadlocked man. I offer you half of everything we take from here if you just cooperate."
"But since you so desperately want it to be like this..."
"Yes. It will be like this."
The second voice drifted in from an entirely different direction, coming from the edge of the ruined plaza.
It was deep, incredibly slow, and carried a weight so profound and ancient it felt exactly as if it spoke from within the bedrock itself.
The footsteps made absolutely zero sound.
There was no heavy vibration against the stone floor, no flare of magical energy, not even a subtle shift in the air currents.
Rhodes and Bartholomew could clearly see the figure, but they couldn't sense him at all.
It was exactly like staring straight into a hole in the fabric of the world, an absolute, terrifying void where a living presence ought to be.
There he was.
Hoodless, yet heavily draped in a dark mantle that the wind caused to flutter and shift exactly like smoke.
His arms were heavily covered, his posture incredibly relaxed... yet simultaneously ready to unleash absolute hell.
Suki.
His hair, once short and messy, now cascaded heavily down his back—long and wild, tied back in a simple, highly careless knot, with thick, dark strands falling forward to veil part of one of his eyes.
Three long years had thoroughly forged the boy into a man. His shoulders were notably broader, his bone structure starkly defined, his jawline sharp, and his facial features far more angular, though he still retained the fierce youth of an eighteen-year-old.
His build was incredibly lean, but highly dense—every single square inch a pure testament to a body pushed to absolute exhaustion, packed tightly with purely functional muscle and absolutely zero excess.
He didn't look overly furious.
He didn't look angry.
He was simply there.
Standing perfectly still, his heavy gaze drilling deeply into the two invaders. It was calm. Heavy. The gaze of someone who had already seen more than enough, entirely removing any need to shout.
Small, faint scars heavily scored his skin in visible places—on his chin, right above his eyebrow, across the back of the hand resting casually at his side.
Physical proof of years of relentless battles. Scars that stubbornly refused to fade, but never weakened him either.
"You," Suki said, and his voice was notably soft, yet every single syllable carried clearly to everyone in the plaza, "just invaded the wrong place."
The air cracked.
In the literal blink of an eye, the entire distance between Suki and Bartholomew simply ceased to exist.
In the very next millisecond, the incredibly sickening crunch of shattering facial bones loudly echoed across the dead-silent plaza.
Only Tsukumo's glowing golden eyes actually managed to track his friend's terrifying trajectory.
Bartholomew's boots were already dangling helplessly above the ground.
Suki's hand was wrapped entirely around the mercenary leader's face exactly like a steel vise, crushing his jaw with such absurd, terrifying force that dark blood was already weeping heavily out from between the young man's fingers.
"I'm going to have a little chat with this one," Suki declared.
His voice carried no rage, only a deeply glacial void.
And, with a massive displacement of air that violently kicked up a shockwave of dust and viciously whipped at everyone's clothes, the two of them instantly vanished.
Tsukumo didn't even blink.
He slowly rolled his neck, completely locking his golden eyes dead onto Rhodes.
The air surrounding Vangor's son rapidly began to crush inward. The heavy paving stones beneath his boots cracked and splintered loudly as gravity itself began to visibly warp reality around him.
"You'd better surrender."
On the entirely flat rooftop of Keflam's small inner castle, the lonely wind howled.
A highly violent thud rapidly shattered the high-altitude silence.
Bartholomew's body was brutally slammed incredibly hard against the stone slabs.
He rolled wildly across the roof, coughing violently before hawking a thick, nasty clot of blood heavily mixed with several shattered teeth onto the cold stone.
The sound of slow, highly rhythmic footsteps echoed heavily over the roof.
Suki was calmly walking toward him, his posture flawlessly relaxed.
"I'm going to ask you a few questions." Suki's voice cut cleanly over the howling wind, incredibly cold and razor-sharp.
"And, for your sake, I highly recommend you answer them."
Bartholomew viciously ground what was left of his teeth together.
Pushing himself up onto highly trembling knees, sheer, unadulterated despair suddenly flared in the depths of his pitch-black eyes, only to be hastily paved over by a highly pathetic, desperate grasp at pride.
"Phantom Strike: Breath of Chaos!"
A massive, roaring torrent of blue fire violently erupted from his palms—hot enough to instantly slag the castle floor—completely devouring the gap between them in a fraction of a second.
Suki didn't step back.
A blinding streak of silver light flashed through the air for a single millisecond.
The roaring wall of blue fire was cleaved perfectly in twain, entirely dissipating into the wind exactly as though it had never been cast.
In that exact same instant, a wet, heavy thud sounded loudly against the stone.
The mercenary froze completely.
He slowly looked down.
His entire right arm, from the fingertips all the way to the shoulder, lay completely severed at his feet.
The cut had been so blindingly fast and immaculate that it took a full second for his own blood to actually realize the flesh had been parted, before finally erupting in a highly violent geyser.
The scream that viciously ripped its way out of Bartholomew's throat was an animalistic roar of pure, absolute agony.
He desperately clamped his remaining hand over the spurting stump, stumbling frantically backwards.
"First question," Suki continued smoothly, completely ignoring the rapidly widening pool of gore at his feet.
"What smuggling route are you using?"
With his eyes blown entirely wide and violently sweating bullets, Bartholomew actually started to laugh.
A highly hysterical, completely maniacal cackle, fractured heavily by breathless sobs of pure pain.
"Are you serious? You're going to violently steal our intel and set yourselves up as the new mercs on the block?!"
Swoosh.
Bartholomew didn't even see the movement this time either.
He only felt a ghost of a cold breeze heavily brush past the left side of his skull before the excruciating pain entirely detonated all over again.
His left ear flopped heavily onto the bloody stones.
He shrieked loudly, collapsing entirely onto his side and desperately mashing his hand against the side of his bleeding head.
"Okay! Okay!" he begged, spitting a thick slurry of blood and saliva, every single scrap of his pride entirely shattered.
"We use the Syfles coordinates! Right through the middle of the meteorite wall in the Yorm Belt! Every single smuggler passes through there if they're heading to this solar system!"
Suki stood over him, coldly watching the highly pathetic, writhing figure at his feet.
There was absolutely nothing but profound disgust clearly etched on his face.
"And do you have a leader?" Suki asked. "If so, who is it?"
Bartholomew's entire body locked up entirely.
The agonized trembling stopped on a dime, his pitch-black eyes entirely lost all remaining focus, and whatever meager color was left in his skin drained away instantly.
"No... not that..."
Suki took a single step forward.
His hand shot down exactly like a viper, once again violently latching onto Bartholomew's ruined face.
Suki's fingers clamped down incredibly hard, and more bones around the man's nose and cheekbones entirely caved in under the absurd pressure, cracking loudly into the open air.
"Answer me!"
But the sheer, existential terror heavily flooding Bartholomew's eyes had thoroughly transcended all physical pain.
He completely stopped struggling against the crushing grip.
A bizarre, highly bloody smile stretched widely across his mutilated lips.
And then, completely ignoring his totally shattered jaw and ruined mouth, he started to sing.
His voice bubbled wetly through the blood, quietly humming a childish, profoundly macabre lullaby.
"♪ Sleep now, little star,
the sky has turned so black...
Close your weary eyes,
the night is looking back... ♪"
His eyes didn't blink once.
He stared blankly straight into the empty sky just over Suki's broad shoulders, his broken mind thoroughly sunken into a sickly, fanatic trance.
"♪ Do not dare to turn around,
do not dare to pray...
When the Void begins to call,
none can run away... ♪"
Suki quietly watched the man's eyes visibly die from the inside out, long before his dark heart actually stopped beating.
He wouldn't wring a single sane syllable out of this highly hollow husk anymore.
Still firmly holding Bartholomew by the face, as the man blissfully continued to smile and croon his final note, Suki uttered a single word.
"Die."
The air immediately surrounding Bartholomew's body violently contorted into an invisible storm of pure, absolute obliteration.
Dozens of incredibly ultra-compressed wind blades erupted violently in every possible direction, forged completely from the very oxygen enveloping the man.
His flesh was instantly flayed.
His muscles and organs were completely shredded into ribbons before the sound of the spell could even ring out.
The haunting lullaby rapidly warped into a suffocated, highly horrific squeal that lasted barely a single millisecond, completely drowned out by the grotesque, incredibly wet sounds of instantaneous dismemberment.
In the literal blink of an eye, the raging tempest entirely ceased.
All that remained was a heavily polished, totally blood-drenched skeleton collapsing heavily onto the castle stones, while the pristine skull still hung, entirely inert, suspended in Suki's left hand.
"Suki?"
Tsukumo's voice sounded clearly from just behind him. His tone was perfectly calm, heavily accompanied by the deep, resonant thrum of gravity manipulation.
Suki glanced quietly over his shoulder.
Tsukumo was casually standing on the rooftop.
Hovering right beside him, suspended a half-meter off the ground within a tight gravitational field, was Guenda.
The massive orc had his eyes entirely blown wide, his breath hitched, his entire body rigid as he desperately stared at the highly grotesque pool of absolute destruction painted vividly across the roof.
He had seen absolutely everything.
"You good, man?" Tsukumo asked, casually closing the distance with slow, highly deliberate steps.
Suki simply opened his fingers.
Bartholomew's skull plummeted, entirely shattering against the red-slicked stones with a highly hollow clatter, rejoining the rest of the broken bones.
When Tsukumo stepped entirely close enough, Suki slowly raised his arm and placed a heavy hand squarely onto his friend's shoulder.
His face was heavily buried in the shifting shadows of his own hair. His expression remained utterly blank, entirely indifferent to the sheer, highly horrifying brutality he had just inflicted.
"Can you handle the rest?" Suki asked.
Tsukumo cast a highly brief, sideways glance at Bartholomew's gory remains and offered a slight, casual nod, his golden eyes completely devoid of judgment.
"Go on."
With a highly sharp, concussive crack that violently folded the very air and heavily blasted bloody dust entirely across the castle roof, Suki vanished.