Chapter 47 The World Waits for No Individual Part 2

“You want to silence me!? Are you not content to watch me waste away, so desperate you are to seize power!?” - Paradigm, former Leader of the Defenders of the Dawn and High Traitor to the Human Race

The real fight began when half of the train carriage was blown off.

Rushing winds slammed into Freddy’s face as he dodged just out of the way, only years of experience allowing him to notice that something had attacked.

He took in information quickly, the top half of the train carriage was blown away, likely by some kind of explosive. No sign of a clear attacker, and the collateral shrapnel had shredded into several people, they did not have a protective technique like him.

Freddy’s hand held tightly to the window frame, other than his fingers which were touching the glass, he was completely hidden behind cover, out of sight of everyone else.

At this moment, he could not trust any single person on the train.

Four passengers had already fired onto him, their blood was still drying, and the owl orbited around him, as if waiting for a prompt.

Currently he had little idea of what the specifics of Owl City were, immediately upon attacking it, it revealed information about him. Any interaction with it could result in more information about himself being revealed.

His enemies were at minimum aware of his power, and of how he could control a person through their bodily liquids, taking appropriate measures against being detected by him.

Secondly, they now knew about his second spinal cord that he uses to react to attacks. His actual defences were heavily limited, working only through a mixture of flash coagulation and freezing a layer of his blood to form a second wall, maintaining the enclosed environment of his body even if superficial portions of himself were damaged and bleeding. It came with the risk of thrombosis and became rather fragile after the ice melted.

As the wind howled and the temperature dropped, he tightened his hand. Freddy sensed every moving body with liquid inside them.

Panicked passengers clung tightly to the stumps of their chairs, some were running, holding tightly onto any handhold as they made their way to the other carriages through the rushing wind.

It was getting cold, the train hadn’t stopped yet and the wind kept blowing fiercely. The temperature of many passengers was dropping.

Far too quickly.

Liquids were freezing at a visible rate, disappearing from the senses of his power the moment they changed to a solid.

Shocked, Freddy stood up, letting go of the window frame. Blades danced around him as he forcefully heated them by rapidly moving the liquid particles within.

The enemy was still attacking.

Freddy raised his hand and-

He had lost his fingers.

Turning to the window, he found the top distal joints of four of his fingers frozen onto the window, leaving only his thumb intact.

The cold had numbed him to the point he hadn’t even noticed.

With a thought, he immediately activated his power, a reddish blush covered his body as he circulated his blood several times its normal speed.

“A lucky guess… or did they know more?”

The middle joints of his fingers were frozen and completely numb, there was no recovering them this soon, so he resolutely cut circulation by scabbing the blood vessels leading to them, maintaining the enclosed environment.

Freddy spread out his power, activating his Imbuement technique.

“Bloody Stream.”

There was a flare of Hume within the bodies of a now frozen passenger. Freddy’s range was large but limited, through his Imbuement technique, he could turn enclosed blood into a range extender, and he could chain such extenders, until he now covered the entire train.

There he found them.

The only person on the train not shivering.

He closed his remaining hand into a fist, forcefully ripping that person out of their seat, not even letting a single muscle move as he restricted their movement.

Then with a single flick, he compressed their blood into one hyper dense ball inside them.

Then let go.

The blood exploded outwards, and he lost his awareness of the enemy.

And the freezing winds stopped.

His water bottles floated out, and he stepped onto two, using them to fly to the first class carriage where he found the body.

Blood was splattered everywhere, their chest had torn open from the blood escaping their body.

It was a woman, her last look one of utter shock.

“How did you figure that one out?”

Freddy swiped around to the source of the voice, his blades were faster, already closing in onto the person’s carotid artery.

The elderly man with a walking cane was faster.

“When Our Bodies Wash Ashore.”

“What’s the most dangerous thing a metahuman can do?” Aiden asked.

Isaac scoffed, “That’s a question without an answer, there’s been people who can shatter moons, lay waste to entire civilised worlds, the simple, answer is no one fucking knows.”

Aiden shook his head, “No, I don’t mean in terms of natural abilities, but what is the most dangerous thing a metahuman can train to learn?”

“Expansions,” Isaac replied without hesitation, not even waiting for Aiden’s question, he answered, “All Extended Techniques of the Expansion side are identical in a way… anyone who learns it is automatically considered a severely more destructive combatant.”

“What is it?”

“An Expansion Extended Technique is when a person constructs a sub dimension,” Isaac answered. “A dimension based on that same inner world you dream about. Pocket dimensions aren’t that troublesome, but an Expansion is dangerous in particular because…”

“It forms a world with a Bleed effect that can overcome a meta’s natural resistance.”

The train disappeared.

Reality bled away as suddenly Freddy stood on an island, in front of him stood a massive corpse city, built immeasurable eons ago in loathsome architecture from the dark side of the universe. There was a heavy scent of thick sea salt, one that seemed to permeate into his very bones.

Freddy’s blades flew, words leapt from his throat to the tip of his tongue.

He was too slow.

0.2 seconds after the Expansion opened, all of his blades violently deformed and exploded.

0.4 seconds after the Expansion opened, the skin of all civilian passengers caught in it bulged up, appearing bubbly like bubble wrap.

0.6 seconds after the Expansion opened, Freddy’s skin began to bulge similarly, as if bubbles were trying to rip themselves out of his body.

0.8 seconds after the Expansion opened, the bubbles on all civilian passengers violently exploded.

1 second after the Expansion opened, the bubbles on Freddy’s injured arm exploded, blowing flesh and bone shrapnel that tore through the rest of his body.

1.2 seconds after the Expansion opened, Freddy completely lost his left arm, the stump not even bleeding as Batro’s Spinal Cord forcefully sealed off the blood vessels.

1.4 seconds after the Expansion opened, Freddy finished the words he was saying.

“Simple Reinforcement!”

Pure Hume flushed through his body, his skin ceased its violent bubbling.

He could not breathe even a sigh of relief, for then, the elderly man raised a gun and fired.

The bullet pierced through his chest, boring a hole through his left ribs and lung.

A second bullet flew and punctured his left shoulder. The elderly man did not stop, and a third bullet was shot.

This time, a black, frosted arm stopped it.

Freddy’s remaining forearm was completely frozen stiff as he fully solidified all liquid in a layer below his skin.

“The weakness of all Simple Meta Techniques is that they use pure Hume. Thus, they disrupt even the user’s abilities.”

While Freddy was maintaining his Simple Reinforcement, Batro’s Spinal Cord was fully deactivated, the automatic responses of his Extended Reinforcement would not activate. He did not naturally possess the ability to quickly react to damages to his body and implement his wound specific flash freezing.

Blood began to seep out of his mouth, his punctured lung burning with pain as he stood within this pocket dimension.

He normally would not flash freeze such a large area, as it severely increased his risk of developing thrombosis along with completely necrotising the entire limb where it was applied.

But at the moment, he decided the elderly man in front of him was a greater threat.

“As expected,” the elderly man sighed as he tossed the gun, “I cannot kill a Gifted with a mundane weapon.”

The entire left side of Freddy’s torso was dead.

He had completely cut off all liquid connections the moment the bullet passed through his lung, just to maintain the enclosed environment within himself.

It was luck, or perhaps an underlying condition of the elderly man’s powers that let Freddy lose only his injured arm.

He was also bleeding somewhere, that’s why Freddy couldn’t sense him with his power.

The elderly man let go of his cane, letting it slowly fall to the ground.

And it softly fell onto the sandy beach.

Both moved.

A palm redirected Freddy’s approaching fist, parrying it off target, instead, he gripped onto the old man’s shoulder, grappling him and tossing the elderly man into the ground.

Freddy moved in to punch with his other arm-

An upwards kick with surprising force sent him flying, Freddy’s frozen arm ripped off the old man’s coat, but little else.

“You’re not used to it yet,” his opponent commented, dusting some sand off his body. A bandage was on his right arm, stained red with blood.

“You’re right,” Freddy spat out, along with his blood and other bodily fluids, clutching his abdomen where he was kicked.

He threw off his torn clothing, revealing the water bottles he kept fastened to his chest, with a thought, they flew out, assembling where his stump was, forming a new limb.

The Bleed affected things based on their Hume level, his knives, which only had a minor amount of Hume invested were destroyed first, then the normal civilians, and finally him.

But this close to his body, Freddy could simultaneously keep up his Simple Imbuement and ability, allowing the bottles to be exempt from the Expansion’s Bleed effect.

This of course was only a temporary measure, as Freddy could feel himself steadily getting more and more thirsty, his Hume Status showing his weakening capacity.

“Having Simple Reinforcement is only the first countermeasure. You’re still stuck in the pocket dimension. Discounting specific ability interactions, the only way to escape is to either find the boundaries of the dimension and forcefully break out with pure Hume, activate a superior Expansion that forcefully overrides the current one, or kill the ability user that created the dimension.”

Even now, Freddy was eyeing the boundaries of the world. The sea around the island appeared endless, but that was just a visual effect. No human possessed the Hume capacity to fully create an entire world.

“You’re not coming to me?” the elderly man asked. “Then I suppose it’s my turn.”

The sand beneath Freddy’s feet started bubbling.

At that moment, he made his decision.

Freddy rushed forward, circulating what blood he had left as the beach exploded behind him. Rushing that old man and the city with maddening architecture.

His range had been lowered to a few metres, while his opponent's range was the entire pocket dimension.

The risk of him dying from one-sidedly receiving attacks while he tried to find the boundaries was simply too high.

And lacking his own Expansion, Freddy was forced to attempt to kill his opponent.

Explosions rocked the beach and sand was thrown everywhere, in a single moment when the sand flew high into the air, Freddy disappeared.

A single shadow on the ground was all the warning the elderly man got as Freddy fell from the sky, a single water bottle under his foot keeping his flight.

The elderly man dodged as a black fist slammed into the ground, throwing up sand and blocking his vision. As Freddy got up, he swept the ground, throwing sand directly into the elderly man’s face.

Blinded, the ground all around the elderly man started bubbling, and exploded before Freddy could capitalise on the advantage.

The moment the elderly man was visible again, a bottle slammed directly into his gut, crumpling him over with sheer force and forcing spittle flying. With a glare the bottle deformed soon after, as a white powdery substance materialised within before exploding.

Explosions rocked the ground where Freddy stood, but he flew high, avoiding most, but his drying throat forced him to land back onto the ground.

The elderly man slammed his fist into the ground, and a wall of explosions circled around himself, covering him completely from Freddy’s sight.

“Give up,” the elderly man called out from behind his wall. “This has become a battle of attrition, one where neither of us has a surefire killing technique. Except you are within my domain, and without a single way of killing me.”

He understood that, it was why he quickly ceased flying. His Hume was lowering at a rapid pace as he kept up four simultaneous abilities. Simple and Extended Reinforcement, his base ability and Simple Imbuement.

But of all Meta Techniques, Expansions were the single most costly one.

The heavy scent of sea salt seemed to have gotten weaker since Freddy entered, enough that it was noticeably easier to breathe.

That was the elderly man’s Hume Status.

For the first time, Freddy spoke back, “What pointless words, don’t you know that even a cornered rat will bite a cat.”

The explosions to prevent him from closing in was just a show of force, Freddy doubted the elderly man could keep the explosions up long enough for him to fully run out of Hume.

“That metaphor does not tell you what happens to the rat in the end,” the elderly man answered.

“Maybe I’ll only nibble off an ear, that’ll be-”

Freddy shot off without finishing his sentence. In a battle where every single second mattered, even concentrating on a conversation could provide the narrowest of openings.

He could only hope it was enough, as he forcefully slammed every drop of liquid he had in his body into the direction of the elderly man, forcefully propelling himself right in front of him. His arm made of water bottles raised high as water shot out after being explosively compressed, forming a sharp blade of ice that stabbed directly into his chest.

The elderly man vomited blood, and Freddy gripped the false arm with his power, forcing it down and deepening the cut.

And the ground underneath them started bubbling.

Freddy looked down, but it was enough.

A gunshot sounded out, square into his chest and heart. A second followed, creating a hole in the bottle with the ice blade.

The third shot into his leg, stopping his ability to further move without his ability.

The elderly man throwing away the gun, constantly exploding the ground and emphasising that neither had a sure kill ability that could end the fight in an instant.

It was all to make Freddy believe that the domain and meta ability were the real threats, not the second gun hidden on his body.

“A metahuman battle is fought and won with deception,” the elderly man told him, gun pointed right at his head, “remember that when you pass on.”

Freddy coughed, a cold spreading through his body.

With his last breath, he whispered.

“Requiem.”

Freddy dreamt of children’s drawings.

In a place like the children’s section of a hospital, clean and sterile, but with many dashes of prepubescent colour and crayon like drawings.

It was a place without windows, a place without doors leading to the outside world.

Here, adults with smiling faces took care of many children, attending to their every need, letting them play and run around and caring for them only as parents would.

It was where Freddy grew up.

And as he ventured through the familiar hallways, he found the large underground complex nostalgic, his heart aching for a childhood that had long since ended.

Slowly, as he walked, lights began to turn off. Slowly becoming dilapidated, or caved in.

Until Freddy stopped at a doorway with stairs leading upwards.

There he was, waiting, a black marble statue, dressed like a musketeer from mediaeval times, a statue half carved, a potential silenced, a hope diminished.

Freddy greeted him like a friend, despite only meeting him once before, “Aborted God.”

(Frederic Goethal.)

“I presume I’ve used my last chance?” he asked casually.

(Only once can a person defy death so. You know where you must go now.)

Freddy chuckled, somehow, the fact of his imminent death had wiped a lot of his worries, gone as easy as flicking dust off his shoulder.

All behind him was the scene of the experiment facility collapsing into dilapidation and wear. Every speck of rust was another person forgetting his name, every cave in was another place that forgot his name.

“It was a place where they experimented on children to see if they could force manifestations,” Freddy said.

The Aborted God was silent.

“They tried a variety of things, among many different facilities, but this one was rather nice. They tried to raise children in peace, all the while injecting the Hume infused blood into them. Trying to force a positive manifestation as those tended to be more powerful. I was the only one where it worked out, but I only showed increased Hume, not an ability.”

He chuckled, “That was, until I left and I saw the world for what it really is, that was when I manifested, in many aspects, I am much closer to a geneline than a manifested, I think that was why my first ability never had a Name.”

Peace ripped away, childhood naivety lost to grim reality.

“Thanks, I really wanted to see this place again.”

And he walked up the stairs, following the same steps he walked all those years ago.

An enormous amount of Hume exploded out of Freddy’s body. The elderly man felt his domain crack as so much pure Hume forcefully ripped at the altered reality.

Gunfire sounded out, as no matter how much pure Hume one had, it did not make them immune to bullets.

But it was stopped.

Freddy’s head was frozen black, he had decisively frozen the liquids surrounding his skull to allow his brain just a few more seconds of safety.

The elderly man deactivated his Expansion and both fell onto the empty train tracks, the train having long since left them behind. His Hume was too low, the smell of sea salt was almost gone from his nose, so he decisively ran away. Fleeing the area as he sensed the massive Hume bomb behind him.

But as he ran, his arm began to feel itchy, right where the cut he had made was.

He ignored it, and kept running.

Then the itching turned to pain, and he began to spit out blood.

He tore off the bandage where the cut was, finding the small incisions within the forming scab.

He died shortly after, not knowing what killed him, or how.

It was quite simple actually.

Microglass blades, hidden in a lattice structure within Freddy’s own water bottles, all with a microscopic drop of water inside. When the bottles were filled with water, it was impossible to see them.

Afterall, Freddy knew that the primary way to nullify his power was to be bleeding somewhere.

So he had hidden microscopic blades within his seemingly harmless water bottles. A condition he had was that he could only use them once an opponent broke the water bottles’ enclosed environment.

It couldn’t be used within the domain, with so much debris and explosions flying about, they would’ve been destroyed before reaching their target.

They could also not pierce skin by themselves, they were too fragile.

Only through cuts made by a person upon themselves to avoid his ability, can these blades enter.

So many different conditions, some were natural ones due to the consequence of the glasses’ nature, some were self-imposed ones.

But once it activated, Simple Reinforcement couldn’t stop them from ripping apart a person’s soft internal organs, even a Savant like Isaac had trouble deactivating their effect.

Afterall, the primary threat from Freddy was his ability to manipulate bodies and his vast array of flying knives.

What harm could a few water bottles do? Might as well just get rid of them to lower his manoeuvrability.

“A metahuman battle is fought and won with deception,” Freddy whispered with his dying breath, “remember that when you pass on.”

Aiden paused as he stepped out of the school, Ranpo landing on his shoulder.

Rubbing his brow, he closed his eyes.

“Odd… I just forgot something.”

“You forgot something?” Ranpo asked.

He nodded, “I’ve gotten used to the feeling, so I know I just forgot something.”

“What was it?” Ranpo asked.

Aiden scoffed, “How would I know, I forgot.”

He took out his phone to check the time, before narrowing his eyes at the last page he had visited.

“Why was I looking to buy gold?”

Grian Gry felt the carvings on his new white cane, an odd warmth in his chest.

After news got out that he slapped Tang Rou with his cane, the students had pooled together to give him a new one to replace the one he broke.

Of course, a mundane cane could not hold Monody, that cane was still in production, but if possible, he wanted to keep using this one for a while.

“Where’s the principal?” he asked a nearby student.

“Oh, he’s at the wall, Ad Infinitum.”

Grian raised an eyebrow, but with his new white cane, he found the way there.

“Principal General!” he called out.

Heavy metallic stomps soon answered as the massive man stepped away from the wall.

“One of our own has died,” the Principal General told him.

In the Principal’s office, there was a pierced bottle leaking water on the ground. A few moments ago, an ice blade had sprouted out of one end before it floated in the air and carved a message on the walls.

“Attacked. Forced to use Requiem. Info on powers leaked. B-Class. Train to OSW.”

And on Ad Infinitum, the wall that remembered all who carved their names on it.

There was a name that Principal General Wendall Richard Monger did not recognise or remember.

“Get Taylor, we will find out everything.”