“Now, listen up.” Growled the voice of Kain’s ‘rival’ to his newest toy. “You know full-well what will happen if you fail your mission, so get going and make sure that you crush that damn bastard!”

The sentient tool did not respond. This was not because it simply did not care, but rather that it could not. Its own master had forbidden it from replying verbally to any voice, even that of its master. This was, of course, a safety measure to keep any secrets from being divulged. After all, who knew if and when that insane entity was watching or listening? Besides, it was made for the purpose of killing its intended foe and not much else, so needing to do much of anything else was excessive at best and downright pointless at worst.

“There!” its master grumbled as it forced open a pathway from his world to another. “Now, go! Get your dumb ass in there and kill that insubordinate bastard!”

The super soldier walked towards the breach in reality and, without even bothering to care if it was a potential death sentence, entered the gateway. As soon as it did, its master closed the path behind it and tried to make itself less conspicuous. Its master needed to give himself an alibi in case the entity that had chosen to use him as its champion came back and saw what he had been up to and to get such an alibi he needed to be as far away from this place as he could go as quickly as he possibly could.

…

Kain was now able to stand on his own two feet for more than a few minutes without the annoyingly omnipresent lethargy he still partially suffered from kicking in again, and to him, this was a good step in the right direction. Part of him was wondering if the flying fortress-city in which he had spent so long was part of the reason he felt so little impetus to do much else besides sitting on that big, fancy chair. However, even up till now he had been unable to tell if the place actually had a will of its own or was just a terribly haunted area that would just do as he wished without comprehending why.

It was during one of the daily attempts he made to try and regain the vigor he once had that he detected something flying towards his pad at a breakneck speed. If this were a certain anime/ manga series about an alien version of Sun Wukong, Kain would have said that the approaching being had a Power Level roughly around four or five times his own back before he had taken a nap o that overly ornate chair. Now, however, their power would be a nearly complete reverse in terms of comparison, with Kain being more than a match for the approaching foe.

In all honesty, he figured that even someone like Zalga would be able to dominate this incoming opponent, even if only by a relatively small margin and also because of her size, magic, and sheer durability. Based on what Kain was aware of, Zalga could have been a difficult foe for the approaching menace to face anyways, but if she emerged from her joint training with Alexis at this very point even Kain was unsure of how much of a one-sided beatdown their match would be. This was to say nothing of Alexis’ gains, which kind of made Kain wonder if Zero Noir had actually gone full weeb and made a Hyperbolic Time Chamber of his own, just to make sure that Alexis and Zalga would be able to spend years building their power without bothering him too much.

However, regardless of such things, the coming enemy was not going to stop for anything or anyone, and Kain could feel that intention as clear as day. As much as this fool that sought to challenge him in his current state would want to believe, Kain was still more than able to put such an idiotic imbecile down with ease. However, Kain was slowly starting to feel the lethargy creeping back up on him again. If his estimations were correct, he would have, at most, around 3-4 minutes to put this fucker down, and that was only if the incoming hazard kept up its current pace and arrived when Kain thought it would.

And so Kain waited, holding back the creeping lack of energy with sheer force of will until at last the mook smashed through a stained-glass window and landed a bunker-buster of a punch straight to Kain’s face.

Which did absolutely nothing aside from making Kain annoyed.

The overly muscled goon whaled on Kain a bit longer, and when the barrage of kicks and punches were put together, they would have hit with enough force to easily cause massive earthquakes. But, to Kain, they were less effective than breathing gently in his general direction. The swole bruiser did not seem to notice this, and Kain eventually decided that enough was enough. He could feel his body beginning to enter ‘sleep mode’ and figured that he had seen everything he needed to.

Kain’s hand reached out slowly, its bearer still struggling to put much force behind anything it did, and slowly grasped the face of Kain’s attacker. At this junction, Kain could have easily just crushed the man’s skull, but Kain decided to try something else instead. The power behind the strikes leveled upon him slowly began to diminish even as Kain held the suicidal goon in place via an application of combat-oriented facepalm, and eventually, the blows ceased altogether and the body of the jacked and roided foe began to shrivel up.

This whole scene took over ten minutes of real-time to take place, which by all rights should have meant that Kain would have fallen to the ground unconscious as the damnable fatigue took hold of him. Instead, he held his position even as the enemy in his steely grip was reduced to a desiccated husk. Finally, the goon was so drained of everything that it began to turn to dust in Kain’s hand, at which point Kain closed his hand into a fist and turned the mummy of a man fully into the dust from which he had come.

As the dust from the incompetent foe settled on the ground and was absorbed by the corrupted, flying former Vatican fortress-city, Kain realized just how much time had passed. He was honestly surprised at how… energetic he felt. It was as though the ever-present tiredness that had gripped him constantly ever since he had woken up was practically gone, and in its place was nothing but the same vigor that he had at his disposal before that business at the end of the war with the Luminas Church.

Of course, he still felt somewhat like shit, but at the very least he was now fully capable of moving around. At least, he was for a time. Eventually, the fatigue he thought that he had banished began to encroach into his body and mind again, but at the very least it was much less potent than it was before. Prior to his draining of that nameless goon, the feeling he had to deal with constantly was as though he had been staying up for over 48 hours in a row with little food and drink and no breaks while working on a very high-stress project. Now, however, he simply felt as though he was just about 4 or 5 hours late for bed and that he needed an extra meal and a few glasses of water.

With this newfound knowledge of how to deal with the curse that had kept him from doing anything for quite a while, Kain directed the massive fortress he resided in to bring him those who had been trapped in its walls, be they alive or undead. The cursed fortress city obliged, and it brought forth the first, or perhaps second victim of the day for Kain to drain to dust. With his eyes filled with naught but insanity and paranoid schizophrenia, everyone’s favorite usurper Sultan was drawn up from the endless hell he had been consigned to and was unceremoniously tossed at Kain’s feet by the very residence that had tortured him so.

Shivering and crying out in animal noises as he endlessly scratched at his body to the point of drawing blood, Nimroad I was to be the next being to be drained of everything and left as dust on the wind. But he would not be the last, not by a long shot. That dubious honor belonged to a person that had been broken long before the war with Arbiana was even a pipe dream. Kevin, still lost in the empty nothingness of the mind that he had consigned himself to via his own boneheaded decisions, had already suffered immeasurably at the hands of those whom he had wronged and who still survived. He had been left in this place and had been forgotten about by all save a few, and now he was to meet his final end.

And of course, anyone who knew what happened when people summoned to this world died there would have known that, even after his death on Mortis, Kevin would not be having a good time.