A silence fell over the battlefield, so terrifying and suffocating that even the wind sweeping off the cliffs seemed to hold its breath.

Across the wide-open clearing, thousands of eyes... Coalition warlords, traitorous Veynar warriors, and broken loyalists almost kneeling in the dirt... were glued to the center of the crater.

The white limestone dust, stirred by an invisible pressure wave, hung suspended in the stagnant air like a shroud of pulverized bone.

There, in the center of the dark pool of spilled blood, the black-armored form of Sol began to move.

It was not some fluid, athletic motion of a warrior rising to his feet, but was terrifying like an unnatural reanimation.

He rose languidly, his limbs dragging against the gravel like a puppet pulled by frayed, invisible strings.

His spine was bent at a sickening angle, his left shoulder hanging limp and dislocated, his head drooping forward as if his neck had been utterly snapped.

"Im... Impossible..." a Zerith squad leader stammered, his hand trembling so violently that his spear clattered. "His ribs were broken! I heard them break! Chief Vane had caved his chest in!"

Panic spread like a contagion through the dense ranks of the Coalition. To a high-layer practitioner, the laws of physiological impact was something they had personally experienced countless times.

A full-force, strike from a Layer 4 warlord wasn’t just simply a heavy blow; it sent a shockwave of compressed essence tearing through the internal organs of the target.

A single full-power strike from a Layer 4 beast like Chief Vane could burst the skull of an ordinary Layer 3 warrior like a ripe watermelon. Yet the black reaper, after taking a barrage of those exact strikes, was standing up.

"What is that thing?!" a Marauder bellowed, taking an involuntary step back into his front-line formation. "Wasn’t he dying! How is he standing?!"

Then, the horror deepened even further.

Under everyone’s shocked and horrified eyes, Sol’s body began to writhe.

Beneath the cracked, dented surface of his black armor, his flesh and muscle tissue twitched frantically, bulging and shifting as if thousands of microscopic parasites were crawling rapidly beneath his skin.

SNAP!

A loud, sickening pop echoed across the dead quiet battlefield.

Sol’s dislocated left shoulder violently jerked backward, snapping back into its socket with a wet crunch.

CRACK! BANG!

The sharp, rapid-fire sound of breaking and resetting bone echoed through the battlefield like firecrackers.

The inward-caved area of his chest armor bulged outward as his shattered ribs were forcibly welded back together by the raging, golden-crimson ocean of soul essence he had violently siphoned from Malphas.

The dark blood leaking from his nose and mouth receded, cauterized instantly from the inside by the sheer, boiling heat of the consumed Layer 4 soul-energy.

It was as if an invisible hand had pressed the reverse button.

Within a span of six agonizing seconds, his bent, broken body straightened out completely, returning to top condition right before their eyes.

Sol slowly lifted his head and opened his eyes. In an instant two blinding, cold, and predatory neon-crimson eyes ignited like twin stars born from the bottom of an abyss.

A slow, unsettling grin spread across his bloodied, dust-caked face... a wide, creepy smile that stood in terrifying contrast to the cold, dead stillness of his eyes.

"Ah..." Sol muttered calmly, his raspy voice carrying a quiet, unnatural resonance that inexplicably echoed in the ears of every single warrior across the entire battlefield, clear as a bell. "You really did not hold back... taking full advantage of my weakness."

...

Before Chief Vane, the Zharun Chief, or any of the Coalition leadership could digest the impossibility of what they were witnessing, Sol moved.

BOOM!

He vanished, yeah really vanished from the spot.

The limestone bedrock where he had been standing exploded downward, sending a violent shockwave of dust and white stone fragments multiple feet into the air.

His speed surpassed the visual tracking limits of every Layer 2 and Layer 3 warrior present on the field.

o the Coalition soldiers surrounding the perimeter, all they saw was a sudden, dark blur tearing through the air, followed immediately by the sound of displaced wind screeching like a dying bird.

"Where is he?!"

"Find him! Form a wall!"

Coalition warriors panicked, wildly spinning their heads and swinging their weapons at empty air.

Then, right at the eastern edge of the central area, two wet, choked cries sounded simultaneously.

The entire battlefield snapped their heads toward the noise, freezing in complete, petrified shock.

Sol was standing casually behind two Layer 3 Zharun shadow-stalkers... the elite guard who had been standing over the bound forms of Kira and Zeyra.

The two shadow-stalkers were completely frozen in place, their bodies stiff as statues, their eyes wide with uncomprehending horror.

Their faces turned a deathly, sallow pale as dark red blood began to leak slowly from their open mouths.

Slowly, with agonizing slowness, both warriors looked down at their own chests.

Poking completely through their back and emerging out of their sternums were two bare, blood-drenched hands.

Each hand was tightly clenching a thick, dark crimson object that pulsed violently in the open air.

Two fresh, beating hearts.

With a smooth, terrifyingly calm motion, Sol pulled his arms backward.

RIP!

The wet sound of tearing muscle and snapping cartilage tore through the silence. Sol extracted his hands with a fierce, decisive pull, leaving two gaping, fist-sized holes straight through the centers of the warriors’ torsos.

As if an internal valve had suddenly been switched, fountains of bright, arterial blood erupted from both holes, spraying high into the air and showering the nearby gravel.

The two Layer 3 elites collapsed face-first into the limestone mud without uttering another sound.

Under the horrified gaze of the surrounding Coalition soldiers, Sol stood there in the blood rain, looking down at his crimson-soaked palms. With a cold, impassive expression, he slowly closed his fingers.

SQUELCH!

He crushed both hearts in his fists like overripe, water-filled balloons, letting the thick crimson gore leak through his fingers and splatter onto the dust below.