Dill had seen this Skill once before. This was the snare employed by the Reincarnator Pitfall, whom Dill had fought on his way to the current battle. But with this Skill in effect, Hero himself should also have been unable to move.
“Can you really get away...without moving?” Dill muttered in astoundment and readied his shield in front of himself. There was nothing else he could do. In answer, a dazzling ring of light appeared behind Hero—an incredibly powerful manifestation of his psychokinesis, so powerful it was visible with the naked eye. The ring of light broke into fragments which flew through the air, tracing parabolas. One by one, they fell to earth like shooting stars. This was Meteor’s Skill: a psychokinetic saturation bombing.
“Protect Steel-Link! We can’t allow our Aegisthus to die!”
Against the constant barrage of light projectiles, Dill’s shield shattered, and he was blown back. Now directly exposed to the barrage, Dill heard the voice of his comrade, Rick. Another familiar voice answered, raising a battle cry.
“Wait! Stop...” Dill fell to the ground and tumbled awkwardly, then struggled to raise his head. The barrage of light projectiles paused momentarily, and he saw Hero fighting with his comrades from the Halberd Brigade.
The names of the men the Reincarnator, Hero, slew in this moment were...
First was Arthurs, who did not rely on a shield. He cried out his own name before challenging Hero to single combat. The first sword he slashed at Hero with was stopped by a repulsion field generated by Hero’s psychokinesis, and the backup sword he wielded in his left hand locked with the head of Hero’s spear. Hero then sent it flying out of view. Without a shield, Arthurs had nothing left to protect him, and there was nothing left for him but to be skewered by Hero’s spear.
Next to charge forth was Lawrenson, a skilled shield-user eager to defend the body of his fallen comrade. He tried to strike at Hero with his stout shield, forged in Vulcan, but this would be his downfall. With his shield in front of him, Lawrenson could not see the teleportation gate at his feet. He stepped through, and reappeared with his back to Hero, who instantly pierced his heart from behind. Darkness then fell over Lawrenson’s eyes.
After seeing two brave warriors fall in the blink of an eye, the Vulcans battling in the plaza were put to rout, but the seasoned mercenaries of the Halberd Brigade stood firm. Receiving covering fire from Rick Wake’s crossbow, grizzled Whitehead made a dash at Hero. His hands glowed red with the blood of Prodotis he had injected earlier, and the spear he clutched conducted that heat, giving off the same red glow.
Hero gave Whitehead a glance, then ignited flames at his fingertips using his pyrokinesis and gently flicked the head of his spear. With this alone, his iron spear was engulfed in flames; Hero was now a warrior armed with the same weapon as the approaching Whitehead, with the same fiery blood in his veins. Out of the two warriors, it was Whitehead who struck first. The cover fire provided by Rick had proved effective, but seeing Hero tilt his body to one side to avoid the crossbow bolt, Whitehead decided to first aim for his feet to reduce his mobility. Hero ignited his foot in flames in response, kicking Whitehead’s spear up high.
“Don’t take me for a fool.” The reason Whitehead’s spear had been sent flying so high was that he had released his grip on it the moment before Hero kicked it. Whitehead swept a dagger out from its sheath around his knee and slashed at Hero, who was still in the middle of his kick—but what Whitehead saw was really just a hazy illusion Hero had constructed through telepathy.
The real Hero, who was standing two steps to the side of the illusion as it dissolved, then thrust with his spear, skewering Whitehead and lifting his body high into the air for all to see. The veteran lieutenant was burned by the flames imbued into the spear, and Hero tossed the body aside once the screams had subsided.
This frightful scene instilled fear even in the hearts of the warriors in chain mail cloaks. Hero would not let up in his slaughter, and proceeded to slay the nimble Birkin, the Kynthia-born Knightley, the Vulcan knight commander Beckett, and the reckless Chamberlain. Still Hero’s bloodthirst was not quenched, so he went on to kill the archer Subal, Tobias, Vickers, Osborne, Talys, Scimitar, Dirac, Vaughn, Bennett, Driscoll, McBain Junior, Alan, Spencer, Welch, Usher, Saxon—Hero slaughtered every man named and flung their corpses away.
The Reincarnators were wildly excited by Hero’s unstoppable advance and began to attack in a frenzy to collect bodies of their own. As they scrambled to claim their prizes, even though they impeded each other in their competition, they still succeeded in hunting down and killing many people of Vulcan.
“You killed them,” said a low voice, the speaker holding back his anger. “You’ve killed my comrades...again!” Rust-colored eyes, opened wide, fell squarely on Hero. In his hands Dill held a spear and a shield, both taken from the hands of his fallen comrades.
Hero wordlessly assumed a fighting stance, and it was at that moment that it came. Snow began to fall...black snow. The sound of beating wings filled the air. The sky, which had been lit up bright as day by illumination flares, suddenly grew dark. People found this curious and looked up, narrowing their eyes—and the black snow looked back at them.
They were looking at bird feathers, an eyeball growing out of each one. This was not the same as the pattern on a peacock’s feathers—there was a genuine, plump eyeball protruding from near the center of each black feather. The eyes were embedded in them, and each iris was a vivid red.
A moment after their eyes locked with those of the feathers, after a few seconds of silence, the people started to scream. Frantically, they fled. From the sky, the being that scattered those feathers with eyeballs started its gradual descent.