John stepped ahead of the group, saying over his shoulder, "Leave this to me."

"You sure, kid?" Doug asked.

"Leave it to me," John repeated, trying not to let any hurt leak into his voice.

It wasn't as if he could blame them for leaving him out of their budding team. The fault was his own. It always was. That was a difficult fact he'd been forced to come to terms with, throughout his life. Even if he didn't understand the particulars, it was clear there was something he was doing wrong that consistently rendered him an outcast among his peers. He'd thought he had been doing fairly well with these guys, but he could see the same pattern playing out, and he wasn't going to let it hurt him.

It's fine, he thought to himself. I was trying to play the part of a mysterious lone wolf anyway.

Five green-souled monsters awaited him in the next section of the endless bus. The windows had gone dark, but flickering light from the bus' internal fluorescents gave him a decent enough impression of what he was dealing with, with Soul Vision filling in the gaps. The androgynous humanoid monsters each stood a head taller than him, and were wrapped head to toe in bandages soaked in deep red ichor. What little of their skin was visible through gaps in the bandages was covered in crisscrossing cuts that oozed viscous gore. None of it dripped to the floor, the bandages absorbing it all despite looking fully drenched. Squinting with Eagle Vision, John could just about make out some kind of script written on the bandages, though it was in no language he could identify. It looked kind of like Wingdings.

The monsters remained apathetic to his presence all the way up until he passed the threshold from the next bus onto theirs. Then, they attacked.

John had been ready for it. When the five mummies lunged, Accelerate was already a heartbeat into its sequence, and the time dilation let him dart forward, ducking past their reaching hands. They were alarmingly fast, but Accelerate easily surpassed them. Coming close, he had time to see that their fingers were twice as long as what you'd expect from an adult of their height, and with too many joints.

Deciding to relieve them of their grotesque digits, John lashed out with Mana Blade at the nearest mummy. Impressively, it saw his attack coming and tried to dodge, but Accelerate gave him too great an advantage in speed. Blade sprayed as John halved the length of the fingers on its left hand.

The severed fingers spun through the air, and it tried to catch them with its right hand. When it missed, the bandages around its arm came unravelled and lashed out with the speed of a whip, appearing fast to John even in the middle of Accelerate. It curled around the fingers with impossible dexterity for a length of fabric. The monster then pulled the bandages back to itself with a flick of its wrist, catching the fingers with a good hand and sticking them to their stumps. The bandages of the injured hand snaked up and wrapped around the fingers, holding them in place, not quite good as new, but definitely usable.

John cursed under his breath as he was forced to dodge the other mummies. The moment their kin had been injured, they'd closed ranks around it, blocking him from finishing the job. Eight elongated limbs reached for him, and John lashed out with Mana Blade once more. This time, he merely scored deep cuts along the mummies' arms, driving them back. Where he cut, though, the bandages came detached from the ruined skin they'd been covering, and lashed out towards him at frightening speed.

Left with no choice, John Flash Stepped back blindly, not at all keen to find out what would happen if those bandages caught him. There was a moment of disorientation as he came out of the skill, and Catfall kicked in, getting his feet under him. Threadwalker proved synergistic with Catfall, and John found himself crouched atop a handrail. Wary of how the Aura system would interpret his retreat, he immediately transitioned to Soul Arrow, nocking a magical projectile and loosing it in one rapid motion. He'd ended up about five metres back, pretty much at the opposite end of the bus, and the arrow covered that distance in the blink of an eye.

He'd aimed for the mummy whose fingers he'd severed, and the arrow flew true, soaring straight for its skull. Three of the other mummies snapped out bandages in their comrade's path, attempting to block the arrow. Their bodies seemed to move in slow motion, but the bandages themselves appeared fast even in John's state of dilated time.

But the arrow was no mundane working of wood, metal, and feather. With magical sharpness and enhanced strength, it speared straight through the bandages and carried on through the mummy's head after it. The shot pierced its bandaged skull right where the eye would be, if it was anatomically identical to an actual human, which wasn't guaranteed.

To John's relief, the mummy collapsed like a discarded rag doll. Black blood flooded from the countless wounds that had previously just been oozing, soaking the bandages in an instant. The blood seemed to discolour the bandages until the faint script was no longer visible. Once that happened, the bandages fell loose, and the monster simply broke apart into chunks of meat and blood.

+1200 Aura

It was up there with the most disgusting things John had ever seen, and he'd gone through an edgy phase of browsing rekt threads on 4chan in his youth.

The other four mummies stared down at their comrade in apparent shock, and John took advantage of their distraction. In four heartbeats he had as many Soul Arrows loosed, aiming for each of the four mummies' heads. The arrows shot across the distance.

Just before they hit, the runic script on the mummies' bandages gained a sickly green light. The bandages snapped tight around their bodies, squeezing so hard that more gore and ichor bubbled out, soaking the bandages further. Then they moved.

It wasn't so much that the mummies gained a burst of speed themselves, but more that they'd completely given themselves over to their bandages. The strips of fabric seemed to pull their heads out of the path of the arrows, just twitching them to one side with mere millimetres to spare.

John grimaced. They were fast enough to dodge his Soul Arrows, and Accelerate was about to run out. Against one of these things, he still wouldn't be worried, given the abilities he'd built up so far, but facing four of them might actually be a bit of a challenge.

At that thought, his grimace turned to a grin.

John activated Precognition just as Accelerate was about to end, and a second later he was leaping into the air, dodging away from a storm of whip-fast bandages. They slapped down on the railing he'd just been crouching on, leaving distinct dents in the metal. If those hit him, he'd feel it.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

So he wouldn't let them hit him.

An Air Step let him double his jump, carrying him away from another bandage attack. The bastards had only attacked with three of them, leaving a fourth to ambush him wherever he ended up. The Catfall and Threadwalker synergy kicked in again, and he landed on the back of a chair a few rows away from where he'd started, on the opposite side of the bus. Precognition ran out, but he didn't need it anymore.

John activated Heat Vision.

The infernal heat moved faster than any projectile, and the mummy monster he was glaring at stood no chance. Having already confirmed that taking out the head killed the creatures, his focused gaze set another monster's skull aflame. It didn't die so instantly as the other had, but it soon collapsed into a burning, bloody heap.

+1200 Aura

John had already moved on. The remaining three mummy monsters screeched at him through mouths that bisected their faces halfway up, spanning the entire width of their skulls. They looked kind of like the parody Canadians from South Park, and the thought took away all their intimidation factor in John's mind.

He found himself laughing as he leapt away from their attack once more, another Air Step carrying him away from the mummies' follow-up strikes. They spared him not a moment to rest, now, throwing constant attacks his way, their bandages lashing out so fast they blurred. But even with their speed, they had no answer for the manoeuvrability Flash Step and Air Step gave him. He darted back and forth across the bus for a moment, pondering his next move. Two different Spells had slain the first two mummies, and he was inclined to keep up the trend.

For the third mummy, he darted close with a Flash Step and lashed its head off its shoulders with Wind Shear before it could react. The wail its two remaining comrades gave was music to his ears.

He used Accelerate only to give himself more distance. Slaying them within dilated time would be too easy. The kills had to look good. Twenty heartbeats was more than enough time to come up with ideas. When Accelerate ended, he threw himself into Flash Step, appearing behind the monsters. They spent a moment frantically looking around for him. Pitiful.

"Sorry, are you guys buys?" he asked. "It looks like you're wrapped up in something."

+400 Aura

The two mummies spun around, their movements jerky from where they were essentially being controlled by their bandages. The bandages whipped out from their arms, spearing towards John like lightning-fast snakes. They were incredibly fast.

Heat Vision was faster. He could have burned their heads off right then and there, but he didn't want to use the same method twice. Instead, he merely burned away the approaching bandages of one monster while pivoting to the side to dodge the other. Even without Accelerate, his Agility made him pretty damn nimble.

Then came an occurrence he should have foreseen. The bandages that had shot past him suddenly went taut, then pulled. The mummy monster attached to them was hurled towards him like it had been dragged by a bungee cord.

John's eyes went wide. He threw himself to one side, using Air Step to give himself extra distance. The mummy monster hurtled past him and slammed into the wall, where he saw its bandage had wrapped around a handrail. Rolling to his feet, John threw himself into another Flash Step towards the other end of the bus, seeking to ensure both monsters were in front of him. Couldn't afford to get flanked.

It turned out he hadn't moved a moment too soon: both mummy monsters had a dozen bandages each extended to the spot where he'd been just a heartbeat prior.

Yikes, that was close.

His heart was racing, but he couldn't let the panic that had briefly overcome him show. Forcing a smirk onto his lips, he stood to his full height.

"Damn, you guys almost made me use 5% of my full speed," he drawled. "Now, you can revel in that accomplishment before you die."

+600 Aura

The mummy monster spun to face him once more, but John had already taken action while he was speaking. It was a relief to find that Summon Undead still worked on the mangled mounds of meat the first three mummy monsters had left behind, though it was somewhat disappointing that their fast bandages didn't come with them. Still, three shambling piled of gore rose up and wasted no time attacking their former comrades.

The two still-living—or still-active, he supposed—mummies screeched in alarm at the sight of their revived kin, and lashed out furiously with a veritable storm of bandage whips. Each strike tore away chunks of flesh, and it immediately became clear John's assembled undead minions wouldn't last more than a couple of seconds.

But that was fine. He didn't really need any more than that.

"You're not my mummy," John quipped as he fired an Elemental Bullet at the nearest mummy.

+400 Aura

The combination of ice, electricity, wind, light, and embers shot towards its target faster than the eye could track, and it had a rather interesting effect on the bandaged fiend.

Its head snapped back as the projectile pierced its skull, only for the electricity to send convulsions through its body, loosening the bandages' hold on the ruined flesh. The wind exacerbated the problem, getting in the newly created gaps and widening them. Finally, the embers caught the newly-loosened bandages alight, with the blood-soaked body unable to douse the heat and allowing huge holes to burn through the fabric. In no time, the monster was falling apart, the bandages no longer able to hold it together.

+1200 Aura

The flash didn't get much of a chance to affect the mummy struck by the Elemental Bullet, but it made up for that by seemingly blinding the other one. Ignorant of its kin's death, the final mummy flailed around, unseeing. Before, it had been utterly overpowering the animated chunks of flesh John had directed at it. Now, it was too uncoordinated, and they were able to get close and wrap themselves around its body, holding it in place and dragging it to the ground.

What followed was quite an unpleasant sight. His undead minions weren't exactly nice to look at to begin with, and seeing them create countless mouths to devour their monstrous enemy was too much to handle.

John looked away. He reached into his jacket pocket to fetch his sunglasses. Putting them over his eyes, he turned back to face his comrades.

They all looked a little pale, staring in fascination at the unfolding scene behind him. He couldn't blame them, exactly. Morbid fascination wasn't exactly something new to him—as aforementioned, he'd seen quite a lot in his edgy phase.

More than that, John felt something akin to triumph swell within him, but it was tinged with a hint of smugness, pride. None of them would've been able to pull off what he just had. In fact, some of them would have struggled against one of the mummy monsters. Even with their teamwork, he was sure they wouldn't have been able to handle it as comfortably as he had.

This was how it was going to be. If he was going to be apart from them anyway, he might as well make sure he stood above them.

"You're kind of sadistic aren't you, John?" Doug mused with a thoughtful expression.

John just shrugged.

It didn't take long for the last mummy to die, its bandages falling loose. More out of curiosity than any expectation of finding the secrets of the magical fabric, John moved to the nearest body and nudged its discarded bandages with his toe. His heart leapt to his throat when it immediately wrapped around his boot, but it didn't attack.

Quite the contrary, John felt his mana sphere ripple, and a connection formed. With a flex of thought, the bandage lashed itself upwards into his waiting hand. The method to control it came to him as easily as any of the other Spells that had implanted their knowledge into his mind.

"Huh," he muttered to himself. "Loot."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.