Walter Ounce was a man in his forties. With silver hair due to stress and a slightly heavy-set frame. He had once had a wife and a daughter, but his wife ended up contracting influenza during one of her shifts at the hospital. Despite her getting preferential treatment as a nurse, she didn’t make it through. The disease took its course through the entire family, and Walter had lost his daughter a mere week afterwards. Without his wife’s income to help, and having lost his own job due to the illness, Walter was forced to downsize and move to a less prosperous area of town.

  In the weeks that followed, Walter was depressed and in poor spirits, indulging in alcohol and wasting money gambling. He held down labor positions for only a few days, as his age had begun to creep up on him. After a couple of months, Walter Ounce had found himself wandering inside one of the sewage tunnels underneath the city where he lived.

  Drunk and cursing the angels for his luck, Walter had been wandering along a certain sewage tunnel for some time before he began to scratch subconsciously on his arms. Then his legs, his feet, his hands. Before long, he was itchy all over, and his skin was starting to grow green scales. His eyes could see better and further, but his nails began to turn into claws and his teeth into fangs. After less than ten minutes, Walter Ounce lost his soul.

  Unfortunately, Walter Ounce wasn’t a Passenger and thus did not even have the chance to deduce his condition as stemming from a strange figure in the depths of the sewage tunnel. This figure, garbed in a white robe and black gloves, lacking a face capable of expression, seemed to be keenly interested in something up above the sewage tunnel, and the monstrous figure that Walter Ounce had been turned into was the perfect opportunity to probe a certain someone’s defenses.

  It was all a very logical, normal sequence of events.

  …

  SHUNK

  An explosive force of sound barreled out of Gusto’s mouth, slamming into the reptilian monster and driving it into a brick wall on the far side of the street.

  SHUNK

  Gusto didn’t give it a chance to scramble out of the way, just as it was freeing itself from the wall, his next attack slammed into it, causing it to cough up blood as some of its scales began to fall to the ground.

  Adam manifested a large orb of light and hurled it towards the reptilian creature, momentarily blinding it and allowing Gusto to close the distance towards it again.

  Tatatatat

  Like a gatling gun going off, Gusto sent a series of high energy booms into targeted areas on the monster, causing it to recoil and drop to the ground. Spitting out a bit of blood, Gusto smiled.

  “Today is NOT your day, monster. I happen to be a very angry Chosen.”

  SHUNK

  The monster, which had scrambled into the small road, was sent skidding on the ground as some of the stone of the road was scraped off on it.

  Adam felt somewhat bad for the thing. While it was clearly a monster trying to kill them, it could hardly be said that it posed a threat to them. Even if Adam were on his own, a monster of his caliber would be within his bounds to defeat. Let alone with Gusto being in the mental state he was in. It was practically overkill.

  Tatatatatatatatatatatatatatatat

  Blow after blow after blow rained down on the monster. Each tat of Gusto’s tongue to the roof of his mouth sent a force roughly on par with a .22 caliber firearm. The blows rained down on the helpless monster again and again, causing its body to jerk from the impacts.

  As it lay on the street, oozing out blood, Adam got a splitting headache and a feverish sensation. He could distinctly feel his bones grow warm, and dizziness assaulted his head. However, as soon as it appeared, the feeling dissipated.

  Sometime during that experience, the monster had stopped bleeding.

  Monsters were often only as powerful as the person they were created from, though obvious exceptions existed. Monsters made from rituals or by the intervention of outside forces could be incredibly powerful, but most monsters were created when a mortal harmonized with a Realm accidentally or too swiftly without taking the proper precautions in their environment. Thus, most monsters were actually only about as strong as normal humans (from a spiritual energy perspective), or capable of killing average Passengers at most. As a Chosen, Gusto had no need to concern himself with noticing that the blood of the monster before him had stopped flowing. It was all a natural sequence of events for someone of his power level.

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  Adam outstretched his hand towards Gusto.

  “Wait! Something’s wro-”

  BOOM

  An explosion of fire spewed out of the reptile monster’s mouth, sending Gusto flying backwards and singing some of Adam’s hair. Ringing sounded in Adam’s ears as the reptile monster stood back up, its body reforming new scales and its form growing in size and muscle until it towered over two meters tall.

  Gusto coughed up blood and struggled to stand. After having been hit by the blast, it was his turn to skid across the roadside, scouring his ribs and lacerating his hands and arms.

  Adam wasted no time. Thanks to his training practice, he was more or less prepared to use magic in combat now, a contrast to his inexperience in the past.

  Reaching into his pocket and producing a metal arrow shaft, he focused his attention on remembering the buffeting winds of the Many Winged Angel’s Realm, which he had briefly been inside of alongside Hannah and Bruenor. This was the same power that allowed him to “fly” for limited periods of time at high speeds that he had used to attempt to locate land in that mysterious Realm. This time, he was merely redirecting the speed towards a projectile.

  He launched the arrow shaft at the reptile monster at extreme speed. With a whish sound, it crossed the distance in the blink of an eye and slammed into the creature, forcing it to take a step back. He prayed to the Many Winged Angel momentarily thanks to the respite.

  "Seraphim of Isaiah's Vision of the Throne, grant me succor in my time of need. By the grace of God, present a portion of yourself unto my body. Amen."

  SHUNK

  Gusto had stood up and, despite his injuries, managed to direct another sonic blast at the creature.

  Unfortunately, due to its strange power boost, the monster was only minorly harmed by the blast, and soon, it tensed itself and pounced towards Adam.

  Adam was prepared to be attacked by the monster and had even expected its speed to increase given its new state, but the sheer aggressiveness took him off guard. It was all he could do to act on instinct now.

  Adam tensed himself up, mimicking the roiling muscular energy of Bruenor, and…blocked the monster’s attack handedly.

  Not wasting a second, Adam continued to act on pure instinct. He shifted his feet, dropped low and twisted his entire upper body into a palm strike with a resounding THUD. It was as if Vice Admiral Bruenor Flos himself was present at that moment, such was the force of the strike. The monster was sent backwards, barely able to stay standing.

  SHUNK

  A sonic boom slammed into the monster. Not from Gusto’s mouth, but from Adam’s.

  Adam was still acting on instinct, but his body closed the distance almost instantly, with another thud thud of heavy slams into the monster, Adam sent it backwards dazed.

  It made a swipe at Adam, who managed to block it with great difficulty. However, he dropped the book he was carrying, causing it to clatter onto the ground and open to the last page.

  Counterattacking just as swiftly, Adam outstretched his arms as if praising the sun, causing a radiant sense of heat to land on top of the monster, forcing it to halt its follow up attack to skitter backwards again.

  Then, Adam’s hand outstretched.

  The scents of feces and manure left the air as ruby red light materialized in Adam’s outstretched hand, shooting towards the monster. A crispy, burning smell emitted from the creature as it screams soon stopped.

  Though the effect was far from the full power of the ruby charm of the past, Adam had managed to recreate the power of the charm he had previously used!

  As the reptilian creature’s corpse sizzled on the street, Adam went to pick up the book. Accidentally looking at the last paragraph, his blood ran cold.

  “It is the opinion of his investigative report that the Diell Instrument likely was split into a pair of magical items upon the death of the Emperor. These magical items were granted to the Emperor’s closest aid. Upon the death of this aid, they were passed to his children. That is to say, Hellig and Hrime Diell have inherited an Instrument capable of killing a Devil.”

  Adam stooped to pick up the book and pretended he didn’t see anything. Gusto had a look of shock on his face.

  “You…Uh…Adam? What was that?”

  Adam wore a quizzical look.

  “What was what? I don’t think I did anything, did I? I just prayed a bit?”

  “Adam, you said something, but it sure as hell wasn’t a prayer in any language I’ve ever heard…You sounded like you were about to Shift. It was that language. And then you just…Destroyed the monster, without any difficulty!”

  Adam glossed over Gusto's concern, too preoccupied with the text he just read.

  “...We should get back to the bastion and make a report.”

  “...Uh, yeah, let’s do that.”

  That’s weird, I feel fine. Hell, I feel damn near superhuman! My head isn’t even swimming, I could take on a half dozen of those monsters, I might even be a match for Uncle Bruenor right now!

  Wait, what am I saying? How could I possibly be a match for Uncle Bruenor? I don’t even remember fighting the monster…

  Adam glanced down at the sizzling remains of the reptilian monster he had just killed with a complex mixture of emotions.

  The entire encounter was a very reasonable sequence of events from start to finish.

  ...