Deviant: No Longer Human

CLAAANG!

A single raised gauntlet caught the spear mid-strike, twisting it aside with precision. No counter, no kill attempt. Just enough force to nullify.

"You've stepped into my skies without leave!" the man with spear spoke, voice swallowed and thrown back by the tearing of the firmament. "Answer me!"

He has a red armor, or what looked like one, a brown hair, tired in long ponny, looked very primitive in first look, not like a king at all, but it was the Emperor of Unified Pangean civilization, Ageis.

It's just warriors of this era carried minimal armor, especially in this world there was nothing that could actually harm or protect him, so there was no need for an armor.

The executioner, on in black armor and molten gold skin, he tilted his head, his voice came out as incomprehensible buzzing.

However a dent in space opened briefly beside him, swallowed the sound waves and turned it into something Aegis could understand.

"Permission?" his voice echoed evenly said evenly, "How about you stay out of my way, and let me do my work instead?"

Kaelvar face turned stern, if not for the restrictions on him, not unable to attack any target outside the one assigned, he would have taken out Ageis easily.

Right now he could only passively defend himself.

BOOOOM!

Another spear thrust, met with nothing but a turn of the wrist.

The tip carved a line through the sky that took three seconds to heal.

"What work?!" Aegis' teeth flashed, rage in every muscle.

"You're asking the wrong question," Kaelvar replied. The faint etchings across his armor flared, glyphs shifting so quickly they blurred.

"You barge into my world, draw steel in my home, and I'm asking the wrong question?" the spear hammered down, sending Kaelvar sliding half a step.

"You've already mistaken me," Kaelvar said, turning the spear once more, "for the one who owes you an explanation."

"I'll drag one out of you!"

"You'll what?" The white glow behind the visor narrowed, almost amused. "Keep swinging? Keep missing?"

"Then fight me! If you're here to kill, then kill!" Aegis roared, the force of his punch punching through three layers of cloud and punching a hole into the rift behind Kaelvar.

Kaelvar's voice turned colder,"…You're not the one I came for."

But Aegis didn't stop. No matter what was said, his strikes kept coming, like a man possessed. Inside, it wasn't madness. It was the fracture that comes when someone who's always been the strongest meets a wall that swallows his blows without effort.

Ever since clawing his way out of the Graveyard of Gods, from weak boy to supreme Emperor, Aegis had lived on the peak, looking down. That kind of arrogance didn't vanish; it shattered violently when challenged.

Kaelvar, the hairless, molten-gold figure neither male nor female, sighed, the faint furrow between his brows the only betrayal of thought.

A sword hung across his back, a plain hilt swaddled in black miasma, the kind of weapon that felt like a dare to even look at.

Dangerous didn't cover it.

He drew it. Not to kill, not yet, but to defend, his body moving like a shadow against the flurry of spear strikes.

The two blurred upward, breaking past the clouds, ripping into the dark edges of the outer space.

"…So that's how it happened?"

From the below, Wang Xiao's eyes narrowed.

Aegis wasn't even the target, the idiot had gone for the Transcendent who came for Yang Yuhuan, and got himself killed instead.

Pathetic.

But before the fight could wrap up, the sky cracked again. Not lightning, gold.

SSHHH!

Molten droplets the size of houses began to rain down, burning through clouds, rock, and ocean alike.

The horizon went from storm to apocalypse in seconds.

"What the hell!" Wang Xiao muttered, looking up just in time to see Aegis hurl his spear away and grab Kaelvar's sword.

For the first time, Kaelvar's mask turned sharply, that white pulse behind the visor flaring, shock.

SHHHHRRAANG!

The blade split his stomach, blackened steel tearing like paper. Golden blood flooded out, thick and luminous, painting the sky like the sun was bleeding.

Aegis didn't wait, e just pulled the blade free and sliced again, clean and final.

The glow inside Kaelvar's body swelled, first under the skin, then breaking through as cracks of light.

"Oh, that's not good..." Wang Xiao's eyes widened.

VVVRRR... BOOOOOM!

The explosion wasn't just bright; it was the kind of light that erases everything. The sky folded in on itself, the sound ripped into the marrow of the earth.

Then…

It arrived.

A hand big enough to blot out continents, pushing through reality like it was silk. Bony white, ancient, each joint like a mountain range. It closed around the explosion, contained it, a thousand big bangs compressed into a trembling sphere in its palm.

"...You've got to be kidding me," Wang Xiao whispered.

It squeezed, the blast vanished.

The hand withdrew.

And then, only white, blankness!

When Wang Xiao's eyes opened, he was lying flat on wet ground, the smell of scorched stone choking the place, a thousand miles of land was charred black; the ground still filled with leftover heat.

It happened.

A Transcendent actually detonated.

Permanently.

That sword… it wasn't just powerful, it was final weapon.

And that hand…

That wasn't a Great Lord. That wasn't even in their league. That was something else, something that could swat Transcendents like ants.

If that thing was an Executioner's superior…

Then the food chain he'd been playing in just grew a few links higher, and he was nowhere near the top.

"The sword…"

Wang Xiao froze mid-step, for a moment, instinct told him to rush in and grab it, but then he stopped cold.

Hours passed before anyone came for the wreck that had once been Aegis. The body, blackened and half-melted, hit the earth like discarded armor. The soul was gone, burned clean by that hand and that explosion. Only the shell remained… and next to it lay the sword.

Aurora was the one who picked it up.

Wang Xiao blinked slowly. "Aurora?" What the hell was she doing here? Oh right...

But if she had the sword now… was it the same one she'd once shown him? The same one she'd given him back then?

The thought hit hard enough to make him test it.

He reached for it, not physically, but across space and time. The connection flickered, then pushed back, resisting him like a stubborn animal.

Only one could exist.

He frowned. "I've had it this whole time…"

If he went back, he could use it. That old, ugly piece of rust could kill a Transcendent. But the version he had now had no shine, no hum, no threat, just dead metal. And yet… it wouldn't come to him. Wouldn't pass through space-time.

That resistance was proof enough.

He let out a slow sigh. "So maybe I do have the answer to killing an Executioner… but can I even use it?"

If it worked, it would burn everything. And if that hand interfered again?

Too many questions... Too many tangled threads.

He turned back toward the cave, mind heavy with the weight of it all. Whatever this world's history was after today, he didn't care anymore.

He had his answers.

And he had three things to do before he left.

The first, he saw her as soon as he stepped inside the cave.

Yang Yuhuan knelt before the flame, unbothered, her white shoulder catching the glow as she calmly drew the essence of flame into herself.

If he was right, she'd stay like this for hundreds of millions of years, trapped without realizing it, until someone in the future finally locked the chain on her.

"Weak body, huh…" he muttered, his voice curling into something darker. His exhaustion bled away, replaced by an old hunger.

If his own body was fragile, then he'd find out how hers held up. And if she couldn't resist… then maybe she'd give him the only joy this world had left to offer.

That was the first task.

The second, waiting for Yuriko, to finally uncover the endgame of her reincarnation cycle.

The third…

Something he hadn't told anyone.