Chapter 640: It Is Rude to Interrupt Someone when they are Still Talking

"Uh... my name is Benjamin Mark," he said it, the words coming out a fraction slower than usual, still edged with residual discomfort, "It seems you lot already knew who I was... Can I ask how that happened?"

Zanya’s smile did not fade. She drew her sword in one smooth motion.

The blade cleared the scabbard with a soft, clean sound and caught the light along its edge as it came to rest at her side.

"The only thing you need to know about us is that we are the Apex Girls, and we have come to erase you from our world."

Benjamin’s own smile returned, quieter and more deliberate than before.

He stood there, blue eyes steady on the six figures arranged in front of him. "Ah, but won’t it be boring if we didn’t get to know more about each other before I send you all back home, bruised and battered? You guys have wonderful personalities, and I would like to at least know you."

"I understand that you are a god-touched," Sekhmet began. Her voice had the low, resonant edge of a predator. The tip of her tail swept slowly back and forth across the cracked stone behind her, "but are you not jumping to conclusions by assuming you can simply beat us?"

Benjamin turned his head slightly, taking in the street around them.

The air itself felt heavy, thick with the overlapping auras of the four people facing him. It pressed against the skin like humidity before a storm, dense and charged and waiting.

Ordinary civilians and even lower-ranked magic users had already begun to fade away into side alleys and doorways, their instincts screaming at them to put distance between themselves and whatever was about to happen.

He watched a woman drag a child by the wrist into a shadowed doorway, her movements quick and desperate, her eyes wide with the particular fear of someone who had seen this kind of thing before.

Then he returned his attention to Sekhmet with an easy, almost lazy smile.

"Well, that’s true enough," he admitted. "In a real fight the outcome can twist away from whatever anyone expects. You four might actually manage to hurt me. You might surprise me."

His grin widened a fraction. "But that possibility is exactly what makes me more interested in—"

POW!

A brilliant golden light tore across the space between them before the final word could leave his mouth.

The beam struck him square in the face with the force of a siege weapon.

His body was lifted clean off the ground and hurled backward several meters. He crashed into the side of a shuttered shop, the impact cracking the brick wall, and slid down to the pavement in a heap.

Smoke curled upward from the blackened ruin of his face. The smell of scorched flesh and hair drifted on the wind.

Sekhmet threw her head back and laughed.

"Hahaha! How embarrassing!" she called out between peals of laughter.

One hand pressed to her stomach, as the sound rang bright and sharp through the emptied street, echoing off the walls, filling the silence that had followed the blast.

"I agree the spell was fast... but how does someone fail to notice a magical concentration that dense? Beautifully done, Saharit!"

Saharit lowered her staff a fraction, the residual glow along its length slowly fading. She did not smile, but a small, satisfied breath escaped her.

"As I was saying," a familiar voice cut through the lingering amusement, as if the previous few seconds had never happened, "that possibility is exactly what makes me more interested in our encounter."

Every head snapped toward the spot where Benjamin had been standing before the blast.

He was there again — same posture, same relaxed stance, same unbroken smile.

But not a single mark was on his face. The charred skin, the smoke, the violent displacement... all of it had vanished as though the golden beam had been nothing more than a shared hallucination.

Sekhmet’s pupils dilated, her fur stood on edge, and her tail froze mid-swish.

[I did not see him move,] she sent telepathically, the thought edged with genuine unease. [Was that teleportation?]

Saharit’s grip tightened on her staff. She raised it halfway, already preparing a next weave.

Her knuckles were pale against the wood. [That cannot be. There was no magical disturbance in the air at all. No spatial rupture, or residual signature. Teleportation always leaves something no matter how small it is.]

Hawthorne’s fists instinctively clenched at his sides.

[And why in the world is he unhurt?] he demanded across the mental link. [I saw his face burn. I watched the skin blacken and crack. That was not an illusion... was it?]

Benjamin’s smile faded. The easy humor drained from his expression, leaving something colder and far more focused.

He looked at each of them in turn, measuring. His eyes moved slowly, deliberately, from face to face.

"It... is rude," he said quietly, "to interrupt someone when they are still talking. You know that, don’t you?"

His gaze lingered on Hawthorne for a beat longer than the others. "At least I can be grateful that you lot actually see me as male. Hawthorne... heads up."

The name left Benjamin’s mouth like the soft click of a trigger being thumbed

Hawthorne flinched as though struck, then dropped into a defensive stance, boots scraping against the stone.

And Benjamin moved.

He launched himself forward in a sudden, explosive sprint, ignoring the women entirely.

The air cracked around him with the speed of his acceleration. Dust and small stones scattered in his wake, bouncing off the walls and rattling against shuttered windows.

Zuri reacted first.

Both hands rose, fingers splaying wide. Fire erupted from empty air on Benjamin’s left while jagged spears of ice crystallized on his right, the two elements racing inward to crush him between them.

The temperature in the street swung violently—searing heat one moment, bitter cold the next, but Benjamin did not slow.

He twisted his torso, planted one foot against the side of a low wall, and used the surface as a stepping stone.

His body rotated in mid-air, slipping through the narrow gap between the converging fire and ice.

The flames scorched the edge of his tunic; an ice spear shattered against the wall where his shoulder had been a fraction of a second earlier.

He landed, sprang again, and used the corner of another building the same way, treating the urban landscape like a set of uneven stairs.

Saharit’s voice cut across the mental channel, sharp and precise.

[Yehi or mekhaleh. Ya’er ha’or hazeh b’einei ha’mashmid, v’yimach et asher naga bo. Lo yisha’er zekher, lo yisha’er tzel, lo yisha’er shem. Kol asher yipol b’oro yihyeh k’ayin, kmo lo hayah me’olam.]

She thrust her staff upward.

A massive magic circle bloomed into existence above her head, its intricate ancient letters blazing with white light.

The circle rotated once, gathering power with a rising, high-pitched whine that set teeth on edge.

Then it fired.

A beam of pure white heat lanced downward and struck Benjamin dead center.

For an instant the street was illuminated brighter than noon. The beam’s energy converted flesh, cloth, and bone into superheated vapor.

Where Benjamin had been, only a shimmering column of ultra-heated gas remained, rising and dispersing into the air.

The stone pavement beneath the point of impact glowed cherry-red and began to crack.

Silence followed.