Chapter 51: Oliver Unique Ability
Just as Oliver, the middle-aged Spider Syndicate captain, lunged forward towards Adam with his arms outstretched, intending to grapple, he suddenly thrust one hand forward, palm open. "Shatter!" Oliver yelled, his voice filled with a strange, resonant power.
The moment he uttered the word, Adam, still in Eric’s body, felt an incredibly intense and bizarre sensation. The very air particles around him, particularly around his left side, began to vibrate violently, almost invisibly.
It was a deeply unsettling feeling, like the world itself was coming apart at a microscopic level. Adam’s advanced senses picked up the shift instantly. He tried to move, to shift his body to the right, away from the focus of the strange vibration.
But he was a fraction of a second too late.
Even as he started to move, the intense vibration concentrated on his left arm. There was no visible attack, no projectile, no magical energy he could see, easily block. Just that awful, intense shaking of the air itself. And then, with a horrifying tearing sound, Adam’s left arm –– seemed to explode from the inside out.
From the shoulder all the way down to the fingertips, the arm simply... came apart. Flesh, bone, and blood erupted outwards in a gruesome spray, splattering the stone walls and floor of the corridor. One moment, there was an arm. The next, there was nothing but a mangled, bloody stump at the shoulder, gushing crimson.
Oliver, who had launched the attack while still moving forward, skidded to a halt a few feet away from Adam. He stared at the horrific result of his unique ability, his own eyes widening slightly in surprise. A grim smile touched his lips.
"Well, well, Third Prince," Oliver said, his voice tinged with a mixture of satisfaction and surprise. He was breathing a little heavily from the exertion of using his power. "You’re more perceptive than I thought. I truly expected that attack to shatter your entire chest, not just an arm." He shook his head slightly. "But you sensed it, didn’t you? You tried to dodge. Impressive."
Even though Oliver was speaking confidently, a small seed of unease was beginning to sprout in his mind. ’He had met few people who could sense his ’Shatter’ ability before it struck, and even fewer who could evade it’
His power wasn’t magic in the traditional sense; it was a unique, innate ability he had possessed since birth, allowing him to vibrate particles at an incredible frequency, causing solid matter to destabilize and essentially tear itself apart from within. It was invisible, instantaneous, and usually, completely unavoidable.
The fact that this ’Prince’ had reacted at all, even if he was too late to save his arm, was deeply unsettling to Oliver. ’Very few has ever dodged that before,’ Oliver thought, a flicker of worry crossing his usually calm features. ’very few has even known what hit them until it was too late. How did he know where it would strike?’