Chapter 319: Hunter Of Parasites!

Bruce sighed thinking back at when he first met Vaelith. He still remembered the promise. The deal.

He would purge them. Not out of obligation alone.

But because leaving them meant allowing rot to spread.

He focused on the nearest anomaly, a mid-tier Awakened stationed at the edge of a settlement, patrolling alone along a snow laden perimeter wall. To ordinary sight, the man appeared normal. Alert. Breathing steadily.

But through Life Glance, Bruce saw the truth.

The host soul flickered weakly. The invader coiled tightly around it, threads embedded deep.

Bruce did not hesitate. He moved.

Distance collapsed beneath him as he advanced, snow kicking outward in controlled bursts with each step. Within seconds, he was behind the patrol route, unseen.

The possessed Awakened stiffened slightly, as if sensing something.

Too late. Bruce stepped forward into view.

The man turned, eyes narrowing. “You…”

Bruce’s gaze sharpened, Life Glance intensifying for a brief second.

He saw the invader react. The foreign soul recoiled, sensing danger.

Good.

“It’s time,” Bruce said quietly.

Time to perform his side of the deal.

Time to remove what did not belong.

Golden light began to gather faintly beneath his palm.

Then it vanished.

Bruce withdrew his hand slowly, fingers uncurling from the fabric over the Awakened’s chest as though nothing extraordinary had just occurred. The man before him swayed on his feet, breath ragged, pupils dilated in lingering shock. For a single fragile heartbeat, the world seemed suspended between two realities, one where something alien still coiled inside him, and one where it no longer existed.

Bruce suppressed his aura completely.

The golden radiance that so often marked his presence dimmed into nothingness. His authority folded inward. His breathing steadied. Even the pressure his existence exerted on the surrounding mana flattened into silence.

Then he was gone.

He did not burst forward. There was no sonic boom, no cracking of frozen ground, no flash of light.

He simply ceased to be there.

Moments earlier, he had stepped forward and placed his palm flat against the possessed Awakened’s chest. The invader had reacted instantly. Within the man’s body, the foreign soul had flared in violent alarm, tendrils tightening like a strangling vine around the host’s core. The host soul had flickered in blind panic, suffocating beneath the pressure.

Too late. Soul Shatter.

It was never spoken aloud. It did not need to be.

There had been no explosion of light. No dramatic surge that split the sky. Only a precise, sovereign vibration, so fine and controlled that even the air did not stir. It passed from Bruce’s palm directly into the layered structure of the parasitic soul, bypassing flesh, bypassing mana circuits, bypassing bone.

The invader had tried to recoil.

It had tried to harden its core.

It had tried to anchor itself deeper into the body but it failed.

The vibration struck its foundation, its very definition of existence, and fractured it from within. A silent scream had rippled across the spiritual plane, unheard by mortal ears yet violent enough to distort the unseen fabric of soul space.

Then it shattered.

Its essence disintegrated into fading motes before they could even attempt escape, dissolving into nothing as though erased from the ledger of reality itself.

The host had staggered backward, eyes wide, hand clutching his chest as if expecting to find a wound.

“…My body…”

Clarity had returned to his gaze in fragile increments, like dawn breaking after an endless night.

Bruce had already vanished before the man could look up.

Now he moved like absence.

Across the frozen plains he traveled in seconds, crossing kilometers without disturbing so much as a swirl of snow. He suppressed even the whisper of displacement, even the subtle ripple that powerful Awakened left in their wake. There was no aura. No projected killing intent. No warning.

Only Life Glance remained active.

Through it, he saw them.

Each anomaly burned against his perception like a stain in an otherwise pristine field of light. Foreign frequencies embedded within human cores. Discordant notes in a symphony that should have been singular.

He appeared behind the next target without warning.

This one reacted differently.

The possessed woman sensed him at the last possible instant. Her head snapped around unnaturally fast, vertebrae twisting beyond normal limits as the invader surged forward to seize complete control. Her pupils distorted, black veins creeping outward as the parasitic soul flared in defiance.

“You…”

Bruce’s palm was already against her sternum.

Soul Shatter.

The invader attempted to flee upward, ripping itself partially free, trying to escape through her crown in a desperate act of self preservation.

It shattered mid transition.

The fracture ran through it like lightning through glass.

Her knees buckled. The blackness drained from her eyes. She gasped sharply, as if breaking the surface after drowning.

Bruce was gone before her body struck the snow.

Across the settlement, chaos flickered in brief, isolated bursts.

A patrol captain stood mid command when Bruce materialized before him. The invader inside roared in fury, forcing the host’s body to lunge forward in a violent reflex. Steel flashed in the pale light, blade arcing toward Bruce’s throat.

Bruce stepped inside the arc without effort, movements so economical they seemed almost indifferent. He caught the man’s wrist, redirecting the strike with a gentle turn of his fingers, and placed his other palm flat against the captain’s chest.

Soul Shatter.

The foreign soul cracked like thin ice under sudden weight. A web of fractures raced across its core before it collapsed into glittering fragments that never touched the ground.

The blade slipped from numb fingers and clattered into the snow.

The captain fell to one knee, sucking in air as though breathing for the first time in months.

“…What… what was…”

Bruce had already dissolved into the distance.

In a distant watchtower, a young Awakened archer screamed as his reflection appeared behind her in the glass before she sensed him physically. The invader seized control fully this time, forcing her body to pivot and channel mana into a desperate spell. Her eyes turned black, the air around her warping as power gathered at her fingertips.

Bruce’s hand touched her back.

Soul Shatter.

The spell collapsed before it could form. The dark aura imploded inward, vanishing as if swallowed by silence itself.

Her bow slipped from trembling fingers. She stared at her hands as though they belonged to someone else.

“My… my body is back…”

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