CHAPTER 96

Draul took a step backward, making Sunspot's attack miss by a hair's breadth while he slammed Shaw with an ice punch.

Shaw just grinned thinking the Draugr didn't know what his abilities were and continued attacking the man with fervor, taking in the strikes as he stacked up on the strength it gave him. 

It was a common misconception when it came to those who knew about Shawn's mutant status. Though it was in the very minority, since most of them were dead, the ones who knew thought his ability was to absorb force, kinetically speaking, but it was much more expanse than that. 

He could absorb any type of energy out there, heat, psionic, waves, electromagnetic, sound, as long as they were in large quantities. He could also absorb more obtrusive things like the cutting energy from a sharp object or the pelting from ice. A wondrously universal ability he had. 

He truly felt that both he and Sunspot could defeat the famed Draugr if they kept at it with such pace since Sunspot could absorb solar radiations and other heat particles to augment himself to ridiculous degrees that breaking the sound barrier with a reflexive punch was very easy. All they needed was to stall the Draugr until they accumulated enough energy. 

Shaw jumped at the Draugr from overhead while Sunspot fired off higher condensed solar flares from his hands that were more than hot enough to melt through reinforced steel. 

As if to mock them, the Draugr used one hand to hold his strawhat in place and did something that neither of them thought possible. 

He cut Sunspot's beam with a chop that the concurrent beams could not pass through the spot he chopped at. It felt like there was something blocking the beam from going further. 

While for Shaw, he held him overhead before proceeding to slam him twice on the ground and then flung him towards Sunspot, making him collide into the beam the young man was still blasting. 

"Not yet enough." Draul beckoned on them with a 'come hitherto' flex of his hands. 

Shaw grunted, his body releasing a glow of energy that surrounded him while Sunspot flew up, changing tactics. 

"I think we'll have to take it a little more seriously, sir." Sunspot spoke as he body released more energy to the point that the space around him darkened making him look like a phantom. 

Draul only raised an eyebrow at the words of the youth but didn't say anything else. 

He looked at Shaw then at the boy called Sunspot and had a pensive look on his face before it brightened. 

"Excuse me, your abilities, it allows you to augment yourself proportional to the amount of energy you can take in and release right?"

Sunspot looked confused as the clearly, should be, hostile invader was taking his time to ask him if his abilities. He deliberated answering but given what he's learned from Shaw, he knew that would be a fool's bargain. 

"What makes you think so?" He wanted to know the man's observations and know what were the limits of his knowledge in regards to his abilities. 

"… Because I can see it." Draul stated in a matter-of-fact tone. 

He wasn't lying. He really could see the amount of energy the boy was constantly taking into his body. It was a ridiculously huge amount and the ease at which he augmented it throughout his body astonished Draul. 

With the amount the boy was taking in, he should have been way stronger like continental level strong. The only person Draul knew who could presently absorb solar radiations or any type of energy as fast or nearly as fast as Sunspot was Bruce Banner, the Hulk, and himself. 

From what he could see, Sunspot was using as much energy as he could absorb, but…. 

'His loss. All I want is to test how far my base strength has grown.'

"Forget about that for now. From what I know, Shaw isn't that far from the limit of energy he can absorb and assimilate, so I'll be focusing on you more in a bit."

The two men had different expressions on their faces at Draul's words. 

Shawn's face completely blanched for a second before he got his disarrayed emotions in control as his mind worked out frantically on how the man knew anything whatsoever about his abilities. Not only that, he was also fearful about the man's scope of knowledge about his abilities' limits. 

'He's more dangerous than I thought. From the way he first subdued Emma, I think he has some form of mental defense, that's why he has her on death's doors, meaning we can't count on her abilities in this fight. Guess it'll boil down to who hits harder and even if I am not confident to contest with him that regards, he definitely doesn't know what the upper limit of Sunspot's abilities looks like.'

Shaw could feel a little pricking weight on his body and knew that what Draul said had some evidence of truth to it. If what he said about seeing Sunspot's energy was true then maybe he was also right about his limits. Shaw could feel the temperature going down and it was not due to the ice that they were standing on. 

Shaw looked towards the yacht and he could still see Sublime, Buckman and Emma still held afloat while he was engaging them in battle. 

'I'm getting the feeling that we should have waited to hear why he wanted Buckman.' 

Shrugging off the trepidation he was starting to feel as the fight went on, he signaled Sunspot with his eyes and the youth immediately knew what he was gunning for and he acted in accordance. 

He used one hand to blast the icy frozen sea between them and the Draugr, while he used the other to shoot at Shaw who was waiting wholeheartedly for the attack. 

Draul, seeing all this, only waited for Shaw to be fully charged before he made a move. Cracking his neck, a savage grin appeared on his face. "Ready or not, hear I come."

This time Shaw was able to react as his body's reflex was empowered to a cap below his current limit, unfortunately being able to react did not by any way mean being able to fight back. 

He learnt the hard way that lesson. 

Draul crossed the distance in the blink of an eye, taking his sweet time to perform a round-house kick to Shaw's brain box. Shaw to his credit was able to form a guard at the side of his head to block the kick but points were deducted as he flew a few meters before crashing into the ice even as he absorbed a part of the force from the kick. 

Sunspot's surroundings on the other hand looked like a hazy glow of black. The flare around his body lowered in intensity while the glow deepened. 

The very second Draul comprehended what his transformation could represent, Sunspot appeared right in front of him with a speed far surpassing that of sound, and punched at his head, going for a full lethal strike. 

There was no way Draul could conjure a block made of ice before the punch reached him nor could he fully dodge as the strike was right before him so with a grunt, one of his hands blazed red and he caught Sunspot's fist right before it impacted his face. 

The look of surprise and shock on his face as he saw Draul react to him at such close range was bare for whoever could see, even on his featureless face. 

"That punch was pretty strong. Looks like I can't keep up to you in my base in terms of speed. What about power eh?" The red glow on Draul's hand subsided. Stretching his free hand forward, he attempted to grab Sunspot by the scruff but the youth was quick on the uptake and released high degrees of scalding heat to discourage the Draugr's action but that proved meaningless as he was still caught, with the man ignoring how hot he was. 

Sunspot grabbed Draul by his collar in retaliation to keep him grounded while the punched Shaw rushed at Draul from behind. 

Punching all the ice blockades spawning in front of him on his path to the Draugr, Shaw joined his two fists together in a hold as he jumped up, aiming his locked hands for the Draugr's head. 

The was a few inches away from his targets when he saw zooming red in omnidirectional linear paths as they impacted him on his chest. 

The recoil of that action caused him wheezing as he slid back, his body spasmodic with the booms from the fight between Sunspot and the Draugr. 

He could feel that he was dangerously close to nearing his limits on how much energy he could absorb. 

The ice started cracking as the booms and explosions became louder. The sea underneath started seeping through the crevices, foreshadowing the broken roots of the ice. 

Shaw turned around intending to engage the Draugr in battle but what he saw gave even him goosebumps. 

Two of the Draugr's hand were glowing red as he exchanged blow in equal magnitude with Sunspot. 

The battle was above the realms of what Shaw was comfortable with. 

With Sunspot, the youth was at his wit's end with the living legend he was engaging in combat with. He and every notable member of the Hellfire Club had been informed on the knowledgeable scope of what his abilities were and even with the upper estimate they gave him for any observation error. Fighting him now, Sunspot could tell that it was still underestimating him by a huge margin. 

It was like the guy had eyes everywhere on his body and those laser beams, God! What kind of beams were those that they could change directions like that? 

He could shrug them off given that his body absorb any heat related properties like a sponge but that didn't mean that they didn't work as perfect distractions. 

And his strength. 

'Gaddamn!'

The moment his fist started glowing, it felt like the fucking man started wearing tanks for biceps. Sunspot could still keep up with him but he had the feeling that the man could still go harder which was proven as the motherfucker drew lightning from thin air and struck at Sunspot. 

Lightning constructs formed around him, all with different shapes and sizes. Sunspot knew he could shrug off most strikes from the lightning but that didn't prevent it from doing its damage. Case in point, the lightning around the Draugr dug into the ice and before Sunspot could react, lightning shot out from the ice around him. Electricity travels through water faster than it does through most states of matter. 

Sunspot found out that he was wrong to skip physics class as the lightning drew him forward, greeting the waiting fist of Draul with his stomach. 

"You really are strong aren't you? You still are not at your upper limit but I doubt you could push out more power." Draul, while controlling the water particles on his body back to the ground. "And here I thought I could see the true limits of my base form." He muttered to himself but it didn't escape the ears of Sunspot. 

"Hey son, what's your name?" Draul asked. 

Sunspot was skeptic as the man was clearly their enemy. He looked at Shaw for instructions only to find the man wrapped in a cocoon of ice with only his head visible. 

He looked at Draul and alternated it with Shaw before coming to a decision. He was wise enough to understand that the man before him wasn't fighting him at his strongest, though what that was he didn't know. 

"Da Costa. Roberto Da Costa." He answered. 

"Word of advice kid, don't hang around these parts of the circle. Sure the money, prestige and power you get are astonishing, but then someone like me comes along and then…" Da Costa watched in shock as the cocoon turned red while Shaw tried to scream but even his voice was muted. 

"… people like you die. Do me a favor, be careful of the circle you choose to align with."

Da Costa did not know what to say. The Black King just died like that. 

"Here, give them a call. I'm sure they'd be willing to take in a stray like you. They're big softies like that."

Draul formed a small ice card and passed it to Da Costa and engraved on it was a line to the X-Mansion. 

He left the young man alone on the ice and floated to where Emma Frost was held. He could see the terror within that calm façade of hers. 

"What am I to do with you?" He looked at her for a while and all he came up with was nothing. He had no reason to kill her as compared to everyone here, or at least their comic versions, hers was quite miserable. 

The number of deaths and betrayals and even distrust she received from friends and foes alike made her easily one of the characters to sympathize with. 

'Speaking of deaths…' Draul looked at the frozen corpse of Shaw, the prick who he could finally recognize as Empath, the frozen bodies of Buckman and Sublime. 'Yeah, definitely miserable.'

He released her and with a squeeze of his hands, killed Buckman. 

He floated Sublime towards him and prepared to get to work. There was no way he was carrying a frozen virus, talk less of a man in his Murcielargo. 

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