Mozart clutched his head in pain. For some reason a sudden wave of dizziness and sharp headache hit him, as if someone had shoved fingers straight into his brain and stirred it violently.
Luckily the bizarre sensation lasted only a heartbeat before vanishing completely.
"What the hell was that?"
Just as Mozart wondered what could possibly cause such a strange reaction, his enemy refused to give him any breathing room.
Shadow Servant Sanson spotted the momentary opening and charged forward instantly, swinging his massive guillotine blade.
A flash of blue light caught the corner of Mozart's eye. He looked up and saw the attack already closing in on his face.
Mozart bent backward in a dramatic ninety-degree arch, dodging at the last possible second.
The blade whistled past his cheek, shearing off a few strands of hair.
After narrowly escaping, Mozart quickly put distance between them and patted his chest in relief.
"Whew~ That gave me a real scare. I thought my handsome face was finished."
He added a narcissistic little comment about his nearly-severed cheek, then resumed firing long-range magical bullets from his conductor's baton, expertly kiting the Shadow Servant and steadily draining his stamina.
Having been reduced to a Shadow Servant, Sanson's power had dropped dramatically. His attack speed and movement were both sluggish, making it easy for Mozart to keep him at range and wear him down.
Mozart still didn't know the black shadow's true identity, but he had already begun to suspect during their clash.
The shadow attacked with ferocious hatred, always aiming for vital points and showing an extreme obsession with decapitation—repeatedly trying to slice straight at his neck.
Although Mozart had formed some guesses earlier, the shadow's current appearance was so drastically different that he couldn't understand why it had deteriorated so badly.
Now, however, the weapon and the fixation on beheading made it almost certain.
There was a ninety percent chance this shadow was Sanson himself.
The moment Mozart confirmed it, pure disgust twisted across his face.
"What rotten luck. Just wandering around and I run into the very last person I wanted to deal with."
"Hey~ Mr. Executioner, what's with that ridiculous look of yours?"
"Did you finally accept that Marie hates you, so your Spirit Origin collapsed and turned you into this?"
Shadow Servant Sanson hadn't recognized Mozart at first. From his perspective, Mozart looked like nothing more than a writhing mass of tentacles with no distinguishable features.
But the instant he heard that familiar mocking tone and felt that unmistakable presence, realization hit.
"Amade…us…?"
"Amaaaaaadeuuuuus…!!!"
The moment Shadow Servant Sanson recognized Mozart, he became violently agitated, as if the composer held some inexplicable obsession deep in his heart.
"Oh~? Why so excited the second you see me?"
Mozart looked at the frenzied shadow in confusion. Why did Sanson always lose it the moment he appeared? Had he done something?
He thought for a moment…
"Could it be… you've finally realized?"
"That as far as scum goes, I'm a hundred times better than you?"
Mozart's taunting tone and smug expression were so infuriating they would make anyone want to punch him in the face.
Sure enough…
The already agitated Shadow Sanson seemed to undergo another surge of emotion after those words. His frenzy boiled over.
He did something that should have been impossible in his Shadow Servant state.
"Ha—ah… ah—!"
"Stop—stop joking around!!!"
"Stop joking around, Amadeus…!!!"
Shadow Servant Sanson actually spoke!
Mozart's provocation had enraged him so deeply that he forced words out despite the difficulty. His speech was broken and stuttering, but the burning anger came through crystal clear.
Mozart's eyes widened in shock when he heard the Shadow Servant suddenly speak.
"Wait, you can talk?"
"You couldn't speak before, right? Did I really snap you out of it just by saying a couple things?"
Earlier in the fight Shadow Sanson hadn't uttered a single word. Yet after a bit of taunting he suddenly regained the ability to speak.
Was it really that simple? Did he have a hidden talent as a doctor in addition to being a musician?
But that wasn't the end of it.
Not only could Sanson speak now, but after Mozart's words he seemed to recall something. He suddenly roared at the sky, voice thick with defiance.
"I won't lose to you! I absolutely refuse to lose to you!!!"
The instant he finished shouting, Sanson's body began to brighten. The pitch-black "outer skin" covering him started peeling away.
Before long, Shadow Servant Sanson had completely reverted to normal Assassin Sanson.
Mozart: "???"
Mozart stared blankly at the restored Assassin. Just a few words from him had turned the man back into a proper Servant.
He blinked in utter confusion.
"…Huh?! Hey, don't tell me you actually sobered up just from listening to me?"
"For real? What exactly did I do to make you hate me so much?"
Mozart scratched his head, genuinely bewildered.
As far as he remembered, he hadn't interacted with Sanson much at all. So why did the man hold such a deep grudge?
The now fully rational Assassin Sanson, upon seeing Mozart, did not calm down. If anything he grew even more agitated, practically shouting:
"Amadeus!!! I have loathed you for a very long time—ever since I first heard that requiem of yours that turns death into entertainment!"
"What the hell do you take people's deaths for?!"
Mozart looked at him with extreme surprise.
"…You sound like someone who actually values human life."
"Does the guy who invented the guillotine even have the right to say that?"
Mozart genuinely couldn't grasp Sanson's logic.
Strictly speaking, he couldn't comprehend how an executioner could speak with such conviction.
"I created the guillotine precisely because I didn't want the condemned to suffer! I did it out of respect for their dignity!"
"It allows the sinner to lose their head instantly. Their consciousness cuts off immediately, without feeling the slightest pain."
"That's why I kept refining my technique—to ensure every person I executed could die without any suffering at all."
Sanson spoke passionately about his lifelong professional ethics, his goals, and his principles as an executioner.
Mozart listened in silence for a few seconds. He could feel the depth of Sanson's obsession with executions.
However, instead of respect, what rose in Mozart's heart was…
"…I really didn't expect this, Sanson. For an executioner, you're surprisingly… twisted."
"You've executed so many people. Your hands are soaked in so much blood."
"How can you maintain such ideals while doing such a bloody job that takes a life every single time you swing?"
As he spoke, Mozart recalled his own view of humanity and looked at Sanson almost with pity.
"You're simply a hopeless fool. Filthy creatures like humans aren't worth that kind of effort."
Sanson reacted violently to those words. He rebutted with great agitation:
"You're wrong, Amadeus! That is exactly the part of you I hate the most."
"Humans are beautiful. That is the biggest difference between us."
At that moment Mozart finally understood why Sanson found him so unbearable.
Their conflict wasn't about trivial matters.
It was a clash of ideologies.
Mozart saw humans as filthy while Sanson saw them as beautiful.
These two completely opposing worldviews were the root of Sanson's intense dislike.
And now, because of that ideological conflict, it wasn't just Sanson who found Mozart repulsive.
Mozart had also begun to find Sanson extremely irritating.
The two men stared each other down, eyes filled with murderous intent.
Just as the battle between them was about to explode—
A new figure suddenly stepped into the fray.
"How pathetic, Sanson."
The two men about to clash turned toward the voice at the same time. There stood Black Marie, who had arrived on the battlefield at some point.
The moment Sanson saw Marie he became ecstatic—so much so that he didn't even register the first words she had spoken.
His reaction made one wonder whether he had truly returned to normal from his Shadow Servant state.
"Oh!!! Marie!!!"
"I never expected to see you here again!"
Then Sanson noticed something off. He looked at Black Marie's outfit and aura and froze.
"…Wait a minute, something feels wrong. Marie, when did you change your clothes?"
Mozart, on the other hand, recognized Black Marie's state instantly.
"Ah~ So it's Marie in this form?"
He recalled the lump on his head from the last time she had beaten him. It still throbbed faintly at the memory.
Looking at the excited Sanson beside him, Mozart could already predict what was coming. He couldn't help but sigh.
"Making Sanson deal with Marie in this state?"
"Master… isn't that a bit too cruel?"
The highly excited Sanson seemed about to ask Black Marie something.
But First Ascension Black Marie looked at him with a loving smile and spoke in an extremely gentle voice:
"Your ears are quite sharp, Sanson. Did you not hear me say how pathetic you are just now?"
"Eh?!?"
Sanson was stunned. It took him a long moment to process.
After the pause he finally sensed something wrong. Why did Marie's words carry such heavy sarcasm?
In his memory, would Marie ever speak like this?
Her gentle expression and soft tone were exactly like Marie's, yet the feeling was completely different.
Black Marie kept her loving smile and gentle tone as she continued:
"Sanson, you keep asking me how I felt when you executed me, don't you?"
"I can tell you right now exactly how I felt when you beheaded me."
Hearing this, Sanson instantly became thrilled and forgot all his previous doubts.
The biggest obsession that had brought him here was to ask Marie what it felt like when he decapitated her.
His expression filled with excitement.
"How was it? Was it incredibly blissful? Was it—"
Before he could finish, Black Marie cut him off, still wearing that loving smile and speaking in the gentlest tone possible.
"Of course it felt disgusting."
"The thing I hated the most was your guillotine."
Sanson…
***
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[Marvel Apex Predator]
Synopsis:
What would happen if you were born into a world filled with bizarre races wielding even stranger powers, as a species whose sole purpose is to evolve by devouring every other race?
Chaos.
That's exactly what happens when the universe's one and only true Apex Predator is born into Marvel.
This is the story of how Xenomorph tears apart the cosmic food chain and reshapes the hierarchy of life itself.