Strip

Fate had aimed directly at Gregovich's head. Instead, the projectile visibly curved around the man and hit the wall directly behind him, punching into the surface and making a crater-like hole.

Gregovich laughed loud and hard, hands on his knees as he struggled to breathe through the laughter. When he managed to somewhat calm himself, still releasing involuntary giggles, he spoke.

"What kind of horrible assassin are you? Didn't you do your homework, murderer? No projectile can harm me! You may have fixed your own Guilt, but the rest of this world still bows to my Manifestation!"

"You say that like you're some all-powerful god," Fate said, holstering his useless railgun.

Gregovich's giggles stopped. He sneered, eyeing Fate like he found a pile of shit on his bed. "You really are stupid. In this world, we ARE gods. Even an Awakened, insignificant to even the weakest Exemplar, could wipe out a planet of mortals with no difficulties except time. An Avatar, like you and I, has every right to be worshipped."

"And that's why the Advanced are such garbage," Fate retorted, walking forward.

"You torture, enslave, maim, kill, all in the name of creating some perfect person. You do all of this, every day, and yet you're still too blind to see that you are in the wrong. Maybe if you felt just the slightest bit of guilt for the horrible things you've done for the Advanced, you wouldn't have stalled out at the Avatar Level for centuries."

Gregovich's face twitched. Fate caught a glimmer of something in the man's eyes. A little bit of anger for sure, but also…

Guilt.

Gregovich's aura surged, his strength leaping from the Avatar Level to the realm of Personifications in an instant. His aura strengthened, the Divine Energy he subconsciously emitted growing heavier and more tangible. The guilt quickly faded from Gregovich's eyes, replaced by a mad glee as his sneer widened into a grin, the grin of a child who was just told he could have the entire toy store.

Fate's eyebrows scrunched together. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

Gregovich started moving closer, Fate having stopped in his tracks in surprise.

"Of course, the first time one of you sick fucks ever feels the slightest remorse for your actions, it makes my job harder," Fate complained, resuming his stride.

They continued toward each other, swallowing up the short distance between the two. When the distance between them was only a few feet, they attacked, Fate throwing a punch and Gregovich stabbing with his knife.

It was then Fate remembered he was now fighting a Personification.

His punch, thrown straight and true, twisted to the side, contorting his arm in an uncomfortable and unnatural way to glide harmlessly past Gregovich's face. The Personification's knife, which would have sliced Fate's cheek, deviated its course to aim directly for Fate's eye. It was only Null's intangibility that saved him, activated at the last second and allowing the knife to slip straight through him, Gregovich's momentum causing the man to stumble.

It was a profoundly strange feeling, having an object slip through you like you weren't there. Fate felt a chill run up his back and make his toes and fingers tingle.

He ignored the feeling, pivoting on his heel and kicking at Gregovich's back. The kick missed, diverted to sail harmlessly above him. The momentum carried Fate forward at an odd angle, causing him to trip and land on his back. Null's usage made him fall straight through the floor, his eyes, which had been instinctively closed in preparation for impact, opened to find darkness all around him.

He cursed to himself, forced to wait now until he hit the basement below.

When he slipped through the ceiling, he stopped his intangibility and flipped in the air, landing on his feet. He looked around. One wall had dozens of large barrels stacked next to and on top of each other, with spigots on the fronts. They probably held wine.

Another wall was row upon row of expensive and purely ornamental armor, polished to a shine. To Fate's left were raised stone stairs leading to a wooden door reinforced with steel.

He rushed up the steps, hopping through the door using his intangibility, and ran through the castle, heading back to the dining room. On the way, he stripped his shirt, jacket, shoes, sock, and pants off, leaving only his underwear, Ex Ear, and mask.

He ignored the blushes and screams from the maids and the glowering of the guards as he ran. He was a bit sad to leave behind his Dragoons, but they were quickly becoming irrelevant anyway. He could always get them back later, too.

It may seem odd, but he had a good reason to do so. When he attempted to kick Gregovich in the back, he clearly felt his shoe, sock, and pant leg all tugging his foot and forcing him to miss.

Fate was sure that becoming a Personification allowed Gregovich to use his ability's influence on even inanimate objects now. And based on how Gregovich's knife had similarly deviated, Fate suspected something was helping the man's attacks now as well.

Fate burst through one of the doors to the dining room, finding Gregovich staring at him expressionlessly. The Personification looked Fate up and down.

"You've embraced your role of clown fully, I see. Come then. Let me put you out of your misery." Gregovich raised his knife.

"I may not like this, but I'll still be laughing over your corpse in a few minutes."

The two men charged at each other as if in sync, Fate letting the knife pass through him harmlessly as he punched the man in the nose. He used a trick he learned from Autumn to imbue his Divine Grasp into his strike.

It didn't amplify the power nearly as ludicrously as Autumn's now four-times multiplier, but it still backed his punch with about half of his Divine Grasp, around 800 pounds. Thankfully, he didn't miss.

The impact rocked Gregovich's head back, blood gushing into the air. Gregovich lowered his chin, grinning through bloody teeth. What should have cracked his skull and shattered his nose instead only flattened his nose a small amount, causing a fair amount of bleeding, but no more than a normal nosebleed.

The blood gushed down his face, coating his mouth and chin like he had just bitten into a chunk of raw meat.

"Weak." Gregovich's grin somehow stretched even further.