[1000x Crit]: One Sword, a Thousand Ghosts

The assassin's professional composure, forged in years of bloodshed and secrecy, crumbled into dust. He stared at the stump of his arm, then into the cosmic depths of Amrit's eyes, and his will to resist shattered. Terror, pure and absolute, was a more effective truth serum than any alchemical concoction.

"The... the Night Heron Guild," he stammered, his voice trembling. "We were hired through a blind contract. The payment was delivered in untraceable spirit stones. We don't know the client's name."

Amrit's gaze remained cold and analytical. A blind contract. A professional guild. Kavi was more careful than he had imagined, insulating himself with layers of deniability. The assassin was telling the truth; he didn't know the ultimate source. But a guild would have records. A trail.

"The Night Heron Guild," Amrit repeated, committing the name to memory. "Where is your local contact point?"

"A tavern in the lower city… The Gilded Cage," the assassin choked out, his body beginning to shake uncontrollably. "A message left with the barkeep…"

Amrit had what he needed. He could have kept the assassin alive, turned him over to his father for a formal investigation. But that would expose his hand. It would reveal that his "decline" was a ruse, and the viper would retreat deeper into the shadows, alerted and more dangerous than ever. His performance had to continue until the final act.

And these two had tried to kill him. Mercy was a luxury he could not afford.

"Thank you for your cooperation," Amrit said, his voice devoid of any emotion.

He raised his hand again. The assassin's eyes widened in a final, desperate plea.

Shlick.

The sound was soft, final. The assassin's head slid cleanly from his shoulders and fell to the floor with a dull thud. Like the arm, the cut was perfect, the wound instantly sealed. The two bodies now lay on the floor of his chamber, silent monuments to a failed conspiracy.

Amrit stood over them, his mind working with cold precision. He had a lead, but he also had two corpses in his room. He needed to handle this with surgical care. The feigned decline, the attempted assassination, the "tragic" outcome—it all had to fit the narrative he was building.

He looked around the room. A small struggle had occurred. A chair was knocked over. The sheets on his bed were in disarray. It was a good start. He then walked to his own body and, with a grimace of distaste, lightly grazed his own arm with the tip of the first assassin's poisoned dagger.

A jolt of numbness shot up his arm. The Wyvern's Bane was potent. His Spirit-Tempered Body and the boundless ocean of Spirit-Prana immediately went to work, surrounding the neurotoxin and beginning the slow process of neutralizing it, but the initial effect was real. His arm went limp and a deathly pallor began to spread across his skin. Perfect. A grieving father would find his son poisoned, having barely survived a desperate fight for his life.

Now, for the final piece of the puzzle. The assassins had failed, but their masters would not simply give up. They would be waiting for a report, and when none came, they would send a third party to investigate. A cleanup crew, or perhaps someone more senior. They would be expecting to find a dead prince and two successful agents.

Amrit intended to give them a surprise. He needed to make a statement, to send a message so terrifying that the Night Heron Guild would think twice before ever accepting another contract in Kshirapura.

He walked to the table and picked up the Obsidian Kiss. The transformed blade felt cool and reassuring in his hand. He went to the center of the room, standing between the two bodies, and closed his eyes.

He extended his spiritual sense, not outward into the palace, but upward, into the night sky. He felt the cool air, the faint light of the moon, the whisper of the wind. He was searching for the subtle fluctuations in space, the tell-tale signs of observers. He knew a guild this professional would have a scout posted nearby to watch for royal patrols or other interference.

He found him.

Perched on a rooftop three blocks away, concealed by a cloaking talisman, was a third figure. This one was different. His aura was that of a Spirit Sea master, far more powerful than the two assassins. He was the overseer, the one who would confirm the kill and report back. He was watching Amrit's chambers, waiting for the silence to confirm success.

Amrit smiled. The audience had arrived. It was time for the performance.

He held the Obsidian Kiss in front of him, point down. He channeled the full, boundless power of his Divine Ocean into the blade. The obsidian sword, already a masterpiece, began to vibrate, emitting a low, powerful hum that made the very air in the room tremble. The faint, silver circuits on its surface blazed with a light so brilliant it illuminated the chamber like a captured star.

He focused his will, drawing upon the conceptual understanding of One Sword. He was not preparing for a simple cut. He was preparing for an idea. A concept.

He thought of the name of his technique: One Sword. He then took it a step further. If one sword could create a perfect cut, what could a thousand swords do?

His intent was singular, absolute, and utterly insane. Action: Manifest the principle of 'One Sword' a thousand times simultaneously.

[Realm-Shaking Action: Conceptual Overload.]

[Host is attempting to impose a Transcendent-level concept onto reality on a massive scale.]

[Crit Chance detected… Insanely High, due to the sheer audacity of the intent.]

[…Triggering a 1000x Crit!]

[System Warning: Unpredictable spatial and spiritual consequences may occur. Proceeding.]

The world broke.

The single obsidian blade in Amrit's hand did not multiply. Instead, the concept of the blade, the very idea of its perfect sharpness, was amplified a thousandfold by the Crit and exploded outward from him in a silent, invisible shockwave.

This shockwave was not made of energy or force. It was made of pure "sword intent." An all-encompassing, omnidirectional wave of "cutting."

For Amrit, standing at the epicenter, it was a moment of absolute tranquility.

For the world outside his chamber, it was an apocalypse.

The invisible wave of sword intent passed through the walls of his room as if they weren't there. It swept through the palace grounds. Every object the wave touched was subjected to the principle of One Sword.

A thousand perfect cuts, delivered in a single instant.

In the courtyard below, a mighty oak tree that had stood for five hundred years suddenly, silently, disintegrated into a pile of perfectly symmetrical, millimeter-thick wooden discs.

In the royal kitchens, a rack of iron pots and pans fell to the floor, not as dented metal, but as a shower of perfectly diced metal cubes.

In the armory, a row of practice dummies simultaneously fell apart into thousands of identical pieces.

The wave of sword intent was intelligent, guided by Amrit's subconscious will to avoid harming the innocent. It did not touch any living being within the palace walls. It was a demonstration, not a massacre.

But the scout, the Spirit Sea master on the rooftop three blocks away, was not an innocent. He was part of the threat.

The wave of conceptual sharpness washed over him.

He felt nothing. He saw nothing. He was simply watching the prince's window, and then… he was not.

His cloaking talisman, a priceless spiritual artifact, silently fell to pieces, diced into a thousand tiny squares of useless silk. His Spirit Sea, the proud inner world of a master cultivator, was instantly and silently crisscrossed with a thousand invisible cuts, shattering it like a glass orb struck by a hammer. His body, from his hair to his bones, was simultaneously sliced a thousand times on a microscopic level.

He did not scream. He did not bleed. He simply ceased to be solid. The night wind caught him, and the Spirit Sea master dissolved into a fine cloud of crimson and grey dust, scattering into the darkness, leaving behind only the faint, lingering scent of ozone.

Back in the chamber, the light from the Obsidian Kiss faded. The air settled. Amrit stood calmly, the architect of a silent, terrifying devastation. He had not just killed the scout; he had erased him from existence.

He knew that the message had been delivered. The Night Heron Guild would receive no report. Their master assassin would simply vanish from the face of the earth. When they eventually sent someone else to investigate, they would find the trail cold, and they would hear the rumors of what happened in the palace that night—of the strange, silent destruction. They would feel the lingering, terrifying sword intent that now saturated the very air of the capital.

They would be fools to ever return.

Amrit looked down at the two bodies on his floor. His work was done. He allowed the numbness in his arm to spread, let his breathing become ragged, and slumped against the wall, assuming the role of a wounded, exhausted survivor.

Then, he reached out with the last dregs of his conscious strength and sent a weak pulse of Prana towards the royal guard post. A distress signal.

The final act of his play was about to begin. The discovery, the shock, the feigned weakness. The viper in the palace would hear the news and believe its second attempt had failed, but had at least wounded its target, pushing him closer to the brink.

It would have no idea that it wasn't dealing with a wounded prince. It was dealing with a monster who could command a thousand ghosts with a single swing of his sword.