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Ivan folded his arms. “I guess you didn’t care much for those two. Alright. How about Darktide, then?” He turned toward Melchor.

“Stop!” said Hector. But he was powerless as he watched a cage surround the fallen Rainlord. It was going to happen again. And he had to watch.

A jostling of debris interrupted them, and a green light filled the room. Hector saw a horizontal pillar of smoke shoot toward Ivan. The Salesman saw it, too, but not in time to prevent himself from being enveloped in it. After a second, a blue wave knocked the smoke away, and Hector witnessed the results.

Xuan Sebolt was there, missing most of his body. Some had been sacrificed for smoke, still smoldering even now, but the majority had been given to acid, in which the Salesman had been entirely coated.

Hector remembered seeing it before. The Seadevil’s acid had eaten through Horatio Blackburn in a matter of seconds, even despite the enhanced regeneration of pan-forma.

But this was the Salesman of Death. And Hector could hear a low laugh behind the loud hiss of the acid.

Ivan’s yellow suit was tarnished, missing chunks here and there. His hat sizzled, mostly eaten through. And some of the flesh on his face was gone, revealing more of his teeth and parts of his bare skull.

And that was it.

“Ouch,” Ivan said, sounding more amused than pained.

A blue field converged on Xuan, and the few remains of his body disintegrated in a flash. After a moment, the Seadevil’s reaper floated out of the rubble, too, though not by his own volition. Duvoss was still unconscious, instead being carried in another blue cage.

“S-stop,” Hector tried.

“What a lunatic,” said Ivan. “I bet that guy would’ve become a real problem, one day.”

And he crushed Duvoss as well.