Thursday, October 15, 2020

Page 2674

There was little doubt in Morgunov's mind that Jackson had more than enough raw power at his disposal to tear the Robert Mk. Vs to shreds.

But it wasn't just about strength.

That was the beauty of the Cage System.

Over the many long years of having Ivan as his subordinate/unwilling test subject, Morgunov had learned a thing or two about suppressing servant abilities. The Salesman of Death was arguably the best at that, after all--or at least, he was, until a few years ago when Morgunov perfected the Mk. V design.

The truth was, there were actually a number of different ways to suppress a servant's power. The first was oppressive field density, but of course, that didn't work on servants with powerful enough passive soul defenses. On the surface, at least.

The second was brain freeze. Preventing the servant from thinking prevented them from activating their power in the first place. And naturally, slowing down their thought processes also had deleterious effects on ability usage.

The third was the destruction of the physical body. The power stemmed from the brain, of course, but without a conduit through which to flow, the servant's power was like electricity stuck in a battery. Useless. Plus, bodily destruction served as a great distraction when trying to overwhelm someone. Most people weren't able to concentrate very well while under the realization that their body was being attacked. That was why servants often trained themselves psychologically to improve concentration and why reapers tried to nullify signals from the brain that might prematurely tell it to shut down--but those tactics had their limitations.

Especially if the bodily destruction was designed to be particularly horrific.

The fourth method, seemingly, was Ivan's power. Alteration of the weak force--the bonds between subatomic particles.

Morgunov had learned, however, that Ivan's power was not uniquely special in this way. Ivan's ability allowed him to "suppress" the body as a conduit by distorting energy transfer between atoms. While he wasn't "destroying" the body, exactly, he was still preventing its normal function by numbing it to the extreme.

Therefore, any power that could accomplish the same feat could achieve the same result.

Morgunov had been very pleased to learn that.

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