Escape (2)
"..."
I stared down at the fallen old man, momentarily stripped of words.
Did it actually work?
His eyes had gone empty. Not a twitch of movement anywhere in that massive frame. It was, without a single doubt, the face of a dead man.
Instant Kill — a 10-star skill that could slay any target it touched, instantly. I'd had my doubts, but it seemed the skill's effect had truly activated. There was no other reason this monster would have collapsed so suddenly.
That was all the confirmation I needed. I had possessed this body while still holding the Instant Kill skill that had come out of the fusion.
Then what about the other skills besides Instant Kill?
The thought drifted there on its own. I had been one of those fossil-tier veterans even among RASA's elite — the kind of player you could count on one hand. If the rest of my character's skills had carried over as well... I let myself spin that happy little fantasy for a moment. It didn't seem to be the case.
Among the skills I'd held were plenty of passives that amplified a character's base stats. If those had remained intact, this body being this pathetically weak wouldn't make any sense. I tried calling up the actives too, but none of them answered.
No other skills, and only Instant Kill... ah.
The reason came to me almost immediately. Why else? I'd fed every other skill and stat into the fusion as raw material, hadn't I?
If the character's abilities had transferred as they stood at the moment the fusion completed... everything added up. This utterly feeble physical capability. The complete absence of any skill besides Instant Kill.
"Huh."
Was that actually it? For real?
A sharp, nauseating twinge shot through the back of my skull. Then if I hadn't done that fusion, all of my character's abilities might have carried over intact. No — this situation itself might never have happened at all. If dumping every last one of my character's stats into the Chaos Box was what caused me to possess a body inside the game, that is.
I couldn't know the correlation for certain, but the possession had occurred immediately after the fusion finished, so honestly the latter seemed more likely.
Either way, I never should have done that goddamn fusion.
Regret was worse than useless. I tamped down the anger bubbling up inside me and recovered my composure in an instant.
...Ah. So that's why.
Then it dawned on me. The reason I'd been able to maintain this utterly unnatural calm from the very beginning, without a hint of agitation.
A sovereign's supreme dignity infuses the soul, rendering it unshakable in any circumstance. Grants complete immunity to all mental-type debuffs.
Every word and action is imbued with a ruler's majesty and oppressive presence. Greatly increases the probability of holding the upper hand in conversations with NPCs.
One 9-star skill I'd accidentally left out of the fusion materials: Emperor's Soul. It seemed its effects were bleeding into my mind. That was why I could keep my composure through this insane sequence of events — why I could stand here, having nearly died moments ago, surrounded by a blood-soaked hell of corpse fragments, and still feel nothing but a flat, even calm.
Otherwise it wouldn't have been strange if I'd already snapped.
I shifted my gaze back to the old man, now a cold corpse. Fist Saint Garton, was it? One of Seintea's Five Stars — a name that, even within RASA's lore, sat comfortably in the ranks of continental-class powerhouses.
The title itself, Fist Saint, I knew perfectly well. The name attached to it was unfamiliar. The Fist Saint who'd appeared during my time playing RASA hadn't been called Garton.
I wouldn't have remembered that wrong... unless the time period is different?
And I still had no idea why a figure of that caliber had been riding the Achemon transport in the first place. No — that could wait. What was I supposed to do now?
I'd saved my own life, which was something, but the situation was still a crisis. My hands and feet were still locked in restraints, and though the explosions had stopped, the ship's unstable pitching seemed to be getting worse. I had no idea what was happening aboard this transport, but if I stayed bound like this, the odds of my survival being threatened all over again were extremely high.
"...?"
My gaze snapped to one side. It wasn't a conscious choice so much as a reflex. Beyond the bars, something strange had caught in the corner of my vision.
A level display, floating in empty air. I turned it over for a moment, then reached the obvious conclusion.
A stealth-type skill...
A level wouldn't be hanging there if nobody was present. It meant someone invisible was standing in that spot. I had no idea how long they'd been hiding, but that wasn't the important part. A monster whose level nearly rivaled the Fist Saint's, if not quite matching it. I needed to decide, immediately, how to respond to this unknown opponent.
Except my mouth opened first, on reflex, before I could do any such thing. And in a tone of the most casual, bottomless arrogance.
"Stop skulking like a rat and come out."
...Was I that desperate to die?
I had no idea why those words had come out of me. Something like instinct had simply outrun reason for a single instant. And I understood, immediately, where that instinct had come from. What else could it be but Emperor's Soul, currently doing a number on my personality? Ah, fuck...
I'm screwed.
Whatever else was true, I was completely fucked. Instant Kill or not, it couldn't activate without contact. If this unknown opponent took the bait and attacked first, that would be the end of me.
...Fortunately, that particular catastrophe did not occur.
A soft rustle. A moment later, darkness rippled through empty air, and a man in a robe stepped out of it.
Daypon walked the ship's inner corridor, stepping over the corpses of transport officers and crew. The operation was proceeding smoothly, as planned. The target had been eliminated, and the ship's mechanisms had been thoroughly wrecked; the transport would sink before long. All that remained was to kill the Fist Saint, leave not a single survivor, and return.
He'd expected the Rognar Kingdom to take some precautions, but pulling in one of the Five Stars had been a surprise. Seintea's five supreme champions. A powerhouse on the Fist Saint's level was not someone even Daypon could face alone. He wasn't particularly concerned, however. A card had been prepared for precisely this kind of variable.
That way.
The immense aura rolling up from the lower deck told him at once that it was the Fist Saint, and he headed toward it. The cabin — one of the prisoner holding cells, by the look of it — was already a grotesque landscape of inmate corpses. With the transport under assault, controlling a riot of prisoners would have been impossible; the man had simply processed them all.
Still stealthed, Daypon drifted unhurriedly into the cabin, and found Fist Saint Garton exactly as expected.
"I am Fist Saint Garton. If you have last words, I shall grant you the privilege of speaking them."
The Fist Saint stood with one hand resting on the head of the sole remaining prisoner. Daypon kept his distance and watched. He couldn't parse the situation, but it seemed the man intended to hear a final statement before disposing of the last inmate.
I'll strike the moment he kills him.
Better to open the fight with an ambush at the most opportune instant. Decision made, Daypon waited for the Fist Saint to crush the prisoner's skull.
Then the prisoner's mouth opened.
"Die."
What followed made Daypon's eyes fly wide with shock.
...?!
At that single word from the prisoner, the Fist Saint's body crumpled to the floor. For a moment, Daypon could not grasp what had happened at all.
He's dead... wait?
No breath. No heartbeat. From the fallen Fist Saint, the presence of life had been severed completely; not a scrap of aura remained. He was truly, actually dead. A martial artist of continent-wide renown — one of Seintea's Five Stars — gone in an instant.
Daypon reflexively stopped even his breathing and crushed his presence down to the absolute minimum. The prisoner, still bound hand and foot, was looking down at the lifeless Fist Saint with a vacant, almost idle gaze. Unbelievable as it was, the only conclusion the scene allowed was that this man had killed Fist Saint Garton.
But how? He hadn't so much as twitched a finger. The only thing the man had done was spit out a single short word: Die.
...Word Magic? Some kind of Word of Power?
But how could a Word of Power exist that could kill a powerhouse of the Fist Saint's caliber in a single stroke? What was this man?
Daypon stared at him in utter confusion. A variable that had blown past every assumption. He couldn't settle on how to act in this absurd situation. An ambush? Opening a fight with an unidentified monster who had just one-shot the Fist Saint would be insanity. Even if he used the force provided by the 4th Lord, Mangjawang — originally intended for killing the Fist Saint — his odds of victory were unknown. Then should he withdraw as he was? But to simply leave without even identifying this unknown figure...
...!
A chill raced over Daypon's entire body. The man had suddenly turned his gaze and was staring straight at him.
"Stop skulking like a rat and come out."
...Made. Since when?
The fact that his stealth had been seen through so easily hit Daypon with a shock and a sense of ruin unlike anything he'd felt in a long time. His concealment, at least, was among the finest on the entire continent. The thought of attempting an escape even now flickered through his mind, then died. He could lose his life in an instant, the way the Fist Saint just had, before he even got the chance. The risk was far too great.
A soft rustle. Daypon revealed himself and met the man's eyes.
Those vacant irises, which betrayed not a trace of emotion, carried an oppressive weight that defied description. Daypon could only sense it, dimly: the man standing before him might be a power of a caliber equal to the Lords themselves.
"Who are you?"
Daypon asked after a brief silence. The man showed no intention of answering. He simply kept his mouth shut and stared, unblinking. A wordless pressure. Daypon guessed at the meaning in that gaze and considered what to say.
He couldn't begin to guess the man's identity, but here was someone being transported to Achemon as a prisoner who had killed the Fist Saint without the slightest hesitation. At the very least, he was no friend of the other side, so revealing his own affiliation shouldn't matter. No — it would be better to make it clear.
"I am Daypon. I have no affiliation with the Rognar Kingdom or the Seintea Imperial Alliance. I belong to the Calderic Overlord Council."
At that, a faint change passed across the man's expression — a face that had, until now, given no hint of what he was thinking.
"...The Calderic Overlord Council?"
He murmured it, let a beat pass, then asked:
"What did you do to the ship?"
"If you wish to know the condition of the hull... this transport will never reach Achemon. It will sink shortly."
The man's face tightened, just slightly, then smoothed again. The conversation died. As if that had been the only thing he was curious about, he asked nothing else. The purpose behind Calderic attacking a mere prisoner transport, the details of the operation — he seemed to have no interest in any of it.
Fortunate, for now.
The absence of hostility in the man's bearing let Daypon relax, a little. No — it wasn't so much an absence of hostility as a complete loss of interest, now that his curiosity had been satisfied. So long as Daypon didn't attack, the man would likely pay no further attention to whether he escaped or did anything else at all.
Even so, Daypon hesitated to leave. To simply go back as things stood would leave something unfinished. His own questions and curiosity about this thoroughly bizarre man had only grown.
"Why would someone of your caliber be aboard this transport as a prisoner?"
A monster who had killed the Fist Saint in a blink, seen through Daypon's stealth, and whose abilities and combat power could not even be estimated. To Daypon, the whole situation felt as absurd as discovering a dragon curled up asleep in the corner of a goblin pen, wearing a set of flimsy shackles and making no attempt to leave.
The hull heaved. The ship began to list. The man still did nothing, and no answer to the question came back. Daypon stared at him, and then something clicked.
...I think I understand.
Those empty eyes, drained of feeling. A total indifference to everything around him. That peculiar air of ennui. Daypon had encountered someone similar before, and so he recognized it. This was the bearing of a man who no longer found any particular meaning in being alive.
To this man, nothing probably mattered. Even with the ship about to sink, he showed no intention of escaping. Living or dying, his own life itself, was apparently of no great concern. Killing the Fist Saint, speaking to Daypon — all of it had likely been nothing more than a flicker of whim, a scrap of passing interest.
The hull shuddered again, harder this time. Daypon felt a deep, unexpected regret — that a giant of this magnitude, holding no further interest in the world and no remaining attachment to it, would choose of his own will to sink into the cold seabed and vanish.
That regret dragged out of him a proposal that was, for a man like Daypon, quite impulsive, and entirely out of place in the situation at hand.
"Would you care to accompany me?"
He said it hoping he might kindle even the faintest spark of interest in the man's heart.