The Soul Pact
"Y-you'll spare me if I talk?"
"Of course I will."
"You'll spare me… even though I've seen your status window…?"
His eyes brimmed with distrust. Having glimpsed the status window, he had already decided there was no way he would be allowed to walk away alive.
Well. He had only himself to blame for inviting disaster.
I gave a quiet laugh.
"What possible gain would I get from killing the likes of you?"
"It's not just the status window. Your face, too…"
"You saw it? Are you certain? That this is my true face?"
"…"
Master's mouth snapped shut. He had already watched me transform once; it was entirely possible that the face before him was not the real one. Besides, my appearance in the Empire had been quite different from what he saw now.
Back in the Empire I was playing the barbarian.
I had even gone around bare-chested like a genuine savage. Believing I possessed a thousand faces would not have been strange at all.
And more than that—
"Even if you told someone what you saw, who would believe you?"
"That is…"
Master hesitated. Naturally. Even I would not have believed such a tale. Who in the world would accept that a Level 8 with stats nearly at three stars, holding fifteen Hidden Traits, actually existed? You would be lucky if they didn't just scold you for dreaming.
Phantom. A Player who is not a Player.
I was curious myself. Someone who impersonated Phantom—a Player who was not a Player. There was a black curtain behind all of this, using Master and the other self-proclaimed "heroes" as figureheads. Someone high enough to feed information to the Demon King just to sabotage the Great Expedition.
Meaning someone capable of making contact with the Demon King.
The Demon King had known about the Great Expedition in advance. He had poured half the Demon Realm into preparing a trap meant for me. If Serengeti had not sacrificed herself, swapping places with the power of the Star, I would have died before I ever reached him.
But I still had no lead. Was there truly anyone who could make separate contact with a Demon King sealed away in the Demon Realm?
Impossible unless they were one of the Lords of Hell.
Only the eight Lords of the Eight Hells were granted audience with the Demon King. No other demon dared so much as approach him. The eight Lords could not be Players, and they would never call themselves Phantom—so it had to be someone from outside.
Unless they were an administrator of some kind…
Meeting the Demon King was that difficult. You either conquered the Demon Realm the proper way, as I had, or… perhaps the Emperor of the Empire might be granted an audience? At the very least, you would need to be on the level of the White King or the Black King.
And Master clearly knew who that black curtain was.
"If you still can't bring yourself to trust me, then we make a contract. I will place a binding restriction so that you cannot speak of me. That should put me at ease enough that I won't need to kill you."
"…You mean that?"
"I mean it. I swear it on the honor of Wilhelm, the Knight King."
"Wilhelm… the King of Fidelity."
"Yes. Strip away faith and loyalty, and Wilhelm was a corpse. I am the same."
Master's eyes trembled violently. Anyone who knew Wilhelm's grand saga could not help but be tempted by such an oath. Master was as deeply immersed in Pangenia as Hudson—he regarded his self here as his true self. The fact that he himself had just called Wilhelm "the King of Fidelity" made that plain.
I shrugged.
"Or we can proceed with whatever form of 'contract' you prefer. Provided you have a method for it."
"…We'll make a Soul Pact. Then I'll believe you."
A Soul Pact?
I had intended to bind him with Winter, but he had come up with the Soul Pact on his own. It was the method Master primarily used when dominating important people—imposing compulsion through the Soul Ring he wore. An equal exchange of conditions; once sealed, it could not be refused.
"Very well."
I nodded without a shred of hesitation. Seeing that, Master's expression eased a fraction. He wiped the blood from his split lip and let a drop fall onto the Soul Ring.
"Scatter a drop of your blood upon this ring. After that, each of us states one condition we desire, and we shake hands. The contract is complete."
I nicked my hand, drew blood without flinching, and let a single drop fall onto the ring. A crimson light began to coil around it.
"You will not harm me in any way whatsoever. That is my condition."
Master spoke first. He truly was desperate to live. Not merely "don't kill me"—he forbade any act that would cause him harm at all. Had he only said "don't kill me," I would have tortured him to the brink of death. He had thought this through rather well.
So I opened my mouth in turn.
"You will keep silent about me."
Whoooosh—!
The ring's light flared wider. Master extended his hand. I took it.
At the same moment—
The Soul Pact has been completed.
The crimson light pouring from the ring sank into my entire body, and the contract was sealed.
Well. I had done everything he asked. All that remained was for him to keep his promise.
With his safety guaranteed, would Master actually try to honor it?
"…It was one day. Someone approached me, introducing himself as 'Phantom.'"
Master forced the words out. Perhaps my display of fidelity and my unhesitating concessions had opened his heart. I listened.
"He told me that in the near future, he would launch the Great Expedition. He spoke of the events that would unfold as well—like a messiah. And the future he described came to pass exactly as he said."
So that was why Master had believed this unidentified being. Someone who could read the future… The first name that came to mind with foresight was the White King. But even the White King could only vaguely sense dangers that concerned himself. He could not read a detailed future.
"Thanks to him, I became the master of the Ruins City, Rundela. I reaped quite a few other benefits as well."
"He approached you longer ago than I expected."
"Roughly a year and a half. Not long after I became a Player, he sought me out. At any rate…"
Master swallowed hard, his face tight with tension, and pressed on.
"He was particularly insistent about the Great Expedition. That I must never take part. That only when Wilhelm died would 'that which had been stopped' begin again…"
"That which had been stopped?"
My brow furrowed slightly. So the black curtain had wanted Wilhelm dead. But that Wilhelm's death would restart something that had been halted… I could not begin to understand what that meant.
"I don't know what it is either. But… he called it 'the beginning of everything.' After that, he would occasionally visit me in various forms."
"He transformed, you mean?"
Master shook his head.
"It wasn't on the level of a transformation. He became an entirely different person and delivered his messages to me. Once as a Player, once as a Pangenian, once as a monster…"
"He became a completely different being? You're saying it wasn't a simple disguise?"
"Yes. Information Disclosure—the ability to view a status window—can only be used on Players. The first time I saw him he was clearly a Player, but afterward he was not."
"Could they not have been different people?"
"They were the same person. There could not be another being in this world who gives off that kind of presence."
Master was certain. So I asked.
"If you confirmed he was a Player when you first met, you would have seen his name as well, wouldn't you?"
Anyone who checked a status window would know the name—just as Master had been certain I was Randolph the moment he saw mine.
Master nodded.
"I saw it. At that time… the name displayed on the status window was…"
He hesitated a moment. Then, as if steeling himself, he spoke.
"It was clearly MintChocoIsDelicious."
"…? Mint choco?"
I tilted my head at the name that had suddenly appeared. MintChocoIsDelicious was a well-known recluse—like Phantom, someone who never revealed their identity. But they had once challenged Laily in the Abyss Labyrinth and been forced to retreat, had they not?
As far as anyone knew, MintChocoIsDelicious was a Spirit Illusionist—a master of jiangshi. Could they have approached Master using other corpses?
He's not so incompetent that he wouldn't have figured out something like that.
Master was not so stupid that he would fail to distinguish a dead jiangshi from a living being. Then was MintChocoIsDelicious someone capable of changing into many forms? But there had been times when they were not a Player…
"My guess is… he seemed able to possess multiple characters. But… I have no idea how he managed it when he wasn't a Player. It may simply be that my own abilities were insufficient to perceive it."
Master let out a sigh.
When a Player's strongest character died, they possessed that character and began again at Level 1. Naturally, possession was limited to the single character they had last played. But someone who could possess multiple characters…
If that were possible, he was far more dangerous than I could imagine. The penalty that killed your real body when your character died might not apply to him at all.
"He also spoke about this 'Tower.'"
"The Rift Tower?"
"He never named it exactly, but it was almost certainly that. He said that after Wilhelm died, a 'Tower' would rise. And that at its summit lay the Heavenly Realm."
The Heavenly Realm. Could he mean the place where the Heavenly beings dwelled? An unexpected revelation I had not anticipated.
Master continued.
"A place opposite the Abyss. If one could ascend to the heavens, one could obtain something extraordinary…"
"So that's why you climbed the Tower with the Black King's forces."
"Yes. In any case, that is everything I know. True Phantom."
I gave a small nod. Master had kept faith in his own way. Bound by the contract, he was certain I could no longer kill him.
"I will keep silent about you as well. It seems we should each go our own way now."
"Each go our own way. Yes. That's how it should be."
I agreed. Our paths had always been far too different.
I slowly raised Winter.
And I cut the crimson light that had been constricting my heart.
At the same moment—
Supreme Winter severs the subordinate contract.
The Soul Pact has been nullified.
Master's eyes went wide as full moons.
"Wh-what are you doing…?!"
The true power of Supreme Winter.
It was dominion over contracts.
How broken an ability was this? Even high-grade contracts could be severed like this and nullified at my whim.
"The S-Soul Pact—how…!"
The Soul Pact was no exception. So long as both parties were bound under the name of a "contract," there was no escape.
Master's face twisted. His eyes shook violently. His whole body trembled. The look of a man watching the thing he had absolute faith in vanish before his eyes—exactly like a rabbit seized by terror.
…How bitterly I had regretted letting him slip away in the Empire.
"Ph-Phantom. No—Wilhelm!"
"I am not Wilhelm right now."
I answered with a dry chuckle. Wilhelm had been called the Knight King, a man who knew fidelity, because that was the concept I had chosen to play. If I had truly been someone who pursued nothing but pure, unblemished honor, I would never even have created a character named Isaac. I had committed every kind of atrocity just to test whether Pangenia's administrators were actually managing the game.
Master, on the other hand, had been devoured by his concept. Hudson at least still distinguished reality from Pangenia, but Master lived a life of complete fusion with this world.
"Were you not a man who knew honor…?"
"I do not know honor."
Confusion flooded Master's face. I had only been acting—pretending to grant him everything, pretending to know honor. With a pact sealed on top of it, of course he had believed me. The conditions we had set on each other had been trivial, after all.
If I had set the condition that he must tell me about the black curtain, that would have been as far as it went.
But I had only demanded that he keep silent about my identity. Even though that condition meant he had no obligation to answer about the black curtain at all. That was why he had opened his heart and spilled even the things I had never asked.
From the very beginning, I had never intended to keep the contract.
"Y-you clearly said you would spare me! I told you everything, didn't I?! Spare me, please…!"
"You crossed the line."
Even if someone had been pulling Master's strings from behind, the things Master himself had done had clearly crossed the line. Sabotaging the Great Expedition. Playing the loudspeaker and distorting the truth. Feasting on Wilhelm's achievements and swaggering about as a hero. I was well aware that Master had been watching for every chance to come after me.
And that was not all. For the sake of his own renown alone, he had told them to abandon Jeju Island—despite never even participating in Baal's subjugation.
But more vile than any of the acts listed above were the countless "experiments" he had conducted.
Hudson uncovered all of it.
Hudson had dug up the information on everyone connected to the Great Expedition. In particular, he had thoroughly investigated the so-called Eight Heroes—and Master's atrocities chief among them. The evils that man had committed were enough to turn one's stomach. He had sacrificed countless people for every manner of experiment. Especially experiments concerning Hidden Traits.
This time was no different. Had he not lured throngs of people into climbing the Tower? People who had not even made proper preparations. He had driven them into a situation where nine out of ten who entered were doomed to die.
"The pact! Let us make the pact again! I'll change the conditions. If you want me as your slave, I'll be your slave. If you want me as a dog, I'll be a dog. So please…!"
Master fell to his knees.