Chapter 94: Elite – Hank the Madman & Shike the Soul-Eater

Dreams are the crystallization of memory. Dreams are the distant gaze toward the future.

A dream of pitch-black.

Memories steeped in pitch-black.

A future painted pitch-black.

I walked along the deserted North Street.

I followed behind, while the child in black walked ahead.

We walked on in silence, step after step, until we reached the great clock tower.

Crashed vehicles.

The corpses of my parents.

Both he and I stopped, staring at the sight.

Perhaps only seconds passed.

Perhaps years.

When the darkened sky revealed its first pale streak of white, we began walking again.

The white spread, staining the world, seeping into my eyes.

The world stretched wide, then closed in, pressed together by an unseen hand until it became a square chamber.

Black silk.

Pale gauze.

Funeral wreaths.

Eulogy scrolls.

The character for “Remembrance.”

The child in black approached the memorial altar. He placed the portrait he had been clutching to his chest upon it, then turned to look at me.

That face—exactly the same as my own in childhood.

Under his gaze, I took up a bouquet of yellow and white chrysanthemums and laid them before my parents’ memorial tablets.

That day.

A day I could never forget.

The day I said farewell to my dearest kin.

The day that shook me to my core.

But I carried a secret.

A secret buried deep in my heart.

One I never dared speak to anyone.

“This day struck you deeply. It became the thorn lodged in your heart.”

A man’s voice.

Familiar, yet strange.

The rasping harshness was gone. It was now simply the voice of an ordinary middle-aged man.

“The Tree of Life’s psychic assault can draw out the deepest knots within a person’s heart.”

He walked toward me from behind, and in the next instant stood beside me. He still wore his signature black robe, yet no mask, and his eyes were no longer inverted black and white.

Side by side, we looked at my parents’ memorial.

“This funeral cut deeply into you, but what truly shook you was not the death of your parents itself, but something else.”

“Yes.”

My parched tongue stirred as I slowly shaped words, confessing to my mortal enemy what I had never voiced to another soul.

“I was truly heartbroken then. The death of those closest to me—how could I not be? But…”

I searched my mind, scraping for the right expression.

“But it was different. That grief… rather than being directed only at my parents, it was more a grief at the senseless passing of two living souls. Two pitiable people, gone in vain. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Ah. Yes, I think I do.”

Dilas inclined his head slightly.

“More than sorrow for your parents’ deaths, what filled you was pity for two lives cut short. Is that not so?”

“That’s… about right.”

“Pity.”

A delicate word.

To grieve for someone is broad and applicable in many contexts. But pity is different.

“The pity you speak of is itself a form of superiority.”

Dilas’s voice pressed into my ears.

“The fortunate pity the unfortunate. The strong pity the weak. The rulers pity the people. The gods pity mankind. It is always the higher looking down on the lower. Never the reverse.”

“…”

“If even your feelings over your parents’ deaths were more pity than sorrow, then it means that, from a very young age, you instinctively placed yourself on the higher plane.”

“…Enough.”

“Zhou Yuhong, this funeral changed you. From that day on, you tried to make yourself humble. Yet how could innate pride be so easily erased? And so…”

“Enough…”

“You became a paradox of humility and arrogance bound in one.”

“Silence!”

“Hmph.”

Dilas narrowed his shoulders, and with that motion, everything around us dissolved once more into thick, suffocating blackness.

Silence fell.

In the darkness, I lost all sense of time. It felt as if an eternity had passed.

“I…”

At last, he broke the silence.

“From a very young age, I was convinced that I was different. Smarter, stronger, more gifted than the common rabble. Even when my abnormal constitution barred me from becoming a mage, I was certain I would carve out greatness all the same.”

He lowered his gaze to his own hand. A flicker of darkness, like a wavering flame, danced in his palm before vanishing.

“Man proposes, Heaven disposes, Zhou Yuhong. Perhaps this is fate. Perhaps it is Heaven’s jealousy of the gifted. Whatever the reason, I have reached my end.”

“…That is truly a sorrowful thing.”

“Sorrowful? You mean you pity me, don’t you?”

“…”

“It doesn’t matter. What pedestal you place yourself upon in your subconscious is your own affair. But let me give you a word of advice.”

He stepped closer, bent down, and leaned toward my ear. His whisper was almost gentle.

“The most important thing in life is to find the right place for yourself as early as possible. Too much repression will only destroy you. Don’t let my gift to you gather dust.”

When he finished, Dilas’s figure melted into the darkness, never to return.

Leaving only me, still plummeting deeper into the dark.

Falling.

Falling.

Falling.

Falling…

…

…

…

Whether from scripture or later invention, it is said that when Lucifer rebelled against God and was cast down, he fell through the void for nine daybreaks and dusks before reaching Hell.

Had I too been falling for nine daybreaks and dusks?

Each second stretched into infinity, and at the end of that infinity lay nothingness. The only proof that time moved at all was the beating of my heart.

Yet within those beats, new sounds emerged.

Deep. Viscous. Cold, yet tender.

The essence of my soul resonated with the rhythm of my heart.

The enemy’s gift spread from my left hand into every part of me.

Seeping.

Seeping.

Seeping…

…

…

…

Nine dawns and dusks, and still more dawns and dusks, until infinity itself became dawn and dusk unending.

Consciousness scattered and gathered within the void.

Spirit drifted and sank within the dark.

Until, at some moment, a fleeting instant that could fit within the cracks of Planck time.

I heard a voice.

My own voice.

“It is brimming.”

And then—

“It has come.”

Rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble!

A pallid lightning bolt split the darkness. My awareness flared snow-white, and suddenly I could feel everything around me. No longer void, no longer darkness. The clothes on my body. The softness of the mat beneath me. The hard surface beneath my right fingertips. All of it poured back into my mind with startling clarity. My eyes, shut for I knew not how long, finally opened.

A dim scene entered my sight. The space was narrow, so narrow.

Around me—what was enclosing me? Canvas?

This wasn’t the great hollow cavern.

Where was I?

Boom!

A thunderous crash shook the ground. Then came the screams outside, followed by the feral roars of some creature drawing closer.

“Rraaahhhhh!”

The canvas covering burst away in an instant under some immense force, and blinding sunlight poured down on me. My long-shut eyes had no time to adjust before a massive shadow loomed overhead, drenching me in a spray of hot liquid. The stench—was that blood?!

“Roooaaaaarrr!”

Something came crashing down toward my head. A heavy fist, stained with blood, its surface like hammered bronze. This was no dream—the gust of its swing, the crushing weight of it, were entirely real.

What was going on?

What just happened?

Who was this?

Why were they attacking me?

A rush of thoughts flared in my mind, but instinct honed through countless battles moved faster than thought itself.

Block!

I twisted aside just enough to let the blow skim past, then drove my left hand hard into the thick inner arm. For an instant, a black substance flashed across the back of my hand and knocked the fist away. I had no time to think about what it was. As if guided by something, my right hand seized the hard, rod-like object my fingers had brushed against, while my left hand spread wide and lunged toward the enemy who had faltered under the sudden counterattack.

Shadow Touch!

Shadowy hands peeled free from my left palm and shot at the enemy’s face with blinding speed.

The instant they seized its head, a violent tug yanked at my whole body, and my vision closed in. When I came to my senses again, the distance between us had shrunk to nothing. My left hand clamped down on its face as it flailed to rip me off.

Draw the blade!

The object in my right hand—Dilas’s ritual dagger—lunged like lightning, driving straight through its mouth.

“Raaahhhhh!”

The blade punched clean through its brain.

Blood—and what might have been brain matter—splattered across my face. The creature shrieked with ear-piercing agony, while somewhere behind me came an earth-shaking crash.

At last, I got a proper look at it. It was a humanoid figure, four meters tall, skin gleaming like burnished bronze, with its features twisted into hideous malice. And already killed, with a single strike through the head.

“…Huh?”

I drew the dagger free and landed steadily on my feet. The drop was nothing, not even worth using Cat’s Step.

I had no idea what was happening.

All I knew was: I had suddenly awakened, something had immediately attacked me, and before it did, it seemed already gravely wounded. Somehow, entirely on instinct, I had killed it.

The monster collapsed with a thunderous crash. Wounds large and small marred its body—injuries I had not inflicted.

Only then did the ache spread through me, the deep soreness of someone bedridden for too long who had forced his body into violent motion. And my left hand throbbed with sharp pain.

“Yuhong!?”

“…Ah?”

Someone was calling my name. My attention finally turned outward.

An overturned carriage. Collapsed tents.

Endless grassland—no, this was a prairie.

And people.

So many people.

All staring at me in fear.

Most were dressed like European knights, some in plain robes. And there Sonia and Felice. Their clothes were different from how I remembered. At Sonia’s side stood a… very large dog?

And beside the two of them was another, a young woman in her early twenties, with golden hair. And, well…

Her chest was very, very large.

I knew it was rude, meeting a stranger for the first time and immediately noting such things, but I was certain those two heavy fruits on her chest would draw the eyes of anyone who saw her.

What in the world was going on?

“—!?”

A chill ran up my spine.

Behind me. Something behind me. Something terrible.

I spun around—

A young man stood not far away, his expression groggy, as if he had just awoken from sleep. Blood spattered his body. In his hand he gripped a greatsword.

He stared down at a corpse at his feet. Humanoid. Face unrecognizable.

Because its head had been smashed apart.

It seemed this man—just as freshly awakened as I—had obliterated it with a single blow.

Drip… drip drip drip drip…

From the moment I struck down Dilas until waking here, what had happened?

Could someone please explain it to me?

And what was this black thing on the back of my left hand…?

~~~~~

Zhou Yuhong vs. Hank the Madman Zhou Yuhong – WIN Achievement Unlocked: Morning Temper No. 1

Lazell Yang vs. Shike the Phantasmal Soul-Eater Lazell Yang – WIN Achievement Unlocked: Morning Temper No. 2