Chapter 74
From the moment I threw the skeleton through the portal, only ten seconds had passed, but the girl was now gone and everyone else was looking at the noble with a stunned expression.
“You killed her?” Erika asked in disbelief.
“She was disposable.” He sniffed.
“N-now we’re stuck here!” His remaining companion cried out.
“You idiot!” The noble snarled at him, a look of disdain on his face. No rewards come without risk! This subspace used to be the property of an immortal. He stripped away almost everything of value, but then he left his library full, why do you think that is? If I intended to leave something priceless behind, I might also hide it among countless fakes.”
“Even so… you killed her…”
“She might survive. Whether she makes it alive or not, my father will be notified and he’ll be sure to investigate. Would you rather you took the risk?”
“N-no…” He looked away shamefully.
I glanced over at Erika, feeling a bit surprised myself. She was trying to appear brave but had a fearful look that she couldn’t completely hide. She had gone to the library without waste, and rather than looking for a way out, she had remained in the library for days pouring over the books.
I had thought she was just a clueless academic, but perhaps there was something more to her actions. It seemed like she had been keeping it from me too, although I wasn’t angry. I was a mere mortal in her eyes and we didn’t exactly know each other. After they spoke, our eyes met briefly. Her expression seemed apologetic. She seemed to feel like she was the one who brought this trouble.
“Is it there?” The boy asked, sounding uncertain.
“No.” The noble looked like he was about ready to attack his ally. “She has it. She’s an entire evolutionary realm under me. Once you kill that mortal, we’ll have all the time with her that we want. My father will take at least a day to reopen the portal. By then, we’ll have taken everything from her and Dad can have the scraps.”
The boy looked between the girl and the noble. “E-everything?”
“Hmph… I naturally will get my fill first.” The noble declared. “After you kill the noble.”
“O-of course! Of course…” He patted his knees excitedly as he turned to me.
While the pair spoke in such a lewd manner, a horrified expression appeared on Erika’s face, and then one filled with rage.
“Spirit, run and hide! I’ll hold them off.”
“Haha… as if you co-” The noble was about to say some more disparaging remarks, but a wave of light erupted from the girl, blinding him.
At the same time, she used a second spell, striking the boy heading toward me and sending him flying away. He struck the wall heavily.
“Spirit, go now! This isn’t a fight you can handle.” She looked at me desperately.
I nodded, turned, and then ran out the door. Of course, as soon as I broke the site, I used L-form Switching and Crypsis to immediately disappear. It was best to hide in the shadows if I didn’t want to expose myself. Of course, I considered just killing everyone present, but such an action might have consequences. This irritating noble appeared to be the son of a powerful lord who had some way of tracking or marking the person responsible for killing his son. If I killed him, I could bring about more trouble for Mara and myself.
Then, there was Erika. If I got out alive, I’d have to answer to Tyler, and who knew how many connections both Erika and Tyler had? I quickly realized the difficult part about nobles wasn’t necessarily their status as paragons, but their potential and unknown connections. Killing any one of them could create a cascade of increasingly higher-realm characters seeking vengeance.
I wasn’t on the street anymore, where everyone was poor and faceless. I recalled an event. Well, I wasn’t part of it. It happened in a city over. Some members of another gang ended up encountering some guys in suits. That was a polite way of saying they were mafia. The mafia said to get lost, but the gang ended up fighting them and killed two of their guys. The mafia guys had money, but more importantly, they saw each other as family.
Their men systematically wiped out the entire gang. The gang mistakenly thought that once they gave up the ones who initially killed the Mafia members, the Mafia would leave them alone, but the Mafia didn’t see things that way. They said that since those gang members used the gang to bolster up the courage to defy the mob, then their entire gang was responsible for the fallout. The last few gang members narrowly avoided death by begging to work off their gang’s debt as street runners.
I didn’t know if the event happened. It was a lesson. You could kill as many nobodies as you wanted. The poor were easy targets. However, you never went after a suit. Suits meant vendetta. Suits meant backlash. It was a lesson that I took to heart, and I was applying it now.
Inside the courtyard, the noble’s vision had cleared and he looked at Erika with a bit more wariness. “A mutation? It seems like I underestimated you.”
Erika held up her hands in a combative stance. “I was trained by the top disciple of the Arcford academy.”
“Is that so?” He smirked, that mocking expression returning. “You! Go find the mortal, idiot!”
The other boy had finally recovered, limping over to the noble, looking like he wanted some sympathy and instead getting snapped at. “What about her?”
He chuckled. “She’s not the only one with a mutation.”
He attacked her, his speed was so fast it was nearly a blur. Well, it might have been a blur to her. For me, he was only a bit faster, but I could tell his speed was quite impressive. She barely managed to put up a defensive spell to push him back, but then he moved to the side and attacked from the back. She began to wildly send out magic, keeping him at bay.
The other guy used this opportunity to race out of the courtyard. I then watched as he passed right by me on his way to find me. I decided to follow him as he went up the stairway.
“Come out… come out… I won’t hurt you…” The guy yelled as he walked down the hallway.
There were a few distant booms as Erika used her magic, but it quickly died out. As for the guy looking for me, he was quickly growing annoyed. I decided to help him a bit and give him a flash of something. He immediately let out a cry and ran in that direction. I continued to lead him on, bringing him out until he was on the wall of the palace.
“There you are!” He growled when he finally saw me standing there.
I was looking up at the sky with a frown. Although there was no sun, there had been a sky, and that sky depicted the day and night cycle pretty reliably. If one looked outside of the wall, there was an infinite field of clouds. It was like the palace was floating in the sky.
However, the sky had darkened prematurely, and there was a distant cracking sound of electricity. The clouds under us were now black, and occasionally I saw sparks of yellow or blue. Perhaps more alarming, the clouds seemed to be climbing up the wall. They were already about halfway up.
“What is going on here?” I asked, looking out at it.
He looked and then made a face. “Who cares, you won’t be alive long enough to deal with it!”
“What happened to ‘I won’t hurt you’?” I asked.
“Only a fool would believe that!” He lunged my way.
“Then call me a fool, because I believe you won’t hurt me.” I caught him by the neck, stunning him. “Or perhaps it’s better to say that you couldn’t hurt me even if you wanted to.”
I picked him up by the neck and then went into my Luminal Storage and pulled out a rope. He choked and sputtered what were likely words of disbelief as I casually tied the rope around his ankle.
“Ghhk… you…ghhh…”
“Who are you to that noble boy?” I loosened the grip slightly.
A look of hope appeared on his face. “I’m his best friend. We’re very tight. I even introduced him to that girl, my father does work for both of them…”
“I see…” I nodded, and he started to look relieved. “A nobody then.”
I threw him over the edge. He let out a cry as his ankle snapped on the rope. He fell about a head above the clouds, but before he could even get his bearings straight, a blue electrical bolt shot from the cloud and struck him. He let out a shriek. More bolts struck them, but they didn’t burn his skin. Instead, it was like they were cutting his flesh. His skin split open in a dozen different places, and more and more bolts came until he was ripped to shreds.
It only took a minute when by the time he stopped moving. The clouds were now as high as his dangling body, which was still being slowly ripped apart until the rope snapped and his corpse fell into the cloudy Abyss. It continued to climb the wall.
GC. Tnks