Chapter Twenty-Eight
LOOMING SAVIOR
Even more time had passed, and it had been four months since the Royal Invasion. At this point, within a year or so, it would be included within the education system.
After all, it's the only real attempt that has ever been seen to try and put down the royal lineage of the empire.
HOOH
PUFF
As usual, Dionysus was behind the bar, right in the alleyway. There, he was up against a wall and was smoking his pipe. It was another one of the normal days that he had begun to get accustomed to.
HOOH
PUFF
'Damn, it really has been a while since I've had an adventure? One of the things that comes with getting old, I guess . . .'
He blamed it on getting old, but he also kept the true reason in mind.
"Man, I can't be bothered to keep getting involved with world-changing disasters, the next generation oughta come and take my position . . ."
He knew that getting old and constantly being watched by the heavens was part of it, but one of the main reasons that he wanted to step out of all the commotions that he had stepped into previously was because he, himself, genuinely wanted nothing more to do with any of this.
In his mind, he failed to become the hero that he had wanted to become, and he wanted the next generation to swoop in and take the stage.
"Well, there's not much to it, time isn't waiting on me."
SCRUFF
He wiped off the dirt on the back of his pants before standing up and beginning to walk away. His shift had already ended for the day, and he had decided to try and spice the day up a little by taking a walk around the city.
Though, the intensity of the spice wasn't enough to even burn the tongue.
--- SEQUENCE 2 ---
"What to do, what to do . . ."
Somewhere in the continent, a man was sitting on a wooden chair inside of a dark room, his presence concealed by both his ability and the shadows.
The room couldn't be seen, but it was, indeed, a very large one. There were pillars all around it, all of them stretching many meters, each and every single one of them reaching the ceiling of the room. They were all thick, but there was still plenty of room to run around at the bottom of the room.
Though, the room wasn't being used to run.
'Negata, you've detected his presence?'
'Yeah, moving in to kill him now.'
Veritas checked in on Negata, who seemed to have pinpointed Dionysus' precise location. The past four months had been used to identify everything they knew about the man, which wasn't much.
He worked at a bar, smoked a lot, and lived on the streets, but there was nothing more to him. To Negata and his four other partners, everyone besides Veritas, this was an endeavor that was pointless. However, since their contractor wanted it from them, they were forced to comply.
The man called Dionysus didn't even seem to have an ability of sorts, he really was just a normal human in their eyes.
'Whatever, I'll just put him out of his misery.'
He was of a large posture, one that easily showed off his muscles. He wore a black tank top beneath his white cloak, and his boots were soaked in mud. He had hair that stuck out like that of a porcupine's needles, the color of it a lime green.
This was the man who went by the name Negata.
Dionysus was currently having a little walk throughout the city, the same as he did a lot of the time. It seemed that his life consisted of just passing the time that was filled with nothingness.
'Seriously, what a lame guy. How can someone even live like that?'
Negata himself was only twenty-five, and he happened upon Veritas one day when he accidentally stumbled upon his dungeon. He, later that day, shared the information with his four friends, and by the end of it, they had conquered the dungeon.
Rather, they conquered everything that they could.
The real issue was what lied in the final room of that dungeon. A man, who seemed to be on his deathbed, was visually detected by the five. Deducing that he was the boss, they didn't go easy, and tried, to their body's limits, to beat him.
However, right after they began to beat on him, they quickly realized he honestly was just a crippled human. They had no idea why that person was in there, but they decided to stop beating on him.
Then, it all began to go wrong.
"Why, why would you beat me like this?!"
The crippled man let out an awfully terrifying screech that the five of them swore came from hell itself. All of them turned around at around the same time, but the problem was that he was nowhere to be seen.
No, it would be more accurate that he couldn't be perceived.
SLASH
An arm went flying. There were screams coming from all around, but Negata couldn't identify which belonged to who. In fact, he couldn't identify the situation at all. His mind couldn't possibly comprehend what was going on.
"BASTARDS, BASTARDS, DON'T ENDANGER ME!"
Negata didn't know if this voice belonged to the cripple, but he could tell, for sure, that it didn't belong to him or his comrades.
This situation would continue until they were all on the ground, bleeding to death or already dead. He still didn't fully understand what had happened at the time, but Negata came to the conclusion, later on, that three of them were dead, and that only he and Ira had survived.
After he beat them all down, some so much that they died, the cripple finally began to act like a cripple again, which was to sit down on the wooden chair they first saw him on.
After around two minutes of bleeding out, Negata could tell that Ira had died. Back then, the room was full of light, and he could see everything play out. Because it was full of light, he was able to see as the light slowly dwindled out of his friend's eyes.
Filled with grief, Negata was considering just killing himself to end it all. In fact, he actually did attempt to do so, but he was beaten so badly that he couldn't even do it. All he could do was sit down and wait for death to approach him first.
"Hey, you."
The man who had beaten them all down was standing in front of him. Negata wanted to spit on him, piss on him, beat him to death, and so much more, but he couldn't. All he could do was look at him with eyes of utter intimidation, hoping to put the man into an endless fear.
Unfortunately, no such thing happened.
"You can't talk, so I'll do the talking. I can make it so that all of you continue to live on, but at a cost. Are you willing to pay?"
Negata was hoping to just ignore him until his inevitable demise came to him, but at those words, he actually began to listen.
"You'll all become my eyes and ears, doing whatever I want. If you reject what I ask you, your death will be brought back to you. If you understand, move any single part of your body."
Negata actually took a second to consider the offer that was just placed on the table. After thinking it through, no matter how he looked at it, there was no way this could turn out terribly for him, or at least worse than it was now.
He put all his effort into his left pinkie, which he thought would be the easiest to move. The man noticed the movement, and quickly aimed the palm of his hand at Negata's head.
'I should be speaking with you telepathically, think of anything.'
'Huh?'
'Alright, we're connected.'
From that point on, Negata could see that his own body, along with the body of his friends, were healing at an extreme pace. Along with that, the crippled man, who actually didn't seem all that crippled at the moment, was slowly weakening.
After some time passed, each and every single one of them stood up. Meanwhile, the crippled old man was back to how he was at first, which was similar to a person who had been beaten twenty times over.
"W-Wha-?"
As expected, everyone here, except for the crippled old man, was confused. Even Negata, who was there to experience all of it, still didn't quite get what was going on.
After that, each and every single one of them were ordered to split up to search the continent for information. Just as the man had said, they truly did become his eyes and ears. Meanwhile, the cripple sat inside his dungeon on a wooden chair, analyzing everything through them.
Many years had passed since then, seven to be exact, and they had continued to live by following his orders. Although they had no evidence, they wholeheartedly believed that the second they stopped following orders, their lives would end on the spot.
Now, their peculiar situation has now organized a meeting between them and Dionysus.
Dionysus turned into an alleyway that would lead into a square behind four buildings, which just happened to be a perfect spot to murder someone without anyone else recognizing.
'Alright, let's wrap this up.'
After Dionysus reached the center of the square, Negata hopped down from his building, and . . .
--- SEQUENCE 3 ---
DWIF
'Hoh, guess it's about time for this.'
Behind him, Dionysus noticed a man, of significant posture, that had come in from up above. It would be more accurate to say that he had noticed him from a while back, four months ago in fact, but as of today, this was where he noticed him.
He acted like a scared civilian.
"H-Hah? U-Um, do you w-want something?"
He put on a perfect act. He hunched his back over a bit and began to rub his hands as well, all to make it look like he was a spineless person. Negata bit the bait and believed him, which resulted in a look of pity.
"Listen, sorry to cut it to you, but I'm here to kill you, meaning you're not walking out of here alive. I'll make it painless, so just stand still."
Negata walked up to Dionysus, who was putting up the act until the very end. If he still wouldn't stop before he killed him, Dionysus planned to jump into his alternate dimension in which he would make a great getaway.
"W-Wait, I can pay you money!"
He continued the act by fumbling around with his hands at the back of his pants as if he was trying to pull out his wallet. He saw Negata hesitate very slightly, but he didn't stop.
"Tch."
WHOOSH
"?!"
Negata saw the curtain that appeared to his right and Dionysus' left, but he didn't have the reaction speed to stop Dionysus before his target threw himself into the curtain.
WHOOSH
As suddenly as it arrived, the curtain disappeared from existence. Along with the curtain, his target, Dionysus, was nowhere to be seen.
'Building to your left, the roof.'
Veritas' voice bounced off the corners of his brain, and Negata whirled around in time to see some black hair up above.
"Got it!"
CRUNCH
He dug his hand into the building right before using it as leverage to throw himself up above. Unfortunately for him, Dionysus was already gone by the time he threw himself up here.
'Where?!'
He tried to ask Veritas, but it seemed that he also had no answer, as silence continued to ring in his ears. Finally, upon arriving at the fact that Veritas wouldn't be of much use in this battle, Negata quickly cut off his line of thought to focus on his physical attributes.
Although he didn't fully perfect it, he had developed an ability, not related to the granted and awakened ones, in which he cleared his mind of anything unrelated, dedicating his focus solely to his senses.
When he did this, all of his senses were heightened to the point where he could even hear a whisper from thirty feet away, even if he was in the middle of a crowd.
'There!"
Negata quickly leaped into the sky while taking a piece of the building that he was on, and the piece happened to be a slab of concrete.
"I've got you!"
Veins bulging on his right arm, he quickly threw it at where the curtain had emerged, and not even a second had passed for all of this to happen.
Dionysus, who couldn't even happen to come close to Negata's physical ability . . .
QWIIF
Took the slab of concrete straight to his body.