Sylthia's consciousness was blurry. She knew she was dying. From poison, of all things.
'What a pathetic way to go...'
Since birth, her body had been administered with the best treatments and procedures in order to make it as strong as possible.
Whether it be a physical, magical, mental or a biochemical attack, her resistance had been increased to the max. Ordinary poisons couldn't even put a dent to her immunity. And of course, there were always elixirs which could instantly cure the venom if needed. So, getting poisoned to death was not the way she had ever thought she would go.
Maybe that's why she got careless.
In the sudden ambush, all of her focus was put into defending against the Kraken's new weapon, ignoring Karlocks sneak attack.
As a result? Now she had been inflicted with a poison which couldn't be contained by her immunity or elixirs.
There was only one way of dying to be saved now, using Estris's ability to the extreme. But since she knew her friend's ability well, she knew it was going to cost Estris. She wondered if it was really worth it.
Synthia coughed, blood coming out of her mouth. Her immunity had almost been consumed. The poison was just too strong. Her lungs felt like they were on fire, cutting off her air supply. Her heart beat was gradually weakening. She was having difficulty processing information, and her vision was getting blurry.
She could barely make out the conversation that was taking place between Estris and Chris. The brat was claiming he could save her.
In her final moments, Sylthia wanted to laugh. 'Yeah, little guy. Of course you can.'
Under different circumstances, Sylthia would have explained to the naive boy exactly why that was impossible, that is, if she wasn't so busy coughing her lungs out and dying.
But somehow, Estris actually agreed to let the boy have a try. Sylthia wanted to yell at her friend. This was dangerous! If the boy is accidentally infected by the toxins, it would be really bad.
Just when she was hoping for Chris to keep his distance, the guy did something that even made her forget to cough for a second. He swallowed her blood!
What a way to commit suicide. WHY would he do this?!
Great. Now they will have two dead people here.
'A pity…'
That was the last thought she had before 'died'.
"Oi, wake up already. It's not the time to sleep." Sylthia awoke to a slap on her cheek.
Opening her eyes, she realized that the coughing was gone and she could breathe again. "What… happened?" She murmured, utterly confused. "Why am I not dead? Estris, did you use your powers?! I told you not to! And… why aren't YOU dead?! Estris, did you use your powers on HIM too?!"
This time, it was Estris who slapped Sylthia. "You need to calm down. And breathe. I did not save you. He did," she said, nodding towards Axel.
??
Sylthia turned to look at Axel in shock. She couldn't believe it! This boy… this… this outsider! HE saved her life? "He did?! How?!"
"I don't know. He just tasted your blood, then made up some weird concoction and fed it to you. Before I knew it, you were breathing stably again."
Sylthia slowly shook her head. "How… how is that possible? Even the Elixirs had no effect. It was a new synthesization. How did he manage to detoxify it?"
"Actually, I would like to know that as well," said Estris, turning to Axel.
While going through the knowledge he had just unlocked, Axel was pricked by the curious and disbelieving gazes of Estris and Sylthia, causing him to pause.
Axel clenched his jaw. He knew coming down here was a bad idea. It seems like he's being forced to reveal all of his secrets here one after another. Well, no matter. He decided that poison mastery is the last secret that is going to be revealed on this trip.
"Alright, I can explain. But… are you guys sure you want to know right now?" He asked, raising his eyebrows as he gestured towards the battlefield not far away from them. Suddenly, the girls turned their attention back to the fight, only to see that Kyrin did seem to need their help.
"Oh no, boss has been poisoned too," said Estris.
"What?! NO!" Sylthia panicked. "What do we do?!"
Both the ladies turned to look at Axel, who had already successfully detoxified Sylthia. "Axel, no Chris, can you…"
"Cure Commander Tenebrous too! Quickly! She's about to die!"
Axel shrugged, leisurely spectating the battle. "Well? I don't know if I can. It's not an easy task, you know. Especially when you receive no gratitude for saving the person."
Sylthia blushed, realizing the huge blunder she had committed. She had forgotten to thank her savior! Everything had happened so fast that she barely had time to process it. A few seconds ago, she was about to die. With a lot of regret and unwillingness. But then, she actually survived! And it was just a 16 year old who saved her, one she would consider to be the last person to be able to do so. Then she found out that her idol was also poisoned. In all this, she completely forgot to thank the person due to whom she was still able to breathe.
"I…"
"Yes?" Axel leaned his ear forward, as if to hear her more clearly.
"I…" Sylthia knew what she had to do, but she was having a real struggle actually doing it. Just a little while ago, when she first met him, she had thought that this guy was just a nobody, even beyond nobody. A primitive person from the outside world. Even after he had shown off his talent in the trial, she had refused to acknowledge it. So what if he's a little athletic and good at combat? He's still a primitive guy who has not received Atlantian education. As for being compared to her? Without a relic, he'd always be an insignificant bug.
But now, that same person had actually saved her life. She felt extremely humiliated and defeated. And that's when Chris hadn't even tried to bother to see her as competition. Even when she had repeatedly put him down in their conversation, and had instead saved her life.
Maybe, that's what made it worse. She had been making all sorts of assumptions about him, getting jealous of his talent, being petty, seeing him in contempt and what not, while he completely ignored her existence, like she was not even worthy enough for his attention. Instead of taking her rudeness to heart, he even saved her life instead.
Just how... noble is that?
Even now, looking at him sitting on the ground, he gave off a strange aura of dominance and indifference that made her feel small and transparent. There was only one other person she had gotten the same feeling from.
The Princess....
'Sigh... I lost.'
Sylthia finally gave up on the comparison.
Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to bow her head. "I'm really sorry, I didn't express my gratitude. I will repay this life debt one day."
'Sounds familiar.'
Standing beside Axel, Akiko just shook her head in pity. If she can tell anything from the past, rather than being able to repay, she would instead end up with more debt.
Axel, on the other hand, nodded in satisfaction. "Not bad. So you do have some conscience after all. Now, quickly admit that I'm much better than you and you're sorry for ever being rude to me."
"...W-What...?!" Sylthia looked at Axel as if looking at him for the first time.
"What's wrong? Do you not want me to go save Kyrin?"
"You....!"
Is this guy for real? What happened to the Noble and Indifferent person who doesn't get offended and is always the bigger man who looks at the bigger picture?
She is taking her thoughts back. This guy is the most narcissistic, selfish, petty, and egoistic bastard she has known!
It seems, he did take offense of her words. But the bastard had just been waiting for the right time to get back at her!
....
A few moments later…
All the Automatons had turned their focus on Axel, specifically, on the glasses he had just taken off.
"How the hell… do you have HIS glasses?" Asked Karlock, using another Automaton's loudspeaker to communicate.
Axel's head went blank. Fuck...
'Did he actually find out?!'
Did this guy find out that these were Nerio's glasses?!
How?!
Axel grimaced. This is bad. If this bastard knows that these are Nerio's glasses, then he is busted. Because the person who has the glasses will be behind the death of Theron and Nerio.
Axel gritted his teeth. When taking out the glasses, he didn't think they would be encountering Kraken high-rankers so soon. And when he learned that many of the Kraken members use the same device, he thought no one would recognize them. Who would have thought that they would encounter a Kraken higher up right away, one who would be a specialist in technology at that?
'Yep, this IS bad.' He confirmed.
Axel's mind worked furiously, trying to come up with ways to prevent this disastrous outcome.
Whoever has Nerio's glasses would be behind the death of Theron and Nerio. Theron and Nerio had been dispatched to bring the Crown Prince. If this bastard connects the dots, he'd know that Axel is not Chris Martin the noob, but Axel Hunt the heir to the Throne.
What's worse is that they can't even kill Karlock right now to silence him, since his real body is not here. Once Karlock reveals this information to the higher ups, all hell would break loose.
Only a second had passed, and Axel's occlumency accelerated brain had processed all this information. But he still hadn't come up with a suitable solution.
"Oh? Whose glasses are these?" He asked, trying to buy time, and also trying to confirm that this guy had indeed realized the identity of the original owner.
"Who else ?! They belong to my friend Nerio!"
!!!
"Nerio... Krosak?"
"The Seventh Hand?!"
The name elicited an instant response from the rest of the people present.
Old man Willis erected barriers all around them, Kyrin turned intangible, Sylthia summoned a wind storm around them, while grey energy glowed into Estris's eyes.
Nerio Krosak, the Unseen Death. Not the strongest among The Hands, but definitely among the most feared ones. He is actually one of the major reasons why the Kraken Territory is so dangerous.
Imagine dying instantly out of the blue, not expecting it, not knowing it, and not even realizing it. That was Nerio, the Unseen death. His relic, the Aerenterous, can shoot through almost any defense, if put enough power.
The only saving grace is that the guy doesn't have much of a defense, so he is only dispatched on extremely important missions.
Though, that didn't do much to alleviate his threat, since he could kill you before you even know where he is, let alone approach him. If that wasn't bad enough, he is also accompanied by his bodyguard Theron, also known as the Unkillable Urchin. No one could break through his defense of his coral armor. And the harder you try to hit, the harder he'll hit back.
....Absolute offense.... and Absolute defense....
The duo together make a terrifying combo.
That's why, just the name was enough to rattle everyone.
Everyone except Akiko looked at the glasses in Axel's hands in shock.
"Seventh's glasses?!" Asked Sylthia in shock.
How can they belong to the Seventh?! If that man comes looking for his glasses, then this messy situation would take a turn for the worse.
On the other hand, Axel still needed more time, so he pretended to be surprised, looking towards the Biomaton which had spoken. "What the hell are you talking about? How can you be so sure they belong to that guy?"
That was something he genuinely wanted to know.
"Khekhekehkehkhe"
But the question seemed to amuse Karlock as they heard his creepy aesthema-tic laughter from the automatons. "Who brought this kid in here? Do you know nothing about me?" He asked.
"I MADE those glasses! Only I have the blueprints for that subrelic! If that doesn't tell you enough, you should also know that I had to make special modifications in that piece to fit a sniper. There is no way I wouldn't recognise them. Now, tell me, how in the Entity's name… do YOU have them?! And how did Theron and Nerio die?!"
"What?!"
The words drowned the Atlantians in shock. Theron and Nerio… dead? WTF?????
The duo has been a real pain to the kingdom, extirpating a multitude of the kingdom's forces in the past few years. There have been serious meetings about making plans to eliminate them but none have been successful so far.
Theron's defense is too strong, and Nerio's shooting is too dangerous. Even if they really send out their major players to eliminate these two, it is guaranteed that they would lose a lot more than they will gain.
That's why, hearing about them being dead came as something too inconceivable and discombobulating to them.
"What... do we do?" Asked Akiko in a whisper, standing beside Axel. She, of course, knew exactly who killed those two Kraken higher ups. Heck, she had even seen their dead bodies herself.
She knew that the situation was critical. They were in the middle of enemy territory. If they found out that the person holding the glasses was none other than Axel Hunt himself, then it could be really dangerous.
Axel cursed inwardly. The situation was bad. Karlock was already catching up. Just a little more time, and he would realize who the boy he was talking to actually was. Also, Kyrin, Estris and the rest were also getting more and more confused. Fortunately, since Karlock, being the geek that he was, was so talkative, Axel had gotten enough time to think of several solutions.
Two of the most dangerous people of Kraken dead? And the spoils ending up in the hands of a boy completely unrelated to the matter? This didn't add up. Axel realized that he just had to add some clues so that the situation makes sense.
He looked at Kyrin. "Hey Boss. Did you really kill them?"
Kyrin: ???!!!???
"Why did you give me some dead guy's glasses?!" He asked, not giving Kyrin the time to refute.
Yup, he had considered several options, but this one turned out to be the best one after all. Simple yet masterful.
"You!" Sure enough, all the automatons' focus turned to Kyrin, shock and realisation sounding in Karlock's voice. "It was YOU! Damn it, who else could it be?!"
The situation suddenly made perfect sense. How did the boy get the glasses? Because his boss gave them to her. How did she get the glasses? Wasn't it obvious?
Everyone at the organization was shocked when they came to know about Theron and Nerio's deaths. How could those two die in the fucking outer world when even the best of the Atlantian forces were helpless against them?
"You have been in the outside world all this time!" Muttered Karlock in realisation. "You found out about them, didn't you? I should have known from the beginning!! You have killed Theron and Nerio!"
But now the cause seems so obvious! Kyrin Tenebrous! One of the most powerful and dangerous Relic Wielders in Atlantis. There's probably no one in the outer world other than Kyrin who can take down both Theron and Nerio.
Meanwhile, Estris, Willis, and Sylthia were completely flabbergasted by the strange series of events. First of all, the sub-relic which Axel was using turned out to belong to Nerio, the dangerous and feared shooter from Kraken. Then, they come to know that the number 7 and 8 of the Hands are actually dead, and this biomass of a machine thinks that Kyrin was the one who was behind their deaths and the one who gave Axel Nerio's glasses.
Well, it wouldn't be difficult to believe that Kyrin did manage to kill off two of Kraken's finest alone. Except… she WASN'T the one who killed them. She wasn't the one who gave Axel the glasses. According to Axel, he just got them 'from a friend'.
And even if she had really killed those two, this is not a matter that she would suppress.
So, were Theron and Nerio really dead? And if yes, then who the hell killed them? And how did the glasses end up in Axel's hands?
"FUCK!" What the hell are you talking about?!" Asked Kyrin. Of course, the most confused person was none other than her.
When did she kill those two?!
And, when did SHE gave this brat those glasses?! Kyrin quickly realized that Axel is shifted the blame to her.
But of course, Karlock was already deep in his theory to believe Kyrin.
"Don't try to play games here, Tenebrous! I know it was you! Now tell me! Is he still alive?!What happened to Axel Hunt?! What happened to the Pri—"
….
A.N.: Powerstones!
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