Editors: Sebas Tian, Speedphoenix, Joker
"Shit… My friggin hand…" I cursed and grimaced as I grit my teeth and tried to bear with it. Oh god, the pain. Seriously, what the hell Yuki? You can't just leave the guy you finished off with a fancy one-liner if you're dripping in cold sweat!
The pervert's sword was still stuck in my arm. I stared at it for a moment and hesitated, but soon made up my mind. Aw, what the hell. I might as well just get it over with. I pulled on the weapon and drew it from my flesh in one go.
"Arggghhhhhhh! Mother fucker!" Blood immediately started to pour from the wound as profanities and screams of agony poured from my throat. I immediately cast it aside by throwing it away. Aw man… This is awful. This hurts so bad I think I might cry.
My sword wound was obviously the worst of my injuries, but it wasn't the only thing that hurt. Impaling my foe had caused the fingers in that hand to bend the wrong way. They definitely looked broken, and the pain I felt from them told roughly the same tale.
Of course, all my troubles had stemmed from the fact that my finishing blow wasn't something that I had planned ahead of time. It was something instinctive, an attack that I had done on the spur of the moment. Thankfully, it actually finished him, or else I'd be in some real deep shit right about now.
I had thought to myself just a bit earlier in the day that amateurs like me shouldn't attempt things that only professionals knew how to do. And yet, I had gone and done it again. The manga I had read in my previous life had often depicted characters performing barehanded attacks much like the one I had just carried out, so I'd thought that I would be fine. But now, I knew for a fact that the characters in question had only ever seemed fine because they were putting up a front. There was simply no way the act wouldn't have caused their fingers to break. And now I know why they say not to try things you see on TV or whatever at home.
I opened up my item box and reached inside with the hand with the broken fingers. The other hand's fingers simply didn't want to respond to me at all, so I didn't really have much of a choice. I then used the palm of my hand to retrieve a high-grade potion, or elixir as the king had called it, and popped the cork with my teeth. Without any further delay, I began pouring the liquid all over my sword wound.
I leaked an anguished groan the moment the liquid touched me, but the pain soon subsided as the wound promptly began to fix itself. The process was basically the exact opposite of the process that had led to its injury; I almost felt like I was watching a video of the wound getting opened up in reverse. Before long, the whole thing disappeared. There wasn't a trace of it left. It was almost like it had never existed to begin with.
I used my now-fixed arm to grab ahold of the potion and poured it on my other hand's fingers, which made an unpleasant cracking noise as they too went back to normal in a matter of moments. Wait, didn't I literally just convince myself to be a bit more careful about using them outside the Wicked Forest? Yeah no. Why the hell would I do that when these things are so goddamn convenient? Just one of them fixed me up in no time flat. For fuck's sake, what kind of idiot would even suggest being more prudent in the first place? Oh wait, it was me.
In the long run, I viewed the whole series of events as a learning experience, and I did, in fact, learn a lot about just how useful the potions could be. Hoarding them was way more of a waste than just straight up using them whenever I felt the need, especially if my reason for not using them was that I was too afraid of what others might think. Therefore, as illustrated in the proof above, not using them is simply not an option. QED.
I picked up my magical handgun and holstered it before pulling Zaien from the earth and propping it up on top of my shoulders. Only after checking to make sure my weapons were in place did I finally look back down at him.
"He really was a strong one though," I muttered. Man, I seriously thought that last attack was going to kill me. My face would totally be on the end of a blade right now if I didn't manage to twist my arm just a bit and throw his stab off course. I basically only won because my stats were higher than his.
The pervert's blade was the fastest I'd ever seen. I was only able to track it because of the ridiculous kinetic vision granted to me by my demon lord tier body. Another interesting thing to note was that my stats trumped his despite the fact that his level was much higher than mine. The people I'd analyzed led me to believe that, as a race, humanity had great potential for growth. Yet, despite that, not even an orichalcum class adventurer, an individual that stood close to humanity's apex, had stats that matched my own.
Humans were just quantitatively inferior. And it wasn't something that they seemed to be able to ultimately overcome. That said, it wasn't like I could just go ahead and fight a bunch of orichalcum adventurers all at once. That would be a recipe for disaster. I'd get stomped on and rekt. I should probably work on both the dungeon's defences and getting stronger myself as soon as I get back. But that's a thought for later. I've pretty much done everything I needed to do here, so I should go ahead and catch up with Nell and her buddies for the time being.
I happened to hear the sound of shattering glass right as the thought passed through my mind. Accompanying it was a great clamour, a mass of voices so loud I could hear it from outside the castle.
And it was all coming from up above.
"I wonder what's happening up there?" As interested as I was, my current angle didn't allow me to see much at all. Maybe the knights ended up getting into a big fight or something. I mean, we're talking about a castle here, so up top is probably where all the important people are gathered, right? The knights were probably headed up too, so a fight seems pretty likely. Welp. No point sitting here twiddling my thumbs. Might as well head over.
While I did want to get up to where the knights were, I wasn't interested in slowly making my way through the castle. That just sounded like a royal pain in the ass. I guess I'll just fly.
I both scanned the area and checked the map to make sure there wasn't anyone looking in my direction before activating stealth, sprouting both pairs of wings, and leaping into the air. I felt myself almost leave the bounds of gravity as a floaty sensation enveloped my entire being. The ground, which had been right before my face, suddenly shrank beneath me.
After getting a bit closer to the source, I peered through the broken window. There, I saw a fierce melee. The hero, Carlotta, and the rest of the rescue squad had taken up a defensive formation around the king in order to keep him safe from a group of soldiers that I assumed were most likely affiliated with the prince.
There was no comparing the two groups. The knights were so much stronger than the soldiers that they were taking them down with one or two blows each. Or at least that was what it had looked like out of the corner of my eye.
My focus was directed elsewhere. My gaze was centred on a single man standing on top of an elevated platform at the back of the room. He was dressed well, and his stance made him look like a cocky little shit. The way the soldiers were protecting him made it obvious that he was the prince I had been looking for.
I used Analyze just to make sure. And found something… interesting. Something I didn't expect. I was so surprised that I started running my mouth in a way I typically didn't. Now hol' up a fuckin' secon'! Dis muddafukka's already dead!
"Seize those rebels immediately!" I heard the prince shouting a bunch of nonsense as he stood atop the elevated platform. It didn't make sense. He was literally a dead man talking, and that shouldn't have been possible. Altering one's status page was definitely doable, but only to a certain extent. Dramatic lies like having literally no HP weren't possible. And that was exactly what the prince's stat screen displayed. His health was sitting at a flat zero.
I had even used magic eye in order to double check that I wasn't crazy. Lo and behold, he wasn't all that different from the zombies that I had encountered back in that one old guy's city. He was bound with magical energy from head to toe.
The more I looked at him, the more I realized that I wasn't staring down a person. I was looking at a thing, a mere puppet that could no longer think for itself. I didn't know whether he was being controlled through a skill or a spell, but either way, I knew that his manipulator was at least more skilled than the only other I'd ever known. I wonder if he's been infected by a plaga or something. Nah, no way. Plaga are just parasites. People with plaga in them aren't actually dead or anything. [1]
Alright, that's enough joking around for now. Let's get back on track. After looking at him more carefully, I realized that the prince's central nervous system was especially well bound with magic and that his bindings had mana actively flowing through them. His brain, spine, and nerves were all under his manipulator's control. It was a feature not shared by any of the zombies I'd seen before, and likely the reason his corpse seemed so animated and alive despite having lost its life force.
That said, the whole scenario brought a question to mind: why hasn't anyone noticed? If there was such a thing as a technique to manipulate one's enemies, then there was no reason for there not to be countermeasures and methods by which one could detect that another was being controlled. They simply had to exist. And of all people, one would expect the family ruling a country to have access to something that performed the aforementioned roles. If they didn't, then I wouldn't have much to say besides that they were horribly ill-prepared.
Thinking back on my conversation with the king had made the whole scenario make even less sense. He himself had stated that he thought something was wrong with his son and that his actions were growing more suspicious. It would only make sense for the king to have the prince checked. And it wasn't like he was the only one to ever interact with his son either. While I had no idea as to exactly when the prince had become a zombie, I knew that people seeing the signs meant that someone should have realized that something was up.
Wait a second… My eyes stopped on one of the rings the douchebag of a prince had on his finger, one containing an excess of magical energy. Appraising informed me that it was the Ring of Truth and Falsehood. It was an item capable of deceiving those that tried to view the user's status page. Its quality was ridiculously high and came in at a jaw-dropping S-. I guess that must be why no one's ever found out. S- is almost as high-quality as high-quality gets.
The reason that I was able to see the prince's stats regardless was likely because my Analyze skill was leveled to a near abnormal extent. It didn't feel that way given that I was still unable to get even a glimpse of Lefi's stats, but I had actually raised it so far beyond the norm that not even an item with a quality rating of S- could trick it. Geez Lefi, just how OP are you!?
I smiled awkwardly, but then once again redirected my attention away from my distractions and back towards the situation at hand. My gaze once again fell upon the room. The prince was just a puppet, and someone else was pulling his strings. The corpse was acting far too realistically for the manipulator to be at a distance.
Whoever was responsible was literally making the poor retarded thing talk, after all. And the only way for the puppet's words not to sound odd was for the one pulling its strings to be aware of the situation. He had to know what everyone else in the room was saying. Making up words wouldn't go well without a detailed account of exactly what was going on.
There was, of course, always the possibility that he was using something similar to my Evil Eyes or Evil Ears, but I struck it out almost as quickly as I had suggested it. My Magic Eye wasn't picking up on anything.
The easiest way to describe my unique skill was to call it something along the lines of a thermal scope that worked with magic instead of heat. Any mana it picked up would simply stand out. It was just that obvious. I could even see people that were using skills akin to Stealth, as the skill made use of magical energy in order to produce its cloaking effect.
Of course, I had never tested it on anyone with a level 10 stealth skill, but level 10 skills weren't all that realistic in the first place. Even Lefi had claimed that they were rare. The Supreme Dragon had told me that, although she had a literal arsenal's worth of skills, only a handful had reached their final level.
And so, upon coming to the aforementioned conclusion, I began to regard the enemies before me in turn whilst using both my Magic Eye and Analyze in tandem.
It didn't take me long to find the perp. He seemed to resemble some sort of minister. He was situated in the corner of the room and wearing a hood that covered his face and hid it from view. Unfortunately, the pendant he was wearing around his neck was giving off something along the lines of a jamming signal. I literally could not use Analyze on him. But as far as I was concerned, all that meant was that he had something to hide.
That said, the most decisive factor wasn't how suspicious he seemed. It was his mana. Everyone's magical energy had its own unique wavelength, and as Magic Eye could pick up on those differences, I was able to discern that his mana matched the mana contained in the fetters binding the prince.
He was the guy behind the curtain, the guy pulling the strings and manipulating the puppet. Heh. What a nasty little asshole. He's using other people and tricking them into fighting as he enjoys the whole thing from backstage.
But the manipulator behind the prince's behaviour wasn't all he was. The man was my enemy. He was the asshole that had marched an army into the Wicked Forest. Listen here douchebag, you've got a tab to pay. A big one.
I put a figurative mark on my target before looking around for an entry point. And after a few moments, I found one that satisfied my needs. I backed up in order to give myself enough room to ramp up speed, twisted my body so that I was facing forwards, and then gave my wings a single powerful flap.
The wind rushed past me. I could feel the pressure pushing against me as I soared through it. Right as I was about to crash through the window, I retracted my wings and braced for impact.
There was a loud crash. Shattered glass flew everywhere as the people inside the audience chamber began shouting in surprise and scrambling to determine the identity of the sudden intruder. But I didn't stop. I didn't let them process what had happened before I carried out my next move.
I used the force of my entry to dart straight towards the manipulator, who was still stunned by my sudden appearance. And before he could question my allegiance, I swung my blade.
***
[1] Resident Evil