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Chapter 156 - No Time for Regret

Marcellus noticed a crude necklace adorning Severin's neck, its components strung together with sinew.

Turning to Martia, Marcellus appeared baffled. She elucidated, "It is surely a mystical item."

"Indeed," confirmed Severin, his voice tinged with satisfaction.

"Yes, it is. I dared not use it, but even a rat driven into a corner will chew its way out." His words echoed with a grim resolve, acknowledging the perilous nature of the mystical item, he was determined to kill them.

Marcellus extended his tenma to cloak his sword, while Martia was already engaged in combat with full force. Marcellus had a troubling tendency to hold back in battle, a habit born from his struggle with taint from the ritual. However, with his recent abandonment of this affliction, a poignant indication of his true nature emerged.

 The dream forged a warped reflection of Marcellus, fueled by primal instincts; the dream's Marcellus, a ruthless swordsman, never hesitated.

Unfortunately or fortunately, the Lacernist pathway's initial sequence proved insufficient in bolstering the constitution of its aspirants to a significant degree.

While it offered agility and dexterity akin to agile hands, it lacked the raw power desired.

This deficiency was one of the driving factors behind Severin's journey to Mythralis.

As a wandering aspirant, resources were scarce, and knowledge even more so. However, owing to the uniqueness of his pathway, Severin possessed the rare ability to delve into realms of inquiry inaccessible to others. Through diligent investigation and tenacity, he sought out and acquired the elusive knowledge that would propel him forward on his path of mastery.

For the wandering aspirant seeking resources, there traditionally existed three primary avenues.

The first involved affiliating oneself with an organization. However, to Severin, such entanglements resembled a form of enslavement, antithetical to the cherished freedom prized by itinerant aspirants.

The second option presented itself in the guise of becoming an adventurer, yet this path appeared fraught with perilous uncertainties. One was perennially on the brink of being thrust into perilous missions teetering on the edge of folly, each venture a potential gateway to one's demise.

The third route, however, resonated most deeply with Severin's nature: thievery. This method of acquisition aligned seamlessly with his penchant for independence and resourcefulness.

In the pursuit of knowledge and power, Severin was willing to tread where others dared not, his moral compass calibrated to the dictates of necessity in the unforgiving landscape of the aspirant's journey.

Severin had weighed the merits of the first two avenues: joining an organization or embracing the life of an adventurer, mercenary, or bounty hunter. Both paths offered their own advantages and perils, yet ultimately, they served as mere stepping stones towards his ultimate goal: acquiring resources through less orthodox means.

The notion of joining an organization held the allure of stability and camaraderie, providing access to resources and opportunities for advancement. However, the prospect of surrendering his autonomy to the dictates of others rankled against Severin's fiercely independent spirit.

Conversely, the life of an adventurer promised freedom from the shackles of servitude, offering boundless opportunities for excitement and discovery. Yet, the inherent dangers of such an unstable lifestyle loomed large, casting a shadow of uncertainty over every venture into the unknown.

In the end, Severin resolved to tread a delicate balance between the two paths, utilizing the facade of legitimacy afforded by his chosen organization to cloak his clandestine activities. As an organization member or freelance adventurer, he would cultivate alliances and hone his skills, all the while clandestinely acquiring the resources he needed through cunning subterfuge and calculated theft.

Severin's investigation led him to an unexpected nexus of power within the Anglia Kingdom—the daughter of a Marchioness, Claudia Ayden Amadeus. While on a mission for The independent odd Fellows as an undercover pirate, he uncovered a covert collaboration between Claudia and Baron Oswulf the Iron Hand, who held sway over the enigmatic Mythralis island.

Their clandestine commission: to delve into the mysteries shrouding Mythralis and locate a man known only as Marcellus.

Yet, Severin's expertise as a Cipherist afforded him a deeper understanding of the intricacies at play. Through keen mental inference and astute analysis, he pieced together the puzzle, unravelling the tangled web of alliances and hidden agendas that lurked beneath the surface.

In the following days, his arrival in Mythralis was swift, driven by the urgency of Claudia's words.

"Blackeyed," the description fit perfectly onto the man now before him, though the different name hung in the air, a dissonance hinting at hidden motives. With the aid of keen observation and shrewd deduction, Severin swiftly located his quarry.

As events unfolded and Edwin, Marcellus, and Martia apprehended a group of cultists, Severin's intuition pricked at the edges of his consciousness.

There was a subtle pattern emerging, a thread of intrigue woven amidst the mundane—a realization that the cultists apprehended by Edwin, Marcellus, and Martia offered little, but further investigation revealed a startling truth: their capture wasn't random, it was deliberate.

They wanted to be caught.

Severin's curiosity was piqued, and he delved deeper into the tangled web of secrets that enshrouded Mythralis.

Why throw away secrecy for the cold embrace of prison walls? And then, whispers reached him on the wind - whispers of a missing book, a governor's diary lost in the chaos. An epiphany struck him with the force of a thunderclap: someone was playing an elaborate game, stealing from the governor under a smokescreen of captured cultists.

In a sudden eureka moment, the pieces fell into place.

or so he thought...

Deception woven this intricately?

It promised a challenge he couldn't ignore. But who dared play such a dangerous game in the governor's own backyard?

Was it Blackeyed, using his assumed identity as a smokescreen?

Or was there another player lurking in the shadows, pulling the strings from unseen corners?

Severin delved deeper, burrowing into the governor's life with the ease of a predator stalking prey already weakened by illness. His uncanny ability to exploit human weaknesses, honed to perfection by his unnatural state, made the investigation almost effortless.

The mask the governor wore, crafted to project authority and benevolence, crumbled under Severin's scrutiny.

The governor's secrets unfolded before Severin like a rotting scroll, revealing a stench of decay far worse than he anticipated.

The man, already halfway detached from his humanity, proved an easy target for Severin's brand of investigation. It was a grim walk in the park, each revelation a sickening twist of the knife.

The governor, it turned out, wasn't just a corrupt official, but a devout member of a clandestine organization.

They concluded a ritual fueled by the life force of thousands, macabre harvesting masked by natural deaths. The victims, mostly terminally ill, were specifically chosen to minimize suspicion. Yet, like any human endeavour, their meticulous plan had flaws. Some survived, their faint flickers of life drawing whispers.

The ritual's flaw, the survival of its intended victims, wasn't the only wrinkle in the organization's meticulously planned sacrifice. A deeper, more insidious layer of manipulation was woven into the very fabric of the ceremony.

Severin, with his metal inference ability, uncovered a chilling truth: the organization left an unexpected trace, a psychic cue embedded within the participants, both initiator and victim, drawing them back to Mythralis.

These "suggestions" compelled them, unknowingly, to return to Mythralis, effectively erasing any evidence of their involvement and drawing them back to the scene of the crime.

Despite Severin's meticulous investigation, a shroud of uncertainty still lingered over the true purpose of the ritual. Whether due to the governor's fragmented memories or his reluctance to divulge the complete truth, Severin found himself at an impasse. Without a comprehensive understanding of the ritual's intricacies, he was left grasping in the dark, unable to discern its ultimate goal.

The governor's reticence only served to deepen Severin's intrigue, fueling his determination to uncover the hidden truths concealed within Mythralis, he felt he was in the grasp of catching a big fish.

Yet, without access to the entirety of the ritual's secrets, he could do little more than speculate, his mind racing with myriad possibilities and conjectures.

Severin faced a new set of challenges with the revelation of the survivors marked by the organization's clandestine influence.

The realization that both the survivors and the initiator of the ritual were closely monitored by the invisible hand of the organization brought a sense of urgency to his endeavours, both parties now cautiously orbiting each other like wary predators.

However, he understood that any rash actions could quickly escalate into a deadly game of cat and mouse, with the marked individuals banding together in mutual defence.

The 'contest' had shifted and the stakes raised to dizzying heights. Yes, contest to Severin, this was no more than a game; his life was not in immediate danger, his actions merely decided by profit and loss.

No longer a mere observer, Severin found himself thrust into the heart of a deadly conspiracy, his every action scrutinized by unseen eyes. Yet one thing remained clear: he needed more leverage.

His Sequence 7 abilities, formidable though they were, offered no guarantees of victory in this shadowy game of intrigue. Containment and elimination proved elusive, the potential for backup lurking in the shadows like a silent spectre. Thus, Severin turned to the one weapon he wielded with unmatched skill: planning.

With meticulous precision, he charted a course through the tangled web of deceit and deception that ensnared Mythralis. Each move calculated, each step measured, he danced on the razor's edge of danger, his mind a whirlwind of strategies, counterstrategies and Mysticism till he found leverage, Gunther!

With clues in hand, he knew encountering the remaining survivors was inevitable.

Gunther was the first to cross his path, followed by Claudia and then Elena.

Counting them all, he realized there were only five left!

Indeed, Severin was well aware of Marcellus's status as a survivor of the ritual. However, this fact held little particular significance to him. The side effects of the ritual, while imbuing the survivor with superior skill, ultimately left them as mundane mortals, incapable of posing a direct threat to his life.

Though he could manipulate and control them from the shadows, the knowledge that they were all being watched tempered any potential advantage.

Gunther, on the other hand, held a different significance. He was the first to be discovered by Severin, and thus his revelation carried weighty implications for the unfolding events.

The revelation of the survivors marked by the organization's influence brought a new layer of complexity to Severin's calculations. No longer could he rely solely on brute force or intimidation; now, subtlety and cunning were his allies. 

Thus, he bided his time, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. His every move is a carefully orchestrated symphony of deception and misdirection. And as the pieces fell into place, he saw a glimmer of hope amidst the darkness—a chance to unravel the mysteries of Mythralis and emerge profitable.

Severin's rationale dictated that Gunther's existence must remain clandestine, preserved as a valuable trump card or bargaining chip. However, after uncovering all the human survivors of the ritual, his focus shifted to the elusive orchestrators of the ceremony—a task fraught with complexity and uncertainty.

While the survivors shared one or more distinguishing traits that set them apart from mundane humans, they proved challenging to locate. In contrast, finding the governor was a relatively straightforward task. However, the same could not be said for the other orchestrators of the ritual, as they remained exceedingly elusive.

These shadowy figures operated from the shadows, their identities obscured by layers of secrecy and deception. Severin would need a scheme.