His blood began to spill slowly from his mouth, staining his jaw and then dripping down the outside of his mask.
Nathan stood still as he held the sword, with his head feeling heavy and his thoughts becoming more and more scattered.
'Na...Nat'
Nathan heard a distant voice, then frowned as he heard Amelia inside his head.
'Nathan!'
He blinked a couple of times regaining consciousness and staggered slightly before gripping the sword tightly again steadying himself.
'I'm fine'
"No, you're not!" Amelia shouted again with clear concern.
Sighing, Nathan replied wearily.
'Really, I am...'
Nathan took a couple of steps back and then his legs lost strength, so he lost his balance and fell down the mountain of rubble unable to stop himself.
Again, he felt himself losing consciousness, but he forced himself to stay awake.
He tried to get up as soon as he stopped on the ground, but no matter how hard he tried his body refused to move. All his limbs were shaking horribly, and he was slowly beginning to lose feeling in his hands and feet.
'Huh? Nathan? No... What do I do?'
Amelia began to panic not knowing what to do, there wasn't a shred of essence left in Nathan's body and it was a miracle that he had even survived such a fall.
As much as he wanted to stay conscious, Nathan felt his eyelids getting heavier and heavier, to the point where he could no longer bear it and closed his eyes.
It was then that a green light surrounded him, forming a rectangular barrier that covered his entire body. Then Nathan felt the pain begin to subside slightly and his senses became clear enough to realize what was happening.
The man had approached him and was pointing his hands at him, forming a strange barrier around him.
It wasn't long before Nathan felt much better, or at least well enough to get up and sit down.
"Who are you, kid?" The man let the barrier disappear and looked at him imposingly.
Nathan's head still hurt from the fall, plus no matter how much the man had healed him a bit with his technique, Nathan was still very weak and definitely in bad shape.
He couldn't afford to antagonize, let alone have a confrontation right now.
"...I'm Nathan"
The man frowned and sighed as he shook his head silently. Then he turned and looked at the large mountain of rubble in the center of the large room.
Nathan looked at the man in silence, but not before looking around cautiously and curiously.
He noticed that there were about ten bodies around him, as well as a strange creature buried under the wreckage of the ceiling.
He saw how the man approached the corpse of the calamity and started to remove several rocks as if he was looking for something. Nathan paid no more attention to him and focused on his greatsword still stuck in Seinor's limp body.
'Are you alright?' Amelia asked knowing that what Nathan had just experienced was simply absurd.
Nathan slowly stood up, leaning on a couple of pieces of rubble, and answered her.
'Yes... I think I will be'
Amelia nodded slightly inside her head but really she was still quite worried about him.
Nathan started to climb up the rubble he had fallen through and reached his sword, then looked at it and sighed.
'I really prefer light weapons...'
Resigning himself, Nathan grabbed the hilt and using what little strength he had regained from the man's healing, pulled the sword out of Seinor's chest. It was then that he saw that something glowed slightly inside its open chest.
Nathan frowned and without hesitation put his hand inside Seinor's chest.
A long time ago he would have found this disgusting, but Nathan had seen and done so many things that he had completely lost his disgust.
He lifted his hand full of black blood and looked at the necklace in his hand that had been hidden inside Seinor's chest.
'A relic?'
Nathan was quite surprised that he had gotten a relic so unexpectedly. He knew that calamities carried relics with them from time to time... but he didn't really think this was the case.
The necklace had a peculiar shape, with two curved prongs resembling a DNA double helix. One end was black while the other was white, somehow reminding him of the yin and yang symbol.
However, with nothing of essence inside him, he had no way of knowing what its function was. So, he quickly and unobtrusively tucked the necklace discreetly into his trouser pocket.
He had learned the lesson that people were greedy by nature... he was not going to reveal that he had obtained something that people would literally kill for.
Nathan gripped the hilt of the sword tightly and began to climb down the mountain of rubble, dragging the sword carelessly.
Once he was down, he noticed that the man was holding a large staff almost as tall as he was, Nathan frowned at the sight of the relic in the form of a staff and sighed.
'That must cost a fortune'
However, he noticed that the man was not looking at the staff with greed but disgust.
'What now?' Amelia asked, taking advantage of the silence.
Nathan was thoughtfully silent as he stared at the ceiling.
He had no idea where he had fallen, all he knew was that he was far from the residence area. He was definitely still inside the castle, so it was not the outside area, and the room did not look like a throne room.
Nathan sighed, knowing that somehow he had reached the military zone, the second worst area of the castle according to Amelia.
If it was hard enough to survive in the residential area, Nathan knew that from now on anything he encountered would probably kill him easily.
No longer could he go through the corridors hunting calamities without much care, now he would have to change the way he did things.
'Well... we'll see'
Amelia sighed heavily at Nathan's vague response.
'Really?'
Nathan shrugged looking at the man approaching the woman who was still kneeling on the ground with a completely pale face and a slight black spot appearing on her neck.
'No matter what…' Nathan looked back up at the hole in the ceiling looking up at the red sky.
'I've come too far already... no matter what, I'm getting out of this place'
Amelia sighed internally and completed Nathan's sentence.
'We will...'
Nathan snorted amusedly and shrugged.