The entire nation of Buckfastleigh had been put under curfew.
Worse was the situation of the nation's capital with thousands of royal police guards and hundreds of investigators turning it upside-down, hoping to find… well, something.
It all happened on the night of the auction, just after they had sold the last item. A scream had awakened the sleeping monsters in and out of the City Hall, and it was so heinous and heart-wrenching that it was impossible to relate it to a grieving woman, and the storm that had rampaged the city afterward.
Viscount Lucas Arbuthnot, Set Lord of the 2nd Set, had been assassinated in his chamber at the topmost section of the Hall.
That was pretty much everything the officials could say for sure then.
A day later, when all the nobles, guards, and commandos had been questioned, the Royal Police Force released a statement that the late Viscount had died of Soul Shock.
It was a frightening effect of various Skills using which a user could freeze, burn, or petrify the target's soul completely from within. None could find the attacker, however. How could someone possibly attack the Viscount within the protection of the enchanted chamber walls? Soul Shock was an effect of Instantaneous Skills, so the attacker must have been near to him when the Viscount had died.
Yet, aside from his lady wife, and now widow Elenora, there was no one with him.
Not known to all, but among a tight circle of prominent officials and the other 6th-floor Contestants present in the same section, there was a talk of two unknown individuals who had shared the chamber of the late Viscount. It turned out that the other two individuals had paid for all the Items that were thought to be bought by the Set Lord.
Even stranger and the mind-gobbling thing was that the Royal Police Force adamantly refused to release the sketches of the faces of these two individuals in this tight circle when demanded so.
Not only that but they also refused to pursue the matter of their identity, stating that these two individuals had left the chambers half an hour earlier based on the statement of the lady Elenora and the four guards stationed outside the chamber's doors.
By the end of the third day, the mystery of Set Lord's death had almost become the mystery of the vanished couple.
It seemed Kai's gamble of imitating the authority of Rinnegan-user had finally paid off, for the only ones who could have pulled that off were those who had come in contact with the white-skinned being personally.
Unknown to all this, Kai was lying on a makeshift bed of wool and straw inside a straw hut. His face was calm, his eyes closed, and in between his brows, there was an uncanny redness.
He had yet to wake up.
Seven days of tiredness. No sleep. Continuous reading, learning, and questioning. And then the events that had played out on the night of the auction after leaving the capital city, especially that flaming figure and those three words, had resulted in something that had never been tried, experimented, or even thought of in millions of millions of years.
These were a series of chain events that had never been combined before and would never happen again in the same sequence or of the same nature.
Only one word could define Kai's state — Unique.
Even Glitch had failed to earn this word in the Primordial Tower. There was only one thing that had come remotely close to being called Unique in this place — Multiverse Interdependency.
After losing consciousness, and seeing the attempts of many fire pillars trying to take the shape of the flaming being, resulting in failures, Kai fell into a strange state of inexplicable lucidity.
He was dreaming, and yet, he was aware of his dreams.
Kai was walking on the blurriest boundary separating the realms of wakefulness and the strangest oblivion of all, the Dreamland. He could perceive himself, his inner Self that was now reading, going through the same documents he had already gone through once before in the Temple of Byagoona. Yes, of that too, he was aware. The only thing that he couldn't do was control the dream itself.
Sometimes his inner Self was jumping to the seventh day, feeling reluctant to leave the library, and on the very next, it was walking with the Existence, making him shiver anew.
Reading, writing, questioning, and then again going through the same.
For hundreds of times, his inner Self traced the same steps, repeating the same process in an uncontrolled and unhinged manner.
Then suddenly, his inner Self was walking out of the main hall of the House of Black and White, the black and white colors of the Chief Bishop's cloak billowing in front of him as if two different worlds birthing and dying.
A Saying that has been passed down from ancient times before the first dawn. It has no true meaning, and every faceless man has interpreted it in a unique way, concluding a result different from all. Listen… the man, whose face was blurred, whispered these words in his self's ears.
The gates of the true essence of the Facelessness open when the White acts as Black and the Black acts as White.
Boom!
Randomness ended there with an explosion and then began a never-ending cycle of the most absurd events.
A controlled meditative state of Kai's inner Self, trying to comprehend the meaning of the Saying. Understanding that had always lurked in his subconscious and unconscious mind came flooding his lucid self.
And from this abundance of bizarre happenings, birthed a question. Curious as Kai was, his true Self turned out to have surpassed even his conscious mind.
This question represented Kai's prime curiosity.
If I am Black, then who is White?
Days, months, years, and decades seemed to have passed, asking the same question in an infinite loop while all the knowledge and insights Kai had gained since his birth in the previous world flashed by his Self, again and again, his Wills kept extracting the essence out of them, feeding his curiosity.
When comprehension crawled out from these extractions, like always, and following some archaic fundamental code of existence, it spurted out as another question.
If I am White, then who is Black?
The moment Kai's lucid Self asked this second question to itself, he knew what he must do to achieve his Uniqueness. And as often goes with Uniquenesses, everything about what Kai had figured out was unique, from the beginning to the end.
If I am to achieve Facelessness, then I must be Extreme. Not only mentally, but also physically. I must obliterate the mental restrictions arising from the physical barriers. With one Extreme Act, I must target my mind, body, and soul together.
That would be my Essence of the Facelessness.
That would be my Uniqueness!
Amid this unworldly realization, Kai's eyes opened with unseen serenity. He took a deep breath and found that some hidden knots in his mind had untangled themselves, paving a fresh path for him to tread.
And now, he must walk on it, come life or death.
"Black contrasts White; White contrasts Black," Kai told himself, his voice sounding ethereal. "If there is no contrast to Kai Stormborn, then I must… create one myself."
The Contrast Kai was talking about was not only physical, as per his Comprehension in the Dreamland. It was in its entirety, meaning he must find someone who lives on the very extreme end of the life that he had lived. Their Thoughts, Actions, and even Ambitions must be on the extreme ends as well.
However, Kai knew none who could offer him such a Contrast. At least, there was no such Contestant.
That's why, he looked in the other direction, toward the System.
A Privilege, only available to the Worthy Ones.
Kai's voice rippled the air and Meg came darting into the straw abode from some unknown direction, her eyes wide in shock and joy. Yet, the moment she was about to speak, she noticed his strange state and frowned.
"How many days have passed?" Kai asked, looking around.
"10 days, master."
Kai nodded. "We must talk," he told her. "Sit."
Kai's bedding was on the ground, so Meg sat down near him, bending her legs quite ladylike. "Let me confirm something from the System first," he said, framing the question methodically in his mind. "Chaos, what are the instructions for a Contestant on the 3rd position of the Worth-Stat Ranking for using the privilege to reincarnate as a main storyline Character?"
A detailed notification appeared in front of him.
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Bonus Chapter Deal (applicable for both Webnovel and ScribbleHub readers):
1. 70 Power Stones per day: +1 Bonus Chapter
2. 90 Power Stones per day: +2 Bonus Chapters
3. 750+ Powers Stones (at the end of the week): +3 Bonus Chapters (can stack over the 2nd point)