Chapter 761 - Eight gold coins

After calming down, he faces me fully. "I’m sorry for teasing you, Nathaniel. And you don’t have to beg or plead. I even give you my vow: Neither I nor anyone under my control will hurt or threaten your family or friends. At least until your tutorial ends. After that, we’ll see what our relationship turns into, whether you accept your place by my side or if we fight. I’m inclined to think we’ll fight, but I still hope for the opposite."

Some of the words resonate through the System. In the way certain vows or challenges do, he has brought the System in as his witness.

I stand there, clutching the mana I’ve been gathering since I arrived. He doesn't have to tell me, I know I’m ready to fight and die if I have to. A part of me even thinks that if I can't straight-up kill him, I can make him pay. I could cripple him for life, forcing him back into the pathetic state he was in before his rebirth.

Oh, how much I want to do it. Even though he hasn't touched anyone I care about yet, it doesn't matter to me. Just the fact that he stands over me, holding that power, irks me to my core. It’s just like the first floor of the tutorial. My emotions are exactly the same as they were back then, in those weeks I lived in uncertainty before I became strong enough to be comfortable.

The fact that first-floor Nathaniel is still here, in a way, relieves me. I sift through my emotions, realizing I meant what I said before. All these millions of people around me could be sacrificed. Men, women, even... even children. Just for the people I care for to be safe. And the realization that it might need to come to that means one thing. I’m simply not strong enough.

There is nothing else to be said. No need for machinations or anything. I’m just not enough, and I won’t be making excuses for myself, like that he is much older and more experienced. None of that would change that simple fact.

I chuckle in the end as I take a deep breath. “I accept your vow,” I say to Adrian. “And I agree, you won.”

“It is true that I cheated, but honestly, I will continue to do so. But I like how you said it, that I won, instead of saying you lost. Just a little twist on wording, but it says a lot about you. How much longer do you have before you return to the tutorial?”

“Three hours and change,” I answer, relaxing, though not fully.

Adrian stands there in what seems like a better mood. “An Earth Stay token is a weird reward. In a way, it's extremely valuable, and in another, not so much. It allows you to return to Earth, yes, but you can’t enter the World Dungeon, not that anyone below Champion would survive it. If you use the token, you can kill attendees and set your rule in a day, yes, but you could do that in a tournament as well. So its value comes with knowledge.”

He fixes the sleeves of his suit as he continues talking. “Every planet with a Sovereign Spark also has a fragment somewhere on the planet. Though we never know why. If it is connected to the Spark or the opposite. As for the fragment, it is usually a very pure one, and its power can vary a lot. It is safe to say it is purer than almost anything found in the tutorial, with the exception of the most powerful ones. But what is incredible is its value. There are people in Beyond who will buy it for tens of millions of shards, offering plenty more than for the ones from the tutorial. Other than the fragment, there are less noticeable advantages. The system remembers you stepped here before your tutorial ended, like one of its darlings. It becomes easier for you to become Champion of this planet, and you might find yourself just a little bit luckier in the World Dungeon, and-”

A signal is sent to me, and it causes Adrian to stop talking.

He notices that a pulse sent to me through a [Ley Line] connected somewhere far away. The line is much thinner than a hair, weak, and unable to do anything except send that signal before breaking apart.

Even I didn't know about that line until it activated and broke, and at the same moment, memories flood my mind.

"Nathaniel, what was that?" Adrian asks in a slightly threatening tone.

Taking in all these memories, I, instead of answering, remind him, "You gave me a vow."

Then my vessel, piloted by Mapthaniel, steps out of the teleportation mark placed on my back, and more of the memories I have been hiding from Adrian flood my mind as I remember the existence of Sneaky. I don't remember all that he has hidden, but it is just enough to make me understand.

A flash of a memory of me appearing on Earth, manifesting my vessel, letting Mapthaniel pilot it, and search the coordinates I had gotten from someone whose identity I don't know. Bits of memories from Mapthaniel surface, along with the effort he spent searching while I moved around.

"I have to go," I tell Adrian.

As expected, he tries to stop me, but my vessel moves prepared. I don't even pretend to try to face him or avoid over-relying on black mana. I use it right away, and the vessel turns black with pale scars visible, my evolved trait glowing more than before against that background of pure dark.

For just the shortest moment, the vessel contests Adrian and his efforts to stop me before it is entirely blown away. That short moment is enough for me to teleport and erase the track behind me so he can't follow.

But before I disappear fully, something bites into my leg. Looking down, I see Septa clinging to me. We teleport, appearing where my vessel located, the dungeon holding the fragment that lies on Earth.

The night swallows the horizon entirely. No stars reflect on the surface, no moon shines in the sky. The ocean at night is like a moving void, broken only by the violent rise and fall of black water with each wave collapsing into another.

I ignore Septa as I plunge beneath the surface, and the world above vanishes instantly. There is not a second to waste, as I know he will be here soon, angered that I am trying to take the fragment away from him, the one he so arrogantly left there to take later. It isn't even me who predicted he wouldn't claim it yet, but currently, I don't know who told me.

The sea grows calmer the deeper I go, but that calm feels wrong, unnatural. The currents pull at me, strong, yet leaving the surface above deceptively still. The darkness down here feels ancient.

I form a single thermal orb above me, and light erupts outward like a spear of light. For a brief moment, the water glows, revealing moving currents and distant shapes that vanish as soon as the light reaches them. The darkness presses on that light as if eager to blow it out.

Three shapes emerge from the black, sliding into the light with terrifying silence and smooth movement. Sharks, each big as a ship. Their bodies are pale only by contrast to the darkness.

[Shark - lvl 299]

[Shark - lvl 230]

[Shark - lvl 239]

A laser-thin stream of thermal energy cuts through the water, not letting the depths cool it down. It lights the darkness and cuts each of the sharks in half as I move it in a wide, sweeping arc as I continue to rush down.

I see the entrance to the dungeon below me when the sea explodes. Miles and miles of water disappear, split and moved apart, revealing a transparent red figure floating high above with Adrian in front of it. A projectile launches at me just as I reach the entrance. The notification asking me if I want to enter pops up, but I barely read it before I confirm and hurry to enter.

Once inside, I stagger and cough while I rest my hand against the wall. I take a deep breath and close my eyes for a few moments. I spit up clogged blood and wait for my body to heal, a big part of my back missing from Adrian’s attack.

But of course, the wound on my back refuses to heal, taking me only a moment to recognize it as damage caused by the Fragment that Luan used to hold.

I use Lily’s healing mark on it, which causes it to heal slowly, and I patch it up in layers of mana.

Then I swing my leg, and Septa finally lets go, acrobatically twisting in the air before landing on her spider legs. She lowers her body and stares at me.

Observing the leg she kept biting, I use several more healing marks on it. I then coat my hand in mana and cut it off entirely, burning away the remaining toxin with massive releases of thermal energy from my body as much as I can. I leave the rest to be handled by Lily’s marks.

I already have experience with this, so I know how to fight against it, yet it is far more dangerous than the one used on me at the Academy.

After that, I regenerate my leg while facing the spider.

I don’t worry about Adrian entering, after all, the dungeon with the Fragment is for a single person only.

Not much time remains, so I get combat-ready, triggering my combat sub-minds, preparing arrays, and changing the movement pattern of my mana. Then I head into the dungeon, only to sense Septa follow behind me.

As I go over my memories once more, a single cold thought settles in.

Did you really think I gathered all that mana just for you? That I would let you throw me around like trash? I already have your vow. That was all I needed.

And now, I will take this fragment from you as well.

***

Flashback Nathaniel

"I have a question for you," I say to Ruby.

"Ask."

"What does he plan to do?"

"I can tell you, but if you are not careful, the people you care about will die," Ruby says.

"Tell me."

She pauses for a moment, studying my expression. “He wants to use a difficulty change token and go from Beyond to the tutorial. He probably hopes to complete it in around a year and a half in its entirety, but Diligence will invoke his veto for sure, and I know what kind of vote to expect from the others. They will throw him to the Thirteenth Floor instead, and it will result in him completing his tutorial while still feeling as though everything is going according to his plan. Some people on your planet will die, the humans he looks down on. He won’t hurt your family, nor the families of anyone else from the tutorial. At least not yet, and that is your advantage. But you can’t beat him. Not yet.”

"Not yet," I agree.

Ruby nods. “Adrian is broken. He always had Pride set as the goal of his envy. He used to be brilliant, he truly was, especially during his tutorial. Showing him the record of Pride’s battle may have been the turning point. Right after that, I saw him mentally close himself off, convincing himself he would never be enough, even if he did not fully understand it. Or it could have been those five decades as a human on Earth, when he believed he had failed.”

"What-"

She doesn't let me finish. "Knowing him, he will tell you more. Though broken, Adrian still has all that knowledge and talent. It is as if he continues to move according to his plan, not realizing he already lost, that he is already missing something important. But he is still dangerous, like a mortally wounded animal continuing to push along."

"And you are still helping him."

"Yes, I am, because of the skills he possesses. Because sometimes, such an animal can, in the spur of the moment, become the most dangerous. And I have been wrong before. To explain it better, I will tell you a bit about Pride."

"I won't say no to that, you know it."

"I know. Pride uses his [Mirror] in a very different way from anyone else who possesses that skill. Pride’s body is at this point stronger than a dragon’s. He is one of the beings with the highest physical stats in the system. So Pride likes to [Mirror] his opponent. He mirrors onto himself his opponent's much lower stats and restricts himself to enjoy the battle just that little bit. With Adrian, we had hoped he would [Mirror] Pride’s full stats while Pride would drop to Adrian’s, giving him a little chance for a fight or for someone else to take advantage of that."

Before I can say anything, she stops me again. "Yes, I know how pathetic this is, so just continue to listen. Another of Adrian’s skills that he would instantly kill you for knowing about is [Possession]. That's the one that helped him take over a newborn baby that later became Christoph. That's what allowed him to take over the Wraith, and that's what he might be planning to do with you or your sister. To raise you and then take over one of you. You for your body, traits, and talent for mana, or your sister for her [Duplication], which is so similar to the Last Elf he admires."

I stand up and walk around, doing my best to keep calm. "And you knew that."

"Yes."

"Tell me, would you mind if he took over me or my sister?"

"Yes, I don't want that to happen."

"But you wouldn't mind it if it meant a better chance at killing Pride."

"I'm not a good person."

"Fuck's sake, Ruby."

"I always tried to make you understand my greed. But I can tell you with absolute certainty that I'm willing to help you rather than him. It will be difficult and require sacrifices, but if you do what-"

"No," I say simply.

"Nathaniel, I-"

"I said no. A question. Since he possesses Wraith, can he use his skills?"

"You figure things out too quickly sometimes. Yes, some of them, though it is limited. Some of the skills he might not understand enough to use fully, and some might not be powerful without Calvorn."

"Great. Why didn't Diligence want to give me the Earth Stay token? What is so valuable about it?"

"There is a Fragment on each newly awakened planet. Pure, not recreated by the system, so even more valuable."

"Is Adrian the type to go after it instantly or leave it for later?"

"Later, he is still getting used to the other fragment he got not that long ago."

"Great, give me the coordinates."

"I won't."

"Why?"

"Because you are stubborn. Just do what I say. My plan-"

"No."

“Do you not trust me?”

“Even you have to admit how bullshit it is to ask that after all your talk about greed.”

“I can give you a vow. I can swear I will help you. I can take the System as my witness that I think you have a better chance to fulfill my wish than Adrian ever had. But if I do that, the other Rulers will listen and know. If Wrath knows, it could end badly.”

“There is no need to,” I wave it off. “I won’t lie and say what you did makes me happy. But I always knew your motivations, and in a way, I like knowing what stands behind every one of your acts. I can even use it all against Adrian. A poor, betrayed Nathaniel, coming there to die or beg,” I snicker. “The asshole likes to read my feelings, so I’ll let him have some fun.”

I look at her properly then. She stands still, shoulders tense, quiet in a way that feels unfamiliar.

Taking a step toward her. Slowly, deliberately, I reach into my pocket and pull out several golden coins. They glint faintly in the light as I hold them up between us. She hesitates before lifting her hand.

I let the coins fall one by one into her palm.

Smiling to myself, I say softly, “I still remember your imitation from the second floor. She paid gold for me so Lissandra could examine me. Damned monster, even as an imitation, she started realizing this is a tutorial, and suspected that I am an attendee. Ruby back then took a hundred gold from Lissandra, who had no idea it was actually only eight gold they asked for me.”

I let the eighth coin cling against the others as I look back at her face. “Now I’m paying you eight gold for the coordinates. I don’t need vows. I don’t need promises.”

Ruby opens her hand and stares at the coins. “These are really from the second floor. Where did you get them?”

“I have my resources.”

“You must have just bought them from a Beyond attendee who kept them." She pauses, "This is so stupid.” For some reason, she looks more taken aback than I expected, her emotions clearly written on her face.

I say nothing and wait for her decision. Finally, she closes her hand and slips the coins into her pocket.

“You’ll get only a rough estimate, the size of a small country, for those few coins,” she says in the end.