Riser's face twisted in frustration and disbelief, veins throbbing as he finally snapped.
"What would a lowly human like you know?! We're talking about the noble pureblood for the sake of—"
His words cut off mid-sentence.
I had more than enough.
In one swift motion, my hand swiped across his throat.
There was no hesitation.
Flesh and sinew parted like paper—his vocal cords shredded and replaced seamlessly by the final holy cross from my inventory.
Silence claimed him, and in that void, the holy spikes I had summoned earlier shifted violently.
They tore through his arm bones, scaling upward to embed themselves in his ribcage, replacing each bone with jagged, dark shadow constructs.
Then, my hand plunged into his skull.
Memories poured into me—years of knowledge and plans, of fears and arrogance.
The sheer volume would have inflicted pain in any ordinary mind.
Yet, with Giratina fused to me, the torrent was a whisper, manageable, and all-consuming.
I absorbed it all.
Every scheme, every betrayal, every hidden weakness.
The seeds were planted.
The battlefield and the future were now entirely mine.
And then—the fusion ended.
Giratina shrank back to her chibi form, floating lazily around me as if nothing had happened, her golden-black aura dimmed but still pulsating with latent power.
Now, before I began executing my plan, I had something to say to him.
I yanked his head up by the hair, forcing his trembling eyes to meet mine.
The weight of my stare was madness itself—cold, merciless, and burning with something far beyond hatred.
My face turned into an emotionless expression.
"I am not a lowly vermin like you," I began, my voice dripping with venom, "so why would I ever lower myself to comprehend your pitiful squeaks and squeals? You dare call yourself noble? You dare cloak yourself in pride and tradition? You're no noble. You're a parasite. A bloated, noxious tick feeding on this world's arteries. You suck and suck, feasting on its lifeblood, and once it's bled dry, you'll stagger away to the next host, whining about how the world failed you—when in truth, it is you who rot the world from within.
You refuse to labor. You refuse to bleed. You refuse to earn. Yet you twist your own uselessness into some kind of twisted virtue, making your flaws everyone else's burden. And when society tolerates you, bends for you, suffers you, what do you do? You spit in its face. You paint yourself as the victim. You scream persecution while you revel in your own persecution of others. You prey on the weak, you torment the powerless, because in the emptiness of your soul, abusing others is the only flicker of satisfaction you can feel.
And when that cruelty finally corners you—when the consequences close in—you don't face them like a man. No. You cower. You hide behind the rotting curtain of your family name. You scream about your 'noble duty,' you invoke your bloodline as if it absolves you. You wrap your crimes in silk words, you crown your cowardice as 'responsibility,' and then you dare—dare—to call it all for the good of the world.
You disgust me."
My expressionless face suddenly started laughing, teeth bared in a grotesque parody of laughter.
My voice cracked between tones, a mad hymn of condemnation.
"You're no noble flame, Riser. You're ash pretending to burn. You're decay dressed in gold. You're not given wings. Strip away the power your family gave you, and what's left? A coward too weak to stand, too pitiful to fight, too hollow to even exist on his own. You are nothing. And yet… You still look down on others."
I leaned close until my breath was fire on his ear, my whisper colder than death itself.
"But don't worry, parasite. I will give you meaning. I will carve it into your body. And every scream you choke down with that holy cross will be the hymn of your truth. You will never rise again. Not as a noble, not as a devil, not even as ash."
My eyes glowed with insanity, my words spilling in a feverish crescendo.
"You are the bottom of the bottom, Riser Phenex. Vermin gnaws, parasites drink, ticks suck—but you? You don't even deserve the title of pest. You're the void left after the pest is killed. Emptiness. Worthlessness. Dead air wearing a crown of fire."
My hand crept toward his face, fingers twitching with anticipation.
Slowly, deliberately, I pressed them against his eyes.
His body jerked, but the holy crosses and spikes kept him locked in place.
"Did you know, Riser?"
I whispered, my tone soft, almost nostalgic.
My fingertips began to sink in, meeting the delicate resistance of flesh.
"There was a time when I used to dream of magic. Just a kid, powerless, staring at stories, wishing I had spells of my own. But I wasn't born into a mage family. I wasn't born into any supernatural bloodline. I was just a nobody."
His muffled screams rattled in his throat as blood welled up, dripping down his face and pattering onto the ruined floor.
His flames flickered wildly, healing desperately, burning furiously.
But my fingers dug deeper, inch by inch, as if I were peeling away the very illusion of his superiority.
"So, do you know what I did instead? I thought. I obsessed. I imagined every power, every gift, every ability I'd never have—and then I asked myself how to break them. Every single one. Every invincible shield, every endless flame, every immortal body…"
His breath hitched.
I could feel the wet pop as my fingers sank further into the soft, trembling sockets.
His healing fire hissed, sputtering, trying to push me out, but it was too slow.
Far too slow.
"Immortality," I said calmly, almost academically.
"Yours, in particular, was always one of my favorites to dissect. Everyone sees it as absolute. An unending flame, a body that can never be destroyed. But me?"
I chuckled, a low, twisted sound.
"I saw the cracks in it."
His body convulsed violently as my nails scraped against bone.
I leaned closer, speaking into his ear like a teacher unveiling a secret lesson.
"Say I rip your heart out. You'll grow another. Simple, right? But what happens if, before it can regenerate, I put something else in its place? A stone. A nail. A curse. Anything that denies your body the space to rebuild? Then your immortality isn't healing—it's torment. An endless loop of pain. A body trying to repair itself but failing again and again. That's not eternal life, Riser."
I grinned.
"That's eternal agony."
With a wet, tearing sound, I dug deeper, and finally—finally—his eyes came free, dangling between my blood-soaked fingers.
He let out a strangled, broken scream, muffled by the cross in his jaw, his flames surging like wildfire, trying to undo the impossible.
But his hope turned to despair when I tossed the eyes to the ground.
The flames swallowed them instantly, reducing them to ash.
And then, with cruel precision, I pressed a smooth, cold stone into the hollow where his right eye had been.
The flesh convulsed around it, trying to reject it, trying to heal over it.
But the distortion wouldn't allow it.
His body twisted in rebellion, stuck between regenerating and being denied the chance.
"Feel that?"
I whispered, tilting my head, almost tenderly.
"That's the gift of your immortality, Riser. You won't die. You won't rest. You'll just keep healing into failure… forever."
Then, suddenly, an idea struck me.
The thought slithered into my mind like a spark of cruel inspiration.
I tilted my head, watching him writhe, and for the first time, my voice carried a strangely innocent lilt, almost cheerful.
"Riser," I said sweetly, "I have good news! At first, I was going to torture you a little bit and then kill you. That was the plan, simple and clean."
He froze for a moment, eyes widening—or at least trying to, with the stones lodged in his one socket—as if he wasn't sure he'd heard me right.
So I leaned closer, letting each word drip from my tongue with deliberate clarity.
"But now… now I've decided I won't."
I smiled, almost kindly.
"Riser, I won't kill you. Not you. Not your peerage."
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