She still hadn't fully processed what he'd said when the vision of the mysterious figure and the golden mist vanished, and she was back in the abandoned villa.
"Sharron, are you—"
Maric had barely gotten the words out when a strong, scalding pain washed over her entire body — like boiling water poured from head to toe. In her mind, memories of past crimes surfaced one after another against her will: the faces of people she had killed, transgressions she had committed, laid out before her like evidence in a trial.
A prosecution and judgment aimed at the very soul.
...
In the Nation of Disorder, Vincent watched the grey crystal on the left tray grow just a fraction heavier. He leaned back into the stone chair, firmly suppressing the urge to immediately spend those crystals on a Shadow Box pull.
He'd run several low-investment Shadow Box experiments in recent days, each time spending a modest amount of grey crystal. Results: a handgun, a throwing dart, ramen noodles.
That was sufficient to put to rest any ideas about small bets paying off big.
But that also meant he wasn't going to spend his crystals recklessly anymore. In theory, the larger the investment, the more significant the return — but what exactly "more significant" meant, and whether it would actually serve him, was completely unknown.
Better to save it all for advancing to Sequence 4.
"All that anticipation, and it turns out to be a useless trick."
He sighed, and came back to reality.
In the dark room, he opened his eyes and sat up slowly.
"What happened?"
Bernadette's voice arrived immediately.
"That was the Temperance Faction's Sharron. She's linked up with Kreuch — they're planning to hunt the Indulgence Faction's pursuers tonight, down at the docks." He summarised quickly. "She was worried about Kreuch falling back under the Mother Tree of Desire's influence. And she doesn't know whether the Rose School's demigod has arrived in Backlund — which is why she prayed and asked for help."
"Do we go have a look? Kreuch is your most trusted first mate."
"I'm not worried about Kreuch falling back."
Her voice was flat. "Over these years, he spent everything he had — drained his every last saving — to obtain a Beyonder item made from the Unshadowed characteristic. Specifically for this day."
"If the item can't free him from the evil god's hold — he'll use it to burn himself to ash."
Vincent was quiet a moment. "No wonder he managed to break free from the Indulgence in the first place. That's a serious commitment against yourself."
"As for the Rose School's demigod."
Bernadette said: "Even with the Unshadowed item, two Sequence 5 Beyonders against a demigod is a very steep climb." A pause, then just a faint hesitation: "Are you planning to go yourself?"
"Not directly. More like — creating some side effects."
Vincent smiled. He held out his palm, let spirituality flare, and with the bedroom as a relatively enclosed space, wove a Shadow Box into being. Half the room dropped into darkness so total that no light could escape it.
He snapped his fingers, opened the hidden compartment, retrieved a few Beyonder characteristics and gemstones, and walked to the line between dark and dim.
He thought for a few seconds.
"I want to inflict a stretch of bad luck on the Indulgence Faction members currently in Backlund."
Eliminating the Indulgence Faction's demigod outright would cost considerably. Inflicting a run of misfortune should be far cheaper.
He held a Sequence 6 Beyonder characteristic and a gemstone, and extended his hand into the darkness.
After a beat, a cold sensation drifted toward his palm. The items were taken. He waited. Then the cold returned — and a hand closed gently around his.
He glanced quickly: the hand was pale, slender-fingered, unmistakably delicate. Almost certainly female.
A humanoid supernatural entity? Or just a person?
The Shadow Box's trading partner could be anything — a creature lurking in shadow or darkness, a dangerous unknown entity, or simply a living human being. Neither party knew who they were dealing with. And even as the one constructing the box, Vincent had never worked out the mechanism. He activated the ability in an enclosed space; somehow the other party appeared on their end. He had no idea how.
Once both parties confirmed the handshake, the cold pale hand let go and withdrew into the dark. The solid blackness gradually faded, and the room came back to normal.
"Is that accepted?"
Mildly surprised. A Sequence 6 characteristic was no small thing — but the target pool included at minimum a Sequence 7, a Sequence 6, a Sequence 5, and a demigod.
"It's possible the Indulgence Faction's demigod isn't in Backlund," Bernadette said. "Or whoever you just dealt with has no intention of honouring the agreement."
The Shadow Box contract was binding — but this world had no shortage of ways to break such bonds.
"Well — I'd rather it be the first option."
Vincent pulled his black coat on. His silhouette twisted and stretched — he dropped into shadow on the street outside and began springing from darkness to darkness, moving fast toward the dock district.
...
The dock district at midnight was utterly black.
Four warehouses. Weeds growing through the cobblestones, the ground still muddy from recent rain.
Boom.
A sphere of blazing fire exploded outward. A middle-aged man in a black tailcoat, dark red cape, and slicked-back hair was hurled by the blast and hit the ground hard. His skin blackened and blistered under the heat, dark smoke rising from the burns.
As a Wraith with formidable defensive ability, an explosion of this magnitude couldn't truly injure him — but the light released in the blast was laced with Sun-pathway purification energy, and that was specifically devastating against creatures of darkness.
Steve clenched his teeth against the pain, rolled to his feet, sprinted forward several paces, caught his reflection in the glass shade of a distant gas lamp, and performed a mirror jump.
His two companions — the werewolf Tyler and the corpse Jason — had been killed within the first few minutes of the ambush. What remained of them was likely just their Beyonder characteristics.
He'd bought himself an escape window by leveraging the Scarlet Lunar Corona to weaken Sharron and her allies — but he knew exactly how this stood: against two Wraiths at the same sequence and that Sun-pathway Beyonder item, his chances of getting away clean were almost nothing.
Unless Lord Satzven arrived.
And everything he was doing right now was buying time to make that happen.
While working through it, Steve completed several more mirror jumps, finally allowed himself to become visible, then reached into his coat and closed his hand around the pitch-black doll he'd been hiding there. He poured every last drop of spirituality into it.
The doll's eyes lit up with two points of eerie crimson light. Its mouth opened wide in a silent, soundless scream.
"Done."
To be continued…
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