A few minutes earlier.
A man was pacing around restlessly within a cramped apartment.
He had bags under his eyes, dim hazel eyes, and messy hair with uneven tips.
His lips were dry, his clothes ragged, and his complexion was a bit sickly.
Overall, he looked disheveled.
Muttering something inaudible under his breath, he suddenly got up and kicked the small study table.
"Damn it!"
The wooden furniture splintered as a piece flew across the room and into the wall right beside the door.
"Why… why why why why why! I got Alistar's abilities; my channel is supposed to be trending right now, so why! Why don't I have a decent earning from this shit!"
He bit into his fingers.
"Hah… I need money." He rasped. "I need it… I need it."
His expression slowly took on a deranged appearance while he dragged his fingers across his face, leaving red marks on his skin.
"Ah, right… There was that rumor."
The rumor about the eldest son of the Kang family deserting his family.
Well, at this point it was more of a fact than a rumor, but Wen Cheol didn't care at all.
All he saw was an opportunity.
An opportunity to earn millions from one of the most influential families in Korea.
If the eldest son of the Kang family had indeed deserted his family, then kidnapping him would be a piece of cake, especially since he was a player with one of the strongest gods backing him.
Although players couldn't manifest their abilities outside the tower, they at least had access to the basic stats of their characters.
So Cheol was confident he could escape if he was ever discovered… no, not escape; he was confident he could kill them all if it came down to that.
So he decided to locate his prey at the institution where Kang Tae-Min studied.
That was a mistake.
At first he didn't find him, not at the school or at the hospital either.
But when he did, he wished he hadn't.
****
"Khkk…"
A strange sound left my lips.
It didn't quite sound human, but ah, I couldn't tell what it sounded like; after all, I could only hear the thundering beats of my heart.
"Hah… hah"
Hot… It was hot.
My chest was burning from the inside, as though my veins were carrying streams of lava rather than blood.
I couldn't even tell what I was feeling.
Was I excited?
Was I annoyed?
Was it both?
I couldn't tell.
But one thing was certain.
I was losing my mind.
"Khkk… I… have to… control myself."
Ash replied from within the soul ring; his voice was eerily hollow as it reverberated in the empty interior of the ring.
"I can kill him in your stead; you don't need to get your hands dirty, at least not yet. Preserve what's left of your humanity."
Ash was right; I knew he was.
There was really no need to get my hands dirty, but he was terribly wrong about something.
A soft chuckle escaped my lips as I muttered.
"Ash… do you think it's my first time killing someone… no, never mind."
My voice was barely audible; it was so faint that it could barely even be called a whisper, but Ash seemed to have heard it.
His expression remained stoic.
Perhaps he didn't know what to say, or perhaps he didn't have anything to say; he remained silent.
I preferred the silence because I wasn't even sure I was talking to Ash anymore. If anything, I was lost in my own thoughts.
My gaze fell to my hands, which shook slightly.
Most of the tremors came from the excitement and anticipation of my prey getting closer, while a fragment of it was from an emotion I couldn't quite name.
Whatever it was, it left a dull ache in my chest.
"Su-Min…"
My gaze grew unfocused.
I exhaled, then clenched my fists to stop the tremors from sending jolts of excitement into my restless body.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, footsteps echoed through the narrow alley.
Then came the shadow, and finally the silhouette of a human figure dimmed by the afterglow of the sun.
I didn't give the stalker a chance to react.
I moved.
Then gave a mental command.
"Ash... grab him in a pocket space."
The white-haired demigod didn't grumble or question my order; he matched my pace, instantly summoning a dark curtain of void essence around us, which enveloped everything within a twelve-meter radius.
"How lucky, the prey wandered into the predator's cave on its own."
My words reverberated within the void barrier.
Then I grinned.
"You're dead."
I could see his confused face perfectly within the dark sea of void.
Unfortunately… I couldn't say the same about him.
He stumbled blindly, hands searching empty air while his breathing grew more labored.
So I decided to scar him mentally, suppressing the twisted desire to outright end his life.
You see… a famous torture expert once said that to efficiently break a person. You needed to take one of their five senses.
And apparently the sense of sight just happened to be the most effective one.
Have you ever wondered what it felt like to be blind, living hopelessly, not knowing what was coming your way, knowing you could be approaching death's embrace without ever knowing what ended your life?
That constant wishing, the plea just to be normal like everyone else.
I'd wager it wasn't exactly what one would call a pleasurable experience.
But the human body—so obstinately relentless in the one thing which made humans a superior species… the ability to adapt—would look for a means to compensate for the lack of one sense.
By enhancing the remaining senses.
Which, in this little situation, meantZeus's new contractor would get to experience hell in an amplified setting.
But before that, I buried every emotion beneath cold necessity.
My cowardly go-to method whenever I needed to do something I wouldn't normally do.
A psychological approach I was forced to learn from my father's therapist after repeated suicidal attempts and haunting nightmares.
"Sighs…"
A soft sound left my lips, but the sound that followed next wasn't the least bit pleasing, because…
SQUELCH!
"Arghhhhhhhh!"
I gazed at him with cold, unfeeling eyes even as my fingers sank into his eye socket.
Warm liquids followed, trailing frantic lines around my wrists
All the time, Ash just floated beside me, observing with no apparent emotion on his face.
He didn't say a word, at least until the space trembled.
Then he spoke.
"An administrator is trying to intervene." He said calmly. Which seemed wrong because I recognized that eerily calm aura.
His eyes glinted with malice as he continued.
"Devour him and be done with it."