Prologue (2)

"You know, we failed to catch you for 30 years, yet your madness brought you here. In front of me. We all thought you were smart, but apparently you were the complete opposite. A fool."

Sebastian's response was a grim and eerie grin, but with his face nearly obliterated, save for his haunting eyes, it took on the unsettling semblance of an undead.

Even Erika Luttrell, one of the most powerful woman alive, the same person before him, couldn't help but feel a deep sense of repulsion and grotesquery at the sight.

"A ool… ha, a… ha… a ool, you sa—say" Sebastian kept laughing. (A fool, you say?)

"That asn't oohat—haha—oour son said ohile I oo—hahahahahahah—I oorned hii aliie." (That wasn't what your son said while I burned him alive.)

"Mad words from a madman. You know, for years I feared you. I feared what you would become. I feared you would reach your father's level, and you were going there. Of course, the man was at the fourth compression level back then, but at that time, he was the strongest. He was stronger than any of us put together. When I learned you reached the fifth compression level, and set the whole fucking Exidia on fire, for a second I thought that nightmare came again. And here I am, utterly disappointed."

"HAHAHAHAHHAHA—Sorry to disaooint you," Sebastian said with difficulty, since he didn't have lips anymore. (Sorry to disappoint you.)

"oind telling oe aout the olack olales noo?" (Mind telling me about the black flames now?)

"Just die, Sebastian Wells."

It was at that moment that Erika started channeling mana again. Her black flames sprouting from her arms like the wings of a demon.

A demon. That was the most fitting way to define the woman.

Erika Luttrell was one of those that killed his father, one of those that plotted the demise of the mighty Wells family, the leader and founder of the Tide breaker clan, one of the five sacred clans, of which only four remained.

It took years for Sebastian to learn that. Of course, he did so after having tortured Lucas Wickens, once one of his father's party members in Somnium, a friend that betrayed him.

However, it wasn't his father's death that pushed him to insanity. It was Rebecca's death, the love of his life, the only good thing that came to him after all his sufferings and years spent in the nightmarish alternative world, and all those years spent being chased.

While the woman channeled mana through the system, Sebastian felt something weird.

It was something he sensed many times before; the mana swirling and surging due to the usage of skills.

However, since he got to the sixth compression level, he started feeling something more.

It was like, after all the time he spent around mana, he finally understood how it behaved, what the systems skills really did and how.

Then, an idea sprouted in his mind: could mana be manipulated behind the system's control?

<How unfortunate, if only I waited, could have tried that. Maybe would made something similar to the bitch's black flames. That been cool.>

Sebastian wasn't sure, but maybe Erika had the same idea he had. Maybe that was the reason she was able to make those black flames, and why her skills were so powerful. She learned how to control mana outside of the system's control.

The black flames surged forth, their inky tendrils coiling and writhing like sentient shadows, eagerly embracing Erika's arms and hands.

They danced with an ethereal grace, licking at her skin and clothing while not injuring her the slightest.

The obsidian blaze seemed to possess a malevolent life of its own, shrouding her appendages in a sinister embrace, as if the very essence of darkness had taken hold of her.

She then prepared to do the very same thing Sebastian loved to do to his opponents.

Grab his face and ashen it while he was still alive. The system didn't give the Pyromancer profession without a reason.

She had to possess a trait that made her keen to play with fire. Exactly like in Sebastian's case.

<HAHAHAHAHAHA. THIS… THIS IS VERY IRONIC, HAHAHAHAHAH.>

As the woman's fiery hands closed in on Sebastian's face, his own hands instinctively sought the pendant hanging around his neck.

It was the same pendant his father had worn until his murder, a cherished memento his mother, who had met a tragic end years later, gave him as a keepsake from Argus.

This seemingly inconsequential pendant, dismissed by others as worthless junk, had always been a source of scorn.

Thought to be a mere worthless trinket, an enigma that no one could fathom why both he and his father held dear.

Friends and acquaintances, until Sebastian had them, scoffed at its apparent insignificance, unable to grasp the sentimental weight it carried.

The pendant remained an irreplaceable relic to Sebastian. The man, though, said nothing about it.

In that fateful moment, as the woman's black flames drew dangerously close and Sebastian started feeling the heat amidst the pain, the pendant ignited.

Brilliant lights erupted from the artifact's enigmatic symbols, momentarily blinding Sebastian and Erika.

Again, he felt the weird feeling he felt through the years, and that became clearer after he reached the sixth compression level.1

It was weird to feel it so clearly twice in a row, while facing the woman, and after the pendant cast a blinding light on the surroundings.

However, once again, the flow of mana was different. Different from his skills and different from the woman's.

As the blinding lights gave way to encroaching darkness, confusion overwhelmed him.

Sebastian kept the pendant primarily as a keepsake. Even he considered it nothing more than worthless junk.

In that moment, an inexplicable sense of serenity descended upon him. This was no ordinary pendant.

Then everything cliqued. There was a reason his father had treasured it for so long, a reason behind his mother passing it down to him.

It was not just a keepsake; it was an artifact of remarkable power. But what was the power it held? What did it do?

<Uh? Shouldn't I be dead? Why am still alive? What is this darkness?> Sebastian realized he spent a lot of time thinking, while he should have already been dead.

His thoughts, strangely enough, felt clearer, as they hadn't done in years. Not since Rebecca's death.

No longer were the voices, no longer were the urges. After many years in that precarious state, feeling so calm was weird. The control over his mind was even weirder.

And then, at that very moment, as if guided by some unseen force, Sebastian opened his eyes.