Chapter Ninety: The Mask and Paul

You have grown stronger again.

When the fighting had finally died down for a moment, the sword-bearer stepped into the hall strewn with corpses, her brows lifting almost imperceptibly before she let out that quiet remark. Amy could clearly tell that, rather than praising his progress, she was expressing her concern.

There was no helping it. Power that had not been earned through hardship and sweat could never truly put anyone at ease.

He understood that better than anyone. Yet understanding did not mean he had a way to solve it. It was not that he wanted to borrow a power he could not control; rather, the strength, experience, and skill once his were slowly, inexorably returning. With each death, he could feel more keenly the presence hidden within his body, that other self, awakening little by little.

He was growing stronger, and becoming less and less like himself.

The change was not yet great. Compared with tangible power, the mental strain was still bearable. But one could not look only at the present; one had to keep one’s eyes fixed on the distant future. If this went on, perhaps one day he would no longer be himself at all, but another existence bearing the name Amy Ulysses. Yes, by the end of it, he could only use that vague word, existence, to describe the other self that might lie within him.

Perhaps this was the price of the forewarning of death.

Thinking of this, the one called the Radiant could not help but sigh. To be frank, he did not reject the side effects of the death omen. Especially in these turbulent times, he needed power, power that could be put to use, power that could change the situation. And the death omen gave him exactly that: the power to protect Yulia, the power to alter Hemtica City’s fate and keep it from ruin. All he needed to do was maintain the balance between death and self. Nothing more.

Compared with the fate awaiting him, this price was far too insignificant, far too cheap.

He closed his eyes gently, paused for three seconds, then opened them again.

The boy abandoned his fruitless thoughts.

Next, he needed to identify the dead.

He returned to the overturned table, crouched down, and turned the corpse on the floor over. Then he could not help but freeze slightly. The dead man’s identity was unexpected. He was neither a servant nor a steward of the Paul estate, nor Simon, the familiar attendant officer. He was a stranger in a long coat and mask.

Wait.

A mask... could it be...

His gaze lingered briefly on the bronze face covering. After a moment of hesitation, Amy lifted the golden mask from the dead man’s face and stared at the wholly unfamiliar features beneath it.

Before him was a middle-aged man, somewhere between forty and fifty years old. Judging from the few wrinkles gathered only at the corners of his eyes, he had been very well cared for. Perhaps he was even older than Amy had estimated. Thinking this, the boy leaned closer and gently pried open his eyelids.

The brownish-gold pupils had no light left in them.

“He has been dead for some time.” His eyes drifted over the lips turned an eerie dark violet. The Radiant closed the man’s eyes again. “The wound is on his back, but from the amount of blood, it was not fatal. For now, we can only assume he was poisoned by some lethal toxin.”

“Time, identity—” The sword-bearer’s gaze rested briefly on the body on the floor. “Confirmed?”

“Sorry, no.” Amy shook his head. “I have no memory of him. I can only judge from his bearing and appearance that he was no ordinary man.”

He paused, a bitter smile touching his lips.

“Perhaps he was the mask himself.”

“Oh.” To the girl from the church, there was little to say about this person called the Mask. She had only gathered from the boy’s words that he seemed to be formidable, possessing considerable authority and no small amount of power. That was all.

His death, to her, was nothing more than a leaf falling in autumn, insignificant.

“I’m not joking,” the Radiant said solemnly. “It really could have been him. Though my understanding of him comes only from what others have said, the dead man’s clothes and bearing are not those of some ordinary nobody. Add the mask on his face and the unusual place of death, and it is hard not to think of that shadow king of the lower district.”

“So?” The girl raised her brows.

“Our, no, my guess was wrong,” the boy admitted frankly. “The mask may have been a victim too.”

“So?” The sword-bearer looked into his eyes.

“Er...”

Amy was at a loss for words. Indeed, there was little point in it. What if the dead man was the Mask? With no reliable source of information, they still had to search the estate before them. And if he was not, then it mattered even less.

One could only say... perhaps he had been overthinking?

Not entirely.

At the very least, the shackle that had been imposed on his thoughts by instinct was broken. He had begun to consider possibilities beyond the mask, and like a bucket of cold water poured over his head, it had extinguished the pride and complacency that had only just begun to stir in his heart.

Well then, thank you for that.

He murmured softly to himself, then lifted his head and dropped the matter. “The hall should be cleared now, but there may still be stragglers. It’s safer if we move together.”

The girl did not refuse. High demons were not enemies to be treated lightly.

But before the two could move, the situation changed.

Heavy footsteps came from above the stairwell. Almost at the same time the boy and girl prepared to meet an enemy, a towering figure, as though it might break the staircase beneath its weight, appeared before them.

“Long time no see,” he greeted them with easy familiarity. “Amy Ulysses.”

The Radiant’s expression shifted slightly. His black pupils contracted sharply, and then he spoke the name of the intruder.

“Paul.”

In the lower district, Paul was not a particularly rare name. There were perhaps a hundred men or more who bore it. Yet among all those called by that name, there was only one who could leave such a deep impression on Amy: the owner of the very estate they stood in, the emperor Michelangelo’s right hand, the towering ruler of the entire eastern district, the rough man known as the Giant.

“You didn’t expect this, did you?” The blue gleam in his eyes was somewhat chilling in the dim hall. His massive body radiated an unassailable pressure like a mountain. “I came back from the ninth hell, and not only that, I gained extraordinary power.”

He flexed his explosively bulging muscles, revealing a mouth full of fangs to the boy.

“See? Even he ended up dying by my hand.”

“He?” Amy glanced at the corpse on the floor, then looked away. “Who is he?”

“The mask.” Giant Paul gave his answer with a ferocious grin. “Calling himself the Shadow King of the lower district, but he still died in one stroke. Crushed beneath my power like an ant, like a bug.”

“Oh.” The boy blinked. “What extraordinary power.”

“Try it and you’ll know.”

The moment the words fell, Paul’s towering body broke into a sprint at impossible speed. In the blink of an eye, the few dozen meters between them vanished, and the giant lunged like a mountain of flesh falling from the sky.

“Cry, scream, and then die, you brat!”

Then the roar came to an abrupt end, replaced by the shriek of sword wind.

And... torrential rain.

Yes, rain falling as blood.

Amid a face full of disbelief, Giant Paul was cut cleanly in half at the waist. Scarlet blood burst outward in all directions, soaking the already ruined ground in a shocking red.

“H-How... is this... possible?”

His demon-born vitality kept him conscious a little longer, though the overturning of his understanding had greatly weakened that precious lucidity.

“It can’t be. I can’t lose... I can’t die—”

The Radiant had no intention of listening any longer to the whimpering of a defeated hound. For this man, whom he had killed once before, he felt no pity at all. Ignoring the burly man’s pleas and curses, he drove his sword straight through his heart and granted him eternal sleep once more.

“It’s over.”

Then the boy turned to the sword-bearer behind him, who had already sheathed her blade, and repeated, “It’s over.”

“No presence,” the girl from the church did not deny it, but too easy a victory could easily leave one with a sense of unreality. “But it is suspicious.”

“What’s suspicious?”

“Too weak.” A lord might not necessarily possess great strength, but for one to be as feeble as that fellow just now was unheard of. “And... too simple. Too easy.”

“A newly born demon lord, after all,” the Radiant said. In truth, he was not the only one with this doubt. Amy also felt something faintly off. He simply did not want to dwell on it further, wasting precious time on deduction or pursuit. “He couldn’t possibly have mastered his own abilities all at once.”

“Hmm...” After a simple murmur, the sword-bearer said nothing.

“Actually, I think I roughly know how it all happened,” the boy said, a little unnerved by her gaze. After some hesitation, he organized what he knew. “After Giant Paul died by my hand, for some presently unknown reason he revived as a high demon. Then, driven by demon nature, he killed the mask and most of the people in the estate, and after that he acted under the pretense of searching for the true culprit, while pursuing some unknown purpose, until we came here and ended his wicked ambition.”

That explained many things.

For example, the information broker Willy had told him that the Shadow King of the lower district was going to take charge of the eastern district and investigate Paul’s death. Yet in the end, there had been nothing but thunder and no rain. Aside from Simon and Paul paying one visit, there had been no further movement, no further rumors. And if one reasoned from the premise that the mask was already dead, then everything made sense.

No, wait. Perhaps there was one point that would become a source of suspicion.

That was Giant Paul’s and Simon’s visit. From the conversation just now, Paul still remembered him, the murderer... but why had he not taken the opportunity to strike then? Why had he let him roam free?

If it had been someone else, perhaps one could explain it by saying he was on an important mission, or that he had to make sacrifices to fulfill some ambition. But for a muscle-brained fool like Paul, nothing was more convincing than fists. Compared with words or exchanges of interest, he trusted fists, trusted real, tangible strength.

A grudge never lasted overnight.

That was absolutely the kind of man he was. Calmness, composure, schemes and stratagems had never been his concern.

It was not impossible to explain it by saying his personality changed drastically after becoming a demon. But that would only create new questions. Namely... why did the demonized Paul just now behave no differently from the muscle-brained fool in Amy’s memory, as though he were a poor imitation, a shabby copy?

And the whole chain of events was logically inconsistent.

Er...

Sensing something faintly, the boy decided to keep his mouth shut.

There was simply far too much here to be explored if one thought about it carefully.

Better stop here.

This was not the right time to make enemies.

“Let’s go,” the Radiant said, turning away. “Now that the lord’s presence has been eliminated at the source, there’s no need to remain here. Time is precious.”

The girl merely watched him with her clear emerald eyes, and after a long while, she nodded.

After that, Giant Paul’s estate once again sank into a deathly silence.

But only three minutes and thirty seconds later, the oppressive stillness was broken by light footsteps.

A tall, graceful uninvited guest hummed softly to herself as she crossed the manor, crossed the hall, and came to the severed corpse of Giant Paul. She stepped on the huge bearded head as though kicking a ball, then bent down, revealing a pale curve of white at her chest.

“So you really think yourself a dead man, do you?”

She paused, then suddenly raised her voice.

“I said—”

“It’s time to wake up.”