Chapter 197: Weight of Secrets
The air of the dark dimension seemed to freeze as Ren Sihue made his final resolve. There was no escape. No one was coming to his backup. There was only the monster in the pristine suit standing before him, and the certainty that this man could not be allowed to leave this island.
Ren exhaled a slow, vaporous breath. He was a predator forged in the dark. In a fraction of a millisecond, Ren activated his primary Talent. His physical body lost its three-dimensional volume, collapsing effortlessly into a two-dimensional silhouette as he merged flawlessly with the shadows cast by the colossal balcony railing.
He moved instantly, sliding along the stone floor like a drop of spilled ink.
"Oh, playing hide and seek?" the Joker chuckled, his voice echoing melodically. He didn’t even look down. He merely raised a white-gloved hand and snapped his fingers.
The space around the balcony violently ruptured. Half a dozen jagged, swirling gates tore open in the air. A terrifying cacophony of guttural snarls and shrieks spilled forth as a horde of Calamity Beasts—mutated wolves, multi-limbed crawlers, and armored primate-like abominations—poured out onto the stone, their red eyes instantly hunting for prey.
Ren didn’t engage them. Bursting from the shadows at the far end of the corridor, he vaulted over the edge of the sweeping stone staircase on his left. He plummeted downward, his cloak billowing like bat wings, entirely focused on evading the chaotic swarm above him.
The stairs were impossibly long, spiraling down the side of the obsidian castle. Ren’s boots hit the massive stone steps, his momentum carrying him downward at breakneck speeds. But a terrifying displacement of air rushed past his ear.
The Joker hadn’t run down the stairs. With a speed that defied the laws of physics—a velocity so incomprehensible it bordered on the speed of light—the masked man simply appeared at the bottom of the staircase, waiting.
Ren skidded to a halt as the stairs abruptly ended, depositing him into a sprawling, hauntingly beautiful courtyard. It was a massive, decayed garden. Ancient, petrified trees with twisted, skeletal branches reached up toward the bruised heavens, completely devoid of leaves. Covering the cracked earth beneath them was a dense carpet of blossoming black flowers, their dark petals weeping a putrid, rotting nectar that smelled of death.
"You’re very fast for a human," the Joker said, casually plucking a black flower and spinning it between his fingers. "But speed is relative, isn’t it? Let’s stop running. I have a question for you."
Ren kept his short sword raised, his chest heaving silently. The horde of beasts from the stairs was already pouring down into the garden behind him, snapping and snarling, but the Joker raised a single finger, and the monsters froze, surrounding the garden but refusing to step closer.
"Eighteen years ago," the Joker began. "A rainy night. A certain government researcher named Erin Volter died. Before her unfortunate... departure... she spoke to you. Tell me, Ren. What did she say?"
Ren’s blood turned to absolute ice. His heart skipped a violent beat beneath his ribs. But his face remained a flawless, deadpan mask.
"I have no idea what you are talking about," Ren said coldly. "I don’t know any Erin."
The Joker sighed, dropping the rotted flower. "Lies. I can smell the deceit on you. I don’t want to kill you, Ren. I just want the truth. Tell me her secret, and I will let you walk away."
"I told you," Ren growled, his grip on his blade tightening. "I don’t know her."
"Then I will simply have to beat it out of you," the Joker whispered.
The Joker vanished. He didn’t step forward; the space he occupied simply became empty. But Ren had been preparing for this. He tightly shut his right eye and snapped open his left.
His third Talent—the Eye of the Executioner—flared to life. His left iris, normally an icy blue, was now a blinding, radiant silver. The entire world around him instantly shifted. The horrifying, light-speed velocity of the Joker was suddenly dragged into a sluggish, frame-by-frame crawl. Ren’s brain processed the impossible momentum, tracking the Joker as he materialized right beside Ren’s temple, his fist already swinging to shatter his jaw.
In this state of extreme time-dilation, Ren activated his second Talent: Absolute Aim. It was a conceptual law imposed on reality—once a target was locked, his strike could not miss.
Ren twisted his torso with every ounce of his superhuman agility, narrowly avoiding the Joker’s fist by a millimeter. In the same fluid motion, he drove his short sword directly upward, aiming for the Joker’s throat.
CLANG!
The blade sparked against a thick, bony carapace. The Joker had moved his arm just in time, but the aim could not be denied. The blade sheared through the Joker’s tailored sleeve, ripping a deep gash into his forearm.
The Joker jumped back, genuinely surprised, looking at the blood dripping from his arm. "Fascinating," he murmured. "You are truly dangerous."
The Joker raised both hands, and the horde of beasts descended upon the garden.
Ren became a blur of lethal precision. He danced through the rotting black flowers, his silver eye tracking the chaotic swarm in slow motion. His blade sheared through bone and flesh. He didn’t want to fight the beasts, but he had to carve a path through them to reach his true target. He sliced the legs off a mutated wolf, vaulted off a falling primate’s shoulders, and threw a volley of throwing knives that curved impossibly through the air—courtesy of Absolute Aim—embedding themselves into the skulls of three Calamity Beasts surrounding the Joker.
"Enough," the Joker hissed.
The masked man grabbed a towering, heavily armored ape-beast standing next to him. The beast didn’t resist. Instead, its massive body violently dissolved into a swirling mass of dark, corrupted mana. The energy wrapped entirely around the Joker, seeping into his pristine suit and porcelain mask. The Joker’s body expanded. Thick, bio-mechanical armor plated his arms, and his hands elongated into massive, scythe-like beast talons.
He had merged with the Calamity Beast.
With a concussive boom that completely obliterated the garden, the Joker launched himself at Ren. The sheer force of the clash shattered the very foundation of the courtyard. The ground beneath them gave way, and the two of them plummeted through the darkness, crashing heavily into the sprawling, abandoned city below.
Ren smashed into the cobblestone street, his body bouncing like a skipped stone until he crashed through the wall of a decaying brick house. He coughed up a mouthful of blood, his vision swimming.
Around him, the city came alive. The cobblestones ruptured as thousands of skeletal figures, clad in rusted armor, began to drag themselves out of the earth. But the Joker didn’t let them interfere.
The beast-merged Joker stalked through the dust, his massive talons dragging against the ground. "Tell me the secret!" he roared, his voice distorted and demonic.
Ren spat blood onto the floor and forced himself up. His left eye burned like a miniature star. He saw the Joker lunge, an unavoidable, sweeping arc of massive talons meant to crush his ribs. Ren didn’t try to dodge. He allowed his body to be clipped.
The talons tore through Ren’s side, shattering three ribs and spraying crimson into the air. But by taking the hit, Ren entered the Joker’s guard. With Absolute Aim locking onto the joint, Ren swung his short sword with the absolute peak of his physical strength.
SHCKKK!
The dark steel sheared cleanly through the dense, beast-merged armor of the Joker’s wrist. The Joker’s right hand, talons and all, was completely severed, spinning through the air before hitting the cobblestones.
For the first time, a horrific, agonizing shriek tore from the Joker’s throat. He stumbled backward, clutching the spurting stump of his wrist. "My hand! You... you filthy, insignificant human!"
The theatrical facade was entirely shattered. Pure madness completely consumed the Joker.
Before Ren could capitalize on the injury, the Joker moved. It was a speed so utterly catastrophic that even Ren’s time-dilating eye could not force his battered physical body to react in time.
CRACK!
The Joker’s boot slammed into Ren’s right knee, completely shattering the joint inward. Ren didn’t even have time to scream before the Joker’s remaining hand grabbed his left arm, twisting it violently until the humerus snapped through the skin.
Ren collapsed onto the ruined street, a horrific, suffocating agony overriding his senses. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t fight. He was completely broken.
The Joker pinned him to the ground, placing his heavy boot squarely on Ren’s shattered chest. The beast-armor began to recede, leaving only the pristine, dust-covered suit and the porcelain mask. The Joker leaned down, his painted smile inches from Ren’s face.
"I am done playing," the Joker whispered, his voice trembling with psychotic rage. "Tell me what Erin Volter knew. Tell me what she found about the gates. Tell me, or I will peel your skin off inch by inch."
Ren stared up at the painted mask. His vision was fading, the edges of the world turning to a cold, comforting black. His lungs rattled with every shallow breath.
He didn’t know much. But he knew Erin Volter. She wasn’t just a government researcher. She was a bright, fiercely kind woman who had treated a cold-blooded assassin like a human being. She had been his friend.
He had kept that promise. He had kept her son, Hide, completely safe from the truth.
Ren coughed, blood bubbling past his lips. He let out a weak, rattling chuckle. "Come... closer..." Ren rasped.
The Joker eagerly leaned down, tilting his masked ear toward Ren’s mouth. "Yes? Tell me."
Ren channeled the absolute last, desperate drop of mana in his failing core. He ignored the shattered bones in his right arm, violently jerking his hand upward. Clasped between his bloody fingers was a tiny, concealed throwing spike.
Guided by his final use of Absolute Aim, Ren drove the spike directly into the right diamond eye of the Joker’s porcelain mask.
The spike pierced the mask and sank deep into the flesh beneath.
"AGHHHHHHHH!" The Joker reeled backward, a horrific, guttural scream of absolute agony echoing across the city as blood poured freely from the shattered eye-hole of the mask.
Ren lay on the ground, a bloody, victorious smile gracing his lips. I never told anyone, Erin, he thought, a profound peace settling over his dying body. Your secret... dies with me.
Blinded, bleeding, and consumed by a world-ending rage, the Joker let out a demonic roar. He pulled his fist back, channeling a catastrophic density of corrupted mana, and drove it directly into Ren’s chest.
The impact was like a nuclear detonation. The force completely obliterated Ren’s ribcage. But it didn’t stop there. The shockwave pulverized the cobblestone street, tearing through the ancient bedrock of the underground city. The ground violently gave way, the entire foundational crust of the floating island shattering into millions of pieces.
Ren’s broken body was violently blasted through the bottom of the island.
This was it.
The water roared in his ears as his consciousness finally faded. Below him, the bottom of the vast, black expanse of the endless ocean rushed up to meet him. Ren Sihue closed his eyes, welcoming the cold, dark water, glad that he had kept his promise to the very end.