Chapter 61: Black Shroud
Malrik read the description a third time and still couldn’t get his brain to fully close its hand around what it meant.
Not just armor. Not just a shell that would wrap around him when the two of them merged.
Complete access to all of Lokris’s original racial abilities and skills. That meant Silent Observer. That meant Impostor. Wearing an Identity Devourer like a second skin apparently came with borrowing everything the Identity Devourer knew how to do.
And every one of his own stats, doubled, on top of that.
He tried to run the possibilities and kept losing track of them halfway through, each one branching into three more before he’d finished the first. Scout an enemy without lifting a finger. Copy a face he’d only watched for a few seconds. Walk into a room wearing someone else’s skin entirely.
He didn’t manage to fully process any of it before his hands had already decided for him.
The skill activated on instinct alone.
Lokris’s smooth black body reacted instantly—the sleek, unbroken surface losing its shape, thinning, spreading, turning into something closer to a dense, glistening liquid than a solid form. It hovered in the air for a heartbeat, waiting.
Then it moved.
Malrik had exactly enough time to think oh, this is going to be unpleasant before the black matter reached him.
It was unpleasant.
Cold and warm at the same time, somehow, spreading across his skin in a slow, deliberate crawl that felt less like armor settling into place and more like something alive deciding where it wanted to live. It slid up his arms, across his chest, down his spine, molding itself to every contour of muscle beneath it like a second layer of skin he’d never asked for and couldn’t currently remove.
He suppressed a shudder. "That is genuinely disgusting."
The black matter didn’t care about his opinion. It kept climbing.
It sealed over his shoulders, wrapped his throat, and finally closed over his face—and where a moment ago there had been nothing but featureless dark, Lokris’s silver mask now sat fitted perfectly to Malrik’s own features, the precise lines across its surface catching what little light filtered through the trees.
When it finished, what stood in the clearing bore no resemblance to the young noble who’d walked in an hour earlier.
Black armor encased his body from the crown of his head to the soles of his boots, flawless and seamless, without a single joint or gap to suggest it had ever been assembled. It hadn’t been forged. It had grown, molded around him as though it had always belonged to this body and was merely reclaiming its rightful place.
Not a single trace of flesh remained visible.
Only a dark silver mask concealed his face, its surface etched with impossibly precise lines that seemed almost too perfect to have been carved by mortal hands. Behind its expressionless visage, a pair of luminous emerald eyes regarded the world in absolute silence.
They were the only part of him left exposed.
There was no crown. No royal mantle. No insignia of rank or noble blood.
Yet none of them felt necessary.
The moment the armor embraced him, every trace of humanity seemed to vanish.
He no longer looked like Malrik Vesperion. He looked like the Reaper of Souls given flesh.
Malrik flexed his fingers experimentally. Strength answered immediately—not sluggish, not building, just there, doubled and waiting.
He laughed, delighted despite himself. "Ha! Did Lokris just turn me into Venom or something?"
Nobody answered. He hadn’t expected anyone to.
Every instinct in him wanted to sprint straight into the nearest patch of forest and find something with teeth just to see what this new body could do to it. His hands were already itching for a fight that didn’t exist yet.
He reined it in with real effort.
We’re already late. I have no time to waste on a battle with an uncertain outcome.
Malrik called Lokris back, the living black matter flowing off his body as though time itself had reversed, gathering beside him before reforming into Lokris.
A moment later, he recalled Lokris and every one of his bound souls back into the Soul Space. With nothing left behind but the scars of the battle, he turned and made his way toward the camp where Eliza and Colin were waiting.
Eliza was already standing when he arrived, exactly where he’d left her, exactly as composed as ever.
"Welcome back, Young Master."
Colin, already busy checking the harness straps on the carriage, echoed it with a short nod.
"We ready to move?" Malrik asked, not slowing his stride. "We’re behind schedule. Need to make up the time."
They were.
The carriage rolled out within minutes. Malrik climbed in beside Eliza, pulled a smooth, dark sphere from his storage ring—elegant in its plainness, the way expensive things sometimes were—and fed a thread of mana into it.
The sphere rose into the air, unfolded, flattened itself into a hovering disc, and projected a three-dimensional map into the space above his palm.
On the left side of it, a spread of dense, red-tinted forest sprawled across the terrain.
Bloodmire Forest.
No one knew what rank the creatures lurking within Bloodmire Forest
had truly reached.
Malrik himself had ventured no farther than the forest’s outer border. Yet even there, he had fought a Fallen-Rank Morveth capable of suppressing the madness of countless Awakened Morveth and bending them to its will, as well as the Faceless Morveth—a creature only a single step away from reaching the Fallen Rank.
If such monsters roamed only its outskirts...
Then what in the world was waiting at the heart of the Bloodmire Forest?
On the right, the rocky path stretched ahead of them, a single red dot marking their position along it—crude, but functional, the closest thing to a GPS this world had ever bothered inventing.
Their destination: the Marquisate of Ashmore.
Even by the fastest route, the journey would take nine to ten hours. And they were already taking that route.
Whenever a lone Morveth tried its luck against the carriage, Fenrir and the rest of the pack handled it without breaking stride. Whenever something stronger surfaced—an Awakened Morveth with enough teeth to actually matter—Lilith, recovered enough to manifest again, stepped in alongside Malrik to fill whichever of the eight remaining contract slots still sat open.
By the time eight hours had passed, all ten slots were full.
Technically it should have only been nine—Lokris now sat at Fallen rank, a full tier above what a normal contract slot was supposed to hold. But somehow the system had still counted him, the binding locked in place from before the evolution had ever happened.
"Whatever the reason," Malrik muttered, glancing at the display, "what matters is we pick up the pace. I want to reach Ashmore before sundown."
About an hour later, the first shapes of civilization broke the horizon—walls, rooftops, the unmistakable silhouette of a fortified city.
Finally. Ashmore.
The walls rose high and looked genuinely capable of holding something back, the kind of fortification that told you everything you needed to know about the man who governed behind them. Marquis Ashmore, evidently, wasn’t the type to leave his people’s safety to chance.
Then, still some distance from the gates, a loud, concussive blast rolled across the road.
Malrik’s head snapped toward the sound.
"That could be dangerous, Young Master," Eliza said quickly. "Please stay behind me."
He nodded, letting her take the lead without argument.
As they closed in on the source, the scene came into view—a group of armed humans locked in combat with a cluster of Morveth just off the road, sparks and dust still settling from whatever had caused the blast.
The group moved with flawless coordination. Their advances, retreats, and shifting formations flowed as one, the unmistakable rhythm of warriors who had stood shoulder to shoulder against thousands of Morveth.
But none of them held Malrik’s attention the way the man at the center of it did.
He fought bare-chested, without a single weapon in either hand.
His skin carried the smooth, warm tone of polished amber. Golden eyes tracked the battlefield with the calm focus of someone who’d done this a hundred times before. His black hair had been braided and tied back, out of the way, and beneath it all sat a build that would have made every bodybuilder on Earth quietly reconsider their training regimen—dense, layered muscle stacked with the kind of proportion that looked less like something achieved in a gym and more like something a sculptor had spent a lifetime perfecting.
And he was tearing through Morveth with his bare hands like they were made of wet paper.
No weapon. No mana visibly gathered around his fists. Just raw, overwhelming physical force, applied with total confidence and an unmistakable, manic joy.
He laughed as he fought—a wild, delighted sound that carried over the noise of battle.
"Come on, you weak beasts!" he bellowed, driving a fist through the chitin of something twice his size. "Show me your strength!"
Even mid-laugh, mid-swing, something at the edge of his vision registered.
A spear, hurled through the air, arcing directly toward him.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t dodge.
Because a half-second later, he realized the spear wasn’t aimed at him at all. It was aimed past him—at a slim, blur-fast Morveth that had been a hair’s breadth from closing on his exposed back.
The spear found its mark before the creature ever reached him.
The bare-fisted fighter turned toward the direction the throw had come from, golden eyes narrowing with genuine curiosity for the first time since the fight had started.
For several long seconds, Malrik and the warrior simply stood there, their eyes locked on one another. Neither of them spoke.