Chapter 48: The end

Chapter 48: Chapter 48: The end

The Hero’s hands finished the gesture.

Air in the ruined hall compressed. Pressure stacked until every breath felt thick, and in time the System flashed cold across Allan’s vision.

[Further Berserker use would damage bodily control and sanity]

He read it and kept moving forward. If he needed to force the skill past the red line to defeat the man before him, he would do it in a heartbeat.

Gradually, white smoke darkened almost to black, rising up the heat. His vision narrowed to the Hero’s pale eyes and the glowing formation between his hands.

The AOE detonated.

Allan did not back away. He met it head-on.

Sword raised, his body the only wall left. Part of the blast still tore across his side and shoulder. Skin split. Ribs cracking. He wanted to scream in pain, but no, not when they were behind him. So he pressed forward. The overdriven Berserker let him cut through the force, closing in and driving a deep, ugly line across the Hero’s upper chest and shoulder.

"Shit!" the Hero muttered in agony. "Why the hell are you still alive?"

For the first time the Hero’s calm cracked into genuine surprise.

He stood true. How was he alive? Even Allan himself did not know. He tasted blood and just spat it out. He calculated what could happen next. Maybe if the Hero used another AOE skill, Allan would be finished, but he did not have time to estimate such things. He was here to keep them safe. That was the only math that mattered right now.

The Hero kept his focus, even though he was bleeding hard.

"I will show you your place, once and for all, and finally the world shall know peace." he threatened, using another combat skill.

Skills and techniques Allan had only ever seen top players use in the final days of the original game. Tight. Efficient. He checked it again, dodging that strike at the last second. The Hero played with the exact same moves, fluid, perfect, too perfect for something that was supposed to be an NPC’s script.

Allan breathed in and then out. He filed the realization without stopping: whatever stood in front of him had either been a player once or was running on stolen player data. The "original Hero" was as much of a cheat as he was. Knowing that changed how he needed to fight him.

He shifted his tactics. He knew what he needed to do. He fed the Hero the bait sequences that had always worked on the original game’s Hero and the players who copied his style. Feints that looked like panic. Openings that looked like exhaustion. The Hero took two of them. A thin, vicious satisfaction cut through the pain.

Allan did not break clean distance after that. He stayed inside the Hero’s guard and made every exchange close and filthy. Elbow to the throat. Forehead to the nose. Pommel to the floating ribs. Knee to the wound he had already opened. Between impacts the Hero could not keep his mouth shut, trying to dig into Allan’s pride.

He kept him talking, knowing that those who liked to talk too much would reveal something eventually.

"They said they fear the one who holds the Investment Class more than any sword or spell. Maybe they are right, the so-called variable that can rewrite the board if left alive long enough."

"Did Kael tell you that?"

"Ha! Why would I answer that?"

Every word cost Allan more blood and more of his fraying control, but he kept the pressure personal. He needed the information more than a clean kill. The women were already hurt because of this man. He was not going to let the reason stay buried.

The Hero finally adapted again. The baits stopped working. The overdriven Berserker began to slip, vision tunneling, a high thin ringing in his ears, the hunger of the skill looking for anything still standing. For one sick moment Allan felt the old pure desire to stop protecting and just end everything in the room.

He crushed it down.

I need to keep them safe, whatever the cost!

[Assets re-identified]

[Lira has been re-enlisted]

[Seris has been re-enlisted]

[Calculating Investment return...]

"What?"

He was sure he had nipped their growth. He stepped up slowly, a certain energy growing inside him.

[Investment return calculated]

[SS class skill: Curse Overload]

[S+ class skill: Assassin’s Sin]

Lira’s incomplete curses bloomed as binding shadows around the Hero’s legs and one wrist, carrying the echo of her fear and her refusal to lose him.

Seris’s assassin techniques traced sharp phantom angles only Allan could see, the same quiet lethality she had once used in the dungeon. It did not feel like a gift arriving out of nowhere. It felt like something that had been sitting there the whole time, waiting for him to need it badly enough to reach for it.

Something in his chest that had been clenched since he watched Seris’s arm get crushed loosened just enough to let him move. While the Hero stood there, confused and tired as well.

"What is this? Is this your damn cheat?"

Using the openings the two women had made possible, Allan drove forward with everything he had left. He locked the Hero’s remaining good arm, forced the angle, and brought the blade down through flesh, tendon, and bone.

"Aaaaa!" he screamed in utter agony, holding his arm.

The arm separated at the elbow in a spray of hot blood. The Hero’s roar was the first uncontrolled sound he had made all fight.

Allan stood over him, chest heaving, Berserker smoke still rising, vision swimming with the cost already paid.

"You did not see that coming, huh?"

The Hero looked at him, still pressing on his severed arm, trying to stop his bleeding.

"You think this is over? You think defeating me, defeating Kael makes it over?"

"No, but you are..."

Boots thundered across the broken stone before either of them could take another step.

Allan looked around with a sigh of relief. "About time."

Viscount Arclight’s guards poured through the collapsed walls and shattered doors. Spears leveled. Shields locked into a tight ring around the one-armed Hero.

The white-haired man looked at the steel surrounding him, then at the blood pooling under his severed arm, then at Allan. The fight went out of his body then and there as he slowly lowered his remaining hand.

Allan did not lower his sword until the first ranks of soldiers stepped between them.

Only then did it all settle in at once. He was bleeding from his side where the AOE had torn him open, blood running down his ribs in slow lines he made no move to stop. Black smoke still rose off his shoulders in thin threads.

The ringing in his ears had not faded. The System’s warnings had gone quiet, but the damage they had promised was already sitting in him, a set of hollow places where control and foundation used to sit solid. The soldiers kept their distance from him the same as they did from the Hero, spears steady, eyes sharp. They had seen enough of both men to know neither was finished being dangerous.

The Hero sat on the broken floor, stump still pulsing, pale eyes fixed on Allan even as the ring of steel closed tighter. No more contempt in that stare.

Allan wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his wrist. "You will tell me everything: why did you attack me, my family, my house?" His voice came out rough.

The Hero did not answer. No, it was more like he could not anymore, looking down.

The soldiers shifted, waiting on orders that had not come yet. Outside the shattered walls, more boots, more steel, the Viscount’s forces still arriving.

A captain in Arclight colors stepped forward. "Stand down. Both of you. The Viscount wants them alive."

Neither man moved. The ring of spears tightened another step.

Allan was taken to the side by the guards, where some healers waited for him. But he knew that even as his flesh was healed, the permanent price the System had promised had been settled.

[Side effect confirmed]

[All stats decreased: -56]

He accepted it without flinching.

All he wanted was them safe, and they were safe. That was all. After his wounds were healed, he quickly stood up, even though the healers had asked him to sit.

But he did not have time to just sit around while they suffered from their hurt.

"Seris! Lira! Amelia!" he called out as from the manor alley, Diva walked through.

"Where are they?" he asked.

Diva smiled. "They are okay. The healers already arrived and healed most of their injuries." she said, pointing to the bedroom door.

He patted her shoulder. "Thank you." he muttered. "Consider your debt paid."

Allan entered the room, leaving Diva be. She could not help but touch her own shoulder where he had patted, leaving patches of blood, but there was warmth there.

He had thought he was some calculating cold bastard, but no. Seeing him so panicked and angry for them, she finally understood. Even that calculating coldness was to protect the ones he deeply cared about.