Killed Me? Now I Have Your Power

Chapter 464: Chapter 464: Rats

Chapter 464 – Rats

"Where were you just now?" Katherine asked, her omnipresent gaze all too familiar to the Alchemist sitting there.

He hadn’t budged an inch from his place, yet even without that, Katherine knew when Alchemist used a clone as a medium to witness something.

It was rarely done.

He never liked the feeling, he always said.

So for something to make him use a thing he hated... she knew without a doubt it mattered.

So she asked, and watched Alchemist’s head bow low, eyes fixed on something held between his fingers.

A small item shaped like an eye, runes etched across it. Runes that no longer worked.

"They have escaped." He said simply, clenching his fist, crushing the item with a loud crack and reducing it to black powder that scattered around him.

"They?" Katherine echoed, and Alchemist could taste the confusion behind the word. Just as he felt her realisation and outrage rising before she even opened her mouth again.

"They?" Her voice climbed octave by octave. "Prometheus and Sorrow have escaped? How is that even possible under your watch, Alchemist? You said you were handling them!"

"I did." He said, with the same calm that irritated Katherine. "Everything went according to plan."

He frowned, knotted his fingers together and rested his chin on top of them. "I made the vessel of Sorrow die and had Sorrow take over the body, just as I promised. I delivered Kaden to Nameless after showing him the cruelty and power of the Warren, and proposed giving him that very Warren."

"Forbidden. Have you lost your damned mind?"

"Ah well, time is nasty—!"

"You actually planned to give a Warren to a mortal? Prometheus on top of that?"

Katherine’s wrath flooded the entire space Alchemist sat in. She couldn’t be seen, but she was everywhere.

The manifestation of it was chilling. Rats. Not one. Not dozens. Hundreds of thousands of them appeared — eyes red, bodies black, mouths stretched wide in agonising silence, rotting the very air and reality around them.

Forbidden tiredly raised a barrier of runes around himself, briefly wondering why he had a habit of choosing problematic companions. He would have been better off with the likes of Kol’Riku.

"You are overreacting for no reason, Katherine." He said, smiling faintly. "It was nothing but an Echo of Warren. Not the real one."

"But still—!"

"Think for a moment." Forbidden cut her off sharply. "Think about why I proposed that power to him. And to do that, I need you to remember where the Warborn lineage came from."

Katherine’s anger seemed to settle, visible in the dwindling number of rats.

"Warborn, Bloodborn, Deathborn. All of them came from the dead God of Death." She said. "And the Warren you were giving him was—!"

"The one belonging to the dead God of Death." He finished. "Tell me, what would have happened if a fragmented bloodline of that dead god found and took hold of his Echo of Warren?"

Katherine’s breath caught for a heartbeat, surprised by the scope of Alchemist’s intention. But after the surprise came apprehension. Deep, seated apprehension.

"You... you wish to summon them back?" She muttered.

"Yes." Alchemist nodded.

"Reckless." She said. "Haven’t you watched them yourself?"

"I have. Very well even."

"No. You haven’t." Katherine rebuked him. "If you had, you would know it’s suicide to deliberately summon their attention onto you. And if they have their attention on you, they have it on me. I want nothing to do with them, Forbidden."

"You won’t—!"

"Find another way." She said. Then, immediately after: "No. No need. I’ll handle it myself from now on, Forbidden."

"Katherine—!"

"You won’t stop me."

Forbidden swallowed his words, staring into the void left by Katherine’s abrupt disappearance.

The black, squalid rats let out a menacing shriek in his direction before dissolving into a mass of flesh and bone, seeping down through the floor of his realm and vanishing.

Forbidden Alchemist was left alone, eyes closed, perfectly still.

It stayed like that for a few more seconds before a chuckle slipped past his smirking lips.

There were certain things people never thought to second-guess when they were presented in the right moment, under the right conditions.

Humans especially.

Katherine was human. Oh, deeply, thoroughly human, despite her lofty status.

And the way of man was reason. And what destroyed reason was nothing but passion.

’And you are so full of it, Katherine. So full that in your haste, in your wrath, you forget that there is rarely anything more suspicious than a liar deciding to tell the truth for once.’

He paused, then snickered. ’Liar is harsh. Conservative, maybe.’

Now, what would she do?

’You don’t know where they are, yet you wish to kill them.’

Though for once, Forbidden had to acknowledge that her very nature would make her dangerous in this. Likely even effective.

In the same way passion killed reason, being pursued by a woman full of it was something the wise knew better than to invite.

Forbidden laughed quietly under his breath, settling back into his serene silence.

But even as everything seemed to return to normal, he couldn’t stop himself from turning back to the last thing he had seen inside the Echo of Warren.

The two skies. The sight of...

’Servant...’

Alchemist frowned, just slightly.

’Now that’s a name easy to remember.’

What was even more worth remembering was the appearance of Servant. Its eyes.

And Alchemist had to admit it plainly...

’I underestimated the boy. Curse The Slave. How did his Unique Aspect of Will get copied by a child?’

He clicked his tongue, his mind already turning like gears in a complex system, new plans taking shape inside old ones.

Plan within plan within plan.

’Always hide that one plan within the others. You are almost there, Seun. You are close. Remember that.’

Yes. Very close.

...

Simultaneously, in an unknown yet known location, Kaden found himself helplessly struggling to hold his balance in the air, eyes fixed downward.

There, a strange and beautiful Saintess knelt on the ground in prayer before a shattered altar where black blood flowed without end.

The appearance of Kaden and Rea in that ruined church sent a violent shudder through Rea’s body, as though thunder had been let loose inside her.

The shaking made the Saintess snap her head toward them, just in time for Kaden and Rea to drop, falling straight toward the earth riddled with broken rubble and shattered pillars.

The impact was wrenching.

He had seconds left before his body gave out entirely. His eyelids were half-closed, unable to open past mere slits.

But his mind was sharper than anything. He could still see. And what he saw made his heart slam against his chest.

Rea had fallen from his grasp.

’Blood and ashes...’

The Saintess, now a monstrous thing, tentacles jutting from her face, seized the spasming Rea with impossible strength, her face inches from Rea’s own.

Kaden groaned. "N-No..."

He tried to crawl toward them. But he didn’t get the chance. A tentacle — glowing with a purple substance — snapped toward him and drove straight through his chest.

Bone, flesh, everything ruptured and burst apart. Half his chest collapsed. His heart — like one built for a creature of fire — was left exposed for all to see.

The Saintess struck again without even looking at him. This time the heart itself was hit and Kaden went completely limp.

Thud.

—End of Chapter 464—