Last Born Of The Desdemona

Chapter 414: Chapter 414: Coin of Maybe [GT Bonus Chapter]

Chapter 414 – Coin of Maybe [GT Bonus Chapter]

"Argh. Damn it." Cassius cursed under his breath, opening slowly his eyes, only to see both Ananke and Tysche’s faces looming over him.

"How do you feel?" Ananke asked, stretching her hand to help him. Cassius accepted the help, rising up to sit down in the middle, his mind still trying to put together what he had received.

"I am fine." He replied, putting his hand on his forehead, feeling there was a spot there that was slightly colder than the rest of his body.

It was nothing dangerous or detrimental, just a casual observation he was making after remembering how the golden coin had entered within his head.

"You now have three Blessings." Tysche said, "Ananke’s Absolute Fate Blessing, that Sleeping Beauty’s Unwanted Slumber Blessing, and finally my Coin of Maybe’s Blessing. Three. That’s quite something, darling."

"In most cases, people only get one Blessing, even the Chosen Ones." Ananke added, "The number you have right now is befitting to people like Emrys."

"Well, Emrys got all his Blessings at birth." Cassius said, "I needed to destroy a church and kill a young boy to get this Blessing. And last time, I needed to escape the hungry, obsessive eyes of Marvela to get that Blessing too. And even you, Queen, I tried to negotiate with you, for the Blessing."

Thinking about all of that, Cassius couldn’t help but notice that although he had been given many things, all of that would have been impossible if he hadn’t done the things to deserve them, and obtain them in the first place.

That small little thought put a smile on his face.

It might have been hard, but at least, he made it. At least, he got his Blessings.

"It’s times like this that you understand that doing your best... works, I suppose." Cassius said, "what do you think? I believe, at this point, I can become a motivational speaker and fool some innocent young people by telling them to pay me big money just to say ’Be patient. Trust yourself, and you will make it! Everything begins in the mind! The mind, boy!’"

Cassius said the last words with great dramatic flair, making both goddesses chuckle, and giggle.

"The worst is that I can actually see you doing that." Ananke said.

"Of course I can." He nodded, as if proud of himself about that, "It must be fun to scam people."

"Oh, darling, it is fun." Tysche added with a grin, "and it will be even more if you learn to use my Blessing better."

Cassius nodded, unable to refute that claim. The Blessing, Coin of Maybe, was quite the interesting one.

The principle was very simple, but Cassius could see how this Blessing could bring him immense success but also terrible outcomes if he fucked up.

That was exactly how Luck and Fortune worked, it seemed. Push and Pull.

The Coin of Maybe was quite similar.

To use the Blessing, Cassius must make two statements, each one corresponding to one face of the coin.

The statements must be different, and not lead to the same outcome. Otherwise, it wouldn’t work.

After making the two statements, Cassius would flip the coin and witness on which side the coin would fall. No matter the side, that side would have a GREAT chance to happen.

It was a Blessing that relied heavily on Luck and Probability, which was something beings like Cassius didn’t like to lean on in dangerous circumstances.

But there was a slight saving grace in all of this.

"Just like I said earlier," Tysche said, "You will obtain around 3% Luck and Fortune of the person you kill. But you must kill them by yourself."

"Only 3%?"

"The very fact you can steal Luck and Fortune from others is already abnormal, darling." The Goddess said sharply, "that’s not something supposed to be possible, and you wouldn’t have this ability if you didn’t have my True Blessing."

Cassius nodded, understanding the implications. Stealing Luck and Fortune was more consequential than anything.

The thing was that he needed to kill them with his own hand. And the other thing was that some people just don’t have enough luck to steal.

Still, this was a useful Blessing that could be of tremendous help.

"And I must tell you, though," Ananke now chimed in, "The fact that your birth was heavily influenced by fortune and luck has consequences. Because of that, your Fortune and Luck has been capped. You cannot increase it."

Cassius frowned, "so you mean..."

"Yes." Tysche said, "Every Luck and Fortune you steal, is only useful for when you use my Blessing. Let’s say it’s a currency. Based on the amount of Fortune and Luck you decide to use by activating it, you have more chance to have a desirable outcome."

"Damn." He cursed, slightly disappointed, "I was hoping to be the Son of Luck."

"But you are the Son of Luck!" Tysche said, hugging him tightly, "And you still get to have the opportunity to use the Luck and Fortune you steal to your advantage. Just be careful. You know what people say about Luck, right?"

Cassius nodded, having a better understanding of his Blessing.

After that, he made small talk with Tysche and Ananke, before finally reaching the limit of his stay in the Gate.

He bid farewell to the two of them, then found himself back inside the room in the Hood Royal Palace, the air and scent immediately welcoming him, alongside the comfortable bed.

Cassius let out a heavy, but relaxed sigh out of his lips.

Today had been a ridiculously busy day.

With everything that had happened, and everything he had gone through, his eyes were closing by themselves the moment he touched the bed, eager to rest.

He remembered at that moment that he had the Sealed Artifact of Mother Demoness of Pestilence to look at. And that made him also recall that he had the Journal of Mother Demoness, who called herself Mother Eve.

A journal he could only read further by accepting to be struck by a curse or ailment or something dreadful along those lines.

But all of that were things Cassius did not have the heart and mind to do at that point.

So he allowed himself to sleep, putting all of that off until tomorrow, his mind and body at ease, his existence more complete than ever before.

That night, Cassius Desdemona fell asleep as a Cassius Desdemona.

And would live his life, from that day on, as Cassius Desdemona, his identity sealed and confirmed.

...

Meanwhile...

"Haha, so many things happened today. Even a burning Church. But this is really surprising." Joykiller said with joy, looking at her phone, browsing on the Net.

Isolde was sitting in front of her, inside that darkness, now completely healed after the help of Joykiller.

The two of them were separated by a purple flame that was flickering gently, giving them light and warmth.

To say Isolde was tired would be an understatement.

They were in a small forest, a couple of kilometers away from the Damned Village. Now they were closer to the big cities of the Kingdom, more precisely to Storm City.

But Joykiller didn’t enter the Kingdom, and didn’t want to. Isolde didn’t ask why. She didn’t care.

However, she became quite curious about this woman and why she was laughing all this time while looking at her phone.

"Surprising, you said?" Isolde said, looking at Joykiller whose hood was now down, showing her face.

The woman was around her own age, with wild auburn hair and grey eyes, beautiful but quite simple. "What’s so surprising?"

"Nothing much." Joykiller said, "It’s just that it seems that we have failed our mission."

"Mission?"

"Oh, yes, mission." Joykiller paused, then looked at Isolde, tilted her head, "Hm. I am not supposed to tell you this, but master said that we must not hide anything from friends. We are friends, right, Kali?"

Joykiller said Isolde’s fake name, and the latter smiled beautifully.

"Of course, we are." Isolde said sincerely, herself not having many friends, and wouldn’t mind someone strong like Joykiller. She could be useful to their Sect. "You saved me when I was certainly going to die. I owe you a lot."

Joykiller smiled innocently, giggling to herself, incredibly happy to finally have a friend.

It had been such a long time she was trying, but every time, people always retreated from her as if the very fact she wanted friendship was suspicious and dangerous.

She had never understood humans and their distrust of people who simply stated what they wanted from the beginning, instead of wasting an unnecessary amount of time dancing around it.

Time Joykiller never had. She was always on missions, after all.

But all of that belonged to the past now.

She had made a friend.

And no one lied to her friend.

"It’s an important mission, my master had said." Joykiller said, raising her hand to explain, completely relaxed, "we wanted to capture the man with the dragon’s eye in order to take it from him. If we can’t capture him, then we were allowed to kill him before resurrecting him within three hours or so."

Her words made Isolde halt abruptly, heart skipping a beat. Slowly, very silently, her whole body began to change, power cooling within her. She lifted her head, tilted it in a very dangerous way, "someone with dragon eye?"

"Oh yes. You don’t know him, maybe? I have heard he is pretty famous in the Kingdom. What a shame that we failed to capture him or even kill him. I wanted to see him." Joykiller said, before taking her phone to show Isolde the picture of Cassius that was going through the Net with the words "CALL OF JUSTICE" on it.

However, before she even had the time to finish her action, Joykiller found herself falling backwards on the ground with resounding impact, air knocked out of her lungs.

She tried to speak, but Isolde, who was now upon her, grasped her jaw tight with a hand glowing with Damned Essence, her purple eyes slowly going black.

"You tried to kill Cassius?" Isolde said, her voice suddenly utterly cold.

Joykiller was still completely taken aback by the whole situation. She looked at Isolde with utter confusion, wondering what was going on and where her smiling friend had gone.

But that didn’t last long. She immediately tried to counter attack, all the time while activating her barrier to protect herself.

It was useless.

Isolde’s dagger passed through her barriers so easily it looked like they didn’t exist, and pierced her heart with chilling efficiency.

She didn’t stop there. She then burst a very concentrated amount of Damned Essence inside, causing Joykiller’s heart to shatter into pieces.

Blood gushed out of Joykiller’s mouth, her eyes wide open in shock.

Everything happened so fast, so silently that she was still struggling to understand.

"W-What?" She muttered, coughing pieces of her destroyed heart, her eyes slowly dimming, "...I...saved you?" She croaked out in confusion and deep bewilderment, "F-Friend?"

Isolde looked at her without much emotion. Every kind of emotion that was beginning to be born in her for being saved was completely extinguished.

"I am grateful for your help. And if you wish, you can see me as your friend." Isolde said, "But I cannot let you live. Not when I am aware of what you were trying to do with Cassius."

That was when Joykiller finally understood that her new friend knew their target. And, apparently, cared for him more than she cared for her, who saved her when she was about to die.

But that realization made Joykiller wonder, as her life completely dimmed away, if it was what it meant to have friends.

She would never know the answer, as Isolde, in her last shred of mercy, killed Joykiller directly, delivering her from her slow death.

Joykiller thus died, eyes still wide in confusion and pain.

Isolde didn’t move for a couple more breaths, taking hold of herself. She sat there, looking at the blank eyes of Joykiller.

She stood up next, taking the phone from the dead woman. She looked at the Net, and saw the picture of Cassius with the Call of Justice.

"Vorn City, hm." Isolde muttered under her breath.

She nodded to herself slowly, destroyed the phone, and threw it away.

She looked one last time at the corpse of Joykiller, and used the purple fire that had been giving them warmth...to burn her corpse.

"Sigh." Isolde sighed as she walked away from the burning corpse, her face tired, "Just what did Cass involve himself in."

—End of Chapter 414—