He had trained relentlessly, fighting enemies stronger than himself, surviving battles that nearly killed him, even resorting to black market drugs to enhance his body. Through agony and obsession, he had forced himself upward. At last, he stood among the ranks of the Transcendants, just like Zakia himself.
Without a sound, Hellsmoke slipped into the castle grounds. Every step erased its own echo; every breath dissolved into the dark.
No signs of life in the corridors… huh.
Once, these hallways had been bustling: nobles strutting in arrogance, soldiers marching in shining armor. Now, the place was dead quiet.
Extending his awareness, Hellsmoke spread his perception throughout the castle, using his honed senses and augmented skills to search for presences.
This is… strange. Way too quiet. Even the nobles who usually live near the castle aren’t moving. Their entire district feels empty.
He remembered how, not long ago, the nobles of the Kaizell Empire had reveled in obscene luxury, throwing nightly parties fueled by the taxes drained from their starving citizens. But now, even that excess had vanished. The city streets were still, drained of light and sound.
Don’t tell me… they’ve noticed me? He frowned, pausing in the shadows of a grand marble column. No. Even if they had, the empire wouldn’t need to mobilize the entire court just to catch one man. Not when they’re mass-producing Transcendants. And they sure as hell don’t know that I’ve become one myself…
As he drew closer to the throne room, a hollow knot of unease tightened in Hellsmoke’s chest. If he let this chance slip, he had no idea when another opportunity would present itself. Still, he shook his head to snuff the thought out.
Don’t second-guess. There’s only one objective. He told himself. Kill that bastard king. If it costs me my life, so be it.
He had steeled himself to die for this assassination; every scrap of preparation, every risk he had taken up to this point, had been oriented toward that single end. The castle felt almost deliberately deserted as he moved through it—an absence so complete it set his teeth on edge—and finally he came to the door he had been hunting for.
There should have been guards at the entrance to the audience chamber. There should have been sentries on duty, the clack of armor, the low murmur of palace business. Instead, the heavy doors stood mute and untouched, keeping a horrible, expectant silence. Hellsmoke closed his eyes for a heartbeat and pushed his senses outward.
No mistake… there’s only one presence in this room. I can’t tell if it’s the king or not, but if the intel’s right, he’s the only one in there… and he doesn’t seem to have noticed me.
The realization that his longed-for moment was within reach made his right hand itch. He flexed the fingers wrapped in the black, uncanny gauntlet fitted there and checked its condition as if the motion were part prayer, part ritual. He had once fought Zakia wearing a wine-red gauntlet with a similar effect, and it had been useless against that man. Zakia’s reach had exceeded what the old gear could connect with.
So Hellsmoke had upgraded. He hadn’t only pushed his body to the brink; he had carefully engineered his tools. The new piece, his Black Death Mage Bow Gauntlet, was designed to change the terms of engagement.
Its mechanics were simple in description and terrifying in implication: the gauntlet could create arrows out of raw mana, stockpile them in a pocket of subspace, and call them back into the world on command. More importantly, it could forge arrows saturated with Hellsmoke’s full, concentrated magical force, each one a projectile crafted at the extreme limit of his power.
Now, the heavy door to the audience chamber waited, and beyond it lay the culmination of everything he had spent his life planning for.
He had prepared for this down to the last detail: a hundred arrows in all—fifty ordinary shafts for quick, reliable shots, and fifty more saturated to the limit with raw mana, each one an absolute hammer aimed to pierce even a Transcendant.
This is it, he told himself. I’ve done everything I can. Kill Sheldt, and then—
Hellsmoke closed that thought off like a door. He stepped into the audience chamber with the cold certainty of a man who had already chosen the price of his action. He had rehearsed the moment in his mind a thousand times, and now, finally, he was acting on it.
But then—
“Huh?!”
A sound escaped him, a question without intention. There was something in the room, but it was not what he had expected.
Whatever sat before him was not human.
He’d seen horrors before, but this was something else entirely: a heaving mass of flesh that writhed with motion, muscles swollen so grotesquely they looked as if they might burst, a bulk so enormous that calling it human felt absurd. Its face was a ruin of what once might have been a face: fangs bared in a permanent, slobbering grin, features puffed and distorted into a hideous caricature, veins bulging across skin taut and blistered. Balding patches showed through coarse flesh; the eyes were dead, lacking any trace of reason. It ate with obscene hunger, shoveling food into its mouth and smearing itself in grease and sauce as if the act of feeding were a sacrament.
What is this thing? Is it even human?
Hellsmoke hadn’t even freed an arrow from subspace—his plan had been for a clean execution the second he saw Sheldt—but now his hands hung suspended by disbelief. The room smelled of oil, blood, and a sweetness that made his stomach roil. The thing showed no sign of noticing him; it kept consuming with animal patience, oblivious to the world.
“—So? How is His Majesty’s condition?” a voice asked suddenly.
“—?!”
The unexpected question snapped Hellsmoke out of his trance. Instinct took over; the arrows he’d readied loosed in a flurry toward the direction of the voice, each shaft a blur of lethal intent.
But—
“Well, well. How barbaric, attacking without warning. You really are a savage, aren’t you?”
Another voice echoed through the chamber, calm and amused, but from an entirely different direction. Hellsmoke’s eyes snapped toward it, only to find Helio, the so-called Phantom Mage, standing there without a scratch on him, a smug smile curling across his face.
“You! What the hell are you doing here?!”
“What, is it really so strange to find me in this place?” Helio asked innocently, as if the question genuinely puzzled him.
“Don’t play dumb. You’re supposed to be leading the army.”
“Oh? For someone who’s been gathering so much intel, it seems you’ve missed a rather important detail, hmm?”
That smirk… that mocking, condescending smirk, it told Hellsmoke everything.