Adonis slashed the air with his sword. The warped, bending sword whistled like a broken instrument—and the man’s words trailed off.
“What is a Solist?” Adonis asked in a low, muffled voice as he took a step toward the man. “What is a sword?”
Another step.
“Who are you? What are you? What creature? What do you live for? What would you die for? Show me.”
Dying like this would be nothing short of absurd. Adonis’s voice, expression, and posture grew colder with each step, a frosty edge to his bloodlust. He was like the frozen, sharp edge of an icicle, rejecting anything he touched, tearing and destroying all that tried to hurt him. He had no clear goals, with only the question spell burning bright as the original letters decayed and distorted.
“I knew it would turn out like this. I knew I’d be forced into this. But I never fought back, trying to put it off for as long as possible. But the one thing I learned is that, in Park, even pain feels like an illusion. None of it feels real to me,” Adonis said in a low whisper.
He approached the man, all pretenses put aside. As soon as he was within striking range, the man’s thick arm swelled with flexed muscle and he let out a roar, whipping it toward Adonis.
Adonis took the attack head-on, defending against it by raising his left arm.
He wore this outfit for combat for a reason. The finely woven water steel threads were pliant and blocked the man’s blade, while enchanted metal fixings he’d had installed when it was repaired easily resisted the attack.
A deep disappointment filled Adonis’s eyes. Grinding his teeth, he closed in on the man resentfully.
The man let out a ragged scream. As he tried to pull back, one of his arms was severed. The warped sword dismembered the limb—everything below the elbow, leaving a jagged slash like an animal had bitten off his arm. That was the last thing the man ever saw.
His head flew from his body. His torn wound spurted blood and emitted an intense stench. Adonis was bathed in blood, and his sword shattered. He quickly discarded the weapon, as if he didn’t want to hear its final cries.
The Centaurus man’s body crumbled to the ground with a thud. Adonis turned and looked around.
“I knew this would happen…”
Standing there all alone, he quietly murmured those words, as if trying to convince himself.
“I finally did it,” he whispered in resignation—and resentment. This was why he avoided personal battles. The result before his eyes spoke for itself.
The more he polished his skills, the worse it became. The more his swords became nothing but tools of murder, which Adonis himself resented.
All he had to live for was the sword. Yet those swords were like fireflies, luring him into a mire of personal resentment. They led him toward gloomy potential murder scenes to create those scenes of bloodshed and death with his own two hands.
Now that he’d crossed that threshold, there was no going back. He would either have to keep killing Schwertland Solists who flocked to him for revenge, or eventually succumb to their attacks himself. He wasn’t cornered to that extent yet, but the situation would eventually reach that point. He was certain it would.
And for that precise reason, Adonis burned with elation, a sense of deep-seated achievement. For the first time, he was able to come to terms with the despair of being a killer, and in the embrace of that despair he found pleasure that burned within him like fire. That fear—the dread killers feel toward what they would become—had been replaced by despair that eventually transformed into a burning pleasure. He’d felt it vividly in the midst of battle.
Yet now, with everything silent and the scenery dyed with bloodshed and death, Adonis was overcome with a deep, muddled, unendurable emptiness. The void left in the wake of that momentary rush of glee washed over him like a deluge of water.
Adonis stared at the sight, his eyes wide. His body was trembling, and he was overcome with intense nausea.
“Bamboo… A sword… Any sword I can use. And a new pair of gloves.” He managed to give the order despite the irritation in his heart.
He covered his hands in a new pair of leather gloves. Leaving behind the littered remains of swords and Solists on the ground, Adonis, now an impassioned murderer, walked away with unsteady steps. Thankfully, no one had noticed the battle yet. There was nobody nearby, and feeling a deep loneliness, like he’d been left behind by everyone, Adonis trembled as he continued down the road to the castle.
“I knew this would happen… I knew it would eventually turn out like this… And that something would come to an end when it does. That the pain would end. That I would end. What should I do? Let myself be killed? Or try to survive? Which should I wish for? Should I scream, asking for someone to end my life?”
Adonis wandered around like a man who’d lost his way, shaken, biting his lip as his eyes darted about.
“I knew this would happen. I have to calm down. Or am I already calm? It’s only the beginning; I just got started. Shit, I need to figure this out. Am I alive? Or am I about to be killed? Can I go to anyone for help? Damn it, I have to check, to make sure…”
Just then, Adonis realized that he’d emerged from the woods and come out into a garden. The canopy of trees above him was gone, and now in their place was the towering castle, inlaid with the finest O’crocks.
Adonis stopped in his tracks, and his body stopped trembling. His expression automatically tensed up, and a gruesome smile spread across his lips. His eyes were wide as he looked at the castle ravenously.
“I knew this would happen…,” Adonis whispered softly, heading toward the castle as if something was luring him there.
Adonis glanced around, then entered the castle with light steps.
He used short, quick strides. His eyes were downcast, making it hard to read his expression, and his shoulders were raised as if he was shrugging or upset at something. It was difficult to deduce what he might do next.
It was clear that today would be a turning point for Adonis. At least, that was what he’d expected when he left Bamboo and came to the castle. No matter how challenging life was in the outside world, he couldn’t spend the rest of his days shut inside Bamboo until he shriveled up and died. He knew that.
However, he could feel that no matter how much he tried to resist it, he’d end up caught in someone’s—or rather, God’s—preordained harmony. Adonis had climbed to the rank of Arch-Solist, and until then, he’d felt as if he was under the yoke of God’s Thema. The fact that he had grown wealthy, gained influence, and risen to the highest rank simply meant that he, the heretical outsider that he was, was adapting and therefore subservient to Park City.
And maybe that would have been fine. But the problem was that he didn’t feel the slightest bit like he belonged there. All he had was closed-off solitude with no refuge. He’d never had a reason to oppose Park’s Thema in the first place. If Adonis had to say, he’d only done so because that was a fundamental part of who he was. His doubts had deepened by the day, until at some point he’d vaguely realized that he felt some sort of antagonism toward God, the king, and the city itself.
The many battles he’d fought opposing God had produced no defeats or victories. Adonis had always felt compelled to fight. It was just the way it was, producing results with no real significance.
He was scared. He wasn’t actually seeking or pursuing anything, and he lacked the capacity and drive to seek or pursue his own goals from the very start. Deep down, he felt a debilitating fear.
To confirm this and to beat that dread, he had to act, to leave Bamboo behind and step out into reality. He understood this, but for what? What was he even acting against? What was he meant to do? And once he was finished with this, what would he do then? Could this action actually yield an outcome of substance?
He was trapped in a vicious cycle of one doubt leading to another. And that in itself—making those doubts his goal—was the only way for him to harmonize with the world.
He was a skeptic of the world, and on that point alone, he wasn’t fully detached from it, nor was he truly alone. If nothing else, he at least had a target for his uncertainties, even if that target was a nameless, shapeless city…
He had no other choice. He didn’t believe he could do anything else. This was much more preferable and comforting than foolishly fighting a goalless battle against reality.
At least, it was until now. Until he met that girl.
She said, all too easily—almost indifferently—that she would set out on a journey, firmly accepting fear for what it was, shining with life.
She’s completely, truly alive…
It was only when he’d met her that Adonis had felt for the first time that maybe he could truly seek something out. The cursed child of a grave keeper clan, who had abandoned his family and been cast out into this world without meaning or purpose felt, for the first time, that he was drawn to someone.