Sebastian came back to himself with a sigh.

He was in the middle of the road down a different street than the one he’d been on.

He got up and moved in the direction he heard voices coming from.

He peeked around the corner of a building in time to see the monster that had killed him shaking gore off its fist and shifting back to human form as the others argued about what to do next.

So only a few seconds had passed this time between death and resurrection.

There was a little bar, opposite the phase countdown timer, which filled as he fought. He could actually feel both himself and his phantoms growing in strength as it crept upward.

It seemed that the longer he fought, the quicker the resurrection. And the more times he resurrected, the more powerful he grew when he came back.

The more I die, the stronger I get, he marveled. What a power.

But it wasn’t just his strength that was changing. His mindset was changing too, growing… distant. Chaotic.

He’d broken his leg that time, not of a phantom, but his own leg. It had hurt like hell, but he’d been able to, not even ignore it, but to relish it.

Most of the insanity he’d displayed had been an attempt at psychological warfare to disturb the group and lower their morale, make them easier to take out, make them make mistakes.

But not all of it. Some of it had been real.

He didn’t know what cost dying over and over again would have on his psyche, whether the changes he was feeling were some unlisted effect of the card’s ability, or simply the psychological toll of dying repeatedly and watching his corpses get destroyed.

Not to mention murdering someone for the first time. Two people, now—a fact confirmed by a second message from the System letting him know he’d killed another Vassal.

Either way, he couldn’t afford to worry about it right now.

What he was worried about was something the group had mentioned: his cooldown. He wasn’t sure how cooldowns worked; when they started counting from, whether it referred to the time between dying and resurrecting, or to the time it took before he could resurrect again after coming back

While he’d initially thought the cooldown on the card was the time between resurrections, that didn’t appear to be the case since that time had shortened with each death as the bar had filled and he’d grown stronger.

It was possible that increasing in power shortened the cooldown, but that didn’t feel right. It was hard to describe exactly, but he had a sense of the abilities the card gave him. It was vague, but had clarified with each death, enough now that he was fairly certain the cooldown started only once he resurrected. Which meant if he was killed during that minute-and-a-half time period after resurrection, he wouldn’t be coming back.

Luckily each time he came back he’d appeared a decent distance away from the group, so wasn’t in immediate danger of being killed again by them. Only being able to die once every minute and a half wasn’t exactly egregious, if that was the case, but it was something to keep in mind.

It occurred to him that he could just ask. So, still having time to kill before he could die again, he did just that.

How does the cooldown work? he mentally inquired.

Unless otherwise specified, a cooldown begins once a card’s effect is activated. During this time, the effect cannot be used. Likewise, any passive or automatic effects will not activate.

So in this case, that means after resurrecting?

For card [Death Is Not the End], the cooldown begins at the moment of resurrection. Time between death and resurrection does not apply toward the cooldown.

So if I die during the cooldown…

Death during the cooldown period would result in the card [Death Is Not the End] not activating.

In other words, I would be dead dead.

The card’s effect would not activate, which means you would not resurrect. You would remain dead.

Stolen novel; please report.

And my body would become property of the System.

Yes.

Having it answer so directly made him again think about what exactly it was he was communicating with. Was it Osiris? It didn’t seem like it.

He supposed he could just ask that too.

Are you Osiris?

You are communicating with an aspect of the Apocalypse System that is quarantined from the main System in order to abide by the Prime Tenets.

What does that mean?

All authorized information on this subject has been dispensed.

Are you tracking me?

Unnotified System tracking goes against Prime Tenets and would result in System reassignment.

Is a Scion tracking me?

Information on other aspirants unavailable.

What about the Vassals?

The answer is the same.

Well, at least the System wasn’t tracking him, if he could believe what it was telling him. The Scions still might be, but these Vassals definitely didn’t seem to be able to.

Can I get a bar for the countdown, or a timer or something?

Just above the timer for the phase 1 countdown, a new countdown appeared. There were thirty-eight seconds remaining.

A hundred seconds didn’t seem like a lot, but in circumstances like this, it was grating.

Is there a way to reduce the cooldown?

Many attributes may be altered by upgrading.

Something to look into later. For now, he needed to decide on his next action. He only had thirty seconds until dying was safe again.

He marveled at this, recalling something Anubis had said, and smiled.

He considered just running away. That last time he’d managed to sneak past them and into their apartment, steal some of their booze and make a Molotov cocktail. Surely he could get away undetected if he could manage all of that.

But he didn’t want to run away.

For one, the idea of leaving them the Blaze of Creation card disturbed him in a way he couldn’t describe. It wasn’t as special as his heart card, but Anubis had led him to it specifically, and he wasn’t going to let it fall into their hands. Anubis had specifically said not to sell it under any condition, and letting them have it seemed much the same.

But mostly, he simply didn’t want to run. He wanted to fight. He wanted… to kill them.

He didn’t have a full grasp of their role, but siding with the System, with Osiris, struck him as a deep betrayal. It had healed the world with its ‘Wonder’, but it had also unleashed monsters upon it. Monsters it made by taking over people—and insects, and presumably anything else—when they died.

And this group, instead of siding with their own species, had sided with the invaders.

It made him think of Magnus. Had he turned willingly?

Sebastian couldn’t believe that. He knew his friend well. Magnus would never do something like that.

But this group weren’t Scions, they were Vassals. Magnus had seemed controlled, like an emotionless pawn. This group was different. They had actively chosen to side with Osiris.

They were parasites, even worse than the monster he’d seen turn after dying.

They chose to betray their own kind.

Which to Sebastian meant they had chosen the fate of any parasite unfortunate enough to infect a modern human: death.

Sebastian had managed to take out two of them now, Lars, the shirtless guy, and Niels, the one in motorcycle gear.

The fire girl, Sanne, had been weakened when she’d burned up his corpse and phantom—which had been disturbing to watch—her haze vanishing almost entirely. But then the flames from the Molotov cocktail had reinvigorated her.

If the haze surrounding her was anything to go by, she wasn’t yet back to full strength. He had thought she would be the most difficult to take out, but after seeing Bram turn into a monster and being crushed by a single blow from the beast, Sebastian was reconsidering that.

Bram had shifted back now, so maybe there was a time limit on how long he could stay transformed. But he also hadn’t put his robe back on, which suggested he was ready and able to change back again.

That, or he just liked an all-over tan. Which seemed unlikely in the current situation.

If anyone had been around to watch, it must have looked rather comical, a bunch of naked people and cosplayers fighting each other.

Daan and Ilse, the two dressed like superheroes, ironically seemed the weakest of the remaining group. Sebastian had been slammed into a building by Ilse and taken several kicks from Daan, and while they definitely hurt and would have left him with massive bruises if he had lived long enough to form them, they hadn’t been that much stronger than a normal attack.

Or maybe that was his power making him more durable.

Either way, he was pretty sure he’d heard at least one of Ilse’s bones break when she’d slammed him into the building.

Watching her now, she seemed fine though. So maybe she was more Wolverine than Supergirl.

And Olivia could skewer him from several feet away.

Daan it is, he decided.

Sebastian’s countdown was finished, so all he had to do now was form a plan of attack.

At first he’d tried coming at them from ground level, but that hadn’t worked that well. The American girl had speared him through the heart from twenty feet away.

The balcony, on the other hand. Well, that they hadn’t expected.

Should he try it again? Maybe they wouldn’t expect him to repeat his balcony attack.

Why not? he decided after a moment’s consideration. He could afford to mess up and die. It would only make him stronger, after all.

Plan formed, he set off, sneaking around to the back and into the apartment building.

There were two stairwells up to the second floor, and he took the opposite of the one he had the first time.

On the landing between floors, sitting with her back against the wall and her legs splayed carelessly, was a girl a little younger than him, with messy electric-blue hair and a vacant expression, staring into space.

She only briefly looked at him as he moved past her, and he wasn’t even sure she registered he wasn’t wearing clothes.

He quickly found the traitors’ apartment again and headed straight for the liquor cabinet, then for the kitchen, which was stocked quite generously with dish towels.

He smiled as he stuck one in the bottle’s neck and lit another Molotov cocktail. The first one had surprised him by not shattering when it had hit Niels in the head, so this time he held it against his bare chest, ignoring the smell of his own burning flesh as he walked out to the balcony.

The group was still there, though a little further away. He’d need to leap out this time.

He climbed up onto the rail, pushed off, and bellyflopped silently and without warning down onto a very surprised Daan.