~Back inside the royal palace~
Neo was walking fast through the corridors of the royal palace. However, for him, walking fast is around 20 mph, so the guards that were meant to escort him were unable to even touch the hems of his clothes. Neo did not bother to wait for them, and instead rushed towards where central chambers, where Levain was. As this was something he hadn’t heard about, he was rather worried about something that had been swept under the rug that had now come back to bite the royal family in the ass. Such a thing would be easy for Levain to handle, but he had called in Neo to help him out. This was an obvious sign of trouble.
After speeding through the halls, Neo reached the meeting point. Levain was there waiting for him, a grim expression on his face. Neo was instantly struck with a feeling of danger. A vision flashed in his mind. It depicted a fire reaching the heavens, and The Worlds Gate crumbling to bits. Next to the Gate, stood corpses with multiple wounds. Some even had missing limbs. At the same time, they all turned and looked towards where Neo’s vision was. Creepy smiles appeared on their faces, and the vision ended. Neo snapped back to reality and immediately felt something wet and coppery in his mouth. He was forced to cough it up. He felt weak and fell to the floor, the blood in his mouth coming out as well.
Levain rushed over, obviously worried about his friend who had suddenly coughed up blood and fell to the floor. Neo stretched out a hand to stop him. Neo got on his knees and finished coughing up the rest of the blood in his throat. By the time he was done, his whole body was trembling and a trace of fear was in his eyes. Levain instantly felt unsettled by that. In all the time he knew Neo, he had never once seen the man in fright. This was a terrifying first.
“What happened?” Levain demanded.
Neo looked at him and said, “I had a Vision.”
When The Worlds Gate opened and trapped the players of LOWG inside, the players gained a special skill unique to them. It was called [Oracle]. As it sounds, it was a skill for the future. The activation of the [Oracle] would be triggered by the player’s introduction to the future event foretold by [Oracle]. In other words, the upon reaching the starting point of a future event, [Oracle] would activate and show the future. This gave birth to the two things players were most commonly called. Oracles and Enigmas. Because the players possessed the [Oracle] skill, one of their official names became Oracles. The [Oracle] skill was impossible to replicate by the Ionisians, thus giving them the name Enigmas as unofficial designations. The effects of [Oracle] was simply called Visions, as it was the most fitting word for [Oracle]’s effect.
“A Vision,” Levain repeated. “A Vision shouldn’t be able to make an Oracle cough up blood, certainly not you.”
“I know,” Neo said hoarsely. “But that was no ordinary Vision.”
“Well, obviously.”
“Levain, you just ruined it. That was number 16 on my list of things to say. ‘No ordinary something’, number 16! The highest I have so far is 31, why did you ruin my new high?”
“There’s a list…?”
“Whatever, just tell me what’s going on. Visions won’t come true until much later, so we have time. I’ll tell you all about it later.”
Levain nodded and motioned for Neo to follow him. They moved to the chamber where Harold, the second prince, was resting. Levain gave Neo the rundown of the situation and asked him for help. Neo was surprised that the Philter of the Goddess didn’t work, but was even more surprised that a simple assassin could get their hands on such poison.
“Please Neo,” Levain begged. “Please help us out.”
“No.” Neo said simply, which caused Levain to look up in shock. However, Neo wasn’t done yet, “Not unless you can provide me with appropriate compensation. If you can, then I’ll be happy to.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“O-of course, we would obviously not expect you to work for free. As long as it is within our power, we will provide whatever you ask for.”
“Success! Number 13 on my things to say list, completed!”
“Huh?” Levain was confused.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get right on it. He’ll be back to full health in just a few minutes.”
Neo walked to the side of Harold and brought around a chair. He sat down and pulled out various organic items, ranging from plants to organs and all the way to the horn of a rare being that even Levain could not identify. Neo then took an alchemy station from god knows where and preceded to mix all the ingredients he took out together. The combining process took little time, and soon, a medical liquid was being poured into a clear vial. A small amount of medical liquid was left out and force-fed to Harold. After being forced to swallow the liquid, Harold’s body started to violently jerk around. Levain rushed to help, but Neo held up a hand to stop him.
“That’s normal, after he’s done with that, he should be fine.” Neo reassured.
True to Neo’s word, Harold’s body stopped jerking and once again calmed down. The sound of steady breathing came from Harold, showing that he was indeed back to full health. Neo nodded in satisfaction and stood up. He put his alchemy station away and began talking.
“He should be back to full health, but whatever that poison was did some serious damage on his body. I’m honestly surprised he’s still alive. Good on him for training his body once in a while. He’ll wake up in- Argh!!” Neo screamed.
Harold, or what was left of him, had jumped up and attacked him. Because of Neo’s superb instincts and reflexes, he was able to lift his arm up to defend himself. However, Harold just bit his arm instead. Neo, enraged at the attack, charged his fist with mana and gave a solid blow in the stomach to Harold, who was sent flying through the wall.
“WHAT THE FUCK?!” Neo demanded.
“What happened?!” Both Levain and the newly arrived king shouted at the same time.
Neo spared a glance at his arm. Grey lines followed the veins in his arm, spreading out from the bite. Suddenly, Neo was given a Vision once more. It showed a person with undistinguished features crumbling into ash, a bite mark on his arm. Neo, understanding what the Vision was trying to tell him, pulled out his sword and… cut off his own arm!
“FUCK!” Neo shouted in pain.
“What did you do?!” Levain frantically asked.
“The fuck is happening?!” A random servant who happened to walk in on this situation questioned.
Neo plunged his sword into the ground and pulled a vial with a mysterious red liquid out of his inventory. He used his thumb to take the lid off and chugged the whole thing. His missing arm grew back in a flash, accompanied by a discharge of mana. Neo exhaled and moved around his arm, his free one picking up his sword. Without saying a word, he jumped through the hole in the wall and followed to Harold. He landed in an open courtyard, which was filled with holes and traces of burns.
Harold, who was in a corner of the courtyard, jumped at Neo, crossing the entire courtyard. Neo swung his sword on Harold, who crashed into the ground. Neo twisted mid air and thrust out his palm and shouted a spell, “Spear of Fire!”
A Spear of Fire rocketed towards Harold, who was promptly pierced through by the spell. He screamed in pain, but charged at the wall in front of him. Neo landed on the ground the same time Harold reached the wall. Harold leaped at the wall, turned around and used the wall as a spring and jumped at Neo. Neo’s pace paled as he saw how fast Harold was. Neo took a defensive stance and shouted a word, “[Sins]!”
Immediately, blue flames burned in his eyes, on his feet and on his hands. The flames on his hand spread to his sword and turned white. Harold stretched out his hand to grab Neo, but Neo’s speed had increased many fold, allowing him to move his sword to block in time. From that collision, an invisible shockwave spread out, cracking the ground below them. Neo reacted quickly, pulling back his sword, twisting to the right and, facing Harold’s side, brought his sword down on him, cutting deep into his body.
Harold was struck into the ground, creating a human-shaped impact on the ground. A scream of pain came from the mangled body of Harold, gravely and broken. Neo removed his sword and flipped it around so it’s tip pointed down. He rose his sword up high and the flames on it turned violent. He roared and stabbed his sword into Harold’s head, white flame exploding everywhere. A gargling scream of pain came from Harold, but was quickly silenced.
Soon, the storm of white flame ended and the fire on Neo’s body was extinguished. He pulled his sword out of Harold’s head and sheathed it. He fell backwards, out of breath, sitting down with his hands keeping him up. A bitter smile surfaced on his face.
“Damn,” Neo said to himself. “What the hell is this? Why is this fool trying to kill me? And why was he so hard to kill? And...” Neo’s voice turned serious. “What does this have to do with the fall of the Gate? And who started it?”
Neo mumbled to himself, asking questions that no one would answer. A commotion was sweeping the royal palace, guards rushing around and the king trying to calm himself down. That was when Neo realized something, his face getting serious. His pupils shrunk and his eyes widened. He shot to his feet and reached for his sword, only to interrupted by Harold, who was not dead! An arm went flying into the air, landing behind it’s owner, who could no longer use his sword with his dominant hand.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!” Neo screamed in pain.
Reacting quickly, he used his only remaining hand to grab another potion from his belt. Harold once again lunged at Neo, but Neo jumped out of the way just in time. Neo downed the potion in one go, his arm coming back as well. Unsheathing his sword, Neo jumped back to get a reasonable distance away from Harold. Another bitter smile appeared on his face. A painful laughter escaped his mouth, “I thought something was wrong when I didn’t get any experience. Seems I was unable to kill you, but don’t you think I’ll be so lenient this time.”
For the first time, Neo appraised him:
Harold the Gate Destroyer Lvl. 300 Divine Devil Being (Gate Destroyer; Boss; Immortal) 173,927 281,937
“This is fucking bullshit. Nadisign, please nerf this guy.”