Wars.

They called them, Esports tournaments that had recorded no human casualty, wars. A Chinese team fighting against an American team. A European giant meets a Korean titan in a mano-a-mano. The pride of the East clashes against the power of the West. A clean-cut powerhouse against an underdog. An unstoppable force meets an unmovable object. An ancient power facing an up and rising star. These divisive and partisan narratives became the blueprint for the media to plant and harvest their money-grabbing trees.

Wars, they called them, a word that caught the imagination of hundreds of millions of people who know nothing about war. Millions NPCs died to our conflicts to be reborn and died again, reborn and died again, and the cycle repeated itself with every new game. Every year, dozens of organizations declared bankruptcy due failure and mismanagement, and sometimes series of bad lucks. Every month, dozens of new organizations formed, hungry for success and richness. Every year, hundreds of pro-gaming and semi-pro teams disbanded in heartbreaks due to the lack of strength and successes, whereas another hundred new teams made a name for themselves, stirring the landscape of the pro-league. Every year, thousands of gamers climbed the invisible ladders to fame and glory or completely fell to obscurity. It was a competitive world made for competitive minded people. You either win or lose. You either succeed or fail. You are either a hero or a villain. There was little room for the middle ground. The abruptly rise and fall, the unpredictability, the chaotic landscape of the ROC Esports, they called them wars. But as a person who lived in the middle of all of that chaos, I knew them the best. No pro-gamer had ever died playing on the stage. Games. I knew them the best. Games. And I am a pro-gamer.

War.

They called that, a conflict recorded only one casualty, a war. Billions of mortals died. An entire intelligent race met extinction. But only one Immortal faced destruction in that event. The First Divine War, a thunderous sounding name to describe that event, but, as best, it was just a family feud, a squabble between Gods and Demon Lords over their major inheritance, a throne. The event followed after that event, games.

As a wise man living on Escana had once said, “Gods make games, man makes a plan.” His words could be understood literally or figuratively.

These Gods, Goddesses and Demon Lords. They have yet to fight a real war. They did not know war. What they called “wars”, I called “Games”.

I have yet to fight a real war in my entire life. Neither these Immortals. In this regard, this makes a fair match since neither side had the experience of fighting a real war.

Maybe, for this same reason URLOX believed that it was “Fair” to pit these Immortals against me, I often thought, from time to time, and subsequently, I had to curse them for fixing this kind of stupid match, FUCK YOU URLOX. ARE YOU PEOPLE SERIOUS? I had no intention of living my life constantly spewing curses at people. After all, there are many things to enjoy about life, why live cursing?

But I kept on cursing URLOX. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING?

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I started to get bore of Niwdar’s rants. I came to meet her over unfinished business. But the Goddess of Nature kept spewing out her anger and curses, on and on, and on.

Locking in an hours-long staring contest with Niwdar, I suddenly remembered him, a late friend of mine. He was an employee and a professional gigolo working at a local night club that I opened. He was tall and handsome, just being a little too much of an asshole every now and then. I had a habit of divide my friends and acquaintances into groups, and this guy certainly belonged to the ‘asshole group.’ He had once told me that the eyes of a woman are the windows to her soul, “Gaze into her eyes, you see her world. You see her thought. You see her soul laid bare,” said he, confidently, without a hint of doubt in his voice.

Back then, when he said that line, he was at the center of his universe, full of charisma, strong, magnetic and absolutely confident in himself. He fully believed that he could figure out a woman’s thoughts by looking into her eyes.

Yet, when he breathed his last in that white hospital ward, the person who held his hand, shed tears for him was me. The people who saw his departure to the afterlife were me, his cousin, the doctors, and three nurses. I attended his funeral with FY. FY sighed dejectedly and called it a male-only funeral. I jokingly called it “a full sausage fest funeral.” Most of those who attended that funeral and heard that joke were my employees. The straight-laced type twisted their face in a grimace like FY. The asshole type, my kind of asshole, they snickered some and sniffled some, then sobbing for real. It was just a bunch of assholes crying for one of theirs, nothing else to see at that funeral. Back then, when I made that joke, I reminded myself that my own funeral would look exactly like that.

No woman grieved his departure. Not his lover nor his patrons. Not his old flames nor his new flames. Not even his female colleagues. He thought that he understood them. He thought that he was connected to them just as they were connected to him, physically and emotionally. Apparently and evidently, he had been mistaken.

As I gazed into Niwdar’s eyes, I suddenly remembered that person, how he usually lived and how his warmth expired inside my clutching hands.

My mind is as sentimental as ever, I complained internally, trying to refocus on my talk with Niwdar.

Niwdar’s eyes, they were “strange.” Each was engraved with a silver double helix ring surrounding a thin pastel seed on a dark forbidding canvas. The eyes of the Goddess of Nature and patron of the Essence Temple, they were certainly “strange” in a human aesthetic and strangely rejecting. But, gazing into Niwdar’s forbidding eyes, I saw many things at once.

In those cold eyes, I saw rejection, loath and contempt. I saw my hideous projection, a demon.

I don’t belong here. Not in Escana, I thought, reading Niwdar’s thought as an open book.

And I agree, I thought.

Words marred with plain rejection and deep-rooted hatred kept spilling out of Niwdar’s veiled lips like a broken dam in the flood season. It went on and on for the last few hours, and still going strong. It felt like if Niwdar could flood my world with curses, she would. I had to internally salute her for that. The last time I was here with Wonten, she was a lot less wordy.

“Accepting your sickening existence means that everything that I have gone through, my sufferings, my nightmare, my curses, my woe, my misery, they exist solely for the sake of your measly entertainment,” spoke Niwdar. Niwdar spoke with the dignity of a Goddess. She did not hiss or snarl. Her voice was soft and elegant like the sound of an autumn raindrop landing on a young lotus leaf, a hidden treasure of nature, the kind of music that most people weren’t blessed to understand. But Niwdar spoke in a deliberate, cold and quiet voice. Her barbed tone was cold enough that I could feel my breath whitened. Hers was quiet and still enough that it felt like the death spell of all things.

Cladded in her usual gaudy scale laminated armor that removed all trace of feminity from her figure, Niwdar daggered her repelling glare at me as if she saw a mortal enemy.

“You dictate and twist our fate for your entertainment. You thought my life is just a game? You thought our life are games?” Asked Niwdar. Those double helix rings shone bright and cold, telling me that if it wasn’t for her promise to Wonten, Niwdar would have stopped at nothing to destroy my life. And that was something I could not afford. This was the second time I spoke with Niwdar, face to face. However, this time, I met Niwdar without Wonten standing at my side, trying to offer postwar peace terms to her. To Niwdar’s understanding, the war has not even started, and here I was already talking about the peace term as if I have already won. To her understanding, I made a better clown than Flokí.

The battle had not even started and here I am, talking about peace term. I inwardly lamented at how stupid I could possibly be in Niwdar’s eyes.

“You thought everything is just game? Do you think you can come to our world and treat everything as yours? This is not your world. We are not just your game characters to you and URLOX.” The Goddess of Nature made her will and intention understood. “I resent you, your kind, and everything you represent and stood for.”

Yeah, you don’t have to say that. I could clearly see, I thought.

I felt no fear or remorse when I dunked Sinintee, the God of Destruction and Civilization into a smelly and dirty cesspool. I showed him exactly how I had understood and adopted his “Might make right” doctrine. The weak got pushed around and the strong dictated the world. Inside this dream, Sinintee was weaker than me. So I got to kick his assess just as much I liked.

I felt next to nothing when I turned Wrath, the Thousand Claws Demon Lord into a musical instrument as I tried to find a way to converse with him. I felt empty when I bashed logic into Wonten, the very God of Justice himself, asking him what justice and whose justice he represented. When I beat Munezee’s dog in front of his face, I felt nothing. I knew I had won the most meaningless battle.

But facing Niwdar and her ire made my stomach cold with caution.

I knew what true madness looked like and sounded like when I stood in its presence. My kind, I knew them the best. They smelled like me. They looked like me and they sounded like me. Talking to her twice, Niwdar was definitely my kind. I would not have been so wary of Niwdar if she was just simply “batshit insane.” Even back on Earth, I had always suspected that Niwdar had the ability to make that insanity felt across the realms.

In that one-shot episode on Misery’s channel where Misery devoted his effort to shine the light on Niwdar and her history, I did not appear in my usual role as Dr. Reality nor did I participate in writing the script. But I had watched that episode.

Niwdar, the Patron Goddess of the Essence Temple, was known for holding and exacting grudges in the ugliest and most gruesome fashions despite being commonly revered as the merciful Goddess of Beauty and Nature. Most mortals living on Escana were told about Niwdar’s sob-story, the tragedy where she was defiled by her father, and they were taught to stay on Niwdar’s good side since their adolescence days. And most mortals living on Escana had never heard the story where Niwdar traded her appearance with Death’s.

In the lore, around the end of the first Divine War, Niwdar made a deal with Death to save the 11th Valkyria from Managan’s soul corrupting maledictions. Her restoring and regenerating miracles could not undo the work of Managan’s corruptions on her daughter, only hastened the process. From that deal, Death killed the spreading blight in the 11th Valkyria and claimed her prize, a part of Niwdar’s soul, the appearance of her astral body.

We, gamers and consumers knew that story from reading the lore. The people of Escana weren’t told of it. It’s almost bizarre how such stories, the kind of stories that should be told, weren’t, and the kind that wasn’t meant to be told was.

Who is the stupid motherfucker spreading these stories?

The media, on Earth or on Escana, is always full of shit, fake news and click baits. It often tells people what they want to listen to but not what they should have listened.

To a smart-and-totally-not-insane people like Misery, the story where Niwdar readily traded parts of her soul to save her daughter was a heartwarming story about a mother’s love, a mother’s self-sacrifice and the length she would go in the name of love.

To a stupid and totally insane asshole like me, I saw love, calculation, and insanity masterfully woven into a story of self-sacrifice and altruism. But I was not so sure.

The first time I was able to confirm one of my biggest suspicions surrounding Niwdar’s true power was around the time I met Death.

Before I touched Death with my own fingers, I had touched her miracle-scattering moths and Authority-ending flowers. I took the opportunity to reexamine my own knowledge and felt them, the white flowers and the black moths. They were parts of Death, born from Death and her miracles, but they also possess their own life and will, even when they were bounded to the scope of a Divine Dream. Both of them, the flower and the moth, were unmistakably alive, a notable characteristic of the Authority that Niwdar possessed. When I touched Death, tasted her lips and turned her body pink with a flame of ardor, I knew my suspicion was real. Death’s appearance, her current character skin, Niwdar’s original figure was the work of the Authority.

I was a calculative person by nature. My mind was that of a demon, dark and full of twists and full of unnecessary things. When my mind started racing, it was a one-way ticket straight to the abyss. The only time in my life that I was not being calculative and devious was when I chose to be stupid or when I became dead drunk. Or when I was at home. No exception.

If only Death could fathom just how much vital information that she has already accidentally leaked to me through our short exchange, she would be absolutely flabbergasted.

If Death had gained some of Niwdar’s miracles from that trade, theoretically, the reverse could also be true. Niwdar could gain some of Death’s unique miracles in the same manner Wrath and I had made our trade. From that trade, these two women gained the duality of being the bringer of destruction as well as being the giver of life.

Life. Death. Birth. Destruction. Rebirth. Technically, Niwdar and Death, these two women carried the entire weight of Nirvana with them. Each of them was a cycle of birth, destruction, and rebirth. The slight differences between the two women hidden in their original alignment toward life and death. One leaned toward life. The other leaned toward death. Since the moment I had made that discovery, I kept silence, conducting various investigations in secret.

Lynx and his alchemy club had confirmed with me that the secret crafting ritual to create Dragon Bane required the invocation of three Divine insignia, Naharis’ a thousand demon and a thousand angel symbol, Niwdar’s double helix ring over the seed of life and the hugging skull of Death.

My little trade with Wrath confirmed the duality of destruction and rebirth in Niwdar. Wrath gained an important part of my soul while I received Ira.

I have not seen Niwdar using her miracles or authorities gained from the trade. Not once that the lore had mentioned that Niwdar could use Death’s authority. I knew the golden dream, a dream that turned a man into hideous monster, making them rather committing suicide than stay alive. It did not sound like an ability gained from Death’s authority. But it was probably related. My understanding of the golden dream was poor. Thus, I could not afford to fight Niwdar when I have not understood her power.

Niwdar kept pouring her unending hatred for URLOX over my head.

Did I enjoy reading the part of the lore where Niwdar was raped by her own father? No, I did not. Did I engineer such a scenario? No, I certainly did not.

But URLOX did.

So is it unjust for Niwdar to blame me for URLOX’s shit? Yes, it is.

Regardless of my inner thought and conflicts, I matched my eye level with Niwdar, unflinching, unapologetic and unashamed.

To every party involved with the Reign of Chaos, I am URLOX’s chosen. I am URLOX’s Champion even though I kept repeating myself, “I am Fearless, the Prince of The Alliance.” Why else I kept repeating myself? It’s because these brain-dead morons could not get it and insane people like Niwdar refused to get it.

If you are going to blame someone, blame URLOX, yourself, your family and especially your fucking sister, I cursed inwardly.

I could refute Niwdar that it was wrong and unjust of her to direct her wrath and hatred for URLOX toward me. I could use logic to win the battle of words against Niwdar. But if rage and fury could be resolved through logic, mankind’s history would have less war, and I would have never been Fearless, the Prince of The Alliance.

I could mock Niwdar about being a hypocrite herself, treating mortal’s lives as sacrificial pieces to further a game of chaos. I could mock Niwdar about the double standard of treating me as if I was just a part of the Game. I could even twist the nature of truth with my silver tongue and mocked Niwdar for everything that she wasn’t.

I did not even want to be here. I did not even want to get involved in the conflict. I could tell Niwdar that I was just another victim of URLOX. But complaining to Niwdar was the wrong way to conduct a peace talk.

If Niwdar is on my side, I win, but Escana is doomed. If Niwdar is my enemy, at the end of the day, only the two of us would live, refusing to kill each other and grieving over our mistakes.

Foreseeing such result, I needed to establish a neither-enemy-nor-ally with Niwdar to manipulate the flow and the result of this war.

So I revealed a nonchalant smirk. Niwdar was not the only batshit insane person inside this dreamland. She was calculative, but so was I. I made an internal sigh.

I hated how my worst predictions often came as true as I have imagined.

The survival of Escana, its fate and future rested in the hands of the least qualified people. Insane. Stupid. Broken. My kind of people. I resigned the situation and the fate of the world to my god given talent, making a woman angry.

“Then kill me. Make me want to kill myself,” I cut in, stopping Niwdar’s unending flood of curses. I offered Niwdar my solution, returning her authorities and power to her in a snap of fingers, “If I die, Escana would stop being defiled by my presence. You don’t have to see a total war. Or a world of total chaos. If I die, it’s the end of your captivity. If I die, you don’t have to face with the nightmare and mockery. So do it. Just do it. Why let a single promise stopping you?” I goaded Niwdar in a most nonchalant voice.

“Do you think I would not dare?” She asked.

Are you serious asking me this question, I nearly vocalized my thought aloud due to the sheer ridiculousness of the question.

Yes, she certainly did, Dion replied. I nearly laughed out loud, never have expected that a Goddess would make that kind of weak threat. Goddess only lives to command. Goddess doesn’t make threat, let alone weak threat. It was funny that a Goddess like Niwdar would hesitate killing me over to a verbal promise with Wonten. For someone who was so consumed by and madness and hatred, her threat sounded weak, her words lacked resolution. I have seen a Goddess. I have grown up with a Goddess. A Goddess’ words had never sounded so uncertain.

“No, that’s the wrong question for you to ask. The correct question is, CAN YOU?” I spoke in a provoking tone. I kept goading Niwdar toward that choice, slowly poking my stick at the sleeping monster. I observed and listened to her body language and commended my attacks accordingly.

“What make you think I have not had everything planned? Just because I am drunk and acting foolish all the time, it did not mean I was not thinking. I got drunk because I don’t want to think. I tossed away my sanity and lucidity because things suck and I am always correct. That is the biggest weakness of this Divine Dream. You people can read my dream, my memories, my past but not my thought, my actual thought. Are you doubting my words? See what happened to Bloodbeard? See what happened to his worms?” I sowed the seeds of doubt into Niwdar’s mind. “Death made the same mistake of underestimating me. So here I am, the master of the black dream. Here I am, your jailor and all of you are my captives.”

If Lucifer was the devil that the Old Testament had described him, he was my lesser in the art of devilry.

“Had you even observed carefully how I act around that foolish spider girl? I meant to walk away with her orb from the beginning. No string attach. My weaknesses, my foolishness, my playfulness were a façade. See the result?” For every seed of doubt that I had planted into Niwdar’s mind, I showed her the pieces of evidence supporting my words to nourish the seeds. Regardless of the nature of pieces of evidence I presented to Niwdar, twisting my words a little, and they would support my claim.

Hideously, I laughed, telling Niwdar that I have planned the flow of events so that Clariciel would lost her voice to Death among many wretched and awful things that I have intended to do to her in the future. Clariciel was first on the list. Hilda would come next. I told Niwdar how I have planned to make Hilda suffered. Why would I do that? Entertainment. Then one by one, the rest of Niwdar’s daughter would fall through blackmail and extortion.

As I was talking, the twin helix rings stared spinning. The pastel seeds radiated as I saw my wretched reflection slowly distorted.

My vision was soon enraptured, entrapped and restrained inside a golden casket. I saw the golden dream for what it was. The wretchedness of my own life and being, I was made to feel it, see it, and experience it vividly. When I broke a demon, I saw me breaking something entirely different. When I squashed a worm, I squashed something else. That demon was a son of a grieving father and a sorrowful mother. The next demon was a wife of a good husband. That worm was a husband of a wife, a father of a daughter. Those worms, they made mistakes. Those worms, they were misguided. Everyone made mistakes. Everyone were misguided. When I destroyed one’s life, that of a worm or a demon, I deprived the happiness of a hundred people. And the golden casket showed I was a monster for squashing them.

But guilt-tripping had never worked against me once. Not me. Never me. If guilt-tripping had an effect on me, I would have never hunted demon in the name of injustice.

As if it could sense that ineffectuality, the golden casket quietly changed its approach.

When I penetrated a woman, I tore her life apart with my filthy dick. “Manwhore”, they called me, “Manslut”. I smiled, did not disagree with their cursing. I was selfish, trying to feel alive, addicted to risk and mishaps. Trying to make Phúc wake the fuck up because everything I did was extremely repulsive to him. Why I did that? Because I could not care less if the world burn itself to the ground. Not my problem. Never my problem if the world burn itself to the ground.

I was made to see it over and over again. How I had hurt them. How I had hurt Alice. How I had failed FY and my brothers. Repeatedly, I saw how I can only live by hurting others. I was uncompromising.

The golden casket turned back the clock again and again, giving me chances to redeem myself. But even with another chance or many another chances, I made the same choice, much to the casket’s pulsating frustration. If you had no intention of hurting them, change yourself, make another choice, I could feel the imperceptible will and the frustration of the casket.

I did not want to live and act like an edge lord. But shit remained shit. Someone had to clean the shit. I saw a demon needed to be hunt down. I hunted. I saw a bunch of worms squirming in the slothfulness of justice. I squashed.

Unyielding. Unchanged. Uncompromised. How I had failed, I lamented. Sorry. Don’t weep for me. Don’t cry for me. Find another man. Find another purpose. Move on.

My family, I hurt them again and again. Over and over and over again. My tears tasted like hypocrisy and lies. I wept for their pain and suffering but in fact I was crying for myself. Tears are designed to relieve pain and suffering. Thus, when I cried, I was actively relieving my own pain.

Funny how I hated myself, my own weakness for wishing to use Dion to smash this casket as quickly as possible.

Stop, just stop doing those kind of shits and take a good care of yourself, FY said, repeatedly, almost as if he was pleading me.

Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.

Stop fooling around. You are going to get stabbed one day, Alice said, slapping me, making me understood her words by force as she cried.

I know. I’m sorry.

Quit drinking like that, you are going to kill yourself, advised Merleon, bailing me out after I was being locked up for floating on the Yarra river, clinging to a boat made of empty wine bottles while being absolutely wasted.

I know.

Just put them behind you and try to move on. There are more in life than just pain, admonished Fantasy as he brought me to those comedy shows.

I know. Am trying.

Why would you do that? This is not you, screamed Misery with tears in his eyes.

This is me.

It’s hurt but life goes on, son. Life goes on, said my dad. Life goes on, said him in a forlorn voice weighted down by the sorrow of life.

I know, dad. I know.

My fingers, they existed to poke my eyes and eardrums out of their holes. My teeth, they existed to tear my fingers out of my hands. I wanted to destroy the world but I wanted to destroy myself first and foremost. My dick, I wondered why I even reconnected it. I loathed myself. Pain was strangely bearable and slowly disappeared. I saw myself a demon in that golden reflection. A world-defiling demon, in form and in thought.

Inside that ring woven coffin, I lamented and cursed. How I had made a mess of everything. How I could only live by doing everything incorrectly and stupidly. How I wish that I was something else, something or someone that was not Fearless, the Prince of The Alliance. Inside that tight space, I saw myself a demonic carrion of rotting fleshes and pulsating boils, an amalgam of mutilation, and decaying foulness and wretchedness. My punishment and atonement.

Hilarious, I laughed, staring at my hideous reflection, that grotesque carrion of decaying flesh. I realized how urgently Niwdar wanted me dead. At least, she could have combined me with various animal body parts, adding slimy tentacles and crazier shits. A carrion she turned me into. Regarding whether I had the intent to save myself or not, I would be dead in this golden casket.

Hilarious.

It was an unfair matchup for Niwdar. It was unfair for Niwdar because I was fully prepared and fully armed for this test. My mind was ready. My weapons loaded. Unlike that time when I took on the black dream with nothing but my conviction over my own stupidity, unlike that time I saw through the red dream, this time I had Dion and Ira to smash apart this nightmare in the case I failed.

But it seemed that I had no need for them.

No matter how much I hated myself or how much I had tried to twist the words, I am still Fearless, the Prince of The Alliance. That remained unchanged and uncorrupted on Earth, now, on Escana, it remained unchanged.

My past. My dreams. My thought. My soul. My illusion and reality. My memories. My self-hatred. My regret. My fury. My sins. They are all mine. My family, they are mine. They are not yours to view, touch, alter and then make comments about. They are not empty boxes for you to fill in your idea and opinions. BITCH.

Niwdar had just picked the wrong fight. Niwdar tried to project and impose her personal reality on top of mine. She tried to turn me into a creature she believed that I was. She wanted me dead as fast as possible.

I could distinguish illusion from reality. I could distinguish my reality from other’s reality.

“I am Fearless, the Prince of The Alliance,” muttered I, my own truth and illusion, putting the end to that self-tormented dream without having to call either Ira or Dion for help.

The perfectly knitted golden casket vaporized before my eyes, revealing a surprised looking Niwdar. “You…” muttered Niwdar. Her double helix ringed eyes knitted tight, clouded and unreadable.

What are you? I could almost hear her thought. I had just smashed a miracle apart without using a miracle.

“That’s it?” I challenged, feigning surprise and nonchalance as if I have not seen anything noteworthy. “I have seen worse. I have been through worse. You know, you can be much crueler,” I smiled, growing ever bolder after passing the first test. Miracles shaped after its user’s personality. I have seen enough of the golden dream to understand Niwdar’s nature. I understood why I saw my own hideous reflection when I gazed into her eyes. I understood why I have been so wary about her before. But now, that wariness has lessened and I felt only pity for Niwdar.

I started to remember a minute, trivial detail in the lore regarding how Niwdar’s priestesses would refuse to grant miracles on women who were known to participate in harlotry. I had never thought much about that rule or the reason behind it.

This woman was so disgusted with herself that she allowed Death to strip away a part of her soul and appearance.

“Try it again. This is your final chance. If you want to kill me, make it count, woman,” offered I, speaking in a most nonchalant voice. A smile full of arrogance blossomed on my lips.

Niwdar’s face was mostly hidden beneath her veil. And yet, I could read the surging anger beneath the veil.

The silver helix strands started spinning again, unraveled themselves into threads as they changed colors, coming into contact with pastel seeds. Miracles spew forth from Niwdar’s hand, layers upon layers of golden threads. She weaved them into another golden casket, my golden casket.

CLACK. The mallet of justice fell hoarsely, once and for all.

“Finally,” some random court attendee, whose face I could remember, whispered softly. Next to him, a woman, whose face I could not bother to learn, sniffed in her tears, the tears of exalt and relief.

The prolonged and deliberating months and months of empty meaning trial and retrials, and more retrials, and even more retrials had finally come to an end. Justice has finally been delivered. They cheered. Of course, they would. After all, the pursuit of justice was very costly and depleting, like war. Costly and depleting in time, physical strength, mentally strength, personal fortitude, creative thinking and above all and most importantly, wealth and human connections.

But justice had been served, finally, after the draining months.

Other chattered and complained. Many smiled, quietly congratulated and briefly sighed a sigh of relief for those brainless worms got the life sentence but not without parole and the little demon was sent to an obscure asylum.

They smiled. They exhaled a sigh of relief.

We didn’t. We did not even have to look at each other’s face to know the expression we wore. On that day, the three of us wore masks on our face, the kind of masks that we had created, honed, and crafted. Hopelessness that did not scream hopelessness. Pain that did not howl pain. And fury that did not spell fury. Our mask was perfectly crafted and perfectly honed, unreadable.

Reliving that day yet again, I could not cry. So, I laughed a noiseless laugh at the irony and apathy. It was not Justice’s parents who was killed. Our parents were butchered. Had the demon and the worms killed Justice’s parent, I wondered if things would be different. My thought darkened. I thought about butchering the love ones and family members of those defenders of justice and those chiefs of justice, then observed how justice would react. Back then, I loathed and was disgusted at how dark and vindictive my mind was.

The three of us stood, staring at the whole scene as if we had an out of body experience. It was like a self-manufactured déjà vu, a self-fulfilling prophecy. We had predicted how and in what manner that mallet of justice would fall from the first retrial. We had predicted the failure of justice before final trial ended. Neither of us was a prophet but our predictions were eerily correct. And we loathed just how hopelessly correct our predictions were.

Our hands held tightly, from the beginning and even now. But her once tyrannical, strong, and ardent hands, now felt hopelessly cold, soft and without power, completely exhausted of human warmth.

His uncalloused palms, once soft and accommodating, now felt feverish, searing, scorching as if he had become a sun. His warmth, his radiating heat, his seething fever, he devoted them entirely to her or her lack thereof.

Mine were controlled but inanimate, astral, neither cold nor hot, neither strong nor weak, perfectly in controlled.

We were quiet, dead quiet, eerily and uncharacteristically quiet as all sounds and noises existed inside the courtroom turned into white noises. Inside that eerie cocoon of quietness, we could feel the thought and turmoil inside each other’s heart.

“See you again. Soon,” the demon whispered very quietly while being escorted out of the courtroom. His defiling breath was almost inaudible among the harsh snapping sounds of camera’s shutters and the meaningless chattering of the people who attended the court.

Justice, I laughed. I had never understood this word, Justice, not once. Back then when Wonten was still inside my head, I asked him, the mighty Protector of Justice himself, What is Justice, tell me, please. I need to know. If there is someone who know what justice is, the shape of Justice, the smell of Justice, the sound of Justice, it would be Wonten. But Wonten could not answer. So, I beat him up, using his own hammer.

Justice, I heard my dry laughter, full of irony and sarcasm, from back then and now, overlapped and echoed in a symphony of chaos.

The three of us could care less about the consoling money, the stash of bank notes we received.

Their attorneys kept knocking our door, pestering, again and again, wishing to strike a deal. It came to the point that Thùy Dương would open the door to meet them with a meat cleaver in her hand. I stood next to her, a fruit knife in my left hand, a butcher knife in my right hand. The stopped knocking the door.

What else do you want? They looked at us, the forebear of that demon, they looked at us, asking. The dead are already dead, please let the living be at peace, the woman inputted her thought into her swollen red eyes, begging for forgiveness and sympathy. But we were the victims. Our parents were the victims. The man stared at us in indignant as if asking, Is that not enough? You want more money? HOW MUCH? NAME YOUR PRICE. His body language always appeared as if he was ready to take out his pen and his checkbook to protect his family image and his business. His body language screamed rage and annoyance as though he had no idea why we were wearing our emotionless mask staring right at him in silence.

I had never forgotten that look on their face. That demon, their pampered son killed our parents to see the twist of torment and the anguish on Thùy Dương’s face. And they thought stacks of banknotes or a lifetime of fortune could solve everything. And they thought we should forgive them and their son.

Back then when I stared at them through Phúc’s eyes, I saw only rage and pain. Phúc’s rage. Thùy Dương’s pain. Now, I saw hints. Hints that I should have understood back then. Had I understood those hints, things would have been different.

A fortune could not make up for the loss of our parents. A fortune or two or three or even more we would trade if they could bring our parents back. But humans died. When humans were killed, they died. When they died, they never return. Even a child understood that logic.

Thùy Dương was so enraged that her mask almost fractured into tears. Phúc was so incensed that his hands started to shake. Thusly, I had to make a swap, taking over his spot.

“Let me handle this,” whispered I, telling Phúc and Thùy Dương to delegate the matter to my hands. Their fury was red hot. Mine was cold and white. I was more suitable for the task. So I took over, dealing with the aftermath in the way only I could.

Funny, how justice believed that it was fair that the lives of good people like our parents could be equal to a stack of banknotes. Funny, how justice dictated that our tax money should be distributed to lock up the slayers of our parents, those brainless worms in their prisons, Giving them a chance of redemption.

FUNNY, how our parents had to die, pay the price. FUNNY, how they thought our parents’ lives were worth a stack of banknotes.

Blank-faced and unashamed, I received the checks, asked for more and mechanically did whatever I considered necessary. Selling things. The old house, the one that we had grown up with our parents had to go. Once it was a shelter, a solace, a home. Now, it only brought us pain. The old house had to go. I told Phúc to let me do it, setting up things. Consulting with a private military contractor and making a connection, just in case. Moving out of the country just to be extra safe. Purchasing things. I bought a new apartment in a new land, one that was big enough for the three of us to live inside, and small enough that we would never feel lonely or disconnected. I wished I had said goodbye to Alice back then, face to face, instead of using a phone.

But Thùy Dương’s condition was the top priority.

Only the three of us knew its demonic promise from the final trial. The world, as usual, remains obvious and is fully convinced in its arrogance.

Her dark and distraught but keen eyes staring, she can read the demon’s lips as though reading a book. And our ears were sharp enough to not miss a single sound escaped from his sickening mouth.

“See you again. Soon,” the demon declared.

That sentence haunted my mind the most out of every single malediction that I had heard.

As for Thùy Dương, she was not herself. Weeks and months of screaming and pursuing justice, seeing how justice failed, and then blaming herself for everything that has happened had turned her into but a husk, a sun no more, just a shadow of herself.

“I did that for you. To liberate you.” The demon had repeatedly said such an acrid lie from one trial to the next. That motherfucking psychiatrist used that acrid lie to support the argument on his side, again, again and again. A caricature of insanity at best. Fake insanity. Malevolent curses. Venomous words. A sinister lie that was meant to be repeated and heard over and over until people bought it.

My ears could filter the demonic intention beneath those lies. Thùy Dương, she knew they were lies. Her eyes could reveal the lies. But she chose to blame herself over time.

Had she been herself, she would have never listened to that wicked suggestion. Dad and mom were not being murdered by her hands. An insane, cruel and tyrannical bitch she once was, but never wormlike or a demonic. A bunch of brainless worms did that. A demon engineered that tragedy for its sinister amusement. Even though logically, it was not her fault. She blamed herself. She was always calculative and logical. But people just can never reason with their emotions through logic and reasoning. People cannot do math and number with their emotions. Even a genius programmer cannot debug the glitches and bugs existed inside her heart. Words had power. Words could lift a person up or throw that person down. They could become maledictions or blessing. “I did that for you. To liberate you.” This time, it was malediction. She should have realized it. She was smarter than that. She was stronger than that. She should have the strength to break that malediction apart, unaided.

I watched as Thùy Dương became an empty husk of herself, a vessel of despair and sorrow. Inside my arms, she was like a newborn fawn learning to stand for the first time, crying and quivering helplessly. I squeezed Thùy Dương inside my arms, smothering her, kissing her teary lips, questioning if the person I made love to was an imposter.

Not even in my wildest and craziest imagination that she could look like that. I knew Thùy Dương. She was a tyrannical bitch. She was insane and unreasonable. Thùy Dương was not made of iron and steel. She was soft and delicate when it counted. She was made of spice, sugar, acid and something else that the world would never know. Thùy Dương was far stronger than the combination of the two us, impossibly and unreasonably strong, so strong that Phúc and I could only keel over to show our respect. She was smart. As smart as FY had ever been. She took our joke as a challenge. “I don’t have to play ROC to beat you at ROC.” My pride and arrogance aside, my masochistic nature had always secretly wished that she was there to learn the look on our face when that shitty AI, what was just a bunch of codes that she had written at the beginning, flattened us, one by one on that stage as everyone watching.

Not even in my craziest imagination that Thùy Dương would transform into this kind of creature, a shadow of herself, only live her days in tears and despair. Thùy Dương was crying every day, full of pain, full of despair. Be away from our woven arms for a short few minutes, she would break down in despair. If she woke up without seeing us next to her, haunting cries would escape her.

She was born strong. Strong in the mind, strong in the body, strong in the heart. She had known no weakness until the day our parents were murdered.

Watching her despair and sorrow, there were moments when my heart could take it no longer, Phúc had to come out, taking my spot, be the man of steel that he was. When she was not crying, Thùy Dương would babble something, something that our sharp ears could barely catch. But we knew that Thùy Dương was cursing herself, repeating the demon’s malediction.

I wished I had slapped her. Slapped the curses and maledictions out of her, slapping sense into her head and slapping the nonsense out her mind, the same way I did to Erinys. I wished I had been more forceful, more heartless, more violent and a lot crazier back then.

Back then, I only knew how to watch Phúc smothered Thùy Dương inside his arms, squeezing her quivering body as if he could squeeze out the despair and sorrow inside her. “It hurts,” complained she, but never opposed or pushed him away. She always embraced him right back, burying her teary face inside his chest, sobbing to exhaustion and slumber until the nightmares took her. That’s when I swapped my spot with Phúc without fail. I had to come out. Otherwise, there would be two people sobbing on that bed.

Just one of us being malfunctioned and damaged was already enough. Two, I was not so sure. Back then, either Phúc or I, if either one of us broke, the other would break as well.

It was the time for the two of us to be strong, stronger than we have ever been, together. We knew that, instinctively, with our mind and heart in unison. We had to be strong, for Thùy Dương, for the two of us and for everyone else. We had to be.

Phúc, he only focused on keeping her alive, well and good. A midnight sun or not, strong or weak, miserable or not, he had devoted to living the rest of his life for her. Phúc loved her, longer than I have ever loved her, perhaps, more than I have ever loved her. His thought and his heart, his life, and even his future, they existed solely for her. He could feel the assimilating weakness and fear that seeped right into her heart. The two of us, Phúc and I, were her last remaining family, the only family that still counted. Phúc recognized that invisible fear before I did. Weaknesses of the heart and the mind are the hotbeds of fear and the darkness that comes with fear. It was just one thing after another, complication after complication and then complication. Against that crashing tides of complications, those pills, those therapeutic incense candles, and those therapy sessions solved shits.

The fear of being left behind, the fear of being alone, the fear of abandonment, Phúc recognized the grip of that invisible vice before Thùy Dương displayed the various symptoms and asked us those stupid questions. If we would choose Alice over her at the time. If we got tired of her shit.If we hated her all along. If we detested this current miserable sight of her. How long until we would move out. Stupid question. Phúc would repeatedly reassure her through action and words. He and I, Phúc and me, we lived only to comfort her. Everything else in the world came second to her will and her need. We brought her with us everywhere we went to, even to our games and our matches. Her seat, front row, always in middle of every arena, always at the center of all the seats.

She knew that she was being dependent on us, physically, sexually, and emotionally. We were her morphine and heroin. She knew. But she lacked the strength to break out of it.

It was until Thùy Dương was conceived with our child that she managed to baby-step from that quagmire of fear, pain, and sorrow. The logical part of her mind screamed at Thùy Dương to be strong for our child. And she followed the will of that scream with baby footsteps, tottering out of her sorrow mire. Our girl was the reason behind her newfound courage and her returning strength. Thùy Dương did not do that for herself. She did all of that for our girl.

Our sun would rise again one day, the two of us knew. And we could even feel it.

I was too naïve…

I should have acted. I alone among the three of us who could still maintain a cold and calculated head at the time. My eyes muddied by my own tears and emotional and all. But still, my thought was sickeningly cold. My eyes closed back then, a hundred paths stretched. How to kill that demon without being caught. How to finish the job that justice should have done. Now, a million paths opened when I searched. But it mattered not. Not even God could change history.

You killed them. Your indecisiveness killed them, the casket seemed to whisper when it made me relive that day. When I heard that phantom condemnation, I pictured Niwdar must have blamed herself when Naharis violated her. She must have thought that she should have tended her father and nipped the manifestation of his madness before it budded. I could picture that even now when Niwdar had learned about me and URLOX’s machination, she still believed that it was her fault. She possessed the miracles to heal and restore him, but she did not.

The tighter the constriction of the casket over me, the more I understood Niwdar’s psyche. Miracles like this, Lust’s red dream, Sanguine’s venom, Yasubotay’s projection, Rasahlu’s whisper, they went both ways like sex and honey trapping. Niwdar saw my past and the demon that I was. I understood the incurable and insufferable fool that Niwdar was.

I should have been the one to act. The demon had declared its intention with such confidence. I should have acted. I should have never trusted the iron bars when the iron bars were powered by the weight of the bank notes like the same way that the entire judicial system was powered and kept alive by the weight of the banknotes. I should have orchestrated its ending back then. Sensing an opening, the golden casket tightened, singing the foul cicada’s mating song.

Then came the day my midnight sun sank into the darkness of the afterworld, forever. That morning, she stayed behind. Morning sickness, plus my crowds were always too rowdy, loud and wild. Bad for our girl. She smiled at us with her usual commanding smile, sending us to our battlefield with a blessing of a Goddess.

S0rr0w was strong. But that blessing was stronger.

That was the last time she smiled for us. I no longer had any delusion about justice and hope, only darkness. The day my other half quitted living all together, disconnected himself from me, I no longer had any dream nor delusion about a family of just the three of us, and our child, only a storm of unbridled rage and a fragmented world of repressed fury, only an oath of vengeance.

I should have killed it.

The casket made me relived that day over and over and over again as if it did not know that I had already done that to myself. Reliving that day and hoping for an unlikely miracle, deceiving myself over a lie that I would never buy. Neither Niwdar nor the golden casket understood that an already broken man could not be broken once more. An already insane man could not be made insane once again. The casket probed my heart, wrenched out my tears, pounded me in the guts and tried to do a thorough job, a finer job, a better job, breaking me into finer pieces and making me even more hopeless.

I clearly felt her arrogance, Niwdar’s arrogance, through the golden casket. Miracles and authority reflected a part of the nature of their owners. The black dream was a casket of despair and futility. The red dream was a casket full of sweet nothing. And the golden dream was a casket of self-torment. Niwdar believed that she could break me better than I could break myself.

And I thought that joke is Flokí’s specialty. Hilarious.

The joke was so bad, so cold and dry that I had no idea whether I should give Niwdar a laugh of pity or not, just to encourage her and tell her, “Keep trying. Believe in yourself. You can do it next time.”

The memory of that red summer evening was like a metronome for me, a special metronome among many metronomes. Always present, always ticking alongside the accursed symphony of summer. Even when I was swimming in the sea of despair, I could still hear its ticking.

The casket constricted. I could almost feel Niwdar’s phantom hands patting my head gently as if to say, it’s fine to die. It’s okay to embrace death. Death is not scary. But I also felt her repulsion and nausea when she touched me.

I played along with Niwdar’s joke, allowing her to keep stroking my head.

Death was easy, the easy way out, as easy as pulling the internet cable in a losing game. Closing my eyes, a trillion paths lead me to a painless death. Giving up was plain simple, I just had to close my eyes and surrendered myself to the hands of the Almighty Ones. And they would have sent me straight to hell, the destination where I wanted to be, either that or Gods and Buddha needed to have their eyes checked. But there was a major problem with those choices.

The problem is, they solve nothing. Killing myself I would kill Phúc as well. Giving up and killing myself would resolve none of my problems and I had billions. Neither death nor asking God for salvation took away the guilt and the regret of knowing that I should have listened to my instinct over rationality and mortality and logic.

Back then, on Earth, when I believed that Death was the end, the real end of all things, I had hope. Now that I had discovered that Death was a real disappointment, I no longer had any hope or expectation about letting Death dictated my fate.

Should have never trust the mallet of justice. Should have never trust the entire judicial system when the entire judicial system survives on banknotes. The servants of justice, defender of justice, the enforcer of justice, the agents of justice, the chief of justice, they had mouths to feed and survive on the weight of the banknotes. When banknotes and the highest bidder held the power to command the best agents of justice, the best barrister and law firms in the nation to find holes in the judicial system, when the banknotes could tamper pieces of evidence and forensic reports, when the banknotes could turn a load of bullshit into a psychology test, the mallet of justice was already bought. The scale of justice would tilt over to the side that has more weight. And banknotes have much weight.

The scale of justice and the mallet of justice, in the end, were tools, crafted to serve humans. And humans are fucked up by nature, after the worms and the demons.

I relived those days. Loudly, the cicadas sang their summer song. I laughed a hollow laugh, a dry and tearless laugh.

“We are very sorry,” the enforcers of justice said when they made me watched that sickening clip.

The demon laughed insanely as he filmed the whole things. He celebrated his escape, gun blazing. Four brainless worms laughing, accomplices, drunk on their brainlessness as they cheered for the carnage. Knife carving, the demon’s laughter echoed inside my head alongside the chirping cicadas’ song. A red afternoon. A sanguine summer.

Quietly, I watched without blinking once. How she tried to save our unborn child and how she failed. She begged for our girl. She died begging. I watched as she, my midnight sun sank to the afterworld begging. When the clip ended, only darkness remained. Phúc still disconnected, said nothing, still.

“Find me. You are smart. You know how to find me,” the demon told me at the end of the clip.

The cicadas were singing in the background. My body forced me to laugh since the damn tears could not come out. My carefully honed acting skill failed me in the direst moment. So I forced a burst of lamed laughter to come out of my mouth.

And, “We are very sorry,” they said whereas they should have kept their mouth zipped.

“We are very sorry,” I mimicked their voice and tone with a bright smile, then boomed, be as loud as I could possibly be. “WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?” I interrogated them, being the one-man band of good cop and bad cop. The light flickered and the opaque glass of water on the interrogating table cracked as I shouted. “WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?” Since that glass has already cracked, I allowed the primal fury leaking out of my voice to break it, adding the pitch and vibration on top of that. And it broke, once and for all, completely. The water spilled everywhere.

FUCKING HILARIOUS.

“We are very sorry,” they said, quiet and subdued like a bunch of men with their balls recently chopped.

But what does that even mean? What does, “We are very sorry,” even mean? I could not understand their reply back then. I still could not understand their reply now.

My fists rapped against the table, “I don’t want to hear your sorry. I want justice,” I hissed coldly, “I want to bring that demon to justice. LET JUSTICE BE DONE THROUGH THE HEAVEN FALL.” I lied barefacedly, wearing the red mask of seething anger.

There is no pointing blaming the incompetence of the mallet, or its laziness, or its uglier and hidden nature. There was no point blaming the hand of fate. Shit happens every day, one way or another. Blaming luck and the hands of fate are pointless.

It’s stupid for FY to blame himself. It’s not his fault. I would play that Final series again if I must, one way or another. If God gave me another chance, I would play that final and set a trap to kill that worm at the same time. But if God could watch his only Son died for the greater cause, he could watch other people suffered for the cause.

There was no point in blaming myself that I should have acted back then. Blaming myself would not give me an edge in making that demon paid. Blaming myself would not get Phúc to stand up. Blaming myself would not solve my problems and neither vengeance. Killing myself solve nothing.

I am no rose, Phúc is.

Demon? Do you think you are the worst?

I will show you something far worse and far uglier.

If I cannot do that, I am not Fearless, I swore.

I saw my younger self swearing that oath in an endless loop, again and again. The golden casket tightened again, convincing me that I had lost my way. It showed me something strange, a choppy PG version of the event following right after the moment I made that oath. The casket forced me to see that choppy PG version sequences over and over. No longer had it presented me a choice to choose my own path, remaking my past or repeating the wrongs of life. No longer had the casket allowed me to make a choice of my own. Why? I could not understand the intention and design of Niwdar in stripping my freedom so late into the game. Besides, why make it PG? I could not understand the intention, so I obediently watched the altered truth, reliving my life in an altered past. The demon ran into an unforeseen accident while escaping justice. An accident at the sea, on international waters. With the demon, many died. And I failed my quest of vengeance. The PG version that golden casket showed me contained a tiny fragment of hope at the end. Hope depended on how it was used, could be a deadly poison. So I waited in anticipation for Niwdar to spring the devious trap. Eventually, the ringed casket told me I have given in to the demon’s malediction and became a demon myself in Phúc’s voice and Thùy Dương’s voice.

What? I was flabbergasted.

It was a massive failure. All that buildups for a massive disappointing ending? I was baffled for a moment and then choked on my own spit, realizing that I have gotten my guard up over nothing. Enraged, I showed Niwdar and her casket my three middle fingers, the left one, the right one and the original one. One middle finger could express my fury and disappointment, so I had to show her three. I felt the waves of repulse spread. Niwdar nearly threw up when she caught me whipping out my dick.

I did not give in and become a demon. I chose, BITCHASS, I corrected Niwdar.

I lost? I asked, concentrated and focused my imagination on an image. I tried to replicate that miracle Lust had taught me, the conjuration of a dream on top of a dream. Creating a dream within a dream. Using one dream to erase another dream. Layered dreams. I projected the truth upon the golden casket, the unedited and unaltered version that Niwdar should have shown me instead.

Does this look like a winner to you? I challenged the golden casket and its mistress. My finger directed at the broken demon or what became of it. A demon no more. The demon was caught, completely unprepared. This is the reality, bitch.

As I was being moved to a solitary cell, FY, The Alliance, Alice, and my devoted followers stirred up the media, thinking that I was still being wrongfully locked up inside the prison under false charge. It was the third week that I was being kept in the prison over the assault charge.

I refused to meet them, or talk to them out of my character and refused to hire an attorney, knowing what would happen next.

Neither staying silence nor self-isolation was a known virtue of mine or Phúc. The two of us were loud, always. Because I was acting out of character, because of my silence and rejection of meeting them, they believed that I was forced and set up to shoulder the blame. I made them believed that I was being framed by the enforcers of justice. I made them believed that I was being forced to admit a crime that I did not commit.

I knew what they would do. Alice used her mini talk show to the maximum effect. Merleon, Fantasy, and Misery would do whatever they could. FY would be FY. But my prediction had not gone all according to my imagination. I did not know the length they would walk for me. I underestimated the scale of that shitstorm.

FY hated dealing with politics and his own root to the extreme. Hated his roots as much as he might, FY hated turning his back on his brothers more than anything. Ever the loyal friend and brother that he was, FY brought out the big gun. He returned home, using his clan’s connection to whip up a storm. The entire Feng clan was a clan made up of clever, wise, influential and well-spoken scholars and politicians. For something that had once been so trivial and private, my case, they whipped the case into an international problem.

I stayed in that prison to create a smokescreen for my associates to act. I meant to be the misdirection. And they were meant to pull off the magic trick. I was anticipated for an L size smokescreen. FY brought and XXXL size. Too big of a smokescreen that I had to adapt accordingly.

The chief enforcer of justice asked me to receive the phone call, talking to FY, my attorney, and some random TV person. I refused with bright smile, making no sound. He then asked me to walk out of the cell, free of charge. “No, thanks. I started liking this place. The food is good. Nice neighbors. I am feeling perfectly at home,” replied I, smiling. Funny, and I had just burst a man’s balls, his subordinate’s balls, and was rightfully charged and jailed with an assault felony. He tried to have his men dragging me out of my cell by force. I told him to be extra careful of leaving police violent evidence on my body because I would resist with every ounce of strength inside my body. I told him that as soon as I went out to meet that mob I would strip my clothes, showing them the evidence immediately.

The inmates on the neighboring cells cheered and laughed, telling the man that they would testify against him, adding heat to the situation. Of course, they would. That was what bribery and promises were for. I bribed them to act as my coordinators, communicators, earpieces, and mouthpieces. That was what my tongue was for, communication. I rub your back. You rub mine. I help you. You help me. Tell your brother that this how society works, even in prisons. I mocked Niwdar, commenting on the scene.

I was prepared to spend a year sitting in that jail when I burst that man’s nuts. Cheap price to call forth a perfect smokescreen to execute a misdirection.

“What the fuck do you want?” The man screamed at me, banging his rough hand at the bars.

My neighbors laughed themselves to tears, hollering.

It was funny that justice would keel over to the public’s opinion. I popped that man’s balls magnificently as dozens of inmates were cheering and whistling with thunderous applause. And justice was okay with that, me popping the balls of an enforcer of justice. They had the evidence. And I was rightfully convicted with an assault felony. And they would let me go. Life is a dark comedy.

I searched for a smokescreen. I got my smokescreen, bigger and better than what I had anticipated.

The media had their topic. As usual, I was their cash cow, their drama queen, their drama prince. The public was just as dependent to drama as much as my slavery was to alcohol. Drunk on the drama created by the media, the public was furious, acting like packs of hungry sharks and starving hyenas.

“Release Fearless,” they chanted. “Release Fearless.” I could hear their enraged chants while being locked inside my solitary cell. “Release Fearless.” Fantasy’s desperation enhanced with loudspeakers echoed the walls. Merleon’s shout was loud. The two of them were taking turns, working with the loudspeaker and organizing that mob of angry fans and SJWs. The way that mob was organized and the timing was impeccable to the point that it was terrifying.

And people said Fantasy was just a clown. And people said Merleon was just a big, lumpy and quiet guy. That clown was just as intelligent as FY. Even when he was laughing and clowning around, he was thinking. And the quiet guy was easily the smartest person in the team. He was always quiet, which mean he was always listening and learning, and that made him the smartest in the team. And people said Misery was just a stupid edgelord. The guy who chose to stay in the shadow and not reveal his cunning misdeeds? An edgelord he is, but never stupid.

Stupid is me. Logic wise, I should just talk and explain the situation to my family. I should just be a good boy, acting like everyone else, every normal man would do. Walk out of the prison, call off my contractors and associates, and leave the matter to the servants of justice, even if justice would fail again.

Great distraction. Thanks to that smokescreen, the entire world believed that I was still being locked up inside that prison, helpless, crushed and defeated. Thanks to them, the demon was not even prepared for what comes next.

I hated how I used them, their good nature to further my vengeance. But my fury was cold, white and uncompromising. I used them, my brothers, my family like an asshole that I was.

I eventually reached an agreement with them, the enforcers of justice. I signed a statement and made a video record of that statement, making the incompetence of justice appeared to be a ruse, making the public believed that my lockup was a ruse to lure out the demon, saving their dignity. I made the statement about how the two of us, justice and me, were buddy-buddy in secret and that warrant and the interrogations and imprisonment had never existed. I made sure to kiss justice’s ass, adding a lie that my silence was especially important for the investigation.

In return, they would pretend that I had never crushed a man’s balls, erasing the evidence as I watched. They would pretend that we had never had any conflict or misunderstanding. They would only release the statement when the time was due.

They wanted a lie of a statement to save their dignity, to pretend their incompetence and mistake had never existed. They wanted a lie. So I cooperated and showed them a lie. My kind of lie.

While the world still believed that I was being mistreated and locked inside the prison, when the media was being their usual self, milking the money and viewers out of what happened to my family, what happened to Thùy Dương, when the public was furious, I was already outside the bars.

I contacted my associates the PMC that I had consulted before to keep a close tap on his capital and connection, the capital of the demon’s old man. I would not fall for false leads and trickeries. There was no reason to believe the word of a demon. There was no reason to believe the lead and hint given to me by a demon. The demon wanted entertainment from watching how false hope evaporated into true despair. My ears could filter out the lies. A lying demon made a lying sound.

The demon wanted entertainment. I showed it the cost of its entertainment, a waking nightmare, the weight of my fury and madness.

I chased after my leads before justice could alarm the demon of my current status due to their incompetence. I had the leads. A leisure 300 feet ship and one final undisclosed farewell party before that demon assumed a different identity, wearing a new synthetic face and synthetic fingerprints.

On TV, its mother cried the same old crocodile tears to exhaustion, acting crazy, acting as she had never known that her son was a demon wearing human skin. She was good at making people sympathized with her. Its father had disowned it to save his family’s name, helping the enforcer of justice with whatever he could in public. A genius public stunt, smart business decision making as ever. I followed the reality TV as I tracked the demon’s whereabouts, watching how justice’s incompetency kept unfolding.

I had the initiative and surprise factor. I had the lead and the demon did not know that I was already coming after it. I had my people. I had three professional strike teams working for me. I found where it was, the demon and that capital boat. Since back then, I had already predicted the ending of this hunting trip.

The stealth drones spotted the demon on the top deck of that 300 feet leisure boat. The commander of the strike teams asked my opinion out of their respect and concern.

“Don’t ask my permission. Do what you must. Do it your way. You guys are the professionals, not me,” I replied. I had no experience in war and combat. But they had. I hired them. I saw their work. I saw their progress. I trusted them.

The commander proposed his plan, waiting for nightfall to commence an amphibious assault on that boat. I told him that I could wait for a thousand years. A few more hours made no difference.

Rarely heaven would be on my side. But that time, the gods on heaven, regardless of which mythology they came from, lent me their help, aiding the already winning side. It was as if heaven told me, “Since you are about to win this battle, crush it completely.” Communication was halfway off due to the thunder and statics. The strike teams shut all forms of communication and signals on that ship down. None thought that the communication on that ship was being jammed by the drones. The timing of that tropical storm was a blessing.

The will of Heaven, the Earth, the people. I could not ask for more.

In the midst of the moonless night and screaming tropical storm, the strike teams boarded that yacht, a 300 feet of pleasure and distraction.

None knew what was coming. None were prepared for my fury and madness.

The light on that yacht went off for a while, five minutes or so. Then on, only to be off again. Only the light in the bar and the casino on the top deck, and the luxury suite on the third decks remained stable, drawing in the guests. Then, the light went on, flickered, on and off, off and on. I played with my coins, observing as that tropical storm became stronger. The rain fell harder. The sea was as white as my fury. The thunderclap got noisier every minute passed. That anchored yacht, alone in the midst of the storm, was the only thing that became less noisy. Twice, the quiet and subdued noises of gunfire could be heard among the thunderous clapping of lightning bolts. But only my ears could capture the silenced sounds through the feed.

Then came the confirmation on the coms. The lighting on that ship became normal again. The mission was a success. A cold, quiet and anticlimactic success.

I boarded that 300 feet yacht, accompanied by three bodyguards. Corpses littered the decks. None of them was prepared to face my wrath and insanity. Worms, worms not, involved people, uninvolved innocent bystander, captain, sailor, VIP, VVIP, VIP not, all dead. Pampered sons of whom, beloved daughters of whom, great husbands of whom, treasured wives of whom, CEO of what company, chairman of what enterprise, good people, bad people. Knives and bullets make no distinction between their identities or background.

Knives and bullets only discriminate moles and allies.

I seared my eyes with the scene of carnage and breathed in the stench, my sin, and my ticket to hell. Like a true hypocrite, I internally apologized to the souls of the departed. I only needed to capture one demon. But these people had to die. Their death furthered my vendetta. That old man, that crafty genius businessman had to answer to justice for what happened on this 300 feet leisure ship. He aided the demon’s escape twice. First, it was that asylum breakout which led to Thùy Dương’s death. Second, it was this leisure ship. I made him paid the extra fees. But, I doubted he could pay the fees this time when the bereaved family of these VIPs and VVIPs came straight at him like a school of empty-belly sharks, no longer on his side like before. No longer his allies, no longer would they aid him like they once did during those exhausting trials and retrials. I made him paid.

The same hush money he gave us back then, I used that to contract these strike teams, tearing his future and family apart in a hush operation.

“You exceed my imagination,” the demon smiled when it saw me arriving with my escorts. That unapologetic smile was the click that flipped the switch.

I was fluent in the language of violence thanks to my years living with Thùy Dương. Violence was punctual, lawful, crafty, and sometimes, very kind. Violence was a tool, existed to serve a greater purpose. But for once, violence overcame me, completely. I lost my command over this language and even the human speaking language. I was a fragmented instrument assembled to execute its greater will.

I had simulated this faceoff inside my head over a thousand times. But never like this, messy and out of control. That cacophony of rage erupted just as sudden as a lightning bolt. My fury white, but no longer cold. White and hot as raging a white dwarf. The dark primal howl escaped my throat sounded like something that leaked out of a portal connected to the depth of the abyss. That hyper demonic laughter mixed up with that abyssal howl inside my head in a crescendo as the world seared in violence.

Neither Phúc nor I had ever punched a person in our life up to that point. But I was already pummeling demon before I knew what I was doing. I punched the smile and the laughter out of demon’s mouth. I barely felt the moment when fist repeatedly connected with the bridge of the demon’s nose and sickening breaking sounds that came along the process. I did not know if those noises came from my shattered knuckle or the demon’s flattened nose bones. I felt nothing while punching its face. But it mattered not, I kept pommeling. The more I pommeled the demon’s wretched rain stained face, the more I felt that scratching emptiness inside my heart. I howled and pommeled. I pommeled and howled. I knew nothing else.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Inside that falling night rain, I had realized that Thùy Dương was already gone. It was not that difficult to tell. It did not take a genius to realize.

Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone. Only darkness every day. My disagreeable midnight sun sank, forever. Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone, just like Bill Withers sang. I had always known. I had already realized. I had no need to listen to someone else’s rambling telling me that she was already gone from my life. I knew. I had already known from that time. I know.

My memory of Thùy Dương flooded my mind. I remembered the taste of her tears. I remembered the flavor of her lips. I remembered the warmth of her hug. I remembered Thùy Dương when she was strong and blinding like a sun. I remembered the look on Thùy Dương’s face when she was weakened and helpless. I remembered the look on her face when I told her that I have decided a name for our girl.

“Bất Hối”. Unrepentant. Without regret. No regret.

Thùy Dương did not like that name, not one bit. “Bất Hối” is a really strange name by any stretch of naming standard.

Phúc agreed. He said that “Bất Hối” made a perfect condition for our child to be bullied at school later on, even better than a name like Fuck Da Bitch. And I had to agree with him. “Bạch Bất Hối” is a problematic name that spells nothing but disagreement and unseen troubles.

“Definitely not,” Thùy Dương said, adamantly, “Not on my watch. Not when I am the mother. Definitely not.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you on that point,” I weakly laughed, raising my hands to surrender. Thùy Dương chuckled. Phúc laughed. Good time.

The bill fell out of my favor. So, I could never get it across, what I meant to say, what I meant to show her.

I had pictured that later on there would be days that those stupid questions would appear on Thùy Dương’s mind again. Fears went away with comforts and reassurance. But the seeds of doubt remained, hidden, invisible.

I often imagined that Thùy Dương would ask me and Phúc those stupid questions once again on a random day or a bad day. She would remember how bad she looked, how terrible she had been. She would remember those days. And those questions that had haunted her back then would return to haunt her. She would question. If we would choose Alice over her at the time. If we hated her all along. If we detested this current miserable sight of her. If we are only by her side because we pity her, not love. How long until we would move out. Stupid questions.

When that happened, I would call our girl over, hugged her, asking a cheeky question, “What’s your name?”

“Bất Hối,” she would answer.

I would then turn at Thùy Dương, wearing my perfectly cheeky smile, “That’s the answer. My answer.” An absolutely stupid answer to a bunch of stupid questions.

Bất Hối. No regret. I have no regret being with you. I have no regret loving you. I have no regret living with you. No matter what. No matter how tyrannical and bitchy you are. How ugly and weak you may be. No matter how ugly and unromantic our meeting was. No matter the high and low. No matter how our child and this family came to be. No matter what.

“I had no regret back then. I have no regret now. I will have no regret in the future. And I will have no regret at the end of the day.” With Bất Hối in my arms, I would tell her my answer.

Thùy Dương had a photographic memory. So I was fine with her picking a different name. After all, “Bất Hối,” is a really weird name by any stretch of imagination. So I would change the scenario accordingly, asking a different cheeky question, “Do you remember the name I intended to name our girl?”

Showered inside that cold salty rain, I howled at the injustice. Fighting injustice with injustice, win or lose, only the injustice remained. Fighting injustice with injustice, the victor is the bigger injustice. I howled at the injustice.

Phúc and I skipped the celebration party. We returned home early, a champion once again, proud and stupidly happy, knowing that she would be there, waiting for us with an arrogant smile on her lips. Just that thought alone would a stupidly bright smile to our lips.

But there, darkness and despair greeted us instead. A cruel trail of blood. A cold body and the accursed symphony of mating cicadas.

I knew since. I had always known.

A once wholesome dream, a tiny happiness, a warm home, a gentle and self-contained illusion of what may one day be and what could have been, they came crashing down the same way that glass of water on the interrogation table. They were already fragmented before. Now, they came crashing down in the pouring salty rain.

I cried. I cried for the first time since the day our parents were murdered. I howled for our adoptive parents. Our parents. For mom and dad. Not once I had cried for them. Not once Phúc had cried for them. We did not cry, fearing that Thúy Dương would catch us crying. We did not cry, fearing that we would never stop crying once we started. But Phúc was not here, nor Thùy Dương. I cried.

I cried. I cried for Thùy Dương. She was only just standing up on her own feet. I cried. I cried for Bất Hối, our unborn child. Thùy Dương had a myriad of well-meaning names in her mind that she intended to gift to our child. Phúc had a world of gentle sounding names in the back of his mind, praying for a gentle and kind future to our girl. The two of them had been talking about the perfect combinations and agreed on three dozens, but never narrowed down to one name in specific. So our girl was “Bất Hối,” because I had named her so. A terrible name to give to a girl. A name that spells disagreement and problems. I cried.

I cried. I cried for a broken dream, a broken happiness, a broken illusion, a broken future. I cried. I cried Phúc’s share because he remained disconnected and refused to cry. I cried for myself.

I cried.

My associates and employees had to remove me from that demon. That yacht floated on the ocean for the next few days to create false evidence before we sunk it to the ocean floor according to the plan. The demon’s life was preserved by packages of my own blood while the yacht was afloat. O plus, mine. A plus, its. Knowing that I could make the demon bled just as much as my blood could keep it alive. I was not afraid not hurting it a little bit more than necessary during that time. As long as I kept pumping my own blood into its body, it would not die.

My knuckles started to discolor, numbed. The right one smelled terrible, especially from that gaping small hole where the yellow slime kept oozing out. Later, I had a doctor surgically removed a broken molar belonged to the demon somehow managed to lodge inside my right knuckle. My left fist broke, had to be tapped in gauze. I told myself that never would I punch something or someone again. There are tools for that.

The weeks, months, years and half a decade followed, cloudy white synthetic blood kept the demon alive. Its life was monitored and connected to machines. Its organ readily replaced with refined and delicate machinery. A team of underground doctors kept checking its status every fifteen minutes. The consoling money, the same one that its rich dad had given the three of us back then, now powered that underground facility, keeping the broken demon alive and locked up from society.

Even though they were referrals from my associates, I had made sure that my employees were qualified people. I screened my own personnel.

The entire process must be delicate, professional and systematic, I told myself repeatedly after I had consulted the experts and professionals of the field, torture experts. The demon had to know why it was being punished, beaten and broken.

The mallet of justice dictated that the demon should live back then. I purchased it through a shady process. I wanted that mallet of justice saw through its decision back then. Otherwise, my goal would not be reached.

A healthy mind can only be sustained over a long time with a healthy body. In order to break the mind, the body has to be broken down first. That was the greater purpose, the philosophy of tortures, interrogation, and imprisonment. In order to break the mind, breaking the body first.

“Do you know why I do this to you?” I asked.

I felt the gag reflex that almost overcame Niwdar’s soul when I asked the demon that question.

The demon shot Thùy Dương four times. With the same gun, I repaid it the exact amount. Off with the big toes and the two thumbs. Nothing else. The demon laughed. It could still laugh at the time. And I allowed it to laugh while it still could.

After that, with the same wooden mallet that had once passed the judgment to save its life, I hammered four hundred sterilized ceramic nails across the demon’s arms and legs slowly over the time, before the doctors amputated the blackened limbs one by one due to spreading necrosis.

“Do you know why I do this to you?” I would always ask the same question before I hammered a nail. The demon has to know why it was being punished, tortured and beaten, I constantly reminded myself. Otherwise, I might hammer the brain out of its sickening skull in a blind fit of fury.

Every time I asked the demon this same question, I conditioned the demon to feel the weight of my wrath. “Do you know why I do this to you?” Every time I asked the demon this same question. I conditioned myself to be patient and purposeful with my fury and vengeance.

As I conditioned the demon, I conditioned myself. I conditioned the demon to be half-broken in its mind whereas everything else would be completely broken. I conditioned myself to be absolutely ruthless and cold in my fury.

“Do you know why I do this to you?” I asked that meaningless question again and again. I always gagged its mouth first, preventing it from biting its tongue. I asked that question, not caring about the answer I would receive. That’s why that question was meaningless.

“Do you know why I do this to you?” I could give less than a damn about the answer to this question because it was meaningless to answer this question. As meaningless as vengeance. As meaningless as using injustice to flatten injustice. As meaningless as burning down my villa down. As meaningless as crying over a broken dream.

“Do you know why I do this to you?”

Around the 35th nail, the mallet broke in two. I laughed at how weak the object was, the mallet of justice. I sent the broken object to a carpenter, reconnecting it, reinforcing it with a metal frame and adding more weight to the mallet. It was not the appearance that counted. It was the core, the spirit, the manifestation. “What the hell is it?” I asked my associate. I sent that object away, a mallet, it returned to me a sledgehammer. Regardless, the 36th nail entered the demon’s femur with little to no effort.

“Do you know why I do this to you?”

The demon cut Thùy Dương a total combine of twenty-six cuts. Back then when I watched that clip, I counted. I systematically repaid the favor with 2600 cuts over the years with the very same knife. Moving that knife and that gun out of the evidence warehouse was as cheap as swapping that mallet with another mallet.

“Do you know why I do this to you?”

I delivered the first 26th cut. After that, I left the job to the able hands of the professionals. I found no joy or satisfaction or gratification to deliver the rest.

“Do you know why I do this to you?” I asked the demon before making every cut. The doctors would ask the same question before making the cut. Words had magical power. Words when repeated, over and over again, had incredible power. When words are filled with curses and maledictions, repetition makes the curses stronger.

It killed my unborn child as Thùy Dương begged. I put its groin on an anvil thrice because there was only one set of balls and one shaft.

“Do you know why I do this to you?” I always asked the same question. But my voice had become so much colder than before.

Thrice, the hammer of injustice fell with surgical precision and the demon frothed each time. Its eyes rolling white, the doctors described and even filmed the process, thinking that I would find joy in watching. I was not. What I saw were emptiness, meaninglessness, and futility.

“Do you know why I do this to you?” I asked that meaningless question again.

The demon had a tongue but it could not say one word of sorry. “I don’t need to hear the sorry from your mouth because that sorry means nothing. Sorry had no value. But you will live wishing you had said that. By the way, do you know why I do this to you?” I asked.

I have that tongue surgically removed by a professional. Methodologically and systematically, I broke the demon’s body, heart, and mind without joy or gratification. My fury cold, my vengeance empty. I achieved nothing. That unreasonable sun would never rise at midnight, ever. The dead could not walk among the living. In my heart, I knew that very well.

But still, vengeance must be exacted when it is due. I found no joy in torturing the demon but I kept the torture going. Vengeance is meaningless, so I bashed meaninglessness with itself.

“Do you know why I do this to you?”

The day came when the curses sank in and the demon was sorry for its decision. Already completely broken in everything but the mind. I pretended not to notice, still.

“DO you know why I do this to you?” I asked the same question, still wearing the shirt We don’t forget. We don’t forgive since the first trial.

The tears of remorse and sorry would solve nothing. No coherent word could come out of that mouth. No limb to write a sorry letter. Want to do something but cannot. Want to die but cannot. Want to express the remorse but cannot. Want to be forgiven but cannot. Helpless and broken. Equally helpless and broken as I once was on that sanguine summer evening. I returned that helplessness a thousand folds.

“Do you know why I do this to you?”

Still, the question haunted it, forever and evermore.

Does this look like a winner to you? I asked the golden casket, pointing my finger at the broken demon.

The demon’s arrogance destroyed, its body torn, its heart shattered, its will to live demolished, its mind half tattered. The demon wished to meet death but death comes too slow. The very fortune that its parents had once deposited in our bank account, consoling cash, comfort cash, hush money. The same fortune now was distributed to serve its intended purpose. Hushing. Comforting. Consoling. I had wanted no comfort or consolation from it since the first day I received it.

The demon destroyed my family. I showed it how its family was torn apart. I did not believe that the demon would care if its family would be smashed apart while it was being locked up. But I showed the demon what happened to its crafty old man and old woman. Things were just as dark as that summer evening. That day I returned home, I saw only darkness and despair. As a result, I replicated that darkness and despair, making the demon live in it.

“My tortures and cruelty could only go so far,” I whispered to the demon in the manner that a father would whisper to his crying son, telling the son to be brave. “The day would come when God would say, enough is enough. The day would come when God would say that you have suffered enough and he would rescue you from my fury,” I whispered warmly. “If that is God’s will, so be it. I’m only a mortal man. I would listen to his greater will. The day would come when you could finally die, and be released from these unreasonable and unjust torments. The day would come when you are finally released from the earthly pain, released from these machines and fakes organs. The day would come when either God or the Devil himself would take you away and free you from the shackle of your mortally form. I promise you that day would definitely come. But fear not. Even in hell, you would see me. Because I would follow you to hell. Even in hell, you would see me still. Even in hell, you would answer to me. Even in hell, I will make you suffer. Even in hell, I will give you pain. Even in hell, I’m your tormentor,” I told the demon as it howled incoherently, thrashing on the bed. The water of despair rolling. Too late. Too late.

After that, I recorded and allowed my curse to play from dawn to dust. Curses are insidious things that only becomes stronger with every repetition. I fought curses with curses.

Even in death, the demon would see me still, in hell. There is no hope for it. Only despair. Only suffer. Only darkness. And I made sure to drill that fact into its half-broken mind.

I felt the dead silence in Niwdar’s appalled heart as she watched how I tormented that demon.

Open your eyes. Does this look like a winner to you? I turned and asked Niwdar through the golden casket once again, pressing my attack while my opponent is still weak.

The tightly woven casket, Niwdar’s miracle, instead of answering my question, showed me something that I had already known. Thùy Dương was killed. And Phúc had given up on living. It told me that because of my inaction back then, still trying to convince me on its nonsense, that things became like that, a dark joke. I wept at how Niwdar’s miracle had failed to convince me to off myself through ill-logic and nonsense, and now it tried to convince me to kill myself through logic.

Woman, you have never had a proper debate in your entire life, have you? I laughed. “The smartest people in the world would tell you that you can never win a debate against a stupid motherfucker.”

When I captured the demon, I already won a physical victory. When Phúc decides to quit his bullshit and stand up, I would win a most symbolic victory. And when I go hell and reunite with Thùy Dương there, I would win everything, the physical, symbolic and the ideological aspect of this battle. All doers and practitioners of injustice go to hell. Creatures of the darkness all go to hell. See? Ideological victory.

Result wise, what had that demon destroyed? Nothing. Legacy wise, what did it win? Nothing. In what manner and aspect that you dare to declare that the demon had won? Nothing, I tell you

Logically, I won. Illogically, I still won.

I loathed being myself. I abhorred the demons I broke and I was disgust with the worms I had squashed. But I was their worse, the worst.

But even so, “I am Fearless, the Prince of The Alliance,” announced I, the demon that I chose to be, back then and even now. With my hands, I grabbed and tore the casket apart. Coming out of the casket, I saw the reflection of my death glare from the Niwdar’s wide-opened eyes, the reflection of a manmade demon.

“Since you are done speaking. My turn. As I have always said. Demons are cruel. I am crueler. The cruelest. Worms are nasty. I am a lot worse. The worst. Those are not boasts, they are the truth. I got foolishly drunk all the time because I want to be stupid, forgetful and thoughtless. The more brain cells I could kill, the better. Why? Nothing good has ever come out of this brain. The only time this brain does not work its malice and insanity is when I knock it out with strong boozes.” I laughed dryly, perfectly aware how lame and insane my laughter was.

“Do allow me to point out and correct your mistakes. You have made many mistakes.

You said that I have given in to the demon’s malediction and become a demon myself. But that’s wrong.

I have always been fully capable of becoming a demon myself whenever and wherever I want to be from the moment I came to be. It’s a matter of choice, whether I actively want to make that choice or not. And I chose to become a demon myself. Make no mistake about it. Did you think that my cruelty and vindictiveness only manifest themselves as the byproduct and consequence of that demon’s madness? No, woman, no. It’s already here, this darkness, this rage, this insanity, has already existed inside my heart from the beginning. Before I even exist and come to be.

This darkness, this rage, this madness, they were already here from the beginning. It’s just a matter of choice that I want to realize them or not. It’s just a matter of choice that I want to see the manifestation and the result of my cruelty and vindictiveness or not. The demon unknowingly ran to its worst. The demon just happened to open seal on the Pandora box. That Pandora box made a choice to open itself.

Make no mistake, woman. When I said that I am the worst demon and the worst worm, I meant it literally and figuratively. You and your kind believe that I am completely helpless without a Miracle and Authority. But I don’t need an Authority with the name like to corrupt things. I don’t need an Authority with a name like to destroy things. What you call “Authority” and “Miracle”, I call “Cheat”. Only noobs and scrubs require “Cheat” to play through the game. I don’t need Cheat to destroy this entire world alongside every existing spirit realm. I don’t need Cheat to pervert and corrupt the world in my color. Feel free to test my claim. Give it a try. Just make sure your pocket can afford the cost.

Next, if you come at me with the arrogance of a Goddess, put more weight and substance to that arrogance. When I smashed it, I barely feel it, that arrogance of yours.” I smirked, then raised a finger.

“But those mistakes are forgivable. Small mistakes. I am willing to overlook. Now, let’s move on to the big mistake that you have made. The one I shall not overlook.

You made me saw them crying, hurting and begging me to change, thinking the images would hurt me. You believe that my memories of them hurt me. You believe that when I saw FY begging me to change my mind when Alice pleading me to be a changed man when they cried, I felt hurt. How presumptuous.

You made me see my family crying and pleading again and again to hurt me. You used my memory of them as tools to hurt me. You projected your thought and opinion into them, altering them, twisting them to hurt me. You have made the same mistake as the rest of your kind. My family does not hurt me. The memory of my family does not hurt me. I hurt myself, realizing my action hurt them. Make no mistake about that. I hurt myself. My family had never hurt me. MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT THAT.

The people in my memory, my family, SO INSIGNIFICANT according to your belief that you have been using them merely as tools to hurt me. My family and the memory of them, what you people have disrespecting all along, believing that it was your right to see them and use them however you want, they are the only force in the world that can keep me in the line. They are the only force in the world that can pull me back from exacting my madness and rage at the injustice of the world full force. And all of you considered them insignificant.

You come into my head. Look, take, copy and project your filthy images and illusions onto them. What you consider insignificant, I consider a treasure. They mean the world to me, and you people come into my head, do whatever you want with them as if you owned them as if they belonged to you. You saw nothing wrong in your action. You believe that you have done nothing wrong when you used my family as a tool to hurt me. This is the biggest mistake. They are the only thing that held me back from wiping all of you from your existence. They are the only force in the world that can stop me from baring my fangs and claws at you. They meant to protect you just as much as they meant to protect me from myself. And you considered them insignificant tools, using them to hurt me, to further your games, to enact your chaos, to bolster your ego.

This space, my head, my thought, my dream, my memory, are sacred. They do not belong to you. I should have punished your daughter back then. But she had her use as a messenger. I have given my warning once through your daughter. Yet, still, you come, despoiling this sacred place with your presence. You have the freedom to make a choice, to come inside my head or not.

STILL, YOU CHOSE TO COME. DESPITE MY WARNING. STILL, YOU CHOSE TO COME. DESPITE MY WARNING.

This is your crime. All of you. This is your crime. This is why I declared war. If you refuse to acknowledge your mistakes, if you refuse to see your wrong and unjustness, I will make you. By force,” I declared.

Niwdar found me repulsive. And I was fine with that because I could not stand her presence either. Even when we were talking face to face with a good twenty meters in between the two of us, I started to feel sick. So did her. Niwdar felt nauseous, talking to me. And I would not blame her.

I took a deep breath, regaining my calm. I adopted a new tone, a carefree one. “Woman, you were supposed to convince me to off myself, not telling me to go on living and keep being my asshole-self. WHAT THE HELL? You had seriously disappointed me,” I told Niwdar my most honest thought. “I gave you two chances and you messed up twice. I even informed you that it was your final chance. Still, you squandered. I honestly feel nothing but pure disappointment right now. But I will thank you. You have just reminded me why I am Fearless. Thank you,” I bowed to Niwdar, showing her my utmost respect.

Niwdar stared at me with her still emotionally clouded eyes. It was as if she has forgotten that we were still in the middle of a peace talk. While I have already understood her, I became a mystery to her. I had just smashed her greatest illusion apart without using a miracle. Apparently, she must have thought that my gesture of respect was a form of sarcasm. It mattered not.

I fixed my voice again, stern and cold this time. “Let me remind you, woman. You ran out of your chances. There will be no third time. The next time you or one of your daughters touch me or one of my people or interfere with the process of my plan, I will make you regret that decision for the rest of your immortal life. Trust me when I say that I will make you regret your decision. Because I will not bare my madness at you directly. What I will destroy, what I will attack is your daughters, all twelve of them. I will search for them and I will find them wherever you may hide them. I will break them apart. Mind. Body. Heart. And I will make you watch how they suffer and be broken. That I promise. That I swear.”

Like a demon, I gave Niwdar my promise of equal destruction. “But feel free to dare my fury, feel free to try my madness. Feel free to challenge my vindictiveness. Feel free to test my promise when perfect opportunities would present themselves to you. You are always welcomed. Especially you, woman. I have always wanted to see how useful your miracles and authority could be, both those that you had from the beginning and those that you had gained from the deal with Death,” I nonchalantly added, flashing a fair well-mannered smile.

I had just smashed Niwdar’s greatest illusion apart without using a miracle. And I reminded her, to make sure that Niwdar understood her predicament and the absurdity of reality. I then tapped my forehead twice. Ira manifested its dark protruding antenna accordingly. The . . The Embodiment of Grudge. The number two reason why Wrath was so feared and regarded as the dog of Munezee. Ran from Wrath, many of his targets could. But never hide or escape from him due to the existence of this pointy object. Nobody could hide from Wrath due to this object.

Niwdar gave me a look of menace and aghast. I maintained my casual smile, unbent and unbroken and uncompromised.

You are free to do things my way or do it your way. I told her. But, if I can promise something, I can always deliver. I reminded her. It is just a matter of whether I want to honor my promise or not.

Niwdar and her kind, they had their nuclear weapons, their Miracles, and Authority. But I am the nuclear weapon. Peace was made like that, through fear or respect, or fear and respect. Peace is achieved when the total destruction of one side is accomplished, or both sides and either side make compromises due to the fear of more harm.

Gods and Demon Lords had their kind of politics. I had mine. FY always tried his best to stay away from politics, but he could never run away from it or hide from it. Even in the world of pro-gamers and Esports, politics existed in all forms and shapes. A short post-game interview is politics. Proposals and speeches, too, are politics. Convincing the shareholders to release the share, buying those shares then selling them to FY, slowly pushing him to the chairman position, too are the extension of politics. War, in humankind’s history, is just an extension of politics. War is politics. Peace is politics.

So is threat, blackmail, and extortion, just an extension of politics. And politic, in the end, is just a mean to an end.

If what I had shown Niwdar was not enough to make her fall in the line and be cooperative, the popping out of my head would.

“As I promised, I will return her voice back to Clariciel. But if you ever see a perfect opportunity to do it yourself or intend to test my claim, feel free to try. Just make sure that you can end me once and for all. Otherwise, I will come. I will ruin your life. I will make you suffer. I will make you live wishing you could die. If you cross me, make sure I die. Otherwise, I will make you live with the consequence of your decision, forever,” I swore solemnly, wearing a mismatched childlike smile, full of innocence and goodness in contrast with my words.

I paused a good three seconds for my malice to sink in Niwdar’s mind.

“Do me another favor. Think before you do something stupid. THINK WITH YOUR HEAD. The world needs only one stupid asshole.” I gave Niwdar my final warning, unflinching, unapologetic and unashamed of being myself.

It did not matter what these brain-dead morons do, how they fight, what kind of scheme they could concoct with their brainless skulls. The result remained the same, unchanged. Win or lose, the war would end in the manner I had desired it to end.

Get it done. I heard her final words still, loud and clear, back then and even now. Hurdles exist for men to jump over them. Herculean feats exist for men to triumph over them. Exams are meant to be completed and passed. Businesses are meant to be concluded.

“I bid you farewell for now. Until we meet again,” said I to Niwdar.

My greatest unfinished business on Earth, I would complete it on Escana.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Anyone who possesses a working brain could tell why engaging a Demon Lord in a one on one battle as a mortal is stupidity in its purest form and art.

That’s precisely why I have prepared myself to fight a Demon Lord in a solo duel.

Searek and Sasengun, my combat instructors and confidants could not understand the logic of my answer, confronting my decision again and again.

“Of course, you would not understand the logic of my answer. Because there is none. This is ill-logic in its purest form.” My answer remained unchanged, standing against the test of time much to their frustration.

Even in the likelihood that the human could miraculously win the engagement, inflicting a mortal blow to the flesh vessel of the Demon Lord, that Demon Lord could just return to Kharigan with his intact spirit and return with another flesh vessel unharmed, unhurt and whole. A battle between a mortal and a Demon Lord is a battle between a character having one life and a Boss character having infinite lives. Logically, it is not a battle designed for a mortal to win.

As if he could sense my thought throughout our sparring lessons, Searek, ever the wise confidant that he was, repeatedly advised me against picking a one on one fight against a Demon Lord. People often labeled an orc or a kobold as “stupid.” Unfortunately, many staff and officers of mine had often made that mistake even though people like Faugus and Searek had repeatedly proven their worth.

“Stupid” is the label to be attached with my name, not Searek, Faugus or their races.

Even though I possess the abilities and the highest chance among any mortal to actually kill a Demon Lord, a one on one fight against a Demon Lord is something I should avoid at all costs. One solid hit lands and I am as good as gone. Besides, I was not a fighter, not back then, nor now, nor will I ever be. That was something I have completely understood through my sparring lessons with Searek.

However, just because I should avoid a battle against a Demon Lord, it did not mean I would. Engaging in a one on one battle against a Demon Lord as a mortal is stupidity in its purest form, thus, as a believer and follower of Stupidity, it’s the inevitability I must embrace, my inevitability.

Ill-advisedly, I tossed aside my other plans, leaving most of the ongoing matters to Sasengun’s able hands, trusting her abilities and decision making.

I made it a goal of mine to fix Acrẽa’s attitude, be it by force or by wit or by manipulation. We mostly communicated through hysterical screaming, fierce unrelenting arguments, threats, coercion and pure domestic violence that went both ways and a lot of angry sexes. It appeared toxic. It sounded toxic and it felt incredibly toxic. But toxic communication still felt a lot better than a purely surface kind of communication and zero communication. I preferred Acrẽa screaming out what troubling-her-mind right in front of my face rather than keeping her mouth shut. I preferred Acrẽa to lash out and exact her anger through violence rather than keeping it inside her heart. I preferred making Acrẽa bawled her eyes out than watching her staying quiet and depressed.

It was funny how little the two of us knew each other. Even though we had embraced and fornicated like lovers for decades, this was the first time we truly understood each other. It was as if we had only lived and known each other inside a small utopian bubble until the moment I incited that catfight. I was no longer just a disagreeable person who only disagreed for disagreement’s sake. I was no longer a prince-perfect in Acrẽa’s eyes, a target of pure ardor and canal fervor. “Just an abusive, cheating, insane and manipulative bastard,” yelled Acrẽa.

I snorted, laughing loudly on the spot. It was funny just how long it took Acrẽa to figure out the truth. If I wasn’t already insane, I could never hope to overcome the black dream. If I wasn’t already a manipulative bastard, I could never be an idol of a cult. If I wasn’t already abusive, I could never fight injustice with injustice and fight demon by becoming a demon myself.

As I had told her, Acrẽa knew nothing about me even though she should have already from watching my memory.

Acrẽa screamed about how much she hated me now and how much she regrets falling in love with me and how much she wanted to puke from the thought of being in my presence. Yet, Acrẽa still jumped and had sex with me every now and then. Just pure angry and abusive and toxic sexes, the kind of sexes that were made to expel one’s anger and repressed feelings rather than the ones were made for carnal pleasures. It was the manifestation of our addiction toward each other.

I was perfectly fine with that result and cost. A cheap bargain comparing to the value I got back in return. Making Acrẽa a realized the kind of insane, abusive and manipulative demon that I was is just as effective a method. I made Acrẽa understood how powerless she was through force and words, and demonstrations, being as abusive and toxic as I could be whenever Acrẽa let her weaknesses shown.

I taught Acrẽa that there was a time for her to be free and be herself and lash out her anger. After that, study time. After that, exam time. Inside this place, there is enough time for everything.

Our sparring became Acrẽa’s exams as much as they were mine. It only became harder for the two of us. But I did not restart the session immediately when I won. I made Acrẽa understood that failing her exam is unacceptable. I taught her the cost of defeat.

“Do you know why you have lost?”

Repeatedly, Enfermé tasted her flesh, systematically. It kissed Acrẽa’s guts with its cruel pointy end. It nibbled her neck with its razor silvery edge. It bit her beating heart with a sharp twist. It tore her body in a psychotic slashing rampage. It slowly ravished her body with a systematic staby-staby hell. Enfermé knew no mercy.

“Do you know why you have lost?” I would ask that question every time.

I taught Acrẽa that Enfermé was an object of fear, failing her exam and defeat was to be feared. I beat that information into her consciousness through the pathway of phobia.

In the book “The Prince,” the META of winning the leadership war across ages, the author Machiavelli argued that “It is better for a leader to be feared than loved if he cannot be both." While I did not agree with everything Machiavelli had written in “The Prince,” I concurred with this point of his, that a leader should be feared than loved if he cannot be both. It was by this principle that I could stand at the center of a cult’s worship. It was for this same principle that Bloodbeard employed someone like Ekar in that revolting and stomach-churning manner. It was by the virtue of following this principle that I had effortlessly won over Bloodbeard’ worms. They feared me more than they did Bloodbeard and Ekar.

Feared me, feared Enfermé, Acrẽa must. I just repeated what I have been doing my entire life.

“Do you know why you have lost?”

I conditioned Acrẽa to use her head if she did not want to taste the cold razor edge or the cruel pointy end of Enfermé. That was her life whether Acrẽa liked it or not unless she could beat me or free herself from this endless dream. Study or Enfermé. Every dreamland’s day and hour, studying or Enfermé. Many things to learn. ROC as a PC game. ROC as the reality. Attack animations and skill casting animations. Numbers. History. Outside the box thinking. Strategies and Tactics. Many things to learn. But I made sure Acrẽa learned and remembered her lessons, that or Enfermé. Carrot and stick.

I rather have Acrẽa cursed me than watching her die a meaningless and stupid death, unprepared. She was already a part of my faction, connected to me. So, Acrẽa was on the list of harm, a named combatant. With her current laughable abilities, Acrẽa would be struck down, perhaps even much earlier than a moron would.

I did not give Acrẽa an infinite time to learn. I showed her a clock. Every time the clock expired, it was exam time. I introduced Acrẽa to a monster that was commonly known as “deadline”. Since Acrẽa lacked the awareness and motivation for self-studying like Pride did, I drilled the lessons into Acrẽa’s head through her crippling fear of Enfermé and the “deadline “monster.

The exams became increasingly difficult for the two of us. It was increasingly difficult for Acrẽa because I always showed her something new in every new test, forcing her to adapt to new and unexpected developments. It became increasingly difficult for me because one by one, my cards were revealed. But that was just like ROC on Earth. No team could remain dominant with one trick forever. People would figure their tricks and recipes. And they would copy, replicate and develop the counter. If a team makes no improvement over the years, they would be obsolete and out of the league in no time. It was something I had become used to.

“I am just a fucking human, not a fucking God or a fucking Demon Lord. Just a fucking human. And you already had a hard time fighting against. Just a fucking human. Don’t even hope to defeat other Immortals when you cannot defeat a human. Sending you out there to fight would be my greatest mistake. You are going to get your forces wiped.” I talked trash all the time during our sparring.

Fighting one on one battles with Acrẽa, I was often reminded again that, ability-wise, Acrẽa was easily my worst matchup. required an ally target or a target that I recognized as an allied unit. Both of my main abilities, and , required visual confirmation for them to work their magic. However, Acrẽa’s strong desires to monopoly things gave birth to many territorial controlling miracles. And most of these miracles blotted out the light, in one form or another. for instance, preventing me from teleporting to area around Acrẽa for a cheap sneak attack as well as barring me from copying her appearance and abilities.

If Acrẽa played her cards right, if she knew how to use her abilities correctly, I should not have a chance. Ability wise, Acrẽa was my worst matchup.

If Acrẽa was ever the stronger one between the two of us, I had never revealed it to her. I stood with my feet squared against my shoulders at the beginning of every exam. I made it appeared that I had always been the stronger one. The Alliance’s uniform tightly donned. No armor. As usual, Enfermé resided inside my left hand. Two bandoliers holding various alchemical concoction hung to my undershirt in a tight cross. The left bandolier contained potions. The right one kept various utility concoctions and an assorted of useful alchemical poisons. Two pouches full of Dragon Bane slathered crystal spikes and metal nails fastened to my belt. I wore my trademark arrogant smile and waited for Acrẽa to activate her .

I had always allowed Acrẽa to activate uninterrupted at the beginning of our sparring, adhering to my one handicap ironclad code. Seethed by my crescent smirk, Acrẽa gritted her serrated white fangs, her living lamprey hair made angry gurgling sounds. I waved the sealing blade in my left hand, forcibly erasing the rage and frustration on Acrẽa’s face and repainting her expression with vigilance.

The fear of pain and deadline had proven to be the most effective motivation for Acrẽa to learn and improve herself actively.

Wearing one of her notable premium skins, , Acrẽa faced me head-on, enveloping herself in the revealing blue luminescent of her battle raiment. On Acrẽa’s waxy left hand held her signature transforming weapon Sirafay. In its current form, Sirafay was a two-meters of bident made of a tight braid of two metallic hagfishes indulged in their mating ritual. However, under Acrẽa’s command and power, Sirafay could turn itself into various shapes. Acrẽa crossed her pallid wrists. She had learned many painful lessons to use her one and only given handicap for .

No longer would my dear vampire girl squander her only handicap for a cheap surprise attack. Acrẽa learned that even though she was inhumanly fast, her attack and ability casting animations had been ingrained into my consciousness through years of learning and playing ROC as a pro. With a quick teleport, I could cut her before her abilities or normal attacks could catch my shadow. Anticipating my teleport sneaking attack had not improved Acrẽa’s winning chance either, simply because Dion and I had always prepared the countermeasure for her counterattacks before I teleported.

In its world eroding glory, manifested, an unforgiving globe of darkness that devoured all forms of life on its path, all but vampiric life forms.

As usual, I teleported in many quick succession, staying out of the area of effect of . Hiding inside the impenetrable darkness of , Acrẽa’s action and the position were hidden to me, an advantage that Acrẽa had been taught to press.

Her attacks, spells, and abilities did not come rushing at me in a reckless abandon like before. I had taught Acrẽa that I can trace her position through my observation over her projectiles and spell missiles.

However, there was little that I could do to hurt Acrẽa now that was up. Unlike Pride, I had no ability to directly destroy or erase . If I could not see her, I cannot hurt her since I possessed zero AOE damage-dealing ability. If you weren’t pressed for time, use it wisely and effectively. That was FY’s favorite words. Thus, it was the most correct move for Acrẽa to take time and carefully lay down her cards, mapping out her attacks first while staying inside that strange darkness.

The foreboding silence and the lack of hostile attacks were like the perfect calm before a storm.

Keeping a safe distance from Acrẽa’s , I squatted down on the ground and hid my body in the tall winter reeds, pressing my ear against the ground for information. By the virtue of acting as Acrẽa’s examiner for 66 exams, I had learned that if I could not use my eyes for gathering information, I could always employ my sharp ears as an alternate method.

Small tremors and footsteps lapped without rhythm informed me that Acrẽa had already activated her . Thousands of elder vampires and various vampiric creatures were slowly flooding the inside of . That was one-kilometer square packed of elder vampires. I continued to train my ears, carefully capturing the various noises and sounds to gain the necessary information.

Among Acrẽa’s summoned vampiric creatures, those chimeric vampires of unknown origin also presented. The sound of their flapping wings carried to my ears by the sweeping winds. In the darkness of , freed steels whimpered, rejoicing their freedom very graciously and quietly. But when a thousand blades gave praise to freedom in harmony, no matter how quiet they were, such bone-chilling symphony could be heard miles away by ears that were as sharp as mine.

The dark foreboding words were spoken, the elder vampires softly uttered the title of their matriarch, beseeching her vampiric miracles. Their weapons draw. Their arrows nocked. Their spells readied. The elder vampires had finished their preparation. However, Acrẽa was still busy stacking her spells and miracles in a delayed fashion, layers upon layers. Quietly, she crafted numerous volleys of flesh-eating spells and befouled miracles to be released upon a perfect moment. Acrẽa had learned the difficulty of hitting a human who can teleport like me. The usual tactic of single volley, fire upon sight and sniping had no chance of catching my shadow. Thus, Acrẽa had learned to design an endless barrage of vampiric miracles to hit me from twelve matches ago.

Acrẽa came at me with an army of vampires and an entire arsenal of a Demon Lord. I wished that I could say that it was an overkill. But history was not on her side, neither number nor math, Acrẽa had understood that from her past 66 repeated failures. The cruel edge of Enfermé still fresh on her mind, Acrẽa treated me as if I was a personification of an army of Gods and Demon Lords, preparing her endless barrages of spells accordingly.

As I listened and analyzed the battlefield from the sound, an ominous wind blew, filling my nose with a familiar musky stench.

Winds?

I darted my eyes around and noticed an ominous change in the atmosphere. A stack of giant swirling red clouds was quietly forming on the clear blue sky. FUCK, I inadvertently cursed and started spamming my teleportation ability. Paying too much attention toward what’s inside the darkness of , I lost track of what was happening on the outside.

This would be the first time Acrẽa used her , a double edge sword of a miracle, a weather control ability and one of her situational abilities. Lightning cracked at the distant horizon. From the red thunder clouds poured a foul mire of trauma.

I heard the mating calls of the accursed cicadas sounding at the back of my head. I gagged and retched a mouth full of dry putrid air because there was nothing inside my stomach.

Down poured the , buffs and debuffs coexisted in one weather bending miracle. A cold musky blanket of gore showered my body as could not get me out of the area of effect in time.

Acrẽa was determined to catch me with this weather bending miracle of hers. She conjured not just one or two . Acrẽa must have spammed this ability over a hundred times or so, and only activated the effect of these upon the moment of notice.

FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.

I cursed. Every FUCK was as loud as the cicada’s cries, meant to beat them out of my head. But, FUCK. The cicadas sang their fucking song, banging their fouled notes against the corners of my head. If the hallucination and curses that came with the damning red rain could torment me more than the infestation lodged inside my mind, I would not know. They were one and the same in the red shower.

FUCK. A world bending vampiric miracle manifested. Gore eroded the world in its fouled excessive decadent.

FUCK. That cold sticky mire, dark red, thick and slimy as juices freshly squeezed from ripened berries, oozed out from the heaven, showering me in a maddened red.

FUCK. Sanguine stained bones poured down from the crimson sky.

FUCK. Femurs, rib cages, spines, skulls, all manner of bones pummeled and bruised my lanky makeshift umbrella-arms, clattered on the wild meadow, dully, hollowly and heavily.

If I had my eyes closed, is sealed. Opened my eyes, I lost. Closed my eyes, I lost. No amount of FUCK was ever enough.

Globs of meat, big, small, all manner of sizes and shape, grey brain, half-eaten white brain, white eyeballs, grey snakelike entrails, filthy filled entrails, organs of all manner of natures and colors, plummeted in heavy and sickening splatters. Cold slimy lifeless entrails fell from the sky and entangled my arms and neck. The damning rain stretched toward the horizon. Even could not dig a way out of this red falling mire. There was no escape.

FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.

In that cacophony of chaos, I commanded Ira to deploy its antenna. I should have done that earlier. Under my command, Ira sprouted its dark spiral horn out of my forehead. Ira expelled mana out of my body in waves through the spiny object and read the Miracles and Authority in the air through the returning undulations. Dion screamed the numbers, the hours, the timers and the angles of the incoming projectiles in a manner that only a person like me could understand.

Black arrows and flesh-eating mists unleashed. Opportunistic volleys of delayed crashed through the wet blanket of red. An unworldly living bowel of screeched, coming for living flesh. But the projectiles were coming. Against my better judgment or lack thereof, my eyes wide opened, flickered, darting all around, unblinking in the red falling deluge.

My neck craned back and forth, repeatedly in breakneck speed to coordinate my chains of teleportation.

Affected by Acrẽa’s dense deluge, my ears and eyes were almost useless in reading the projectiles. Ira did most of the heavy lifting, sensing the vampiric projectiles through its antenna. Dion shouted at me, telling me to keep my eyes peeled and my ears trained because Ira’s reading was far from being enough.

FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.

My ears still trained, working tirelessly to figure out the rhythm of chaos, giving no chance for Acrẽa’s cheap attacks to spell true. White thunders struck near and far, high altitude, low altitude, randomly. came, pounded the globs clotted ground, exploded in great splatters of red. Something bit me, shoulder and thigh, not nearly as painful as Ira’s claws and spines. I kept teleporting, eyes and ears training on the endless barrages to come.

Myriads of well-timed carved the musky air, whistled as I evaded them. Barrages of giant blotted out the sky and erupted in deafening splatters. They exploded in the goriest of fashion upon impacts. Because the were considered as living beings, I could turn myself into them, and I did just that once, exploiting that oversight of Acrẽa to get to her. Since, Acrẽa made sure to dispose of her to deny me of the option of pretending to be one of them through . She used the as time fuse shells, filling their inside with sacks of flesh-corroding mist before pumping them out.

From various information that Ira and I had collected, Dion worked with us in tandem, keeping track of the incoming projectiles fresh with its deafening screams. I handled the execution.

Then, there was a strange whizzing noise echoed, disturbingly loud, affecting Dion’s reading, Ira’s reading, and mine. That noise kept followed me wherever I went. The three of us worked fast to locate that strange whizzing noise. A small gaping hole on my left cheek, I did not even realize it. That was where the whizzing noise came from. I plugged the hole with my hankie. The blood in my mouth, mine or not, I stopped thinking at that point from the sheer horridness.

I was fully aware that the would render Acrẽa’s senses of smell and sight useless due to the absurd amount of blood and gore presented. She should have a hard time tracking me as much as I had a hard time reading her projectiles without Ira’s horn. But her barrages followed me. They were on point, with precision even when I have already teleported at least five kilometers away from my original position.

How? I kept asking the same question, racing my thought for the answer.

Then, Ira started to notice me what they, those unintelligent vampiric creatures and elder vampires, were doing.

They did not come charging at me, crowding and overwhelming me with numbers in their usual suicidal fashion. Bathing in the red gory rain, they chased after me, but also kept a distance and only attacked me on occasions. They spread out their number like a fishnet, low on the ground and high on the sky, followed closely after me. Through the antenna on my head, Ira detected that they released a trail of decaying spells into the sky as they moved, using those spells as the smoke signal.

Ah, I muttered, realizing what these vampires were doing.

Acrẽa tracked my general position through this spread out network of observation units. Dion’s answer arrived at the same time as mine. We both had our answers to break out of this current dilemma.

I kept teleported toward these observation units while reading and avoiding the bombardment. Against this kind of unrelenting barrage, random evasive maneuvers would spell an eventual demise. Zigzagged through the damned rain, I teleported high and low, left and right, read the incoming numerous projectiles and evaded with cold mechanical discipline, putting my trust in the numbers and updates.

Over fifteen elder vampires quickly fell to their splattering doom by my swapping attack. Twenty unintelligent chimeric vampires grounded, Enfermé carved through their exposed neck and spine. I dismantled Acrẽa’s network as she watched. Volleys upon volleys upon dense blankets of vampiric horrors shelled relentlessly, picking up in pace and speed but falling in accuracy. Acrẽa was getting desperate. But Ira’s reading and Dion’s screams were on point and my execution was as mechanical as mechanical could be.

I was expecting it. Acrẽa’s ultimate.

Amidst the red deluge, my eyes spotted a bluish glimmer. Ira’s horns projected a great tide of mana. Acrẽa’s ultimate ability , finally came, sneaky and subtle, mixing in with the shelling projectiles and the pelting accursed rain. A great host of hagfishes and vampiric creatures in blue spectral body phased through the dense blanket of projectiles and the falling red deluge, swimming straight at me.

I made sure that I had enough mana for .

Stained, dirtied, and defiled by Acrẽa’s but the emblem of five hands sewed on my left chest was not a lie. It was not just about glamor and fanfare. It was never just laughter, victory, glory and fun. It has never been just sunshine and rainbow. This tiny emblem meant nothing to world at large. It meant nothing to Escana or Kharigan. But, to us, The Alliance, to me this insignia meant the world. Thirteen years of donning The Alliance’s uniform was not a big fat lie. The skills and abilities that I gained from years of donning this uniform were no lie.

manifested and fitted inside my hand, bright and shining as my memory of The Alliance. The familiar flag of black and gold fluttered against the invisible headwinds, offering a short ten seconds of true solace. Dion ran a countdown inside my head. Before the warm solace of the flag, the fouled host of darkness and vampiric horrors parted.

Myriads of shattered like they were made of glass. Dark corroding mist evaporated. The grotesque swarms of living entrails divorced. Arrows bounced. The red damning rainfall expelled. harmlessly parted in two ghostly currents, then turned around for more futile assaults, each time weaker and smaller.

Holding the flag of five hands, I was overcome with a swell of gratitude and pride and nostalgia.

Normally, we would never care about which one of us got to be the flag bearer. However, whenever one of us had shit thrown at him, that person held the flag. The rest of the team would have his back.

That time when I dislocated my thumb. That I time when I returned, being publicly known as the reason for the squad’s one-year hiatus. The time when Fantasy got that death threat. The time when Misery chewed anti-depression to play the games or that time when he was blamed for our losses. The times when Merleon needed to make his statement but could not. The time when even someone like FY fucked up. I inadvertently chuckled. Looking back, I was the flag bearer most of the time.

Flag-holder goes first, the rest follows, pushing him forward if needed. Just a tiny solace. Just silly tradition, a silly gesture. Just a silly memory. Just a silly tiny brotherhood.

But there is no one behind me now.

Even though the flag felt real inside my palm, it was just a replica. An illusionist would never get caught by his own illusion. And I have ended The Alliance. I mechanically ran my hand on the potion bandolier, rummaging for a healing potion and mana potion. The smooth texture vial contained the healing potion. The rough and prickly textured vial kept a mana potion. I popped and drained a vial of quick-acting healing potion and mana potion, pulling out an arrow stuck inside my left heel. Dion howled, screaming pain. I cursed it, telling the insane venom that I should be the one howling pain, not it. Dion barked right back, telling me that the one howling pain was me. I stopped arguing with it over the matter, saving for later.

Against the remaining mana of Acrẽa’s mana reserve, ten seconds of solace was hopelessly short. But that was all I needed to map out my escape and cut Acrẽa’s off my tail. Dark projectiles and insidious spells bombarded the bright solace radiating from the flag of five hands like moths to a flame. Vampiric projectiles and insidious missiles directed at this tiny solace of mine. Planting the flag of The Alliance against the ground in defiance, using this shining solace as a diversion, I quietly disappeared into the darkness of the failing gory deluge.

I could not believe how low I could be until this moment. Even when I was already a good two kilometer away from the flag, Acrẽa focused her firepower at that tiny solace. Barrages after barrages, volley after volley of vampiric horrors. Even when the flag disintegrated into light particles, the barrages were endless.

Just a silly illusion of an olden past. Funny how it still saved me.

I teleported until the red clouds and the damned rain was behind me. Slowly, with the coldness of fatigue, they sank in. The acrid stench of death, the foul slimy liquid that coated my body, the hallucination, the curses, the cicadas, and their accursed symphony.

I retched so much that my own stomach and entrails felt like they would come out of my mouth. My blood, not my blood, my liquid, mine, not mine, I had no fucking idea. Knowing that none of it was real but I retched. I puked only empty air and curses. I unbounded and tossed away that disgusting knot of slimy entrails still wrapping around my neck and shoulders. The cicadas sang. My body shook like a wet dog, drenching the unspoiled part of the reed meadow with fouled dripping redness and gluey falling flesh. The accursed summer song rang. I cursed, vomiting a mouthful of blood in a teary wet blaze. A bone fragment rolled out with that mouthful of red.

Dion, the ever faulty equipment that it was, failed and failed hard in the direst hour. It just made everything worse for me, feasting on my imagination, and painted my consciousness in gore color, making the world an infestation of gore.

MOTHERFUCKER, I SHARE MY ROOM WITH YOU SO THAT YOU WOULD FIX MENTAL ATTACK, NOT WORSEN IT.

Instead of quieting my thought, Dion filled my head with the sound enhanced version of the summer song. I cursed angrily, commanding Ira to sink its teeth into my body me or impale me with its sharp spines. Ira curled its body into a ball, shaking, crying, and thinking that I was testing its loyalty again.

FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.

That accursed cacophony of summer did not just ring inside my head. It came out of my own mouth. If I could curse that atrocious song away, I would have already.

They are coming. Stand, I told myself, willing the accursed chirpings of cicadas away from my ear canals. The golden coins came out of my pocket, then one by one slipped away from my sticky, red slurping fingers.

My hand, wet and gooey, tightened on the brain matter clotted blade. Enfermé cold with fury, carving the ground to make do with its hunger for vampire’s flesh. I puked just as much as I cursed, promising Enfermé that it shall have what it desired.

The sound of approaching footsteps and beating wings became more noticeable, just not loud enough to drown out the accursed orchestra.

They are coming. Stand, I told myself, screaming at my rebellious body and four limbs that it was not the fucking time for democracy and revolution. It’s still a monarchy. I am the monarch, their monarch. If I go down, you all go down with me, screamed I. But it was no time for debate.

My red stained fist jammed my nose canal in a tyrannical fury. When words failed, violence. When logic failed to convince, ill-logic violence. Why violence? Because violence solved everything. I am the Prince of The Alliance. My fist beat the summer song out of my traitorous teeth, and then beat words in and out of my rebelling body, “I am Fearless, the Prince of The Alliance.”

I heard the sound of winter wind brewing. I crushed the rebellion. I crushed the revolution. Violence, again, proved a quick and reliable fix to every problem in the world. Tiny problems, normal problems, big problems, celestial type of problems, every problem in the world but Phúc’s and mine.

With their loud marching footsteps, came Acrẽa’s vampire elders, her scouting party, fletching their vampiric spells and arrows. The chimeric vampires swooped down from the sky with their riders.

I hissed. Ira howled. Dion gnarled. We could not be more desynchronized. Our chemistry is just as shitty as always. I wept at the dysfunction of my current roster comparing the old one. It was a major step down from Phúc, Thùy Dương, FY, Misery, Fantasy, and Merleon. But for once, a human and an angry beast and an insane venom, the three of us were on the same page.

“ACRẼAAAAAAAAAAAAA, YOU ARE DEAD.”

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

From the noises, Acrẽa knew that her vanguard has clashed against him. Inside the lightless protective shell of the most recently conjured the vampire queen trained her sharp eyes, reading the various signals. Red and blue mana columns billowed alongside the eruption of the dark decaying mist, signaling a complete massacre of the scouting party. Acrẽa was not surprised over that kind of development. She had become used to the sight.

“ACRẼAAAAAAAAAAAAA, YOU ARE DEAD.”

A human’s proclamation had never been so loud, angry and so foreboding. His hollering proclamation made Wrath’s angriest roar sounded like a whimper of beaten pup. His was even louder than the time when Xaara and his entire faction stood together, united in a deafening parade of cracking thunders, piercing screams, whipping gales and raging firestorms. What Acrẽa heard was the personification of fury. The winds wept tears to his penetrating fury, rejoiced that they weren’t the target of his ire.

Acrẽa was.

Acrẽa gulped. It’s already a cold puddle down there, for a while now. The vampire queen believed that she might have peed some and orgasmed some. Made no difference, Acrẽa wept internally over her lack of shame these days. Her breasts full, hardened and heavy of quaking fear. Her throat parched, thirsty for warm blood. Her body felt the urgent need to preserve her lineage, more than ever whenever she was near him. Her pride and shame have been completely perverted and broken. Acrẽa has already been disgraced through and through.

The vampire queen vividly felt how wide and opened her skin pores had become. Her living hair recoiled and shriveled, tingling, croaking in dry air. Had her host of elder vampires not a bunch of lifeless dolls without survival instincts, they would have advanced with more prudent, especially after they had witnessed how he survived that many barrages of vampiric miracles.

This time, Acrẽa had expended nearly her entire mana reserve, every small spell and every big miracle under her command. The number of miracles that Acrẽa had dispended was enough to wipe a third of the population in the continent of man. Still he lived. HOW? Though her mana recovered fast. Just not fast enough to release another in tandem with a barrage of vampiric miracles. The amount of mana that Acrẽa had left in the tank, only Acrẽa and, that SOB knew, Acrẽa cursed. That madman always counted and kept track of the numbers and variety of projectiles and spells Acrẽa released, thus worked out the general amount of mana she had left in her tank.

“HOW?” Acrẽa had once asked when he explained how he knew her mana reserve had emptied in the third exam.

“Presence of the mind,” he explained with a casual shrug every single time, then elaborated about the math and logic behind that Presence of the mind, none of which Acrẽa could understand. He counted and kept track, Acrẽa only understood that.

Her tricks and arsenals fell short of claiming him. should have blocked his visibility and hearing. Showered an army with and they would falter, scattering like ants from the hallucinations. Adding barrages of vampiric miracles on top of that, he should have fallen, Acrẽa cursed, knowing that she had just hit the final nail of her own coffin. She had braved the pain and the fear, purposefully failing her last three exams to create a real chance of passing this exam, but now it was over.

Sirafay, or a replica of it, cold and afraid inside Acrẽa’s hand. For a mere replica of the real thing, the weapon’s cowardly nature felt more authentic than the real one, a renowned trait of Lust’s red dream that he had managed to recreate.

A tiny graze made from the Dragon Bane coated sealing blade is a promise of death. So is a graze created by Sirafay, being an avaricious weapon bore Greed’s marking, forged from a pair of Acrẽa’s fangs, star metal, and tempered Titanite. But, just like Acrẽa, this replica of Sirafay had learned the terror that the sealing blade commanded when that son of bitch held it. In the last exam, Acrẽa sacrificed Sirafay to buy herself an extra three minutes. Sirafay was chopped into pieces during that exam. Not all Divine Relics were made equal. Enfermé just happened to be the top weapon.

The sentient weapon shuddered and shivered as if to say that Acrẽa had already failed yet another exam. Acrẽa choked the life out of her weapon, “No, I had n…” Her words of assertion died away.

“ACRẼAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

Decaying mist, the life-liquid of any bloodless being evaporated when contacted with sunlight, billowed and darkened the sky of the battlefield. Over a hundred of Acrẽa’s vampires must have died to create such a massive volume.

Like a hurricane, arrived fury in its avatar form. A human. A madman. He appeared fury for what fury was worth. Acrẽa had tasted his fury once. His fury was cold and deliberate, vindictive, calculating. Never like this, scalding, brash, loud and hollering. Feigned fury, Acrẽa hoped that she was right.

Acrẽa was not sure if he sounded human or appeared human or acted like a human. His usual well-dressed dashing figure now seasoned in gore. Coated in grit and grime, he came howling like a madman.

Acrẽa immediately spotted that object.

The Horns of Ira, once curve, twin and shining with ivory luster on Wrath’s taurine head, now straight, spiral, lone and ebony dark crowned on his head. The shape was different, but Acrẽa instantly recognized the Horn of Ira through its distinctive emission of mana waves. Back then, when it crowned on Wrath’s head, the mana waves it sent out were brash and scalding, now they were cold and thin, almost imperceptible.

That’s cheating, Acrẽa shivered, realizing that the object had fallen into the worst hand.

Upon her silent signal, dark arrows and vampiric spells whistled toward that hollering and running madman. But a young elder vampire male took that madman’s place and showered in that violent rain of feathers instead.

“IS THAT ALL YOU GOTTTTT?” That madman stood in the middle of the loose rank, howling.

A host of Acrẽa’s elder vampires came rushing. Steels swinging. Arrows flying. Spells singing. But another elder vampire fell victim in the place of that madman, swapped by a perfectly executed

It was a familiar scene, something that Acrẽa had already expected, a usual sight. No big surprise.

“ROC operates on a 30 frames per second system. finishes its intended animation within four frames. Four frames, that’s your window of opportunity to land a hit on me,” he had repeatedly explained the weakness of his skill to Acrẽa, drilling it to her head.

In close-quarter, Acrẽa’s superior reflex and agility could catch him with that four frames, as long as Acrẽa could correctly predict the intended travel location before he even used . But in those four frames, he could be everywhere in a radius of 100 meters. Acrẽa could only hope that she lands her hit. That or spray her vampiric miracles in an endless barrage and pray that one of them might land.

That is definitely not a human, Acrẽa felt her stomach frozen. Sirafay seemed to agree.

“I AM RIGHT HERE MOTHERFUCKERS. YOU BLIND OR WHAT? USE YOUR FUCKING EYES IF YOU HAVE A PAIR.”

Another female elder vampire, a favorite concubine of Acrẽa died hideously, impaled by the blades of her own kind.

“I AM RIGHT HERE MOTHERFUCKERS. STOP KILLING ONE OF YOUR OWN.”

The circle of despair repeated itself in a demoralizing fashion. The hunter played with his own food. And the food, well, they remained food. That madman teleported and slapped the back of the head of an elder vampire with his hand. But when that elder vampire flashed her blade backward, another elder vampire was there, taking the blow, head flying in a gush of black decaying mist, reminding Acrẽa of how she had failed the fifth exam. Beheaded by her own puppets.

The madman’s body movement was slow comparing the inhumane agility of Acrẽa’s vampires, but his instantaneous movement skill was blindingly fast.

“WHAT? I HEARD YOUR QUEEN TALKED A LOT OF SHIT. VAMPIRES ARE SO MUCH STRONGER THAN HUMAN. WHAT? PROVE IT. DEFEND THE HONOR OF YOUR QUEEN. DEFEND THE HONOR OF YOUR RACE.” The madman howled and grabbed a sword lying on the ground, tossing it to the advancing host of vampires with all of his meager strength. In front of vampiric sharp reflex, the twirling object missed by the wide margin, until the madman teleported and swapped his position with an elder vampire, adding a new victim to his list. “DODGE THIS BITCHASS,” he howled, stomping his feet on the head of his newest victim.

The madman zipped through the air, collecting a bow and an arrow as he moved. With his meager strength, he half-drew the bow and shot the arrow at the open sky. He immediately abused his teleport-swap combo in a blinding succession. Another female elder vampire gurgled decaying mist. “I SAID STOP HITTING YOURSELF.” That wicked arrow tore through her fair neck.

“VAMPIRE FAST? HUMAN SLOW? VAMPIRE STROONK. HUMAN WEAK. BITCHASSES, YOU PROVE IT. AND STOP KILLING YOURSELF.” With a sword in his hand, the madman teleported, lopping the neck of another elder vampire of Acrẽa with a back attack, then executed another perfectly timed swap as arrows and spells came right at him.

“HELLO VAMPIRE SUPREMACISTS, MEET A HUMAN SUPREMACIST. PROVE YOUR SUPREMACY, VAMPIRES,” he howled, zipping around, lopping five more heads. One of Acrẽa’s female elder vampires nearly got him, predicting correctly that she was the next victim. She turned around, blade swinging but the execution of that madman’s teleporting skill was faster. He was already at her back again. Twin blades in hands, one long one short struck in a reverse. Dark decaying mist erupted into the air.

“ACRẼA, COME OUT. SAVE YOUR VAMPIRES,” howled the madman, grabbing a magic cane on the ground only to knee the object into halve as Acrẽa’s vampires chased after him.

“ACRẼA, COME OUT. COME OUT. HERE’S YOUR PRINCE CHARMING.”

If Acrẽa had learned a lesson from her repeated losses, “Do not talk back,” because she would reveal her position when she talks back.

The madman howled as he juggled four swords in his hands alongside his wicked blade. “I FIND THE MYTHS OF VAMPIRIC STRENGTH ARE HIGHLY EXAGGERATED. CAN SOMEONE PROVE ME WRONG?” Laughing insanely, he flung each blade in one random direction. Five twirling blades flew aimlessly and harmlessly until that madman abused his skill, providing five unfortunate targets for those whistling steels.

“STOP KILLING ONE OF YOURS FOR FUCK SAKE. I BEG YOU.”

“STOP KILLING YOUR OWN BROTHERS AND SISTERS. I BEG YOU. WHAT HAVE THEY DONE WRONG? WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?”

Bored, the madman collected magic canes, spears, and swords and fixed them to the ground as he zipped around the killing field. He mocked Acrẽa’s vampires and dropped them on top of those weapons pointing at the sky.

“IS VAMPIRE A RACE FULL OF MORONS? WHY ARE YOU IMPALING YOURSELF?”

The taunter repeatedly shouted his taunts, full of open and bravado, appeared and disappeared, zipping across the killing field. The taunted ones reacted to the taunts and one of them would be swapped and butchered hideously by one of his/her own ranks. But, had they slowed down, acting with prudence. It was a squall of falling vampire elders.

“WHY ARE YOU SKYDIVING WITHOUT A PARACHUTE?”

“WHERE IS YOUR PARACHUTE? SAFETY FIRST, BITCHASS. SAFETY FIRST.”

“STOP KILLING YOURSELF. I SAID.”

“STOP SKYDIVING WITHOUT A PARACHUTE.”

“ACRẼA, TELL YOUR VAMPIRES TO STOP SKYDIVING WITHOUT A PARACHUTE. WHAT’S WRONG WITH THEM?”

“WHERE IS YOUR FUCKING PARACHUTE?”

“WHERE THE FUCK IS YOUR PARACHUTE?”

“STOP KILLING YOURSELF.”

The madman screamed so much that Acrẽa’s eardrums hurt. He danced through the air, disappeared here and appeared there, flying high and running low. His arms always widespread as he dared Acrẽa’s vampires to attack him. He kicked one’s nuts and slap one’s head for the fun of it before executing a perfect timing swap to get out of harm's way.

Attacking him, winged chimeric vampires grounded and the flightless vampires skydived. Attacked him, they would be killed. Stop attacking him, they died regardless. It would have been a cycle of despair for those soulless puppets, had they possessed a mind.

Now that Acrẽa had grown used to watching the scene, she wasn’t nearly as demoralized as before. She rejoiced the fact that she wasn’t the target of the humiliation this time. The last time when Acrẽa was the primary subject of the humiliation, she was repeatedly tossed around the air, flailing helplessly in an endless loop of teleport-swap-teleport until she lost all sense of direction. She could not distinguish up from down, left from right, and the sky from the ground. Even when she had sprouted tentacle wings to fly, she could not fly. The world rotated, tumbled and warped in dizzying chaos and Acrẽa felt like she was constantly punched in her gut until he ended Acrẽa.

That skill has definitely fallen to the wrong hand. It should have been a skill to relocate and escape. NOT LIKE THIS, Acrẽa complained.

Unlike Acrẽa, he could zip around the air in a mindless fashion without feeling dizzy.

From the latest conjured , Acrẽa sent waves of her elder vampires out there to be killed and they died hideously as she had expected, but not meaninglessly. Sirafay probed Acrẽa’s mind to keep summoning and sending out more vampiric creatures to appease that madman’s fury.

Acrẽa refused to listen to her weapon. Rule number one, do not give away your location without a counterplan. Do not give me your location without a plan. It was a rule that Acrẽa had been made to remember through various painful experiences, repeatedly.

Wrath could mark his targets through the Horns of Ira in the same manner that Acrẽa could mark her targets by smelling their blood.

“Wrath will look for you. Wrath will find you and he will tear you apart without fail.” Every Demon Lord must have at least heard that boast repeated to them through the words of mouth once. Once released from Munezee’s chain, Wrath would find his targets and destroy them without fail.

The Horns of Ira could immediately pick up her location the moment Acrẽa used her miracles. It was because of those horns that Wrath would always find the target of his ire. That pair of horns remembered the mana signal emitting from a miracle and the identity of the owner of that miracle. Ran from Wrath, his prey could. But never hide from him, as long as they are Immortals, miracles and authorities depended. Running to the end of the universe would not save them from Wrath’s grudge. It was by the combination of Wrath’s overwhelming might and ability to track down his target that he was so feared.

The same pair of horns that made Wrath so terrifying is now sporting on that SOB’s head, no longer a pair, just a lonesome horn. The vampire queen tried to recall the various information she had learned about the Horn of Ira from the lessons and her own experience.

The moment Acrẽa used her miracle, her location would be compromised. And the moment when her location was compromised, “It’s punishment time”, the madman would announce.

Acrẽa suspected that the madman had used the Horn of Ira defensively, reading the mana emission from her miracles and avoiding them. This is unreal, Acrẽa ran from reality. Her battle plan had been completely unraveled by the appearance of this horn.

Panic, Acrẽa thought of saving herself first. Inside the darkness of , the vampire queen swapped clothes with one of her soulless vampire elders. A safety measure. That decaying blue glow emitting out of her armor was a dead giveaway. Acrẽa could only hope to use that a body double as a bait. Sirafay turned into a shield in Acrẽa’s hand as Acrẽa mingled with the rank of her defenders standing in a circle around her body double.

Unlike her vanguard and scouting unit, Acrẽa fitted her defenders with large shields. She had learned that these large shields could prolong their lives for few more seconds and sometimes even minutes.

As though he was done toying with her vampires, that madman dropped a probing squall of falling vampires into with his swap-teleport combo executed on top of the dark dome. Acrẽa made sure her defenders killed every vampire that tumbled right back into , eliminating the chance that the madman would steal their identity as they fell into .

“THAT’S COLD. COME ON. YOU ARE KILLING YOUR PEOPLE AND YOUR LOVERS. YOU SHOULD HELP THEM,” The madman laughed. Acrẽa knew that madman was probing the numbers and position of Acrẽa’s defenders from the sounds, numbers, math, and physics, the kinds of wizardry that Acrẽa could never understand no matter how much he drilled into her head.

More elder vampires and chimeric vampire creatures crashed into , flailing helplessly as they plummeted. The thousands of vampire elders that Acrẽa kept inside the lightless dome made a quick work of those falling vampires.

“BITCH. THAT’S COLD. YOU CANNOT JUST EXECUTE YOUR LOVERS LIKE THAT. THEY ARE YOUR LOVERS. YOUR SUBJECTS. YOUR PUSSIES AND DICKS. WHAT HAVE THEY DONE WRONG? NOTHING. WHY DO YOU HAVE TO KILL THEM?” Even while he was taunting, he was dodging arrows and spells coming at him left and right, strictly maintaining a 60 meters distance from . That was enough distance for him to react to any surprise spell or projectile coming at him. He kept dropping more vampires back into .

Acrẽa made sure those reentering vampires were executed on the spot, in midair or on the cold ground. Twice Acrẽa had fallen for his devilry and was stabbed in her back. No more. The first time, she was not even aware of his method. The second time, she learned that he was mad enough to free-fall, broke his two legs while acting as her vampire elder to locate her position. Since, Acrẽa had mentally marked any vampire she ordered to go out of the perimeter of as sacrifices to dull the madman’s fury. They were meant to waste his mana.

“That’s it. If you are not coming out. I’m coming in,” he declared mockingly, zipping around the perimeter of .

Another rain of free-falling vampires reentered , but Acrẽa’s defending vampire elders made quick work of them. Suddenly, flame erupted from many dying vampire bodies. The madman recycled his oldest trick, attached his incendiary concoction to her vampires as they were free falling. The golden and blue alchemical flame pervaded various defensive positions of , but for a brief moment, a vampire’s true darkness would return without fail as Acrẽa will it.

Came the much dreaded familiar silence show. That madman’s presence had completely vanished. Acrẽa could no longer feel those probing mana waves from the Horn of Ira or hear that madman’s hollering voice. Acrẽa and her army had lost track of his presence. She was not even sure if he had already entered through unknown mean. It has always been this crippling silence show that Acrẽa feared the most. More than often, this was how Acrẽa met her ending.

Acrẽa was desperate to mingle in with her defenders, trying to be one with her soulless puppets, and quietly commanding her body-double to stand out as much as possible.

The vampire queen focused and infused mana into her eyes and ears, to increase her sensitivity and expand her range. Her living hair on edge, moving and sensing. Her sharp ears captured the sound of the weeping winds, her own ragged breathing, and pleading fear. Her keen vampiric eyes could see through the lightless world, constantly flickering. Acrẽa had learned from her experience to trust her back to no soulless puppet of hers when fighting against that madman.

The end is nigh. Sirafay had given up on hope. Acrẽa decided to ignore it. But its fear clearly infected her. Her juices inadvertently leaked out, completely spoiling the new leather.

Had Acrẽa not seen that Horn of Ira growing out of his head, she would employ her miracles to search for his location as her experiences dictated. But this time, carelessly using her miracles, Acrẽa would pay a heavy price this time.

Acrẽa’s pointy, sharp ears picked up the subtle whistles from the sky. The vampire queen, faster than the rest of her defenders, duck low and raised Sirafay, now in its great shield form to repel the rain of poisoned projectiles. Sharp nails and spikes, wicked projectiles coated with Dragon Bane, freefalling from high altitude, pommeled against Sirafay. The four elder vampires standing next to Acrẽa were not so lucky. Against Sirafay, the metallic projectiles clank and bounced off whereas the crystal ones exploded into smaller and finer shards, lodging into the nearest vampire bodies standing around Acrẽa, killing them in the process through the curses imbued inside the Dragon Bane coated shards.

Only the wicked mind of that madman could come up with something like this. Every thin shard erupted from the original crystal projectiles was a death spell for Acrẽa’s vampires, since they could not purge curses out of their bodies the same way Acrẽa could through her Authority. The metal projectiles freefalling from high altitude, 2000 meters and above, easily killed unguarded vampires upon impact. If the impact failed to take their life, a graze from the wicked projectiles would do the job. The Dragon Bane would spell death. And death was claiming hundreds of Acrẽa’s defenders.

Wizardry. Acrẽa dreaded the accuracy of the wicked rain. Its impact zone was so accurate that it was unreal, barely missed the position of her body double by fifteen meters or so. He called it the result of geometrical knowledge and logic, Acrẽa called that stuff “wizardry and devilry”. As Acrẽa was repelling the rain of projectiles with Sirafay, she noticed that incendiary bombs were mixed within the wicked rain, popped here and there like bonfires within . Acrẽa willed the vampiric darkness to return, killing the light sources as fast as possible to prevent that madman’s from having his entry points.

A sudden gurgling sound compelled Acrẽa to turn her head alongside the many still surviving defenders of hers. Acrẽa watched as her body double fell to her knees, clutching her pale waxy throat as the decaying mire gushed out from there in volume. Standing next to her fallen figure, a male elder vampire stood with the wicked silver blade in his hand, wearing a look of knowing and bafflement.

He’s here, Sirafay shouted needlessly. Acrẽa whipped her hand in a furious dark blur, sending corroding gales toward that male elder vampire.

The madman scrambled, evading the gales in panic, trying to mix in with the ranks of Acrẽa’s defenders. But Acrẽa kept her projectiles coming in an endless barrage, keeping him in place. One mistake cost him everything. The role of the hunter and the prey reversed. As vampiric miracle spewed forth from her hands, the vampire queen screamed at her defenders to join the effort of ending her torment once and for all.

Only in the pit of madness that a person would consider undoing his transformation, becoming human again in . Acrẽa stared at that madness in the eyes for a brief moment as several vampiric projectiles phased through his disappearing shadow. The vampire queen turned her head in the direction of that madman’s latest line of sight, searching for him. She spotted him, just the blur of his body appearing and disappearing from one fading glow around the incendiary bomb to the next.

Madness, Acrẽa thought and exploded into action, giving chase. Sirafay turned into a harpoon in her right hand. The smell of his blood, ever familiar to Acrẽa’s nose, filled her world. claimed him, his skin, his flesh, his hair. He howled in pain as devoured his body like a strong acid. But the persistent madman prolonged his suffering, chucking potions as he moved from one glow of incendiary to the next.

Madness, Acrẽa sent homing projectiles in bulks, indiscriminating of the life of her defenders standing on the path. More alchemical incendiaries exploded almost randomly. But the vampire queen noticed a disconnected blazing path in . She immediately realized the madman’s intention, conjured another on top of the old one, preventing the madman from escaping her lightless domain.

Inside , his teleporting skill was severely limited. Her homing projectiles tracked the invisible trail of his blood, following him as he zipped from one fading light source to the next. Inside he could only travel from and to the bright glow of incendiary. Acrẽa had him trapped for the first time. All of a sudden, Acrẽa’s pointy ears registered the sound of her homing vampiric missiles impacted. smashed astral body. twisted body and bone. Her dark corroding gales munched on the fleshes of their victims. But the smell of blood, his blood had vanished. The vampire queen’s instinct screamed at her that the madman had recycled his oldest trick, switching his position and identity with one of her defenders.

Acrẽa swept her sharp eyes around. Could not distinguish her vampires from the madman. This cannot be it, isn’t it? Acrẽa asked herself, holding her breath. She had always imagined this moment, picturing it, thinking about it, dreading about it, but keeping it a secret for so long. This cannot be it, isn’t it? She thought and allowed a loud piercing screech to escape her throat. It was a signal, the signal. Her defenders turned at each other, running their pointy magic cane through their partner’s heart. Thousands of Acrẽa’s defenders committed mass suicide in that manner.

This cannot be it, isn’t it? Acrẽa asked. Her vampiric eyes swept the lightless mass suicide site rapidly. Dark decaying liquid spew out of falling vampiric bodies. Only one of Acrẽa’s defenders stood, soullessly stared down at his pairing partner limping on the ground and gurgling dark decaying liquid.

Got him, the vampire queen clenched her fist in a rush of emotion but did not put down her guard.

Acrẽa knew that one standing was one of her own, a real vampire. And his partner, the one limping on the ground with a look of betrayed and surprise was that madman in disguise. But the paranoia inside her head compelled Acrẽa to send forth a whipping dark gale, sending the head of that male vampire elder flying. Falling to his trickeries and devilries for countless times had taught Acrẽa to doubt everything and everyone.

Only when Acrẽa saw a rain of decaying liquid erupted from that last standing vampire body and its thudding plummet, she felt safe. Slowly, Acrẽa approached that madman in a female vampire elder disguise, sprawling on dark decaying liquid spewed out of his ruptured heart just like thousands of Acrẽa’s defenders.

“I got you,” muttered the vampire queen, still keeping a distance from that sprawling body. Sirafay impaled that female twitching body, twice, liver and left kidney, just to be safe. More dark decaying mire spurted forth from the gashing wounds. Acrẽa used her weapon to poke, searching for the silver blade, the evidence that supported her claim.

Though she could not find that wicked blade, Acrẽa was sure that she had gotten him just by the look on his face. Her summoned vampires in these sparring sessions, soulless, all of them. Their expression lacking, inanimate, unexpressive, like dolls. Their eyes communicated no thought, no emotion, but his was different. “I got you good this time,” Acrẽa declared, poking at his twitching body once more with Sirafay to be extra sure. “End the exam. I have passed. I got you good this time. Admit it and end this exam. I have passed your exam,” she spoke with pleading voice. Her paranoia from her repeated losses and repeated mistakes still overwhelmed Acrẽa. She knew that she had won, but her paranoia convinced her otherwise.

Neither Acrẽa nor her weapon was convinced with their victory. Sirafay probed Acrẽa, pleading her to do away with his head in one quick slash, just to be one hundred percent sure.

Just as then, that pair of blaze blue eyes started moving away from Acrẽa’s figure, looking pass her, staring at something or someone behind her.

“I’m not going to fall for that cheap trick,” muttered the vampire queen.

That disguised hand slowly moved, pointing to Acrẽa’s back.

“I’m not going to fall for that cheap trick,” repeated Acrẽa, steeling her mind. She lifted Sirafay, which had turned into an executioner sword, into the air.

Strength suddenly left that hand. Blaze blue eyes turned murky. But the exam still progressed. A heatwave pervaded her neck. Her vampiric instinct compelled Acrẽa to turn around. Sirafay led the path in a reverse swing. Vampiric miracles shot out in a blind, consuming the explosion of alchemical incendiary, shielding Acrẽa from the light and the flame. In that brief moment when time seemed to freeze inside her head, Acrẽa knew that she had been tricked. But it was already too late. She felt that stinging sharpness dug into her ankle. Acrẽa cried out in pain as she stumbled on her knees.

“You should not have wasted time asking and just brought that blade down.”

Acrẽa heard his voice echoing inside her head. receded in front of her eyes. The exam was over. She had failed yet again.

“I will admit that was a good attempt. That suicide command. I should have expected you to come up with that kind of nasty command considering your nasty temperament. You got me. You got me good.”

Acrẽa clutched her head, deep in despair at the pain to come, deep in despair at her failure. She tried. She employed everything. Still, they were short at claiming him.

“Shit, I’m out of potions and bombs. You really got me this time.”

Acrẽa had failed yet again. Her mind raced, thinking of the mistakes and blunders that lead to this failure before that “Do you know why you have lost?” question would arrive. Nothing good came with that question. Only pain. Only punishment. Her mind raced ahead, unburdened of the unfolding situation and the casual exchange and banter coming out of his mouth. “Do you know why you have lost?” Acrẽa rushed her mind to come up with the answer before that dreadful question arrived. “Do you know why you have lost?” She must come up with the answer to that question while he was still talking some nonsense.

It’s lacking, Acrẽa had thought of this line before taking the exam under the assumption that she would lose. But she did not want to believe that she would fail yet again so she did not think much about it. It’s lacking, it was a good line to buy more time for Acrẽa to think the answer for that dreadful “Do you know why you have lost?” question.

What’s lacking? He would ask. More barrages. More miracles. More vampires. More armies. She would reply accordingly, all nonsense to buy more time for her to continue thinking. She had used up everything, strength, number, miracles, and mana. She had hit the limit of her strength. She had reached her limit as a Demon Lord. Still, she had failed. What else? He would definitely ask. What else? Acrẽa racked her brain.

“That body double tactic was good. Here I was thinking what you were thinking donning such a standing out armor at the start of the match. Oy, Acrẽa, are you listening?”

More body doubles. Yes, more body doubles. Received a miraculous suggestion from the white noises inside her head, Acrẽa got her answer to the “What else?” question. A world of them, and keep them spread out among the Defenders, Vanguard and Scouting units. But he would probe Acrẽa with that “What else?” again, and Acrẽa knew it since she sprouted nonsense to distract him from the real question. What else?

What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else?

“I would consider it a pass…. OY, snap out of it, you listening? Acrẽa? You need help?”

Help? Yes, more help. More Demon Lords. Acrẽa thought that was a good reply. Then she shook her head. Two? Three? The entire faction? Acrẽa thought of submitting to Pride again, to be stabbed that sword once again. After that, she would call the entire faction to help her passing these exams. Despair at that dark future, Acrẽa felt her nails sinking into her temples. A dozen more Demon Lords would still not be enough. Let alone eight. She imagined that Greed would outfit all of them in the best set of armor and weapon and Divine Relics. NOT ENOUGH. Acrẽa still had no answer to that “Do you know why you have lost?” question. So she had to keep buying time. What else? What else? What else? What else? What else?

“Oy, Acrẽa. Snap out of it, bitch. Or I will give you a slap.”

More slaps? No, no no. What would that do? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else?

“That’s it. Grit your teeth. I’m slapping you, Crazy.”

More crazy bitches? Echo? Niwdar? No, no no no. How would that even help? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else?

All of a sudden, Acrẽa felt her vision flared up. “What?” She asked, snapping out of reflex.

“WHAT means what? You crazy bitch. You passed. Snap the fuck out of it.”

“Stop fucking with me. If you want to stab, stab. I don’t have the fucking answer. If you want to punish, punish. I don’t have the answer. Stop fucking with me. If you want to stab, STAB.” Acrẽa pounded her fist at her chest, “STAB MEEE.” Her vision immediately flared up again.

“You passed. Bitch. Must I slap you again?”

Acrẽa stared hard at him. Slowly would the realization sink into her head, very slowly. When Acrẽa has finally understood, she held her face within her hands, howling. Her tears kept pouring out.