Chương 234: Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Thirty-Four

Despite Adam's fear that the Flayed Lady worshipper in his stage ten group would've pre-emptively blocked him, that was not the case at all, since he was easily able to find the blonde vampire in the tavern. Beck had no luck with the three Nwetrou worshippers in his group, and Adam likewise couldn't find the bald fish man he'd seen in his orb of insight.

"Maybe the reason she did not block you is because it is a trap," Kat said. Adam nodded.

"It is more than likely."

"You're still going to fight her," Kat stated.

"I am." Instead of asking him to reconsider, Kat just pulled out her own challenge stone and gave him a grin before disappearing. The blonde vampire with the diadem on her head also vanished. Beck laughed.

"She's starting to grow on me." Adam frowned.

"I hope the Flayed Lady didn't predict this…"

"Adam, Kat's a player-killer," Beck pointed out.

"If she was weak or easy to catch off guard, then she would never have made it to stage fifteen last time." Despite Beck's assurances, they waited five full minutes before Kat reappeared in her seat, which immediately broke under her massive matriarch form. She reverted back to normal and looked Adam right in the eyes as she said, "I just saved your life."

"That bad?" Beck asked.

"She was prepared to counter Adam's projectile build. She had this strange aura around her that sent out tendrils to intercept attacks, alongside a spell that made her teleport when she was about to get hit, replacing her with a blood clone."

"The Shade Barrier spell," Adam said.

"Damn, she was very prepared…"

"Yes," Kat replied.

"I do not think you would have won against her." Adam frowned, but knew she was likely telling the truth.

"You should probably avoid targeting Flayed Lady worshippers," Beck concluded.

"If she knows your build this closely, the Flayed Lady must be spying on you," Kat theorised.

"What's new?" Adam remarked drily.

"Question is, who will the blonde vampire be replaced with in my stage ten."

"Maybe Alivida will let you try to use the orb again tomorrow night," Beck said.

"I doubt it, but I'll give it a try," Adam replied.

"Hopefully whoever it'll be is not just another Flayed Lady worshipper. But if I can't go for her worshippers in the tavern, then who do I go for instead?"

"You should kill a man named James Carteaux," Kat said.

"He was in my last group."

"Why?" Adam asked, while Beck had a contemplative look on his face.

"I recognise that last name," he said.

"I cannot explain it," Kat answered.

"But I feel like he is dangerous." Adam asked his cube to show them the guy. His hologram appeared by a different table a few metres away. He wore a bored expression on his lightly-tanned face while balancing a pencil on his finger. His hair was a tussled light-brown mane and his eyes were a dull blue with star-shaped irises, marking him as a worshipper of Messimer. The moment Beck saw him, he let out a sound of recognition.

"That's the Necromancer I told you about! The one who reanimated my friend!" Kat looked at Beck.

"He had the Necromancer wand in my stage, but he struggled to use it, because of the Forlorn Shadow. When we killed the Ritualist, he swapped out his Spellcaster staff for the bone wand."

"He only had the one wand when I fought him," Beck said with a frown.

"If he fuses them, he'll be even more trouble."

"I'll take care of him," Adam said.

"It should be me," Beck insisted.

"Wand spells are slow to cast, and even the summoning powers of the Ritualist will not be immediately available to him since he won't have time to prepare. Plus, you worship the same Absolute. I can take him out," Adam concluded.

"You should deal with someone that you don't have a history with."

"Fine," Beck said. The events of his last loop are definitely still affecting him. I need to make sure he keeps his level-headedness. Adam pulled out his challenge stone and aimed it at the Necromancer. < < Challenge Stone Activated > > < You have forced Player James Carteaux into fighting you > Adam was teleported to the arena alongside his target, landing on his feet atop a wooden floor like the one inside the Tome Keeper's giant library.

The seating around him looked like it was cut from bookshelves, showing old dusty tomes and scrolls between the legs of the spectators on each level of the seats curving around his half of the arena. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Akin to the Absolute's abode, the spectators were flesh-wrought creatures, shadow-and-bone humanoid birds, flesh smiths wearing skin robes, bone constructs that defied logic with their anatomy, and things made of metal that were best described as robots. Most surprising of all, however, was the fact that there was a special booth right behind Adam wherein the Tome Keeper and his bodyguard, Heskel, appeared. The boyish-looking Absolute had his enormous tome in front of him and looked up in apparent surprise.

"So, this is what it looks like. I see," he remarked. One of the shadowy bird scribes jotted something down on a scroll using a pen. Heskel grunted something that Adam assumed was akin to a personal assistant telling their boss they didn't have time to play around.

"It should only be a moment," the Tome Keeper told his servant. On the other half of the arena, everything was made of obsidian dotted with blinking galaxies visible within. It was remarkably similar to the shard that Adam had lodged in his heart, but not exactly the same. On the stands were various creatures with upside-down pyramid bodies and heads.

Some of them had business suits and togas over their human bodies extending below the strange floating heads, while the others were entirely just pyramids, with tentacles and whiskers below. They were all dotted with eyes. Even one of the business men had a tie with an eyeball looking around. Unlike Adam's part of the arena, Messimer did not appear behind his adherent. Maybe it's because he is not yet chosen.

In the act of Adam switching Absolutes to the Tome Keeper, he had technically been chosen by him, although he hadn't yet gained a second boon, so it felt like an in-between state. Still, it was interesting that the Absolutes might appear to watch their chosen ones fight. Although, it's likely that the Tome Keeper just appeared because he's curious. James Carteaux looked around where he stood at the other end of the arena.

He wore the gluttonous aristocrat's crimson shirt, the rat whistle necklace, the mask of convergence from the Ritualist weapon, mage aspirant's cowl, spring boots, the fetish of sloth and wraith lantern trinkets, some black pants with silver stitching, and eyeball rings Adam did not recognise.

"You challenged me," James said, his voice flat and dull.

"Why?" Adam didn't respond and instead activated his lucky charm and barrage master's coat, before flinging his kunai straight for James' centre of mass. The throwing dagger split into twenty-one, then duplicated into three two times thanks to his barrage gloves, half of the kunai becoming phantoms, and finally the Ghost evolution tripled the number with even more phantoms.

Thanks to the lucky charm, all of the kunai honed directly in on the same spot on James' body, but the Necromancer was quick to react to the overwhelming attack, triggering the eyeball ring on his left hand, which sent a shimmering field outward from his finger. As it washed over all of the many projectiles, they suddenly switched directions, randomly picking somewhere new to target.

James smirked, confident that he'd defused Adam's strongest attack, but then Adam triggered his mentalist's locket and swept the relic's control across all of the projectiles, pulling them towards the same spot on James' body. Before the Necromancer could activate any other relic, he was pierced through by nearly 400 projectiles, utterly destroying his body.

His crimson shirt released a blood nova from the first impact, but it did nothing to protect him, and he was dead before the first tick of Adam's stacking bleed affliction could go off. All that remained of him was scattered bits of flesh, bone, skin, and hair. Adam retrieved his kunai as the fight came to a close.

"Well done," the Tome Keeper praised him. < < Challenge Stone Deactivated > > < You have defeated Player James Carteaux in the arena > < < Victory Pearl Obtained > > Adam was back in his seat in the tavern, surprising both of his friends.

"That was quick," Beck noted.

"Would've been quicker if he hadn't made all my projectiles briefly lose their targeting power with his Absolute relic," Adam replied.

"Maybe I should've gotten the blink ring after all."

"Oh, I got that relic too," Beck said, showing off a silver band with an eyeball on it." < < Unique Relic > > < Ring of the Misleading Target (Rare) — Once invoked, all projectiles and spells targeting the bearer will be turned away, so long as the bearer worships Messimer. 5-minute cooldown >"Only a five-minute cooldown??" Adam said in surprise.

"Yeah, it's quite powerful," Beck replied.

"It was the reward for stage nine's quest. I'm glad I finally got something useful out of worshipping Messimer."

"Have you warned Lasse about it?" Adam asked.

"It directly counters his build."

"He should've gotten it too," Beck said.

"Oh, right. I forgot he also worships Messimer."

"You still need to find a target," Kat told Beck.

"Since I can't take out more of the fish boys, I already know who I'm going to challenge," he replied. Without any further explanation, he pulled out his stone, mentally prompted the tavern to show him a Caucasian guy with red gelled-up spiky hair and black plate armour, and then they both vanished. About twenty seconds later, Beck returned to his seat, picking up a crab claw and continuing to eat as if nothing had happened.

"Who was that?" Adam asked.

"They call him Jack the Shark, or well, they do after stage eleven," Beck said.

"He's a Nharlla worshipper who apparently broke completely in my last run, because he started eating other players for power. Something to do with one of the legendaries from Miredeep and a relic from Nharlla. Anyway, it's better he's dead before he can end up down the same path."

"How do you know he will repeat the same fate?" Kat asked.

"Are things not quite different this time?"

"I don't," Beck admitted.

"But the way I see it, even if he never finds the legendary, he might just end up killing other players in a different way. But, enough about that. Thinking too hard on this stuff makes me feel like I'm part of Minority Report…" Adam wasn't sure what to think about using future actions to justify killing someone, especially when he'd managed to steer Kat away from such a dark path by intervening. But I get it. It's impossible to tell if someone will change completely if all the cards in their hand are swapped.

Someone destined to become a cannibal player-killer seems impossible to fix, especially if going to Nharlla's realm is the thing that breaks him and turns him down that path. It was part of beating stage ten that players would go to their patron's domain, and Emelia had told him long ago that those who went to Nharlla's realm were fundamentally changed by the experience, losing their sense of self.

The only way to potentially help such a person from repeating that fate would be to have them swap patrons, but that too was a dubious prospect. If I stayed in this universe, maybe I would end up justifying things in the same way. After all, if I had dealt with Katherine Joan Williams before stage six, then she wouldn't be able to charm me, Mikhail, and Sarah… Adam stuck a piece of fried chicken in his mouth to quell the maelstrom of complicated thoughts this topic spawned.

He decided to hold off on worrying about this until he was actually in the situation to make such a decision. After they were done eating, Beck left his dimension, but Kat stayed behind. Adam had thought to talk to Seo-Yoon and Natalia, as well as Sarah Ayala, but since they had another day tomorrow, he wasn't in a hurry, and the way Kat looked at him made him forget the many plans he had in mind.

They went up the stairs to the player house and enjoyed each other's company until early morning before sleep found them.