Chương 14: I Kidnapped a Villager

POV: The Dark Lord, Milo Miles After Evelisse left, I heard the door open behind me. Standing there was Nyx with an annoyed expression as if wondering what mistake I had made this time. She then walked over.

"So?" She crossed her arms.

"How did it go?"

"I, uh…" I scratched the back of my neck.

"She said the Church is coming for us. Tomorrow. Probably morning." For a second Nyx just stared at me, as if she hadn't quite heard it." What?" Her voice dropped flat. Then it climbed.

"That's it. That's it, then. I'm done for." She drove both hands into her hair and dragged them back, raking it into a mess.

"I should've known. I should have known you'd find a way to screw this up." She spun on her heel, wings snapping open, already muttering something about flying out and killing whoever she could find before the night was over. I lunged and caught one of her wings.

"Wait, wait! Just listen to me!"

"Let go." She wrenched forward.

"I'm done listening to you. I should never have listened to you in the first place, not from day one!"

"She told us to move! To move away!" I hung on, boots skidding in the grass as her wings beat against my grip. Level 9999 strength, and she was still dragging me. She had to be just as strong, maybe stronger.

"Don't you get it? If she wanted me dead, she'd have just done it. She warned us instead!"

"So what?" She twisted, and with one sharp roll of her shoulders flung me off. I went sprawling across the grass.

"It doesn't change a single thing. They're still coming. We did this your way — the slow, careful, bloodless way — and what level are you, Milo? Ten." She spat the number.

"The last few Dark Lords hit thirty in two days. Thirty." That stung more than the throw had. I pushed myself up, grass clinging to my robe.

"Nyx. This is my second shot at life. Maybe my last shot. If I turn into the kind of Dark Lord who keeps himself alive by stacking up corpses; then I've just wasted it all over again. I would rather not." She went quiet. Looked at me for a long moment. Then she crossed the distance between us, slower now.

"Listen to me, Milo Miles." Her voice had changed, lower, almost tired.

"I know what this is. You were a screw-up in your old life, and now you want this one to mean something. I get it. But this system, the Afterport, the Order, all of it, it was never built with you in mind. It doesn't exist to grant you the happy little life you never got. It exists for whatever the things up there want from it. And you are not one of them."

"I know." I held her gaze.

"Which is exactly why I'm saying, there's a workaround." Her expression cracked back into frustration.

"A workaround?" She jabbed a finger hard into my chest, punctuating each word.

"You. Are. Weak. You're a coward, you won't do the one thing I keep telling you would make this easy, and now what? You want to pack up, hide in some hole, crawl your way up the Terror Levels at a snail's pace, and run again the second the Church sniffs you out?" The finger pressed harder.

"It's too slow. The balance of this entire world will collapse before you ever catch up."

"I can't run." She laughed. Short, humorless.

"What? You don't want to kill. You don't want to run. So what's left, Milo? Don't tell me the grand plan is to sit on your ass floating meat over a fire while I do everything for you."

"If I run," I said, "the Church will know someone tipped me off. And the only outsider who came here today was the Hero. They'll suspect her." Nyx stared at me. Then she barked out a disbelieving laugh.

"Oh my god. You're protecting her now?" She threw up her hands.

"What is this? You want to be the noble prince who rides in and saves the heroine? Are you really so desperate for a girlfriend that you'd get us both killed for one?"

"Nyx, please, I'm telling you I can—""No. I'm done. I am so done. You said you would do something so the Church won't attack us, yet this happened," She turned away.

"Whatever. I'll just let them kill you tomorrow, get myself fired, and figure out my own life from there. At least that I can manage."

"Nyx, listen—I have a plan—" She didn't even slow down. She stepped into the hut and slammed the door behind her, and a beat later I heard the bolt slide home. I let out a long breath. My head was pounding. I turned to Luke. She immediately looked away, very pointedly, toward the trees. Couldn't blame her since she'd just watched something stupidly awkward. That was when I noticed the food baskets, still sitting where Luke had left them, a little fruit and a waterskin left over inside. The growl.

During the conversation with Evelisse, that faint sound. It had been her stomach. It had to have been. I gathered the leftover fruit and the waterskin into one of the baskets and held it out to Luke.

"She can't have gotten far. Think you can catch her?" If I was going to die tomorrow, I could at least do one decent thing before I did. Maybe not decent by Nyx's standards. But a good deed, all the same. After staring at the clouds for a while, I opened my skill window. I wanted to see what I could do in a fight with my current skills. SKILLS PASSIVE Mental Link, Intimidating Aura, Flight OFFENSIVE Sleep Gas, Telekinesis DEFENSIVE Smokescreen, New Skill Available!

SUMMONS None I noticed a new skill being available despite not doing anything to scare off people today. Come to think of it, if Terror Level is based on fear, that would mean I could earn it passively as long as people spread the word. Slower, sure, but it was still progress. I tapped the defensive skill part, and it showed me the new skill. Purgatory Shield Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Creates a shield at will; size adjustable to the desired object to be protected.

The stronger the will to protect, the stronger the shield. This seemed like a very useful skill. Though, it sounded a bit weird, especially the will-to-protect part. That made the skill more suitable for a Hero rather than a Dark Lord. But I would take it. A shield-skill would be useful in a fight. I proceeded to the basic stats window. NAME Milo Miles CLASS Dark Lord LEVEL 9999 TERROR LEVEL 11 For my plan to work, I had decided to risk it all on Evelisse.

Still, it wouldn't hurt to pick up a few more skills to help me maneuver through the chaos of tomorrow. The sun was still high, so I figured I would make use of the time I had left. I asked Luke to take her human form, and she obliged: same oversized dark coat, the same dangling sleeves, three eyes and all. I scooped her up like last time and told her to point me toward a new village.

This one sat farther out than Milly Village, but it still took less than thirty minutes to reach—not that I had a watch to accurately track the distance. I hovered high above the village entrance. I couldn't make out its name, but at a glance it looked much like Milly: the kind of place you would forget the moment you left it. A loose scatter of timber-and-thatch houses clustered around a packed-dirt road that swelled into a square near the middle.

Fenced plots of farmland sat behind some of the homes, and a ring of tall wooden stakes enclosed the whole thing. As I drifted toward the entrance, a few villagers spotted me and started pointing. Between the robe and the fact that word of my visits to two nearby villages had surely spread, they had most likely assumed I was the Dark Lord. To sell the part, I told Luke to shift into her full Cerberus form the instant I dropped her. I released my arms, and as she fell, white light swallowed her whole.

Her silhouette stretched and split into something monstrous; when the light scattered, a three-headed beast stood in the dirt below in all its mythical glory. She even roared, which did wonders for the atmosphere. People were screaming and scattering before I even landed. A few villagers were arming themselves; pitchforks, rusted swords, the occasional kitchen knife. I didn't know who the chief was, and frankly didn't need to.

Most of the villagers had already vanished, hiding in their homes or fleeing somewhere I couldn't see. The ones who stayed were armed, and nearly all of them were men. Then I caught it out of the corner of my eye: a woman, probably early forties, hanging back behind the cluster of men. Too scared, maybe, to make the run home, so the men had closed ranks to shield her.

"What a wonderful display of solidarity," I said.

"Though I think we all know you're no match for me."

"W-what do you want from us?" The man with the pitchfork managed it, voice shaking. I raised my arm toward the woman. A faint purple light wrapped around her, and she lifted off the ground—too fast for the men to grab her back down. I drew my hand in, and she came drifting toward me. She struggled, but I held the strings; all she could do was wobble in the air. When she was close enough, I breathed out the sleep gas, and she went limp. I settled her over my shoulder.

The man with the pitchfork charged — a last, desperate lunge. The steel snapped against me like a twig.

"None of your attacks will work, humans. I'm only here to amuse myself. So let's make it interesting, shall we?" I forced a smirk.

"I'll return whenever I please and take one of you with me. The moment you see me rise above that entrance, run. Run as fast as you can. The slow and the unlucky come with me. As for what happens to them after?" I let the pause stretch.

"You'll find out, if you're the one I catch." I leapt onto Luke's back and signaled for her to carry us out. It was the best way I could think of to raise my terror level without actually killing anyone. The plan was simple enough: stash the poor woman in the hut, let her sit a day, invent some reason I had spared her, and send her home. I did not feel good about it, especially if she had kids waiting for their mother to walk back through the door. Kids who might remember this.

Kids who might grow up swearing vengeance, vowing to slay the Dark Lord someday. Sorry, children. But if I don't do this, I might not live past tomorrow. Your mother will be returned to you soon. Once we'd put enough distance between us and the village, I jumped down from Luke's back. She then shifted back into her human form, and I scooped her up with my free hand. A strange sight, surely, a man hauling two women around like sacks of rice. When I landed at my kingdom, I set Luke down first.

She bolted straight for the food baskets, dug out some leftover vegetables, and started eating. I went to open the door to the hut. It wouldn't budge. Of course it wouldn't. Nyx had thrown the bolt. I could force it, but the door would splinter, and given the state Nyx was in, I had no idea how she would react to that. So I circled the house and tried the window instead. It slid open easily enough. I climbed through what passed for a living room. No sign of Nyx. She was probably asleep in the bedroom.

I laid the village woman down against the wall, propping her up gently. Still out cold. She was just an ordinary human, so I figured the sleep gas would be working for a while. Just to be safe, however, I breathed out another round of sleep gas. It made me felt like a creep, and at that moment, I supposed I was a scumbag beyond redemption. I went outside, crossed to the food baskets, and found two apples still sitting inside. I couldn't tell whether Luke had left them on purpose or not.

I took one, stepped back into the hut, and set it down on the floor in front of her door.

"Hey. If… if you're hungry, I put an apple at your doorstep. I'll just be, uhh, doing some things out here. So..." No response, figures. I stepped outside, sat down on the grass, tipped my head back to the clear blue sky, and bit into the other apple. A moment later, a familiar ping. Terror Level: 13 Two levels. Not bad. If things kept working the way they had been, I figured I would hit fifteen or so by morning. Time to check the skills again.

SKILLS PASSIVE Mental Link, Intimidating Aura, Flight OFFENSIVE Sleep Gas, Telekinesis, New Skill Available! DEFENSIVE Defensive: Smokescreen, Purgatory Shield SUMMONS None I tapped the offensive tab, hoping for something with a little more punch, something like an actual way to hit an enemy, for once. Sensory Distortion Scramble a target's perception. Choose one: muffled hearing, blinded vision, or loss of balance. Only one effect per individual at a time. Cannot be cleansed. Duration: 10 seconds.

Cooldown: 60 seconds. Useful, maybe. It was the first skill I got with a cooldown. Honestly, it seemed strong enough to warrant one—blinding an enemy outright was nothing to scoff at. On top of that, it cannot be cleansed, which probably meant this debuff cannot be cured until the duration was up. The limit was probably there to stop me from disorienting a hundred soldiers at once. I had suspected this before, but it seemed a new skill was not guaranteed with every Terror Level.

Two levels gained this time, and only one skill to show for it. I closed the window and let my mind drift to tomorrow morning and everything that might come with it. I thought of the possibilities, the evil deeds that I might have to do, and for some reason, hoping for Evelisse to still have… feelings for me. The thought occupied me for most of the day. By the time I finally settled on a plan, evening had begun to creep in, and I made my way back through the window. The village woman was still asleep in the corner.

And the apple I had left at Nyx's door was gone. I took a shower. The bathroom was simple yet surprisingly decent. There was a toilet, a mirror, a sink, and a small area behind a glass divider with a showerhead. I did not know where the waste went after flushing, but again, as long as it worked, I did not care. I slept in the living room that night; in the far corner, well away from the village woman, of course. Then it was dawn. A ping pulled me out of sleep. It seemed like my hunch of leveling up was right.

I called up the status window. Terror Level: 15 Then I checked the new skill. A passive, this time. Affection Sight But before I could read the description beneath it, I heard it. The sharp, unmistakable sound of a spell being cast, somewhere outside. I was through the window in an instant, rushing toward the source. Luke was frozen solid. A thick shell of ice encased her in mid-snarl, all three heads locked in place.

And across the clearing stood three figures, weapons drawn; there was the mage girl from before, a silver-haired man with the kind of face you would see on the smug rival in some anime, and, of course, Evelisse. She was not looking at me the way she had yesterday.