Chương 75: Chapter 74 - Artificial pain

Lucid sat cross-legged in the absolute blackness that had swallowed the world. What had just happened? Was he in some kind of rift? Had he been knocked out? No. The memory was too visceral, too real. He looked down at his hands. Clutched in his grip was a horn. An ivory tusk, smooth and cool, radiating a faint, sorrowful luminescence. The horn of the lady, Neptune. It felt more real than anything. As he held it, the solid object shimmered and dissolved into a stream of light that poured directly into his chest.

'What the...' A voice resounded inside his mind, clear and direct. The usual boiling black letters of the Specter's notifications didn't materialize. He didn't know why.

You have obtained Neptune's Ivory Tusk — Legendary Divine Lance Rank: UR A Monolith once appointed by distant goddesses, gifted a sacred tusk to safeguard humankind. But upon witnessing the horrors of the land, her sorrow festered into wrath. The tusk meant for protection became an instrument of ruin, and she drowned continents and civilizations alike, washing away mercy beneath relentless tides.

The monotonous, system-like voice spoke directly into his consciousness. The familiar white shadow of its interface was absent. It was talking to him now. But he paid it no mind. The notification was a ghost against the screaming reality of what he had just done. Lucid never considered himself a saint, but brutally murdering someone with his bare hands… that was the act of a cold-blooded killer. His mind reeled, teetering on the edge of sanity. The worst part wasn't just the violence; it was the whiplash.

One moment, her beauty had hypnotized him, her sadness had felt like his own, and a desperate, chivalrous need to protect her had swelled in his chest. The next, a wave of pure, seething disgust had overwritten everything, making her presence an offense, her form a grotesque idol that had to be destroyed. That shift hadn't felt like a choice. It felt like being puppeteered. And now, in the hollow silence afterward, all that was left was an immeasurable, crushing guilt sitting like a stone where his heart should be.

He blinked. The darkness shattered into the familiar, vast expanse of the purple void. He was floating, disoriented, before the spectral train tracks.

"Lucid! You are awake! Are you alright?"

"Don't move, you'll worsen your injuries!" Alice's voices, worried and overlapping, filtered into his awareness. He looked down. The memory rushed back—not of his own violence, but of a gentle, mournful embrace. The narwhale's ivory tusk had pierced his stomach. He didn't remember the impact as pain, only as a profound, sorrowful intrusion. Now, the agony arrived all at once, a white-hot brand in his gut. He winced, a low groan escaping his lips.

But then the familiar green light enveloped him, Alice's fate essence weaving a protective, healing barrier against the void's cold harshness.

"Can you channel my fate essence, Lucid?" Alice asked, her tone edged with urgency. Lucid nodded weakly. He lifted a trembling hand, focusing on the mental command to manifest the Chain. A bright, translucent light sparked to life at his fingertips, coalescing into the beginning of a link—and then sputtered out, shattering into useless motes before it could fully form. His body felt utterly exhausted, drained to its core. The train and the repaired section of rail were a distance away now.

He understood why the essence failed. Alice's power was a loan, a borrowed strength. The more he used it, the more his own mortal frame struggled to act as a conduit. It was a taxing paradox. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Geez..." he sighed, the sound swallowed by the immense silence. He needed to get back. He looked around. Debris littered the void—jagged, decent-sized rocks adrift in the gloom. He pushed off, attempting to swim. It was a ridiculous, awkward struggle, all jerking twists and futile kicks, each movement sending fresh jolts of pain from the slowly knitting wound in his abdomen. The pain didn't fade; he simply chose to move through it. He made it to a large, craggy rock and hugged it, catching his breath.

The void's "air" was cold and dusty, carrying a scent like ancient minerals and forgotten places. He was positioned just below the suspended rail. Gritting his teeth, he bent his knees and pushed off with all his remaining strength. The force was just sufficient to propel him upward, though the rock he'd used drifted slowly away beneath him. He rose, the rail growing larger, the details of the waiting train becoming clearer. He could almost hear the distant, muffled murmurs of the passengers.

Then his ascent stalled. He hung in the emptiness for a moment before gravity—or whatever law ruled this place—reasserted itself. He began to sink, slowly but unmistakably. A creeping dread slithered up his spine.

"Shit." He forced his hand up again, trying to manifest Alice's Chain. It sparked and broke. He tried again. It shattered, the backlash a sharp, psychic sting. Panic clawed at him. Then, in that desperate moment of struggle, a different power surged from within. Not green, but a deep, luminous purple. Fate essence, yes, but of a completely different character. It formed a brief, unstable chain that shot upward, its links resembling shattered violet glass. He grabbed it.

"Lucid, that is different from mine! Where—?"

"Gyhhhhaaa!" he hissed through clenched teeth, using the momentary anchor to haul his bloody, protesting body upward. The purple chain was unstable, fracturing under the strain, disintegrating into a million shimmering pieces that grazed his chin like cold ash the moment its purpose was served. His hand slapped onto the solid edge of the rail. Gasping, every muscle screaming, he pulled himself onto the track, collapsing onto the hard surface. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

He was directly in front of the train carriage. What was that? A desperate moment of will? A newfound power? No. He knew. It was Neptune's lingering essence. He didn't know exactly what she had given him, but the voice that had spoken directly to him… that had been real. He wasn't an Awakened. He wasn't an Enlightened. Yet he had heard the system's direct address. Alice hadn't been the source. It had spoken to him, though it hadn't said its name. He would have to think about that later.

Now, he had a train to catch. He stood up on unsteady legs, looking at the wound in his stomach, now sealed under a lattice of faint green light. The people were there, behind the windows. He took a shuddering breath and moved toward the train. Moments later, he entered through the rear exit hatch, avoiding the control room entirely. It wouldn't do to draw suspicious glances from any awake crew members, and by now, he assumed at least some of them had to be stirring.

He moved through the cargo carriage, a dark silhouette against the dim emergency lighting. Frightened individuals huddled in clusters, their eyes widening as his rough, bloodied form passed by. It was stupid to walk in plain view, but his seat was in first class, and there was no other path to get there. He made his way forward, half-expecting to find Ayame, the tall, silent Oni woman—waiting in her usual spot. But to his dismay, her seat was empty.

Only scattered soda cans littered the floor beneath the table, rolling slightly with the train's gentle motion. His gaze drifted toward the forward exit hatch, where the conductor still lay unconscious. Lucid felt no urge to go over there. He had done the worst of it: steering the damned thing, repairing the celestial rails, and narrowly avoiding a narwhale born from sorrow—though he had been unlucky and ended up pierced by it. The rest—the waking, the explaining, the returning to normal, was up to them.

He sank into his seat with a long, worn-out sigh. His eyes felt heavy, his very body felt spent. It wasn't a physical tiredness, but a deep, soul-level exhaustion. He felt… despair. Hopelessness. A chilling conviction that he hadn't changed for the better at all. He was the same selfish bastard, the one who wouldn't think twice about betraying others if it served him. The brutal, cold-blooded murder he had just committed didn't disprove that theory; it engraved it in stone.

'Neptune... I'm… so…' He couldn't finish the thought. An apology was a pathetic, worthless coin to offer a god he had slaughtered.

"Are you alright?" Alice's voice was soft in his mind, a gentle probe. She could feel the edges of his inner turmoil, a dark echo through their linked fate. He momentarily snapped back to reality, a thin veneer of normality hastily applied over the cracking surface of his psyche.

"Uhh… yes. Of course…" The lie was flat, unconvincing even to his own ears. It seemed the entire encounter, the pocket dimension, the deity, the killing, the fleeting, beautiful sadness, was hidden from Alice. To mask the inner storm of guilt and sorrow, to show no weakness, he performed a simple, mundane act. He grabbed one of the discarded red soda cans. He cracked it open with a sharp hiss and took a deep, deliberate gulp, as if the act of drinking could wash something away.

"Yuck."

"It tastes like shit…" He leaned his head back against the cool seat, closing his eyes briefly against the dim carriage lights. The image of her peaceful, final smile flashed against his eyelids. He forced them open.

"I miss the green herbal tea."