Chương 13: Strange New Oaths

Lio tilted his head with interest. This confirmed his theory that even the general topic was enough to trigger the Oath. That level of restriction suggested whatever information Ophila possessed was considered extremely sensitive by whoever had designed these contracts. Then the pendant pulsed once again. This time, Lio almost blacked out.

He barely managed to drag himself back out into the realm of consciousness, as his heart stuttered again, missing two beats in a row this time before lurching back into an erratic rhythm. His knees buckled, as his body began to shut down. Lio's hand reached over to the pendant, fingers closing around the obsidian surface. It was hot, and shaking violently with so much accumulated death energy. He quickly willed it to stop. For a moment, nothing happened.

The artifact resisted, like it had become addicted to the massive flow of death energy. Still, Lio pushed harder, forcing his will into the obsidian, commanding it to release. And his willpower was much stronger than the artifact's. The pendant gave one final, violent pulse, almost like it wanted one last satisfaction against its new owner before going to sleep. The pain peaked so high that Lio actually gasped, an involuntary release as his body almost succumbed to the pain.

His vision went white, then red, then black. His heart actually stopped for a second, before he managed to will it back to life. Then all at once, the oppressive aura dissipated, with the suffocating weight being lifted from the room. Lio slumped against the table. Sweat dripped down his face, soaking into his collar. His hands were trembling, as his nerves struggled to recover from the harsh effects. Meanwhile, the pendant had gone cold and inert against his chest.

Lio looked around the tavern, assessing the damages. The young one was still curled on the floor, sobbing quietly, but his breathing had slowed from that panicked hyperventilation. The other patrons who'd been frozen in their seats were starting to move again, glancing around nervously, clearly confused about what had just happened. And the woman had— Oh? His eyes narrowed in slight surprise. She'd recovered faster than he'd expected.

Her pale face was still drained of color and her ice-blue eyes were still wide with fear, but Lio could see an fiery determination dancing behind her eyes. Her hand was already moving, pulling another vial from her belt. The liquid was a deep black, seeming to absorb light instead of reflecting. She quickly uncapped it with her thumb, and muttered a quick whisper beneath her breath. Immediately, the liquid began to glow.

Lio glanced at her fingers to see that they were pressed against her collarbone where he could now see the faint outline of a rune beneath her shirt. The woman's arm snapped forward with lightning quick speed, flinging the contents of the vial directly at his face. His inhumane reflexes kicking in, Lio's hand moved to his wrist, touching [Mach Heart].

Power flooded his legs, and he kicked off the floor, launching himself backward just as the liquid splashed across the space where his head had been a fraction of a second earlier. The black substance hit the table, and the wood began to dissolve immediately, hissing and bubbling as the liquid ate through it like acid. Smoke rose in acrid plumes, carrying a chemical stench that burned Lio's nostrils. Wow. Now that's corrosive.

If that had hit his face, it would probably have melted through his skin, muscle, and bone in only a matter of seconds. Lio landed on a nearby table, narrowing his eyes as he continued staring at the woman. She'd already pulled another vial, this one filled with clear liquid that looked like water. Her fingers pressed against her rune again, and the clear liquid began to shimmer with a faint blue light. She threw it. Lio dodged left, [Mach Heart] propelling him across the room.

The vial shattered against the wall behind him, and the liquid spread across the surface. A multitude of ice formed instantly. Not just frost or a thin layer either. It was a thick, crystalline ice that spread outward from the impact point in branching patterns, covering the entire wall in seconds. The temperature in the immediate area dropped so fast that Lio could see his breath misting in the air. Lio paused, just to marvel at the sight. This really was one of the most versatile runes he'd ever witnessed.

He was guessing that her rune let her imbue liquids with different properties. Acid, ice, probably other effects depending on what she was carrying. The woman was already moving, circling around the overturned tables with surprising speed. Her hand went to her belt again, pulling two vials simultaneously this time. Lio watched her with detached interest, ready to accelerate away at any moment. She was good, he mused. At least better than most rune users he'd fought across the loops.

Her movements were efficient and practiced, showcasing her years of training. The woman threw both vials simultaneously—one high, and one low. Sighing, Lio touched [Mach Heart] again, launching himself straight up. Both vials shattered where he'd been standing. The liquid from the first vial hit the floor and ignited, hungry blue-green flames spreading across the wooden boards with supernatural speed.

The second vial's contents splashed upward, and where it touched the flames, the fire intensified, burning so hot that the wood beneath began to char and crack. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. Lio's eyes widened a fraction. An accelerant and ignition source. She was trying to trap him and limit his movement options. He almost grinned. How very clever. Lio landed on one of the tavern's support beams, his bare feet gripping the rough wood.

From this vantage point, he could see the entire room laid out below him. The woman had positioned herself near the back exit, her remaining vials arranged in her hand like playing cards. Her pale eyes tracked his movement, and Lio could almost see the calculations going on behind them. She was definitely planning something. Lio's hand moved toward [Mach Heart] again, his fingers hovering over the rune on his wrist. It had been so long since he'd had a proper fight.

Something with some actual back-and-forth, where his opponent demonstrated genuine competence and creativity. The woman was just that good! His finger touched the rune, but he stopped. The flames below were spreading, licking hungrily at the wooden tables and chairs. Black smoke was beginning to fill the upper portion of the tavern, curling along the ceiling in thick clouds. The remaining patrons had already fled, but the building itself was catching fire now. Within a few minutes, it would be completely engulfed.

Any more damage, and it would be beyond the extent of what that could fix. And the city guards would definitely notice, resulting in an investigation, and maybe even a lockdown of the Ring. That was something Lio absolutely could not afford right now, especially not with Ophila waiting for him at dawn and the descent into Ghenna scheduled for later this morning. His hand dropped away from [Mach Heart]. The almost-grin faded from his face, replaced by his regular empty expression.

As a tinge of disappointment filled his chest, Lio's hand moved to his ribcage instead, touching the [Isopolity] rune. The Adamantine knife shuddered, its form blurring as four identical copies materialized around him. He didn't bother with anything fancy or creative. With a thought, all five blades shot forward simultaneously. The woman's eyes widened. She threw her remaining vials in a desperate spread pattern, trying to create some kind of defensive barrier, but it was too late.

Three knives intercepted the vials mid-air, shattering them before their contents could reach him. The other two knives continued their trajectory without slowing. The woman tried to dodge, but the telekinetically controlled blades simply adjusted their directions mid-flight, tracking her movements with precision. The first blade slammed into her shoulder, driving deep into the muscle and pinning her against the wall.

The second punched through her thigh, severing the major muscle group and ensuring that she couldn't run away. Without giving her a chance to recover, Lio quickly dropped from the support beam, activating [Mach Heart] to propel him across the distance in a blur. He landed directly in front of her. The woman's mouth opened in surprise, and her hand fumbled weakly at her belt, searching for another vial. Lio's hand shot forward, grabbing her throat. The woman's eyes bulged, her hands flying up to claw at his wrist.

Her nails raked across his skin, but Lio's grip didn't falter. She tried to activate her rune, but without air and focus, it was useless. He twisted. Crack. The woman's body went completely still. She was dead. Lio released his grip and let her body slide down the wall to the floor, leaving a smear of blood from where the knives had pierced her shoulder. He straightened up, looking around the tavern. The flames were everywhere now.

The tables where the woman had thrown her ignition vials were completely engulfed, black smoke billowing up toward the ceiling in thick, choking clouds. The wooden floor was charred and cracking, some sections already collapsing into the cellar below. The entire building would be ash within the hour. This would definitely attract the attention of the city guards. Lio stood there in the center of the burning tavern, surrounded by the consequences of his actions.

Now, why had he even bothered with Death's Breath if his main goal was to avoid attracting attention? He'd just done the exact opposite of staying subtle. The pendant had created such an overwhelming presence that half the tavern had fled in terror. The remaining patrons would remember this night for years. It was possibly the least stealthy approach he could have taken. Unfortunately, the irony wasn't lost on him. But then, that hadn't actually been the point of using Death's Breath.

The fear effect and the psychological warfare had just been secondary benefits. Useful, certainly, but it wasn't the real reason Lio had purchased the artifact and pushed it beyond its limits. He'd just needed to exceed the one thousand deaths worth of channeled energy. Because that's when Death's Breath's most useful function activated. Morthos's journals had mentioned it only once, buried in the notes from his final year of research.

A side effect he'd discovered entirely by accident during one of his last experiments. See, when Death's Breath channeled more than one thousand deaths worth of energy simultaneously… It created a domain. To put it short, a localized field would be created around thirty meters in radius where physical changes to inanimate objects were recorded and stored in a kind of a... temporal buffer.

And when the domain collapsed, which happened exactly thirty seconds after the energy flow was cut off, everything would revert to the state it was before the domain was enacted. Of course, not people or any living organism. Just inanimate objects. Morthos himself had theorized that it had something to do with death energy fundamentally rejecting change, as death was the ultimate static state, the end of all transformation.

When concentrated enough, that rejection of change extended outward, creating a field where physical alterations to dead matter became only... temporary. And Lio, with his millennium of death energy, had triggered it easily. And he'd also been counting the time since he deactivated the pendant, around twenty-seven seconds ago. Three seconds left. Lio looked around one final time at the burning tavern, at the broken tables and shattered vials and blood-smeared walls.

And as the time reached thirty seconds, the domain collapsed. The flames vanished instantly, as if they'd never existed. The smoke dissipated, clearing from the air. The charred, blackened wood of the tables and floor lost its burn marks, the wood grain quickly becoming clean and whole again. Shattered glass from the woman's vials reformed, the liquids flowing backward through the air, returning to their containers which also sealed themselves.

The vials appeared on the floor near her corpse, completely intact and full. Even the blood splatter from where Lio had pinned the woman against the wall vanished completely, the wall becoming clean and unmarked. Within the span of a millisecond, the Brass Lantern looked exactly as it had when Lio had first walked through the back door. Well, almost exactly. The two corpses still remained. Dead bodies were still technically living matter, just non-functional. So the domain didn't affect them.

The young one was still curled on the floor in his puddle of urine, still catatonic and unresponsive. That was biological matter too. And the patrons who'd fled in terror were still gone. But the physical evidence of the fight had all been erased. Lio looked around the now-pristine tavern, feeling a small sense of satisfaction. Perfect. Well, almost. He glanced at the young one, still curled on the floor in his puddle of urine.

"When are you gonna get up?"