Chapter 53: His silver threads

Oxygen was slipping away.

The world was turning into a dark tunnel with red edges.

Raziel clawed at the leather glove crushing his windpipe.

His fingernails broke against the reinforced material, useless like a cat fighting a golem.

’Shit! Let go of me!’

But something didn’t fit.

Zion didn’t strangle you.

Zion erased you with a flick of her fingers and a look of boredom.

She didn’t sweat.

She didn’t grunt from effort.

This attacker was shaking with pure contained rage.

Raziel opened his left eye, bloodshot, and locked his gaze on the hood.

[SYSTEM ANALYSIS]

[TARGET: ???]

[MANA SIGNATURE COMPARISON: NO MATCH WITH “ZION”]

[THREAT LEVEL: LETHAL (PHYSICAL)]

It wasn’t the “Protagonist”.

It was a hunting dog.

An assassin sent to clean up the trash.

The relief of not facing Zion lasted half a second before being replaced by the panic of being suffocated by a nobody.

“You move a lot for a corpse,” the figure grunted.

The voice was distorted by magic or a burned throat.

Raziel tried to kick, aiming for the crotch, the knee, whatever.

THUD!

His foot connected with a metal shin guard under the robe.

Pain shot up his leg like an electric whip.

The hooded guy didn’t even flinch. It was like kicking a castle wall.

Raziel’s vision started to flicker.

[ALERT: OXYGEN LEVEL CRITICAL]

[CONSCIOUSNESS: 15%]

’I’m not dying here. Not in a dusty archive.’

His right hand, hanging uselessly at his side, brushed against something on the floor.

The spine of a heavy book that had fallen during the initial impact.

An iron-bound tome.

Raziel closed his fingers around the book, ignoring the pain in his lungs screaming for air.

’Die!’ he thought, because he couldn’t speak.

With a spasmodic movement, fueled by the last gram of adrenaline he had left, Raziel arched his body and slammed the iron edge of the book against the hooded man’s temple.

CRACK!

The grip on his neck loosened a fraction of an inch.

That was enough.

Raziel took a raspy breath, coughing violently, and let himself fall to the floor, rolling away from the assassin’s reach.

The hooded man staggered back, bringing a hand to his head.

He grunted, more annoyed than hurt.

Raziel got to his feet, dizzy, his throat burning as if he had swallowed glass.

The assassin recovered fast.

He turned his head, and under the hood, red eyes shone with a promise of violence.

“Well played, little rat,” the man hissed, unsheathing a curved dagger that glowed with greenish poison. “Now I’m going to have to skin you slowly.”

Raziel spat bloody phlegm on the floor and raised his fists, even though his knees were shaking.

The assassin took a step, slow, savoring the moment.

The poisoned dagger drew a lazy arc in the air.

Raziel clenched his teeth.

His body screamed from exhaustion and lack of air, but his veteran mind was already calculating the odds, which were terrible.

A 98% chance of death.

A 2% chance of being crippled before dying.

Just when the hooded man was preparing to pounce, a calm voice cut the tension from the archive door.

“Need some help, brother?”

Both turned their heads.

In the doorway stood another novice.

He looked a bit older than Raziel, maybe seventeen, with messy ash-blonde hair and stormy gray eyes that analyzed everything with an unsettling calm.

He wasn’t wearing the St. Celeste uniform, but simple travel clothes.

’No!’ Raziel screamed in his mind because his injured throat stopped him from saying a single word.

’Get out of here, idiot! Don’t get involved! This isn’t your problem!’

People who tried to play hero always ended up with a hole in their chest.

The assassin let out a dry laugh.

“Another lamb to the slaughter. Get lost, kid, if you don’t want me to use you to clean my dagger.”

The blonde novice completely ignored the threat.

His gray eyes fixed on Raziel, and for an instant, a strange smile crossed his lips.

He winked at him.

“Don’t worry,” he said, his voice so serene it was almost an insult amidst the violence. “I’ll handle it.”

Before Raziel or the assassin could react, the air in front of the newcomer tore.

FZZZZT!

From out of nowhere, silver threads, thin as spiderwebs but bright as polished steel, shot from his extended fingers.

It wasn’t chains, it wasn’t ice.

It was… something else.

Something that Raziel, in his nightmare lives, had never seen.

The threads shot out at impossible speed and coiled around the hooded man’s arms and legs, tightening with the strength of metal.

CLANG!

The assassin was immobilized on the spot, his muscles tensing uselessly against the ethereal bindings.

The poisoned dagger fell from his hand and bounced on the stone floor.

“You’re not going anywhere,” the blonde novice said, advancing calmly toward the archive.

But the assassin, instead of panicking, started to laugh.

“You think this is enough to stop me, kid?” The assassin’s voice dripped with poison. “How cute.”

The assassin wasn’t just barking.

A black and viscous mist erupted from his skin, like boiling tar, hissing on contact with the silver threads.

HISSS!

The magic metal melted in seconds.

The hooded man broke free with a roar, launching himself toward the blonde with the speed of a cobra.

The poisoned dagger was going straight for the newcomer’s jugular.

Raziel wanted to scream, wanted to warn him, but his throat was still closed from the previous blow.

’Move, you idiot! He’s going to kill you!’

But the blonde boy didn’t even blink.

He just sighed, as if someone had spilled wine on his favorite shirt.

“What a waste of mana,” he muttered.

He moved the fingers of his right hand. Just a twitch.

SHIING!

The assassin stopped dead in mid-air.

His red eyes opened wide under the hood.

The dagger fell from his hand, clinking against the cold stone.

Then, his head slowly slid to the side, separating from the neck in a cut so clean that the blood took a second to realize it was supposed to come out.

THUMP!

The body fell like a sack of potatoes.

The head rolled until it stopped near Raziel’s feet.

Silence.

Raziel looked at the corpse, then at the blonde boy, and felt a different terror than before.

That wasn’t a novice’s move.

Not even an average Paladin. That control of the threads, that coldness to execute…

’Who the hell is this guy? He wasn’t in my previous regressions!’

The blonde shook his hand, cleaning invisible blood from his ethereal threads, and smiled with that exasperating calm.

“What a mess,” he said, looking at the pool of blood. “Hope you’re not the type who faints, partner.”

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