Chapter 468 - More fitting expression (Patreon)

Taking a few steps closer and to the side, I finally see what the TV screen shows. It’s the fight against lurker Whitey from my first-person point of view.

“Just come here and sit, don’t sneak around,” the man waves his hand at me. I notice how slim and smooth it looks.

Not hesitating much longer, I reach the edge of the hill and think of creating a similar chair made of mana, but before I can do that, another white plastic chair appears next to the first one. When I sit down, I look to the left.

Whitey is very similar to how I remember him from our two meetings. Tall, slim, with a handsome face. This time he isn’t a lurker, so his eyes aren’t pale red but of the proper red color demons have. Even his hair looks smoother.

He is wearing black clothes and sits there in an extremely easygoing manner.

“Look, do you see this crap?” he points at the TV where the video pauses.

The current scene shows when multiple of his ranged attacks pierced me, and I had to use two healing marks from Lily.

“You should be dead twice over! How the fuck is his aim so bad!”

“Isn’t that your aim?” I ask.

He snorts, “If I had fought you, you would be dead only seconds after the fight started. Disgusting amounts of mana or healing marks or not.”

The screen starts playing that video again, and Whitey watches it with apparent disdain, “It’s like giving an amazing weapon to a newborn demon. No, even a newborn demon would do better.”

Whitey waves his arm, and the screen starts changing rapidly, “Here, terrible placement. Here, that should hit. Here he should push you more. Here, that movement was trash. Here, why did he dodge instead of facing the attack and getting a hit in? Here, he should deactivate the kinetic field much sooner. Here, he should go 3rd stance before going 5th; that would mess you up well!” In rapid succession, he points out every one of these things.

Annoyed, he waves his hand, and the screen disappears. Whitey stands, turning his chair to face me, the plastic legs scraping against the rock. Then he sits back down, folding his arms across his chest, giving me a slow once-over.

“What year is it?”

“No idea how that would help.”

He hesitates and nods, “Is Adrian still first in Individual and Exploration rankings?”

“Yes.”

“When is the next reset of these rankings?”

“There’s a reset?”

He blinks, “Please don’t tell me my lurker lost against a goddamned newbie.”

“I started my second year of the tutorial not that long ago?” Satisfied, I almost feel like smiling and lean back.

“You smug little shit,” Whitey snorts. “Individual and Exploration rankings reset once every millennium, and Guild and Craft reset every year.”

“Thanks for the info. This could help; some people said you’re one of the oldest lurkers.”

He nods, “1st floor should reset at the same time as the rankings, so I probably died close to a thousand years ago? For sure over 500 years. Damn, and no one got deeper than fucking Adrian.”

“Yeah, he’s the only one with the 6th floor.”

“That makes me curious how that asshole is doing nowadays. If you meet him by any chance, punch him for me.”

Feeling bold, I decide to poke Whitey for more info, “Was he stronger than you?”

“At least learn to mask your intentions when you decide to do things like that.” He gestures at my eyebrow, “It moved when I mentioned Adrian. Your chin too, muscles there twitched. Now your pinkie is tense, and you are getting ready to attack. Heartbeat changes a bit too.”

He shifts his position in the chair and watches me, “Adrian was stronger than me, but he always avoided fighting me.”

I let the silence stretch for a bit longer, and when the time feels right, I ask, “So what is this place, and where did you get that TV?”

“You tell me. This all is made using your memories.” He smiles, red eyes glowing, and when he stands, the plastic chair he sat on turns into black particles before disappearing. The same happens with mine, and I jump to my feet before I fall to the ground.

Whitey is slightly taller than me and slimmer. He looks like he has barely any muscle. Something I thought was the result of being a lurker back during our meeting, but looking at him now, I guess he looked like that even before he died.

“I will tell you one thing, human: it’s fucking unfortunate that trashy lurker made of my body didn’t win; it would be nice to walk around again. I also don’t understand how it’s possible that challenge got accepted, but someone either hates you a fuckton or the opposite. But a wager is a wager, and I lost.”

“So, you are…”

“Probably just something akin to the natives of the floors.”

“That sucks.”

"It really does. So, you foolish little human wished for my knowledge of kinetic energy, and now you have it. It’s safe to say that I will, for a while, stay part of your memories, just taking on this form."

“Wouldn’t it be easier for the system to just transfer that knowledge?”

Whitey doesn’t even bother answering.

“Yeah, I got it.” Obviously, the system is an asshole.

Curious, Whitey takes a few steps around me, poking my arm, my back, and my chest over my heart. “Tell me, why do you want kinetic energy so much?”

“Is this a test or something?”

“Just fucking answer the question. You have a lot of mana, and from the way you fought, it’s clear how much time you spent mastering it. There’s no point lying; it’s something I know very well. You also possess thermal energy. There are plenty of things you could divert your attention to. So why kinetic energy?”

“I don’t want to show off, but I could put my attention to mana in multiple areas. I could focus on detailed manipulation, I could focus on compression, I could focus on ranged mana abilities or melee. I also could spend more time crafting. The same goes for thermal energy. I could spend more time making it as damaging as possible. I could also try to come up with ways to use it for healing.”

“That’s a lot of options,” he nods. “So why kinetic energy?”

“Because I want to.”

Whitey shows me a wide smile and gestures to continue.

“It will cover my weaknesses in the future. Kinetic for body strengthening and close-range combat. Thermal for healing, and mana for everything else.”

This white-haired demon keeps nodding, his bearing now so different from the way he fights. He is weirdly easygoing.

Clapping his hands together to catch my attention, he says, “A loss is a loss. I’ve never taught anyone before, so this will be an interesting experience. There are seven stances I’ve put together and made my own. Some I learned from demons I met in Beyond, some were drilled into me before the tutorial, some I gained on the floors, and some I came up with myself. And you will learn all of them.”

My interest grows more and more, and I listen quietly to this demon who has almost killed me so many times.

It’s unnerving to see him move so casually, and sometimes I notice my body twitching, expecting another attack. I’m sure he noticed it as well, but he is quiet about it. Most likely even considering it amusing.

“First is Pulser Stance.” Whitey takes a short, quick step, his movement boosted by kinetic energy, and delivers a quick punch to the air where a concentrated pulse reverberates. “It’s quick, disorienting, focused on efficiency and accuracy. You stay in constant motion, confusing your opponent with erratic movement, absorbing and adding to your inertia to outmaneuver them.”

He shifts back into his original position and smirks, “You were trying to do something similar, but I will beat these bad habits out of you.”

Once again, he changes his stance; it becomes wider and heavier. “The second one is Breaker Style. It’s brutal, relentless, and relies on raw kinetic energy to overwhelm the opponent with powerful, heavy attacks. You crush, you shatter.” His movements are heavier now, but each with purpose, each strike he shows sending powerful waves in the direction of the hit.

“The third one is Wraith Dance.” He stomps powerfully, but there’s no impact; instead, he vanishes, moving so quickly it feels like teleportation. His heartbeat echoes erratically, sometimes even in places he's already left, leaving fake signatures along his path. “It’s all about rapid, long-distance movement, afterimages, and a single burst of swift, extended motion.”

The more he shows me, the more I realize how lacking his lurker was when it comes to the delicate use of his abilities.

“I will show you the other four later, but they are called Resonance Flow, Needle Point, Counter Flow, and Steelroot.”

As he stops, I ask the question that kept coming to my mind the entire time and I held back until now, “How did you die?”

The moment these words leave my mouth, the mood changes. The expression Whitey had until now and that to me felt so forced crumbles, becoming darker. His eyes seem redder now, and the beats of his heart more oppressive.

I like it more than this weird kindness, so I add to it, knowing the question will hurt.

It’s meant to.

“How many times did your lurker get killed?”

Whitey moves impossibly quickly, a movement more akin to teleport in an amazing show of the third stance he demonstrated not that long ago.

I lift my arms in front of me to block, but he shifts his aim at the last second, landing a hit on my chin instead.

Louder and louder that demon heart beats, and I freeze mid-air, held before my body can move further, and he grabs my leg, pulling me back and smashing me against the ground. He finishes it with a kick, sending me crashing against the rocky wall nearby.

It hurts surprisingly a lot, similar to how it would hurt outside, and I stumble to my knees before pushing myself back up and glance at the demon who now has a more fitting expression.

Not like a puppet serving to deliver information, but more like a living being.

He might be a fake, perhaps just memories from moments before he died, or maybe the system prepared something else entirely. Still, I much prefer this over that fake eagerness from before.

Laughing quietly, Whitey moves hair off his face, his red eyes staring at me. “Killed by betrayal, hundreds of years as a fucking lurker, and then I get challenged by a fucking human just to end up like this. Rulers must be shitting their pants from how much they are laughing at me.”

My movement halts again, and I don’t even fight against it as Whitey uses Wraith Dance to appear in front of me.

“Worst of all, I have to teach a human,” he says, pressing a finger against my chest. “Even though you’ve won fair and square in my eyes, what can you do? As a human without a proper heart, you will never master what I can show you.”

As he lets go and steps back, I answer, “I hear similar things a lot. Show me the first stance.”

I decide to abandon any further attempts at explaining; I was never good at this anyway, and I know my actions will convey what words cannot.

***

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