Chapter 68

Flicker (2)

Flicker, in terms of output alone, was comparable to Stained Glass, which could be considered the modern high-end standard for battle gear.

Flicker was stored in the vault of the Rezantin Royal Museum. Therefore, the Empire was originally supposed to know that Flicker had gone missing.

But not now.

"Because I stole the inventory list."

For important documents that shouldn’t be taken outside, only one copy was typically made. The more copies existed, the higher the risk of leakage.

The vault inventory list of the Rezantin Royal Museum was no exception.

The moment I raided the vault inventory list, it meant the museum had to draft a new artifact list.

Naturally, since Flicker—the masterpiece battle gear I had just stolen—was no longer in the vault, it wouldn’t be included in the newly created artifact list.

"A perfect crime."

If someone wanted to know what had been stolen, they would need the list but the new list wouldn't contain Flicker.

There was no way for the Empire to find out that one of the stored artifacts had been stolen.

"Now…."

I had exited the vault and arrived inside the museum. I didn’t spare a moment for the soldiers blocking my path, dispatching them quickly and continuing my escape.

By now, all passageways connecting the museum to the outside world had been sealed off with bulkheads.

The moment I saw the bulkhead, I increased my output and swung my sword. With a heavy sound, the blade managed to pierce into the bulkhead, but it didn’t cut through.

If I kept swinging, I could probably break through eventually. But…

"Pointless."

The bulkhead was merely meant to buy time until the knight captain arrived. All the forces guarding this museum were the same.

Once the knight captain, Dana Watson, arrived, everything would be over.

"But if I can just get out, there's hope."

It wasn’t that I didn’t have a plan.

Inside the museum, completely isolated from the outside world, I couldn’t resist Dana Watson. If she wanted to kill me, I would die.

If she decided to break my legs, my legs would break. If I encountered her here, I wouldn’t be able to do anything by my own will.

"But outside is different."

There were civilians.

"Red Comet Dana Watson."

A monster who fell from the sky like a comet and flattened a hill with a single strike. Her fame came from her overwhelming destructive power.

"She can’t use her full strength in Rezantin City."

She was a human weapon specialized for offense. If Dana Watson swung her sword with full power, each strike could kill civilians in Rezantin City by the thousands.

No matter how high her rank as knight captain, she wouldn’t be able to avoid the backlash from such a massacre.

"Now, there's a reason I specifically chose you."

The reason Kairus chose Flicker among the countless masterpiece battle gear stored in the vault.

The blade, composed of a black-and-white mosaic, momentarily produced countless afterimages, overlapping one another.

As he drove the sword into the bulkhead, the mosaic spread out in a circular pattern from the point of impact.

It looked as if the bulkhead was being contaminated.

"Now."

At the same time Kairus pulled the sword out from the bulkhead, he activated Flicker’s ability.

The blade, made of mosaic, vanished. And with it, the contaminated section of the bulkhead disappeared as well.

Along with the blade, the part of the bulkhead tainted by the mosaic was temporarily removed from existence.

"If I maintain the state where the blade is gone..."

Then whatever had been contaminated by the mosaic would also remain excluded.

The maximum duration was 15 seconds.

To exclude something a second time, Kairus would have to use Flicker again to contaminate it with the mosaic.

After passing through the now-exposed bulkhead, Kairus deactivated Flicker’s ability.

The blade with the mosaic pattern reappeared, and so did the previously vanished bulkhead, returning to its original place.

"And I passed through the bulkhead."

There was no damage at all. Kairus excluded and restored all the bulkheads blocking his path in the same manner as he escaped the museum.

"It’s more than usable in actual combat."

The core component responsible for Flicker’s output wasn’t in the blade, but in the hilt.

In other words, even if he excluded the blade using Flicker’s ability, the battle gear’s output could still be fully utilized.

"But what about the opponent?"

If he managed to completely contaminate the opponent’s battle gear with the mosaic and exclude it along with the blade?

Kairus could still use his gear’s output, but the opponent could not.

In short, for 15 seconds, he could beat the opponent one-sidedly.

With Flicker’s output, 15 seconds was enough to turn hundreds of ordinary people into mashed potatoes.

But the real utility of Flicker was theft.

"Because it leaves no trace of infiltration."

Just like now.

The bulkhead was completely undamaged, so anyone in pursuit wouldn’t suspect that Kairus had passed through it.

So even if he were chased, he could throw them off.

"The sad part is, it’s still just a trick."

Because he couldn’t face her head-on, he twisted his body and used every means at his disposal to flee from Dana Watson.

"I do wonder what would happen if I stabbed someone and then excluded them…"

But now wasn’t the time to satisfy that curiosity.

"Shit…"

Kairus had successfully escaped the museum using Flicker’s ability and continued his flight. Or at least, he tried to.

In that instant, a chill ran down his entire body.

“…!”

Kairus widened his eyes and forcibly inhaled.

‘What the hell is this monstrous presence!’

fighting spirit, bloodlust, domination, sense of crisis.

That intangible force that sounded alarms in the instincts of all living creatures—people called it by many names.

Some claimed it didn’t exist.

“…Hh…ughh.”

But if they found themselves in Kairus’s current situation, they wouldn’t be able to say, “It doesn’t exist,” anymore.

Inside the museum or out, everyone was affected. Most people couldn’t withstand the pressure and collapsed unconscious.

A few, with unusually strong will and mental fortitude, managed to stay conscious.

On the other hand, some, particularly frail individuals, died suddenly from heart attacks.

‘She had to know people would die… no way she didn’t.’

The one piece of luck was that Kairus could still move under this monstrous pressure.

‘She… hasn’t found me yet. That’s why she’s doing this.’

Dana Watson was convinced that the intruder in the vault hadn’t gotten far. But that was it—she hadn’t caught them yet.

“C-Captain…!”

A knight assisting Dana Watson opened his mouth with great difficulty, leaning against the wall with a pale face as he barely managed to speak her name.

“Endure it.”

She gave a cold response.

“I, hoo… I’m fine. But what about the civilian casualties…?”

“What about them? If you don’t like it, go file a petition with His Majesty.”

As the knight captain, Dana Watson had merely taken the measures she deemed necessary.

If the knight captain had taken improper action, the only one who could officially punish her in the Empire was the Emperor himself.

In the Empire, human lives did not all hold equal value. In Dana Watson’s case, she could wipe out several cities for no particular reason and still be considered innocent.

She was that valuable a person.

“Kh…ughh… haah!”

The knight beside her gasped repeatedly for breath.

“You’re making noises like you’re having sex with the air, you dumbass.”

The knight, struggling to breathe, didn’t respond. He wasn’t in any state to answer ridiculous remarks like that.

Even knights who had roamed battlefields for years could barely breathe under this dense pressure.

In this atmosphere saturated with killing intent akin to violence, hardly anyone could move.

“Fuck…”

But Kairus could. Still, his footsteps as he ran were heavy and strained.

To take a single step, he had to succeed in overriding the instinctual warnings with logic.

With every step, Kairus had to overcome the fear one might feel as an executioner’s blade hovered above their neck at the guillotine.

“…”

He hadn’t taken more than a few steps, but Kairus’s entire body was already drenched in cold sweat.

Bottomless fear seeping out from deep within his heart, and the mind pouring its full effort into resisting that fear.

His head felt hazy, as if he had spent hours in a sauna.

“Fuck.”

Kairus muttered under his breath, then drew Flicker and drove it straight down into the back of his own left hand. The blade pierced through the top of his hand and jutted out from the palm.

Blood streamed down and soaked the ground. Thanks to the sudden pain, the fogginess in Kairus’s mind slowly began to clear.

“Damn body. It always takes blood to come to my senses.”

The wound would heal soon. The procedure of the Featherwing ensured that a direct descendant like Kairus couldn’t die so easily.

While Kairus dragged his body toward the city’s fountain park, Dana Watson gave the vault a cursory glance, then began walking toward the exit.

“Where… are you going?”

“We’ve got to find and catch the bastard who broke in, don’t we?”

At a glance, the vault was intact, aside from the dead soldiers. And truthfully, soldiers’ deaths didn’t count as a loss to the vault.

After all, it was a soldier’s duty to guard with their life if something happened.

‘If you survive, consider yourself lucky.’

Rather, when a vault was raided, it was natural for all the guarding soldiers to die. No one who dared to raid an armory for knights would’ve come unprepared.

“Handle the situation. Count the heads of the scholars who were examining the artifacts and check their health.”

They were valuable human resources of the Empire. A scholar who had diligently studied and researched deserved the same treatment as a knight who trained for the same amount of time.

“I’d like to do that, too, but…!”

“Oh dear. I plan to maintain this pressure until we catch the culprit.”

At Dana Watson’s response, her aide sighed deeply. His spine felt like it had been wrung dry with fear, and he couldn’t even take a step.

“I’m sure you’ve killed a good number of the committee members yourself, Captain!”

“Probably. But remember this. Valorn has plenty of competent scholars, but there aren’t that many masterpiece battle gears.”

In other words, it meant that some deaths among the Artifact Evaluation Committee scholars were acceptable if it meant protecting the vault.

“Captain… I don’t think war is about numbers.”

At that, Dana Watson scoffed.

“You idiot. War is all about numbers. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t deserve to be in the military.”

“You sound just like that mobster woman from that damned city…”

At the knight’s words, Dana Watson immediately flicked his forehead. A loud crack echoed as the knight’s head snapped backward.

The impact felt like a hammer blow to his forehead, and the knight trembled.

“Unlike that psycho who goes by the name Longhorn, I actually smell like a human being.”

The knight didn’t think Dana Watson smelled like a human being. The memory of the two women clashing was still vivid in his mind.

From his perspective, the captain was just as inhuman as the psycho from Bennett City.

But if he got flicked in the forehead again, he was pretty sure his skull would crack—so he simply nodded in agreement.

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