On the chariot sat a figure. A golden, glazed crown rose to the heavens from his brow; behind him hung a great solar halo. His robe—embroidered with sun, moon, and stars, reflecting the myriad heavens—turned slowly, as though it contained the entire universe. With a single glance, it made Libery Garcia reel, dizzy and unsteady on his feet.
"Grrrr…!"
The sun-chariot rolled past, spilling gold. The three-legged gilt bird, wings spread like clouds that could blanket the sky, let out a vast, ancient cry.
The rider's face was veiled in sunlit haze; it couldn't be seen clearly. He merely turned his head and gave Libery a calm, passing look—
Libery's knees went weak.
Pff—
Blood burst from his mouth, nose, and ears. He toppled backward like a sheet of paper.
"Y-you…"
Libery stared at Roy in terror. His hands slackened. The three cards Roy had casually chosen scattered like cherry blossoms, carrying the last threads of aura, and fluttered down to cover him.
In that instant, Libery felt his body grow light—so light he couldn't feel its weight. Light enough to float.
When he looked down, he could see himself on the ground, bleeding from every opening… while his soul was already lifting away.
He went blank.
So… am I dead?
"Not yet," Roy said, watching Libery's sudden hemorrhage, collapse, convulsions, and the start of soul separation. His gaze shifted, thoughtful, as he felt the karma between them thicken violently. "But… you're close."
So much for no risk.
If this man really died because of him, then as the "result" that killed him, Roy would inevitably shoulder the consequences—credit-grabbing, church retaliation, and the resentment of the Garcia family's noble backers.
A castaway killing a noble?
That was an open challenge to authority—a public slap in the church's face, a disgrace to the gods.
Unforgivable.
Even if this so-called noble was himself a traitor of his class and a criminal "blasphemer."
"Hah… hahahaha…"
"Good. Good… if I die, so be it…"
Libery laughed after a few stunned seconds. The laugh came hard; blood even seeped from the corners of his eyes, but his soul rose faster and faster and he didn't care. He only felt—relief. Release. Like he'd finally been unshackled.
"Cough… cough…"
Clinging to his last breath, Libery forced his bleeding eyes wide and fixed them on Roy.
"Five days ago… my reading told me… hope was here… now…"
"You… you're the variable… you're the—"
His voice rasped. The words never made it out.
His head lolled to the side and he collapsed into the blood.
A wind swept through, and Libery's soul, as if answering some signal, shot upward.
In the endless forest, only Roy remained, looking down at him in silence.
This was what "risk" and "reward" looked like in the world of nen:
When your information isn't enough, you don't gamble.
Roy's waist-length silver hair swayed in the breeze. He extended a hand wrapped in warm aura and lifted it toward the sky.
Magnetism—Attraction.
A faint hum—
Libery's soul, already about to fade, jerked. It felt suddenly heavy.
With a whoosh, it was dragged downward and slammed back into his body by Roy's aura-formed hand.
Another invisible vibration—
Soul and flesh snapped together.
Libery slowly opened his blood-wet eyes, barely able to move, and asked in a hoarse whisper:
"Why… did you save me?"
Roy glanced at him calmly. "I suggest you stop talking."
Sumeru Mustard Seed.
A dark glow coated Roy's hand. He brushed the air lightly—
A rift split open, a mouth of space yawning wide.
Libery's eyes widened in horror as the rift swallowed him whole.
Just before he vanished, he heard Roy's quiet voice:
"Sleep."
"When you wake up, if you want to smash your head into a rock and die, I won't stop you."
"Just… don't die by my hand."
"Why?"
"No reason." Roy closed his fist, stitching the rift shut. "I just don't like owing people."
"…I see." Libery's final mutter echoed faintly in Roy's mind. "You really are… different from the other gods."
Roy dismissed the space, then stood still for a long moment and scoffed under his breath.
"Gods aren't that weak."
"Weak enough to be unable to drive out a petty curse…"
He moved again, walking toward the bones of Old Mark and what remained of Nora—half her body reduced to a skull.
Along the way, he conjured the yellow chrysanthemums he'd brought from home and gently planted them before the two of them.
"Chrysanthemums from my garden. They're not 'dirty.'"
"Please… don't dislike them."
"And as for your granddaughter—"
Roy took out the leather flask from Sumeru Mustard Seed, buried it together with the couple's remains, and exhaled.
"I brought her back to you as well…"
"May you find peace in the next life. May you suffer less."
"Thank you…"
Somewhere deep in his heart, a warm voice seemed to answer.
Roy froze, pressed a hand to his chest—and in the haze, it was as if he saw them: the grandparents, one on each side, holding a girl's hand, bowing to him.
Then they dissolved into the soft sunlight and vanished completely.
Roy stared forward, silent for a very long time.
He suddenly understood why, in his great-grandfather's dream realm, there had been so many tombstones.
For some people… failing in rebellion was less satisfying than dying as martyrs.
The forest was quiet.
Roy finally lifted his head, rubbed a thread of sunlight between his fingers, and came back to himself. His gaze went to the edge of the forest—Bandel City, and the crooked, scattered slums wrapped around it.
He pinched that sunlight to dust—
And his body, his clothes, his shoes began to change from head to toe.
In a blink, through Deceit, he became Andrew Cooper.
Then he sprinted for Bandel City.
Closer—fewer trees.
Wide plains opened in his view.
Roy had read in Silva's guide that the Utsuki Forest was so vast it contained every kind of terrain; pockets like these—forest suddenly giving way to open fields—were called "oases," where crops could be grown and humans could live.
The irony was bitter:
These "oases" didn't just feed humans—they also fattened up livestock for beasts.
Because whether it was an "oasis," "swamp," or "great river," it was still inside the Uzuki Great Forest's domain—ruled by monsters and calamity.
Even God couldn't reach in.
Step by step, Roy flashed through the light—blink, blink, blink—and within about five minutes, he finally saw people, farmland, and ahead, the slums: uneven, ramshackle huts, mud everywhere, no order at all.
He stopped in a secluded corner and stepped out of the light.
The smell hit first—filth and muddy water mixed into a sharp stench.
From within the slums came hawkers' shouts, beggars' prayers, children's shrieks, livestock braying under whips and curses—
For a moment, Roy felt like he'd fallen out of the modern world and into a brutal, decaying Middle Ages.
A violent sense of history running backward.
It didn't match his expectations of the Dark Continent at all—no wonder, no grandeur—only misery.
Roy frowned, forced down the surge of disgust and disappointment, straightened his collar, and stepped into the slums.
"Fresh mushrooms! Picked today!"
"Kids for sale! Two silver for the big one—one for the small!"
"Hey, boss, how much for your dog?"
"Five silver for a male. Three for a female."
"Highway robbery! More expensive than a person? Tell me—can a dog eat shit? Can a man? Cheaper, or I'll report you to the security corps!"
"I…"
Noise everywhere. A whole world of squalor.
Roy walked through it, expression flat, hearing the bargaining and brawling. Traders, laborers, farmers, servants—every face yellowed and gaunt, clothes patched and repatched. They fought red-faced over scraps.
The stink of urine and animal dung clung to his nose, worsening by the second.
A flare of grief and anger rose inside him.
The Dark Continent shouldn't look like this.
It has land—resources—far beyond the lake-island.
And yet it's reduced to this mud-soaked poverty…
Even after learning some of it from Old Mark and Nora's spirits, even after bracing himself, seeing it with his own eyes made it painfully clear where the rot came from:
God.
Or rather—the privileged class that wrote "rules" in God's name.
They divided humans into fixed ranks, froze class mobility, sealed the climb from the bottom.
They hoarded "nen" as a monopoly, strangling the ordinary person's one chance to become superhuman.
And they treated people as fuel—funneling wealth upward for pleasure—until this "resource-rich" continent looked worse than the lake-island.
Here, "demons" walked in daylight.
Not just in the night like in Demon Slayer.
Roy touched the curse hidden under Deceit and took a long breath, unable to shake the sense that he, too, was part of what was being "eaten."
He swept a cold glance at a slaver selling children and kept walking down the mud road.
Splash—
Dirty water flecked his pant leg, and something darkened inside him.
His eyes held a faint red glow: the Eye of Truth, long unused, now quietly active.
Maybe because his physique and understanding of nen had risen, the vision born from Tanjuro and inspired by the Transparent World had strengthened. With a casual scan, Roy could almost see a person's current state—blood vitality, aura.
Bare-chested cart puller: physique ~0.3 (normal is 1). Aura nodes unopened. Aura leaking from the crown is thin. He'll never become a nen user…
Head-wrapped mushroom woman: physique ~0.4. Nodes unopened. Aura thin. Same fate. If this were the lake-island, she'd be around 0.4F…
Dumpster kid: physique ~0.1. Nodes unopened. Aura nearly invisible. Extreme weakness—starving. And he's coming…
Roy stopped.
A skeletal little beggar, half-fainting from hunger, stumbled straight into him. The rebound knocked the kid onto his ass.
He clutched his head and looked up—saw Roy's face—and shook as if struck by lightning.
Nearby children bolted, screaming as they ran:
"Run! Andrew's back!"
Instantly, the slum's main street went silent.
The cart puller, the mushroom seller, even the child-slaver's voice dropped into a hush. Everyone stared at him—then snapped their eyes down, busying themselves like they'd never seen him.
They treated him like a plague.
"Heh… 4K gang sure lives large…"
A faint mutter slipped from the slaver's mouth.
Roy stayed calm, unmoved.
Then someone called from behind:
"Andrew. The knight wants you."
Roy nodded once and stepped past the beggar—who was still frozen in fear—and silently marked a thought:
Aura's weak, but there's grit. With guidance… maybe his nodes could be opened.
Then he walked on.
~~~
Patreon(.)com/Bleam
— Currently You can Read 50 Chapters Ahead of Others!