Only because Ian had already left the living room
did he miss the chance to connect Clark's injury to the passenger plane crash that had not been fully prevented that morning. It was obvious Superman had run into a rather mysterious crisis.
Of course,
even if Ian had known, there was nothing he could have done. He was still far too weak. Anything capable of injuring Superman was absolutely beyond what he could approach right now.
On the second-floor hallway,
Ian chatted with his two brothers for a while and flexed his writer's talent a little before finally returning to his room. Jonathan was still outside yelling that Ian needed to start working out with him.
"I'll add exercise to my schedule plan!"
Ian called back through the door. Only after hearing their footsteps gradually fade away did he flop down onto his bed.
"What exactly is going on with this thing?"
He pulled open his coat again and tugged out the pendant beneath his shirt. It was still glowing, that dim black light pulsing like breath.
The glow reflected onto Ian's face and pushed back the room's lamplight. Frowning, he raised the pendant before his eyes and studied it closely.
What he mainly wanted to find was the evil spirit inside.
"Anybody in there? Say something?"
Ian tapped the pendant with a finger. It was just a bored action from someone who had no real clue what to do next, yet unexpectedly, it seemed to actually produce some kind of effect.
The moment the words left his mouth,
the pendant's glow suddenly began flickering violently, the rhythm growing faster and faster, as though it were responding to his question. Ian's breathing stalled, and he instinctively looked down toward the lower edge of his vision.
No new negative status had appeared.
Bzzz.
The pendant suddenly started trembling faintly. The metal patterns on its surface twisted and wriggled like living things, spreading open as if some sort of door had been unlocked. Then strands of black substance spilled out from the pendant, drifting lightly like silk ribbons and gradually weaving together in the air with an eerie softness.
Ian's eyes widened.
He watched as the black substance gathered, reformed, and finally... turned into a sentence. A proper sentence, in perfectly standard English, like something out of a textbook.
[An interesting life deserves reward.]
The words floated in midair.
Their shape was neat.
As if written by a gentleman's hand.
Every stroke carried an ancient, mysterious air. Suspended there, they swayed faintly, as though an invisible breeze might scatter them at any moment.
"What the hell?"
Ian was baffled. He reached out, trying to touch the words, but the instant his fingers were about to make contact, the black letters suddenly broke apart like spilled ink.
Splash.
They spun and gathered in the air like stirred liquid darkness.
Ian thought he could hear a familiar scream.
The voice belonged to the nun spirit from before.
"So it really did crawl into the pendant!"
Ian was impressed by his own earlier guess. At the same time, though, he could also tell that the nun spirit probably had not entered the pendant willingly.
Very soon,
as the evil spirit's screams faded, the black substance finally condensed in the air before him into a thumb-sized black crystal.
It slowly drifted downward.
After hesitating for a moment, Ian reached out and caught it.
The instant the crystal landed in his palm, a cold sensation spread along his skin, like holding ice from the deepest polar wastes, or like touching a truly frozen soul.
"So the pendant gave me a present?"
Ian murmured to himself, raising the crystal under the light for a closer look. He hesitated, wondering whether this was the sort of thing he was supposed to swallow in one gulp. The black crystal was not fully transparent. Inside it, he could vaguely see flowing shadows, like mist trapped within.
It did not look especially tasty.
"Still, it seems pretty hard."
Ian swore he only wanted to test whether the black crystal or his teeth was harder. Even if his teeth shattered, he could always count it toward today's leveling anyway.
However,
driven by that little bit of curiosity, he nearly got the shock of his life.
Not because anything dangerous happened, but because what happened was completely outside his expectations.
The moment the black crystal touched Ian's lips, before he could even lick it to see whether it was salty or not, it melted into a cool liquid and slipped straight into his mouth.
It really was instant melt.
No bitterness, no evil burning sensation. Instead, it felt like a mouthful of iced spring water, cool to the bone, instantly sinking into all four limbs and every vein in his body. Almost like a slippery jelly that moved on its own.
A clarity he had never experienced before swept through his mind.
Ian felt himself growing stronger.
His mental state, in particular, felt dramatically improved.
And not only that.
[Strength: 5.6 -> 5.8]
[Constitution: 4.5 -> 4.7]
[Intelligence: 2.4 -> 2.6]
[Spirit: 4.2 -> 6.8]
It was not just his [Spirit] and even [Intelligence] attributes that had increased. Even [Strength] and [Constitution] had risen a little as well.
Of course, the biggest jump was still in [Spirit].
This was far beyond Ian's estimate of how much he would gain from finishing off the rest of the evil spirit. It had even pushed him, a [Berserker], into a bizarre state where his [Spirit] was now stronger than his [Strength].
His bloodline really was starting to look a little impure.
"So it really was a present."
Ian was delighted at first.
Then he noticed that, at some point, a strange mark had appeared on the back of his hand.
Its shape was bizarre.
Like a black eye.
"So this is the price of free pie falling from the sky?"
Ian was startled, though not panicked. He immediately tried scrubbing it hard with his other hand, but it would not come off.
His skin turned red from the effort, yet the mark did not budge in the slightest.
It was like a brand.
Ian instinctively checked his status panel. He had expected a new negative status to appear, but instead, the old [Soul Corrosion] negative status had disappeared.
A new status had taken its place.
"No wonder I felt like I'd lost some of my wisdom."
Ian felt a little regretful. He had thought the [Soul Corrosion] state could probably bring him some nice surprises at certain moments.
Yet now, unexpectedly,
it had disappeared just like that.
Without even waving its sleeve.
Without time to say goodbye.
The status now occupying that spot on the panel also looked like an eye, matching the mark on the back of Ian's hand exactly. It was obviously the system's "official" explanation for the brand.
Only,
unlike the negative statuses Ian liked, this one had no actual effect at all. It caused no change to Ian whatsoever.
[Deathrider's Thrall]
Only the name of the status revealed what it really was.
(End of Chapter)
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