Chapter 390: Absolute Chaos [5]

Chapter 390: Chapter 390: Absolute Chaos [5]

Chapter 390 – Absolute Chaos [5]

"Been a while, old man. Still kinking?"

Horus stared, dazed, at the masked man before him, no idea who this could be.

He searched his memory for anyone he knew who wielded plasma as their power, but came up empty. Plasma was a rare affinity, after all.

His confusion didn’t last long, though. Soon, he felt a numbing sensation creeping up the back of his skull, looking at the man.

A sensation he knew well, as it came from the Oath he’d once sworn to Mother System. That day, in the outskirts of Desde City, where he’d met the youngest son of...

Horus’s thoughts trailed off, then stopped abruptly as realization hit.

His eyes went wide.

"You... you’re Cas—!"

"It’s indeed me," Cassius cut him off before he could say the name aloud. Certain strange skills could dig that out. "Glad to see you’re still alive, despite the tumor."

Horus still could barely believe it. The man standing before him, radiating enough power to kill him easily, was the same young man he’d met months ago?

How could someone change this much in such a short span of time?

’Unbelievable,’ he thought, dazed, before nodding. "Yes, still alive, thanks to my treatment at the Fangs Sect."

"Glad to hear it," Cassius replied, turning his head, extending his perception outward. "I’d love to talk more, but there’s still unfinished business to attend to."

"Are you here for the artifact too?" Horus asked, trying to push himself up.

"Yes," Cassius said, standing fully, closing his eyes to sense Meadow’s location. It was oddly hard to pinpoint. Something had clearly gone wrong.

Worse, he could feel Sarah in mortal danger, surviving only thanks to the spirits, against an opponent that could kill her at any moment.

She wouldn’t last much longer.

He needed to move fast and end this now.

"What are the Fangs doing here?" Cassius asked, his body crackling with golden plasma, even his eyes sparking with it, as though he’d become a living current.

"We were hired," Horus said. "By Sea Wealth."

"Oh?" Cassius exclaimed. "Meadow’s brother? Now that’s..."

His eye twitched as he finally caught Meadow’s location. Without hesitation, his body streaked away in a straight line of gold, his voice trailing behind,

"...interesting."

...

At the same time, inside the third carriage, Meadow and Faceless remained locked in the Game of Truths.

Like Meadow, Faceless had wagered his own identity. Yet instead of unease, he seemed strangely delighted by the turn of events.

Meadow didn’t understand why, and didn’t bother trying. Her essence was draining faster than expected, her head spinning. She needed to end this quickly.

She drew the first card, flipped it, and read the question aloud:

"First question," Meadow said, expression carefully blank, "What caused your birth?"

"Oh?" Faceless murmured, unsurprised. Every being he’d ever crossed paths with had asked him some version of this question, at least once.

How did you come to exist? What made you? How could a monster like you exist at all?

The questions never stopped, until even gods had eventually asked the same thing:

What is your origin, Faceless?

And every time, his answer stayed the same,

"I’m what happens when people stop wanting to be themselves," Faceless replied, the world around him trembling. "I’m what you see in the mirror when your lips curl in disgust. I’m that part of you that desperately wishes you were someone else — anyone else — because surely any face would be better than the one you were given."

His voice deepened, and Meadow felt her chest tighten in response.

"I became Faceless because I hated my own face so much, I started stealing others’ just to feel something better. One became ten. Ten became hundreds. Hundreds became generations of faces. And now, dear Meadow, after wearing so many faces for so long, I’ve finally realized something."

He touched his own face, the eternally faceless face.

"I no longer remember which face was originally mine. I’m surrounded by faces begging me to become them, yet there’s no one left underneath any of them to actually become anything. I could steal your face, Meadow. I could steal every face beneath the heavens, and still, once the very last one is taken..."

Faceless laughed, hollow.

"...I’d remain Faceless."

Meadow’s heart pounded painfully. She began trembling with dread, feeling her Ultimate Skill buckling under the weight of the truth Faceless was pouring into it.

A truth she couldn’t bear. One she was never meant to encounter yet, given how underdeveloped her existence-level still was, however special.

Faceless smiled, watching Meadow struggle to breathe.

"You truly are exceptional, Meadow. But forcing truth out of people always comes with a price." He rose from his seat and coldly swept the table between them aside, shattering it.

Meadow began crawling backward, body shaking. Her mind ached, her soul trembled with fear.

Faceless stepped forward, calm, closing in like a wolf on a helpless lamb. "This is just one of those prices. There are truths you were never meant to know. Others you were only meant to learn much later. And you, insolent little human girl, think you can grasp my very being? Think your existence measures up to mine? Are you cursed with foolishness? What you see before you is nothing but one of my countless faceless faces."

Sudden fury sharpened his words, and his hand shot out, closing around Meadow’s throat, squeezing hard enough that the young tycoon wheezed, tears welling and spilling down her cheeks.

Faceless lifted her high into the air, her feet dangling, thrashing uselessly against him.

It made no difference. Just as he’d said, she couldn’t survive his truth, and it was killing her.

Her Ultimate Skill was far more complicated than she’d realized, its rules binding even against her.

In that instant, Meadow could think of nothing but death, and growing more certain of it with every second she watched his faceless face blur before her eyes.

"Remember that, in your next life," Faceless spat, scornful. "I am Faceless. I’m everyone, and everything you could ever imagine. And right now, I am—"

"—dead."

The world froze, and then a hand coated in red plasma burst straight into Meadow’s Ultimate Skill, shattering it, seizing Faceless by the throat.

Meadow and Faceless were both yanked back to the real world, inside the carriage. She lifted her tear-blurred eyes, coughing violently, and saw a masked man in a white suit gripping Faceless.

Cassius. Cassius had finally arrived.

Then Meadow watched something that widened her eyes.

Cassius seized the faceless man and, with a single red-plasma-coated punch, caved in his chest, tearing a hole deep enough to almost see through.

Faceless screamed, agony ripping through him.

The strike hit so hard the resulting shockwave shattered the carriage into splinters.

"Who are—!"

Cassius didn’t let him finish. He pulled out one of the two remaining Tier Four bombs left by his ancestor and jammed it directly into the hole he’d just carved.

Faceless immediately felt a lethal threat to his very life. He tried to resist, using the Skill of the identity he had stolen, but it was completely useless.

He had been severely weakened by everything that had happened, leaving him with barely the strength of a Third Rank.

And no Third Rank was a match for Cassius Desdemona.

The bomb would explode in 33 seconds.

Cassius grasped Faceless by the shoulders, spun around with his speed amplified by plasma, and hurled him straight into the Sky, where Horus was already waiting, his eyes shaking in dread as he cursed and screamed at how crazy his master was.

’Fuck this family!!!’ Horus bellowed, preparing himself.

Cassius looked at Meadow and smiled behind his mask. "You have done your part, Meadow." He turned and faced the direction where Sarah and the faceless masked woman were. "It’s my turn now."

He used the Sun Body of his Ultimate Skill, this time transforming his entire body into golden plasma.

Cassius’s body blurred, leaving behind a crackle of golden lightning. He pierced through the entire Hushsight Domain in a straight line like a cannonball, leaving behind a trail of gold that burned everything in its path, the very ground scorching black as he closed in on Sarah.

18 seconds were left.

At the same time, Faceless reached Horus.

Horus poured every drop of his remaining essence into his Skill and grasped the Sky around Faceless, wrapping it around him like a vast blue cloak before dragging him through the Sky itself, straight toward the faceless masked woman.

10 seconds were left.

At that point, Cassius could finally see Sarah.

She was on the ground, bleeding furiously, while the faceless masked woman held the artifact in her right bony hand.

Cassius increased his speed even further. He leaned his body backward, almost as though he were sliding down a mountain, and thrust his right leg forward.

Everything happened faster than the blink of an eye.

His right leg struck the bony hand of the faceless masked woman an instant too fast for her to react, cracking it and bending it outward. The strike caused her fingers to loosen, releasing their grip on the artifact.

Cassius caught the falling artifact, but his momentum was far too great to stop and take Sarah with him.

So he didn’t stop.

Dozens of plasma threads erupted from his body, wrapped around Sarah, and ripped her from the ground before hurling her high into the air.

5 seconds were left.

Fire Spirits spawned around Sarah the instant she reached the sky and blasted her forward with fire, calculating Cassius’s trajectory through their connection and sending her directly into his path.

Cassius pivoted without slowing down and caught Sarah against his chest. The impact sent him crashing hard onto his back, rolling across the ground, but he immediately flipped back onto his feet and detonated a high concentration of plasma beneath them, turning himself into a blur that disappeared deeper into the Domain.

2 seconds were left.

The faceless masked woman finally registered what had just happened. She turned her head toward where Cassius had disappeared, wrath boiling throughout her entire body.

Death essence coated her as she prepared to follow, but she abruptly stopped.

She lifted her head.

Above her, a faceless man was dropping from the sky, a hole carved through his chest.

And inside that hole...

Her eyes dilated in shock. "Vorn’s br—!"

Faceless crashed into her before the final word could leave her mouth.

0 seconds were left.

The Tier Four bomb exploded.

—End of Chapter 390—