Chapter 364: Made a Terrible First Impression on My Sisters-in-Law

A thin, cold neck tensed beneath his hand at the same moment a choked gasp came out of nowhere, making Rose step back in alarm.

Mark hardened his gaze and tightened his fingers slightly.

"Who the fuck are you?"

The air in front of him rippled.

For an instant, the figure he was holding by the neck seemed to flicker, like an out-of-focus image, and then finished appearing all at once.

She was a short young woman with pale skin, red eyes, and black hair cut at chin length.

Both her hands were clamped around Mark’s wrist, trying unsuccessfully to pry it away, while her feet dangled several inches off the ground.

"D-Dalia..." Lily managed to say in a thread of a voice.

Behind Mark, Rose let out a gasp so sharp that he knew immediately something was wrong. He didn’t catch her expression, but he didn’t need to; from the sound she had made, she must have been completely paralyzed.

Mark was about to turn and ask what was happening when a shadow descended from above.

Dalia dropped onto him with a katana gripped in both hands, using the momentum to drive the blade straight at his head.

Mark reacted on instinct and raised his free hand.

The edge slammed into his palm with such force that the air seemed to tremble around them. Mark’s fingers closed around the blade and a thread of blood began to slide down his wrist.

Dalia hung suspended in front of him, less than a hand’s breadth away, still clinging to the hilt with both hands and wearing a look of surprise.

Mark reacted at once and twisted his torso violently, using Lily as an improvised weapon to smash Dalia with all his strength.

BAM!

The impact of the two bodies echoed through the garden like a tree trunk splitting.

Dalia lost her grip on the katana, and she and Lily were both flung several meters before crashing head-on into the central fountain.

The stone cracked on impact, one of the statues split in two, and a jet of water shot into the sky before falling back down on them.

’Yuki, get Rose out of here. NOW,’ Mark called through the mental link. ’Then warn the others that there are intruders inside the palace, so they can get the ones who can’t fight to safety.’

’Yes, Master.’

Yuki materialized instantly beside Rose and, for a moment, Mark caught the tension on her face.

From her expression, she hadn’t detected them either.

Rose turned her head toward Yuki and opened her mouth to say something, but she didn’t get the chance. Yuki wrapped both arms around her, careful not to put pressure on her belly, and an instant later the two of them vanished from the garden.

The garden fell silent, except for the water still pouring from the broken fountain.

Mark lowered his gaze to the katana he still held between his fingers.

It was a long, slightly curved blade, a dark red verging on black, with the hilt wrapped in crimson cord and a circular guard decorated with a thorn pattern.

He recognized it instantly.

Crimson Tide.

One of the hardest katanas to obtain in Eternal Conquest Online and the final reward of a raid that a good portion of players had never managed to complete.

Every cut caused bleeding, and the bleeding stacked until it burst. For an entire season, it had been the most hated weapon in player-versus-player mode.

Mark slowly raised his eyes to the fountain, and then he noticed something else.

The clothes.

Dalia’s navy-blue suit was tailored with a precision far too perfect for any tailor in this world, while Lily’s dress had a design Mark remembered seeing more than once in the game’s cosmetics shop.

’Players...’ he thought, frowning. ’Shit... I got too complacent, thinking nobody could get this far without making a scene.’

However, he had no time to keep mulling it over, because a strange, damp sensation ran across his hand.

The katana finished dissolving in his grip until it turned into blood, which slid between his fingers and fell onto the stones without splattering.

But instead of staying there, it began to move.

The blood advanced along the path as if it had a will of its own, snaking through the cracks in the stone toward the fountain.

Mark followed the trail of blood with his eyes to the fountain and found Dalia already upright among the rubble.

Her suit was soaked, several strands of hair were plastered to her face, and a wound on her forehead was slowly closing.

She ignored Mark completely as she tended to Lily, brushing the wet hair from her face before carefully propping her against the broken stone, out of the water.

The katana’s blood reached her fingers shortly afterward and vanished beneath her sleeve as if returning to where it came from.

Once finished, Dalia straightened up and turned her full attention to him.

"You have no idea how angry I am," Mark said, watching the wound on his palm finish closing. "You entered my home, approached my family, and attacked me without caring that my pregnant wife was standing beside me."

He approached her slowly.

"I’m not going to let something like this slide."

Dalia studied him in silence for a moment.

Then her clothes changed.

Her navy-blue suit dissolved from the bottom up into tiny particles of light and, almost at the same time, a black trench coat began to cover her body.

The red lining flashed for an instant as dark plates appeared on her shoulders and forearms, followed by gloves, boots, and a high collar.

Her hair gathered itself into a ponytail and, finally, a golden spear with a crimson tip appeared in her hand.

The transformation finished in just a few seconds, but it was enough for Mark to recognize what he was seeing.

He might have forgotten the name of that outfit, but its price was impossible to forget.

It had come out of one of those limited loot boxes in Eternal Conquest Online’s paid shop that appeared once a year and then vanished forever.

Back then, Mark had seen enough players flaunting it that he’d ended up working out the cost out of sheer curiosity.

More than six months of salary.

That was what it cost to get it.

And to make matters worse, it wasn’t just an expensive cosmetic.

In player-versus-environment, its resistances were so absurd that wearing it was almost like activating an invulnerability hack.

Although in player-versus-player it didn’t stand out much, since there were far better options, cheaper and far more useful than simply soaking up damage.

Mark narrowed his eyes.

There was no doubt left.

She was a player, and a big-time whale at that.

Mark let out a long sigh. He wasn’t going to hold back anymore, so he raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.

Mark’s shadow darkened all at once and something floated up out of it.

It was a tall figure wrapped in a tattered black robe, with no legs, the lower part of the cloth fraying in the air.

Beneath the hood there was no face, only darkness and two points of bluish light.

Two skeletal hands protruded from the sleeves, holding a scythe taller than Mark himself, its curved blade giving off an icy vapor.

The reaper positioned itself to his left, floating half a meter above the ground.

[Grim Reaper]

[Race: Undead (Specter)]

[Type: Dps]

[Level: 90]

[Skills:]

[Soul Harvest: each strike of its scythe damages the target’s soul directly, ignoring armor and physical defenses.]

[Ethereal Step: can become intangible for a few moments to pass through attacks and obstacles.]

[Mark of Death: the marked target takes increased damage from all sources while the mark remains active.]

[Description: Elite specter that responds only to the highest-level necromancers. Its presence weakens the living, and once it fixes on its target, it doesn’t stop until it has harvested their soul.]

Then the ground behind Mark trembled.

An enormous hand of bone gripped the stones of the path, then another, and something gigantic rose at his back.

It was the upper half of a colossal skeleton, from the waist to the skull, so huge that its head rose above the willow.

Its rib cage was the size of a house, and in the empty sockets of its skull burned two blue flames.

It had no legs or pelvis; the spine ended right behind Mark and merged with his shadow, so that the skeleton was attached to him, floating at his back, its huge arms mimicking every movement Mark made.

[Odokuro]

[Race: Undead (Colossal Skeleton)]

[Type: Guardian]

[Level: 95]

[Skills:]

[Shadow Bond: remains attached to its summoner’s shadow and replicates his movements.]

[Bone Bulwark: intercepts attacks aimed at its summoner with its arms and rib cage.]

[Abyss Fist: channels energy from the abyss through its fist and drives it into the enemy on impact, damaging the body and disrupting the flow of mana.]

[Description: Animated remains of a giant fallen in a forgotten age. Half shield, half weapon, it never leaves the side of whoever summons it.]

"This is your only chance," Mark said coldly. "Surrender and I promise you a quick death."

Dalia looked at the reaper, then at the giant skeleton, and finally at Mark, but not one of those things managed to draw the slightest trace of fear from her.

Her answer came when she opened her stance, bent her knees, and readied the spear.

"Then that’s how it’s going to be..." he said, shaking his head. "Don’t say I didn’t give you options."