Killed Me? Now I Have Your Power Chapter 464: Rats

"Where were you just now?" Katherine questioned, her ever-present stare all too familiar to the Alchemist seated nearby.

Though he hadn't shifted even slightly from his spot, Katherine could sense whenever Alchemist deployed a clone to observe events.

Such actions were seldom taken.

He always professed to despise the sensation.

Thus, for anything to compel him toward something he loathed... she knew it held grave importance.

Her question hung in the air as she observed Alchemist lower his head, gaze locked on a small object pinched between his fingers.

A minuscule eye-like artifact, inscribed with runes that had gone inert.

"They have escaped." He stated flatly, fist clenching to shatter it with a sharp crack, crumbling it into black dust that drifted around him.

"They?" Katherine repeated, confusion evident in her tone, which Alchemist detected keenly. He sensed her dawning realization and surging fury even before she spoke further.

"They?" Her voice rose sharper with each word. "Prometheus and Sorrow have escaped? How is that even possible under your watch, Alchemist? You said you were handling them!"

"I did." He replied with that same infuriating calm. "Everything went according to plan."

He creased his brow, laced his fingers, and propped his chin atop them. "I made the vessel of Sorrow die and had Sorrow take over the body, just as I promised. I delivered Kaden to Nameless after showing him the cruelty and power of the Warren, and proposed giving him that very Warren."

"Forbidden. Have you lost your damned mind?"

"Ah well, time is nasty—!"

"You actually planned to give a Warren to a mortal? Prometheus on top of that?"

Katherine’s rage inundated every corner of the space where Alchemist resided. Unseen, she permeated it all.

Its embodiment chilled to the bone. Rats—not one, not dozens, but hundreds of thousands materialized—eyes crimson, forms ebony, jaws gaping in mute agony, corroding the atmosphere and existence itself around them.

Forbidden wearily summoned a rune shield about himself, fleetingly questioning his tendency to ally with troublesome figures. Companions like Kol’Riku might have suited him better.

"You are overreacting for no reason, Katherine." He remarked, a subtle smile playing on his lips. "It was nothing but an Echo of Warren. Not the real one."

"But still—!"

"Think for a moment." Forbidden interrupted her curtly. "Think about why I proposed that power to him. And to do that, I need you to remember where the Warborn lineage came from."

Katherine’s fury visibly ebbed, marked by the thinning horde of rats.

"Warborn, Bloodborn, Deathborn. All of them came from the dead God of Death." She said. "And the Warren you were giving him was—!"

"The one belonging to the dead God of Death." He concluded. "Tell me, what would have happened if a fragmented bloodline of that dead god found and took hold of his Echo of Warren?"

Katherine’s breath hitched briefly, astonished by the vastness of Alchemist’s design. Surprise yielded to dread—profound, entrenched dread.

"You... you wish to summon them back?" She whispered.

"Yes." Alchemist nodded.

"Reckless." She said. "Haven’t you watched them yourself?"

"I have. Very well even."

"No. You haven’t." Katherine rebuked him. "If you had, you would know it’s suicide to deliberately summon their attention onto you. And if they have their attention on you, they have it on me. I want nothing to do with them, Forbidden."

"You won’t—!"

"Find another way." She said. Then, immediately after: "No. No need. I’ll handle it myself from now on, Forbidden."

"Katherine—!"

"You won’t stop me."

Forbidden swallowed his retort, eyes fixed on the void from Katherine’s sudden departure.

The foul black rats unleashed a sinister screech his way before liquefying into gore and skeleton, trickling through his realm’s floor and fading away.

Forbidden Alchemist sat alone, eyes shut, utterly motionless.

The stillness lingered moments longer until a soft chuckle escaped his curling lips.

Certain truths go unquestioned when unveiled at the ideal juncture, amid perfect conditions.

Humans above all.

Katherine remained human—utterly, profoundly so, lofty station notwithstanding.

Man’s essence was rationality. Passion alone could dismantle it.

’And you are so full of it, Katherine. So full that in your haste, in your wrath, you forget that there is rarely anything more suspicious than a liar deciding to tell the truth for once.’

He paused, then snickered. ’Liar is harsh. Conservative, maybe.’

Now, what would she do?

’You don’t know where they are, yet you wish to kill them.’

Yet Forbidden conceded, for once, that her core traits would render her formidable in this pursuit—perhaps triumphantly so.

As passion vanquished reason, so did the sagacious shun the chase of a passion-fueled woman.

Forbidden chuckled softly to himself, easing back into tranquil quiet.

Even as calm restored, his thoughts returned inescapably to the final vision within the Echo of Warren.

The two skies. That glimpse of...

Alchemist’s brow furrowed ever so slightly.

’Now that’s a name easy to remember.’

Even more memorable lingered Servant’s form. Those eyes.

And Alchemist conceded outright...

’I underestimated the boy. Curse The Slave. How did his Unique Aspect of Will get copied by a child?’

He tsked sharply, mind spinning like clockwork in an elaborate mechanism, novel strategies weaving into established ones.

Plan within plan within plan.

’Always hide that one plan within the others. You are almost there, Seun. You are close. Remember that.’

Yes.

...

At that very moment, in a locale both obscure and recognizable, Kaden battled futilely to maintain aerial poise, gaze pinned below.

There knelt a eerie yet captivating Saintess in devotion before a fractured altar, from which black blood poured ceaselessly.

Kaden and Rea’s arrival in the desecrated church jolted Rea violently, as if lightning raged inside her.

Her convulsions drew the Saintess’s head snapping toward them, just as Kaden and Rea plummeted onto the rubble-choked ground strewn with crumbled columns.

The crash tore through him.

Seconds remained before his form collapsed fully. Eyelids drooped to narrow slits, refusing to widen.

His awareness, however, sharpened acutely. Vision held. The scene seized his heart in a vise.

Rea had slipped from his clutch.

’Blood and ashes...’

The Saintess, now a grotesque abomination with tentacles erupting from her features, clamped the writhing Rea in unnatural might, face hovering scant inches from hers.

Kaden groaned. "N-No..."

He strove to drag himself nearer. No chance arose. A tentacle—aglow with violet ichor—whipped forth, impaling his chest outright.

Bone splintered, tissue exploded. Half his torso imploded. His heart—like forged for a fire-born beast—stood exposed brazenly.

The Saintess lashed once more sans glance. The organ suffered the strike; Kaden slackened utterly.

—End of Chapter 464—