THE VILLAIN'S POV Chapter 744: The Sixth Adaptation

On the fringes of the battlefield, distant from the clamor of devastation...

A hush descended.

Frey Starlight at last quit shaking once he had heaved up all the contents of his gut—after beholding a horror surpassing any dreadful dream.

A horror that ripped wide an ancient scar Frey had hidden away profoundly, just to prevent his sanity from shattering.

What intensified his agony was realizing Danzo wasn't alone in that ocean of gore. Next to him lurked another shape... a maiden with a hideously warped body, drifting without purpose along the depths too. Naturally, Frey knew who she was.

"I thought I was rescuing her... but all I managed was to heighten her misery," Frey murmured, his gaze gloomier than ever before.

Nameless offered no reply. Language had become pointless at this point.

That maiden was Clana Starlight.

Long ago, Simon Manus had somehow transformed her into a marionette. The odd thing was she hadn't perished in that condition... she had lived on, robbed of her free will.

The blaze Frey had unleashed previously, the one that razed the City of Puppets, was what finished her off.

Frey had thought that act freed her.

In reality, he had merely trapped her far down in the shadowy chasm within his own being.

For an instant, Nameless pondered...

What emotions must be churning inside Frey Starlight at this moment?

Frey had slain those close to him. Those he cherished.

That by itself was brutal, casting deep, inky shadows that chewed relentlessly on his soul for ages.

But slaying was one matter.

Trapping their spirits was a whole different ordeal.

In that fleeting second, Nameless experienced real intrigue... what surged through Frey upon grasping that he had stolen their peace and release, dooming them to endless agony?

He required no verbal response.

Frey's feelings transmitted to him.

Nameless stayed silent. He balled his hand into a fist and held it over his heart, struggling to quell the ache.

A brutal torment... like some force was consuming him internally, scorching him with blistering fire.

An intolerable feeling, blending sorrow, fury, and hatred toward himself.

A heavy load that even compelled Nameless to resent such sentiments.

"What surges through me now is just a sliver... a mere piece of the torment Frey Starlight bears."

"If this counts as only a piece... a lone spark... then how immense is the suffering he withstands?"

Nameless bowed his head to the pile of bodies. He grasped that the anguish probably equaled the count of those anguished spirits... spirits doomed to stay locked here eternally, or to be incinerated and converted into strength for one individual's gain.

Amid those two destinies, they held no say.

The choice rested solely with Frey.

"The sixth phase of Shadow Adaptation involves the incineration of souls," Nameless murmured softly.

"More accurately, that's merely part of the skill... the portion tied to demise. Souls ended by my strike face inevitable suffering. Souls ended by someone else's... those I can bestow renewal upon."

"That's the nature of this ability... one that disrupts the rules of existence and oblivion..."

"To restore one life, another must perish as payment. That's the equilibrium needed to uphold the cycle of life and death. The pair remain tightly linked."

These statements captured the height Nameless had attained after tampering with existence and oblivion for so long.

Still, he had overlooked the reason he first embarked on that road. What lingered was simply a warped remnant of his vanished reality.

"...Stop. That's irrelevant at present."

Nameless shifted his focus back to Frey.

"He can't rise once more—not after bearing such intense torment."

Frey Starlight couldn't set ablaze the spirits of those he had slain. Such an act would devour his companions too... and that proved too overwhelming for him.

Frey might draw on icy reason if it involved only igniting foes' souls, or even unknowns.

But Danzo and Clana...

They formed the exception.

A barrier Frey Starlight, a figure who retained his feelings, could never surmount.

At minimum, that's what Nameless assumed.

However, for the initial time since encountering Frey...

Nameless's eyes gradually expanded in astonishment as he observed an unforeseen sight. An event that flipped all his prior assumptions upside down.

Frey Starlight rose to his feet once again.

And right then, a single body burst into flames, swallowed by furious purple fire.

Only one, positioned at the distant rim of the gore-filled sea.

But soon...

Corpse after corpse started to ignite, accelerating rapidly in a frightening rhythm. Purple surged over red as Nameless observed wordlessly.

In mere moments, the entire heap of remains blazed up... consuming everything, forming a dark signal fire that set the blood ocean alight.

Clana's form burned among them.

And shortly thereafter, Danzo's.

They blazed swiftly. Silently.

Without opposition. Without even one cry.

They burned identical to the rest.

No separation.

No preference.

Just purple flames... mirroring the anguish and shadow that consumed a mortal soul.

Nameless directed his sight back to Frey Starlight, now standing tall anew.

He remained the identical individual.

Yet a single detail seized Nameless's focus above all.

Frey's eyes.

Shadowy. Vacant. Devoid.

That shadow...

That deadly emptiness...

Nameless knew those eyes well.

"They're identical to the gaze I glimpsed in my recollections..."

Inside Nameless's mask lay an enormous archive of recollections... echoes of his history.

And within those recollections,

Nameless possessed those very eyes.

Icy eyes, stripped of feeling.

Eyes he had only lately started to shed...

Ever since Frey Starlight's sentiments began infiltrating him.

But in a cruel reversal, Frey now displayed the exact eyes Nameless thought he had forsaken permanently.

The mortal had grown nearer to a beast...

and the beast, nearer to a mortal.

"You've transformed... Frey Starlight..."

...

...

...

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— Frey Starlight’s POV —

Recently...

I've started doubting what counts as just, and what counts as unjust.

At a certain juncture, I'm sure I breached the boundary dividing those notions.

The gore coating my palms is dense—and it will never cleanse.

I glanced forward briefly, at the furious clash zone.

Gehrman battled Amon there, with my father at his side.

Up in the heavens... Snow dueled Nito, the Ninth Seat.

And even loftier...

that beast that emerged from nothing clashed with the Third Upper Seat.

"This is a warzone... a warzone where all combatants strive for a cause, to fulfill some goal."

Each of them carried their personal motive to battle with such intensity, such urgency.

"I had one as well... a motive, an impulse to press on... safeguarding my kin, and those precious to my soul."

Gradually, I pivoted to Ada, my sibling, whom I had abandoned there... sprawled in oblivion.

"That served as my motive for combat until this point. Provided they stayed secure, other concerns faded..."

"Yet ultimately... I turned into the tormentor of the exact folks I vowed to shield."

"Danzo... and Clana. Each one."

"And not only them. My father returned to life just to serve as a tool against me.

My sister turned into a bargaining chip... an element foes could exploit to undermine me.

And Carmen perished directly in my sight, with me powerless to halt it."

It seemed unavoidable.

Regardless of my efforts...

Regardless of my actions...

I invariably confronted the identical result.

"I explored endless routes... endless scenarios... yet every one concluded in defeat."

I even morphed into a gore-drenched slayer merely to tread the Path of Blood.

I massacred tens of thousands in conflict without mercy, gradually discarding my human essence.

And it brought me to nothing.

"All those remains... all those spirits agonizing within me... they must damn me daily, yearning for my end—right?"

It was evident.

They latched onto me in hopelessness, attempting to pull me along into that swamp of gore and doom.

"All of this... stems from my doing."