Chapter 1371 (2/2)

Then Neveah left, leaving Roy sitting with soup splattered across his face. The cooling mixture dripped out of his hair and onto his shirt as he sat and watched her go. And after she left, Roy’s expression shifted. From fear, it settled into a resentful bitterness. When he was sure she was gone, he pressed his lips together and spat on the ground next to him.

There wasn’t any point in continuing his inner narrative without an audience. In fact, to do so would just demonstrate how much of a lie it really was.

Then, with footsteps far heavier than the ones he had when he had walked out of his cabin and created the fire, he walked inside and carefully washed off his face.

“The truth, huh…?” Roy sighed as he used a towel to squeeze the potatoes, carrots, and onions out of his hair. He didn’t have a mirror in the hastily made home, but he waved his hand and conjured one. Roy looked at his reflection, showing the illusion of the heroic human that he had used to be. He was middle-aged, but attractive with a winning smile. His bushy brown facial hair framed his face well. He was a hero.

Then the illusion flickered and Roy stared at what he really was. A skeleton with glowing eyes. The Undying Hero. An abomination who had seen beyond the edge of this life and been eternally scarred by what he found there.

But even this was fine. It was that third flicker that sent waves of panic through Roy’s heart. When Roy looked at the mirror, he saw himself as the man he used to be. His hair was oily. His eyes were dull. His limbs were weak and his stomach was flabby. He was the man who had worked in data entry at a cookie-cutter insurance company. He was the man who ran from himself with the System arrived, seeking a new life.

Very quickly, Roy looked away. Then he pressed his eyes closed. I hate it. I hate who I used to be. So why…?

Part of the problem was Neveah, keeping here and forcing him to do menial tasks and play house with her when she wasn’t studying Engravings or helping Randidly Ghosthound. Her treating him respectfully was strange for Roy, but he ultimately could have dealt with it while plotting his escape and revenge. Which was what he had intended to do in the beginning.

That was until the day after Randidly Ghosthound’s birthday when Roy had received his third Labour: the Doldrums of Normalcy.

It should have been easy. Roy had been flabbergasted at first by how simple his new Labor had been. As a hero, the Labors were the source of his power. Each Labor that he successfully completed would increase his strength and abilities by a large margin. It was the way that the Hero Class functioned.

His first Labor had been dying, which obviously had a profound effect on him. His second Labor had been being tortured by the ruler of the frog world. And now his third Labor was to live… normally, if only just for a time.

So Roy had told himself that he could do it. Since he was captured by Neveah anyway, he would put aside his plots to escape and simply live. And when he completed this Labor, he could use his newfound power to escape.

Very quickly, memories had caught up with Roy. Moments of inexplicable dread left him unable to move when he had no pressing need to do anything. Still, it wasn’t like he was an idiot. He knew that this Labor would increase his mental strength. His images, when he finally could escape normalcy, would be so much more powerful.

But he slowly had begun to panic. What if he never escaped normalcy? What if he was slowly regressing to the man he used to be? What if everything so far was a dream?

Normalcy had begun reclaiming him, too. For the first time since Roy had died, he felt the suffocating weight of depression. If it wasn’t for Neveah bossing him around, Roy might not even move around during the day.

And Roy could try and escape, but that would mean he failed to complete Labor. And that… seemed like it would entail consequences. So Roy wanted to complete it-

“I…” Roy’s mouth was dry. Well, it was obviously dry, he was a skeleton. Yet he couldn’t work up even the spit to speak. He just stared blankly forward at his own reflection. Then he waved his hand and the mirror shattered.

Even the secret darkness Roy still held in his body, the remnant of dying and experiencing what the System had in store for everyone that it was able to grasp, was cowed by the crippling weight of being normal. That horrible truth, the one that had driven Roy to seek to halt the progress of the Earth through the System, no longer made Roy froth at the mouth. It was just a truth.

It was because the normal Roy felt powerless. What was the point of doing anything? Nothing would change. His prior actions were a childish tantrum-

“Fuck…” Roy whispered. Then he shifted and walked to a shelf along the wall. After a long hesitation, he removed a piece of paper from his interspatial ring and began to write a letter.

*****

When Octavius Shrike had received Randidly Ghosthound’s message, his expression had twisted in fury. The message didn’t explicitly say anything, but Octavius had dealt with Randidly for a long time. The fact that whatever he had done had made the Ghosthound nervous enough to reach out was a bad sign.

So Octavius had sat at his desk and waited for the inevitable hammer to fall. One hour passed, then two. And to his surprise, there was no feedback from the System. As far as it was concerned, whatever had happened didn’t require a notification.

Around hour five, Octavius Shrike was beginning to relax. He received a message from a friend in the Nexus, which caused him to jump. But when he saw it wasn’t concerning Randidly Ghosthound at all, Octavius quickly relaxed.

But then Octavius read the message. The hammer had come from an extremely unexpected source. His eyes widened. “Dear god…”