Path of the Extra

”Are you sure you’ll be fine on your own, Lumine...?”

”Yeah. Don’t worry about me. You said you had something to check on, right?”

Yelena still looked solicitous as she gazed up at Lumine. The two of them walked down the corridors, having already left the place where Celestina and Jasmine remained.

”I do, but...” Yelena hesitated, her expression tightening. ”I still agree with Celestina. You should wait until backup arrives. Or at least let me go with you.”

Lumine shook his head.

He had practically needed to beg Celestina to trust him—and to convince Yelena not to follow. At the very least, he had managed to make them accept it.

”Just go check on whatever you need to,” he said. ”I’ll catch up with Azriel as soon as possible.”

They stopped walking.

Lumine turned to face her with a tenderhearted smile, and Yelena responded with a small pout. She looked somewhat recalcitrant, as if every part of her still wanted to argue, before she finally conceded.

”Fine,” she grumbled.

Then her eyes narrowed.

Without warning, she pinched his arm.

”O-Ow! Ow, ow! Yelena! Why!?”

She let go and looked far more satisfied, nodding once to herself.

”That was for making me worry so much. Oh, and I’ll do it again if you get another nosebleed. Or die.”

Pinching a bleeding man or a corpse?

Lumine decided it was better not to question it.

They said their goodbyes, and Yelena headed in the opposite direction. Lumine watched her back as she hurried away, eventually breaking into a run.

This was the reason Yelena had not followed Lumine last time, when he went to find Azriel.

Granted, they might have found him faster if she had. Back then, however, she had been strangely focused on going somewhere else—and just as strangely insistent that Lumine not follow her.

This time was different.

Perhaps it was because Lumine had suddenly begun acting so strangely, worrying both her and Celestina in the process.

Sighing, Lumine dragged a hand through his hair and steeled himself.

Then he turned.

This time, he ran toward the direction where Azriel was located.

This time, he would reach him much earlier.

He knew where Azriel was now.

And he would not waste a single second.

*****

Just a few more corridors, and Lumine would reach Azriel.

He ran as fast as he could, feeling the world blur around him as he refused to stop. He had to get there. It was still far—farther than it should have been—and he did not know how or why Lioren and Azriel were there, but the last time he had arrived, the two of them had already been locked in battle.

They could already be fighting.

In fact, they probably were.

Lumine was confused. Overwhelmed. His thoughts were still reeling from everything that had happened—the system quests, the return through time, the skill called [Redo]... and that strange thing that had hugged him from behind and left him feeling sick to his stomach.

But none of that mattered right now.

His first priority was saving Azriel.

Despite having the chance to leave the scenario, despite understanding only fragments of the terminology—words like ”Ophanim” and ”Anathema”—Lumine was smart enough to understand the system’s warning.

The longer he stayed, the sooner he would die.

But he could not leave.

He could not leave anyone behind.

He had to rescue Azriel. He had to confront him. He had to figure out how to deal with all of this.

And Lumine was certain...

Azriel would know what to do.

Which was almost impressive, considering Azriel had killed him earlier by dropping him from thousands of feet above the ocean.

Sweat clung to Lumine’s skin. His lungs burned. His legs screamed beneath him, but he did not slow down.

’Almost there!’

At the very least, the silver torches were all lit, giving him a path to follow.

’Just two more turns!’

A surge of energy rushed through him, the kind that came when the end of a race finally appeared in sight. Lumine pushed himself harder, faster, until only one turn remained.

One last corridor.

One last stretch between him, Azriel, and Lioren.

But just as he reached it, his perception of the corridor suddenly warped.

The world displaced itself.

”Huh...?”

Lumine hit the ground hard.

His face struck the stone floor with a sickening crack, and for a moment, he simply lay there, numb from head to toe. His eyes blinked slowly. His expression was vacant, disoriented, as if his mind had been knocked loose from his body.

He tried to turn over.

His vision swayed.

Then flickered.

Darkness crawled along the edges of his sight, and for a brief, terrifying moment, Lumine felt as though he was no longer awake.

’What... happened...?’

He forced his gaze downward, trying to see what he had tripped over.

That was when he noticed the blood.

A horrifying volume of it was spreading around him, pooling fast beneath his body, dark and warm and terribly real.

Then he looked at his left leg.

Or what remained of it.

It had been severed halfway down.

Blood spurted from the stump in violent pulses, and a jagged piece of bone still jutted out, drenched in red. The other half of his leg lay nearly a meter away from him, twitching faintly on the stone.

”A-a... a... a—?”

A broken, confused sound left Lumine’s mouth. It was not a word. Not even close. It was only the mind’s desperate attempt to build logic where none could exist.

His leg was gone?

His leg was gone.

”Oh my! Oh my! What happened here!?”

A cheerful voice rang out beside him.

Lumine’s trembling eyes shifted.

Standing next to his head, grinning wickedly down at him, was the little angel.

”To think you reached them so quickly! It is almost as if you knew they were there, huh?”

Lumine stared at him, still unable to comprehend the situation. Consternation sank deeper and deeper into him, spreading like poison through his bones.

”But it does not matter!” the angel chirped. ”Looks like you got a preview, lucky participant! You see, very soon, I will be announcing that everyone can take a break, since the time limit for killing participants with red markers will disappear. The break will last five hours. However, the participants on the leaderboard will not receive a break. Instead, they will receive a challenge. They must reach the summit as fast as possible!”

The angel’s grin widened with childish delight.

”But a challenge has to be challenging, riiiiiight? So that is why I brought this thing from the Void Realm. Of course, considering how many participants are inside this colosseum... hehehehe, the ones who were supposed to be on break are simply unlucky!”

He paused, then gasped as though he had just realized something wonderful.

”Ah! Wait! Then you are both lucky and unlucky! Just like the participants outside this underground colosseum who are on the leaderboard but will be lucky enough not to face this challenge!”

The angel laughed, light and shrill and utterly cruel.

”Hehehehehehehehe! What do you think, human? I made something quite fun, right? I wonder how all of you will get out of this...!”

He looked elated.

Then his expression shifted into an awkward smile as he glanced down at Lumine.

But Lumine was no longer looking at him.

His eyes had moved past the angel.

To the thing in front of him.

The thing the angel had brought.

His entire world had narrowed to the thing standing in front of him.

”Ah, well... not you, of course,” the angel said.

”Since you are going to die now.”

Lumine did not hear him.

All sound seemed to sink away, swallowed by the sight of the creature standing ahead.

A towering mass of draped white strands hung from its body like soaked funeral veils, swaying gently with every crooked movement. At first glance, it almost resembled a cloaked figure.

Almost.

But its limbs were wrong.

Long, splinter-thin arms protruded from beneath the hanging shroud, bending at impossible angles like the legs of some diseased spider. Its joints cracked softly whenever it shifted its weight, the sound small and brittle and nauseatingly wet.

Beneath the pale curtain of hair and flesh, faces were fused into its torso.

Human faces.

They were stretched and half-sunken into the creature’s body, as though they had been swallowed alive and never fully digested. Their mouths hung open in frozen screams. Some twitched. Some wept black fluid from hollow eye sockets.

One still seemed to be breathing.

Its head sat unnaturally high above the rest of its body, hanging from a thin neck that looked far too frail to support it. A pale, smooth face stared forward with empty black eyes and a carved crescent grin that never changed.

”Ah... k... kh... n-o... n-n... o...”

Lumine’s eyes trembled even more.

Excruciating torment and trepidation consumed him like nothing he had ever felt before.

”A-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! NO! NOOOO! ARHGHHHHHKKKK!”

He screamed and thrashed, trying to force strength into his arms, trying to crawl away, trying to drag himself backward through the blood spreading beneath him.

But his body would not obey.

The creature took a single step forward on the needle-like tips of its limbs.

With that one movement, the stench reached him.

Warmth.

Rot.

Blood.

It struck his nostrils so violently that nausea flooded his throat.

”Nooo! H-help! Please! Arghhhhhhhh! Khahhhh! P-please! Aaaaaaaaaahhh!!!”

He did not see it move.

One moment, the creature stood before him.

The next, one of its splinter-like arms was buried in his chest.

Lumine’s body seized.

The limb had pierced straight through his heart.

Blood welled in his throat and spilled from the corner of his lips as his scream died into a wet, trembling gasp. He could not move. Could not breathe. Could not even look away.

The thing leaned closer.

Closer.

Its smiling face descended until it hovered only inches from his own.

Its breath washed over him, rancid and thick, so foul that Lumine wanted to vomit everything inside his body—his stomach, his lungs, his very soul—just to be free of it.

And then...

Lumine did not know what happened.

Because there were no thoughts left inside his mind.

No fear.

No pain.

No understanding.

Nothing.

Because Lumine’s head had been chopped off.

*****

”Do not worry. I promise you this. Go save Azriel, and once I am free of these chains, I will make both Caleus and Lioren pay.”

”...”

?

...?

...Huh?

”Lumine?”

Lumine looked at Celestina.

[The ??? Skill, [Redo], has successfully been activated.]