The Broken Halo

[A/N: This bonus Chapter is thanks to OfcSoccer4. Ws to OfcSoccer4.]

-----

The Fifth Needle’s severed head remained in Simon’s hand.

For several seconds, the only sounds inside the chamber were the blood dripping from the Nethri Demon’s neck and the repeated impacts against the reinforced door.

The vice-leader stared at Simon.

His eyes moved from Simon’s uninjured body to the corpse lying on the floor, then back to Simon again.

He had seen the poisoned needles enter Simon’s body.

He had seen his veins turn black and the poison spread.

He had watched Simon stop breathing.

Yet the Minor Archfiend was standing before him without a single wound.

And the truth was simple.

Simon had never been poisoned.

The moment the Fifth Needle looked into his eyes earlier, Hollow Sky Eye had already affected his mind.

Simon did not use the illusion merely to kill him. He could have attacked while the Nethri Demon was distracted by the First Hazard Officer or anytime for that matter, but doing that would have wasted something far more valuable.

The Fifth Needle had entered Black Horn to kill a protected prisoner, and he had prepared for the mission longer than Simon had.

That meant he must have possessed a way to escape.

Simon’s spatial teleportation was currently not suitable to use. The formations covering Black Horn restricted the surrounding space, and forcefully tearing open a path could injure him or alert every runemaster inside and outside the Office.

He had another idea for escaping, but it was uncertain and dangerous.

The Fifth Needle’s method would naturally be better.

So Simon allowed him to believe that he had won.

The conversation between them had been real. Simon spoke from another part of the chamber and used the wind to carry his voice toward the illusion standing before the Fifth Needle.

However, the battle that followed existed almost entirely inside the Nethri Demon’s mind.

The Fifth Needle attacked empty air.

He dodged attacks that never came.

He struck an illusion of Simon, crouched beside an empty section of the floor, and pressed his fingers against the neck of a corpse that did not exist.

The vice-leader had also looked into Simon’s eyes when Hollow Sky Eye activated. However, Simon gave him a much simpler illusion.

He only made the vice-leader see Simon fight, become poisoned, and die. The part where the Fifth Needle killed the vice-leader never appeared in the prisoner’s mind.

That was why the vice-leader had looked at the assassin like he was insane.

From his perspective, the Fifth Needle moved away from Simon’s corpse, spoke to empty air, pushed a needle into nothing, and watched an imaginary demon die.

He had even stood in one place for several seconds before walking around the chamber and returning to almost the same position.

The entire time, he muttered to himself.

A madman would have looked more reasonable.

Simon’s greatest reward came when the Fifth Needle brought out the black scale.

The Nethri Demon physically removed the artifact and sent demonic energy into it. That initial activation allowed the scale to search for its matching half and awaken the spatial road carved within it.

Simon sensed the path immediately.

Before the Scale released enough power to open the road, Hollow Sky Eye made the Fifth Needle believe the activation was complete.

He thought the spatial tear had appeared, and he thought he entered it and emerged elsewhere.

In reality, he stopped feeding energy into the Scale, walked several steps through the treatment chamber, and turned around.

The artifact had revealed its purpose without being used.

Simon dropped the severed head beside its body and walked toward the treatment frame.

The vice-leader flinched as he approached.

Simon did not explain anything.

There was no time and he had no desire to waste his saliva on a demon that would soon be another corpse among the mountains of corpses in his life.

He channelled demonic energy into the Chaos Blade and swept it across the restraints.

Shiiing!

The dark metal separated without resisting.

The vice-leader’s visible eye widened.

The restraints were made from a metal that was strong enough to hold Greater Demons whose demonic pathways had already been sealed. Even Sovereign ranked weapons would require several attacks to break through them.

Simon cut them apart with one swing.

The vice-leader fell from the frame, but Simon caught his shoulder before he struck the floor.

”Stand.”

The demon’s legs trembled beneath him.

Simon turned toward the corpses.

He removed the Hazard garment he was wearing, brought the real Second Hazard Officer’s corpse out of his spatial ring, and dressed it quickly.

The illusion and the poisonous gas had hidden Simon’s involvement, but the scene still needed to tell a believable story after he left.

The First Hazard Officer had already died from the Fifth Needle’s poison.

The Second Officer’s broken neck could be blamed on the Nethri Demon’s physical strength.

Only the Fifth Needle’s death needed an explanation.

Simon used wind to lift the First Officer’s short blade from the ground and moved its hilt toward the vice-leader.

”Hold it.”

The prisoner hesitated.

Simon looked at him with the cold and indifference of a Demi-God looking down on mortals, and that was enough for the vice-leader to react.

The vice-leader grabbed the weapon with both hands.

”Press the edge against his neck.”

The demon obeyed with a pale expression. Simon guided his arms with the wind, dragging the blade through the blood covering the severed wound before making him place it inside the dead First Officer’s hand.

It was not a perfect scene.

A careful investigation would definitely discover inconsistencies.

But it would be enough to suggest that the First Officer and the Fifth Needle killed one another during the struggle, while the Second Officer died nearby.

By the time Black Horn examined everything properly, Simon would already be gone and the waters would be muddled by so many factors.

BOOM!

A section of the main door bent inward.

Voices finally travelled through the widening cracks.

”Again!”

”Break the lower hinge!”

Simon moved faster.

He collected the Nethri Demon’s spatial ring and stored it inside his spatial ring, then he picked up the black scale and examined the silver line running through its centre.

He sent his spatial energy into the Scale.

Hum!

The silver line brightened.

To his slight surprise, the artifact resisted him immediately, and Simon understood why after looking at it carefully.

There was a formation on it that only allowed the Fifth Needle to use it.

Simon’s eyes narrowed.

In his past life, he had dealt with similar artifacts.

However, he had spatial affinity and the knowledge of a Demi-God who used space as casually as walking.

He bypassed the formation, and dealt with the Scale’s limitation of only allowing one individual to enter it’s spatial road.

The Scale’s limitation came from the narrow layer surrounding the spatial road, not from the road itself.

He poured his spatial energy into that layer.

Instead of widening the path completely, Simon reinforced its weakest sections and wrapped a second current around the first. The Scale trembled violently in his hand, but the silver line became thicker.

However, it would not remain stable for long.

But Simon did not need it to.

CRACK!

A black arm suddenly broke through the damaged section of the main door, and Ossik’s eye appeared through the hole.

His gaze swept across the chamber.

Simon did not bother looking at him, he channelled the last of his spatial energy into the Scale.

The silver line split apart.

A narrow tear opened in front of him, filled with darkness and moving silver lights.

The vice-leader stared at it in fear.

Simon grabbed the back of his neck.

”Move.”

Before the demon could protest, Simon dragged him toward the spatial tear.

The main door exploded inward.

Simon and the vice-leader stepped into the darkness at the same moment.

The spatial road twisted beneath the weight of two living beings, and cracks spread across its silver edges.

Then the tear closed.

By the time Ossik, the captain, and the guards entered the treatment chamber, Simon and the Eastern Warden’s vice-leader were gone.