Scarlet

“Heya little pup,” he says, still smiling. Although I can tell that he doesn’t have as much enthusiasm as this personality normally has. “Looks like you’re awake. Did ya sleep well?”

I look him over for a second, finding it a little hard to match the battered and beaten image I have of him during that battle with his image now as I answer, “Yeah. You look worse for wear.”

Even though he physically looks better, he just doesn’t seem to have that same spark he had before. And I know he’s not in his psychopath personality right now, so that means something’s up.

He nods his head, his smile turning slightly into a grin. But then he sighs, his grin fading as he mutters, “Guess there’s no point hiding it.” He meets my eyes and crosses his arms, “I owed you two favors as I stated a while back but you never tried to cash in on it. Not until I offered to help send you to Tartarus, and we both know how that went. But now…” a hint of sadness emerges in his gaze. “Now you’ve saved my life and I still haven’t finished paying back my debt. So please, let me do something to pay you back.”

I frown at his words, only now understanding just how important paying back debts is to Black. Then I shrug and answer, “I’m not the type to ask for help from others, so unless you have some sort of poison and disease based magic, then I don’t think there’s much you can do to help me right now.”

He blinks before tilting his head slightly and saying, “I do have both a poison and disease based skill.”

Silence fills the rooftop for several seconds before I mutter, “Oh.”

Come to think of it, he’s an assassin. It makes at least a little sense that he’d have a poison skill.

The silence stretches on for a while until I eventually ask, deciding to act like that didn’t happen, “Then that’ll work. Please use the poison skill on me without holding back.”

He looks surprised but does it without question anyways, making my eyes widen in surprise before I immediately start diffusing all of the pain and focusing on using Gradual Corruption Nullification. And the skill ends up taking quite a bit longer to nullify the poison than I would’ve expected, leaving me sitting here nullifying it for nearly an entire hour nonstop.

Almost forgot how weak I am without those stacks of Blood Thirst active. Makes me wonder how long it would’ve taken to nullify it with those stacks active.

After finishing nullifying the shadow-based poison that I still don’t understand how works, I open my eyes, finding myself sitting on some sort of chair made of shadows.

Interesting.

On that note, the System Notice reappears with the achievement filled in. Although the achievement doesn’t give me any SP, irritatingly enough.

Anyways, I turn to Black and ask, “Next up the disease skill.”

He nods, seeming rather surprised that I managed to nullify the skill as fast as I did. Then he raises his hand, making strange and disgusting looking snakes of shadows begin crisscrossing through the air towards me before entering my skin.

Right away I see my skin taking on a darker and darker skin, getting blotches of black and green all over as I quickly begin nullifying the disease. But the disease proves to be stronger than the poison, so it ends up taking me longer to do.

I manage to do it though, so I eventually open my eyes again to find the System Notice reappearing again with just a single achievement necessary.

And this achievement doesn’t require me to be Class IV to do, right Tar?

“You’re right,” Tar answers, making me smirk slightly.

Which means I can set about now to get those five Catalysts.

On that note, what are the Class IV Catalysts?

“Your grandfather told me that they are, of course, the Class IV Cores and Class IV magical ores,” Tar answers before adding a rather surprising answer, “but the last one is, instead of hearts this time, you need the entire reality of a level 1000 being for each Catalyst.”

Wait, their entire reality? We need souls?

Seriously?

“Yes,” Tar answers, sounding incredibly serious. “Remember that the ascension to Class V is finishing the process of merging reality and your body entirely. So the catalysts have to be as powerful as entire realities to do that.”

Right. That.

This ascension is going to be very unpleasant.

“It will be,” Tar agrees before adding, “look at the bright side though. You won’t ever have to eat, sleep, or do any sort of daily necessities anymore after reaching Class V. Since your body won’t really be mortal in that sense of the word anymore. It’ll be your reality and body in one.”

Wait, no daily necessities at all? And no more having to stuff my face with food?

Okay, I’m looking forward to this now.

It’s too bad that I can’t just use Pain Diffusion for it.

I grimace at the thought of Pain Diffusion and the pain I’m gonna have to feel at some point within the next couple weeks.

“You should probably spread that pain out,” Tar suggests, making me nod my head in agreement.

Anyways, I thank Black before the man vanishes in a veil of shadows. And right after that, Red appears next, making me wonder if he was just waiting there for us to finish or something.

The man walks up to me and actually bows his head, saying, “Thank you for saving my life. I am in your debt.”

Oh. Right.

Almost forgot the man was about to die when I got there. So I kind of did save his life.

“If your Pride will allow it, I have permission from the Demon King to gift you these,” Red says while handing me five different glowing red shards that has my eyes widening slightly. “He said that you would have absolutely no issue clearing mere Class IV Fractures, so there’s no point making you get these Catalysts yourself. Not when you’ve already killed a Class V.” He raises his head with a light smile on his face. The first real, non-sadistic smile I’ve seen on the man’s face since meeting him. “Don’t you admit that killing a Class V was more than enough test to reach Class V?”

To my surprise, my Pride doesn’t actually burn at this.

It even lets me reach out and absorb the cores into my body, following which I get the usual System Message about me being able to Ascend.

Red then grins and bows his head once more before leaving.

And without missing a beat, Blue arrives after him.

Okay, seriously. Is this just a parade of the Knights or something?