"Ry... Ryuk?" Isha called out to Ryuk, who slowly turned his head.
Frost suddenly covered his hands, along with the blood on his claws—and then, it shattered into pieces as it fell, revealing Ryuk’s claw, now drained of all blood.
"Isha," he called out, but his words were like nails scraping against each other, and the smile he tried to create only made her take a step back in fear.
[You don’t have time for this, you know that, right?]—The system notification suddenly flashed.
Ryuk faintly turned his head to look at the gigantic pirate ship still floating behind him, before he turned back to Antares.
"Antares, Rakshasa," he suddenly called out to both of them as they looked into his eyes.
"Thank you..." he said.
A faint grin appeared on Antares’s lips, and he shrugged his shoulders.
"Just getting myself some exercise is all..." he said.
Ryuk nodded, but then he continued:
"I have a task for you. Return to the spaceship and tell Elder Celine to keep on the journey. Anything you meet on your path until I join you..."
Antares’s eyebrows knitted.
"...Kill them. Kill all of them."
It caught the barbarian’s attention even more, as he could sense the emotion behind Ryuk’s words_ caution.
But a little skirmish with Void Pirates, which he had massacred so easily, shouldn’t have made him cautious at all.
And that was what caused Antares to look behind Ryuk—at the gigantic spaceship.
For some reason, he could feel it.
There was something with that spaceship.
Something was amiss.
But he had watched Ryuk a couple of times now, and he knew he never makes a decision without a reason.
If he wanted them gone without him, it was most likely for the best.
"Here..." he said, flinging him an object, which Ryuk caught in his palms.
It was a communication device.
"Elder Celine will send the update of our aircraft’s location to you soon," he said.
Ryuk nodded, and his hands instantly reached out, conjuring a Void vortex beside them.
He nodded reassuringly to Rakshasa, whose eyes flamed with light, but she did not comment.
"Wait, Ryuk, why are you staying behi—"
Isha tried to ask, but Rakshasa gripped her hands, and instantly, she was dragged into the Void vortex.
Not even three seconds later, the spacecraft rippled forward with speed, sending a cosmic shockwave that blasted apart the air around, and soon, it became a disappearing beam of light that shot quickly into the distance.
"Huuu,"
An exhale of blood-red gas escaped Ryuk’s lungs as he watched the spaceship completely disappear, and only then did he slowly turn back to the gargantuan ship.
Then—
CLAP
CLAP
CLAP
The sound of clapping suddenly resounded from within the spaceship.
Then it began to pull apart, the middle part opening up.
The entire spaceship had been split—so smoothly that it could have only been done by an incredibly sharp blade, with horrific slicing power.
When the spaceship pulled apart, it finally revealed the entity.
...A young man.
He looked just about 20 or 22.
Billowing short blue hair. White complexion. Big eyes—each of them holding two pitch-black irises instead of one. A pair of ruby-red lips, which were currently parted into a smile.
He was clad in royal masculine attire:
A navy blue coat tailored over his lean form, with huge collars and a row of ornamental buttons running down the front.
Over the coat, he wore a navy blue cloak, hanging over his right shoulder.
His trousers were made of the same dark velvet material, tucked into eye-catching, tall black boots that reached up to his knees.
Ryuk learned just one thing from his appearance:
Even though he came out of the spaceship of the destroyed Void Pirates—
He was nothing like them in physiology.
Which meant...
The young man in front of him probably hijacked the spaceship and killed whoever was the previous pirate leader.
But still... There was something about him.
Something that prompted him to silently activate a skill.
[Host has activated a Draconic Skill: Skyvein Lattice.]
The moment he activated the skill, the Void—exactly 300 meters around Ryuk—instantly changed.
Everything alive began to shimmer, as threads of pure Void energy travelled across the space, weaving through bodies and air.
The dead, floating pirates—slowly crushed into nothing by the pressure of the Void—glowed with a grey energy radiating a clear aura of death.
But then, Ryuk could faintly feel something embedded on their bodies, around their head and heart parts.
Something glowing with an especially eye-catching ash blue aura.
He could feel it was unnatural.
And when he looked at the young man before him—
He appeared as a thread completely covered in that same ash blue aura.
Unlike the one on the dead pirates, his was thrumming with a bizarre, dark power—one Ryuk could never mistake.
It was the faint aura of Knulls.
It was mixed in with the young man’s ashy blue life aura, making Ryuk affirm his suspicion:
’It’s just like I guessed. He truly had something to do with the Knulls.’
"You..." the young man said, as he floated forward among the parted ship wreckage, pointing a finger at Ryuk.
Somehow, his fingers were so lean and long, they looked like feminine claws—pale white—pointed right at Ryuk.
"You must be him... the son of Theth Vorgath. Please, correct me if I’m wrong..." he said in a courtly, gentle tone, prompting a reply.
"You already sound very sure..." Ryuk said blankly, his voice still thick like a roar.
"Oh, please, I just felt like you must be his son."
"After all, you seem to have the same sickness as him..."
’Sickness?’
Ryuk thought.
"...Except yours seems much worse, of course," the man added, his tone still laced with mystery.
"Who are you?" Ryuk asked, ignoring the topic.
"Oh, where are my manners. Please forgive me."
The young man bowed lightly.
"I am Evander, A threadbearer of the Marionette Queen." He said, but all he got was a blank look from Ryuk, which made him smile deeper as he continued.
"I do believe you may know her by her other name:
The Sixth Knull Calamity."