All of this, Owen watched from the side, his face covered in disbelief.
He had been given a simple mission, one that he had thought couldn’t be any simpler.
Two Apocrypha Stage cultivators and three Eternity Stage cultivators, all going on a hunt for a little princess who was merely at the Cataclysm Stage.
Their mission was to kill her.
And yet, in this mission, all five had met their demise, save for him alone, who had ended up getting trapped in this endless, dark Void.
Endless, because he had tried to look for a way out and failed.
It had always amazed him, and half left him in disbelief, that he had been beaten and trapped within the realm of someone who seemed so much younger than he was.
Yet, he seemed so powerful that it was beyond Owen’s imagination.
But now?
That same one whom he thought was so powerful?
He was on all fours, hacking up pitch-dark blood mixed with white.
His left hand gripped onto his chest, where, from the side, Owen could see some gigantic claw marks, oozing with a dark aura.
The young man who had been his captor now looked like someone just a step away from certain death.
It was a notion that filled Owen with disbelief.
What horror could have reduced him to this state?
But a darker realization crawled up to him.
’So even someone as strong as him can also be reduced to such a state, huh?’
_____
’She still got me,’ Ryuk cursed, crimson veins pulsing in his eyes.
At the last second, he had pulled off the impossible.
He had copied her abyssal energy and forcefully triggered his Knull transformation skill.
He even used one of the Knullic skills—"Claws of Erasure: Terminal Execution"—and it had all happened so fast that he managed to land a clean strike on her.
Yet, before she could be sent flying,
She had reacted just as fast, smashing her claw into Ryuk’s chest.
And the pain from that... was far worse.
"Hey, system..." he forced out from his lips.
And immediately, an object appeared in the space before him.
It was a vial, with golden liquid bubbling here and there inside.
It floated before Ryuk, whose hand reached for it, but
GRAB
Something snatched the vial faster than he could.
A hand that took it away from him.
And in return—
SHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING
A dark blade flashed across Ryuk’s vision,
SPRAAAAAAAY
White blood sprayed into the air as his head jerked back from the force, and he landed flat onto his back on the platform, his vision turning blurry.
[You’ve Sustained Two Major Injuries While Holding Zero Endurance Stats.]
[You’re Now Dying.]
The system panel flashed before his gaze, disbelief washing over him.
Running across the top of his head was a blade mark so deep his white skull was revealed.
One of his eyes had gone blind from the blood that flooded it, but with the other, he looked, and saw him standing there.
The assassin he had kept locked away in here stood right before him.
One hand held the scythe, currently resting on Ryuk’s neck, and the other held the healing vial.
Owen turned away from the vial in his hand before crouching and looking down at Ryuk.
"Do you know why you’re dying?" he asked, as his curved blade inched closer to Ryuk’s neck, pressing against the skin.
White blood began slowly oozing out.
"If...you...kill...me...you’ll...be stuck...here...forever," Ryuk forced out, incoherently, as the chilling pain slowly spread through his head.
The blade was cutting deeper and deeper into his neck.
Owen leaned closer, his expression focused for a few seconds.
Yet when he looked into Ryuk’s dying eyes, a grin curved his lips.
One filled with disbelief and mockery.
"You know, I still remember what you always were." Owen began slowly, his eyes flashing with memories.
"That overly confident aura of yours mixed with seeming naivety, though sweet at first, still couldn’t hide that one factor about you."
"It’s like a disgusting stench that hangs around you all the time," Owen said, watching a line of blood slip from Ryuk’s mouth.
"It’s your nauseating ego."
"The ego that screams ’I can never be defeated.’" he completed, and Ryuk’s iris widened.
"Because of your ego, you placed me—an assassin—in here, for whatever reason you may initially have."
"But because you think you’re invincible and can’t possibly be defeated by the likes of me..."
"You didn’t do whatever it was you planned to do with me."
"If I ever crossed your mind, you were probably like—’Him? Yeah, he can’t do anything. It’s fine,’" Owen said, chuckling darkly.
"Yet—" he continued, pulling his blade back and hanging it before Ryuk’s eye.
And then—
PUUUUUUCCCHHHIIII
The blade carved straight into Ryuk’s right eye, cleaving it to bits as white blood slowly leaked out.
The pain of losing an eye was so overwhelming that Ryuk could not hold down the urge to scream.
But all he could do was gargle on the blood flooding his lungs.
"Yet look at you now. Even more pathetic than I was when you caught me." Owen said as he roughly pulled out the blade from Ryuk’s eyes, making the blood rain down his face.
"You thought the tables could never be turned on you, didn’t you?" Owen said, as Ryuk’s eye turned away from him, and looked up into the sky.
But there were no beautiful blue clouds to welcome his gaze.
Only the deep, dark void, which seemed even more haunting than an abyss.
’I died,’ he thought, the realization slowly dawning.
’And I didn’t die in battle with someone countless times stronger than I am... but at the hands of one I truly thought was no threat.’
’In the end... I died at the hands of someone so weaker than I am.’
This was the most disbelieving thing he had ever faced in his entire existence.
The reality that there was someone so strong they could render him half dead in just three strikes was hard enough to believe.
Yet just moments after, he had faced another shock.
He was dying in a way he could have never predicted, not even in a million years of imagining how his death would come.
Owen’s eyes flashed when he saw the blood in Ryuk’s mouth slowly bubbling.
His disbelieving expression twisted into clear laughter, which could be seen amidst the blood on his face.
’He’s laughing?’ Owen thought in shock.
And his expression grew even more confused when he saw the white blood spilling from Ryuk’s remaining eye.
His expression was like that of someone who finally had his freedom after hundreds of years of being denied it, yet tears of blood flowed freely down.
Still, Owen didn’t waste a moment.
"Open the gate, and maybe—just maybe—I might give you back your precious vial."