"You know, Snow... I’m really grateful to you.
"I never trusted anything on the battlefield except my own strength... but you’ve grown strong enough to keep pace with me.
Watching you soar honestly made me happy. For the first time... I can give someone my back without worry. I don’t think I’ve thanked you properly—and I might not get the chance later, so...
thank you."
Snow Lionheart’s presence .. and his willingness to give so much for my sake .. made me genuinely grateful, so I made sure to say it right.
But no reply. Only silence, broken by the steady rhythm of his breathing.
I turned his way to find he’d already passed out, mouth open, gulping the air around him.
Seeing how fast he crashed... I didn’t know what to say.
"Weren’t you the one who said you wouldn’t let me go anywhere? In that state, you couldn’t stop a fly," I muttered, lying back again.
I stared up at the tent’s tattered ceiling.
I closed my eyes slowly, and the sound of my thoughts echoed in the dark.
"The war is entering its final stages now .. and the outcome will soon be revealed..."
We were close ..so very close to the end of the War of Darkness.
Since the beginning, I’ve fought like a madman and butchered thousands with my own hands.
From time to time, I used the system’s future-vision, unable to kill my curiosity about how it would all end.
But even after burning all my Achievement Points, after doing everything I could...
I saw no happy future .. only murky visions.
Visions of a future where I stood among corpses, with the Empire lost ..completely, miserably.
It was a horrific vision that tightened my nerves further and further.
Worst of all, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see how we lost .. like something was blocking the truth from me.
Whatever the cause, it was terrible enough that I couldn’t change the future, no matter what I did.
If things kept going like this, we would lose .. inevitably.
Future-vision...
For all the dread it showed me, the vision felt strange this time...
as if it lacked... detail.
As if something were interfering.
Thinking it over, I opened my eyes again and brought up the system interface. There my odd ability gleamed:
Snapshot of the Future.
An ability that shows me what’s to come .. truly powerful.
Power of that caliber... it’s surely world-breaking ..
akin to Shadow Adaptation.
In other words, as the Engineer, Gehrman once said:
"The system is nothing but a manifestation of my own power and abilities."
If that’s true, then Snapshot of the Future is itself an ability ..and likely a world-breaking one.
If this ability showed interference ..was obstructed ..doesn’t that mean it collided with another ability of the same class?
I sat up on the cot again, thinking it through.
"When it comes to abilities of inevitability-law, there are very few on Earth who wield that kind of power."
Me... and the Engineer, Gehrman.
And...
"Rank Four Demon—Wesker."
Could it be... that the reason I saw nothing but defeat was because the final enemy on the other side is Wesker?
Will an opponent of his caliber appear at the end?
Against whom?
A handful of humans ..none of whom have even reached SSS-tier?
"If that happens... that’s the end."
Unless someone intervenes, we’ll die in disgrace.
The thought gnawed at me ..and just imagining it summoned nightmares.
"What would I do if I found myself against him? Against Wesker?"
Eyes on the system interface, I checked all my stats.
...
Host Name: Frey Starlight (Dual Soul)
Class: Duelist
Talent: SS+
Current Rank: SS−
Strength: SS
Speed: SS
Agility: SS
Endurance: SS
Aura: SSS
Magic: —
[Dueling Art Lv. 7 (max)]
Talents: {Dueling}, {Aura Manipulation}, {Poison Immunity}
Combat Style: Ten Thousand Steps of Shadow
Skills:
Hawk’s Eye (A class)
Phantom Steps (A class)
Seduction (D class)
Ascension (S class)
Ignition (SS class)
Screenshot (SS class)
Abilities:
Spatial Manipulation.
Shadow Adaptation 4/7.
Stage One: Adaptation to all combat styles, generating counters to any technique.
Stage Two: Adaptation to all bodily injuries, granting extreme regeneration that repairs the body autonomously.
Stage Three: Adaptation to all Aura types, granting perfect control and absolute command over both ambient Aura and the Aura within the user.
Stage Four: ???
..
Anti-Magic: Level Two.
Current Achievement Points: 0.
---
"I’ll have to break my limit again... if I want to become stronger than I am now."
But to do that, I needed Achievement Points.
And those had become hard to get—the quests rarely appeared anymore.
Only the final quest remained ..
the one that would let me master Shadow Adaptation completely.
I had reached Stage Four.
To be honest, I still had no idea what this stage actually granted me...
I hadn’t felt any real increase in power—so much so that for a moment I thought nothing had happened.
But somewhere inside... I was certain.
Something had changed.
Something... was waking up.
I didn’t know exactly what was happening, but the deeper I sank into Shadow Adaptation ..into mastering its stages ..
the more it felt like I was unlocking shackles around something sleeping deep within me.
A vast, overwhelming power.
But it came with something else ..something I might not be ready for.
"Maybe... if I master all seven stages, will that mean my existence disappears entirely?"
Do I become nothing but a distant, thinning shadow... while the true owner of these powers awakens?
And then... Nameless might truly return to life.
"Ah... this is not the time for an existential crisis," I muttered with a laugh, lying back on the cot.
With thoughts this dark circling me constantly, there was no way I could sleep.
"Sleeping with Uriel might not have been the worst idea..."
At times like these, I needed something .. someone to throw my consciousness far away.
Unfortunately, I no longer knew how to do that on my own.
And so, I ended up staying awake until morning broke and it was time to move ..
toward another battle... another war that would bring me one step closer to the end I was desperately trying to escape.