Chapter 112: Reaper II
In the same second, all the red threads he had held in his hands until the last moment went dark. The threads connecting his body to the alpha retracted without force. The alpha’s body, no longer having the active fusion, collapsed to the ground with its full weight.
Yorel human, in two pieces, fell as well.
With blood pooling in a growing puddle that reddened the grass in a radius of approximately three meters.
Nathan stood still.
With the scythe dripping.
With steady breathing.
And with the mental System confirming the result.
```
Elimination completed.
Target: Yorel, bearer of the Draken
Seal. Estimated level: 28.
EXP gained: +12,000.
Reaper’s Toll activated: +5% maximum
mana. Mana: 0 → 185.
Level: not increased (requires +8,000
additional for level 11).
SCYTHE MANIFESTATION:
Time remaining: 3 minutes and 20 seconds.
Mana available to sustain: 185.
Sustain required: 30/minute.
Remaining autonomy: 6 minutes.
Status: sustainable by reserve.
```
Nathan checked Soul Sense passively.
The clearing was silent.
The twenty fallen puppets. The six residents eliminated by Liaraen. The twelve previous reinforcements. The dismembered alpha. Yorel in two.
No remaining hostile signatures.
No killing intent directed at him.
The Class’s lethal mode, without a target, automatically attenuated and returned to default suppression mode.
Nathan lowered the scythe.
He held it with one hand at his side.
And he looked at Liaraen.
---
Liaraen was standing five meters away.
With heavy breathing.
With her right arm bleeding from the warrior’s cut.
With her left shoulder bleeding from the rear cut.
With her travel dress now almost completely ruined by her own blood and the guardians’ black blood and the puppets’ human blood.
And with her pale green eyes fixed on Nathan with an expression he hadn’t seen in her during the previous months.
It wasn’t fear.
It wasn’t horror.
It was understanding.
Of something she had apparently been processing over the last forty seconds while she watched the execution.
Nathan looked at her.
With his cynical smile calibrated to minimum functional level.
"Sprout."
"Nathan."
"Are you okay?"
Liaraen nodded slowly.
"I’m okay. Minor cuts. No serious internal damage."
"Good."
Silence.
Liaraen didn’t move.
Nathan didn’t either.
Then Liaraen spoke, with a calm voice but a slightly different tone.
"Nathan."
"Yes."
"The scythe."
"New skill. From level ten. I leveled up by killing the alpha."
"You used it to split him in two."
"Yes."
"And you explained to him during the process why you weren’t taking him alive."
"Yes."
"With the calm of someone who had internally decided the decision was definitive before Yorel even proposed surrender."
Nathan looked at her.
With calibrated calm.
"Yes, Sprout."
Liaraen nodded again.
"Alright."
"Are you okay with that?"
Liaraen thought for a second.
Then she spoke with an honest voice.
"Yes. The decision was correct. The arguments you gave him were valid. A living Draken practitioner is a continuous risk. The settlement residents deserve certainty. And he planned for twenty years. You weren’t going to risk him escaping the guild and resuming the plan."
"Correct."
"However."
"Yes?"
"It’s the first time I’ve seen you execute someone with a prior explanation. It wasn’t a moment of fury. It wasn’t immediate self-defense. It was a rational execution after a won fight."
"Yes."
"It’s different from how I’ve seen you kill until now."
Nathan processed it.
"Sprout."
"Yes."
"Is it a problem?"
Liaraen shook her head.
"It’s not a problem. It’s an observation. You’re going to execute more people over the coming years. With this Class. With the position of guardian to a major elven house’s heir. With the connections you have in Greywall. It’s inevitable. I just wanted to note mentally that this version of you exists. So that when it appears in other moments, I don’t confuse it with emotional crisis. It’s your capability. Deliberate. Controlled."
Nathan nodded.
"Understood."
He mentally corrected himself.
*Understood.*
*Doesn’t matter. Let’s go.*
"Understood, Sprout."
Silence again.
Then Liaraen moved toward the alpha’s body. She walked around Yorel’s pieces, avoiding stepping in the blood puddle. She reached the creature’s neck where her lineage sword was still embedded. With both hands, she pulled it out.
The bright green sword came out with the alpha’s black blood still clinging to it.
Liaraen wiped it with a rag from her dress.
She sheathed it.
And returned to the position beside Nathan.
"Let’s go."
Nathan looked at her.
"Sprout."
"Yes."
"I have approximately four minutes before the emergency manifestation collapses me. I need to dismiss the scythe first and then we’re going to have to work with what’s left."
"Dismiss it?"
"Yes. If I keep the scythe active, the mana runs out. If I dismiss it, I recover the minimum reserve. And I need the minimum reserve to be able to walk to the horse without collapsing along the way."
"Alright."
Nathan closed his eyes.
In the internal space.
*System. Dismiss scythe.*
```
Scythe dismissed.
Mana: 185 → 185 (no return; the
mana was already consumed in the
initial manifestation).
Status: HP 245/2,600. Consciousness
stable but degraded to 60%.
Recommendation: medical intervention
within the next 30 minutes.
```
The scythe disappeared from Nathan’s right hand without drama.
As if it had never been there.
And with the disappearance, Nathan felt the weight of his wounds return to full level. The stability the scythe had maintained over the last few minutes dissipated. The right flank began bleeding more intensely again. The left arm began to tremble. The right thigh lost firmness.
Nathan staggered.
Liaraen grabbed his left arm.
"Nathan."
"We’re going to the horse. Yorel left medical kits. The ones from the shelter. Even if part of his intentions were false, the kits are real."
Liaraen nodded.
And with Liaraen supporting Nathan by the left arm, with the green sword sheathed at her belt, with the northwest clearing of the settlement covered in bodies that were going to be a logistical problem for another day, the two began walking toward the southern edge.
Toward the horse.
Toward the kits.
Toward the road back to Greywall.
---
Approximately twenty minutes later, when Nathan had received the herbs and bandages from the shelter kit, with the right flank covered with proper pressure and the other wounds at least controlled so as not to continuously lose blood, the two were sitting beside the horse at the edge of the path leading south.
Nathan looked at the sky.
The last hours of the afternoon descending with the specific orange color of autumn.
Liaraen sitting beside him. With her own wounds also covered now. With the calm of someone who had survived and was processing the fact.
Nathan spoke first.
With a low voice.
"Sprout."
"Yes."
"The settlement."
"Yes."
"The residents are all dead."
Liaraen nodded.
"You killed them. When the parasite consciousness collapsed upon the alpha’s death, most adults over forty didn’t survive. Those who did survive the collapse were killed by Yorel when he used them as puppets against me and against you. When Yorel died and the threads released, there was no one alive among the residents anymore."
"The children."
"The children too. Four. All dead during the fight. I killed two with the sword when Yorel moved them against me. The other two died when the alpha moved as Yorel’s puppet and stepped on them by accident."
Nathan closed his eyes.
For nearly a minute.
Then he opened them.
"Sprout."
"Yes."
"We couldn’t save anyone."
Liaraen looked at him.
With a calm voice.
"No, Nathan. We couldn’t."
"The settlement no longer exists. The minor deity they venerated no longer has a cult. The creature—daughter of the deity—is dead. The meat tree is dead because you cut it. And the residents are dead because Yorel planned them as a sacrifice twenty years before we arrived."
"Correct."
"And all of this started because we took a low D-Rank mission to eliminate Nightbrid that had already been eliminated by the alpha before we arrived."
"Correct."
"Nathan."
"Yes."
"We learned a lot."
"Yes."
"Selene is going to appreciate the information about refined vidhraki parasites. About Draken practitioners. About other unofficial primary cycle deities. About meat trees. About the dual-mode mechanism of your Class confirmed in real combat against an enemy who knew how it worked."
"Yes."
"And you went up to level ten. With three new skills. Including the scythe."
"Yes."
Silence.
Nathan looked at the sky again.
With his cynical smile calibrated to minimum functional level.
"Sprout."
"Yes."
"We’re going back to Greywall."
"We’re going."
"And we’re going to tell Selene that next time, when I take a low D-Rank mission that’s actually an A-Rank in disguise, we’re going to verify the settlement’s history much more carefully before accepting hospitality."
Liaraen smiled slightly.
"Acceptable, Nathan."
"Acceptable, Sprout."
And with the horse carrying the medical kits and the remaining provisions from Yorel’s shelter (which they now knew had been partially prepared for the ritual but would serve for the return journey), Nathan and Liaraen began walking south.
Toward the path.
Toward Greywall.
Toward Selene.
Toward the rest of what came after a day that had lasted approximately twelve hours and had changed Nathan’s understanding of his own Class almost completely.