Ch 186 – Such is Life
As Deacon positioned himself between Ian Pines and Bonehead, Bjorn's hand shot out, his fingers wrapping around Ian's wrist with enough force to halt the grieving father's momentum entirely.
The sudden stop caused Ian to stumble forward slightly, his body's inertia carrying him a few inches past where Bjorn had caught him, and within moments, both were standing atop the holo-table, with Ian managing to regain his balance and plant his feet firmly on the polished surface.
"Sit down, Ian," Bjorn commanded, his voice carrying an edge of steel that cut through the room's tension, the words spoken with an authority that made it clear this was not a request. "You agreed to watch the memories to see the truth of what happened and collect the remains of your daughter. Do not do anything hasty without knowing the truth of what transpired in the Hidden Quest Zone."
Ian's chest heaved with ragged breaths as he stood there with Bjorn's iron grip still wrapped around his wrist, his eyes burning with a fury so intense that Deacon could practically feel the heat of it from across the table.
The man's jaw worked soundlessly for several long seconds, grinding his teeth together so hard that Deacon wouldn't have been surprised if he heard them crack under the pressure, before Ian finally gave a single jerk of his arm to pull free from Bjorn's grasp and turned back toward his seat.
As he moved, his eyes briefly caught his brother's stony gaze across the table, and inwardly he scoffed at Ferros's complete lack of reaction to what had just been shown, at how his brother didn't seem to care one bit about who it was that had caused the fatal wound on his own niece.
Of course he didn't care, Ian thought bitterly as he dropped down from the table and back into his chair, with Bjorn doing the same.
The only things Ferros had ever cared about were what belonged to him, what he could control and command. When Ian had left the family on his own terms years ago, refusing to endure his brother’s bullshit for even one more day, choosing to marry the person he loved instead of accepting an arranged engagement for the sake of the House’s honor, Ferros had seen it as a betrayal and banished him.
Ian Pines crossed his arms tightly over his chest and focused back onto the holo-table where the projector had frozen mid-scene with Jass's body suspended in the air as she was launched backward from the impact of the barrel fragment embedding itself in her side.
With his heart beating rapidly in his chest from the adrenaline spike of nearly having to physically fight a max-level Tier 2, Deacon gave Bonehead a quick glance and found his friend's shadowflame-like eyes wide with surprise at how close he was to dying and how fast Deacon had thrown himself in front of Ian Pines's lunge without any regard for his own safety, before making his way back to his seat as the projection resumed playing.
As the memory carried on, it showed Sam and Bonehead sprinting toward Jass’s falling form while the Elite Sand Golem began hurling massive sandstone boulders at them. They raced to reach her before she could bleed out from the wound in her side and her newly caved-in chest.
Ian Pines watched with no small amount of grim satisfaction as Bonehead was struck by one of those massive boulders, the impact crushing his lower half beneath its weight while his upper torso was launched forward by the force of the blow, sending him tumbling directly into Jass's prone body, which was bleeding out onto the platform.
From there the projection split into two separate scenes displayed side by side above the holo-table's surface, one showing what Bonehead could see from his own perspective and the other displaying Deacon's point of view as he was no longer attached to the ceiling and now falling toward the ground below while the Antlion Prince tore out the core of the Elite Sand Golem that had just crippled Bonehead.
The parents watched as Bonehead kept dragging himself forward despite losing his lower half and an arm, driven only by the need to reach Jass.
Despite reaching her, Bonehead found that his Spatial Satchel had been destroyed, its contents scattered across the platform. By sheer luck, a Health Potion lay close enough for him to seize it with his remaining functional hand.
His grip was unsteady, and what remained of his body was clearly failing him, but he forced himself to hold on long enough to position the vial above Jass’s mouth. Using his one remaining hand, he tried to crush the potion bottle as the remnants of his bone frame, still powered by his core, began to crack and fracture at an accelerating pace.
At the same time, from Deacon's point of view, the projection showed the Antlion Prince rushing toward where Jass, Bonehead, and Sam were clustered together on the platform, and Deacon's voice could be heard shouting at them over and over to rip a Leave Ticket and escape while they still had the chance.
However, Bonehead was unable to comply even if he'd wanted to because his Spatial Satchel had been completely destroyed in the boulder impact, its contents scattered everywhere across the platform, and his Leave Tickets were too far from reach, while Jass remained unconscious from blood loss and shock, incapable of doing anything to save herself.
Sam was the only one in a position to actually rip a Leave Ticket and escape from the temple before the Antlion Prince reached them, but instead of saving himself he made the decision to perform what could only be considered the greatest act of loyalty and sacrifice a person could ever commit, choosing to deliberately implode his own mana core to power a spell that would shield his friends rather than abandon them to certain death if he left.
The moment Sam slammed his staff into the platform and cast his final spell, a sharp, audible intake of breath came from Lady Barrenthal. Barely a second later, she watched her son’s body be pierced straight through by the arm of the mutant antlion, creating the fist-sized hole that now marred his preserved corpse. His lifeless form was flung aside like a discarded toy as the multilayered Earth Dome he had formed with the last of his power sealed itself around Bonehead and Jass.
In that same moment, as Sam’s body was pierced and cast aside, Deacon slammed into the ground hard enough to crater the stone beneath him. The image of Sam’s death replayed endlessly in his mind, over and over, refusing to fade. With each repetition, the reality of what had just happened sank deeper until something inside him finally broke. In his mind, everyone was dead, the people he had considered his brothers and sisters, all gone within the span of ten minutes.
From the projector, every single one of the Tier 2s gathered around the table could see and feel through the memory that Deacon had unleashed an explosive eruption of pure bloodlust so powerful and overwhelming that it actually broke through the natural limiters that every living being possessed on their Vitality, Mana, and Stamina reserves, allowing all three to run completely rampant throughout his body without any consideration for self-preservation or the damage it would cause to his own flesh and bones.
This was shown to them by how the projection showed Deacon had somehow managed to go toe-to-toe with the mutated General Rank Antlion Prince despite the massive gap in their respective power levels, completely uncaring about how his limbs were being systematically destroyed with every swing of his swords, with every punch he threw that connected with the creature's carapace, utterly unbothered by the pain as he began to bash his skull directly into the Antlion Prince's armored body when his weapons were knocked from his mangled hands, and then proceeding to tear at its flesh with his own teeth when his arms were reduced to bloody stumps from the sheer amount of power he'd been channeling through them, causing the limbs to literally explode from internal pressure.
The sight reminded everyone watching of the actions of a maddened beast that had lost all reason and intelligence, operating purely on instinct and rage and grief so profound that death itself seemed preferable to living with the weight of failure.
As those maddened grief-filled roars rumbled out from the projection's speakers from both perspectives, Bonehead's broken body finally reached its absolute limit just as the second Health Potion he'd managed to grab was mere millimeters away from being crushed and releasing its healing liquid into Jass's mouth.
His damaged bones, already pushed far beyond what they should have been capable of enduring, began to crumble into dust beneath him, and the potion slipped from his failing grip to shatter uselessly against the stone platform while everything in his vision began to grow dark and distant.
Through his fading awareness, Bonehead could see Jass's lifeforce transition from its weakening irregular blips to a single sustained flatline before his own consciousness gave out entirely and he went unconscious, something that should have been completely impossible for an undead to experience, especially considering Bonehead was a skeleton.
At the same moment that Bonehead's awareness faded to nothing, the projection from Deacon's perspective showed him tearing out the Antlion Prince's throat with his cracked and bloodied teeth, his maddened brown eyes staring up at the ceiling above as the creature's royal blue blood poured down his face and neck and chest, before the projection came to an abrupt halt and the Meeting Room fell into a heavy pregnant silence so complete and oppressive that not even the sound of breathing or the scrape of fabric against chairs could be heard.
After what felt like an eternity of that crushing silence pressing down on everyone present, Ian Pines wordlessly rose from his seat while cradling the die that held his daughter's remains close to his chest as though it were the most precious and fragile thing in existence.
He moved toward the Meeting Room door and pulled it open himself without waiting for anyone else to move or speak, and just before he stepped through the threshold, a soft warning emerged from him.
"Never approach my family again. This is the one and only warning I will give out of respect for the friendship my daughter had with you both." His voice was quiet and carefully controlled, each word enunciated with perfect clarity so there could be no mistaking his meaning or his intent.
"Attempt to reach out to what remains of my family, and I will no longer hold back my anger. I will torture you both in ways you cannot even begin to imagine, and you will beg me for the mercy of death long before I grant it to you."
The door shut behind him with a soft click that sounded deafening in the continued silence, and both Deacon and Bonehead sat with their eyes downcast, wordlessly nodding their understanding and acceptance of his words even though Ian Pines could no longer see them, the declaration cutting through them more painfully than any physical dagger ever could.
With the oppressive silence finally broken by Ian Pines's departure, Lord and Lady Barrenthal exchanged a long wordless conversation with their eyes alone before Lady Barrenthal rose from her chair.
Clasping Sam's remains within the die between both her palms, she walked out of the Meeting Room door without speaking a single word to anyone, her composure holding firm even as fresh moisture gathered at the corners of her eyes.
After the door closed behind her and only Lord Barrenthal remained within the Meeting Room, still sitting directly across from where Bjorn, Deacon, and Bonehead remained in their own seats, the four of them formed a strange tableau in the aftermath of everything that had been witnessed and said.
After several minutes of continued silence broken only by the ticking of the analog clock on the wall, Lord Barrenthal finally spoke up with a question that immediately put both Deacon and Bonehead on high alert. "Why were the contents of the Memory Vial modified?"
Bonehead and Deacon both glanced at the man in surprise, with Deacon ready to ask what Lord Barrenthal meant since as far as he knew and had seen the memories were completely accurate and unaltered, while Bonehead on the other hand was already preparing excuses in his mind because he knew full well that certain aspects had been deliberately obscured to hide Deacon's true race from anyone viewing the recording.
"Do not take me for a fool, Sovereign Blades Order Master," Lord Barrenthal continued before either of them could formulate a response, his tone matter-of-fact rather than accusatory. "I know magic like the back of my hand, and memory magics are practically a requirement to learn in a noble mage household like my own, as you are well aware."
"Everything regarding the truth of what happened to your son and niece was left completely untouched," Bjorn admitted without any attempt to hide or deflect from the truth of the matter. "The events you witnessed are exactly what transpired in that temple, without any alterations or falsifications."
"I could tell as much," Lord Barrenthal replied with a slight nod of acknowledgment. "The only inconsistencies I could detect within the memories projected were centered around your son, the leader of the Party my son belonged to, and this is not me speculating or making baseless accusations, because if I were I would be bringing up the obscured nature of the Status Pages shown in the projection, but anyone who has dealt extensively with memory magics knows that those are always automatically obscured by the System itself to protect sensitive information."
"This was done for his protection, as well as your own and your family," Bjorn responded, not bothering to correct Lord Barrenthal's assumption that Deacon was his biological son rather than his nephew, since the distinction hardly mattered for the purposes of this conversation.
Getting out of his seat and moving to stand directly in front of where Lord Barrenthal remained sitting, Bjorn extended one hand toward the other man in an offer of direct contact. "If you wish to know the truth, perform an—"
Suddenly, both Deacon and Bonehead found themselves unable to hear the rest of Bjorn's words, as though someone had simply turned off the volume on reality itself, as both men shook hands with one another.
"A Silencing Ward?" Bonehead muttered in confusion as he and Deacon watched Bjorn's mouth continue moving but could no longer hear anything he was saying, nor could they pick up anything intelligible from attempting to read his lips or Lord Barrenthal's responses, because every time they tried to focus on what was being said, they could only make out random disconnected words that refused to form any coherent meaning, making it clear that there was more than just a simple silencing ward at work here.
Whatever truth Bjorn was revealing to Lord Barrenthal, whatever secret he was sharing about Deacon's nature or origins or capabilities, it was clearly something he didn't want either Deacon or Bonehead to overhear, which made absolutely no sense to Bonehead, given that he already knew Deacon was a Jötunn and Bjorn wasn't revealing anything that should be kept secret from him.
But given the surprised look that spread across Lord Barrenthal's face and the several steps backward he took as though physically recoiling from whatever information he'd just received, it was clearly something far more significant and shocking than Bonehead had anticipated.
After the silent and secret conversation between Bjorn and Lord Barrenthal concluded, with whatever truth had been shared now hanging in the air between them like an invisible weight, Lord Barrenthal took his leave from the Meeting Room, looking incredibly on edge.
He departed with the full knowledge of what had truly transpired in Solomon's Fourth Temple and whatever additional information Bjorn had deemed important enough to share under the protection of those layered wards, and once the door had closed behind him, Bjorn turned to face Deacon and Bonehead, who had followed him to the main entrance to see Lord Barrenthal off.
Staring at the downcast gazes of both Deacon and Bonehead, at the way they held themselves like condemned prisoners awaiting execution, Bjorn couldn't help but close his own eyes as memories surfaced unbidden of the time when he himself had lost people he'd once considered family, people whose deaths still haunted him.
"But such is life," he muttered to himself.
Reaching into his back pouch, Bjorn pulled out a Token Fragment and passed it to Deacon, who looked up at him in complete bewilderment and confusion, because receiving a second Token Fragment required accomplishing something truly exceptional and worthy of recognition, something far beyond the scope of normal duties or expectations.
"You surviving what you did and coming back to me alive is the greatest task I could ever ask to be accomplished by you," Bjorn answered Deacon's unspoken question before his nephew could even formulate the words.
Then, attempting to bring some small amount of levity to the oppressive atmosphere that had settled over them all, he added, "Not to mention reaching Level 25 and unlocking your Racial Trait while still being a Floor Ten climber, which is frankly absurd and shouldn't be possible."
Reaching out and grabbing Bonehead's floating skull to support it and prevent the skeleton from having to waste any more mana maintaining his position, Bjorn delivered one final statement to Deacon before turning to walk out of the main door himself so he could get Bonehead the replacement bones and proper medical care he desperately needed to rebuild his shattered body.
"Your Third Goal is to land one proper hit on me during a sparring session. You have two months to accomplish this."
With those words hanging in the air like a challenge and a promise and a distraction all wrapped into one, the door shut behind Bjorn and Bonehead, leaving Deacon standing completely alone in the Sovereign Blades' Main Hall with nothing but the Fragment Token clutched in his hand and the crushing weight of everything that had happened pressing down on his shoulders.