Chapter 163: A Delicate Mind
"How?" asked the owl.
After I revealed that I knew about his scheme, his round eyes were devoid of hate and hope.
How I knew about his little scheme was more of a guess on my part. I assumed he wouldn't be dumb enough to charge at me without any plan in mind. He was likely buying some time for his array to activate, the same strategy I had used more than once. It worked better if the opposing side had no idea I was an Array Conjurer.
"If you asked anyone, they would say that's my gimmick. I read many books and know many things," I gave the owl a lackluster excuse. After what he had done, I owed him no explanation.
He should be glad I wasn't giving him a barbaric death after he had messed with the minds of those close to me. After what I had seen at the Song Clan prison, I could be pretty creative in these kinds of things.
Bile rose up my throat just thinking about that place—the man hanging like a piece of meat, the guy having his brains eaten by rats, the one shoved in a barrel, and much more. I clenched my teeth and stopped myself from coming off as a weakling and throwing up in front of my opponent. The last time I had done something like that with an enemy nearby, I had almost died.
"No matter what tortures you inflict on me, I would never betray my Master's trust and spit on his legacy!" the owl declared.
"Torture? What are we even talking about here? We both know I don't have the stomach for that," I said, walking closer to the owl and crouching again. "What I'm saying is that we could work together. You get to keep the inheritance and give it to some other guy. But at the same time, you write down a couple of books on whatever the inheritance teaches, and we will be on our own merry way. You know what, I will even help you find some asshole guy your master can body snatch."
The owl met my gaze, and as our eyes locked, the darkness around the library's third floor intensified. Shadows, once merely cast by the dim light, now wriggled free from their constraints, moving with eerie autonomy. They crawled toward us like hungry worms, slithering across the floor and walls with a life of their own, growing in size and number.