Act 7: I'm OK, Actually

[Part 1: The Story of the Dark Ages]

"General of Tears, do you want to know my real name or my past background?"

The Old Bones helped Liuxing towards the dressing room, talking as they walked.

"Who am I? Does it even matter?"

"It's very important, really very important!" Meteor stumbled up the steps, his eyes not fully recovered. His eyeballs had been pierced by the spindle, and his sensitive and complex optic nerves wouldn't be able to resume functioning quickly.

He glanced at the Old Bones with his one eye, and his feelings became complicated.

--If the "arbiter" beside you is the BOSS's hunter king, then this king has become a toy of the Immortals. What a tragic and miserable ending this is.

Perhaps dying in battle is a kind of transcendence, a death that is worthwhile.

But after becoming part of Gloria Sebastian's collection, the Old Bones had to work for this devil, building dueling stages for her and acting as her announcer.

"I was only able to win because I relied on the psychic properties of [The Power] to find a crucial clue," Meteor continued. "Without these castanets, I would be dead, Old Bones —you are very important to me; you saved my life."

"I still hold the same attitude and the same words—I have never harbored any malicious intentions, nor have I ever shown favoritism." The Old Bones spoke softly and gently, first denying that he had helped Meteor, and then asking curiously, "How did you find the key to victory from my soul?"

"It's all thanks to a check attribute." Meteor sat back down on the steps, not in a hurry to go inside. "In the cloakroom, your Soul Might assigned everyone the first turn, and the first person to enter the duel round wasn't actually me—it was Sirius Parker."

"After my turn with Derek ended, Sirius Parker could still turn once. I was thinking, how does [The Power]'s target acquisition mechanism work?"

"Generally speaking, there are many conditions for triggering soul power and spiritual energy, such as touching it with the physical body, or striking it with the hands or a spirit."

"The activation conditions change depending on the strength of the psionic tide. The power of [The Power] comes from your castanets, so based on my experience studying in the Arcane Library —it is a kind of psionic energy that is transmitted through sound."

"Later on, the maids in the dressing room naturally left. They couldn't hear the sound anymore. I took Derek out of the dressing room, and the butler Sirius couldn't hear the castanets either, so naturally he didn't get his turn or his turn—which means I guessed correctly."

Old Bones chuckled, "You possess astonishing wisdom, managing to use my psychic abilities to lock onto the enemy."

"Yes! It's because of these castanets!" Meteor said excitedly, spreading his arms wide. "If Derek's daughter could hear them, why didn't she have her action wheel? I was wondering about that at the time. Had she lost her hearing?"

"It wasn't until the decisive round that I became somewhat certain that Christina was a dead person, a walking corpse created by Derek Jokic's soul power—because Derek had said something during the lobbying phase of the first round."

He said, "Do you look down on me? Do you look down on my daughter?"

"I did remember that. At the time, I felt that what he meant was that Christina's physical body still had some fighting power. If it weren't for your soul power, Old Bones —I would have to fight two powerful enemies at the same time."

At this point, Meteor still felt a bit scared. If he had been attacked from both sides, he would have had no way to fight against Gloria Sebastian's magic dice.

"You've temporarily fooled the devil." Old Bones recounted Meteor's self-inflicted sword strike that turned the tide of battle. "How did you come up with such a method, using an arm as the price?"

"I could barely think. Old Bones, I didn't even have a chance to think at the time." Meteor's face fell as he recounted the incident. "I just felt my arm was in the way, my fingers were broken, and I couldn't swing the sword with all my might—an attack of that quality, even if I won the dice roll, couldn't possibly kill Derek Jokic in one round."

"Since it's in my way, I'll cut it off, regain my balance, and use the pain to stimulate myself and temporarily wake up my body. The adrenaline will help me; it will never let me down."

"As you can see, when I cut off my arm, it was only considered self-harm; there was no need to roll the counter-dice."

"Berloberg flew towards Christina. The girl was already dead; she wasn't even alive, and she didn't deserve to possess Gloria's dice—instead, the soul power hidden within her body would be damaged by Berloberg's light blade."

"I didn't think too much about it at the time; I just felt that doing this might offer a glimmer of hope—I was gambling, but I didn't want to gamble according to Gloria's dice rules."

"Your courage is admirable." The Old Bones clapped again, his withered, topaz-like fingers tapping out a crisp, clear sound, "Fortune still favors the brave."

"Sigh." Meteor looked up at the mysterious Evil Spirit Body: "You've asked all the questions, now it's my turn, right? Tell me your story, Hunter King?"

It was just past midnight.

--Only a few people remained in the cloakroom of the Church of Dionysus's reception hall. Sirius Parker rushed out and saw the corpse on the lawn. The young butler said nothing, gave the Old Bones a cold look, and then led the maids to clean up.

A misty fog rose from the nearby Queshan Highway, shrouding the lights of the industrial park and bringing everything to a quiet.

The Old Bones first put his hands behind his back, took a few steps in front of the meteor, and then sat down shoulder to shoulder with the young, nameless general.

"My current predicament is entirely due to greed."

"Just as that little tailor Derek Jokic said, I was originally destined to become king, serving by the side of the Lord of the Nine Realms of Ming De."

"I was born in 1900 in a small fishing village on the Rhine River in Rotterdam. Like other children, I was nothing special."

"When I was seven years old, my father contracted malaria. His condition worsened, and when winter came, he passed away."

"After the funeral, my mother remarried and had a younger brother with my stepfather. From then on, I became an outsider in the family. I moved out of my room and slept in the attic. My original bedroom was converted into my brother's nursery."

"Children always cry when they sleep. I was terrified of the dark back then, and once I started crying, my baby brother seemed to have Inspiration and would cry along with me."

"Later, my stepfather found me and tried to reason with me, thinking that my crying had disturbed my younger brother—but that wasn't the case."

"At that time, I could see that my father's spirit hadn't gone far. I thought that my father hadn't died, but had just crawled out of the coffin and cured his illness."

"Once I start wailing, this foolish and ignorant spirit goes to my bedroom to look for me. If it can't find me, it goes to bother my younger brother, who will naturally be frightened and cry."

"Finally, one day, my stepfather could no longer endure the torment, so he found the village priest to perform an exorcism for me."

"I was whipped, and holy candles and hot holy oil were dripped onto my skin. After I was fed Holy Communion and Holy Wine, my father still refused to leave."

"This went on for eight years, until my younger brother grew up. Every week I had to go to church and pray with the priest, suffering both physical and mental torment—my Inspiration, intuition, spiritual pressure, and clairvoyance became stronger and stronger."

[Part ② The Road to Kingship]

"When I was sixteen, war reports from World War I arrived in Rotterdam. Although the Holland was a neutral country, my stepfather got greedy and wanted to go to a war-torn country to try his luck and make a fortune. Because of the whip marks on my body and the scars on my face, I didn't have time to grow up and didn't have the chance to go with him."

"With no man to take care of her, and two children to raise, my mother soon fell ill from exhaustion."

"My father's spirit has been silently watching all of this. I can feel his feelings—a complex mix of melancholy and joy, as if he were blaming my mother for her infidelity. Because my mother is about to die, he both pities this woman and longs for her to embrace Death God and return to his side soon."

"I stayed by my mother's bedside, asking about the family's money and valuables, and asked her to use them to buy medicine."

"Under my stepfather's bed was a family heirloom. My stepfather was Italian, and he owned a set of commemorative coins printed in 1517."

"I thought at the time—since my stepfather went to the battlefield, his fate was unknown, and he might not come back. It would be better to sell this family heirloom to raise money for my mother's medical treatment."

"Upon opening the suitcase, I learned from my mother that these commemorative coins were indulgences issued to believers when Peter was built."

"They are worthless and should have been swept into the dustbin of history long ago."

"I readily agreed and went out with the box, but even the antique dealers in town didn't want this junk. From both a religious and collectible perspective—these indulgences, which are over two hundred years old, were practically worthless during the war; they were cheap goods that even rats wouldn't eat."

"I found two train tickets for Sky Station among them, and thinking they were job postings, I stumbled upon the BOSS's side by accident."

"That road was incredibly difficult to travel."

The Old Bones tilted his head back, trying hard to remember.

"From the Rhine River to London, I can hardly remember how I traveled by carriage or boat. I chatted with everyone I met, worked as a pub helper, sang songs, and entertained people. All the money I earned went to my travel expenses."

"I obtained the Universal Elixir, cured my mother, and drove away my father's spirit."

"The BOSS highly valued my psionic talent, and luck was always with me—until I participated in the Harvest Season, fought in World War II, returned to the Council of Five Kings and took a sinecure, and people called me the Hunter King."

"My soul power can break down infinite time into individual rounds, making the harvest season ritual process clear and simple, which is also a key factor in my becoming king at the age of twenty-five."

"For the next thirty years, I devoted myself entirely to the hunting, using this extraordinary power to record the weaknesses of monstrous beasts and monsters, and to find their Achilles' heel."

"Until I retired in my sixties, I returned to the Arcane Library to begin writing, and spent twenty-three years completing <The Great Rift of All Things>."

"In the last ten years of my life, while I'm still healthy, I want to take a trip to Shambhala."

"Despite the BOSS's warning, Shambhala is an unfamiliar land, where there is no blessing from Ming De."

"I am such a greedy person. Perhaps those years were the time when the BOSS needed my company the most—it was facing the test of the harvest season once again. But I thought that my mortal body was nearing its end, and even if I stayed, I wouldn't be able to help much."

"When I finally made all the preparations and boarded the ship to Shambhala, it was already 1984. My 84-year-old body was no longer able to bear the strain. I finished writing the bound volume of 'The Great Rift of All Things' on the ship and entrusted it to my students to send back to the Arcane Library. Then I set off alone, wanting to explore the mysteries of this unknown land."

"My experience is similar to yours. I met Gloria Sebastian because of a storm. Our ship ran aground off the coast of East Horse Port, and the crew became the stakes. I gambled with this duchess—but in the end, I was no match for her."

"I can use the power of my soul to seize an opportunity to strike first and then withdraw. As before, when facing an opponent I cannot defeat, I will gather information, memorize the Gate of Death, and then come back next time."

"But this time I did not back down; Gloria's power is truly captivating—"

"I know my days are numbered, and if I were to escape here, I fear I would regret it for the rest of my life."

"So this demon took my soul, turned me into a crystal skull, and used my radiant stone artifacts as a catalyst to seal my spirit. My flesh was skinned and dismembered to make a box to hold my soul."

"That's it. I've now become an evil spirit. As long as the box is still in Gloria's hands, the medium's coffin can easily cast a spell, and I'll have to obediently return to her grasp."

"So that's how it is." After hearing this story, Meteor was filled with emotion. "So you really are the Hunter King?"

This hunter king comes from a time long ago; he's a predecessor of the Cat Tree Lady.

Similar to most psionicists who awaken in this way, Old Bones also came to the Underworld in search of medical help. His psionic talent is exceptional; he became a Phantasmal Butterfly at the age of twenty-five and possesses a strong will to survive, enabling him to participate in the Harvest Ritual.

After becoming king, the Old Bones were not content to remain idle and continued to focus on their profession as hunters. The only thing worth discussing and weighing was setting off for Shambhala during the harvest season when the BOSS was at its weakest.

Perhaps if the Old Bones hadn't left, the harvest season in the late 1970s wouldn't have ended so tragically.

--The BOSS wouldn't have devoured the four royal treasures, nor would there have been only Isoragi Chinatsu left, and the Madness Butterfly Sect wouldn't have proliferated so much, building hundreds of stations along the subway.

"Tell me, if I brought you back!" Meteor suddenly became interested. "Wouldn't the BOSS be very happy to see you?!"

The Old Bones hesitated for a moment; you could tell he was somewhat embarrassed, and his eyes became complicated.

He also learned from Gloria Sebastian what happened next—including Zero Platform, the BOSS's harvest season, and the story of the Nameless One.

Nearly half a century has passed, and he still doesn't know which side he belongs to or who he's working for.

Faced with the Magic Power of [Sing For Me], Old Bones was like a puppet on a string, completely obedient. Gloria refused to give him freedom, and he was utterly powerless against this divine force. As soon as the devil spoke and the dice fell to the ground—no matter how aggrieved or how much he struggled, Old Bones had to obediently take up his post and assume the role of referee in the gambling game.

Once you surrender your soul to the devil, there is no turning back.

The Old Bones thought for a moment, but found himself unable to express his thoughts.

"It's alright, actually. Continue your betting."