Chapter 10

Deathwish (3)

People who became entangled in the main scenario were rarely ordinary, and it was even rarer for them to possess only admirable traits.

There were quite a few people Aiden knew he absolutely needed to avoid, and this girl ranked near the top of that list.

Deathwish, Katya Heinkel Craven, was a major character whose importance within the scenario rivaled Noel’s.

As for the traits Aiden remembered, she was eccentric, fickle, self-destructive, and completely willful. At the same time, the power she had been born with was terrifyingly strong.

Every one of those qualities was the kind that could make the negative consequences catastrophically worse whenever a situation went wrong.

Aiden silently considered the direction the game’s story was supposed to take.

Eventually, every major character would end up with blood on their hands. Yet regardless of the route, the person with the greatest number of possibilities where she killed the most people was probably the girl standing before him.

She was not someone who murdered indiscriminately, nor was she a brute who enjoyed inflicting violence on innocent people.

The problem was that she had certain switches that absolutely could not be pressed. If someone touched one of her deepest sore spots, this girl was capable of carrying out a massacre without blinking.

From appearances alone, she looked like a wealthy young lady leisurely strolling through the streets without a care in the world.

In reality, she was more like a quiet-looking time bomb.

!! Sub Quest !!

▶ Contact established with Deathwish, Katya Heinkel Craven.

▶ Resolve the current situation as peacefully as possible.

▶ If you handle the situation smoothly, the target’s favorable feelings toward you will increase dramatically!

▶ Failure will result in a penalty!

And now, while entangled with someone like that, the system was telling him to resolve the situation peacefully.

It almost sounded as though something violently unpeaceful was guaranteed to happen.

The thought alone was horrifying, but now that this quest had appeared, he had no choice except to stay fully alert.

…A crisis can also become an opportunity.

If he handled it well, that might actually be true.

A dramatic increase in favorable feelings meant more chances to copy skills, after all.

“I am bored.”

They had been walking quietly beside each other for quite a while when the girl suddenly said it.

“Is there anything to do?”

“…I thought you asked me to keep you company. Did you not have something you wanted to talk about?”

“No?”

“…”

“I really called you because I was bored. I had something fun right in front of me, and then you interrupted it.”

Aiden lost his words at the cheerful answer and her constant smile.

Surely she had plenty of questions she could ask. Why had he intervened? How had he known who she was? Either subject alone should have been enough for a long conversation.

“Or would you rather entertain me personally?”

“…”

“I can think of several interesting ways to play with you. Want to hear…”

“Anything is fine?”

Katya giggled when Aiden cut her off.

His behavior was clearly not the way one normally addressed royalty, but judging from everything he remembered about her, she was not someone who cared much about such formalities.

She was relentlessly direct about everything. There was no need to twist her words into anything more complicated.

“Anything is fine.”

“I have something to do, so follow me if you want.”

Aiden started walking ahead, and Katya snorted when she saw where he was going.

“A gun shop?”

This was the back side of the imperial capital, a place where one could naturally buy almost anything. Even firearms that normally required difficult ownership permits could be purchased as long as one had enough money.

“Does buying something like this even mean anything?”

“I need one.”

“Why?”

“Why are you curious about the reason?”

“You can use supernatural abilities.”

“…”

Aiden had no idea how she knew that.

When he looked at Katya with that question written plainly across his face, she tilted her head and immediately offered an awkward answer.

“…You can tell at a glance.”

There seemed to be an awful lot she could tell at a glance.

Putting that aside, explaining why he needed a gun despite being able to wield supernatural abilities was slightly complicated.

As Katya had said, people capable of using supernatural abilities normally had little reason to rely on firearms.

But when Aiden considered what he thought of as his own particular trait, there was almost no tool better suited to him than a gun.

He remembered an explanation Noel had given him before.

“Abilities become far more precise when you give them a physical form. You can place them into your body, but applying them to a weapon is more efficient.”

A supernatural ability could be used by itself, but placing it into a weapon multiplied its efficiency. The idea itself was simple enough.

For Aiden, however, the choice of weapon became slightly more complicated because he handled several different abilities.

He needed something made from multiple components, and more importantly, it had to be a weapon that someone with absolutely no combat training could actually use.

Traditional cold weapons such as spears and swords were therefore out of the question. Aiden had never had anything to do with weapons like those.

That naturally left the most suitable option.

A firearm was a simple weapon composed of many separate parts.

“Welcome!”

The gun shop owner was an amiable old man who greeted his new customers enthusiastically.

Considering how vicious Aiden’s disguise looked, the old man’s customer service deserved full marks.

“…Do you have a handgun a beginner can use?”

“Certainly. Please look over here!”

The fact that he remained cheerful despite a request so mismatched with Aiden’s appearance and voice only made the service more impressive.

“I still do not think buying one of these means much.”

Katya, who had been trailing behind Aiden, wandered around the shop while voicing her dissatisfaction.

“Weapons exist to kill people. Everything here is meant for self-defense.”

Embarrassingly enough, self-defense was exactly the level Aiden wanted.

Before he could explain that properly, however, Katya was already expressing her dissatisfaction through action.

“Shopkeeper, where are the cartridges?”

“Ah, you will find them in the drawers.”

Katya whistled as she rummaged through a drawer and pulled out ammunition matching one of the handguns on display.

Up to this point, there was nothing particularly strange about the scene.

Neither the owner nor Aiden thought much of it.

“If you would like to test a weapon, the back yard…”

The problem was that before the shopkeeper could finish, Katya raised the loaded gun.

She pointed it at her own head.

“Wait, customer!”

A gunshot tore through the shop before the startled owner could say anything more.

Aiden’s mouth dropped open as the spent casing rolled across the floor.

Divinity had flared around Katya’s body the instant she pulled the trigger.

It looked identical to the divinity Aiden had used before, flames that automatically reacted whenever their wielder was endangered.

The bullet had undoubtedly melted without a trace the moment it touched the superheated divinity.

“Even when I suppress it as much as possible, it still comes out like this. Annoying.”

Katya gave a small laugh and set the smoking gun back on the display case.

Then she continued down the row, picking up one firearm after another and doing the same thing each time.

Pick it up. Load it. Put it against her own head. Fire.

She behaved as though she were simply comparing products.

Aiden and the shopkeeper both stood rigidly watching while every bullet melted against the divinity surrounding her body.

“Ah, right.”

Naturally, the farther she moved along the display, the larger the calibers became.

Before long, Katya was holding something that deserved to be called a hand cannon rather than a handgun and aiming it at her head.

“This one feels better.”

Then she pulled the trigger without a trace of hesitation.

Even divinity that had easily stopped ordinary handgun rounds apparently could not completely block a projectile of that size. The bullet punched straight through.

Aiden watched with the blood draining from his face.

Even with her head catastrophically damaged, Katya calmly turned her body.

Her face, crushed by the passing round, folded and pulled itself together like a clay doll being reshaped by invisible hands.

Divinity seeped into every gap, the exact same power that had automatically emerged moments earlier when she was in danger.

It was as though the ability refused to permit death itself to touch its wielder, refusing to allow even a single drop of blood to remain spilled.

The injury regenerated completely without leaving a trace.

“This is about the level of firepower that becomes useful. You should probably buy from here upward.”

Katya herself did not so much as blink.

Her expression had not changed in the slightest even after a bullet had destroyed part of her head.

It looked as though she truly felt nothing at all.

“When I suppress my divinity as much as possible, it is still roughly equivalent to layering several thin steel plates over myself. A weapon needs to penetrate at least that much before it becomes useful in combat, would you not agree?”

Aiden swallowed a groan and stared at Katya as she smilingly offered him the handgun.

He knew the trait she possessed, at least intellectually.

The first was painlessness, and far beyond even that lay complete absence of sensation.

Katya Heinkel was incapable of feeling any sensation at all as the price for wielding such absurd divinity.

The power automatically erased every external stimulus that might harm her, cutting her off from outside sensation altogether.

Seeing it in person, this is completely…

The sight made him wonder whether she could even be called human.

She had claimed to be suppressing her ability to the absolute limit, yet calling her functionally immortal would barely be an exaggeration.

Aiden could understand why she held as much weight in the main story as Noel.

At least one other person clearly agreed with that reaction just as strongly.

CLICK.

Aiden and Katya both turned toward the sound coming from the counter.

The shopkeeper, face drained white, was aiming a loaded gun at Katya.

“Get out of my shop.”

“…It does look a little gruesome, does it not? I will pay for every round I fired, so…”

A flash burst in front of Katya’s face.

Her divinity had erased the bullet the shopkeeper fired.

“I told you to get out, you monster…!”

The words came out through a voice strained tight with fear.

His violently trembling hands made it obvious that he was not accustomed to threatening people like this. He had probably fallen halfway into panic after watching Katya perform those insane acts without a trace of concern.

But the corner of Katya’s mouth slowly stretched upward.

“I can understand how I might look a little strange.”

On the surface, it resembled her usual frivolous smile.

Aiden, however, had spent his life reading other people, and he immediately recognized the difference.

Beneath that expression was killing intent sharp enough to feel as though it could split skin.

This girl reacted with extreme sensitivity to hostility from others.

“But opening by putting a bullet into me is rather unpleasant, do you not think?”

Katya took one long step toward the counter.

CLICK.

A switch flipped inside Aiden’s mind, the personal alarm that always activated when a situation reached its limit.

It felt exactly like the moment just before Noel had once swung a sword at him.

If he stood still now, the shopkeeper was going to suffer something truly horrific.

!! Sub Quest !!

▶ Contact established with Deathwish, Katya Heinkel Craven.

▶ Resolve the current situation as peacefully as possible.

▶ If you handle the situation smoothly, the target’s favorable feelings toward you will increase dramatically!

▶ Failure will result in a penalty!

That outcome was absolutely not welcome to Aiden.

He groaned and clutched his head.

This was already the second time since meeting this damned princess that someone might die if he did not intervene.

And at the very least, Aiden was not the kind of person who could simply watch something like that happen without caring.

Especially not when he had a means to stop it.

Skill Info

◈ Weaver of Fate

【 Katya Heinkel Craven 】

• Bond: Stage 2

• You may copy 1 skill.

< Copied Skills > ◆ First Vow

Aiden hurriedly manipulated the familiar window that appeared whenever he prepared to copy a skill.

He had already looked through Katya’s abilities once before, so choosing one was easy.

There was no physical way for him to stop her from doing something insane. The only option was to redirect her mind somewhere else.

And when dealing with a fickle, eccentric, completely willful person, the best way to calm her anger was to seize her interest.

That meant the skill he needed was already decided.

System Message

▶ Copying the skill Sacred Body!

While Aiden manipulated the window, colorless flames surged around Katya as she strode toward the counter.

The seething divinity took shape, sharpening itself into a blade and locking directly onto the man behind the counter.

The blade fired without the slightest hesitation.

The shopkeeper had gone beyond pale and was nearly purple, as though he had already seen his future.

“…?”

Katya’s eyebrows arched sharply when Aiden threw himself between the two of them.

Her eyes widened even more when the blade of flame punched straight through the arm he had extended.

“It hurts!”

Bright divinity immediately began regenerating the wounded arm even as his scream filled the shop.

The sight was identical to what had happened moments earlier when Katya’s own destroyed head restored itself.

✦ ✦ ✦

It hurt with an intensity Aiden had never wanted to experience.

◆ Sacred Body

Repairs the body using First Vow as its foundation. Its power can be strengthened through the Rite of the Vow.

◎ Requires First Vow as a prerequisite skill!

◎ First Vow currently has no unique attribute assigned. The Sensory Block attribute has been removed. A penalty will be applied.

◎ Only minor injuries can be healed!

His arm was intact thanks to that ability, but pain remained pain.

Aiden clutched his arm and twisted helplessly.

There was no question that burning pain ranked among the worst sensations a human could experience. Having one arm completely pierced by a blazing blade was naturally enough to produce a reaction like this.

Katya’s eyes, however, were filled with shock as she stared at him.

She looked as though she had witnessed something that simply could not exist.

“Mister…!”

While Katya stood frozen, Aiden groaned toward the counter.

“Run…! Damn it, this hurts like hell…!”

The shopkeeper understood him and immediately turned around and fled.

At least Aiden’s reckless move had clearly been worth something.

Katya did not seem to care about the fleeing shopkeeper in the slightest.

“You are the same as me.”

Her cheeks trembled. The smile she always wore was badly distorted for once.

“Hey, Mr. Aiden. Answer me. That was my divinity, was it not?”

Still tearing up from the pain, Aiden turned toward her blankly.

“You called me Mr. Aiden?”

“Did you honestly think that pathetic disguise would fool me? More importantly, answer me. What exactly was that just now?”

So she had known it was him from the very beginning when she approached.

That explained why she had seemed to know far too much about him and why their supposedly accidental meeting had felt much too convenient.

Instead of asking any further questions about that, however, Aiden merely sighed inwardly again.

It was not the important part right now.

“…Yes.”

There was no point lying about what she had seen.

Katya was not an idiot, and something like this could not be hidden from her.

More precisely, the thing he needed to deceive her about was somewhere else.

“You are the same as me.”

“You can see that for yourself.”

“…”

Katya’s expression became even stranger as the excitement shining in her eyes was obvious enough that even a fool could recognize it.

“Then how in the world…”

“How do I ‘feel pain’?”

“…”

Katya stopped dead, and her eyes shook violently as though Aiden had struck directly at the center of her weakness.

Aiden knew why this girl wandered around casually shooting herself in the head.

Painlessness was already terrible enough, but complete lack of sensation was a curse of horrifying proportions for someone born into it.

It meant continuing to live while feeling absolutely nothing, existing in an empty world without stimulus because even death refused to arrive.

Her bizarre behavior came from desperately wanting to feel something, anything, even for a moment.

From that perspective, the true reason for Katya’s shock was not merely that Aiden had used an ability identical to her own.

The greater shock was that he possessed that ability and still felt pain vividly.

That gave him exactly the opening he needed.

“Want me to tell you?”

“…”

Katya’s entire body stiffened as though he had clearly driven straight into her deepest weakness.

The switch inside Aiden’s mind was still clicking as he watched her.

Everything had happened in an instant, and his solution had been little more than improvisation, but now that he had gotten this far, there was no reason not to add one more step.

If he was already here, he might as well take every benefit he could get from the situation.

“If you want to know…”

It was time to return to his true profession.

A scam meant lying to someone else.

“Would you do one favor for me?”

And a proper scam turned that lie into profit for the scammer.

System Message

▶ You have handled the Sub Quest wisely.

▶ Katya Heinkel’s interest in you has increased.

▶ Bond stage has risen from Stage 2 to Stage 3.

▶ 1 additional skill copy has been granted!

▶ Related information has been added to the Main Quest!

Aiden let out a relieved breath as the messages appeared before him.

At the very least, the feedback showing that he had profited from this was wonderfully straightforward.