THE VILLAIN'S POV Chapter 744: The Sixth Adaptation

On the fringes of the battlefield, distant from the resounding chaos of ruin...

Quietness descended.

Frey Starlight ceased his shaking once he had emptied his gut entirely—after beholding a horror surpassing any dreadful dream.

A horror that ripped apart a long-buried scar in Frey, just to prevent his sanity from shattering.

What intensified his agony was realizing Danzo wasn't alone in that ocean of gore. Next to him lurked another silhouette... a maiden with a hideously warped shape, drifting without purpose at the depths too. Naturally, Frey knew who she was.

"I believed I was rescuing her... yet I only prolonged her misery," Frey murmured, his gaze more shadowed than ever before.

Nameless offered no reply. Utterances held no value anymore.

The maiden was Clana Starlight.

Once, Simon Manus had mysteriously transformed her into a marionette. The eerie detail was her state of undeath... she lived on, but robbed of her free will.

The blaze Frey had ignited then, which razed the City of Puppets, was what finished her off.

Frey thought his action had freed her.

In reality, he merely trapped her soul far down in the shadowy void within his own being.

For an instant, Nameless pondered...

What emotions must be surging through Frey Starlight at this moment?

Frey had slain those closest to him. Those he cherished deeply.

Such an act was brutal, casting endless dark shades that chewed relentlessly at his soul for ages.

But taking lives was one matter.

Trapping their essences was a far graver sin.

In that fleeting second, Nameless experienced true intrigue... what surged in Frey upon discovering he had stolen their peace and release, dooming them to endless suffering?

He required no verbal response.

Frey’s turmoil flowed straight to him.

Nameless stayed silent. He balled his hand into a tight fist and held it over his heart, fighting to quell the ache.

A ferocious torment... like some force was consuming him internally, scorching him with blistering infernos.

An excruciating feeling, blending sorrow, fury, and hatred toward himself.

A weighty load that even compelled Nameless to despise such sentiments.

"What I sense now is just a sliver... a mere piece of the torment Frey Starlight bears."

"If this is only a piece... a lone spark... then how immense is the suffering he withstands?"

Nameless bowed his head to the pile of remains. He grasped that the anguish probably equaled the count of those agonized spirits... spirits doomed to stay locked here eternally, or to be incinerated and converted into strength for one man's gain.

Amid those grim destinies, they held no say.

The choice rested solely with Frey.

"The sixth phase of Shadow Adaptation involves soul incineration," Nameless uttered softly.

"More accurately, that's merely part of the power... the aspect tied to demise. Souls felled by my strike face inevitable agony. Souls ended by others' hands... those I can bestow new existence upon."

"That's the mechanism of this force... one that defies the rules of existence and oblivion..."

"Reviving a single soul demands another's end as payment. Such equilibrium upholds the cycle of life and death. The pair remain eternally linked."

These statements captured the height Nameless had attained from tampering with existence and oblivion over endless time.

Still, he had overlooked the original drive that set him on that road. What lingered was merely a warped remnant of his vanished reality.

"...Stop. That's irrelevant at present."

Nameless shifted his focus back to Frey.

"He can't rise once more—not after bearing such intense torment."

Frey Starlight couldn't consume the essences of those he had slain. To do that would involve devouring his comrades too... and that proved too overwhelming for him.

Frey might draw on icy reason if it involved only foes' souls, or even unknowns.

But Danzo and Clana...

They stood apart.

A barrier Frey Starlight, still holding onto his feelings, could never surmount.

Or so Nameless assumed.

However, for the first time since encountering Frey...

Nameless’s eyes gradually expanded in astonishment as he saw an unforeseen event. An occurrence that upended all his prior assumptions.

Frey Starlight rose to his feet once again.

And right then, a single body burst into flames, swallowed by furious purple fires.

Only one, positioned at the distant border of the gore sea.

But soon...

Corpse after corpse ignited one by one, accelerating with frightening speed. Purple surges drowned out the red as Nameless observed wordlessly.

In mere moments, the entire heap of bodies blazed up... fully consumed, turning into a dark signal fire that ignited the blood ocean.

Clana’s form burned among the rest.

Shortly followed by Danzo’s.

They incinerated swiftly. Silently.

Without opposition. Without any cry.

They burned identical to the others.

No separation.

No partiality.

Just purple fires... mirroring the anguish and shadows that consumed a mortal soul.

Nameless directed his sight back to Frey Starlight, now standing tall anew.

He remained the identical individual.

Yet one element captured Nameless’s focus above all.

Frey’s eyes.

Shadowed. Vacant. Devoid.

That shadow...

That deadly emptiness...

Nameless knew those eyes well.

"They're identical to the gaze from my recollections..."

Inside Nameless’s mask lay an enormous archive of recollections... echoes of his history.

And within those recollections,

Nameless possessed those very eyes.

Icy eyes, stripped of feeling.

Eyes he had only lately started to shed...

Ever since Frey Starlight’s sentiments began infiltrating him.

But in a cruel reversal, Frey now displayed the exact eyes Nameless thought gone for good.

The mortal had grown nearer to a beast...

while the beast edged closer to mortality.

"You've transformed... Frey Starlight..."

...

...

...

---

— Frey Starlight’s POV —

Recently...

I've started doubting the boundaries between right and wrong.

Sometime ago, I'm sure I breached the divide between those notions.

The gore coating my hands runs deep—and it shall never cleanse.

I glanced forward briefly, at the furious clash on the field.

Gehrman battled Amon there, with my father at his side.

Up in the heavens... Snow dueled Nito, the Ninth Seat.

And even higher...

that beast emerging from thin air confronted the Third Upper Seat.

"This is a warzone... a warzone where all battle for motives, pursuing certain goals."

Each fighter carried their own drive to clash so savagely, so urgently.

"I possessed one as well... a motive, an urge to press onward... safeguarding my kin, and those precious to my soul."

Gradually, I faced Ada, my sibling, whom I'd set aside... sprawled there in oblivion.

"That served as my battle's purpose until now. So long as they remained secure, all else faded..."

"Yet ultimately... I turned into the tormentor of those I vowed to shield."

"Danzo... and Clana. The pair of them."

"And beyond them. My father returned to life just to serve as a tool against me.

My sister turned into bait... a means for foes to erode my resolve.

Carmen perished directly in my sight, with me powerless to intervene."

It seemed predestined.

Regardless of my efforts...

No matter my actions...

I invariably met the identical result.

"I explored endless routes... endless chances... but each concluded in defeat."

I even morphed into a gore-drenched slayer to tread the Path of Blood.

I massacred multitudes in conflict without mercy, gradually discarding my humanness.

And it brought me to nothing.

"All those bodies... all those spirits writhing within me... they surely damn me daily, yearning for my end—right?"

It stood clear.

They latched onto me in hopelessness, seeking to pull me into their swamp of gore and demise.

"Everything here... stems from my doing."