As Freddy walked into the gym, Mark greeted him, "Hey, man, what's up?" Then he asked the dreaded question, "So... did that guy come after you?"
"Nah," he lied. "He must have pussied out."
"I see..." Mark said, his voice drifting off. "Honestly, I thought about it a bit, and I think the smartest thing to do would be to just apologize."
Freddy remained quiet.
Mark continued, "It's much better to take a small hit to your pride than deal with trouble that isn't worth it."
Freddy looked at Mark with a distant gaze and a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Yeah. I'll... I'll keep that in mind."
***
It didn't take Freddy particularly long to rationalize his actions. That guy was a dumbass, and he could have gone after someone else. If that had happened, the roles could have been reversed.
No matter how he thought of it, that idiot was a hostile maniac who should have been taken out. In fact, he was willing to go as far as to say that if placed in that situation again, he'd make the same choices, even knowing the results.
But... his excuses didn't change anything.
Every time he woke up in the morning, his essence reserves would be topped off. The morning after that incident, he woke up and checked his essence reserves—they were at 28%—1 % more than the day before.
Every time he struck out with a technique, a shred of its power felt borrowed. Stolen. And it would forever be a part of him.
By day, when around people or training, he was fine. Things were different at night. Repeatedly, he would wake up in a cold sweat, nightmares ravaging his mind whenever he closed his eyes: images of how easily a neck snapped, the visions of a body appearing before he could tell what happened.
Every time he trained, every step forward he took, and every bit of progress he made... suddenly, it felt so heavy.
What exactly was he preparing himself for?
Days passed, and eventually, on one evening, just as he was about to take the collection of medicines...
His doorbell rang.
Freddy walked over, expecting it to be Mark. But as he looked through the spyglass, he spotted Matt Canstone, the assistant, instead.
He couldn't keep a breath from escaping his lips.
With quite a bit of hesitation, he turned the lock and opened the door.
"Hello," Matt said. "May I come in?"
Freddy's mind froze when he heard the question. "Uhm... sure, feel free. I'll uh... Yeah, do you want me to order something to drink?"
"No need for that, but thank you, regardless."
The handsome auburn-haired man sat on the couch in the living room, and he sat across from him, shifting awkwardly.
"You can relax," the man said. "I'm not here for business. I just wanted to have a conversation with you."
Regardless of what the man said, there was no way in hell he was here without Madame's knowledge. And if she allowed him to come here, it was because she was playing at something. He showed no indication of his suspicion outwardly, instead feigning relaxation.
"I'm... Am I in trouble?" he asked.
"No, you are not," the man said. Before long, he added, "You don't have to worry. The situation has been dealt with—officially, it would be concluded that Hilbert died during a delve."
Although it made him feel ashamed, Freddy couldn't help but feel a sense of relief at that. "I see... Thank you, and I apologize for the trouble I caused."
Matt simply smiled and nodded slightly. Then, with a swing of his hand, a large bottle of alcohol appeared, and two glasses appeared next to it.
Ah, okay... he thought. So that's what he meant by no need.
"Do you want to have a drink with me?" Matt asked, shaking him out of his thoughts.
"Uhm... I'm not personally in the mood for it. Thank you for the offer, though," he thanked the man. Truthfully, he wanted a sip but was afraid that it was spiked with something.
"I see. That's all right," Matt said as he poured himself a glass and took a swig. With a deep sigh, he turned to face him. "That was similar to how my first happened."
"What did?" he asked.
"The way that man died by your hands."
The bluntness of the man's statement was like a punch to his stomach, but he just nodded in response, waiting for the man to continue.
"I'm a single father," Matt said. "When my daughter was two years old, I took her everywhere since I couldn't bear to leave her alone." He poured more of the pungent drink into the glass and downed half the glass in one gulp. "One night, I had some late shopping, so I took her with me. I put her down briefly at her request to walk by herself. That was when that man appeared.
"He looked homeless and disheveled. With sure steps, he approached my daughter and reached to grab her. I reacted instinctively, kicking him in the head. His neck broke, and he fell to the ground."
Freddy sat silently, then said, "Seems fair enough to me."
"The court said the same thing," the man added with a lethargic chuckle and another sip. "I was never punished for my actions, but... I've never made peace with what I've done.
"I don't know who he was or why he did what he did. Perhaps he was on drugs and saw something that made him reach for my daughter. I don't truly know if his intent was to harm or take her... He didn't jump at her. He didn't have the eyes of a predator. He simply reached out with his hand," he said, gesturing the motion. "Maybe he just wanted to pat her on the head, and I judged him by his appearance before he could prove his innocence," he confessed, tearing up a bit. "And my lovely angel...
"She claims she doesn't remember seeing that happen, but I see it in her eyes. She jumps when I show up beside her without her noticing. She averts her gaze when she holds mine for too long. Even if she doesn't remember, I'm sure the experience still haunts her, lurking deep in a long-forgotten corner of her early childhood memories."
Freddy listened with rapt attention, nodding slightly at the man's words. "Yeah, I... I definitely wouldn't want to trade places with you."
The man chuckled a bit. "Indeed. And I'd trade places with you in a heartbeat."
"So, you're the one observing me?" he asked the man, but the assistant stared at him with a mysterious smile.
Then, ignoring the question, Matt said, "I wanted to give you a few words of advice. First, never get into a fight unless you're prepared to kill your opponent. Never." He let the word sink in for a moment. "Let me ask you something. Would you wield a knife if you wanted to fight someone but didn't want to seriously injure or kill them?"
Yet again, he returned to his body, and this time, he took a deep breath.
Relax, Freddy... it might not be that good.
The last thing he'd want was to get too excited and overreact. So, he returned to the Netherecho again and began the test run of his new soul construct.
Filling his essence back to total capacity was something he couldn't do even with several straight hours of gathering. But when nearly empty, his soul recovered essence faster. Usually, he would dive into the Netherecho for around fifteen to twenty minutes at a time, which would be enough to regain approximately 5% essence. Then, once he spent that, he would return and do the same thing.
He did as usual this time, spending roughly fifteen minutes in the Netherecho. But the longer he spent there, the more he felt the pull to go back to his body so it could process the shock.
Because by the time he was done, he hadn't regained a mere 5% essence. He had regained nearly 22%.
***
For the next few days, he spent most of his time not abusing his newly discovered cheat but contemplating how he would hide it. It didn't take long for him to land on the perfect solution. He just wouldn't.
There wasn't enough merit to doing so. Madame almost definitely wouldn't hesitate to snatch Bloodshed if she discovered it, but that was different. Bloodshed was something she could use. His talent wasn't.
On top of that, if he wanted to remain safe after leaving Madame's protection, using this advantage to become more powerful would serve him far better than hiding it.
He still didn't intend to advertise that he could do this, and he made sure to disguise it to the best of his ability, but if someone was keeping an eye on him, it wouldn't be long until they discovered that something was off.
As more days passed, his growth sped up even further. His star was, yet again, growing at a crawl, but his ether shells were developing rapidly. Hydraulic Flex was still far from being finished, but Hundred Wet Hells was at least 20% along with being able to upgrade to a stage one ability, and Flowing Strike was closer to 40%.
As his time spent here passed two months, he noticed something worrisome. He had to stop using the steroids because, simply put, he was growing too big. While his muscular growth was utterly insane initially, it had slowed down somewhat. But it was still going. He had already reached 91 kg. He had put on 11 kg of weight in less than three weeks.
While some of that mass was due to his limited use of Abyssal Depths, judging from what he knew of the tempering technique, with how little he had used it, it couldn't have added more than 100 grams to his total weight.
Even if his growth slowed further, another four months of development like that would put him way above 100 kg. Being at around that much mass would still be manageable, but if he grew much more than that, it would seriously compromise his mobility.
Freddy wasn't all that tall, either.
Mark, who was much bigger than him, weighed 115 kg. But his talent and weapon choice permitted it. He, on the other hand, needed to stay mobile.
Although he was quick to kick the drugs out of his schedule, he wouldn't limit his calorie intake. Because otherwise, he might just starve to death.
***
On another ordinary evening, Freddy was getting ready to go to bed until his doorbell rang again. He immediately knew it would be exhausting, but he forced himself to walk there anyway.
The moment he peeked through the spyglass, however, his stomach dropped.
Madame stood before his room entrance, wearing a loose, white dress, her hair tied up into twin ponytails, and her arms crossed right across her torso. Her nails were painted each in a different color, and one finger playfully tapped against her forearm. Although spyglasses were meant to only go one way, her eyes showed she was well aware that he was looking through the other end.
He took a single deep breath to calm down and opened the door. "Greetings, Madame!" he chirped.
"Freddy, darling, how lovely to see you!" she said as she walked into the apartment.
"Yeah!" he concurred. "So, to what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Please, cut the shit, young man," she said in the most polite tone she could manage with such a phrase.
The whiplash momentarily stunned him, and Madame patted him on the shoulder with a casual smile, causing him to jolt reflexively.
"You don't need to pretend to be happy to see me. Anyone can tell that you trust me about as much as a man with IBS trusts a fart, so let's not do this pretend play, okay?"
He nodded hesitantly, and Madame walked past him. "Let's go have a seat. We have something important to talk about."
With clenched fists and shaky steps, he followed her, and they sat in the kitchen.
It was as if she extracted some sort of sick pleasure from awkward silence, and she let it stretch on for far too long, simply observing him from top to bottom. And then, finally, she spoke up. "You're growing fast."
"That I am," he confirmed, still somewhat stilted.
"Lovely. You should have at least asked before dropping the steroids, though."
Freddy winced at that and wondered whether she would force him to return to taking them.
"I won't," she said, as if she could read his mind. "I was going to tell you to stop anyway since a freak who belonged in a circus is the last thing I'd want on my show." Then, with a dramatic sigh, she summoned a cocktail from thin air and started taking a long sip through the straw.
Then, the way an interrogator questioned a criminal, she opened her mouth and asked him, "How exactly did you manage to piss off the patriarch of the Kraven Clan?"
"Who?" he asked, genuinely confused, but Madame showed no indication that his confusion held any worth to their discussion.
"I will be straightforward with you. If I conclude that you knew he was after you and decided to trick me into taking you under my wing anyway," she said, leaning forward and freezing the smile on her lips, "I will kill you immediately."
He gritted his teeth. Rage boiled in his heart, but he took a deep breath and calmed down. After all, he was innocent. Even if he wanted to tear her head off her shoulders for the threat, he was powerless to do anything.
"Madame," he said, taking a moment to think through what he was about to say. "I have no idea who that person is, and this is the first time I've heard of the 'Kraven' clan," he answered honestly, holding her gaze throughout the ordeal.
She squinted at him and took another long sip of her drink through the straw. The cocktail ran dry, but she kept slurping it up, producing an annoying sound all the while. "All right, I believe you," she said, just like that, putting the glass back into her storage device with a pop of air rushing to take its place.
He didn't let himself relax.
"Well," she said, "I still have to ask you a few things. You've somehow made an enemy that is a pain for even me to deal with, and given that I have no choice but to defend you, I would like to request your full cooperation.
"So," she continued, "I guess I should clue you in on who we're dealing with. His name is Janhalar Kraven, and he leads a clan of blood-affinity warriors."
It all happened in an instant.
The moment she mentioned the clan of blood archhumans, he immediately thought of Bloodshed, and as soon as he did, her arm morphed, extending forward, and her rainbow-colored nails sharpened into pointy claws that grasped his neck, drawing blood.
Bent over the table, her arm stretching out of her dress, she struck an utterly inhuman picture, yet it was her expression that sent the fear of death into his heart.
With a murderous look of wrath on her face, she growled. "So, you do know something, after all."