Cleaver Of Sin

Chapter 548: 13 Hours

But Asher gave no reply; he wasn’t foolish enough to give one, as him saying anything would mean he was admitting to escaping and would mean that he had received the man’s message. Besides, who said the kidnappers were only watching? What if they were also listening? Moreover, Asher hadn’t ruled out the possibility of the man being a spy.

Thinking of all of this, Asher gave no reply; after the mission, if the man’s so-called son was still alive, if none of the villagers had died of course, Asher would pass on the man’s message. After all, it took nothing from him; he already had the map of the entire region engraved within his mind, and he could simply just fly there when he got the name of the village from the man’s son, making the task trivial and insignificant in comparison to the larger objective at hand.

Asher could feel gazes turning towards him, but he met none of them, and as the man had spoken, those around the both of them had heard the man’s words clearly, so they stared at Asher, waiting for any form of confirmation, their expressions fluctuating between desperation and fragile hope.

If they received any confirmation, then they would also pass on their final thoughts and words to Asher as though Asher were a form of guardian angel who delivered messages.

Normally, when a person is cornered, they ended up doing something dangerous and insane as they had nothing to lose but their life, but that wouldn’t work here; any plans to escape were simply futile. After all, they were a bunch of unawakened rats in front of titans, beings so far above them that resistance itself was laughable.

Asher wanted to ask questions, like how long they had been here, whether there had been people in the empty cells before they were taken, Asher wanted to ask all these, but he didn’t, because questions invited attention, and attention invited variables, and variables disrupted calculations.

Soon, the heavy sound of a thick metallic door closing echoed through the chamber as the deranged man finally left. The moment the man left, Asher closed his eyes as though he had accepted his fate; seeing Asher close his eyes, the other villagers who had been gazing at him with mild expectations and hope sighed at their own naivety and tore their gaze away from Asher, their shoulders slumping in resignation.

’How long has it been since I was unconscious?’ Asher asked, his thoughts directed to the system with calm precision.

[It’s been 13 hours, Host]

The mechanical voice of the system chimed within his consciousness, cold and emotionless. Asher arched an eyebrow in confusion; the kidnappers hadn’t knocked him unconscious, he was the one who had purposely slept, and whenever he did, he didn’t sleep more than six hours even if he overslept, and in a mission like this, Asher was certain he would automatically wake up in about two hours at most after being taken, yet it had taken him 13 hours, which was completely abnormal.

Something was definitely wrong.

He had thought it was still night, as they had taken him out of the inn at exactly 10 o’clock pm, but now it was 11 o’clock am in the morning, meaning nearly half a day had passed without his awareness.

’System, what happened?’ Asher immediately asked, as he couldn’t just take the news and dismiss it like nothing, especially not when lost time equated to lost control.

[The system isn’t an all-knowing system, Host]

The mechanical tone of the system echoed yet again in his mind, devoid of apology or elaboration.

’Tsk, useless system,’ Asher thought to himself, but he didn’t panic or care; if it wouldn’t answer, he had someone else to ask, someone who had been watching all this while: Virelass.

The moment he directed his thoughts towards her, she immediately appeared beside him, but of course she didn’t make her presence known, as she was invisible at the moment, floating silently beside Asher like a phantom tethered to his existence.

Before Asher had been taken, he had attacked those three kidnappers with another weapon while Virelass was already hidden within his soul. Although if Virelass were taken, she could easily teleport back to him, Asher didn’t take that route; after all, what if their weapons were also being monitored? It was always better to be thorough, meticulous, and unnecessarily cautious than careless and exposed.

Virelass immediately answered Asher’s question: he had been taken and stuffed into a golden box that the woman who had spiked his food earlier could make appear and disappear at will, and then he had been transferred into this cell about an hour ago, meaning he had remained inside that unknown container for nearly twelve hours.

’It seems that is their mode of transportation, and that golden box of hers seems to be her ability, and it seems to make one stay unconscious,’ Asher thought to himself, analyzing the information calmly. However, he was immune to mind and soul manipulation of any level due to the presence of the system, which acted as an absolute safeguard over his consciousness.

After a moment of thought, Asher decided to stop dwelling on it; the woman’s ability wasn’t an offensive type, and he had to be put into the box to be rendered unconscious anyway, and judging from the way his food had been spiked before he was placed into that golden box, Asher came to the logical conclusion that she could only put unconscious people into her golden box, which meant there were limitations to her ability, and limitations meant weaknesses.

’It’s time to act,’ Asher thought to himself; there was nothing keeping him here any longer. Although he had been given a month for this mission, which remained three weeks by the way, it didn’t mean he planned to spend that much time on this mission alone, nor did it mean he would tolerate unnecessary delays.

Although Asher’s connection with Astra energy had been severed and he couldn’t shatter the chains and metallic cuffs through brute force, Asher had something better: the Star Energy.

With a single thought, Star Energy responded to his will, flowing through him like a silent cosmic tide; the next moment, Asher moved, but to the outside world, nothing had happened.

Asher remained seated exactly as he was, with his eyes closed and his posture unchanged, but the real Asher was already gone, displaced from his original position without causing even the slightest disturbance in the surrounding air.

The Asher that was bound by the chain was nothing but a photon clone he had created to replace him, a flawless construct formed from light photons, and then, the moment he escaped by spatially phasing through the cuffs and chains that bound him, he immediately bent light photons around himself and made himself invisible, erasing his presence from ordinary perception.

He had used these three different skills at the same time, executing them with seamless precision and flawless synchronization, hence fooling whoever was watching and also fooling the villagers and prisoners around him, leaving behind nothing but an illusion of captivity while the true predator was about to move freely.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: Golden tickets? Super gifts? Am I a zombie? Am I dead? Ahh, I still have work tomorrow.