"Move!" The man shouted again, now holding the knife toward Lucius to threaten him… but the thing was… there was nobody who felt threatened.
No, Lucius wasn't shaking because of fear, he wasn't flooded with the adrenaline of a fight-or-flight reaction… no.
What Lucis felt was… excitement, pure and raw excitement that took over his body… excitement.
Excitement that commanded and controlled him to walk toward the man with a faint smile on his face, his teeth gritting against each other, his hand curled, veins popping out.
I need to test it… now… it's the perfect time. He thought, as if it truly was the perfect moment.
A homeless man meant nothing in the world of Eldoria… he had to test it with him, rather than with something more powerful.
So he was walking toward the homeless who was everything and nothing all at once. He seemed… fragile, scared. Like he just wanted Lucius to leave, to vanish, and nothing more.
"Hey! Stop!" He shouted once again, pointing the knife at Lucius with uncertainty … but he didn't stop.
He just kept walking with that maniac smile spread across his face, surrounded by something dark… something terrifying that froze the man in place.
And then he felt it… felt the knife going into him… into Lucius.
He walked into it on his own… into the knife that cut through, slit his skin, tore through tissue, and sank deep into his stomach.
"W-What… monster are you…?" the man asked, staring deep into Lucius's eyes… eyes that were nothing but a dark void, while the sound of blood dripping echoed no, it wasn't dripping, it was pouring onto the ground, yet there wasn't a single trace of emotion on Lucius's face… just that smile.
"Haaah…" He exhaled, still staring into the man's eyes as he grabbed his hand and slowly pulled the knife out, then, without hesitation, he stabbed himself with it again… and again… and again… and again.
The sound of it… that terrifying sound as it went into his stomach, that noise of skin splitting, the blood gushing out, that hot, sticky warmth… doing all of while staring into his eyes.
"I'm truly immortal, huh…?"
[Quest completed: The Rise of the Fool of Death]
"Quest completed?" He whispered as in front of him suddenly a window popped up just like in the game. "Huh, so there is some kind of system after all…"
"Y-you… what– are you…" The voice of the homeless man came, but it was everything then a voice no…
It rose from deep inside him, not just a cry or a scream, but a voice torn straight out of his soul… a sound that was not only touched by fear, but was fear itself.
Fear as his hand literally burned from the blood spilling endlessly out of Lucius.
Yeah, it was not warm like how it's supposed to be for some seconds that you feel that sensation of warmth… no, it was hot, like boiling water just spilled on his hand, something he never expected in life nor even thought he would feel, yet now he did, as that hot and heavy blood covered his skin… yeah, heavy.
Heavy, like that blood that sprayed and poured out of Lucius's body, it seemed to want to drown him, to drag him down, to make him kneel and let it swallow him whole. Every drop was like a chain, pulling him deeper, deeper, into something dark… into something evil he could not fight or escape.
It was as if the devil itself stood before him, waiting, smiling.
The devil that wanted him to take a step, to leave behind the world of the living, and walk willingly into the realm of Hell.
And still he didn't close his eyes… he didn't even blink through the whole thing, as he felt the blade going in deep, as he felt the tight grip as Lucius grabbed his hand and just willingly stabbed himself again and again… he didn't close his eyes as the thick drops of blood splashed against his face, into his eyes, into his mouth, no he did not close them.
His eyes stayed wide open and in that moment, what he saw was not life, not even death, but something that stood outside of both, something that felt lower, darker, and more cursed than either one.
It was not a place he had ever dreamed of, not a thing he had ever glimpsed even in the darkest corners of his mind.
No book had spoken of it.
It was nameless, yet it breathed in front of him… as if two worlds life and death had been forced together and from that broken place came something else, something entirely different.
He should have seen a man dying, a body failing, blood pouring out, but instead, he saw Lucius smiling at him as if none of the blood, none of the terror meant anything at all.
It was not the smile of a man who lived, nor the last smile of one who died… it was the smile of something that belonged to neither.
What he saw was not death. What he saw was not life.
What he saw in front of him was not something that could be said to be human nor a monster, but something darker, something so intense and terrifying that there was no word he could describe it with.
That was what Lucius didn't really think about… how others might be seeing him. And it wasn't just about what had happened, that he had stabbed himself. No, his whole aura was on a completely different level.
A pure dark being that even pushed away the brightest light… that's how the homeless man saw him. A shadow that moved on its own, swallowing everything around it. A dark entity that should not exist, something that defied all reason, something that defined the very meaning of darkness itself.
To the man, it wasn't human anymore. He could feel it staring at him not with eyes, but with something deeper, something that reached into his soul.
Something that is more evil than Hell, more prideful than the gods, and darker than the void itself.
The Fool of Death.