The Protagonist Already Knows

Chapter 8: Inheritance

My eyes closed, I followed the visual map in my head, suddenly breaking through the backroom of an empty store and diving through another window, ignoring the impact and pain of glass embedding itself in my skin.

The shadow ball barely missed me, passing right by and destroying at least ten houses down the street like a bowling ball striking pins.

Jumping through windows and reaching the street to the right of where Tartarus was, I momentarily glanced behind me, watching as the Specter simply phased through the building’s walls.

Was I going fast enough? Was he going to catch me?

Shaking my head, I steeled myself and continued sprinting forward, following the imaginary bright red line that symbolized my route.

Taking a deep breath as an opportunity to gain some distance on the Specter appeared, I pushed through the wooden door of a familiar building: the lodge I had stayed at.

Sprinting up the stairs to the second floor as the Specter flew upward through the ceiling, already arriving there, I ran forward and yanked the door of my previous room open.

At that moment, as the Specter phased through a wall and entered my room as well, I felt an overwhelming cold sensation envelop my body, as if I were standing naked during a blizzard.

But, there...perhaps it was an illusion created by the Specter to destroy my mental state...or maybe it was actually there, I saw his limp body still impaled on the scythe.

His frozen azure-blue eyes met mine, snapping me back to reality.

No...for his sake, for those who had died at the Gate because of my laziness, I had to survive.

If I were captured by the Specter and became a vessel, so many more would die.

As the scythe slashed downward at me, threatening to cut my body in half, I leaped forward and crashed through the window of my lodge room.

As a glass shard embedded itself in my right eye, forcing it shut and sending my body into a world of pain, I raised my hand while mid-air, tumbling downward.

Simultaneously, the Specter phased through the windows, perhaps attempting to catch me while I was immobile in the air.

With blood leaking from my closed right eye, I finally felt it: a rough and familiar texture.

My tie!

Gripping it instantly, I flew backward, right back through the window and into my room, as if I were on a swing.

While Specters had amazing mobility, with the ability to phase through objects, turning was relatively slow for them.

Thus, as I ran into the lodge’s hallway and broke through the window on the opposite wall of where my room’s window was, the Specter had to pause momentarily to make a U-turn.

Leaping onto the next street, I sprinted North, passing by a familiar alchemy shop.

Turning my head down, I sprinted as fast as I possibly could, my ankles threatening to break apart every time the soles of my feet pounded against the rough brick sidewalk.

I’d never forgive myself; I couldn’t.

But the least I could do is remember, atone. If I died now, his death would be useless.

He wanted to help his parents, right? I would pay the favor forward tenfold.

As I made a right, ramming through the familiar wooden doors of the train station, I didn’t even dare try to descend the stairs slowly.

Like a skydiver, I leaped forward, clearing all the stairs at once and landing stomach-first at the bottom.

Blood spewing out of my mouth and painting the ground a crimson-red, the pain snapping me back to reality, I stumbled up and glanced backward, seeing the Specter atop the staircase.

Did I make it in t-?

"Station: Ascent #3. Arrived!"

As the familiar voice reverberated throughout the empty station, a gust of wind announcing the train’s arrival, I sprinted forward into the train.

There was only one way to claim the inheritance of Anubis, the Guardian of Death.

It was to escape the underworld once arriving there.

To do so was to defy the absolute laws of death, the ultimate insult to a Guardian of those laws and of Death itself.

As the train doors automatically opened, I stumbled in, the right side of my face now painted a crimson-red with my right eye completely numb.

Stumbling forward and falling onto a seat, I gazed forward as the Specter rushed toward me, its figure so big that its legs were going through the ground.

Barely remaining conscious, the ground below me painted a crimson-red. I tilted my head, watching the Specter begin to slow down as he approached the train.

Specter’s had one weakness...well, it was more of a strength.

They were like Emperors: once they claimed a piece of land, they would have absolute authority and boosted stats within it.

However, outside of that land, they were significantly weakened. That’s why Specters relied on brainwashing humans to expand their sphere of influence and territory.

Anubis had already claimed Ascent in the past, but this train was not technically part of Ascent’s scope, but property of The Grove.

*BAM*

At that moment, Peril’s ocean-blue eyes lit up with vitality as his body, hanging from the scythe, began rapidly trembling and seizing.

"...ah."

While the Specter slowed down, Peril leaped off the scythe, unimpaling himself in an instant, and rushed toward the train, a hole in his stomach that I could look through.

His blue pupils danced around in his eyelids with unmatched insanity.

*WHOOSH*

Time seemed to slow down before me, and the train’s automatic doors began to close, Peril’s brainwashed corpse mere inches away.

Reaching into my pocket, my hands bloody and covered in glass shards, I grabbed a familiar piece of paper and held it up high.

And, as the doors slowly shut, just for a moment, Peril’s eyes flickered, his feet pausing as he saw his own face on a missing persons notice.

*BAM*

The doors slammed shut, and as the train sped off, my body violently jerked forward, propelling me off my seat and onto the train floor.

But I didn’t care...all that pain, suffering had been for this.

I had done it.