MIDNIGHT PRINCE: Empire of Sin

[???]

"How is the plan advancing?"

Somewhere in a warehouse, a man wearing a trench coat was looking down at his body as he heard a woman speaking.

The woman was wearing a featureless black mask with the number 10 engraved on it.

"I am reaching my limit. My body cannot take the load anymore. I will die soon."

The man answered calmly as he opened his coat, showing off his body.

The stench of rotten flesh and wiggling maggots spread through the air as the horrifying body of the man beneath the coat came into vision.

His flesh was mangled beyond recognition. At first glance, it looked like it would repair itself but then it would simply collapse and worsen ever so slightly.

The man inserted a finger in his chest and scrapped the flesh away while the maggots continued to wiggle in said discarded piece of flesh.

"I already lost all sensations below my neck. My body responses have slowed considerably."

"How much?"

"I guess I am at only about 30% or maybe even 20% capacity at most. I cannot use shadow as much anymore either."

"So this seems to be a failure."

"Indeed."

The silence spread as the two talked indifferently. As if the disgusting scene of the man's crumbling flesh had no importance to them.

"Very well, the experiment is coming to an end. Failure is the mother of success after all."

"...."

"Your sacrifice will be remembered."

The connection went off and the man stood up.

He looked up at the illuminating Sun sitting still in the air. It was noon. But soon, the night would come.

It might very well be his last night as such…

———

[Campus]

After Sae and Adam left together, he passed the rest of the afternoon in her apartment playing video games.

Sae liked VR games but she also liked simple console games of the past. In her opinion, a game didn't need to be fully immersive to be interesting.

There was something nostalgic about the old games of the year 2020 and so on.

Adam honestly found those games quite old for his liking. But there was one game in her collection that caught his attention.

It was a rogue-lite rpg game that had been nominated game of the year in 2022. That game had the main character dying again and again while learning all the move sets of the bosses in order to win in the end.

What made him interested in this game was the ability to use magic in order to 'cheat' the difficulty.

Sae groaned when she saw him choosing a mage build but he was fascinated by his choice. Not only because he didn't want to suffer because of a game. But also because it reminded him of his current situation.

'Say, Genesis. How fast do I resurrect when I die?'

[The time necessary for your body to reconstruct depends on how heavy the damage you've sustained.]

Adam spoke with Genesis while he played the game. It was simple for him to do so now, with his two minds and whatnot, and there was something he wanted to make sure of.

'I am certain the regeneration rate increased when I was dying over and over again last time. Am I right?'

[Indeed.]

Adam nodded. The curse of Kain that was plaguing him was pretty strident. He didn't like that he was shackled with the curse of a Murderer when the only one he had killed so far was himself.

But the disadvantage of the curse would only really show in the future. As of now though, he could make full use of it.

If he could reach a level where he could regenerate immediately after dying… It would be more than useful for him. It would be a true game-changer in a fight.

'Well, it would be more useful if I could rewind time altogether though.'

He wondered if he could be able to do so in the future. But it all seemed so far away that he stopped thinking about it.

[Skills that deal with time and space are exponentially more costly than skills at the same level as they enter the level of higher dimensional beings and concepts.]

Adam nodded. The World for example seemed to be in the domain of space. It was a skill he acquired after attaining enlightenment through someone as powerful as Buddha. Someone who could hold an entire universe in the palm of his hand. [1]

Space and time were inseparable in the grand scheme of things.please visit panda-:)ɴᴏᴠᴇ1.co)m

'I just have to train. Who knows?'

Perhaps in the future, he would even be able to stop time like a certain iconic character.

"Argh! Magic is cheating."

Adam chortled and ignored Sae as he killed another boss with a blue laser beam while his clone summons was tanking the monster for him.

Cheating sure felt great.

———

After spending hours mocking Sae and making her scream in frustration, Adam felt light-hearted as he left her apartment.

He wished he could have spent more time with her but he had a meeting he could not miss today.

It was time for him to discuss about their future with Natasha. Now that the two of them knew that the other was from the supernatural world, they had to make clear how they would interact with each other going forward.

He hoped that there would be no big problems as Natasha was also a good friend of his. At the very least, he didn't wish to have enemies on the campus until he decided whether he would continue studying or drop out altogether.

At least this was the plan he went in mind when he reached the place they were supposed to meet.

'Where is she?'

It was a clearing. From what she said they would go to the restaurant from there.

But when he reached the place, he could see Natasha running towards him with terrifying speed while screaming at the top of her lungs,

"RUN!"

Adam felt goosebumps rise on his skin and faster than his mind could react, he instinctively moved to the left.

*Bang*

The sound finally reached him and he saw a huge hole in the ground not far from where he stood.

'A sniper!'

Natasha finally reached him and took him in her arms before running at full speed to avoid the sniper's aim.

He could have prevented her from carrying him but he let her do as she wished while he spread his ability, The World to the maximum capacity.

'We are surrounded.'

He could already 'see' more than five armed people coming at them from all directions.

pαпdα-ňᴏνê|·сóМ His Eyes of Truth immediately activated as he noticed that they were all humans and they were all hostile toward him.

Adam's body was only that of a human. He would not be able to dodge hundreds of bullets coming at him from all sides and there was a limit to what he could do to block the projectiles. He didn't know if he could block bullets and he didn't want to try it out yet.

They were all in the range of his ability.

The amount of Prana they had going through their bodies was pitifully low compared to what he had felt from his mother, even though she was in a severely weakened state due to the complications in her Heart Chakra, and even from him who did not have the Heart Chakra at all.

Are they hunters?

Adam did not really care about that. There was only one response when dealing with an enemy.

Answer hostility with even greater hostility.

Since they had used lethal attacks against him then…

*Crack*

After dying nearly a hundred times, Adam realized one fundamental aspect…

The human body was truly fragile.

This was what he thought as he twisted the neck of four of those five people with no hesitation while twistings the arms and legs of the last one.

There was a small resistance as their prana tried to protect their bodies. But the resistance was so small it might as well not have existed.

Feeling their existence fade away from his sight, Adam realized once again how frail life was.

From the moment Natasha took him to the moment four people died and one was crippled.

—All it took was a few fleeting seconds.

[1]: Those who know Sun Wukong should know how after he wreaked havoc in heaven. Buddha captured him. They made a bet about escaping the palm of his hand. Sun Wukong moved to the edge of the universe and wrote his name on five pillars came back to mock buddha but buddha showed him his fingers and the name of wukong was on them. Pretty badass. But one thing to take into account is that Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods aren't really mythology or religious scripture but more like novels. So the buddha in the novel is different from the true Buddhas in Buddhism. My Buddha in my novel is more geared toward the novels version even though I gave him the backstory of the true Siddhartha Gautama

(AN: Yeah. I was a mage build in Elden Ring. Killed Radhan with Comet Azur and killed Malenia with Mimic tear + 10 and River of Blood +10. Hahaha! The fastest boss was Radhagon. Deleted him in 40 seconds.)

(AN 2: Guys, the Fantasy carnival end Tomorrow (16th February). If you liked the story until now. Don't hesitate to send me some gifts haha. I really hope I will be able to at least obtain a price for the festival.)

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