Chapter 110: Back from the Dead × The Seven Most Beautiful Colors
"It is over."
Pariston's body lay still on the deck, breath gone.
His two bodyguards, Clark and Goh, bobbed back to the surface on the push of a wave. Faint shapes of sharks, drawn by blood, began to circle.
Kite stood on the mast and had watched it all. His gaze fixed on the boy's not particularly tall back. Sensing it, Roy turned, gave him a calm glance, and slid the cane-sword into its sheath.
"Young Master, how should we deal with him?" Gotoh took one look at Pariston, caught his breath, and returned.
By his lights, anyone who offended the young master ought to be thrown to the fish with his two bodyguards.
Roy said nothing. A prompt flickered across his inner panel. Clark and Goh, upon death, each contributed eight or nine points of life energy.
Only Pariston showed no soul at all.
What was certain was that the blade had indeed pierced the man's heart.
And Pariston did indeed lie at his feet as seen, quiet, with no breath.
Everything looked perfectly reasonable.
Then Roy sensed something off, crouched, and examined Pariston's body. The moment his fingers touched the carotid at the man's neck…
A living figure, before the eyes, shriveled. In an instant, it turned to a clump of mud and sand. A sea wind came and scattered it into the sky and water.
[Vows and Restrictions]
[Die for the King: by permanently expending one piece, trade death for life]
Kakin Empire, Capital Spiento.
On the south end of Tulip Avenue, beside the center of power under the Hui Guo Rou royal family—the First Prince's palace—stood a lavish manor.
The manor was grand. Towering spires, vintage window latticework, and a groomed garden tended by dozens of gardeners lent it the elegance and opulence of the nobility down to every carved line.
At a huge floor-to-ceiling window on the second floor, an "old" man and a youth drank tea and played a game.
The "old" one was around fifty years old. His long hair was pinned up. His face was rugged; a thick black beard hung under his jaw. From afar, he even resembled Netero a little. In frame, though, he was far more robust.
"I warned you long ago. If you want to conjure a true dragon, you cannot be confined to this little world. You should come with me to see the real continent."
Clack.
The man captured a black knight without mercy.
A sickly flush rose visibly on the youth's face. He opened his mouth and spat a mouthful of blood.
It stained the black-and-white board.
Pariston slipped a pocket square from his breast, dabbed his lips at an unhurried pace, then touched his chest. The pain of a blade through the heart was real. For an instant it dragged him back to the sea to relive it.
"Roy Zoldyck… is terrifying, as expected."
"Who?"
"Roy Zoldyck."
The man froze, tossed the piece in his hand aside, and laughed with a cruel edge. "I said it was only an exam. At your level, even at your worst, you would not fail it."
But...
"If the opponent is a Zoldyck, that would make sense."
Beyond stood with his hands behind his back at the window. His gaze skimmed the garden, crossed the royal halls, and fell on the docks, where the yard was busily building an enormous ship by tonnage—the one he had named the Black Whale just two days prior.
His thoughts drifted back to a brief "contact" some time ago with that silver-haired man.
The other could not be bothered to answer and refused outright to convince his old man to persuade the father to lift the binding.
Even a hundred billion Jenny wouldn't sway him. That alone showed how unyielding he becomes once he sets his face.
(Note: Netero once swore an oath that as long as he lived, Beyond would never set foot on the Dark Continent. This was one of the reasons the old man ended up taken down by Beyond and Pariston together.)
Pariston wiped the last trace of blood from his mouth and smiled, eyes narrowed.
"A man has to be tested in truth. You told me that yourself."
Just as Beyond had told him, he would have to see a true dragon to conjure a true dragon. The youth pinched up the blood-stained "dragon" piece on the board, toyed with it a moment, and said in a low voice, "This is not over. When I find a true dragon, I will settle this with him."
If you want to savor the pleasure that comes from being hated, you must first learn to hate others. Beyond shot him a sidelong glance.
Only now had the youth truly reached the threshold.
"Take it slow. Take it slow. No rushing." He said it to the boy.
It was what he had told himself for years as well. When he turned back to the royal halls, the layout, subtly and slowly, was already underway.
Aboard the Sea God.
Gotoh watched Pariston's body turn to mud and also sensed the wrongness.
He copied Roy, crouched, scooped a handful of the mud Pariston had become, brought it to his nose, and sniffed. "Red clay used for molding."
The young butler had not been born into the Zoldyck household. As a child, he had played his share with mud. Frowning, he analyzed, "A body becoming mud means the blond youth who stood here just now was not the real one, but a substitute made from red clay."
Then the chessboard. The pieces. The truth slowly surfaced.
"That Pariston probably is not dead…"
Gotoh said it carefully.
Roy stood, picked up the branch Gotoh had temporarily wedged into a crack in the deck, and walked to the bow without a word, where he resumed fishing and tempering his Nen.
In truth, he knew:
Dead or not, it no longer mattered. There is nothing new under the sun. As long as strength remains, all schemes will be erased without a trace in the end.
"At worst, kill him again."
"Yes." Gotoh settled himself and went to the bow with him, back to the boy, once more guarding his back.
Night fell. The last light of sunset sank. A pale moon quietly climbed over the sea's rim and washed the Sea God in a fine veil of silver.
People woke from their faint one after another. Without exception, the first thing they did was look to the battlefield.
The cracked deck was a ruin. There was no sign of Pariston, Clark, or Goh. Only the old captain, first mate Gus, and a few crewmen, tools in hand, struggling to make repairs, and—
The boy, like a rock, was still sitting at the bow with rod in hand. It was as if the terrifying swordsman moments ago had never been the green youth at all.
A scream burst out.
Moments later, the killing restarted.
Only then did people remember the points battle was not over. A new round began, and everyone gave the bow a wide berth by unspoken pact. It gave Rika a chance to breathe.
The girl sat cross-legged beside Gotoh. She tore off her sleeve for a bandage, dressed her wounds, and staunched the bleeding. Then she slipped a bank card from her inner pocket and pressed it into Gotoh's hand, stole a glance at Roy, and said, "This is the savings I have scraped together over the years. Please accept it."
Rika had an eye for the moment.
Unfortunately.
"Your people are worth nothing but your eyes."
"?"
Rika: "…"
Her head snapped up. The pitch-black pupils shivered with a violent wave of feeling. Faintly, they began to shift toward a fiery crimson.