"Rest easy, you idiot. Don't expect me to do anything for you — I don't owe you a thing. Whatever regrets you're carrying, chalk it up to your own bad luck. You brought this on yourself. From here on out, none of this concerns you anymore. The most I'll promise is that I won't trouble your family…"
"Fine — if it's not too much of a hassle, I might do them one favor. Just one. Don't push it."
That said, Ryan added the final customary words of this world — spoken aloud, but without any accompanying gesture of prayer.
"May the Lord of Storms watch over your soul."
The big idiot had followed his family's faith: the Lord of Storms, one of the two great beliefs of the Ruen Kingdom where he'd lived. Not that his faith had been particularly sincere, given how much of it he'd squandered at gambling tables. Hopefully the deity wasn't too put off by that.
It was fortunate that no one else witnessed this absurdly bare-bones funeral — if those few words even qualified as one. Even the father who'd cast his wayward son out might have felt the urge to throw a punch.
But Ryan didn't much care. The circumstances were unusual. Unusual circumstances called for unusual measures. Besides, he'd only gotten a little sentimental and said a couple of words — it wasn't a big deal.
He had never been the type to show reverence for all the dead. Let alone someone whose choices he couldn't begin to understand — even now, even with access to the big idiot's memories.
A glance at the guy's build alone told you the family had been well-off. The father was strict, certainly, but the decision to expel his own son hadn't come purely from the son gambling his way through university and accomplishing nothing. The real breaking point had been the big idiot beating someone so badly at a gambling den that the man ended up seriously injured — and that man happened to have ties to local people of influence. After spending considerable resources cleaning up that mess, the father's patience finally snapped when the son showed no remorse whatsoever, and the expulsion followed.
Adding to that — everyone in the family except the big idiot was a devout follower of the Storm Church. So even though the mother couldn't bear to go along with it, she had no power to override the head of the household. The money she gave her son was handed over in secret, behind her husband's back.
Ryan even suspected that money had been borrowed from a close friend. In households that followed the Lord of Storms, wives typically held a subordinate position — their role was to manage the home for their husbands, with no income of their own. And while the father was undeniably patriarchal, he wasn't unfaithful, and the marriage was by all accounts a stable one. Under those circumstances, a devout Storm Church wife would have had no logical reason to keep private savings.
Though of course, this was all speculation on Ryan's part. It was equally possible the father had quietly turned a blind eye, still holding onto a thread of affection for his son.
But the big idiot hadn't given any of that a second thought. He'd been thrown out thinking he'd prove himself — find a gambling den, make it big, make the old man regret it. If supernatural power hadn't seemed like an even more satisfying way to be right, Ryan doubted the idiot had the self-control to limit himself to one gambling visit a week and only small bets.
Ryan himself, though far from a model citizen, had never been one for crooked shortcuts — they simply weren't worth it. So he couldn't fathom the big idiot's inexplicable confidence in himself, not even with his memories to draw from.
Which meant that even taking this idiot's body and inheriting his memories, Ryan felt no obligation to be kind about it. The big idiot hadn't left him with nothing — no skills, no resources, no starting point — so Ryan supposed he could hold back from saying anything truly harsh.
Anyway. The dead are gone. Focus on yourself — your own situation still isn't confirmed.
He pulled his attention back and turned his focus to sound.
The area was already on the eastern outskirts of Moen — a medium-sized, unremarkable city — so aside from a scattering of slow, sleeping breaths in the distance, the only sound was the night wind moving through the grass. Quiet enough to feel peaceful rather than unnerving, especially since the darkness, to him, looked barely different from daylight — just without color. He could even gauge the approximate straight-line distance to each of those sleeping sounds.
He shifted his attention to the building in front of him and, without particularly thinking about it, pulled himself up onto the roof — agile in a way that didn't match his frame, and without much effort.
Even with the technique helping, he had noticeably more strength than the big idiot had before. Ryan was certain of that. He also noted that the movement, despite its scale, hadn't broken his concealment — and neither did the moonlight, though that might have been because the crimson glow wasn't bright enough.
He leaned over to check the distance to the ground. Not terribly high — but Ryan quietly decided to find the lowest eave and sit-drop from there, just to be safe.
As it turned out, he'd been overcautious. The moment he lost contact with the surface, before he'd even consciously activated the ability, Featherfall had already kicked in — as automatic as certain people's mouths operating without passing through their brains. A body that had to weigh at least a hundred kilograms drifted down like a leaf.
Ryan didn't know yet what he looked like, but imagining the scene, he had to admit it was a little ridiculous. Good thing he had concealment.
As he neared the ground, he tried manually disengaging Featherfall — his descent speed immediately normalized. After landing, he gave a moderate jump. As expected, Featherfall wasn't triggered just by leaving the ground.
Makes sense. Otherwise it'd be called Lightfoot.
That left Full-Force Strike — it consumed spiritual energy to concentrate all of his physical strength into a single attack. But looking at the empty expanse around him, Ryan scratched his head. No stick, no branch. Was he supposed to punch the earth?
Find a small stone, he decided after a moment. And while I'm at it, test whether my vision really is as sharp as an eagle's.
Throwing a stone was still an attack. Fair enough.
By this point in the testing, with the easier-to-verify abilities all checking out, Ryan's anxiety had settled to about half. He was relaxed enough now to start noticing smaller things.
Like the fact that he wasn't sneaking or tiptoeing — just walking normally. And yet even with his own augmented hearing, he could only barely make out the grass bending underfoot. No footstep sounds. Not even the rustle of his shoes against the blades.
Finding a stone in the dark wasn't difficult with Night Vision. A few sweeps of his gaze and he had a target.
He picked it up and tossed it casually in a direction, then took off at a sprint to follow it. Only as he approached full speed did his form become fully visible — and footsteps finally sounded. Even at that pace, he could still clearly track the stone's rotation as it flew through the air.
He retrieved the same stone and tried Shadow Concealment in direct moonlight. Nothing happened.
So the shadow cast by the moon isn't enough to work with — even dim moonlight doesn't qualify.
Back to the building's shadow and concealed again, he threw the stone with the same force as before. In the instant his wrist snapped forward, something intangible but distinctly his dissolved — and his concealment broke simultaneously.
The stone launched at a dramatically faster speed, moving too quickly for even his current vision to track. It came to rest absurdly far away — far enough to be almost unreasonable. As if every ounce of his physical strength had been poured into that one small stone.
He was a little glad he'd picked something small. If it had been any bigger, he might have woken someone up.
Imagining that velocity hitting a person's skull at close range — it felt about like a brick dropped from height. And the more baffling part: his wrist hadn't taken any feedback from the force at all. Full-Force Strike seemed to transfer the power directly to the projectile.
Concealment, gravity defiance, enhanced sight and hearing, explosive force that followed no reasonable rules — paired with a body that was already remarkably agile. Ryan found himself genuinely surprised by the gap between himself and an ordinary person, and this was from the most common, weakest Sequence 9 potion.
He couldn't begin to imagine what a Sequence 1 potion might do. Planetary destruction? Purely conceptual abilities? He wondered idly what Sequence you'd have to reach to move freely through space.
Somewhere in that reverie, his mind drifted back to a fragment of the big idiot's memory — his first encounter with the man who'd sold him the formula:
"Big guy, I hear you've been looking for supernatural power. I happen to have a Sequence 9 formula for the Assassin pathway. Want it?"
He could feel the rush of excitement and longing that had flooded the big idiot in that moment. It was the same feeling stirring in him now.
I suppose I can call myself a Sequence 9 Extraordinary of the Assassin pathway.
He admitted it — he was a little excited. Whether that excitement came from standing at the threshold of a path laced with supernatural power, or from catching the faintest flicker of something that looked like possibility, he couldn't quite say.
Author's Note (this chapter):Concealment, gravity defiance, enhanced sight and hearing, explosive force beyond all reason — paired with remarkable agility. Ryan found himself genuinely surprised by the gap between himself and an ordinary person, and this was from the most common, weakest Sequence 9 potion.
叒叕是我 · Beijing Not exactly invisibility — true invisibility doesn't come until Sequence 7, and you can't do it without materials until Sequence 6. 😂 Author reply: The protagonist is just using a more concise and familiar word to describe Shadow Concealment — it's not meant to be taken as literal invisibility.