“Ugh. I’m so unlucky…”
Jessica, a rookie knight of the Royal Palace, sighed deeply while looking out at the eerie night town.
“I absolutely didn’t want to be on night watch alone…”
She said, glancing back.
Before her stood a building with a solemn and sacred atmosphere, and a grand gate befitting it.
However, in the ominous night air, its solemnity and sacredness seemed to subside, giving way to an indescribable sense of oppression, at least to Jessica.
Jessica was assigned to guard the Cathedral at night.
Her main job was to stop anyone from entering the Cathedral, but it wasn’t just to prevent theft.
Quite the opposite. Apparently, there was a toxic gas developing inside the Cathedral, and anyone who entered unknowingly could even die.
Even though all she had to do was stand guard outside the doors, Jessica wasn’t exactly thrilled about being near something so dangerous.
Furthermore, the words spoken by Commander Spark Hawk when she accepted the mission, “If anything unusual happens inside, you don’t need to confirm it, but be sure to report it immediately,” were nagging at her.
Didn’t that mean that something more dangerous than poisonous gas, something potentially fatal, could occur inside?
The thought of it made Jessica feel like she was barely alive.
“Please, please let this mission end safely without any incidents…”
Jessica desperately prayed to God, but her prayers were not answered.
“Wh-what…?”
Immediately after pleading for her own safety, she saw a figure approaching her.
–It was a man dressed entirely in black.
Was it a cloak?
He wore a black cloth carelessly wrapped around his body, obscuring his form.
His deep black hood and the black cloth covering his mouth blended into the night’s darkness, making his face indistinguishable.
“Evil God cultist…?”
The words naturally came to Jessica’s mind.
The approaching man possessed an eerie presence that made her think of such things.
She couldn’t let such a person get close to the Cathedral.
“S-stop! This area is currently sealed off by royal order!”
Finally remembering her duty, Jessica shouted, but the man in black didn’t stop.
Instead, he accelerated his Speed and closed in on Jessica.
Jessica bit her lip.
Besides, the Cathedral’s visiting hours had already ended.
Anyone who would visit this place at this hour could not possibly be a normal Human.
If persuasion wouldn’t work, she’d have to resort to force.
Even if the opponent were an Evil God cultist, if they were Human, she could fight.
She could fight, she hoped.
“I warned you.”
She couldn’t stop her voice from trembling slightly.
Nevertheless, Jessica bravely drew her Katana and shouted,
“Magic Arrow!”
First strike wins!
From her other hand, separate from where she drew her Katana, she fired a magic arrow.
This was Jessica’s trump card.
It was a weak magic, not even enough to deter a Monster, but it was different for a Human.
In this darkness, a suddenly dazzling arrow would surely disrupt their composure.
Jessica intended to use that opening to plan her next move, when—
“…Huh?”
The next moment, she realized the man in black had passed *through* the magic arrow and was standing before her.
He hadn’t dodged.
He had phased through it.
Cold sweat broke out all over Jessica.
She couldn’t even imagine what kind of skill could achieve such a feat.
“…Sorry, but I need to pass.”
The moment she heard his voice, she felt a cold sensation around her lower abdomen, as if a knife had been plunged there.
Overwhelming fear.
It was a sensation she had experienced once before…
“Waaahhhh!”
However, her calm thinking only lasted that long.
As the man in black stepped forward with a faint rattling sound, Jessica, unable to withstand the fear, swung her sword at him with all her might.
“Nnh?!”
But she missed.
There was no preamble.
Although he shouldn’t have been in a position to dodge, the man leaped sideways.
–And then, an explosion sounded behind her.
“Wh-why…”
When she turned around, Jessica’s eyes widened in surprise and despair.
The man was in front of the Cathedral’s doors.
It wasn’t just that he had dodged to the side.
Jessica had lost sight of the black-clad figure for only a second or two.
In that short time, the man had moved behind her and reached the Cathedral’s doors, more than ten meters away.
Incredible Speed.
The thought that if the man behind her had prioritized killing her, she shuddered.
And was this his way of saying he’d kill her if she got in his way any further?
For the first time, the man in black drew his weapon.
It was a short sword with an unusual design, called a Ninjato.
If he had crept up on her with that Speed and slit her throat with that Ninjato…
The thought made her legs freeze and her body tremble.
But Jessica’s last shred of pride, her pride as a Knight, made her raise her voice to the man in black.
“Stop! The inside of the Cathedral is filled with toxic miasma!
Besides, without the key I have, you can’t get inside…”
However, Jessica’s cry was in vain.
“…ru.”
Just as she thought the man in black muttered something, his figure, clad in dark robes, suddenly vanished.
“What… the heck was that…”
Overwhelmed by a series of incomprehensible events, Jessica collapsed to the ground as if her legs had given out.
Then, she suddenly remembered.
She had encountered a similar level of absurdity once before.
It was when the Capital City was attacked by a horde of Monsters.
Could the young man who appeared from behind the Monsters then have been…?
“…Hmph!”
The figure who suddenly appeared inside the Cathedral winced for a brief moment from an explosion within him, but then landed on the marble floor as if nothing had happened.
Wielding only a single Ninjato, the man in black, who had successfully infiltrated the Cathedral, fixed his gaze on its center.
A pillar of light extended straight down from the stained-glass ceiling.
The miraculous light of the Cathedral, even in the night, formed a clear shape and shone down beneath the Cathedral, into a deep, bottomless hole.
And…
“…Miasma, huh!”
As the black-clad figure muttered, a miasma that could only be described as ominous billowed from the hole where the miracle’s light should have reached, distorting the Cathedral’s air.
It was clear abnormality, detectable even without peering into the hole.
However, the man’s lips, hidden by his black robe, twisted into a smile, and he plunged into the hole without hesitation.
His falling body.
His black robe billowing.
The metal fittings on his robe swayed in the wind pressure, making a clinking sound.
The fall continued.
The black robe fell endlessly.
As the hole deepened, the light weakened, and the miasma grew thicker.
But as the obsidian cloth came off, exposing him defenselessly to the miasma, a smile still played on his lips.
The man fell serenely through miasma that would kill an ordinary person ten times over.
Amidst wind pressure that made it difficult to even keep his eyes open, the bottom of the hole finally came into view.
However, what awaited him there was not merely an endpoint.
Where the pillar of light ended.
Lying dormant, no, bound at the bottom of that deep hole was a monstrous aberration.
–A partially destroyed giant gem.
–A giant arm sewn on.
–An unsightly face with partial regeneration.
Anyone who saw it would have known.
This was the “Fragment of the Evil God,” humanity’s nemesis.
However, the man in black had a more immediate problem to address.
It was the speed of his descent.
The man in black had recklessly jumped from a height without any magical assistance.
It was clear that if he continued like this, he would collide with the ground at an uncontrollable Speed and end up as a mangled corpse, like a crushed toad.
But just before impact, the man in black cried out,
“–Illusionary Mirage!”
Simultaneously, his form vanished.
It was as if he was recreating the scene where he disappeared from before the female Knight in front of the Cathedral.
The only difference was that the man disappeared not into the building, but within the same hole.
In the narrow hole, the man repeatedly teleported and slashed, but none of his blows landed on anything.
Performing entirely futile attacks, the man’s body eventually returned to the spot where he had first used his Skill.
However, by then, the falling energy his body had possessed had vanished, and the man landed on the Fragment of the Evil God with the ease of someone jumping down a small step.
At the same time, his hood, lifted by the wind pressure, flowed completely backward, revealing his jet-black hair, suitable for this location, and— large cat ears.
“Nice to meet you, and nice to see you again after a few hours.”
The cat-eared man, cloaked in black, addressed the Fragment of the Evil God in a light tone.
“Hu-man…. Why…?”
The response was a dull sound as if metal was grinding.
This fact made the man raise his brow in slight surprise.
“Huh? You can talk even though your mouth hasn’t regenerated yet.
Ah, I remember you screamed when I blew your face off earlier, didn’t you?
What a strange creature, I must say.”
The man in black showed no fear of the Fragment of the Evil God.
He approached the being known as the strongest and most wicked in this world without any apprehension,
“As for ‘why,’ that’s a difficult question to answer.
You haven’t done anything yet.
Perhaps I’ll just silence you before you do something.”
However, the bound Fragment of the Evil God sneered at the man in black, who spoke with defiance.
“Foolish… A weapon that can harm me– GAH!!”
Immediately, a blow from the man in black pierced the Evil God’s core.
At the same time, the grinding sound ceased and turned into unintelligible noise.
“Foolish…”
The Fragment of the Evil God let out a gasp of astonishment.
That’s because what the man in black used for an attack wasn’t a Katana, Spear, or Axe.
It was simply—
“What? If I use Power Up, won’t punching it do damage?
My thinking back then wasn’t entirely wrong.”
—just a clenched fist.
“Yo-you are why– GAH!!”
The Fragment of the Evil God’s words were cut off by the man’s fist punching the core.
Even so, the man’s fist did not reach the point of shattering the Evil God’s core.
However, the man in black laughed merrily.
“Then, as planned, I’ll keep punching it, hundreds or thousands of times, until I die.”
And then it began.
“K-is– GAH, GIG, GAH, GUH!!”
The Evil God couldn’t even find an opening to interject.
–Punch and punch and punch and punch, he continued to punch.
The sound of relentless pummeling and distorted noises like a broken recorder echoed at the bottom of the deep hole.
If the Fragment of the Evil God had been in perfect condition…
It would have instantly killed the man in black with a single tentacle strike, a roar, or a beam of light from its core.
If the pillar of light wasn’t raining down upon this place…
The minor damage inflicted by the man in black would have been completely erased by its self-regeneration.
However, now.
The Evil God was completely immobilized by restraints and continuously took damage from the pillar of light, almost equivalent to its self-regeneration.
Therefore, the man’s blows, at a speed that gradually accumulated like grains of sand, but surely, depleted the Fragment of the Evil God’s stamina, and then…
“Lik-e… Stop…”
A broken sound echoed from the core, now riddled with cracks and on the verge of breaking.
“It seems to be over. When you return to your main body, tell them this:
–I’ll come to defeat you someday, too.”
The man in black mercilessly and relentlessly struck the cracking heart with his fist.
…And that was the end.
His fist shattered the ruby gem with a solid impact, and the Fragment of the Evil God, which was supposed to have resurrected and destroyed the Capital City, silently vanished without anyone knowing.
After witnessing the Fragment of the Evil God, whose core had been destroyed, turn into particles of light and dissolve into the sky.
“Hmm. I suppose revenge isn’t really my thing.
…Well, it was a good stress reliever, so it’s fine.”
The man in black, who had accomplished something tremendous, simply stretched, and then, as if noticing something, twitched his cat ears.
“…Ah. Perhaps when I said ‘why?’ earlier, you were asking why I was unaffected by this miasma?”
The man asked, but the only being who knew the answer had already turned to light and disappeared.
However, the man in black, perhaps unusually conscientious for his appearance, or perhaps simply wanting to explain, opened his mouth towards the chains that had bound the Fragment of the Evil God.
“You see. It’s true that the game balance of Nekoneko is harsh, and it’s impossible for players to achieve complete resistance to status abnormalities, no matter how well they combine their equipment.
But did you know? The status abnormality with the highest priority after instant death is Petrification, and Petrification and other status abnormalities cannot occur simultaneously.”
“So—”
The man in black then held out his hand.
On it were worn a jet-black ring that rejected death, and a ring intricately carved with a winged stone statue, possessing the magical power to move those who had been turned to stone…
“–No matter how strong the miasma is, you can’t do anything about someone who is already Petrified, right?”
The man boasted proudly, then playfully shook his cat ears, which seemed out of place with his black attire.
…However, the man did not notice.
Although the man in black had completely hidden his face,
the Skill Cancel he used to move to the front of the Cathedral had been witnessed by many.
The cloak made of black curtains was well-made, considering it was originally curtains.
However, the metal fittings used to operate the curtains – “shaa!” – were conspicuously visible, and its true identity was recognized by many.
And the next day.
Among those with quick ears, rumors of an unidentified mysterious dark hero, “Sakyo of the Shading Knight,” began to circulate, and the man gained another epithet…
–But that is another story.
This concludes the consecutive updates.
Thank you for accompanying me this far.
Starting with the next installment, the fourth part, the final chapter of Nekoneko, will begin in earnest.
…But I’m tired, so I won’t update it no matter what for a while!
・Advertisement
Nekoneko Volume 4 will finally be released on March 31st.
Details have been updated in the activity report, so please check there, but after reading the extra content in Volume 4, even those who said, “There’s no way Maki would go back with him!” will start saying, “Ah, I guess Maki shouldn’t be left alone. Leaving her is totally unthinkable…” –or so I hope.
