Chu smirked. The skeleton was a dead man—would be a dead man again once he was done. He watched his newest batch of pieces spread out around the man. Like fuhyo, they would be sacrificed so that he could make the decisive blow. He would be the ryou, ready to rush in and mete out defeat.

His ring hummed with power in his hand. It was a cursed object, capable of focusing the air around his fingers into slashing attacks. It was small enough that most would never notice it, and he kept it active as much as possible. He could cut a man to shreds at a moment's notice.

Chu had underestimated just how many pawns that the man could take out. That was his mistake, but he wouldn't make it again. He backed up as the man flung out his hands and stepped toward the henchman. Chu would throw an attack when the moment was right and then back into the tunnel for cover. He just needed the right moment.

Thump.

As he backed away, a solid surface pressed against his back.

That wasn't right. There should have been an open archway behind him. Chu looked back but saw the distance light of the next room down the tunnels. However, when he pressed his hand against the empty air, it pushed back.

"What is this?"

Thunk.

One of the henchmen flew into the seemingly invisible wall beside him. His bearded face perfectly flattened against it, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Chu watched in horror as the man slid down the invisible surface.

What was going on?

Thud.

He turned, only to see the other men finished off in a flurry of kicks from the skeletal man. It had all happened so fast that Chu couldn't follow it. A blur of the leg, a flash of white bone, and the men fell, eyes closed.

Chu brought up his ring, his other hand resting against the invisible wall behind him as he aimed a shot. Power flared in his fingertip as he targeted the man.

"I will not go down like this!"

Flick.

Air exploded from his finger, channeling to a small line before lashing out. Chu flicked his finger three times rapidly, sending out his cuts from different directions at the skeletal man. His legs seemed the most important part of him, so Chu made those his primary targets.

Rip. Crack.

Fabric ripped as his slashes connected. The man had been on his feet at the center of the room and hadn't even tried to dodge. Chu smiled. Even if his plan hadn't worked, he still had gotten solid hits on the man's body. Now, he just had to wait for the blood to flow.

However, no blood seeped from the cuts across the man's body.

"Is that it?" the man asked, closing his bony fists together.

Chu's eyes widened as he looked over the man's legs. What had gone wrong? Chu raised his fingers again, ready to flick another blast of air at the man. This time, he would cut him for sure. He aimed for the head.

Flick.

A solid cut slashed through the air, coming directly for the man's head. Chu watched, ready to release another the moment the man tried to dodge. However, to his surprise, the man merely raised his arms, placing them both in front of his face as the blow slammed into him.

Rip. Crack.

More fabric ripped underneath the cut, but still, no blood flowed. Chu held his finger ready as more cloth fell away. His whiskers twitched as he saw the full extent of the man's deformity.

At first, Chu thought the man was a drimn. He had seen their kind before; they were common workers in the Underground. However, he knew of no drimn, regardless of their state of decay, that were only bones.

Enough damage to a drimn could sever their connection to the aether. Breaking their heart or their brain would kill them as readily as a normal person. Black, aether-filled blood also filled them, though it did not flow like a person's, hence the lack of heartbeat.

This man was no drimn. He was nothing but bones.

"What are you?" Chu whispered, his back pushing further against the wall. "You're no drimn!"

"Of course not." The man smiled wide, reaching out his bony fingers and splaying them wide. "I am precisely what I seem, a man cursed with the strength of the grave. I am the last glimmer before the never-ending abyss. I am the end of all men's fates. "

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The hairs all along Chu's body rose. This drimn, this thing, was speaking like it was death. It had the gall to say that it was beyond the reach of even the Scions. Chu forced down his fear and narrowed his eyes.

"Braggart," he hissed through his front teeth. "Loathsome whelp. I've met plenty like you in my time. You think you've got real power, but you've never seen the true extent of the world. You're a rain droplet, thinking it is the lord of a puddle. But I've seen the truth. I've seen what our betters can do. You are nothing compared to the might of even Lord Baccia, and he is an equal to the Scions themselves!"

"Hah."

The man laughed. It was a quiet chuckle at first, but it soon spread into an eruption of manic laughter. The man held up one hand, raising a single finger as he stood there, laughing. Chu's jaw dropped.

"Sorry." The man shook his head as he rested his hands on his knees and continued laughing. "But I don't think that is the threat you mean it to be."

"So, you accept that you will face Miss Malone if you defeat us here. You accept that you will eventually have to fight the Underground Lords if you defeat her. There is no shortage of the strong at the top of the world, and they are all ready to crush you like a bug."

"Accept it? I look forward to it," the man continued, chuckling. "What is the point of a life where you face no struggle? What is a life of repeating the same safe thing every day? Nothing new. Nothing novel. That is a fate worse than death."

"You would spit on safety?"

"Oh, it is comforting, but that's all it is. It is eating the bare minimum in life. It is taking the spice out of your food. Life without any struggle at all is just bland."

Chu shook his head. He had expected anger, maybe disbelief, not exegesis. However, his words had done what he wanted. The man seemed completely off guard, standing there and talking with his hands on his knees. Chu brought up his finger and lined up another slash of wind. He would not let the opportunity be wasted.

Aether vibrated at the tip of his finger as he released his technique, but the moment he was ready to send the wave of air flying at the man, he disappeared.

"Spirit Step."

Crack.

A bony foot slammed into Chu's finger, sending it bending backward. Chu's mind flashed red, and his vision blacked out momentarily. He fell against the invisible wall behind him, grasping hold of his broken finger as he collapsed to the ground.

"Aah!" A hoarse cry escaped Chu's lips as he held onto his hand, his finger sagging in the wrong direction.

"You mistake me." The man smiled down at him. "I have seen the extent of this world. I know it far better than most. While I know I am nowhere near the power of some, that doesn't change that it is my fate to reach them someday."

Chu collapsed the words, losing meaning as he focused on his finger. However, the words kept coming even as he tried to ignore the man. He closed his eyes.

"This crew is strong and only becoming stronger. Even with my memories in tatters, I realize this. Your mistake was not realizing that you stood no chance against me."

Crack.

Jean stepped away from the broken man, holding a ring in his hands as he looked it over. It was a cursed object, of that much he was sure. Chu had an ability but showed no signs that he had a curse himself. He didn't seem to need to channel his power into techniques, and his attacks had been incredibly limited.

This wasn't the first time he had seen a cursed object in action, and it probably wouldn't be the last. While they were a rarity, anyone with enough capital would find a way into one if they needed the strength. It was no different than owning a gun—a tool for the powerless to lord over the powerless.

He pocketed the ring. He could study it later, perhaps to understand how it worked. While there were articles on cursed items at the Academy, they weren't nearly robust enough for his taste. The controlling hands of the nobility and the Scions ensured that.

"Now, what to do?" Jean looked around, noting that clusters of gems rested above his head.

Each room he had been through in his chase of Chu had been filled with gems. Each one had to at least have a hundred in total. With Grim Aegis being a key island, thousands of citizens had to be in its capital alone.

Crack.

"An awe-inspiring amount." Jean flexed his fingers until the bones cracked.

He had a few injuries across his body. His skeletal frame could easily take hits like the ones Chu had dealt out. The bones would heal in time after cracking. However, he wasn't about to test his body's limits but his curse's limits.

He closed his eyes and opened his gate wide. Slivers of the purple thread reached out from his hands, crawling through the air like snakes until they reached the room's domed ceiling. Hundreds of strings reached out from his hands, and each one found a connection with a gem above.

He hadn't been sure when they had seen the scope of the problem and how exactly they would get all the gems together. He wasn't even sure how exactly they would break all of them.

Would people risk being overwhelmed if they broke all the gems at once? Would the rush of memories send a person's heart into spasms? He didn't know.

Several gems had been broken during his fight, but he also knew he was no normal man—down to his very bones. The rush of memories had incapacitated him, but what had it done to the others? There were too many questions.

Once each strand connected to a gem, Jean brought his hands together, transferring the strings in his right hand to those in his left. He needed a free hand for what he wanted to try next.

He let out a series of strings from his right hand as he started to wave them in a circle. The web of strings tangled together until he had formed a purple glowing bag made of string in his right hand. When he was done, he pulled down on the strings above him, one by one.

Plop.

They fell into the bag, and the bag expanded as each one landed inside. In moments, he had drawn down all the contents of the ceiling above him into his bag, and it clinked as he held it aloft.

In truth, the strings were doing most of the work.

His curse allowed the manipulation of the strings, regardless of what they were connected to. He could have the strings float on the air around him, and they would hold almost as strongly as if he had attached them to a solid object. So, while the gems presented a formidable weight, his control of the strings allowed him to offset that and drag the bag through the air as he retraced his steps.

His mind may have been damaged, but the one memory of his curse provided more than enough inspiration for a scholarly mind.

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