Maru considered Cord's reply for a moment, uncertain whether that was truly what he had expected to hear or why Cord chose not to deny the accusation. Yet, despite the ambiguity, Maru appreciated the raw honesty in his words and accepted it as genuine, allowing the conversation to continue with a subtle air of tension and curiosity.
[I even had a detailed list of reasons why you could be both the perpetrator and the victim, each carefully thought out and supported by observations, which I intend to reveal in just a few minutes.]
Cord couldn't keep his expression straight for long; his features hardened into a mask of dislike and distaste, a carefully chosen façade meant to shield his true feelings. He hoped the display would be convincing enough to make Maru hesitate, to silence any further probing into reasons why someone might be cast as a perpetrator rather than a victim.
However, Maru didn't let up; he continued rambling about something Cord could barely hear, his words fading into the background as Cord strained to maintain focus. Most of his mental energy had already been spent fashioning three carefully constructed reasons, delivered with the eloquence of a seasoned scholar rather than the brute practicality expected of him. In truth, Cord's natural strengths lay in straightforward duties—cutting down a foe without hesitation, striking first and questioning later, or, when pressed for evidence, simply battering something into submission and presenting it as proof.
Cord could only make out a few scattered words from Maru at the end, his mind sluggishly recovering some of its lost strength. Yet what he managed to catch next stirred a storm of mixed feelings within him.
Maru's voice carried a weight of determination as he declared:
[…you and I would try to battle that squid, again, as I fear defeating it is the only way out of this island to find Floki.]
Cord was overwhelmed with joy at hearing that last statement, for he had long dreamed of the moment he could finally show Maru and Floki how true warriors fought. His pride flared brilliantly, his aura radiating a vivid greenish hue that shimmered with intensity, and for a fleeting instant he nearly considered leaping about in celebration, so immense was his happiness.
That was why, when Maru prepared to speak further, Cord listened with rapt attention, as though his very life depended on each word.
Yet the next piece of news carried no joy at all; instead, it struck him with cold weight, dimming his aura until it flickered weakly and eventually faded into nothingness as he heard Maru say:
[Now let me present the reasons I have for believing you killed Floki…]
Before he could even begin, Cord felt a heavy wave of despair wash over him, his spirit sinking under the crushing weight of accusation. The situation gnawed at him, leaving him restless and uneasy, unable to reconcile the harsh reality with his own pride as a warrior.
For a fleeting moment, he sought solace in the dimming recesses of his mind, but that comfort was short‑lived. His fragile brain power, already strained, was swiftly extinguished, leaving him adrift in confusion. In that haze, Maru's words became indistinct, fading into meaningless sounds Cord could no longer make sense of, each syllable echoing like a distant, unreachable truth.
***
At the same time Maru was presenting his argument for why he believed Cord had killed Floki, a bare skeletal figure sprawled across the throne room stirred faintly. Its movements were slow, almost magnetic, as though drawn by some unseen force.
The figure managed to shift its head and body for only a few moments before collapsing again, surrendering to stillness. The cold floor of the throne room now bore the crooked remains, lying awkwardly as before, yet changed in its orientation. Where once the skull had faced upward, gazing emptily toward the ceiling, it now fell face‑flat, its features angled to the right.
The hollow sockets, which had previously stared into the void above, now rested against the stone, fixed in a silent, unsettling gaze toward the side. The subtle shift carried a haunting weight, as though the skeleton itself bore witness to Maru's words.
A few moments passed again, and this time it was the right hand of the skeleton that moved. It crept upward with a disturbing slowness, stretching unnaturally until it stood upright on its own, as though animated by some unseen will. Then, with deliberate precision, the digits peeled away from the weakly formed knuckle, casting a dark shadow across the throne room floor.
That shadow, elongated and distorted, mirrored the hand's movement with uncanny accuracy, resembling the eerie scene unfolding mere meters away. Yet the most chilling detail was not the hand itself, but the shadow's perfect imitation—an astonishing reflection that added depth and dread to the already unsettling atmosphere, as though the darkness itself was alive and complicit in the spectacle.
However, after the skull shifted and the ankle joints raised the bony hand of the skeleton upward, nothing more occurred for several long, unsettling moments. It seemed as though the earlier movements had been nothing but echoes—faint remnants sent from whatever corner of the underworld the soul now resided in.
These were the bare whispers of a desperate attempt to cling to life, even though death had already consumed him. Within the skeleton's frame, unseen currents of energy still lingered, flowing through hidden pathways that no bare eye or even microscopic lens could ever detect. Instead, such currents relied entirely on the soul being's ability—its intuition, its mastery of energy and energy techniques—to sense, to feel, and to observe the invisible streams that pulsed faintly within the hollow body.
The energy observed within the skeleton's body revealed only fragile sparks, tiny bursts barely strong enough to contain an electron before flickering out of existence. To any observer, it would have seemed that the last remnants of vitality were vanishing, fading into nothingness with each passing moment.
Indeed, it truly appeared that the body's remaining energy was collapsing into silence—until, against all expectation, a single stable atom of energy emerged. That lone spark pulsed faintly yet defiantly, a fragile beacon of persistence, hinting at the possibility of renewal and resisting the inevitable decay that had consumed the rest of the skeletal frame.