Wednesday, July 28, 1740
"Wahhh...!"
Lyxander woke up on top of the bed. He was still wearing his military uniform, and there were even puncture marks from shattered glass on his clothes.
When he looked at the torn fabric caused by Ghost's stab, he recalled how his wound had closed on its own.
"What exactly is happening to my body?"
Although a 1-star identity granted enhanced strength, regenerative abilities should only be obtainable from 2-star or 3-star healing-type identities, or identities ranked 4 stars and above.
In truth, Lyxander's strange regeneration was nothing new, he had simply only realized it after such a long time.
'Is this why I survived after Oscar shot me?'
It was rather strange that he only noticed it now after all this time. In the end, Lyxander stopped theorizing and immediately took a knife from the drawer.
It was better to test things than waste time thinking. Without hesitation, Lyxander slashed his palm deeply enough to draw blood.
However, in the blink of an eye, the blood stopped flowing and the knife wound on his hand vanished without a trace.
"I was right!"
The experiment Lyxander conducted had finally given him a definite answer. He truly possessed abnormal regenerative abilities.
But Lyxander did not stop there. He immediately continued experimenting by stabbing his own hand with the knife.
Lyxander bit his lip tightly as he pulled the blade out of his hand.
A few moments later, his flesh and skin fused back together, erasing the stab wound on his arm.
"How horrifying... Have I become a ghoul now? No, a knife wouldn't be able to injure me if I were a ghoul."
Lyxander smiled faintly and joked to himself. Yet honestly, he was afraid of himself, or rather, afraid of the truth.
About what had happened to him, or the truth behind his transmigration, or perhaps the possibility that the answer to his questions was something utterly horrifying.
As Lyxander questioned his own existence, his brows twitched slightly. It was as if he had received a revelation and noticed something missing from himself.
More precisely, he looked at his hand.
"There's... There's something I forgot?"
Lyxander fell silent. He desperately tried to remember what he had forgotten, completely ignoring the fact that he should not have been able to forget anything because of his photographic memory.
"My hand! I wrote something on my hand, but what was it...?"
Finally, Lyxander began revisiting the memories he had long ignored. After Oscar's death, during Oscar's funeral, he had started feeling strange and wrote something on his hand.
But he could not remember what he had written, as though that memory had been stolen from him.
Lyxander turned around and stared at Zirkon's bed. Only two people knew what he had written on his hand, and one of them was Zirkon.
"Zirkon... Only Zirkon knew, but he's already dead..."
"Dead... Zirkon died because No Scope killed him... No, why did he even meet No Scope?"
Lyxander's pupils widened, his hands trembled so violently that the knife slipped from his grasp and fell onto the bed.
"He met No Scope by coincidence? No."
Lyxander immediately denied his own thoughts.
"If some other powerful hitman had killed Zirkon, I would've stubbornly risked my life trying to kill that hitman. But instead, it was No Scope, a powerful hitman who cannot kill me because of the Group Chat rules."
Lyxander finally realized it. Zirkon being killed by Ghost was not a coincidence. The murder had been arranged by someone who wanted to eliminate Zirkon without putting Lyxander in danger.
Someone so powerful that they could manipulate a 5-star like Ghost, and someone who understood him so well that they could anticipate the reckless actions he would take.
"Who! Who! WHO?!"
Lyxander's entire body trembled violently, his eyes widened hysterically as his hands clawed at his hair. He gritted his teeth so hard that the sound of grinding could be heard.
Bang!
Before he could think any further, a sharp pain struck his stomach. He was thrown off the bed and crashed onto the floor.
His red necktie was yanked as his throat was nearly strangled. Sitting on top of him was a blonde girl who was unintentionally choking him.
"Lie!"
"Harming yourself is just stupid! I know you're sad, but there's no point in hurting yourself."
Quartz shouted angrily at Lyxander. Her dark red eyes contrasted sharply against her blonde hair, eyes that looked either angry... or perhaps worried.
Lyxander needed several moments to understand what had happened. First, he noticed the door had already been opened without him realizing it. Second, he saw the blood on the bed along with the bloodstained knife. And lastly, from Quartz's perspective, seeing him clawing at his own hair, it was no wonder she misunderstood his actions.
"I wasn't hurting myself."
He showed her his arm, which no longer had any wounds at all.
Quartz fell silent, glancing repeatedly between the bed and Lyxander.
"Wait, then where did all that blood come from?"
Lyxander only gave an awkward smile.
"Have you ever read the book The Ocean Girl?"
"The Ocean what?" Quartz looked confused by Lyxander's strange response.
"The Ocean Girl, a novel by the same author as The Little Monster."
"It tells the story of The Ocean Girl, a little girl from a poor slum settlement by the sea.
She lived in a fishing village, where people made their living from the ocean.
A life people from cities like ours could never imagine.
The life of marginalized people abandoned by the Empire.
The settlement where The Ocean Girl lived had a strange tradition, where they would hunt mermaids that appeared near the village and devour them together.
During one of these rituals, The Ocean Girl saw a mermaid being hunted by sailors. She watched the mermaid's tears fall, transforming from droplets of water into beautiful pearls that slowly drifted toward her.
Milk-white pearls so beautiful that anyone who saw them would be consumed by greed. Unable to resist the greed swelling in her heart, she swallowed one of the pearls to hide it from others.
That greed led her to a miracle. Whenever her body sank into the sea, her legs would grow fins and transform into a fish tail, turning The Ocean Girl into a mermaid herself.
At first, she was terrified, but slowly that fear turned into joy. She could swim for so long beneath the sea and witness countless beautiful fish with dazzling colors and patterns.
Honestly, the novel described the beauty of the ocean wonderfully. Even though most of the sea creatures and underwater scenery were fictional creations of the author, it was still enough to make people who had never seen the sea imagine its beauty."
Quartz still sat on top of Lyxander, and with a flat expression that already looked bored, she asked,
"So, what's the point?"
Lyxander smiled bitterly.
"The Ocean Girl could never tell people that she could turn into a mermaid, because if she did, she would be hunted down and killed."
"So, just like The Ocean Girl, I can't tell you what happened to me."
Quartz smiled and brought her lips close to Lyxander's as if she were about to kiss him. Lyxander was startled and confused, unsure how he was supposed to react.
But then, Quartz slammed her forehead hard into Lyxander's nose, instantly wiping away all of his strange thoughts.
"You damn idiot, so basically if you tell me, you'll die or something?"
Lyxander merely narrowed his eyes and tried to hide his unnaturally healed nose.
"Something like that."
(But if I told you, Quartz, maybe the one who would die would be you, not me.)