Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day

Chapter 333: Prince Of Broken Swords [I]I remembered...

everything.

Since Xaldreth was connected to Michael, having him manifest by calling his name had also brought the protagonist back to reality.

And having Michael back made me remember everything about the God Who Eats Is, and his many assaulting ambushes on us.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to mull over much of it.

Because the moment I uttered his name, the world held its breath.

The cold wind flowed no more, and no longer did the crimson moonlight paint the valley in shades of rust.

Everything in the entire canyon, from the distant groan of shifting stone to the persistent howl of air funneling between the cliffs, simply fell silent, all of it drowned beneath a bleak tint of gray and black.

Colors bled out of the world.

Time froze, and with it, I froze as well.

...

Well, not all of me.

It was as though reality had wrapped invisible chains around my body, yet my mind remained free to move.

My consciousness stayed painfully alert, continuing to process the view around me even as everything else stood still.

And so, I saw him clear as day when he appeared before me.

The Prince of Broken Swords.

The Sixth Demon Prince.

Xaldreth.

He was unnaturally tall, but not merely in the sense of stretched limbs or towering height.

He felt tall because of the quiet certainty he carried that told you he was someone who had earned that height through centuries of standing over the fallen.

His frame was broad and heavy, layered in decimated pieces of obsidian armor that looked less forged and more grown over his skin, as though it had fused with him over time.

But the most eye-catching feature about him...

was the swords.

Dozens upon dozens of broken swords, of every make and origin, were embedded throughout his body, jutting out at grotesque angles from his shoulders, his ribs, his spine, even his thighs.

Some blades were snapped clean in half.

Others were splintered, as if they had shattered against him with such force that they had fused into his flesh.

Rusted iron, gleaming steel, radiant holy blades — every sword piercing him told a story of a failed execution or a desperate last stand, an attempt to end something that simply could not be ended.

None of those broken swords looked ceremonial.

They looked used, as though each blade had been driven into him with hatred or hope or terror...

and none of it had been enough.

None of it could bring him down.

His flesh was ashen black, veined with faint crimson lines like embers buried beneath cooled magma.

Where the swords pierced him, there was no blood.

Instead, the metal around the wounds appeared...

absorbed, as though his body had swallowed the weapons and claimed them as trophies.

But the worst part, at least to me, had to be his face.

You’d expect me to say it was monstrous or scary beyond words...

but it wasn’t.

Xaldreth’s face was sharp, sculpted with an almost regal symmetry.

High cheekbones and a strong jaw gave him the appearance of someone who, in another life, might have been a graceful knight or a revered general.

I lifted my gaze to his eyes and found them empty in the way a battlefield is empty after the screams of the fallen have faded.

Twin bottomless pits of darkness stared back at me, reflecting nothing, not even myself.

If the metaphor that eyes are the windows to the soul held any truth at all, then his soul was a wasteland where nothing remained anymore.

He truly looked like...

an abomination born of war and ruin.

...

At least, until he smirked.

One corner of his thin lips pulled upward, revealing bat-like fangs as he studied me the way you’d study something so far beneath you that it barely warranted acknowledgment.

That was when he stopped looking like a tragic relic of war and began looking like a calculating predator.

When he finally spoke, his voice came out distorted, layered with multiple others speaking in unison.

"And here I thought you were smart.

" I couldn’t speak.

Not out of fear, but because my jaw refused to move just like the rest of my body.

Every muscle in my flesh, every vein in my body was firmly rooted in place and denied even the slightest motion by an entity I couldn’t defy.

It was when he suddenly reached out and placed a long finger against my chest.

Thump—!!

Then I was no longer inside my body.

••• "...

What the fuck?

" I swallowed hard.

Watching myself standing there, right in front of me, was a disorienting experience in ways I didn’t even have the words to describe.

My body remained frozen in the exact same posture, eyes locked forward, jaw clenched, and breath stolen mid-inhale.

It looked solid, as real as it possibly could be.

It also looked very much alive.

Yet, I was here, hovering just a few steps away, weightless and untethered.

I looked down at my arms and found them translucent, not unlike the state Aunt Morgan had been in when I met her last.

Xaldreth’s finger still rested against my body’s chest, and yet I could feel its weight against my own chest as well.

The stillness blanketing the valley remained unbroken.

Everything stayed petrified in that gray, soundless nothing, as though the world itself had not yet been permitted to move again.

But if I were being honest, I knew better.

It wasn’t that the world was stuck.

It was simply that my mind was moving faster than reality, thousands of times faster.

Or, in simpler words, I was experiencing a single second thousands of times slower.

When you take a higher entity’s name or make contact with them through ritualistic means, you create a connection.

And higher entities need only the thinnest thread of that connection to influence you.

Just like he had done.

The moment I said his name, he pulled my mind into an accelerated mental subspace.

Then, most likely, he severed the connection between my consciousness and my body, forcibly detaching my soul.

Because while flesh was restricted by the laws of physics, a soul was not.

"Surprised?

" he asked, sounding almost politely curious.

I wasn’t, really.

Just startled.

He continued, turning fully to meet my gaze.

"It is a dampened version of my Soul Severance technique.

Fret not.

I have severed the link between your soul and your body only temporarily.

You will return to your flesh when I wish.

" His grin sharpened as his finger pressed more firmly against my chest, and I felt intense pressure despite being outside my body.

"If I wish.

Because if I remove my finger without pulling your soul back...

you will die.

" It was a simple threat, delivered without flourish, and it left no doubt that I was entirely at his mercy.

But I had expected this scenario.

...

Or, well, I had hoped I had.

You see, the downside of forgetting someone when they slip out of your memory is that you may not remember whether you took precautions against them.

So when I couldn’t recall Xaldreth, I also couldn’t recall whether I had prepared for an encounter with the Sixth Demon Prince.

Now, though...

I knew that I had.

"Sure," I said, flashing him a friendly smile, "but you wouldn’t want to do that.

" He returned the gesture with one of his own devilish smiles, clearly amused to humor me.

"Oh?

And why is that?

" I shrugged with my hands.

"Because...

I have a deal for you, Prince of Broken Swords.

"