A brave man may not live, but he cannot die

Chapter 205 "Assassin"

A slight stinging sensation came from my fingertips.

By the time Quinn tried to figure out what was happening, the needle-like stinging sensation had spread to his entire palm, like a sharp blade piercing through his fingers, down his hand, down his arm, and finally reaching his heart, tearing his soul apart.

The extreme pain was secondary; the 'assassin's' extraordinary characteristics, once they entered his soul, were not absorbed by his own extraordinary characteristics or merged with them, as Quinn had anticipated.

Instead, it was like pouring cold water into boiling oil. In an instant, Quinn felt his mind and soul explode. He no longer had the strength to care about the changes in his body. His will was as if it had been broken into pieces, making it impossible for him to think.

After an unknown amount of time, he once again felt the same downward sensation as when he took the [Thief] potion, as if falling into a black hole.

All the frantic whispers, songs, murmurs, and incoherent ramblings he had once heard turned into silence, as if waiting for something.

He could sense countless eyes watching him from infinite heights, on the outskirts of the spirit world, in corners incomprehensible to humans. These beings remained silent, as if appraising a piece of fatty meat about to be served.

Quinn finally understood what those things were waiting for.

In his horrified gaze—the perspective had somehow shifted to his outside world—he was observing himself from an unprecedented angle, watching his soul crumble and disintegrate, the fragments gradually twisting and eventually transforming into transparent, distorted "scars" that resembled that extraordinary characteristic.

The scars writhed and sprouted tentacles, as if they had come alive, scurrying away from Quinn like worms. The beings were no longer silent, bursting forth with frenzied joy. They cheered and leaped in the language Quinn had desperately tried to suppress, like a madman receiving a cake made from mole entrails, like a madman savoring the brain of a genius, like a devil receiving a sacrifice from a greedy person.
I'm being devoured!
In just a few seconds, Quinn lost a fifth of his soul. He felt his mind go blank, as if his memories and emotions had been swallowed up. He desperately tried to pull his soul back. The whispers gradually quickened, from joy to anger, falling like dense raindrops on Quinn, this tiny human who dared to interfere with their feeding.

Quinn is like a clay statue sitting on a lotus throne in a mountaintop temple, while the "monks" chanting sutras for him spread from the mountaintop to the foot of the mountain. They chant in a dense and chaotic manner, but they are not reciting Buddhist scriptures. Instead, they are reciting indescribable, crazy ramblings.

All of this was too chaotic, and the confusion was unstoppable, threatening to assimilate him.

At that moment, a spark ignited deep within the dismembered and devoured soul.

The firelight was not an illusion, but rather the power emanating from the hero. Sekiro's extraordinary nature was like the last stronghold in his soul, the deepest, most essential part of him, where he still managed to maintain his human form and had not been assimilated into a scarred, characteristic shape.

This sliver of light was like a drop of oil in a car about to stall; it gave Quinn a sliver of power, but it was clearly far from enough to hold back the countless scattered fragments of souls and wrestle with those indescribable beings.

The instant the firelight appeared, the overwhelming, frenzied babbling paused for a fleeting moment, as if stunned, giving Quinn a brief respite. But even that brief instant, combined with the power of the firelight, was enough for him to make a decision—

He couldn't hold back so many "scars" formed from souls, but he could barely manage to grab onto one.

The assassin's extraordinary characteristics were like scars, worms, beast claws, and knives.

Fuck your mother—

Quinn gripped his soul tightly, stabbing fiercely at the infinite heights, at the void, at the indescribable entities deep within his spirit—

With one, two, three, and countless piercing screams that threatened to burst his brain, Quinn stopped falling. As if grabbing a balloon filled with high-density gas from hundreds of meters deep in the ocean, he began to surge upwards.

The madness of his mind began to subside, replaced by physical pain, as if he were actually surfacing from hundreds of meters deep in the ocean. The omnipresent, deadly water pressure crushed and reassembled his flesh, but Quinn just wanted to laugh.

He knew that if he could get through this, he would likely succeed.

In the darkness before he awoke, he saw a new extraordinary characteristic being generated—a sharp, centipede-like gray-white scar etched deep into his soul.

Images appeared before his eyes: ripples created by the absorption of new power, memories of the original owner of the absorbed extraordinary characteristics, and even the black knife stabbing towards him.

These memories are vague and fragmented; even describing them as "memories" is not accurate enough. At best, they are just fragments discarded when new extraordinary characteristics are born. However, these images seem to have a strong anchoring significance in the original owner's life. Even after thousands or tens of thousands of years, Quinn can still glimpse a corner of them under the erosion of the river of time.

He saw "himself" kneeling before a tree, the faces of his companions blurred, their words reduced to blank spaces. The tree was a brilliant golden yellow, reaching to the heavens and illuminating the entire world. He saw "himself" riding a horse, galloping with the same companions in a world that was no longer so bright but still had light, a black knife in hand, rushing towards a tree skeleton that was burned to half its original size but still as massive as a mountain.

He saw "himself" lying on the ground, facing death, but in the midst of hearty laughter, the world before him had turned pitch black, and there was no longer any light in the sky.

These memories were chaotic and fragmented, both fleeting and brief. Quinn knew he had glimpsed a brief moment of that era from ten thousand years ago, but all of this vanished into nothingness as the Assassin's supernatural abilities solidified, never to reappear.

Having taken the potion twice, Quinn knew that his advancement was complete, but for some reason he had not yet awakened. His consciousness was still floating outside his body, and he could not feel anything.

Quinn seemed to understand something, and waited quietly.

As expected, the numerical information that had appeared when he advanced to Sequence Nine resurfaced in his mind. It was a long string of 1s and 0s that Quinn could not understand, but the automatically popping-up system window helped him translate the code information.

This time, however, instead of text, the long string of code translated into only a set of numbers.

[7717-8400-4934-33]

"Quinn. Quinn?"

Feeling a gentle shake on her shoulder, she heard a hesitant, shy yet eager voice whisper in her ear: "Old...Old."

Quinn suddenly opened his eyes, sprang up from the ground, and in the next second he was behind Xia Dai'er, his eyes fixed on her fair nape.

There was a faint, almost imperceptible, scar-like "line" on her neck, which only existed in Quinn's eyes.

A sudden thought popped into his mind: the most vulnerable part of his neck was just below this line.

Not just the neck, heart, and abdomen, but also the temples, the most vulnerable part of the skull.
There is a line, thick or thin, on each one, as if it were a mark guiding his attack. Without exception, these are all parts that can be killed with a single blow.

"Whoa—where did everyone go?!"

Xia Dai'er was startled. She hadn't heard a sound and Quinn had disappeared. She looked around blankly, then turned around and was startled again. Quinn was leaning slightly forward, staring at her like a wild beast lurking in the darkness before hunting.

"W-what's wrong? Your expression is scary."

Quinn blinked, as if recovering from some kind of frenzied state, and reverted to his usual harmless self, giving Xia Dai'er a gentle, apologetic smile: "Sorry. I was a little groggy from sleeping."

"You look fierce."

Quinn hugged the girl and kissed her forehead. "No matter what happens, I won't hurt you. Don't be afraid. Heh, I'm a gentleman who would never commit domestic violence."

Xia Dai'er grumbled in his arms, "Why don't you sleep on the bed? You have to sleep on the floor outside, and you're not even dressed!"

"I'm afraid I won't be able to resist."

Dissatisfaction quickly turned into a slight blush on her face.

"The swelling's gone down. Ugh, it's dawn. I just put my clothes on!! There's a pervert. Ugh."

In the early morning when the sky was just beginning to lighten, a newly promoted, unscrupulous superhuman carried a girl into the room and began to argue about the differences between Sequence Eight and Sequence Seven.

(End of this chapter)