I Possess the SSS Skill: Future Sight-Chapter 59: The Tax
Death is not the worst thing that can happen to you in the city of "Elysium."
The worst... is to stay alive, and be forced to pay the tax of that survival with your flesh, your soul, and your mind. To feel your very being slowly being chewed apart, and to realize that every second you breathe is a temporary loan with usurious interest from the Bank of Hell.
We had withdrawn—or rather, fled like plague-ridden rats—to a new "safe haven" arranged by my conspiracy-obsessed friend, Zack.
This time it wasn’t an apartment, but an abandoned groundwater pumping station from the last century, located in the deepest and filthiest point beneath Sector F.
The place was a labyrinth of rusted steel pipes with diameters the size of small skyscrapers, and massive idle gears coated in slimy layers of black algae and fungi glowing with a sick phosphorescent light.
The smell of oxidation, stagnant water, and mold was so heavy you could taste it as a warm, metallic, nauseating flavor at the back of your throat with every breath.
In a dark corner of this basement, where the steady drip of water fell from the cracked concrete ceiling—tick... tick...—the shattered Alpha Squad was trying to catch its breath after the massacre of the steel hounds.
Damian lay on his back atop a pile of rotting wooden crates, staring at the ceiling with empty eyes, his burned-out machine gun beside him like the corpse of a dear companion.
Sia sat in a meditative posture on her knees, whispering healing incantations, trying to purge the corrupted Eitra toxins from her exhausted body, while dried blood covered half of her angelic face.
Aiden was curled up like a fetus in the corner, trembling and muttering incomprehensible words about his lost pension.
And Zack was typing frantically on a waterproof keyboard connected to a shattered screen, trying to scramble our signals from industrial intelligence satellites and reroute surveillance cameras.
As for me... I was dying in silence.
I sat a few meters away from them, hidden in the shadow of a massive turbine, pulling my knees to my chest and burying my face between my arms.
"Ahhh..." A faint, muffled groan slipped between my teeth, which I was clenching so hard they nearly cracked the enamel.
I looked at my right hand in the darkness.
It was not a human hand at that moment.
The bulging veins beneath my pale skin had turned pitch black.
Not the dark color of blood, but a blackness like absolute void, moving and pulsing like living worms crawling beneath my skin.
This blackness spread from my fingertips, climbing up my forearm, heading toward my heart like an army of parasites.
The tax.
The tax of using the "Forgotten Blade."
When I stabbed the shadow of that steel alpha hound, when I used the power of the Forgotten Blade for the first time, I thought I had cheated the system.
I thought that, thanks to the purple ghoul core in my blood, I could manipulate a power beyond my miserable rank without consequences.
How foolish I was. How arrogant!
The legendary sword now sleeping in the spacetime rift connected to my soul... did not just consume my Eitra.
It devoured it in a fraction of a second like a drop of water in a barren desert.
And when it found my Eitral reservoir empty... it began feeding on my "life."
On the vitality of my cells. On my remaining time in this world.
It felt as if thousands of fine, icy needles were being driven into my spinal cord, draining the marrow and tearing at my nerves.
A freezing cold, unrelated to the sewer’s temperature, emanated from within me, freezing my limbs and paralyzing my movement.
My lungs felt as though they were filled with ground glass, and every breath required the effort of lifting a boulder.
This cursed sword... it’s alive... I thought, my crimson eyes watering from the pure, raw, savage pain crushing me. It’s hungry. It wasn’t satisfied with killing the steel beast. It wants my soul. It wants to turn me into a dead sheath, an empty husk to carry its cursed blade.
I had to bite down on a torn piece of leather from my coat to stop myself from screaming, smearing my shattered mask with more saliva and blood. If I screamed, if they noticed my condition, my cover as a weak recruit would be exposed immediately.
And as I struggled with this inner hell, trying to control the rhythm of my heartbeat... I felt a shadow fall over me.
A dense, cold shadow, carrying a killing intent that instinct could not mistake.
I lifted my head with extreme difficulty.
It was "Eva Blackwood."
She stood directly over me—the girl with jet-black hair, wearing her torn tactical gear.
Her face was pale, but her black eyes burned with a flame of sick suspicion, paranoia, and lethal analytical intelligence.
She held a short black dagger in her right hand, the blade pointed toward the ground, but her grip was white from tension.
"Lady Eva...?" I whispered in a broken voice, feigning the usual fear and confusion of Recruit Kyle, while hiding my right hand with the black veins beneath my coat. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞
"Do... do you need something? Are you okay?"
She didn’t answer immediately. She slowly bent down until her face was level with mine. The scent of dried blood, gunpowder, and her faint perfume slipped into my nose.
"Don’t play this game with me, you piece of trash," Eva whispered through her teeth, her voice dripping with venom, hatred, and suspicion.
"I’ve been watching you. Ever since they put you in our damned hall, I’ve been watching you."
I swallowed with difficulty. The pain in my body was tearing me apart, but I forced my mind to function.
Did she expose me? Did she see me stab the hound’s shadow?
"I’ve been watching you pretend to be weak," Eva continued, her eyes narrowing as if to pierce through my broken mask.
"In Warehouse 42... Vargas was about to crush your skull. He was right on top of you. And suddenly, without anyone touching him, his Achilles tendon snapped! He fell like an idiot and gave me the chance to snipe him. And in the alley today... the alpha hound that surpassed S-rank—the monster that was about to split your friends in half... suddenly tore itself apart from the inside out without Valisera moving from her place?"
She brought the blade of the black dagger closer until it touched the exposed skin of my neck, just beneath my chin.
The cold metal made me shiver.
"Coincidences don’t happen twice in Elysium, boy,"
Eva growled, madness glinting in her eyes.
"Especially when you’re the only common factor. Valisera claimed she killed it, and I know she’s capable of that. But I know Valisera’s tactics. She crushes, she folds, she burns. She doesn’t rip something from the inside downward in a straight line like an invisible sword!"
