Paragon of Skills

chapter 277

Delefagus doesn’t like the Dark Champions robes. Something he likes even less is the fact that Nimirea is gone.

He’s in an impossibly tall mountain, in a tower that is so well-concealed and remote no one has ever stumbled upon this project in two years.

“I lament her departure so much,” he tells Miss Fluffy, his red cat. “The others are idiotic brutes. All of them. Even Astabazos. Infernals are supposed to be… well,” he scratches Miss Fluffy with a monsterified arm and she purrs back at him. “I know, I know. I keep repeating myself. We saw their limits at the tournament. I don’t think Astabazos would be able to do much better than Iskara, honestly. What do you think?”

The cat looks attentively at Delefagus but does not provide an answer.

The Human with green eyes and quite the handsome appearance takes the monsterified arm in front of his face, looking at it, fascinated by it.

It’s not scaly, which he had feared might happen. Delefagus finds scales repulsive.

“Scales are dirty, dirty little things,” he tells the cat. “I wouldn’t have accepted them.”

He would have accepted short fur at most, but not scales. Thankfully, the monsterification process just turned his flesh a deep obsidian black with veins of white, with the same sheen of the glass-like substance. His skin recedes during the monsterified state and muscle and tendons are exposed. The muscle is black, the tendons are white.

“Pretty, no?” He asks the cat who licks her paw in reply. “Right?”

He closes his eyes and, procedurally, the tendons and the muscles slowly go back to their natural state and a layer of skin appears back on top of them.

When he re-opens his eyes, the arm is not monsterified anymore.

“Knowledge, Miss Fluffy, is not correlated with Rank,” Delefagus says, taking a notebook and jotting down his thoughts. “Even the Prophet might be wrong. It’s my intuition that he believes we must eventually return to the state of monsters—idiotic.”

He draws a few diagrams and then turns back to the cat whose hair suddenly stood up since a large mouse he monsterified with his new technique, exhibiting the same kind of black obsidian monsterification he did, awakens and starts pushing against its confinement, a box of enchanted glass.

Delefagus ignores the mouse and the cat’s reaction.

“I miss her because she was the only one who understood my thoughts, you know? Maybe… yeah, maybe, you’re right. I did have… feelings. For her, I mean.”

Delefagus brings a hand in his short brown hair.

“The others are only worried with fighting and simple scheming. Nimirea… she could think. She saw the potential in my proposal and she always thought in grand, overarching plans. That’s why she sent me here years ago.”

The Dark Champion gets up from his recliner and looks at the fire in his chimney.

“Asmodeus requires our faith and our soul. But, he cannot have our soul unless it leaves our bodies. And in the span of immortality, I’m sure you can find a way to trick even a God, as that man showed us.”

Delefagus was there when Jacob Cloud extirpated the divine claws of Asmodeus out of Nimirea’s body.

“What a mind she had,” Delefagus says, turning toward a mirror displaying an appraisal competition between Jacob Cloud and a local Tutor in Ashenmere. “I have to admit, Miss Fluffy, I do not possess a mind as great as hers when it comes to plans. My research is my greatest pride, but her strategic mind was just…”

Delefagus sighs, rubbing his face more than once and looking at some scarlet drapes she had chosen for him, then he turns toward the mouse that’s screeching wildly and ramming against the glass, starting to crack it.

“She said that if we planted information in the local cults, the same ones we used to get bodies, we might get Jacob Cloud and distract him enough to believe the mine in Ashenmere is where one of us hides.”

The Dark Champion paces back and forth, more nervously now.

“How she could figure out a backup plan like this in case the Champions didn’t show up is beyond me. How did she know he would come alone?”

Miss Fluffy meows nervously and then hisses at the monsterified mouse.

“I know, I know. You fear she might have been compromised. But I’m telling you, she wasn’t. If she had been,” Delefagus takes a pendant from his neck. “The Prophet would have felt that. He’d have seen that future. But she didn’t. She sent Jacob Cloud for us to finish.”

Delefagus goes and picks up Miss Fluffy, holding her in his arms like a baby.

“I wish I could have done this with her,” he says, taking the cat below the arms and lifting it right in front of his face. “The Prophet will kill me if I don’t call in Astabazos and the others for this, but… I wish I could just take his small, pathetic life myself.”

Delefagus changes his grip and now puts one hand across the small animal’s neck, holding it in a choke.

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“Such a great strategic mind, a multi-generational genius for tactics. Yet, she never saw my true power. She always thought herself as the greatest fighter in our ranks.”

The cat swipes its paws at Delefagus, who just ignores it.

“It’s kind of sad if you think about it. You spend your whole life like she did, and then she ends up a prisoner. Defanged. Her real potential taken away for… what? A boy’s pride?”

The enchanted glass box starts shaking violently under the attacks of the black mouse.

“But it’s alright. As soon as he enters the mine, the trap will spring,” he chokes the cat now, but softly. “And he will understand true despair. I will kill him and that bastard Velnaris. And then, Jacob Cloud’s Rainbow Skill will be mine. I will avenge Nimirea and…”

Delefagus licks his lips.

“Once I find her, I will put her out of her misery.”

The monsterified black mouse breaks out of his containment and Delefagus simply throws the cat at the creature, who immediately feasts on it.

He looks at the scene with a rare tranquility, imagining Jacob Cloud’s screams playing in the same way as Miss Fluffy’s.

Lancelot sits behind a stall, chewing on an extralarge turkey leg, looking at Master Brendev walking up to a Gold Rank box.

The man frowns slightly but once again answers before Delilah can open the box.

“Yellowed Licorice Tooth,” he says. “Very aged, it seems.”

“You truly have a great instinct, Master Brendev,” Delilah has to admit with a sigh, revealing the content of the box for the audience to see.

“He was right again!”

“Still without looking!”

“Master Brendev is incredible!”

But now, the cheering has toned down as Jacob walks up to the next box and Delilah opens it for him without asking.

The crowd sees him pick up a blue-leafed stalk and make faces at it.

“Oh no, is it already ending here?” One mutters, terrified.

“It can’t be, right? He…”

“SILENCE!” Delilah thunders, making the audience recoil.

He’s dead, one thinks.

He’s losing his life this early in the competition… incredible.

No way, right? He must know…

But Mr. Cabbage does not show any sign that he knows what he’s facing.

“Well…” Jacob says. “Mmmm. This one, man. Pretty hard.”

A few women start crying in the audience.

“Maybe…”

Delilah looks hopefully at Jacob who then just says, “I guess it’s time, huh.”

Everybody thinks: he’s resigned himself to die, not getting what he’s hinting at.

[Grimoire Analysis…]

“Alright, Blue Mooncut Bulb. Oh, it’s apparently been cut three years ago and aged in the crevice of a mountain full of Water and Ice Mana, so now it’s much more potent. Fascinating.”

There’s a beat.

Then another.

Then another again.

People start losing their mind.

“WHAT?! IS THAT RIGHT?!”

“THAT’S DEFINITELY BLUE MOONCUT BULB! BUT THE DETAIL…”

“No, it can’t be…” Master Brendev himself says, stunned.

“You’re… right,” Delilah says. That Blue Mooncut Bulb comes straight from Master Velnaris’s reserves and she tended to it personally. “How did you know, Tutor Ocabj?”

“Beginner’s luck?” Jacob offers.

There’s not one person who can believe their ears and the shamelessness of Mr. Cabbage.

What does he mean ‘beginner’s luck?!’ Does he think they’re idiots?!

Did he always know?!

Or… did he just guess?!

This matter is making everybody insane.

But the crowd is forced to quiet down when Master Brendev steps forward.

Now, when it comes to the Platinum Rank, the old bald man awaits for Delilah to open the box.

When he sees a silvery light, he nods.

“Platinum Ash Rose,” Master Brendev says. “Grown around Ash Lilacs to enhance its properties.”

“Correct,” Delilah says, nodding.

“Master Brendev recognized a Platinum Rank herb just like that! That’s a real expert for you!”

“I thought he’d start to struggle now, but he even gave details on it!”

“Right?! He’s just on another level.”

Jacob starts walking forward as Delilah puts down the next box and, before even getting to the table, he calls out, “Cursed Bloodvine.”

Delilah freezes in midair, with the box still in her hands, and her eyes become two wide saucers.

“C—correct.”

The audience can’t believe it, but Master Brendev quickly steps up and almost trips as Delilah gets a Diamond Ranked herb from one of her assistants.

She opens it and Master Brendev frowns slightly.

“Purple Death Lure,” he says, growling. “It’s easy to confuse with Purple Life Blessing, hence its name. But the spiky edges of its leaves give out its real nature.”

Everybody is impressed but before the assistant can even start passing the next box to Delilah, a voice calls from the back.

“Heaven’s Lotus. Not aged. Just harvested and… quite poorly. Whoever did it should be fired.”

Delilah can barely remember herself if she ended up picking the Heaven’s Lotus and goes on to check, finding out that Tutor Ocabj is right… on both counts. The way the herb was harvested, cutting the stem at the wrong height, destroyed a lot of its Mana, rendering it almost unusable. She files this defect away for later and just says, with trembling voice, “c—correct.”

She has no idea how Tutor Ocabj just did it. She knows very well that even Master Velnaris would have struggled to learn so much from just looking at the box.

Next, the assistant brings her a True Diamond herb for Master Brendev and, as she opens it in front of the old man, she sees him instantly, visibly sweat.

It’s understandable since, when getting at True Diamond, one enters the realm of very hard to find plants that are all quite unique, at least in the region. To find a True Diamond herb around, one needs outstanding perception. It’s extremely hard to spot them since many of them start concealing their own Mana, masquerading as much weaker herbs.

And the one she just showed to Master Brendev is one of those hard-to-identify herbs that her master chastised her so many times before for failing to recognize.

He doesn’t know, Delilah realizes. Master Brendev actually does not know this herb. This might actually be Tutor Ocabj’s win…