Chapter 23 : Responsibility with Powers
"Oho... Look at him—he came here alone to die?" Urus moved silently between the bushes, barely disturbing a leaf. His green-black cloak rendered him nearly invisible in the dappled shadow. "First, let me check that thing."
He crept toward the white-wrapped bundle leaning against the distant tree. Just a quick examination. Just to see what a warrior would carry that required such obvious reverence.
He reached for it, attempting to lift the cloth-covered weight.
His hands barely shifted it.
Urus tried again, putting his back into the effort, muscles straining. The bundle moved perhaps a finger's width.
"What the hell is this?" His voice came out strained, shocked. "It's like—more than double my weight!"
And this thing barely budged.
Urus forced himself to refocus. The figure beneath the tree remained perfectly still. Resting. Meditating. Genuinely unaware—or so it seemed—of the predator circling him.
'Perfect timing to attack.'
Urus raised his loaded crossbow, took aim at the white-cloaked figure, and fired.
The arrow flew true.
And then—impossibly—a hand appeared, cloaked in white fabric, deflecting the bolt at the last possible instant. The arrow tumbled off course, harmless.
Before Urus could process what he'd seen, the figure moved.
Not walked. Not ran.
'Leaped.'
Mabel left the ground and vanished into the thick undergrowth on the opposite side of the clearing, moving with speed that seemed to mock the laws of physics. By the time Urus blinked, he was alone beside the lake.
"What the hell was that?" His heart hammered against his ribs. Sweat formed on his forehead despite the cool evening air. "Where did he go? How did simple clothes stop my arrow?"
Before he could process the questions, the white-cloaked figure reappeared—directly behind him.
A hand grabbed his cloak with devastating certainty.
Urus spun, throwing knives appearing in both hands, hurling them with Death Knight precision toward the figure's torso. But the hand holding his cloak didn't release. Instead, it 'threw'.
Urus found himself airborne, his own momentum combined with superhuman force, flying over the lake like he'd been launched from a trebuchet.
He traveled sixty meters—an impossible distance—before hitting the water's surface with impact that drove the breath from his lungs and cracked his ribs with sickening clarity.
Pain exploded through his left side as he sank, gasping, drowning in lake water and agony.
But Death Knight physiology kept him alive. Kept him conscious. Kept him fighting through injuries that would have ended a normal human.
He surfaced, coughing, blood mixing with lake water.
The white-cloaked figure had moved to retrieve the wrapped bundle. Grabbing it. Preparing to depart.
'Not today.'
Urus pulled on the chain coiled at his belt—a weapon of his own design, heavy links of reinforced steel ending in wickedly sharp hooks. He hurled it upward in a desperate arc, watching it wrap around Mabel's neck from behind, the hooks digging in with promise of strangulation.
Urus pulled hard, trying to drag his attacker into the water, trying to finish this before—
The figure turned. Unwrapped the white cloth covering the bundle.
And revealed something that belonged to myth rather than reality.
The Fantom Spear.
One hundred thirty-one kilograms of nearly invincible alloy, aerodynamically designed with dual points that caught light like liquid silver. The spear itself seemed to hum with potential energy, as if merely existing required more force than normal weapons could contain.
Mabel's posture shifted. Right leg extended back. Left knee bending. Body lowering while still enduring the chain's strangling pressure around his neck. The spear settled across his shoulder, held with the kind of delicate balance that suggested he was barely aware of its weight.
Then he threw it.
The Fantom Spear left his hand at a speed that created a visible distortion in the air—a "phantom ray" of motion that seemed to ignore normal physics. It spun as it flew, the rotational motion granting it additional speed while perfectly balancing air friction. The spear became less a weapon and more a force of nature.
It passed mere inches from Urus's left shoulder—close enough that he felt the heat of its passage, felt the displacement of air that would have torn him apart had it struck true. The spear continued its trajectory across the lake, crossing water and beach, striking the far side where a massive rock wall stood at the cave entrance.
The Fantom Spear drove through that wall like it was parchment.
Half the spear embedded in the rock. The other half protruded from the cave opening. Behind it, a trail of destruction—dozens of trees snapped like kindling, earth torn apart by the force of its passage, everything aligned perfectly in the weapon's wake.
Urus watched his death pass harmlessly by.
"What was that?" His voice barely above a whisper. "Who are you? Are you even human?"
The chain around his neck went slack as the figure turned to address him properly.
"I'm Mabel." The voice carried no malice. No satisfaction. Just calm statement of fact. "I'm just a passerby."
He moved toward the lakeside, crossing the hundred-meter width of water with a single impossible leap. Not swimming. Not using the water. Simply crossing it in one bound that defied comprehension, landing on the far shore with perfect balance.
"I hope you focus more on humility and goodness." His voice carried across the distance as if he were standing beside Urus. "Evilness breeds more evilness. It's the same for goodness—it multiplies, it spreads. What you carry in your heart will create more of itself in the world."
With that, he began walking toward where the Fantom Spear had embedded itself in the rock wall.
Urus found himself following—not out of continued hostile intent, but out of sheer compulsion. He had to see. Had to understand.
The trail of destruction was apocalyptic. Dozens of massive trees snapped in half or uprooted entirely. The ground carved with furrows as if plowed by divine hand. And the rock wall—a cave entrance with a section simply... gone, replaced by a chasm where the Fantom Spear had passed through.
Mabel reached the weapon still embedded halfway through the remaining rock. Without hesitation, without apparent effort, he gripped the shaft and pulled.
The spear came free as if it had never been stuck at all.
And there—not a single scratch marred its perfect surface. Not a dent. Not discoloration. Nothing to suggest it had just passed through solid rock and forest and earth as if they were nothing.
Urus's mind finally caught up with what his eyes were seeing.
'Godlike strength. A spear like that. The way he moved. The technique. The discipline.'
"Are you Mabel?" Urus called out, his broken ribs screaming with each breath. "The artist of war arts?"
The figure paused, beginning to wrap the spear back in white cloth.
"Yeah, I'm Mabel." He began walking back toward the city, moving at a pace that seemed leisurely but covered distance impossible for normal humans. "Though you made me hungry again. I was thinking about going toward Maru, but I suppose I'll need to return to Zyrick for food first."
Urus followed despite his injuries, despite understanding at a bone-deep level what he'd just witnessed. "Dual-pointed, heavy, this durable... is that the Fantom Spear?"
"You're very clingy." Mabel adjusted the wrapped bundle across his shoulders like a backpack. "Don't follow me. I don't want people knowing me as a Connoisseur Knight."
He paused, turning back to study Urus with genuine curiosity rather than hostility.
"But why did you attack me? I don't even know you."
The question hung in the evening air between them—simple, direct, and carrying the weight of profound confusion.
Urus had no good answer.