"Cringe?"
The Monk repeated the word slowly, like he was tasting poison and trying to identify which kind.
"You call five thousand years of atonement cringe?"
"YeP."
Kaizen popped the 'p' sound obnoxiously. He leaned casually against a crumbling pillar, though his knees were secretly knocking together like castanets.
"I mean, just look at you. You are arranging dead flowers for a headless statue. It is giving major Drama Queen energy."
The Monk's hands clenched into fists. The frozen stem in his grip pulverized into dust that scattered across the altar.
"You know nothing."
His voice trembled with a dangerous mix of sorrow and rising fury.
"You did not hear their screams. You did not feel their small hearts stop beating against your blade. You did not watch the light leave their eyes while they called your name."
He turned fully toward Kaizen. His eyes, previously hidden beneath his tangled hair, burned with a golden, terrifying light that made the air shimmer.
"They were pure! They were innocent! And I..."
"And you killed them," Kaizen interrupted, actually yawning for effect. "Yeah, we get it. You had a really bad day at the office. You slipped on a banana peel and accidentally decapitated a kindergarten class. These things happen. Move on."
[Aggro Rising...]
The air in the temple grew oppressively heavy. It felt like gravity had just doubled, pressing down on Kaizen's shoulders.
His heart was hammering against his ribs so hard he thought they might crack.
'I am absolutely insane. I am literally insulting a five-thousand-year-old holy warrior who could vaporize me with a sneeze.'
'My survival instinct is completely broken.'
But his greed was screaming even louder: 'YES! HE IS CHARGING UP! I am about to get my cool katana!!'
"Bad day?"
The Monk's voice rose to an earth-shaking roar. The stone floor beneath his feet cracked in spiderweb patterns.
"It was the end of days! I was their shield! I was their light! I was supposed to protect them! And I became their executioner instead!"
"So?"
Kaizen shot back, actually stepping forward instead of running away like a sane person.
"So you dress up in dirty rags and cry about it for five millennia? Does that bring them back? Do your snot and tears un-kill them?"
"SILENCE!"
"You are not a Saint mourning the dead. You are just a coward hiding in a frozen ruin because you are too scared to face the truth."
"I SAID SILENCE!"
BOOM.
The Monk snapped.
A shockwave of pure golden mana exploded from his body like a detonating bomb.
Kaizen did not even have time to dodge. The force hit him like a physical wall made of solid air, blowing his hair back and rattling his teeth in his skull.
"About time," Kaizen grinned maniacally while shielding his eyes from the blinding light.
The world shattered like glass.
The grey stone walls dissolved into particles of light. The frozen flowers vanished into smoke. The peaceful, rotting silence was violently ripped away and replaced by something else.
FLASH.
The smell hit him first before anything else.
Copper. Iron. Ash. Burned flesh.
The smell of a battlefield.
Kaizen blinked rapidly, trying to adjust his eyes. The temple was no longer a ruin. It was structurally whole again, but it had become a slaughterhouse.
The pristine marble floor was slick with black demon ichor and bright red human blood mixing together. Bodies were scattered everywhere like discarded toys. Monks in shredded robes. Paladins in dented armor with massive holes punched through the metal. Demons dissolving into black smoke that stained everything it touched.
It was That Day. The day everything went wrong.
The visual filter had shifted from Grey Depression Mode to High-Contrast Horror Movie.
Kaizen looked around frantically. The Monk was gone.
In his place, in the very center of the carnage, was a figure kneeling in a pool of blood.
He wore armor of white steel, now completely stained red and black tar from neck to boots. His helmet lay discarded on the floor beside him, revealing a face twisted in eternal agony.
He was cradling three small, lifeless bodies in his arms.
And beside him, half-buried in the muck and blood...
Lying there, stabbed deep into the stone floor...
The Sword.
It was not a Greatsword anymore. It had melted, twisted, and reforged itself in the intense heat of the Paladin's despair and corruption.
It was a Katana. The legendary Saintsplitter!
Pitch black like a shard of the void itself, but with beautiful golden murals running down the blade's spine like rivers of light trying to escape the darkness. It was beautiful. It was tragic. It was the absolute coolest loot Kaizen had ever seen in his entire life.
The kneeling Knight slowly lifted his head with mechanical precision. His eyes were not golden anymore. They were hollow, bottomless black pits actively leaking dark tears that hissed when they hit the ground.
He looked directly at Kaizen.
He reached for the black katana with one trembling hand.
Shinnnng.
The sound of the cursed blade being pulled from the stone sounded like a dying scream mixed with shattering glass. He gripped the helmet with his other hand and slowly placed it on his head, the metal scraping against itself.
Kaizen swallowed dryly. His legs shook uncontrollably.
'Okay. I wanted the boss fight. I deliberately provoked the boss fight. I got exactly what I asked for.'
'But why am I regretting this?'
A bright red system window slammed into his vision with an aggressive beep.
[SYSTEM ALERT]
[Dungeon Updated: The Despairing Last Light of Sun]
[Rank: D]
[BOSS ENCOUNTER STARTED]
[Sir Cassiel, The Fallen Guardian]
[Rank: D (Corrupted)]
[Warning: Enemy possesses Holy/Dark Dual Affinity. Resistance to both Light and Shadow damage.]
Kaizen gripped his Rusty Pan of Doom with both hands until his knuckles turned white.
"Alright, Sir Cries-A-Lot," Kaizen whispered while sweating bullets. "Let us see if trash can beat trauma."