Chapter 34 – An Oscar-Worthy Collapse

The golden light vaporized into silence.

The air in the corridor was thick. It smelled of ozone and superheated stone, a clean, sharp scent that had burned away the ancient dust. The glowing runes on the walls seemed to flicker, their faint light dimmer now, as if intimidated by the power I had just unleashed. Where the hulking stone knight had stood, there was only a pile of glittering rubble. It was a grim monument to a power I never asked for.

A shimmering text box hung in the air, visible only to me.

<<Class Unlocked: Divine Lineage>>

My stomach dropped. I stared at the words, my mind a mess of screaming static. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was a cheat skill. A protagonist privilege. The kind of unearned, overpowered garbage that was meant for Kenji, not for me.

My entire life’s work, two years of meticulous planning for the perfect, gritty revenge arc, was being invalidated by a system pop-up. This wasn’t suffering. This was a handout. The universe was trying to force me to be a hero.

I would not let that happen.

Siegfried scrambled backward, his boots scraping against the stone floor. He wasn’t looking at the pile of rubble. He was looking at me. His sword was in his hand, but it was trembling. His eyes were wide with a terror that went far beyond the fear of a simple monster.

“What… what was that?”

His voice was a ragged, terrified whisper. He thought I had done it. He thought this power was mine. I had to fix this. I had to sell him a new story, and it had to be a tragedy. I had to make him see me not as a powerhouse, but as a liability. A ticking time bomb of cursed energy.

I clutched my chest and let out a series of loud, theatrical gagging sounds.

I needed to sell the pain. I forced another cough, a dry, pathetic hack that echoed in the silent corridor. I bent over, my body trembling, and spat a mouthful of dusty saliva onto the stone floor. It looked nothing like blood. It was a pathetic little puddle of spit. My performance needed work.

Siegfried flinched back, his eyes fixed on the wet spot on the floor.

He looked like he expected it to grow tentacles and attack him.

“A ritual?”

His voice was tight with a new kind of fear. A horrified awe.

“A sacrifice for the power you just used?”

It was working. This idiot was legit buying it. He thought this was some kind of dark magic payment. I had to escalate. I let my knees buckle, collapsing to the floor with all the grace of a dropped sack of potatoes. It was an Oscar-worthy performance of weakness.

My body shook with fake convulsions. I was critiquing my own performance in my head. The spit was a bit weak, maybe a 4/10. But the collapse? That was a solid nine. The trembling was the icing on the cake. I was the very picture of a man being consumed by his own cursed power.

He took a hesitant step forward, his sword still pointed at me.

“To use such forbidden arts… what is the cost?”

He was building the narrative for me. This was perfect. He didn’t see a strong rival. He saw a pathetic, desperate fool who had made a deal with a devil and was now paying the price. He saw a liability.

I let out a low groan, rolling onto my side.

I looked up at him through my bangs, my expression a carefully crafted mask of agony and regret.

“You shouldn’t use that kind of attack… not to protect an enemy.”

Siegfried just shrugged, but his eyes were wide with a fear that bordered on reverence.

He looked at me like I was a bomb that had forgotten to explode. He took a slow, cautious step forward, his sword held low. He was still wary, as if I might suddenly burst into a shower of cursed energy and ectoplasm.

He offered me a hand.

I took it, making my own hand feel limp and useless. He pulled me to my feet. The physical contact was tense. He let go as soon as I was steady, quickly putting a few feet of space between us. I internally celebrated. He was seeing me as fragile. As dangerous. As a problem.

“What do we do now?”

His voice was different. It wasn’t the question of a peer. It was the question of a subordinate asking a dangerous, unpredictable leader for orders. He was scared of me. My plan was a smashing success.

I leaned against the cool stone wall, still selling my post-curse exhaustion.

I gestured vaguely down the dark, ominous corridor ahead.

“Well, we’ll just have to keep going deeper into the dungeon.”

My mind was already racing, storyboarding the next act. Dungeons like this always had some kind of damsel in distress. A captive princess. A sealed demon girl. The deeper we went, the more pressure he would feel. The more of a burden I would become. He would have to get rid of me. It was inevitable. Sooner or later, it would happen.

“That idea seems to be the least useless you’ve come up with lately.”

His tone was flat, filled with a weary resignation, not the snarky bite of a rival. He had accepted that he was following a madman into the depths of a deathtrap.

I, of course, completely misinterpreted this. I heard the classic line of an anime rival. The grudging respect. The birth of a frenemy dynamic.

Damn it, don’t do that. Don’t be Enemy-to-Best-Friends. Keep hating me. Keep seeing me as a liability. Your betrayal is the entire point of my character arc.

My soul screamed the words at him.

Damn it, Siegfried, don’t abandon me. Don’t abandon your dream of killing me.