The Scum Emperor's Redemption System - Chapter 83

Chapter 83: Mysterious Man (2)
Argider felt it immediately. The sharp pull, like an invisible cord tethering her to her own body was suddenly yanked, unraveling strand by strand.

A sickening sensation spread through her, like a strong wind dragging her down, deeper and deeper into Uzak’s core.

Her body, her self, felt… wrong. Distant. Like a memory fading in reverse. Her limbs, or what passed for them in this void, trembled.

She felt lighter and yet heavier all at once, as if her essence was being squeezed and stretched to fit a form that wasn’t hers.

The man’s grip on her throat burned like ice, his eyes boring into her, his eerie calm contrasting the chaos he unleashed. “Give in,” he said, his voice velvety and maddening.

“Your body will become mine, and you… you can rest here. Forgotten. Isn’t that easier?”

“No,” she croaked, though her voice was weak, her defiance trembling on the edge of collapse.

The void began to shift, no longer an empty expanse but a swirling maelstrom of light and shadow.

Argider’s senses twisted, colors bleeding into sounds, emotions erupting into jagged shapes. She felt herself slipping, her own thoughts merging with something alien and dark. She wasn’t just being dragged into Uzak. She was becoming him, or rather, becoming what was inside him.

Memories flickered, not her own but vivid as if she’d lived them: a howling wind, a blade striking a shimmering collar, a roar of freedom cut short by chains of golden light.

These fragments wrapped around her mind like vines, constricting, pulling her further away from herself. “No!” she screamed, louder this time, though it felt as though she were shouting underwater.

She could feel the man pressing into her mind, his presence overwhelming, smothering. “Your struggle is futile,” he murmured. “You’re already mine.”

But something in Argider snapped at that. Mine? No one owned her. She was herself. Her palace might be filled with scheming nobles, her wives might grumble behind her back, and her life might feel like a mess, but this body, this soul, was hers, and no cloaked weirdo was going to take that from her.

She focused on the tether she could still faintly sense, the fragile connection to her body. It was like holding onto a spider’s thread in a hurricane, but it was there. She clung to it with everything she had, forcing herself to remember: her name, her voice, her strength.

“Who are you?” she demanded, her voice trembling but firm. “Who are you to take what’s mine?” For a moment, the man froze, as if the question caught him off guard. His hood shifted, and a pale face emerged, gaunt yet familiar. Too familiar.

“Uzak?” she whispered, the name falling from her lips like a stone. The shock was a lightning bolt through her soul, and the force of it shattered the darkness around her.

The void splintered, cracking like glass, and she felt herself being hurled backward, through layers of light and shadow, until, with a gasp, Argider woke, her body convulsing as she coughed and retched.

She felt the cold marble of the throne room beneath her hands, bile rising in her throat. Her whole body trembled as she emptied her stomach, the echo of that terrible grip lingering on her throat. She wiped her mouth, her breath ragged, her mind spinning.

“You… You’re not Uzak, you’re…” she whispered, her voice trembling as the image of the man before her seared itself into her mind, sharp and indelible like the mark of a hot brand.
The air between them seemed to ripple with something unspoken but undeniable, and confusion wrapped around her thoughts like a suffocating fog.
Her wide eyes betrayed the terror she felt but couldn’t fully name.

The man or was it Uzak? No. It wasn’t Uzak’s laugh, not really.

Then, before her very eyes, his body shifted, twisting and reshaping as though the fabric of reality had turned pliable.

The comforting, familiar visage of her best friend melted away, leaving behind something else entirely someone she had seen before, lurking in the dark recesses of her memory.

“Uzak is dead,” the man declared, his voice a chilling blend of triumph and disdain. “I ate his soul and body. Now his form is mine.”

Her mind reeled, the weight of his words crashing down on her like a landslide. What? Did he… eat him? That wasn’t a metaphor, was it? No, his tone carried the sharp edge of grim truth. She blinked, desperately trying to comprehend. Her lips parted to speak, but all that emerged was a bewildered, “Huh?!”

The man smirked, clearly reveling in her disorientation. “Magic?” she finally managed to gasp, clinging to the one explanation that made any sense in a world as twisted as this.

“Magic?” he repeated, his tone dripping with amusement. “No, no… I lost my magic ages ago. This was simply the work of some… artifacts.”

Artifacts. Of course. It was always artifacts or curses or ancient pacts. This was the kind of world where nothing and no one was ever just one thing.

Duality was a constant here, a maddening dance of contradiction that she had long grown weary of. And yet, this man wasn’t like the others. He wasn’t merely dual. He was something far more dangerous, far more layered.

Her head throbbed with the effort of making sense of him, of the situation, of the grotesque transformation she’d just witnessed. Yet no clarity came. Only the sinking realization that she was hopelessly out of her depth.

“Master!” a familiar voice cut through the haze. Her heart skipped, jolted by the sharpness of it.

She turned toward the source and wasn’t surprised to see Denzelle.

Of course it was Denzelle. He always appeared at the worst possible moments, a harbinger of bad news wrapped in sarcasm.

Before she could respond, the master, Uzak-no-longer, raised a hand, silencing Denzelle with a single, cutting gesture. “Silence,” he commanded, his voice laced with authority so absolute it seemed to weigh down the air. “You’ve been nothing but a liability lately.”