Overkill: Incarnations Chapter 7: Chapter 7 : White Bone Coliseum

Read chapter 7 of Overkill: Incarnations by Kudo_Aosakka on NovelPedia.

Chapter VII The White Bone Coliseum ..... Inside the wet, pulsing interior of the giant eyeball chamber, the ambient temperature plummeted. Ryo Itsukizu did not move his feet, but his hand dropped instinctively toward the edge of his layered robes, near the hidden pockets where his talismans slept. The air grew cold and heavy, compressed by a gravity that belonged to a deeper, older strata of reality. "What happened to Kuroshiraga Arufa?" Ryo’s voice was a low sliver of iron cutting through the hum of the chamber. The boy standing before him...or rather, the entity piloting the boy’s flesh...let out a dry, short laugh. It was a sound entirely devoid of Kuroshiraga’s usual exhausted, teenage cynicism. He ran a hand through his black hair, which had quietly grown several inches longer, cascading over his shoulders like spilled ink. "Kuro?...well...the boy's still daydreaming, if you can say that ." Kurael said, his voice carrying an unsettling resonance that vibrated through the obsedien walls. "He is currently trapped inside the *Collective Subconscious*...in the nested domain of this Thousand-Eyed Witness. The brat is still technically fulfilling the conditions of the *Engram Chōra*, considering he was the one foolish enough to look directly at that thing ." Kurael’s gaze shifted, his dark eyes locking onto Ryo with a piercing, predatory focus. "Which brings me to a rather glaring question, Auramancer. What exactly are your motives here? Are you working with Mnemoscopus?" Ryo remained silent for a long beat, his eye narrowed beneath the wide brim of his conical hat, studying the being that had just taken the wheel of Kuro’s vessel. He looked like a man performing a complex mental calculation. "If your vessel had a shred of patience, we wouldn't be having this conversation," Ryo said bluntly. "He saw the runic incantation circles engraved on the floor and ignored them . If he had waited for me to explain the situation, I would have told him to keep his eyes closed. But he didn't. And now we are here." . Ryo adjusted his hat, his tone shifting into something strictly transactional. "However, it makes no difference. Now that you are here, we can simply fulfill the original contract." . Kurael tilted Kuro’s head, an indifferent frown playing on his lips. "And what, exactly, was the original contract?" "Your vessel was in a sorry state," Ryo explained, gesturing vaguely to the damp air. "He was too weak to reach the next checkpoint on his own. The road ahead is crawling with formidable Dreadspawn that hunt in packs. With his current Ryoku reserves, he would have died within the kilometre." Ryo took a step forward, his voice flat. "And since Kuroshiraga Arufa possesses absolutely no healing abilities or restorative techniques to speak of, the only way for him to restore his soul body to an optimal condition... was to die. In Makai, dying allows a soul body to reform at the last synchronized checkpoint." Kurael’s frown deepened . "So you took it upon yourself to kill him? " "I was too impatient to watch him drag his feet across the wasteland, die slowly, and wait for him to respawn," Ryo admitted without a hint of shame...or remorse. "Makai is vast, and I happened to be resting along his specific path because that’s where his soul body originally reformed. So, I used my experience in runic geometry to construct a temporal checkpoint." Ryo pointed down at the faint, glowing lines beneath the obsidian film of the floor. "Real checkpoints are focus points where Ryoku, dark energy, and the spirit realm naturally overlap. You find them in the ruins of ancient dungeons from the Golden Era. Creating a pseudo-checkpoint requires four things: a *Source* of dense dark matter, an 'Authority' to mold reality, a *Directory* to guide the energy—which were my runes—and a *Medium* to oversee it." "The Medium must be a sentient being of an incredibly high soul body status. In this case, either a goddess like Tenjo, or a deity like Mnemoscopus." Ryo g