With a sigh, Kariel drove his blade into someone’s heart.
He didn’t care about that man’s name, nor his pain.
In fact, before the victim, wheezing, had even crumpled to the floor, Kariel was already rushing to his next target.
He ran, not forgetting to dodge the bullets flying at him.
They tore holes in the wall behind him with a roar and fury.
At the very moment a bullet, kicking up a cloud of dust, entered the wall, his blade entered flesh.
Then he cut: with his left hand, he slit open a belly; with his right, he slashed a throat.
The human body was so fragile, all weak points.
“It’s that ghost!” someone shouted in the darkness, undisguised terror in his voice.
“The Vengeful Spirit!” “He’s probably trembling,” Kariel thought.
The thought made him smirk.
“Yes, I’ve come.” “And you…” A quiet laugh echoed in the dark and gloomy corridor.
Killing was laughably simple for Kariel.
He did it with ease, naturally, more easily than he breathed.
It had become almost an instinct.
For him, killing was akin to solving a simple arithmetic problem.
Did you need paper and a pen to add one plus one?
Of course not.
But that didn’t mean he liked it.
He didn’t kill for the sake of killing.
Five minutes later, Kariel decapitated the last man in that long corridor.
He stopped, surveyed the floor littered with corpses and chunks of flesh, and took a few deep breaths.
Tasting the air, thick with blood, he waited.
Feeling a vibration at the far end of the corridor, Kariel jumped without hesitation and, driving his blade into the ceiling, clung to it for a moment.
Gunfire erupted: automatic rifles, shotguns, machine guns — someone was even firing a laser weapon.
He squinted involuntarily and licked his lips.
Half a minute later, when the deadly lead rain stopped, he dropped back to the floor.
The sound of his landing was barely audible, but they still noticed him.
Nothing to be done — he couldn’t be as silent as the Ghost, and the gang members were very alert.
In fact, Kariel thought that for a bunch of madmen constantly hopped up on psychotropics and other hallucinogenic garbage, they were far too vigilant.
Realizing he was still alive, someone hurled a homemade grenade at him with a roar.
Kariel smiled and kicked it back as naturally as he would a ball.
The thugs had given him a gift, and Kariel, considering himself a polite man, repaid them with a powerful explosion and flames — and, of course, the chaos that followed.
That sudden explosion saved Kariel from a dozen minor problems he otherwise would have had to solve with his blade and violence, but he didn’t consider it luck.
Too loud.
“Well… my bad,” he thought, swiftly leaving the scene.
There was no arguing that.
His work was such that it always threw surprises at the most inconvenient moment.
You never knew what those thugs would pull out to rain a hail of fire down on you.
A homemade grenade was still not the most dangerous option.
It was certainly better than a grenade launcher capable of leveling an entire building.
Taking a deep breath, Kariel tensed his leg muscles, ready to leave.
He couldn’t linger if he didn’t want to end up in the same kind of carnival the Ghost had been through.
Half a second later, icy blue light flared in Kariel’s eyes again.
Then he easily jumped out the window and, upon landing, bent his knees.
His muscles bulged, and in just a few bounds, he was on the roof of a tall building hundreds of meters away.
The wind whistled in his ears, the icy cold nearly numbing his skin, but he didn’t dare close his eyes.
The landscapes of Quintus flashed by, and only when they had completely disappeared did he allow himself to smile.
Feeling the ground beneath his feet, he knew he had landed.
Taking one more deep, slightly tired breath, Kariel slowly lowered himself to the floor, leaning against a wall.
His back ached unpleasantly, and he needed something to lean on to ease the pain.
Over a dozen air purifiers were quietly running on the roof.
They were in excellent condition, obviously recently serviced.
The residents of this building must have had connections with aristocrats; otherwise, they wouldn’t have gotten such amenities.
Noting this to himself, Kariel focused on his condition.
But every time he did this, pain inevitably washed over him.
It was always like this.
Listening to himself, Kariel felt his leg muscles ache agonizingly and his bones groan from the strain.
Obviously, after such a battle and inhuman escape, his body was protesting.
In other words, his physical condition was failing him.
But that didn’t matter.
The rain had stopped.
Kariel shook his head and decided to resort to his most despised sense of humor again, telling himself a joke to at least lift his lousy mood.
“Look on the bright side,” he muttered.
“At least you recovered those two bikes, right?
You have to be polite and honest.
A debt is a debt.” After telling that joke, Kariel waited three minutes.
He didn’t laugh.
He just couldn’t laugh.
“My sense of humor really is terrible.
I hate making jokes,” Kariel thought.
He sighed and sank into thought, all the while taking deep breaths.
“The Great Purge will start soon,” he thought.
Once every twenty years, almost like a cruel law of nature.
The aristocrats would profit from it.
In fact, it didn’t matter if the Great Purge happened or not — they always came out ahead.
This brutal event was more like entertainment… and what was there to say?
On Nostramo, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
At least it was far more normal than sewing living people into mattresses.
In the first case, at least there was profit; in the second… if Kariel hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he would have considered it the ravings of a madman.
Kariel sneered.
There were almost seven hundred gangs in Quintus, and he couldn’t kill them all.
Even if he killed until his own death, it would be impossible.
As long as the oppression of the aristocrats existed, more and more poor workers would renounce their humanity.
This world had already changed, changed beyond recognition.
How could he alone set everything right?
He couldn’t even create a decent organization to gather helpers.
The minds of Nostramo’s inhabitants were completely warped; there was no room for kindness in this world… “But you can’t stop killing by killing, Kariel.” “Yes, I know.” Kariel closed his eyes, completely pushed aside extraneous thoughts, and began to delve deeper into his consciousness, digging deeper and deeper.
In a place like Nostramo, making plans was very difficult, but he had to try.
The gang whose leaders the Ghost had killed was called “Sons of Unity.” A stupid name.
Like all the other gangs, these people always sought to imitate the aristocrats.
Giving themselves such strange, pretentious names was part of that imitation.
They thought that one day they could join the ranks of the aristocracy.
Only a few understood that gangs were just the aristocrats’ attack dogs.
“Sons of Unity”… Kariel began searching his memory for that name.
He shouldn’t have had those memories.
But it didn’t matter, did it?
He soon found the answer.
One of the leaders of the “Sons of Unity” had recently joined the “Knocking Teeth.” Perfect.
“Knocking Teeth” and House Skraivok… Two ancient aristocratic houses.
Their attention was surely now fixed on Quintus.
What a joy.
I wonder if I’ll be honored with a meeting with these noble lords?
Kariel smiled coldly.
House Skraivok had lost one inquisitor.
Although they might have hundreds of them, the death of one was still no small matter… House Skraivok, like all other high aristocrats, was very similar to the others, except for one detail that made them special.
They placed immense value on “rules” and “honor.” Ironic, wasn’t it?
But it was true.
Those who served them could gain much.
For complete loyalty, these people could have almost anything they wanted until their death.
This meant that House Skraivok would certainly try to find the inquisitor’s killer.
As for the “Knocking Teeth”… they were a pack of madmen who adored bloody feasts and thrills.
They wouldn’t miss such a perfect opportunity to descend into the Underhive for a hunt under a plausible pretext either.
Kariel opened his eyes and smiled.
He already knew what to do.
If the “Knocking Teeth” and House Skraivok were planning a gala dinner in Quintus, he had already beaten the organizers and gotten an invitation.
Standing up again, Kariel, leaning against the cold wall, exhaled a long, trembling sigh.
The pain still wouldn’t let him stand straight.
After a short rest, a new, even stronger and unrelenting wave of pain washed over him.
It was always like this.
This power was terrible, yet very useful.
He hadn’t picked up that broken chair at the dump for nothing.
First, no one needed it, so he could take it.
Second… he really did need a chair.
There was no day on Nostramo, only eternal night.
Standing at the edge of the building, looking at the landscape spread out below, Kariel pondered.
All the cities on this planet were rotten.
They had been built from distorted materials from the start.
He was just an ordinary man; he couldn’t change them or these people.
He also knew that shifting all the responsibility onto the Ghost was extremely selfish, but what choice did he have?
“Only now do I realize that phrase was true.” Kariel smirked and muttered under his breath: “Free will doesn’t exist, unless you put a bullet in your head, breathe in gas, or jump off a pier…” … +He refused again.+ +Indeed, my Lord?+ +Yes.
It seems he is greatly mistaken about me.+ +You cannot demand that someone on the other side of the galaxy simply accept your challenge, my Lord.+ +Perhaps.
But I will try a few more times.
The fate of Konrad Curze is now in his hands.+ +Then good luck to you, Lord.
By the way, I recall you said yesterday that the word ‘fate’ is utterly absurd.+ “Yes, my friend.
The giant in golden armor opened his eyes and said: “But sometimes it does exist.