The Insane Regressor: Throne of Pride

Mirai approached Aldric with cautious steps, while Ravian remained several paces behind her, watching every corner of the hall without allowing his gaze to rest on any one place for more than a moment.

The silence was so heavy that the sound of her shoes against the floor seemed far louder than it should have been.

Mirai reached Aldric and knelt beside him in the pool of blood, paying no attention to the stains spreading across her Head Servant uniform. She pressed her fingers against his neck to feel for a pulse before her gaze shifted toward the places where his limbs had been severed.

His pulse was extremely weak.

But it was there.

"Old Aldric?" Mirai whispered as she leaned over him. "Can you hear me?"

His eyelids trembled for a moment, then his aged eyes slowly opened.

His gaze no longer held the firmness the participants had grown accustomed to seeing from him, nor the resolve he had maintained even during the worst moments of the game. All that remained was pain, exhaustion, and terror he no longer possessed the strength to conceal.

His lips moved as he attempted to force out a word, but only a hoarse, unintelligible sound emerged.

"Don’t speak," Mirai said quickly. "We’ll get you out of here."

Aldric’s eyes moved past her, focusing on something behind her.

At that same moment, Ravian took another step into the hall.

He did not know whether it was Aldric’s reaction or the vague sense of danger that had suddenly risen within his chest, but his body stopped before his foot could fully touch the floor.

One of the enormous curtains extending from the ceiling to the floor behind the long table moved.

It was not stirred by the wind.

There was no air flowing into the hall in the first place.

The curtain slowly slid aside, and someone stepped out from behind it.

The first thing to emerge was the blade of a black axe coated in layers of blood, followed by another identical blade. The hands holding them appeared next, and then Bran stepped fully into the hall’s pale light.

Blood covered much of the servant uniform he still wore. Strands of his short black hair clung to his forehead, while the scar running across his eyebrow and down his face looked even uglier beneath his broad smile.

The axes were not dragging behind him this time. Instead, he held them slightly raised so they would make no sound while he waited behind the curtain.

Ravian’s crimson eyes rested on the weapons for a moment.

The fresh blood covering them belonged to Aldric, but Bran’s presence here answered another question as well.

Only four participants remained alive.

Ravian, Mirai, Aldric, and Bran.

’So Garrick was the one who died last night.’ Ravian’s eyes narrowed. ’And Bran is the Traitor.’

Bran’s smile widened when he saw realization surface in Ravian’s eyes.

"Finally," Bran said as he stepped out from behind the curtain. "I was beginning to fear that I’d have to drag this old man somewhere else before one of you found him."

His eyes shifted toward Aldric, who lay on the floor.

"Didn’t I tell you they would come?"

Aldric’s body trembled violently at the sound of his voice.

Mirai raised her head and looked at Bran, but she did not move away from Aldric. She slowly rose and placed herself between them despite knowing that her body could not stop even a single blow from either axe. Perhaps the situation would have been different outside this world, but here, an individual’s strength meant nothing.

Bran looked at her, then at Ravian, before letting out a low laugh.

"This is better than I expected," he said. "All three of you in one hall. You’ve saved me hours of searching through this damned palace."

No one answered him.

Ravian continued watching the curtains, the upper gallery, and the side doors, searching for anything else Bran might have prepared in advance. Yet nothing seemed suspicious.

Bran needed nothing else. He himself was the trap.

"What’s wrong?" Bran asked, tilting his head. "You’ve all suddenly gone quiet. I thought Head Servants and record keepers liked to talk."

Mirai fixed her eyes on him.

"So you were the one who killed Garrick," she said, her voice carrying suppressed fury.

Bran merely laughed.

"He wasn’t much fun," he said, raising the axe in his right hand and examining the dried blood on its blade. "He woke up late, screamed a lot, and then died faster than I expected. I was beginning to think the nightmare had overestimated the difficulty of this role."

Mirai clenched her fists, suppressing her anger. Ravian was the Killer and had caused the deaths of more participants than anyone else, yet he had always seemed like someone merely forced to fulfill the role assigned to him. Bran, by contrast, appeared to savor every passing moment as a butcher who personally slaughtered people with two steel axes.

Ravian’s expression did not change.

He watched Bran, but at the same time, he kept Mirai within the corner of his vision.

Before entering the hall, she had not told him what she intended to do. All she had said was that he should trust her.

Now, he had to discover what had driven her to enter a trap she knew was waiting for them.

Bran began walking toward her.

"Stay away from her," Ravian suddenly said.

Bran’s steps stopped for a fraction of a second before his gaze shifted toward him.

"Why?" he asked with a smile. "Are you trying to protect others now?"

Ravian did not answer.

Bran pointed one of his axes toward Aldric.

"Don’t worry. I won’t kill her," he said as though genuinely trying to reassure him. "I know that if either of them dies now, the number of participants will fall to three and grant you victory. I can’t allow something that troublesome to happen."

Then he turned his attention back to Mirai.

"I’ll merely cut off her arms and feet, just as I did to him. After that, she’ll remain here beside him, and I won’t have to search for her again once I’m finished with you."

Genuine delight appeared in his eyes as he imagined it.

"Time is a treasure, as you know."

Then he gave Ravian a look that made the smile on his face appear even more deranged.

"As for you, I’ll give you my undivided attention."

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