Transmigration: I Made A Deal With A Man in Yellow

All I needed was an opportunity where Sister Friede would willingly touch one.

And getting her to do that wasn’t easy.

She was too fast for most of my attacks, and whenever I summoned darkness around her, she either dodged or destroyed it with her scythe. Trying to suddenly wrap a tentacle around her arm wouldn’t work because she would sense it coming.

So instead of bringing my darkness to her...

I made her grab it herself.

The opening I had given her earlier wasn’t an accident.

I had deliberately attacked at an angle where she wouldn’t have enough time to reposition her scythe properly. With her strength and experience, I had guessed that she might choose to stop my weapon directly rather than dodge.

And she had done exactly that.

The moment her hand closed around my scythe, the trap was already complete.

"Don’t you know that grabbing your opponent’s weapon with your bare hands is a fool’s move?" I asked.

Sister Friede slowly raised her head toward me.

Despite the dozens of spikes piercing through her arm, her expression remained strangely calm. There was no scream or visible panic. She merely looked at the wounds for another moment before returning her attention to me.

"I must admit..." she said quietly. "You continue to surprise me, child."

Her fingers twitched around the spikes embedded in her flesh.

"This power of yours is a dangerous one to fight."

I stopped a few meters away and rested one hand against my waist.

"I’ve always said I’m a box full of surprises, Sister."

My smile remained, but I didn’t allow myself to relax.

After everything I had learned about Sister Friede, I knew better than to think a few spikes and tentacles were enough to defeat her.

If anything...

No was probably when she was most dangerous.

Let’s not waste time.

With that said, I spun on my heel and dashed toward the altar.

Behind me came the sound of something tearing apart as Sister Friede broke through the tentacles restraining her. Before she could move, however, more darkness erupted from the floor and wrapped around her arms and legs, forcing her to stop and tear through them again.

I knew the tentacles wouldn’t hold her forever. With her strength, keeping her restrained for more than a few seconds was already asking for too much. But I didn’t need forever.

I only needed enough time to reach the altar and find the dagger.

I rushed up the stairs and stopped in front of the small table beside the altar. Several candles covered its surface alongside numerous small statues and other objects I didn’t recognize. There was also some kind of strange symbol embroidered into the fabric of the tablecloth.

My eyes landed on it for barely a second before instinctively looking away.

What?

I frowned and almost looked at it again, but something inside me screamed not to. I didn’t know whether it was instinct, a sixth sense, or something else entirely, but the feeling was strong enough that I decided not to question it.

Whatever that symbol was, looking at it felt like something I would deeply regret.

So I didn’t.

I ignored the strange symbol and immediately began searching the table.

"Where is it? Where is it...?"

I moved the candles aside and searched between the statues, but there was no dagger anywhere. I checked beneath everything and even ran my hands across the table, yet I still couldn’t find it.

My frown deepened.

It was supposed to be here.

With no better idea, I grabbed one of the statues and smashed it against the table.

Shatter!

Nothing.

I grabbed another.

Shatter!

Still nothing.

"Why are there so many statues?" I muttered in annoyance as I reached for another one.

"Child!"

Sister Friede’s voice suddenly thundered through the church.

I stopped for a fraction of a second.

"Do not destroy the sacred relics of my God!" she shouted. For the first time since I had met her, the calmness in her voice had completely disappeared. "Stop this instant if you do not wish to die painfully!"

A chill ran down my spine.

Oh.

She was pissed.

And considering Sister Friede was a woman of her word, I had absolutely no doubt she would make good on that threat if she caught me.

Which meant I needed to find this dagger as soon as possible.

Shatter! Shatter!

I continued breaking the statues.

With every one I destroyed, the killing intent behind me became heavier. It pressed against my back like a physical weight, and I didn’t need to turn around to know that Sister Friede was glaring at me.

"You will pay for this!"

Another violent tearing sound came from behind me as she ripped apart the tentacles restraining her. More immediately rose from the floor and wrapped around her body, some even piercing into her flesh to hold her in place.

I didn’t bother looking.

Sorry, Sister.

You could complain about your statues after I found the thing that was supposed to help me kill you.

I smashed the final statue and swept the remaining candles from the table. They fell onto the marble floor around me, some rolling down the altar steps while others went out completely.

Nothing.

There was no dagger.

"What the heck?" I stared at the now-empty table. "Where is it?"

I stretched my mana across the altar, searching for anything unusual.

Nothing.

I expanded my darkness circle as well.

Still nothing.

That didn’t make any sense.

I was one hundred percent certain the dagger was supposed to be on this table. I had written it that way. This was where it had originally been found, so unless my memory had suddenly become completely unreliable, it should have been sitting right in front of me.

Unless...

My expression darkened.

"There’s no way that man changed this too."

Was he actually trying to get me killed?

Without the dagger, defeating Sister Friede would be almost impossible. More importantly, if I couldn’t defeat her, I wouldn’t be able to leave this place.

I’ll be damned with that man’s shenanigans!

Think, Idal. Think! Where would the dagger be?

I searched through my memories, trying to remember every detail I had written about this place, but nothing came to mind. The dagger had been on the altar. There wasn’t some hidden chamber underneath the church or secret treasure room I had forgotten about.

At least, there wasn’t supposed to be.

For all I knew, the dagger could now be hidden somewhere else inside the church. It could even be outside in the burning town, and I definitely didn’t have enough time to search an entire town before Sister Friede came for my ass—

Pause.

Either way, I was running out of time.

Another tearing sound came from behind me.

The restraints weren’t going to last much longer.

"Am I actually cook—"

Wait.

My thoughts suddenly stopped.

Something from my first attempt came back to me.

Sister Friede.

There had been a moment during our first fight when she had completely disappeared from my sight. Not because she had moved too quickly for me to see, but because she had actually turned invisible.

If she possessed a way to make herself invisible...

Then perhaps...

I slowly looked back at the table.

"No way."

I leaned forward and stretched both hands over its surface. Instead of relying on my eyes or mana, I began physically searching, pressing my palms against different parts of the table and moving them around like a blind man trying to find something.

Technically, I was blind right now.

If the dagger was invisible, then seeing it was impossible.

My fingers moved between the broken remains of the statues and across the fabric of the tablecloth. For several seconds, I felt absolutely nothing.

Then my fingers bumped against something.

Hard and cold.

My eyes widened.

"There you are."

I wrapped my fingers around the invisible object and slowly lifted it from the table. From my perspective, it looked like I was holding absolutely nothing, yet I could clearly feel the shape of a dagger between my fingers.

A few seconds later, something changed.

The air around my hand distorted slightly before the invisibility suddenly disappeared.

The dagger revealed itself.

Its blade was completely black, while the handle was made from a white-silver metal that reflected the light of the surrounding flames. Strange writing had been engraved along the black blade, but no matter how closely I looked, I couldn’t understand what the words meant.

"The Black Dagger..."

This damned thing wasn’t supposed to be invisible.

Someone had definitely changed things.

Nevertheless, I had found it.

That was all that mattered.

"O Black Flame..."

My attention immediately left the dagger.

I turned toward the source of the voice.

Sister Friede stood below the altar, still surrounded by the remains of my darkness constructs. Her wounded arm hung beside her body, crimson blood dripping from the holes my spikes had left behind.

Yet her attention wasn’t on her wounds.

Her head was slightly lowered as she held her scythe with both hands.

"...lend me your power once more."

The moment those words left her mouth, the atmosphere inside the church changed.

I felt it immediately.

The air became strangely cold and hot at the same time. Frost still covered parts of the marble floor, yet waves of heat began spreading through the church, mixing with the cold until I couldn’t tell which sensation was stronger.

My grip tightened around the Black Dagger.

Then something appeared beside Sister Friede.

A small flame...it came from nowhere.

There was no spark, no burning object, and no source for it to feed on. One moment there was nothing, and the next, a tiny black flame was floating beside her.

It flickered once.

Then it grew.

Black fire came to life.

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