Transmigration: I Made A Deal With A Man in Yellow

My vision turned dark, and when it returned, I found myself standing in front of the two massive doors of the church again.

This time, I didn’t stumble away from the entrance. My stomach suddenly churned, but I refused to bend down and throw up.

I took a deep breath, pushed the doors open, and entered the church.

This time, the church looked exactly the way I had left it in the previous run. It was still heavily damaged, with all the benches reduced to splinters and the walls and floor covered in cracks.

That was strange.

Normally, it would’ve reset after I died.

Sister Friede was kneeling on the ground where I had left her before dying. Both of her scythes lay on the floor, while the dagger remained buried deep inside her chest. Red blood stained her clothes, and more crimson blood ran from her mouth and down her chin.

"You... what have you done to me? I... I can’t move." Sister Friede weakly raised her head and looked at me.

She can’t move?

"You mean the dagger? It was purposely made to weaken you. Didn’t you know about it?" I raised an eyebrow. "Wasn’t that the reason you were protecting the altar?"

Sister Friede shook her head.

"No. I didn’t know such a dagger existed. The reason I was protecting the altar was to stop you from staining it with the stench of that man."

I raised my right arm and smelled under it, only to quickly pull my head back in reaction.

"I smell quite good, though, so you’re probably talking about that man," I said.

I walked closer to her without drawing my weapon because, for some reason, I didn’t think she would attack me.

The clicking of my boots against the marble floor stopped as I stood over the trembling Sister Friede.

Honestly, what I was doing was extremely risky, but I decided to gamble on my intuition.

And she actually didn’t jump at me.

Yet.

"You said you can’t move. Are you sure you’re not lying so you can grab your scythe and cut my head off the moment I let my guard down?"

"Yes and no. A Sister does not lie." Her amethyst eyes lowered toward the dagger. "Whatever this dagger is, it contains powerful magic. Strong enough to stop me from moving, and it has also taken away my strength."

That was suspicious.

The dagger was only supposed to weaken her because she couldn’t be killed like other undead monsters. She had protective magic from wielding the Flame, and the dagger was meant to break through that protection. Only then would I be able to destroy the core buried deep inside her chest.

She was supposed to become weaker and easier to kill.

Not completely paralyzed.

Very strange.

That meant this was another modification to the story.

Since she couldn’t attack me anymore, it wouldn’t hurt to ask about the man she had mentioned.

I wanted to confirm whether he was actually the same person who reincarnated me.

"When I came in here for the first time, you called me the child who bears the stench of the Man Who Writes the Last Page. I want to know who that is."

I crouched down so I could look her directly in the eyes.

Her amethyst eyes stared quietly at me before her trembling lips parted.

"He was the man responsible for the death of my people..."

"How was he responsible for their deaths?" I asked.

She lowered her head.

"I made a deal with him."

A deal?

Those words immediately brought back memories of the deal I had made with the Man in Yellow.

This has to be him.

"What kind of deal? And what did it have to do with the death of your people? From what I remember, you were the one responsible for their deaths, not another person."

Sister Friede lowered her head as though she were deep in thought before slowly looking back at me.

"I... can’t remember," she said.

The hell?

"What do you mean you can’t remember? You just said you made a deal—"

"I don’t know. I truly don’t know. Whenever I try to remember, my memories become foggy."

She pressed a pale hand against the side of her head as though trying to endure a headache.

I fell into deep thought.

She made a deal with a man, who I believed to be the Man in Yellow, but she couldn’t remember anything about the actual deal?

Had spending thousands upon thousands of years trapped here given her some kind of amnesia?

Or was it the corruption caused by the Flame?

I shook my head.

No.

It couldn’t be that.

Sister Friede in the book had still been relatively sane, aside from slaughtering her own people.

There was no reason she should’ve forgotten something this important.

Unless...

...she had been made to forget it.

"Do you remember the man’s face? Or what he wore? Did he wear yellow robes? Did he have purple eyes? Was he tall?"

Sister Friede shook her head.

"He was tall. Probably the tallest man I had ever met. I don’t remember his face or what he wore. And his eyes..." Her own eyes trembled as she struggled to recall the memory. "Sometimes they were purple. Sometimes red. Sometimes blue. I don’t truly know. It was as though they were many colors at once."

She paused.

"All I can say is that man was no man at all."

"What do you mean he was no man at all?"

"He... he was no man."

Her lips trembled, and a tear rolled down her left cheek.

"He was the devil."

For some reason, chills immediately ran through my body.

My skin turned cold.

The devil?

I frowned.

Everything she had described screamed the Man in Yellow.

Sure, it wasn’t exactly the same as the man I had seen in that alley, but I strongly suspected it was him.

And since the story had been changing...

Maybe Sister Friede wasn’t entirely responsible for the death of her people.

Maybe someone else had been the true culprit.

Ugh.

I ran a hand through my hair.

This was usually the point where the main character in a book had some kind of guide to give them hints about the world’s mysteries.

But I had nothing.

It was really annoying.

I asked Sister Friede a few more questions and even asked about the Flame as well.

Then it was time to kill her.

"It’s time now."

I reached for the dagger embedded in her chest and wrapped my fingers around its grip.

Sister Friede only looked at me with her amethyst eyes.

I pulled the dagger out.

"Aghhhhh!"

Sister Friede screamed in pain as blood splattered from her chest and tears ran down her face.

She looked pitiful, but right now, I couldn’t bring myself to feel that sort of emotion.

I rested my left hand on her right shoulder and pointed the sharp tip of the dagger toward the center of her chest again.

I looked into her eyes.

"Don’t worry. I’ll make it painless."

She nodded.

"Thank—"

Stab.

I drove the dagger straight into her chest before she could finish speaking.

Then the sound of her core cracking reached my ears.

Cracks began spreading across her body as though she were made of glass or porcelain.

Starting from her feet, her body slowly broke apart and turned to ash.

I remained silent as she gradually crumbled away.

Just before Sister Friede’s body completely disappeared, something suddenly changed.

Her amethyst eyes widened.

The calm expression she had maintained even while dying vanished, replaced by something I hadn’t seen from her before.

Shock.

Her lips parted slightly, and for a moment, she seemed to be staring at something that wasn’t there.

Then her trembling eyes turned toward me.

"Child..." Her voice came out weaker than before. "Child, my God has sent me a prophecy... your prophecy."

I raised an eyebrow.

"A prophecy?"

A prophecy about me?

Why would a God that most likely didn’t even exist send Sister Friede a prophecy about me?

And why now, right before she disappeared?

Sister Friede continued staring at me, and strangely, there was pity in her eyes.

"You will suffer greatly in the future," she said. "You will lose those you love, and you will lose things precious to you. You will fall many times, and you will experience pain greater than what you have known."

My expression slowly became serious.

"But do not despair, child. For every pain carries meaning. Every time you fall, you must rise again. Learn from your suffering, and let it shape you rather than destroy you."

I stared at her.

"Suffering? What’s that supposed to—"

Before I could finish asking my question, the remaining parts of Sister Friede’s body crumbled apart.

Her amethyst eyes disappeared first.

Then her face.

Her entire body broke into ash before scattering through the air, leaving nothing behind.

"Ah..."

I stood there awkwardly with my mouth still slightly open.

She seriously disappeared before explaining anything.

Before I could properly think about her words, several familiar notifications appeared before my eyes.

[You have slain a Greater Common Monster, Elfriede of Sidegard.]

My eyes widened slightly.

Finally.

After being killed four times, spending months training, having my arm cut off, getting stabbed through the stomach, and being burned alive by Black Flame...

I had finally killed her.

More notifications immediately followed.

[Congratulations, Yves. You have accumulated enough Soul Fragments to advance to the next subrank.]

[Congratulations, Yves. You have accumulated enough Story Fragments to advance to the next Story Rank.]

I barely had enough time to process the messages before I felt something shift inside me.

[You have advanced to the next subrank.]

[You have advanced to the next Story Rank.]

And just like that, I had finally advanced my Story.

A smile slowly appeared on my face.

All the suffering I’d gone through in this damned place had actually been worth it.

Then another notification appeared.

[Congratulations. You have received a new Gift.]

My smile immediately widened.

"Finally!"

This was what I had been waiting for.

It had taken far longer than I would’ve liked, but I had finally received another Gift.

Considering how useful my existing abilities had been, I could only hope this one was something equally powerful.

Actually, after everything I had just gone through, it better be something good.

I was about to open the System and check what kind of Gift I had received when another notification suddenly appeared.

But this one was different.

[’■■■’ is activating its Authority.]

My smile disappeared.

I stared at the message.

"What the hell?"

■■■?

"What’s happening now?"

Before I could even open the System or understand what the notification meant, my surroundings suddenly disappeared.

There was no warning.

No pain.

No feeling of being pulled anywhere.

My vision simply turned completely dark.

"What the—"

Then the darkness disappeared just as quickly as it had come.

My vision returned.

But I was no longer standing inside the church.

I was somewhere else.

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