Free Web NovelMatt kept pushing forward, room after room, enemy after enemy, door after door.
After modifying his bow, the challenges had become more manageable, though the Forge Cave was still garbage designed by someone with an overactive imagination and a deep personal hatred for challengers.
But now Matt had options.
When an enemy was fast, he used the spear.
When an enemy was large, he used the bow.
When an enemy had too much armor, he combined mana with blood.
The weapon wasn't perfect. It took Matt quite a while to get used to fighting with a spear.
At first he kept hitting his own legs.
Then he almost cut off his arm.
Then, in one particularly embarrassing room, he lost his balance trying to spin the weapon and ended up flat on his back in front of a three-headed monster.
The creature stared at him.
Matt stared back.
"…You didn't see that."
Then he killed it.
Still, little by little, he improved.
The movements became more natural.
Distance started to make sense.
The spear tip stopped being a danger to his own face.
That was progress.
And in bow mode, the weapon felt increasingly stable. The mana arrows came out with more power, the core responded better, and the switches between spear form and bow form were smoother.
It was useful.
Extremely useful.
Enough that Matt got through entire rooms without taking any lethal wounds.
Normal wounds, yes.
Cuts.
Blows.
Burns.
But nothing like the eighth room.
That was a victory.
A sad victory.
But a victory.
Though lately Matt had started losing count of how many victories he'd racked up.
Not because there were too few.
But because there were too many.
The rooms had all blurred together in his memory. Black stone, different monsters, door at the far end. Black stone, different monsters, door at the far end. Over and over until the number stopped mattering and all that mattered was moving forward.
However, for a while now he had been trying to ignore another problem — one that was becoming harder and harder to dismiss.
A voice.
At first it was just a soft, feminine laugh.
Sometimes it appeared when he was very tired.
Sometimes when he used too much blood.
Sometimes when the weapon cut through something especially tough.
Matt thought it was the ego weapon's voice, but it wasn't.
Then he thought it was the cave.
Then he figured it was some dirty trick of his imagination from being trapped down here so long.
In the end, Matt decided that as long as the voice wasn't trying to kill him, he was going to ignore it.
That strategy lasted a very short time.
"That was incredible," said the voice with a hint of excitement.
Matt stopped in the middle of a room full of monster bodies made of liquid metal and looked up. freёwebnovel.com
Nothing.
Just black walls, a cracked floor, and an open door at the far end.
Matt slowly lowered the bow-spear.
"No, it's not the weapon talking. It's me."
Matt closed his eyes.
"I'm not going to talk to a hallucination."
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"How cruel you are to me."
"You don't exist."
"Why do you keep thinking that?"
"Because it's the truth."
The voice laughed again.
Matt clenched his jaw.
It didn't sound like any voice he'd known before.
It wasn't Iris.
It wasn't Eleonora.
It was softer. It always sounded curious, like someone watching an entertaining show from a comfortable chair.
That was pretty annoying.
In a later room, while Matt drove the spear through the neck of a stone bull creature, the voice spoke again.
"That was a fun fight, Matt."
Matt yanked the spear out with a sharp pull.
The beast fell.
BOOM!
"For you, maybe."
"I am your only audience after all, aren't I?"
Matt went still.
Then he looked at his weapon.
The bow-spear vibrated softly in his hand.
For several seconds he stared at the reddish core.
"Is it you?"
The voice went quiet.
Matt narrowed his eyes.
"If it's you, just wake up already."
Nothing.
Matt raised the weapon in front of his face and the voice let out a laugh, clearer this time.
"I already told you I'm not your ego weapon, Matt."
Matt went still.
The silence of the room grew heavy.
Very heavy.
Matt slowly turned around, switching the weapon to spear mode.
Hmmm!
The double blade extended.
"Who are you?"
No immediate answer.
Matt took a step back, checking the corners, the invisible ceiling, and the shadows behind the columns.
"Come out."
"I can't come out."
"Then be quiet."
"I don't want to."
Matt gritted his teeth.
"Last chance. Who are you?"
The voice seemed to think about it.
"If I had to compare myself to something you already know…"
Matt frowned.
"We know?"
"Yes. I'd be like Iris."
Matt felt his body tense.
The voice continued:
"Because I was born the same way she was. I was born from your mind."
Matt went still.
Then let out a short laugh.
"That can't be."
"And yet it is."
"No."
"Matt—"
"No. You have to be joking. That's impossible."
"It isn't."
"Of course it is."
Matt ran a hand through his white hair.
"I've been locked in a cave for way too long, fighting monsters, drinking disgusting blood and talking to a bow. Obviously you're a hallucination."
The voice sighed.
"I'm not, Matt. I've been asleep inside your mind since you separated from Iris."
The room went silent.
Matt looked at the nearest wall.
"That's impossible."
"It isn't, because I'm here."
Matt punched the wall.
BAM!
The stone didn't give, but his hand did. The skin split and blood appeared between his knuckles.
"It's impossible."
The voice didn't respond right away.
Matt breathed hard.
"There's no way any trace of that plague is left inside my mind."
The word came out with hatred.
"The spell worked."
"It did," answered the voice. "But remember what you chose during the separation."
Matt gritted his teeth.
"I separated from Iris."
"But you chose to keep part of her vampire powers."
Matt didn't answer.
"You kept the regeneration, her magic, and the ability to fly."
"Be quiet."
"It was an intelligent decision."
"Shut up."
"If you had abandoned everything, you would have been left defenseless against the queen."
Matt turned his head slowly.
The voice continued:
"Worse still. You probably would have been left as a hollow shell with no trace of royal blood."
Matt gripped the weapon so hard his fingers ached.
"But by keeping that blood, you made the queen hesitate. Because even if you're not Iris, you still carry something she recognizes as hers. That's why she didn't kill you."
"Silence."
"That's why she calls you daughter."
Matt's eyes snapped open.
Red.
Blazing.
Furious.
"I told you to shut up."
The voice went quiet.
Just for a second.
Then it laughed softly.
"I love that shy side of you."
Matt blinked.
"Shy?"
"Yes."
"Are you out of your mind?"
"No. And if I were to give you some advice, you could stand to be calmer sometimes. Reacting like this only makes—"
Matt moved the spear.
Fast.
Too fast.
The sharpened tip aimed at his own throat.
He didn't hesitate.
It wasn't a gesture to frighten her.
It was a direct movement.
The blade was about to go through his neck.
Then his left hand moved on its own.
Clack!
It grabbed the shaft of the spear and stopped the blow at the last instant.
The tip stopped a few centimeters from his skin.
Matt went completely still.
His breathing stopped.
That hadn't been a reflex.
He knew it immediately.
That movement hadn't been his.
His left hand was trembling, gripping the spear tight.
Matt looked at his own hand.
Then smiled.
A horrible smile.
"Ah."
The voice spoke more quietly.
"You can relax. I'm not like Iris."
Matt let out a laugh and tried to push the spear toward his throat again.
His left hand resisted.
Matt gritted his teeth.
"Not like Iris?"
The voice didn't respond.
Matt pushed harder.
His left hand trembled.
"Then explain to me why you just took control of my body without permission."
Silence.
Matt laughed.
"That's what I thought."
The voice took several seconds to speak.
"I don't want to die."
Matt stopped pushing slightly.
His eyes narrowed.
"Don't be dramatic."
"Matt."
"A wound like that won't kill us."
"That's a lie."
Matt smiled again.
"Are you scared?"
The voice went quiet.
Then answered with irritating honesty.
"I don't like the feeling of pain."
Matt blinked.
"What?"
"It's unpleasant."
"What a revelation."
"And I've watched you fight with that weapon for far too long."
The voice turned more serious.
"Do you really think that weapon would give you a clean wound?"
Matt opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
Because she was right.
That irritated him.
A lot.
Then the weapon began to tremble.
Hmmm!
Matt looked down.
The bow-spear vibrated intensely, as if something inside the core was reacting.
It wasn't the voice.
It was the weapon.
The red lines blazed.
The string tensed on its own for an instant.
Then the spear vibrated again.
Matt's eyes went wide.
The voice spoke with a hint of amusement.
"It seems the weapon doesn't agree with this either."
Matt wasn't listening.
His attention was on the weapon.
On the trembling.
On the response.
On that familiar sensation.
An ego weapon didn't wake up all at once.
First it responded.
Then it reacted.
Then it moved according to the user's will.
Later, it even started to manifest a voice.
And when the challenger defeated the final boss…
The ego weapon unlocked its complete form.
Matt felt something inside him ignite.
"It's waking up…"
The voice went quiet.
Matt slowly lowered the spear.
His left hand stopped resisting.
The weapon vibrated again, softer now, like it was breathing.
Matt held it with both hands.
Then, without overthinking it, he held it against his chest and closed his eyes.
A tear ran down his cheek.
'Almost there.'
Matt thought of his mother, his sister, the graduation he was supposed to attend.
Then he remembered Clara and his other coworkers.
His promise to return.
His fingers closed around the weapon.
"I'm almost out of here."
The voice said nothing.
Not because she had no comments.
She had many.
Too many.
But there was something cruel about telling him the truth at that moment.
So she just watched Matt in silence from the back of his mind.
She had been keeping count from the beginning, because Matt had stopped. Sleep cycles first. Then rooms. Then rest areas as reference points when everything else blurred together.
At the start he moved slowly. One room a day, sometimes less.
After the bow-spear, four or more.
The result was not a pleasant one.
Eleven months.
More than twelve hundred rooms.
