The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 3 (38 page)

People into demons? Is he talking about NPCs or actual people like Valerie? How is it even possible to turn someone into a demon just by having them play a game?
Darwin’s doubt as to whether or not that was even possible gave him a momentary reprieve from the self-hatred that Charles was injecting into him with every word.
No, it doesn’t matter why.
“No matter what the reason, he has to die.” His thoughts switched from an inner monologue to an open declaration as his face continued to redden. “He has to die.” Darwin reassured himself one last time as Mclean, Daniel, Kitchens and the others walked behind him in his march towards the portal.

“Do you think he even knows we’re here?” Mclean asked Daniel, not even bothering to talk about Darwin in hushed tones. “I mean, if I were to pants him, would he even react?”

“Can you actually pants something with a bathrobe?” Minx tilted her head and looked as if she were trying to find the boxers.

“No, I mean his boxers underneath the bathrobe,” Mclean specified.

You have to kill me no matter what? So harsh. So violent. Even if you agree with me, you can’t alter the action you must take? I’d try to argue with that thinking, but, by your own mouth, you’ve admitted that logic is pointless. I expected as much. I already knew you were nothing more than a mindless beast. I already understood that your kind can’t change. They’re all built from the same program. Immortal, yes, but flawed and capable of terrible variance. It’s an insult that you and Stephanie would ever want to press that immovable script onto a superior race. You should have just stuck to doing what you were so good at: protecting humans from monsters.

Kitchens scowled at Darwin then glanced back at Mclean. “There will be no taking off of his boxers with my daughter around!”

“Relax, Pops,” Minx assured him. “I already checked, and he’s not wearing any boxers for her to pull down.” From the grin on her face, it was hard to tell if she didn’t know how upset that would make Kitchens.

“Wait, where is he heading? That boss was already cleared,” Daniels asked as Darwin trudged determinately towards the room that once housed the great dragon of Mt. Lawlheima.

I guess I really am an unchanging beast bred with one purpose.
Darwin continued his march towards his goal when he caught sight of an apparition. It was the king, the one who had first welcomed him to Tiqpa, standing in front of him and fidgeting with his crown.

“The problem is gone now, isn’t it? My champion killed them, and the problem is gone. He just killed them all, and it just went away . . . All you have to do is kill . . .” the odd shade of the king said as Darwin passed him.

“How would you know? Did he show you!” Kitchens fumed louder than an opera singer at the climax of a performance. “Did that pervert take off his robe in front of you?”

“Not yet, Dad, but here’s hoping,” Minx said, continuing to laugh to herself from atop Fuzzy Wuzzy.

Those glazed eyes. I know that look from Eve. What did you see, Darwin? What appeared?

Before Darwin could even guess what he had seen, the image he had passed was once more in front of him, still playing with his crown.

The apparition spoke again: “Am I really a monster? Does doing what is necessary count as an atrocity? Or is it the fact that I took pleasure in doing it that makes me a monster?”. Darwin’s head followed the image as his feet slowed and he listened to what it said. Darwin’s companions were behind him, those who had been with him almost every step of the way, but this man in front of him felt more like kin than any of them--and the king’s questions felt like they were coming from Darwin himself than the man in front of him.

“Qasin . . .” Darwin mouthed as the apparition vanished as quickly as it had appeared, never second-guessing how he knew the name.

Are you having a vision? I thought those were impossible for males. I thought only females had them and only when they came of age and manifested their demonic callousness.

No sooner had Charles asked than Qasin once more appeared in his ghostly form. His hand was no longer adjusting his crown but grasping his sword. Darwin perplexedly stared at the king.

“I will kill them and spare my people,” Qasin said. “I will murder them so that my men will never have to die for petty politics again. If I kill enough of them, my kingdom will never see its armies march to their deaths again.” The king sounded more sure of himself this time, his voice now steady like steel drawn before a fight.

“What’s he looking at now?” Daniel asked in a tone that made one think this was a spectator event, and he didn’t actually expect an answer.

“It feels good to kill,” the ghost-like apparition said, his voice wavering again as he stared at his sword hilt. “It feels so good.”

Darwin found himself mouthing the second line out loud as Qasin said it before the ghost vanished again.

You know, those visions opened my eyes too. They showed me what kind of monsters you are, what kind of evil lurks inside your blood. They showed me why I can never let Stephanie win, why I can never let humanity turn into your kind.

Qasin appeared again, this time his knuckles noticeably whiter from gripping his sword too tightly. “This is why killing has always been the answer. The blade doesn’t lie; it tells only one truth.”

The rushed words didn’t make sense. The context was lost on Darwin, but the truth seemed to resonate within his heart as he listened to Qasin. The king’s grip on his sword loosened, and he stared right through Darwin. “Let him think he is right. Our champion will destroy him,” he said before vanishing again.

I was his champion, and it may have just been proclaimed by him without my consent, but I never denied the title either as he threw me to the battlefield. And I did do it . . . through violence. I saved the Humans of that land from the White-Wings, from certain destruction. It may have only been picking the winner and loser, but it was still a choice, an action that saved them.
Darwin started to feel more confident in himself as he felt the king’s words echoing through him.

After all, it was those visions that broke my sweet Lilith. Those visions that tricked her into killing her best friend, twisting her into depression. It was those visions that made her into what she is today, and you want to take part in pushing that fate upon all mankind?

As Darwin nearly finished his march, he came across another vision of Qasin, this time standing right at the entrance to the stairway, blocking his path. “When a problem rears its head, Darwin will slay it. That’s how great men solve their problems. They eradicate them.” Qasin unsheathed his sword and took off his crown.

As Darwin stood in front of the man, not able to move around him, the king extended his blade and crown until Darwin grabbed them. As Darwin instinctively put the crown on his head, his eyes met the king’s again, and he found himself speaking in sync with Qasin as he said one more line before vanishing: “The blade doesn’t lie; it tells only one truth.”

“Uhh . . . Did you guys just see him randomly get a crown and a sword?” Daniel asked.

“Yeah, they just kind of appeared out of nowhere. Is that even possible? Did he have them in his inventory this whole time?” Kitchens said with a shrug.

It seems it was more than just a vision that has occupied your attention and distracted you from your supposed goal of killing me. Let’s hope that, now that you have your pretty trinkets, you will finally do what you always do: try to kill someone. I don’t think we need to establish again that that’s all you abominations are good for. Come on now. I’m waiting for you.

Darwin needed no more encouragement as he sprinted down the stairs that lead to the portal room.

That’s a good boy, Darwin, but we can’t have uninvited guests, now can we? After all, I’m still trying to keep my identity a secret.

Darwin barely heard the shocked voices behind him. He could make out Daniel’s muffled complaints as he likely yelled, “What the heck? Where did this wall come from?”

So he’s going to make it a one-on-one? Figures. They always make you build up a great team, get comfortable with a combination, and then separate you from them just before a boss fight,
Darwin laughed to himself. His earlier self-doubt had melted away almost instantly when the crown touched his head, and Qasin’s sword entered his hands. He gripped the blade tighter, almost chuckling at the name: Steel Clemency.
Is it implying that I’m forgiving the people I kill, or forgiving myself for killing them? It doesn’t matter though.
“Come, my steel brother. It seems our journey has yet to end.” He smiled as he spoke lovingly to his new sword.

“It’s about time you made it here.” Charles was away on a laptop at a desk that was conveniently placed to the side of the portal. “I was beginning to think you’d stood me up on our first big date alone,” he laughed.

“You didn’t have to kill Kass, you know.” Darwin held out his blade, readying it as he faced off against Charles. He cautiously approached the other man, edging closer, inch-by-inch. He wanted to charge in and slash Charles, but something about the whole situation felt off.
He wanted me here. He wanted me alone, and I came. I need to kill him, but what does he have planned?
Darwin’s eyes darted left and right as he tried to find a clue as to what trap Charles had laid.
He didn’t come here unprepared, did he?

“To be fair, Darwin, I didn’t kill her--one of my bodyguards did. The only reason I’m here to wrap up this loose end in person is because your spineless, worthless friends couldn’t do it for me, and I can’t risk someone else doing it and running their mouth where Stephanie can hear.” Charles stood up from his leather swivel chair and extended his hand. As soon as he did, a meter-long, simple wooden stick appeared in it. “Though, honestly, I did enjoy knowing she died. It brought me a little pleasure to think that the traitorous wench bit the bullet.”

“She wasn’t a traitor. She just made a few mistakes,” Darwin replied, trying to defend Kass as he circled to Charles’s left, still approaching only by inches at a time in his slow creep closer.
What is he planning? Why am I here, and how does he plan to defeat me with a stick?

“She made a mistake? No, her father made a mistake by allowing such naivety to exist in a girl over the age of ten. She was incapable of thinking any action through more than one step ahead.” Charles seemed amused by the stick as he twirled it twice, not even bothering to face Darwin as he kept slowly circling to his left. “She might as well have been taught the rules for checkers while everyone else grew up with chess. That is why it’s fitting that, given it was his mistake and not hers, he’ll be the one left alive to suffer her death and mourn the loss of a second woman he loved.”

“Is that how little you think of the people around you?” Darwin continued to edge closer, growing even more unsettled by the complete disregard with which Charles treated his presence.

“Ah, that’s right. You, like most people, use conversational proximity as a primary factor in calculating a person’s worth. If they have enough conversations close enough for you to hear, they are suddenly more important than if you never hear a word out of their mouth.” Charles laughed at Darwin. “Darwin, why don’t you just admit it: You love to kill, and the only reason you don’t butcher those two people playing bestial half-breeds upstairs is because you got to know them, and you don’t like the negative emotions that come with killing someone you know.”

Darwin looked at his blade, Steel Clemency, and then joined in Charles’s laugh. “You’re right, Charles, I do. I don’t just love it: I need it. It’s more than hunger. It’s more than a skill penalty, a festering urge pressing me to act. No, it’s a calling. It’s my purpose, and without purpose, what are we but lost lambs waiting for the day we are slaughtered?”

As Darwin’s voice grew firmer and his laughter rose, Charles’s own jolly chuckling ceased. His expression stiffened like rapidly-freezing ice as he looked at Darwin. “So, that little game won’t work anymore on you. A shame. I was hoping it would progress further, but it seems that she has blessed you with clarity in your madness.”

“‘She’?” Darwin looked at the sword.
It was given by a man, right?
he asked himself as he lunged across the room and struck at Charles. The blow failed, quickly parried with a simple flick of Charles’s stick.

“Yes, ‘she.’ Did you never wonder about the nature of the beast you lived in? Did you think that we could create an artificial intelligence capable of running a million times more functions, thoughts and processes than any human being alive without it ever growing sentient?” Charles had the upper hand. The blow he had used to knock Darwin’s blade aside had left Darwin wide open, but Charles just sat there, continuing his dialogue as if Darwin were nothing more than a gnat he couldn’t be bothered with slapping on a hot day. “Naivety. Just like Kass. Hers through nurture, but yours through nature. All you’re good for is swinging a sword.” Charles blocked another thrust Darwin had aimed at Charles’s exposed left side. He diverted the attack with such indifference that a spectator might have viewed it like watching a grown man parrying the slow, weak attempts of a child at playing knight. Charles’s skill made his statement about Darwin only being good at sword-wielding seem more like mockery than truth.

Darwin did his best to focus on the fight and not let the conversation distract him as he tried a third thrust with his new sword, but that too was easily parried. Charles didn’t even appear to be trying, but as he blocked this third blow, throwing Darwin and his sword to the left, he took his wooden stick and struck the right side of Darwin’s arm lightly. The pain that shot through the point of impact pushed tears out of Darwin’s eyes as he struggled to stop himself from blacking out. “What the--”