Volume 9 Endless Days, The End NO.4: Merciless (1/2)

Volume 9 Endless Days, The End NO.4: Merciless

Translated by Trespasserby, Ever & Raylight (proofread by J Tao; C/E edited by lucathia)

Enemy: Lv. 1 in command, Ri Ji Yan, intends to harm the highest priority master. Eliminate!

Analysis of highest priority master’s condition: sorrow, rage, pain.

Lv. 2 in command has approached the highest priority master. Threat level low. No danger determined.

On standby.

“The higher-ups ordered a microchip installed in Ah Ye’s head to suppress his humanity, leaving behind only a robot that will obediently follow orders. Your little brother places your safety as the highest priority. Even if you command him to stop protecting you, it’d be useless.”

“I didn’t have a way to rescue him. All I could do was persuade those theorists that perhaps their employer would prefer to have a bodyguard with emotions. Also, if eliminating Dark Sun’s humanity negatively affected Dark Sun’s judgment, then what? So an alteration was made to the microchip, to include the option for retrieval in the settings…”

Change in the highest priority master’s mood. Analysis uncertain. Searching for additional examples to make a determination.

“So, give Dark Sun the command! Tell him to stop suppressing his humanity and emotions. Let him recall his memories. Ah Ye will remember you, his gēge, even though a brother like you took so long to get here!”

“Ah Ye.” The highest priority master spoke. “Stop suppressing your emotions. I don’t want to see you like this. You are my dìdi, not a robot bodyguard!”

Command received.

“Understood.”

Initiating action: Cancel emotion suppression setting. Processing…

Warning: Emotion suppression is classified as a core setting of the microchip and is unable to be changed. Unable to follow command.

The highest priority master has issued the command. Following the command has highest priority.

Unable to follow command. Following the command has highest priority. Unable to follow command. Following the command—changing core setting. Attempting to restart.

“Ah Ye!”

***

“Aren?!” I cried out.

“Haven’t seen you in a while, Charles-gē.” Aren jerked his thumb in the direction of a car and said, “Get in, then we’ll talk. Our hacker notified us that his interference has been discovered, so the Church should just be finding out that you’ve escaped now. We’d better leave.”

My thoughts were in complete disarray. I had never guessed that the employer was Aren. To be honest, even if the Sun Emperor himself appeared here, it would have been somewhat less surprising than Aren showing up.

But the most important matter at hand was to flee, so I immediately pulled open the car door and jumped in. Someone was already seated inside.

“Yue Gang?” I once again cried out, “W-Why are you here?”

Yue Gang rolled his eyes and irritably said, “My old man said you’d been kidnapped and they were keeping you out under the sun. And, that you were about to turn into vampire jerky from how dried out you were getting. How could I not come?”

Actually, I had not even seen a glimmer of sunlight. However, these words and what Father Yue had said were truly very similar. Neither of the two “could refuse to come.” They truly are father and son.

I looked toward the driver’s seat. The chauffeur Nitewalker was wearing sunglasses like he always did and he had not even turned his head to look back. Even after Lieder also sat down in the car, he still wordlessly started driving. He was going so fast that it felt like this had to be the world’s fastest racecar, but the car’s outer appearance was clearly an SUV!

During this, I was not sure how I should react, as I was still confused. Out of the corner of my eye, my gaze swept over Yue Gang and I blurted out a completely trivial question.

“You skipped work?”

“To hell with work! I haven’t taken a day off in eight hundred years! I’m just catching up on vacation right now.” Yue Gang unhappily said, “As soon as that jerk Xie Wei heard I was going on vacation, he was so happy that there was a smile on that dead fish face of his. He even said I should take all my time off at once and just come back a year later! He’s really making a mistake! He makes such a mess of things that if I hadn’t always been there to stop him, he would’ve been killed off already! Instead, he’s wishing for me to take time off and never come back. Ungrateful bastard!”

For the first time in recent days, a smile crept onto my face.

Aren looked back and said, “There’s a box of tools beneath the footrest. Check if the Church did anything to Charles-gē.”

I shook my head and said, “You do not need to conduct an inspection. They did not do anything to me.”

Lieder disagreed, saying, “The Church has more vile schemes than you can imagine. What Sin did can’t even be counted as very egregious, since he really didn’t intend to harm you. As long as you drew out X, they’d leave you alone, since you still hold the title of the Elysees family head, after all. If the Church could avoid making another enemy, then it would. But they’d still let Sin use a few small tricks. Like, drugging you after you had fallen asleep and making his move afterwards. I believe he isn’t so upright as to avoid that kind of tactic.”

I looked at him earnestly and said, “Believe me. They did not do anything. Ever since I drank your drug, I have not lost consciousness. They have not tampered with my thoughts.”

Lieder was startled and curiously asked, “You can’t even faint?”

“I cannot.”

“I don’t know if that’s good or bad.” Lieder frowned and said, “You had better be careful not to use up too much of your energy. Otherwise, I’m afraid that one day if you do collapse from overwork, it’s because you’ll have dropped dead.”

“What do you mean dead?” Yue Gang listened, stunned. Then he forcefully slapped me and scolded, “Haven’t you already been rescued? Are you going to die over nothing? I’m warning you, I used my time off to come save you. If you still dare to die on me, you’re never going to hear the end of it from me!”

If I am already dead, how are you going to never let me hear the end of it? I smiled and said, “Fine. I will not die.”

“I don’t know if death would count as losing consciousness? If you can’t fall unconscious at all, then perhaps…”

Lieder suddenly let out a couple of sentences, but he had not even finished speaking before he fell deep into thought again. His expression was complicated.

… Do not say that even death is impossible. Even hearing it is extremely alarming!

“It shouldn’t be like that.” Fortunately, Lieder refuted it while muttering to himself. “This drug isn’t that strong, so it shouldn’t be able to stop the march of death. If not, then how could those remnants we found have died?”

Hearing that, I sighed in relief. The lifespan of a vampire was already too long. I was absolutely incapable of accepting an outcome like eternal life.

Aren said with regret, “That’s a pity. Otherwise, wouldn’t Charles-gē be unable to die?”

Only once I looked at Aren did I remember the most important issue.

“Aren, did the young master send you?”

Aren glanced back at me and calmly said, “Ah Ye didn’t tell me to come save you. He just phoned me about everything that happened.”

Hearing that, I could not help but feel some regret. In the end, the young master was unable to disobey his instincts?

“When I was done listening, I asked him, ‘You’re not going to save the butler?’ But he said he couldn’t go to save you and that he even had to kill you because you raised a hand against his brother.”

So it truly is impossible after all.

Even though the situation was like this, after that time in the alley and seeing the young master’s tears falling as he wanted me to flee, I felt that even if I really had been killed by him, I would have had no complaints. I would only be concerned that the young master would blame himself, perhaps even to the extent that it would create a permanent rift between him and the master.

Aren continued to speak. “I asked him, ‘If you won’t rescue him, then is it fine if I go?’ He said I wasn’t one of his subordinates, so he couldn’t regulate my actions. If I wanted to go to your rescue, then of course I could.”

I was stunned. I lifted my head to look at Aren.

The corner of his mouth curled up and he said, “I asked him for a pretty big sum of money, then borrowed Melody-jiě, the chauffeur, Bramble-shū, and the others. If they hadn’t helped with the planning, I wouldn’t have even known where to look for you. Ezart originally wanted to come too, but Ah Ye wasn’t doing so well, so all he could do was stay back and look after Ah Ye.”

I quickly inquired further, “What happened to the young master? Why is he unwell?”

“Uh,” Aren stammered a moment, then confessed, “It was my fault. When I borrowed the money and personnel from him, he was quiet for a long time, with his entire face contorted and flushed red like an apple. Finally, he forcefully squeezed out just the word ‘fine.’ Scared me to death! I was almost about to give up and say that he didn’t have to lend them to me. But if I didn’t have people or money, what would I have used to rescue you, Charles-gē? All I could do was watch him struggle.”

Young Master…

“Charles-gē, Ah Ye didn’t mean to hurt you, and it’s not that he doesn’t believe what you said, he just can’t do anything about it.” Aren looked at me in concern, saying, “He didn’t explain much to me, but I can tell, he really didn’t—”

“I understand.” I interrupted him and emphasized again, “I really understand.”

Aren looked at me for a while and then grinned as he re???positioned himself steadily in his seat, saying in ease, “I’m gonna go laugh at Ah Ye. He said you’d never forgive him, ‘cuz his brother made you lose your family, brought X into this, and even fired a gun at you. After hearing all that, even I started to worry that you might hate Ah Ye. But still, Charles-gē is Charles-gē!”

All I knew was that these were all unrelated to the young master himself. How could I blame someone for things that he had never done? Just then, the car suddenly swerved to the side, and I saw a silver reflection blocking the road, crossing the car’s original path. The object’s outline was very familiar….

Something landed heavily on the hood of the car. Upon such an impact, the car’s back wheels, which had been moving at a high speed, immediately left the ground and almost tipped the car over. However, Nitewalker did something to force the car down, making the back wheels land heavily on the ground.

These sudden movements forced everyone forward uncontrollably, lifting them up from their seats and almost hitting the roof. To avoid crashing into each other, I immediately used my blood ability to keep the two normal human beings and myself in our seats.

“Ezart you jerk!” Aren’s outraged shout sounded from next to me. “Didn’t you say that you’d phone immediately if Ah Ye’s behaving weirdly?”

I stared fixedly at the thing that landed on the hood of the car—or I should say, the person.

A pair of wings came into sight first, flashing with silver light, followed by hair that flashed the same silver-white. At first glance, the person seemed incomparably divine, as if they were an angel, but after looking more closely, one would discover that the pair of wings was actually made of blades stacked together. They were so sharp that one could feel the pain just by looking at them. Those were a pair of wings that could not be touched; they were the wings of slaughter.

The person crouching on the hood of the car lifted his head. He did not have a visor on to cover his expressionless face and dark pupils that were black as the night.

The cold, heartless, Dark Sun.

Young master… no, this is Dark Sun.

He slightly turned his neck to face me. The movement was not natural at all, as if a robot, having calculated the exact angle, executed the action without the smallest deviation. His pitch-black pupils gazed at me directly, as if they had found their prey… No, I was at most a “target.” Predators looked far more spirited than this when they found prey.

“Charles-gē, does Ah Ye look really weird?” Aren swallowed nervously and said, “He looks like… uh, I really don’t know how to describe his condition.”

“Like a robot.”

Aren immediately replied, “Right, that’s exactly it.” But just as he completed his sentence, his expression darkened immediately, and he looked very concerned.

I was concerned as well. The young master had never acted like this in the past, even in his Dark Sun mode. Is the young master right now another step closer to a robot with no human feelings?

Even DSII looked more like a human being than the young master was right now.

Dark Sun jumped off the car neatly, holding a stick in his hand. After waving the stick, a giant silver blade extended from the top, chilling everyone who saw it to the bone.

The Death Scythe.

“Aren.” I called.

“Huh?”

“When Dark Sun comes after me, you and the others must leave. Do not look back, and do not try to stop him. Until this entire thing is over, do not make contact with him.”

Hearing so, Aren immediately turned around, saying in frustration, “But—”

“Believe me!” I interrupted him and said hurriedly, “He is not the Ah Ye you remember anymore. To kill me, Dark Sun will use anyone, so you absolutely cannot play with fire! He will kill you, truly!”

As if to prove my words, Nitewalker suddenly shouted, “Go!”

Everyone’s expressions turned frightened and they hurriedly pushed open the doors as Dark Sun brought the blade down on the center of the car. A loud noise erupted as the Death Scythe split the car in half.