?"Darkness," Ning explained, "is far stronger than simply Shadow. Darkness is the power of the shadow, mixed with the vile evil that corrupts all those who use it."
"It was a good thing that it disappeared from this world long ago, but I managed to use it."
Nightblade lay on the ground, reaching for his own shadow. With the sun above him, his shadow was right in front of him, and yet no matter how much he tried to reach for it, he couldn't get access to it.
The Darkness Ning spoke of had completely cut him off from the place he went to when he used his Shadow Movement technique.
Something dark sprung from his own shadow, latching onto his shoulders and arm, pushing him upward. Some of the darkness held him by the chin, pointing it upward until he was looking directly at Ning.
"I am explaining what this is to you," Ning said. "Do you not wish to learn?"
Nightblade grunted. He tried to shake away the tendrils of darkness around him, but he was completely unable to. They bound him so strongly.
"Just… kill me," he said through gritted teeth. "Just kill me and be done with it."
Ning sighed. "No, I take back what I said," he said. "I won't kill you any longer."
Nightblade looked up, hope in his eyes, but suspicion as well. What was this man trying to do?
The tendrils faded away, and Nightblade fell to the ground. He held himself up by his arm and started panting. He hadn't realized he was being strained so badly while strung up by those tendrils.
He had been freed from them. Did that mean he had been freed altogether? He didn't dare hope so, but he still checked anyway.
The shadow opened up and it swallowed him.
The lack of sight, sound, and scent felt so blessed to him right now. If it was possible, he would cry right now.
He looked at Ning through the hazy fog of black, watching him standing alone. Then, he remembered the forest in the distance. He needed to go there and run away.
Nightblade skimmed through the blackness and appeared beneath the shadow of a tree, gasping for air. He had spent too long inside and desperately needed his breath.
"Why are you running?" Ning asked from a treetop.
Nightblade turned his head upward in a near instant and a blade came out of his sleeve that he instinctively threw at Ning on the branch.
Ning clicked the blade away, which hit the tree in the distance, splitting it into two. "Come on now, we both know that is not going to work," he said and jumped down from the trees.
Before he landed, however, Nightblade vanished again. He ran through the shadows, trying to find another opening to resurface. After a while, he appeared again.
He was on the beach. "What?" he couldn't help but cry out in surprise. He went in and ran again, appearing at another part where the trees were. When he came out and caught his breath, he looked around to assess his situation.
Not much further from him, he could see the beach, and past it the ocean. He could see the ocean here too.
"No!" a feeling of dread filled Nightblade. He ran and arrived at a different place. Ning had been standing here for some time now.
"Great!" he spoke as Nightblade came out. "I had hoped you would be coming out soon."
"You bastard!" Nightblade shouted. "What did you do? Where did you bring me?"
Before he could take 2 steps, however, he fell to his knees, a pressure pushing him down to a point where he couldn't even stand anymore. He felt the bones in his body creak, the muscles tense as if they were going to be torn.
He felt lightheaded as if no blood was reaching his brain.
There were no dark tendrils around him at all this time around. How was he down? Why was he down?
"It's weird, is it not?" Ning asked. "The sudden change in gravity. It makes you feel so weak, like a newborn. Now imagine this, but you're near a black hole. That was something."
Ning remembered the one black hole he had seen in the Yolena galaxy. He looked down at Nightblade. "Ah right, you wouldn't know what a black hole is."
He stopped the technique and the force of gravity disappeared.
Nightblade stepped back, panting.
"Are you ready to talk now?" Ning asked.
"I will, I will," Nightblade said quickly. "It was Bass Thranger who hired me. He was the one who paid me to—"
"I know who paid you to kill me," Ning said. "What I want to know is why did you accept."
The man looked up, not understanding what he was talking about. "It…" he slowly thought about it. "It was good money."
"That it was, I'm sure," Ning said. "Then let us go to another question. Had I been not alone in the room and was instead sleeping there with my student, what would you have done?"
"I—"
"Don't bother lying. I'll know right away," Ning said. "If you lie, I will kill you right here, right now. Maybe that will be mercy, but I'll give it to you."
"I-I'll speak the truth," Nightblade said.
"Good, then I'll leave you alive," Ning said. "Now say it. What would you have done?"
"I…" he gulped a little, realizing what he was going to say. "I would've killed him. I would kill anyone who got in my way."
"But you weren't paid to kill them," Ning said.
"I have to. To cover for me," the man said.
"And how many such innocents have you killed, not counting the men you were paid to kill," Ning asked.
Nightblade didn't know. He didn't keep track.
"I—"
"83," Ning said. "You killed 83 innocent men and women. 105, if you count your victim as well. Think about it."
After saying that, Ning disappeared.
He would be gone from this island forever, condemning Nightblade to live in isolation from the world for weeks without any food to eat or shelter to live in.
It would be a short life for Nightblade, for he would take his own life to spare himself the agony of a slow death.
