Bro, I'm not an Undead!

"What?" Skullius said with a duck face upon his generic face.

Dezrael had said something that he understood this time.

This at least told Skullius that he was using a language that was classified within the scope of [Greater Communication]'s range.

Free him?!

Flesh no!

"Free me."

Dezrael spoke with a light voice that caused a shiver to race through Skullius' body.

'How am I even supposed to do that?' Skullius thought as he was too scared to voice his opinion. What if he made this guy mad and got fleshed up?

"I sense it from you. You have it. You have grasped the essence of manipulating this darkness. It's what makes up this yoke that binds me. Come here and cleave it away," Dezrael said, his eyes flashing with mana intimidatingly.

A burst of hot air and mana brushed against Skullius making him grimace.

Just that little display of power caused him to lose some Health Points!

'Damn it! What do I do? This guy really expects me to set him free. I—"

"Essu'l parik dos tep't, Ka'ril."

A thunderous power acted upon Skullius from Dezrael's words, making the Discount Human's body jerk forward unwillingly!

'Again?' Skullius thought in frustration.

His body moved while his hands took up the Baleful Gale Reaper.

As he moved closer to Dezrael, Skullius felt the burning sensation of power worsen by a grand degree even though he had moved a few steps closer than the meter's worth of distance that had existed between him and the Arch Luminant before.

The majority of this power was mana in a vastly condensed form and Skullius noticed that it wasn't just coming from Dezrael, it was also coming from the gold and crimson armour he wore!

There was a distinctive difference in the mana that flowed from Dezrael's body and the mana that flowed from the armour which Skullius was barely able to notice with his [Basic Mana Manipulation].

The Discount Human stood merely inches away from Dezrael, noticing his imposing presence from up close. He could barely keep his eyes open as the power radiating from this monster kept blasting onto him like waves and depleting his health.

To make matters worse, his mana supply from the arrow finally stopped from flowing in!

'NONONONONO! Come on! Not again! I was ju—'

[The Doom Factor 'Disowned' has caught up]

[Assessing target's situation...]

[You have failed to grab a hold of—

"Oh no you don't! I'm not dy- getting erased today! And stop cutting me off!" Skullius boomed, making Dezrael raise a brow in confusion. He hadn't missed the arrow sticking out of Skullius' belly, mana leaking from it into the fake human's body until just now. However, he wasn't interested in the story behind it.

[Basic Mana Manipulation]!

Skullius in a last ditch attempt to save himself with all the knowledge that he had so far about this Doom Factor, used the only mana manipulation skill he had.

Since mana was abundant right here, he would just absorb it and try to feed it to his core continuously!

The mana that hummed from Dezrael was drawn to Skill when it reached a few inches from his body, as was the current reach of the skill in terms of drawing mana in the surroundings.

Skullius felt mana trickle into his body and directed it to his core rapidly, feeling the task to be vastly different from when he was using his own mana to coat weapons.

Since the activation of the skill did not require physicals gesture of any kind, Skullius wasn't prohibited by the influence of Dezrael's words which were unhindered by his actions.

He found his hands rising as he wielded the sword, preparing to start hacking at the yoke!

"What good will absorbing my mana do for you, especially with that pathetic grasp you have over drawing it?" Dezrael sneered.

Skullius didn't render him an answer.

The Arch Luminant didn't much care for it, going on to command Skullius to accomplish the duty he had assigned.

"Use your grasp over this darkness to cover your sword and remove this yoke from me."

Skullius gnashed his teeth.

He was already sweating as the pressure of his mind doing one thing while his body did something else was too much for him.

His body mimicked the heaviness of exhaustion and it made things much worse.

To top it all off, Dezrael wanted him to focus on gathering [Evil Darkness] onto his sword to destroy the yoke!

'Just my luck! We were fine just some minutes ago! What's with this?!' Skullius thought frustratedly.

Could he do these three tasks without crippling his mind?

There was no choice. He had to try.

On the bright side, the notifications for Doom Factor 1 had stopped coming in which probably meant that he was in the clear for now.

'If only I'd thought of this back then. Did changing into a Discount Human turn me into that much of an idiot? VOW bro even told me that [Mana Sense] would be the key to helping me with Doom Factor 1!' Skullius agonised. 'Or maybe it's better that I didn't think of it back then. I wouldn't have been able to hitch a free ride until now.'

Without further delay, Skullius dedicated a portion of his mind to drawing the darkness around and wrapping it around his sword.

Surprisingly, it wasn't as strenuous as it had been before [Evil Darkness] was upgraded to rank D.

A layer of darkness covered the Baleful Gale Reaper, giving it a beautiful inverted colour design like a black and soft grey x-ray.

Dezrael watched with careful eyes as Skullius did his thing.

This wasn't the first time he had seen this. Three challengers had once passed by here, carrying the power to wield this darkness and for some, to wield a strange light.

He had killed the first two as even though he was bound, he had powers that were free from Fulgardt's seal, such as his speech.

When the third came, he decided to find out if he could use their ability to grasp onto the strange darkness around him to destroy the yoke which held a similar power.

Skullius struck down with his sword onto the yoke and felt it barely scratch the hard surface of the yoke!

'Gah!'

A slight mark had been created from a full power slash from Skullius!

Not that his full strength was anything impressive.

'It barely did anything.'

As Skullius looked intently at the yoke, he only now discovered that there were marks of damage on it.

Some were scratches like his own while others were deep gashes, with the deepest one running through a quarter of the thick yoke!

"It's not working. If I keep this up, it will take years to destroy this thing," Skullius said as he looked at Dezrael, his hands already rising for another try, void of his control.

"I know. You will slave away, hacking this yoke until it breaks for as long as it takes," Dezrael replied with a tranquil malignance noticeable in his voice.

"What?!"

'This sockethole was really going to make him do this for that long?'

He'd die or turn into a madman midway because of the Doom Factors!

Once more, Skullius brought the darkness covered blade down at the yoke which felt like it was made of wood!

Another scratch appeared, looking like it would disappear from the pile of black at any moment.

It was discouraging. It was infuriating.

Even though Skullius didn't want to be doing this at all, he had hoped it would be a fast process at least still.

This couldn't go on.

'Right! What if I...' Skullius thought as he recalled that he had a new weapon. The sudden encounter with a creature this powerful had caused him to forget that he had this.

[Pseudo Evil Veneration]!

He just had to say something with evil intent, right?

But what if it didn't work and Dezrael heard him say something obscene against him?

Well, he could just whisper it?

Skullius opened his mouth, focusing on the face that he was really hating on right now and...

"Eat yourself."

"..."

Dezrael heard Skullius' words and couldn't quite understand what this weakling was trying to do.

'Eat myself?'

"Turn inside out."

"..."

'Gah! It's not working! I knew it wasn't going to be something so simple! There's probably something else I need!'

Dezrael ignored Skullius' words, thinking of them as childish mumblings.

Skullius sighed as his body continued to work hard.

With time passing by, his body continued to feel heavy and his mind felt like it was assaulted by thunderstorms. His snarky comments lessened as his focus was pulled in by the work he was forced to do to keep his existence.

Suddenly, a refreshing feeling enveloped him, bringing his declining health back up again.

Skullius was puzzled. He looked at Dezrael and found the Arch-Luminant to be donning a nonchalant expression.

"I can't have you die on me before you free me. There will be plenty of time to die afterwards," Dezrael said.

He wouldn't let Skullius die until he was set free, unlike what he did with the other challenger who died of extreme exhaustion. He hadn't bothered to continue healing him as it hadn't been that long since he had been trapped at the time.

He had been spunky and hopeful, thinking that there was a better option instead of this agonisingly slow method of having the incompetent bastard hack at the yoke.

But now, he had learnt patience.

Dezrael had healed Skullius, but the Discount Human couldn't feel more depressed.

It was already astonishing that someone with his enormous amount of raging mana that was once again beginning to scrape off Skullius' health couldn't break free from this.

Where did all this mana even come from?

A few minutes passed with Skullius doing the arduous task he had been granted.

It was extremely boring and tiring, especially with the add-ons of his other tasks. Since it had come to this, he thought that he might as well strike up a conversation.

Sila couldn't communicate what with all that rambling about tomatoes, whatever those things were, but Dezrael seemed sane enough.

Skullius couldn't help but wonder.

Was he using the mana just to keep his mind intact?

"So, Wing bro. How did you end up here? Were you like, fleshed up and captured by Fulgardt?" Skullius asked.

"I WAS NOT CAPTURED! WATCH YOUR MOUTH, YOU FILTH!"

An unsightly expression smeared itself on Dezrael's once regal face, his mana bursting in a frightful manner and beating against Skullius' body which flew a distance away!

Skullius rolled for a moment, before coming to a stop.

He then stood up hurriedly, shocked at the sudden outburst and the ugly expression on Dezrael's face that caused him to take a few steps back with a drop of sweat running down his face.

"Well... damn."