Chapter 46: Chapter 46 – I Am Cursed…?

Damn it, Ryuuko! Get a hold of yourself!

I wasn’t the one moving my hands.

At least, not consciously as far as I could tell.

I tried to stop myself, but my hands simply wouldn’t listen. Instead, they kept on moving closer to Antenora’s neck. Inevitably.

And then she stirred.

It was a momentary interruption, but it was enough to wrench my hands away from where they would be ending up.

Antenora hadn’t woken up, but I sure had. Whatever nightmare had taken over me was now gone, for the time being.

I could still feel it nagging me in the back of my head to end Antenora right here, right now. But I pushed it away as best I could.

I slowly extricated myself from the mounted position I’d taken above Antenora. It seemed that during my murderous trance, I’d somehow found myself on top of her.

With my body still trembling from my very recent and unsolicited murderous urges that I had somehow managed to suppress thanks to a timely interruption, I reached out and this time, I placed my hand on Antenora’s shoulder.

I gently shook her awake. It took around half a minute for her to get up and another half a minute to meet me outside of her tent.

Antenora rubbed her eyes to purge the last vestiges of sleepiness from them before frowning. She was staring straight at me.

To be more precise, she was staring straight at my eyes.

“Ryuuko. Did you always have black sclera?”

I was actually physically stunned for a good second there. It wasn’t a result of anything Antenora did, nor was it the result of any intrusive thoughts.

Rather, it was the question she posed to me.

Is this the effect of Corruption...? It can’t be. The rulebook never mentioned anything about that. Besides, I didn’t even have Corruption anymore. Then... is it Darkness? There wasn’t anything about that either...

I opened up my character sheet, checking to see if I had any status ailments. Again, there was nothing out of place.

In that case, there’s one last solution...

I rummaged through the shared inventory of our traveling bag and retrieved a mirror. Sure enough, the sclera of my eyes were black. I focused my gaze on them.

[Complete Analysis]!

I was immediately bombarded by a slew of information, but none that I understood. If I didn’t purge whatever had suddenly flooded into my mind, I would probably go insane, but thanks to the nature of [Complete Analysis], it didn’t take much for me to instantly trash all of the bullshit that I’d just obtained.

I couldn’t even begin to comprehend what kind of horrific information had just tried to entrench itself in my brain, but all I knew was that it was beyond the realm of mortals.

You are reading story I Am the Greatest at novel35.com

Even through that mental shitstorm, there was one thing I managed to glean. It was the only thing that wasn’t enshrouded in some metaphysical language barrier of bullshit or whatever.

It was the name of whatever the hell was afflicting me: [Empyreal Madness].

I looked in the mirror again, and the black had faded from my eyes. I knew it was only temporary.

It was a [Detriment] that transcended the system, and thus, transcended [Rulebook]. In fact, I was pretty sure that this thing was already on me since the start. I simply didn’t have any way of detecting it until I triggered it.

As for what it did, I wasn’t too sure seeing as the information was completely assfucked. However, I did have a few pretty good guesses.

That’d have to wait though, as Antenora was looking at me with a frown of concern.

“I’m not sure what happened to me, but it’s gone now.”

“Perhaps it is a result of that librarian girl’s poison? If we kill her, the effect should end immediately.”

“No, it’s not the poison. It’s... something else. Something from up there.” I glanced upward meaningfully, hoping that she’d take the hint.

Fortunately, she did. Antenora’s eyes widened and then she nodded curtly, her lips forming a thin line of displeasure.

Since I improved the level of [Psychic Citadel], the strongest [Telepathy] effect she could use on me was level 3, which meant that she could read my surface thoughts, sense and share emotions, and communicate with me telepathically.

It occurred to me then that she might’ve been testing my full awareness and understanding of her abilities during our telepathic conversation in the small village of Yasterton when she lied.

Normally, people who didn’t know the exact details of the skill would’ve thought that the ability to read minds came with the ability to speak telepathically too. I mean, I’d done the same and assumed exactly that before I actually read what the skill did in the rulebook.

I really should’ve been using [Rulebook] as much as I could the moment I arrived here and honestly, I don’t know why I haven’t been doing it.

Maybe actually coming to a fantasy world killed the munchkin in me, but it was more likely the fact that I was so enamored with actually having companions.

Even if one of those companions was a bitch, a liar, and now weird as fuck.

I looked at her now as we sat down next to each other at the dimly lit campfire. Now was as good a time as any to put everything on the table and learn the truth behind Antenora’s actions.

Chances are, she’s probably already reading my surface thoughts, so our confrontation was inevitable anyway.

I sneaked a quick look back to the tents. [Eagle Eye] showed me that Lucrezia and Priya were fast asleep. They probably wouldn’t be awake even when the sun rose.

I turned to Antenora who was already looking at me with an expectant gaze. I wasn’t any good at deception or any of that bullshit where you danced around the subject, so there was only one way I could approach this.

But then again, she probably knew that.

“Why did you lie to me, Antenora?”

You can find story with these keywords: I Am the Greatest, Read I Am the Greatest, I Am the Greatest novel, I Am the Greatest book, I Am the Greatest story, I Am the Greatest full, I Am the Greatest Latest Chapter