[1% LIFESTEAL] Chapter 164 - Shifting

I’ve peered into her mind. She has the potential to inherit my will.

Silver Heart’s final words echoed through Freddy’s mind as he stared at the death-affinity shard in his hand. It was a shade of black that was slightly tinted green. The shard itself was but an unassuming crystal with a ragged surface and potent, pure aura within. 

She has the potential to inherit my will.

Those words were like a virus that had infected his mind. And as he found himself getting lost within the sickly green taint of the blackness of death, Sophia’s voice finally reached him. “Hello? You there? Wakey wakey.” 

“Huh?” He raised his head to look at her. 

“Don’t ‘huh’ me you lunatic. You dramatically proclaimed you had to tell me something then started staring into the ground.” She looked at him askance. “Are you trying to seem cool?”

Freddy chuckled and put the death-affinity shard away. “No. I was just distracted by a stray thought.”

“So… You were saying…?”

“Oh. Right.” Freddy leaned back. “Remember how I told you I was selling my organs for insane amounts of money?”

“Ah, crap,” she sighed and slumped into the cushions. “You’re gonna rope me into your scheme, aren’t you?”

“I can keep doing it myself if you really don’t want to help,” Freddy said with some irritation. “But it would go a lot faster with you.”

“Sure. I’ll do it.” She grinned devilishly. “If you give me 80%.”

“I’ll give you 50% and even that’s more money than you’ll know what to do with.”

She paused for a moment. “Out of curiosity… How much were you earning exactly?”

“Let me see… I used to sell a full set of organs for about 50 million dollars.”

“F… fifty!? Wow. That’s a lot of money.”

“I could probably sell it for double that now, to be honest.”

Sophia popped upright. “So when do we get started?” 

He chuckled and shook his head. “I’ll have to find a way to contact the adjudicator first and make a deal with him. For today I’d prefer to just relax.”

“Booo. You can’t wave that kind of cash around and then do this!” 

He raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m surprised you’d be so tempted by the lure of cash. Didn’t you grow up in a communist cult?”

She threw a cushion at him. “For the last time, we weren’t communists!” 

Freddy defended himself from the incoming projectile and then raised an eyebrow. “What’s with that reaction? You have something against communism? You know, it’s actually based on some pretty compelling—”

She simply rolled her eyes at him, grabbed the BC remote, and turned it on.  

Freddy yelped jumped quite violently at the sound of the BC suddenly turning on, nearly hard enough to leap off the couch. 

“Jeez…” Sophia said. “You okay?”

With his heart beating out of his chest, he settled back down. “Yeah. Sorry. That just caught me off guard a little…”

Sophia eyed him with a sad look. 

He chuckled and waved it off. “Don’t worry. I’m fine,” he said and joined her in watching a cheesy crime drama. For a while, they just remained in silence. The whole time, Freddy appeared tense, as if waiting for something odd to appear on the screen. 

“We don’t have to watch it if you’re uncomfortable,” Sophia said. 

“I told you I’m fine,” he said with a forced chuckle. “It’s gonna take me a while, but I have to get used to it eventually.”

“Mmh…” she half-heartedly groaned in acknowledgement and then put the remote down. 

They continued watching the show in silence.

“I miss home,” Sophia said suddenly. 

Freddy was about to fire a snarky retort, but he couldn’t muster the snark. “Yeah.” He thought back to that little closet he used to reluctantly call home. A place where he could at least be comfortable with reading without fear that the next page would try to convince him to kill himself. “Me too.”

Eventually, they shut the BC off and headed to go catch some sleep. 

After about an hour of tossing and turning, Freddy finally decided to get back up and walk out into the kitchen. There, he found Sophia sitting at the table. There was only one light on, and it barely illuminated the kitchen part of the combined empty space. Beneath it, she sat pouring herself some vodka into a large glass. She was wearing an oversized white shirt and loose baggy pajama pants. Her hair was tied into a messy bun behind her head.

“Where’d you get the booze?” he asked. 

“I keep some in my storage ring,” she said. Then, she smiled at him. “If you ask nicely, I’d be willing to share.”

“Oh, your highness, would you be so merciful as to bequeath upon me a drop of heavenly dew?”

She rolled her eyes. “Just sit down.” 

“Hold up,” he said as he reached for a cupboard. He opened it and pulled out a jar of honey.

“What’s that for?” she asked. 

“To sweeten the alcohol a bit.”

“Pff. Come on, man up! Put that back on the shelf.”

He eyed her for a long moment then sighed and reluctantly placed it back. “You know there is really no reason to suffer the taste of alcohol. It’s not like we’re gonna get sick if we add some sugar to it.”

She scoffed. “Alcohol would come sweet if it was meant to be that way.” Pouring a glass, she pushed it forward with an exaggerated motion. It didn’t exactly slide across the table as she imagined. Rather, it fell over and spilled vodka all over the place. “That was a lot cooler in my head.” In the end, she just passed him the bottle and he poured himself a shot. Given how big Freddy was, and with respect to his natural resistance to any poisons, which included alcohol, he poured himself a much bigger shot.

“Bottoms up!” Sophia said as he downed the glass.

With some reluctance, Freddy joined her. He couldn’t help but wince as it went down, burning as it coated his throat. And it was a lot of vodka to drink at once. As he finished, he slammed the glass on the table, feeling the inside of his mouth going a little numb as his saliva glands worked extra hard to save the inside of his mouth. As he breathed out, the ethanol vapour ran up his nose, causing his eyes to tear up. “God damn.” 

Then, they poured another shot. And then they downed it again. And again. 

It was genuinely unpleasant. But as it finally started kicking in, he found it going down a little easier with every shot. By the time they were on their third bottle, he was starting to understand. 

Drinking alcohol like this sucked. But that was the point. It was a replacement pain. A distraction. The burn scorched his mind clean of the thoughts dancing around in his head. 

Sophia hiccuped and placed a hand to her chest. Then, she, slurring her words, said, “You know, having access to so much supreme-quality healing makes drinking seem like a little too good of an idea.”

Freddy chuckled. “It sure does.” His speech was mostly intact. He also felt quite drunk, but not enough to make him lose control of his body. “But hey. No brain or liver damage.”

“Do you do any drugs, Freddy?” Sophia suddenly asked. 

Freddy hesitated at that. “Depends…. I smoke. I drink. Do steroids count?” he asked. 

“I meant hard drugs,” she asked seriously. 

“No. I don’t,” he said. “I’ll be honest, I have thought about it. But I’ve seen how quickly they ruin people’s lives.”

“You think you’d have the same problems?” She leaned in. “It wouldn’t damage your health. It would hardly cost you much money.”

“That’s not really why drugs consume people. I mean yeah, that shit makes it way worse. But they… People become obsessed in a way that… throws everything to the wayside. I’d argue that the lack of consequences might make it worse. I might just lose myself and stay high all day every day. Which is why I’d rather not even try.”

“That’s a good answer,” she said, smiling lopsidedly. “But I might not be so prudent about it.”

He snorted. “Don’t. You’ll regret it.”

“Will I…?” she said teasingly. “But what if I really want to?” 

He was about to continue arguing against it, but he felt himself losing the will to argue before he even started. Instead, he just asked, “Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” she said, slumping over the table and sighing deeply. “You know, this place is exactly like all the ‘propaganda’ my ‘cult’ fed me my whole life.” She laughed. “When I first started questioning them, I thought there was no way it could actually be this bad.” Her gaze grew distant. “Sometimes I wonder why I even bothered to run away.”

“You’d have died had you stayed.”

“Yeah. And maybe I prefer that.”

“No you wouldn’t.” He sighed. “You know, there was a moment in that dungeon when I came this close to killing myself. At that time, death felt like it was the only thing that could save me. But having lived, I know that I never really wanted to die. I just wanted to be free of the pain.”

She paused for a long moment. “I see.”

Freddy reached over, grabbing the bottle to pour himself another shot. It was empty. “You have more?” he asked. 

She shook her head.

“Oh well.” He put the bottle back down and looked at her. She was smiling. But it was the kind of playful, cold smile people used to disguise the worst kinds of internal struggles. 

But her smile grew a little more genuine as she met his gaze. “Why are you looking at me like that? Thinking of having your way with me?”

His expression flashed with genuine disgust. “No. God. Don’t say that kind of stuff.”

“And why shouldn’t I?” she said. “Weren’t you talking about how you were down bad? What’s wrong? Scared?”

“You don’t really want this, though. And I don’t want it, either.”

“Who are you to say what I want?” She suddenly turned a little hostile. “What are you gonna say next, that ‘the alcohol is speaking,’” she said mockingly and then burst into laughter. “Do you really think I’m that pathetic?”

“Even if you want it, I still don’t.” 

“And why is that?”

He had to pause to think an answer. “Because I just want us to be friends.”

“And what’s wrong with some benefits?”

“The only benefits I want from you are those your talent can provide.”

“Can’t you put that aside… just for one night?” The genuinety behind those words left him frozen. 

He found his heartrate elevating and his hands trembling slightly. And his little friend was beginning to perk up. Not the time, buddy, he thought. Sighing, he collected himself, and for a brief moment, he actually considered the offer. “A wise man once told me to listen to my moral compass before making reckless decisions. And… maybe I’m not wise enough to know why exactly… but it’s screaming at me right now. I just know it ain’t right. I’m sorry.”

She smiled at him. “It’s fine.” Suddenly, the tense atmosphere vanished and shed sat upright, stretching her arm behind her back. “Well, I should probably head to bed.” She got up and walked past him, tapping him on the shoulder. “It was nice talking to you.”

As she slowly approached the hallway, Freddy had a creeping suspicion. “Wait,” he said. 

She just turned the corner, so as he called, she peeked from behind the wall. “Hmm?”

“Were you testing me or something?” he asked. 

She laughed. Then, she shook her head and rolled her eyes as she turned back around. After a brief pause, she whispered, “No” and then vanished behind the wall.

He slowly turned around and stared longingly at the empty bottle before him. He knew he made the right choice. And he was proud of himself.

Because boy had that been a tempting offer. 

“Ah, fuck,” he muttered to himself. “Don’t go regretting it now, you loser.”

***

The following day, Freddy managed to form a deal with the adjudicator. He didn’t send Bloodshed this time, however. He visited personally and handed over a “letter from Skull.” 

It was likely that the adjudicator already suspected that Freddy was either Skull himself or had close ties with Skull. But at this point, he wouldn’t do anything about it. The man would undoubtedly get far greater rewards from the empire for finding a potential future Overlord than he would get for trying to use force to capture him. And besides, he was still probably earning an insane profit on Freddy’s organs. 

Because the man offered to pay over 130 million dollars per set. Almost three times as much as that bastard from Strata. And not only that, but Freddy managed to effortlessly push it up to 170 million. He thought he could still do more, but he didn’t want to abuse the man's good will too much. 

While she had jokingly showed quite a bit of excitement, Sophia wasn’t nearly as moved by the vast wealth as she pretended to be. And it made sense, he supposed. The values of the cult she grew up in perhaps weren’t literally communist, but they were definitely a little hostile towards imperial capitalism. 

And… well… given that the whole city was still on fire, there was hardly anything to spend that money on. 

As the days continued, the situation in the city gradually started to improve.

Sophia and Freddy kept themselves busy with the organ harvesting, where they started to run into some hard limits. Freddy had already learned that overharvesting “drained” his body of nutrients. His extreme diet ameliorated this a bit, but there was a point at which he simply couldn’t absorb nutrients quickly enough to keep up. Even spamming Adaptive Water Body only helped to a point. 

Still, with Sophia’s help, things did go a lot more smoothly, as expected. They sold nearly 150 sets in just a couple of days, making both of them disgustingly rich. They earned a total of almost 26 billion dollars. But this was where they ran into another limit. 

There was more than enough demand for organs like these. But the market couldn’t keep up with the sudden influx. Rather than pushing it and dropping the price, adjudicator advised “Skull” to tone it down for a while. Just enough for people to prepare their funds for the next wave of goods.

With his newly found wealth, Freddy made the executive decision to give every single remaining employee in all of the companies a massive bonus. It didn’t even cost him that much, only around half a billion dollars divided between everyone. Granted, that was a shit load of money to give away, almost too much, but boy did it have an immediate impact on shutting people up and getting them back to work. 

Then, he invested another immediate 5 billion into covering all the business costs while the local economy was still recovering. Then another 2.86 billion on covering the damage caused by the riots and reversing a bit of the harm done by the real estate collapse. 

Valhalla was also in the process of getting a lot of their people hired in the vacant positions. Yes, it was nepotism for sure, but it was their nepotism so it was good. 

And also there was a critical lack of trustworthy workers available. 

With the tensions quickly deflating, Repentawa started the healing process.

On a rainy morning, Freddy found himself sitting on the living room couch and holding a book. He was chugging vodka straight from the bottle, and gathering the bravery to open the book and start flipping the pages. It was a lot harder than he expected. 

Forcefully, he pulled the first page open. The title page greeted him, and he released a tense breath. “So far so good…”

“What are you doing?”

“Jesus!” he yelped as he jumped, slamming the book shut. He had been so focused that he failed to notice Sophia approaching. 

She was dressed in a tracksuit and a little sweaty from a run, with a hanging around her neck. She peered down and spotted the book. Taking a sip from a thermos, she nervously asked. “Yikes. Is it really that bad?” 

He chuckled. “Nah. Not really. I’m just being a pussy.”

“Don’t call yourself that. Anyway, I’m gonna go take a shower. Feel free to continue, I won’t bother you.”

He nodded at her and returned his gaze to the book. It was easier this time. He opened it and started reading. There was no text trying to fuck with his mind. But every here and there, the paranoia would get the better of him and he’d misread a sentence as something targeted at him. It took a lot of willpower not to close the book at those moments. 

Then, suddenly, he felt a subtle shifting in the air. He ignored it at first as just his mind playing tricks on him, but by the time he realized it wasn’t just his imagination, it had gone away. 

He rushed to his feet and looked around, feeling his heart beat a little faster. “Sophia?” he called. She was still in the shower. 

He scoured his whole apartment, but found nothing of note. The Netherecho was empty, too. 

But he did feel something. 

… Or did he? 

Frankly, whatever that had been, it had been subtle and… strange, yet wholly familiar. 

The fact that he wasn’t confident enough to say that he wasn’t imagining it felt like it set him back on his journey to recovery. Sighing, he sat back on the couch and continued drinking.

As the days continued, Freddy felt his motivation to do anything rapidly dwindle. 

On yet another evening of binging alcohol, Sophia finally spoke up. “Hey. Are we like… gonna do anything these days? I’m kinda getting sick of this.”

“Nah…” he said, pouring himself some whiskey. “I’m on a vacation.”

“Yeah but this isn’t a vacation. Maybe you could go and do something actually fun, rather than just sitting around and drinking all day?”

“What’s the hurry?” he said and then downed another glass. He wiped the few drops that snuck around his lips off his chin and laughed. “You know, I’ve been thinking about it, and I think having so much money and power is taking all the wind out of my sails. I don’t feel like I have to do anything.”

“But you could go an have some actual fun.”

“That… is true, yes. But again, what’s the hurry?”

“Remember when you said that you wouldn’t try hard drugs because you’re scared you’d spend all day being high?” 

“I… Yes, okay, I get that I’m kind of doing that with alcohol now, but!” He pointed a finger at her. “Actually that’s a really good point.”

She snickered and shook her head. “Cmon. Let’s—” 

Suddenly, Freddy felt a strange shifting in the air again. He immediately jumped to his feet and tried to turn to where it was coming from, but it almost felt like it was coming from his left no matter where he turned. It was like a laughter tearing through space, but muted and distorted. He appeared dazed as he kept spinning around, and finally, after a few minutes, it went away. 

“Hello!?” Sophia shouted, grabbing him by the arm. “What the hell was that!?” 

“I…” he tried to speak, but his throat felt too tight. 

“Jesus…” she said, scowling and pinching her brow. “You know what”—she pulled the bottle of whiskey off the table—”I think you’ve had enough.”

“No,” he said. 

“Yeeees,” she retorted, dragging it out. 

“No, I mean, it’s not the alcohol,” he asserted as he turned towards the wall, staring at it as if suspicious of what it would do next. 

“Mhm. Sure.” She touched his arm and burned a spark to undo the inebriation. It worked like a charm, sobering Freddy up in the blink of an eye. “Look at me,” she said. “That damn dungeon you went to had messed you up. And you’re not going to get any better by living like this.”

“No…” he muttered again, but this time, with a lot less confidence. “Sophia, this felt real.”

“And what did you feel?”

“I… I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t… It was… Like… I just felt this… weird shifting in the air. It was a left shifting that thought itself quite funny.” He hesitated as he realized how absurd he sounded. “Okay, you know, words are not a good way to describe it.”

“Freddy… you said that you met the literal concept of Insanity, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think that might have done something to you?”

“It did do something to me,” he said.

Sophia softened her expression as she carefully said, “To me, that sounds like something that would leave a mark.”

“No, it did leave a mark,” he said. “Literally. I was given this vision of… well… Insanity. In all its glory.” He gesticulated with his finger. “And I recognize what I’m feeling. This is real.”

“Maybe it is. But if your best approximation of what you’re feeling is ‘left shifting that thinks it’s funny’ then does it even matter if its real or not?” 

“I… I…”

“Look,” she said, sighing and sitting down. “Just lay off the alcohol for a bit. Please? Just for today. And I won’t force you anywhere tonight, but promise me you’ll go outside tomorrow.”

He deflated a bit. “Okay.”

“It’s a promise! Now go to bed. And can you please do something about the screaming?”

He scowled. “Screaming?”

“Yes. Screaming. You scream while you sleep. I wasn’t going to mention it to not be mean but now I did mention it so please just don’t.” She grin-winced at him. “Okay?”

“Okay. Sure.”

The two of them parted ways and got ready for sleep. 

For Freddy, sleep just wouldn’t come. He lay in bed fully awake and aware of every shadow in the room. An unnerving note hung in the air. Something was wrong. Just past his limen of perception, a wicked force was shifting, like waves of madness washing over the world. 

Then, again, out of nowhere, he felt the bizarre feeling again. He sat up, but this time, rather than panic, he calmed down and listened to it. The way it cackled in the dark, morphing and singing the song of lunacy. But the more he listened to it, the less calm he felt. He didn’t understand it, but he was starting to vaguely recognize what it was. 

“Oh, fuck!” He jumped out of bed and rushed into Sophia’s room. The room was locked when he tried entering, but that barely even slowed him down with his physical mass and strength. 

He broke through the door, finding her sound asleep.

She stirred slightly, and then started screaming at the fight of the frazzled Freddy. “What the hell!?” 

“No time for that!” he said. “Come!” He didn’t wait for her to listen. Rather, he picked her up and slung her over his shoulder as he ran into the hallway of the building and then up onto the roof, where he put her down and frantically looked in every direction, scouting the skies above. 

“What are you doing!?” she asked. 

“Madness, Sophia!” he said. “Something unspeakable is happening. I don’t know what or where, but I can tell you one thing for sure.” 

He stopped and then turned to face her. “If it comes here, we are absolutely fucked.”