Well shit.

I actually died.

I don't know whether to be impressed that he'd managed to kill me or angry at myself for letting it happen.

It wasn't as if it was a scenario that had never crossed my mind. In fact, I had expected Arnaud to try and kill me. It was an event that I had planned for but not well enough. I just hadn't expected him to be able to find me so quickly.

Nor did I expect him to have a weapon of that caliber. Not that it made that much of a difference what weapon killed me. I'd had my brains disintegrated after all.

All it told me was that he was a man of high military standing. A factor I hadn't really considered before pulling the souls. What happens when that person has connections?

Unfortunately, this is what happens when one does not carefully choose their targets. You end up a soul looking at a slushy spray of red and grey that used to be your head. The most annoying part of the whole thing was that I'd felt him in the mountains.

The tracking contained within the mark had been trying to alert me to his presence. Yet, for some reason, I had thought the feeling was part of my powers transferring over.

So I hadn't paid it much mind until it was too late.

Staring at your own body is a very surreal experience, especially when your head is missing. Watching your body be disposed of and all traces of your murder being covered up is equally as surreal.

Though, I had to admit that I was slightly impressed with how meticulous he was with the cleanup.

Nonetheless, that slight admiration couldn't cover up my growing annoyance. I'd been a bit too confident in my abilities.

As he walked out of the apartment, I attempted to grab ahold of him, but my hand slipped right through.

An expected result, but it was no less infuriating.

My attempt at dragging his soul to the fulcrum was also a failure. All I could do was watch him walk away into the snow. I followed him as he carried the remains of my body deep into the forest before assembling some sort of high-tech shovel and cutting through the cold dirt like sand.

Only after he had dug a hole nearly 6 feet deep did he finally put my body in. Once he completed his work, he made his way back to wherever he came from.

For a moment, I was tempted to follow him, but I decided against it.

That feeling that the mark gave had not diminished due to my death. I could find him later once I figured out what exactly I was going to do.

I had much bigger issues to address, one of the most pertinent ones being my apparent lack of powers.

I could not feel any of my abilities.

My death had taken my attention away from that fact, but as time passed, I had started to notice.

At first, I had thought it was simply from the shock of dying, but soon I began to worry as I realized it wasn't.

I attempted everything I could think of to use my powers, but nothing seemed to work. It was only as the feeling of loss began to settle in my chest that my physical body flashed green. The light was so bright that it could be seen through the dirt.

My attention was immediately drawn to it.

In the next instant, a green beam of energy slammed into me.

Nearly all of my powers had been dumped on me at once, and it was the most blissful thing I had ever felt.

The return of my powers sent my mind reeling in pleasure.

It took several minutes to recompose myself after the incident. Which is when I noticed the changes and when I understood what had happened.

The fragment of adaptation had been searching for consciousness in my body. It couldn't be used if it didn't have one, and it was only now that the owner of the fragment-me- had been found that it transferred over.

It was because the fragment affects all aspects of a person that the rest of my powers hadn't immediately returned.

I was glad that this was the case. Because this was probably one of the strangest yet fascinating things to happen. It almost made up for my death.

At that moment that the bullet had shredded my skull, the concept fragment tried to save me. The only way it could do so was by working with my title[He Who Hangs at the Precipe of Annihilation]. This cooperation between my two powers had basically turned me into a Dullahan.

I was no longer a soul floating aimlessly instead. Instead, I was a headless man buried deep in the forests of Switzerland.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

My powers made me into a goddamn Dullahan. Ah well, I can't complain. I don't need to eat, drink, or breathe anymore. I wondered how that worked.

It was an odd feeling being without a head. My sight no longer came from my eyes. My qi had been adapted into a field around me that allowed me to see everything within its range. That range being several kilometers long.

After all, several continents worths of qi, even if divided 10000 fold is still a lot of qi.

The only downsides were that I couldn't see anything outside of that range. Not too much of a downside, if it is even one at all.

Unfortunately, my cancer was still present, but I was much less worried about it. I was alive without a head, for goodness sake. Cancer kind of seems small right now.

I slowly began to check in with the rest of my abilities and was relieved to feel them there until I tried to access the fulcrum and failed.

Continous attempts led to no success until I felt the faintest connection.

Deventus?

That was her presence, without a doubt. I could feel her essence pour out.

It seemed that my death should have terminated my connection to the fulcrum. Her essence was the only thing that was currently keeping it open.

I had to figure out a way to reopen the connection. I wanted to immediately dump my qi into it, but I held off. Underestimating the consequences of things had already bitten me in the ass. I needed to take this slow.

It would be devastating if I messed it up by just randomly pouring energy into it.

From my connection, I could feel that even though she was weakened by keeping the door open, she would survive this endeavor. She could keep it open for potentially weeks. The only issue was making sure that she didn't give up.

"Deventus?" I attempted to send a message through the connection. As the message was sent, the link was destabilized, but then it quickly regained stability.

She had heard me and, I could feel her attempting to communicate back. But I couldn't understand anything being sent over.

It was like a movie being played at high speed. The words were much too fast for me to understand.

I would have to deal with that later once I got out of this grave. I didn't exactly feel like living in here after all. Slowly I pushed some of my leftover qi through my body before leading it out.

Slowly the dirt was filled with my qi. Once that was accomplished, I ignited it.

BOOM!

The sound was loud, but the effect was minimal.

I had used the same technique that Arnaud had created to escape.

I had never used it in that manner, so my failure at escape was not surprising.

That is when I used my title of [The Great Pretender] to turn into a ghost and float through the dirt.

The drain on me was much greater than I had expected. The act of floating out nearly had me unconscious, but I managed to get out.

Once I climbed my first instinct was to hunt down that man, but I decided against it. I would let him think he succeeded. It would be more fun that way.