Skill Hunter -Kill Monsters, Acquire Skills, Ascend to the Highest Rank! Chapter 354 - 354. The Fog

A laugh echoed from all around Ike, sliding into his ears unasked-for. He shuddered and wiped his ear on his shoulder, but it didn't stop the voice.

"You co into a girl's ho, ruin her wall, and then you lead with that? No manners," the voice humd, drifting around Ike.

"What are you? Why are you doing this?" Ike watched the fog, sword in hand. If it wanted them dead, it could have attacked them at any point until now. There was no point revealing its location like this, unless it wanted to negotiate. But what did the voice want to negotiate? It was in full control of this situation.

The only thing he could assu was that it wanted to chat with him for so reason. As little as he was interested in talking with so mysterious being that was being more frustrating than anything else, he also couldn't sense her tier level. That either ant she didn't have one, or she was so powerful he was too weak to sense it. He couldn't afford to be careless with this being, whatever she was. He might not be able to handle her, if it ca to a fight.

The voice chuckled. "The better question is, what are you?"

Ike's hackles instantly raised. He tightened his grip on the sword, on guard. In his other hand, he summoned the King's scepter, ready to absorb the fog at a mont's notice. "What do you an by that?"

"You know what I an. So tell , child. Are you Brightbriar's son?"

He scowled, instantly disgusted. It might be physically true, but he rejected it with every piece of his heart. "Maybe biologically, but no more than that. I'd rather be counted as the other being's son."

"The other being…?"

"Don't play coy. If you know I'm 'Brightbriar's son,' then you know I'm… a fragnt of soone else," Ike finished, taking a mont to figure out how he wanted to word it.

Wisp glanced at him, but said nothing.

"So he does know," the voice murmured to herself. She humd, then added, "But how much does he know?"

"Not much else. Why? Do you know sothing?" Ike lowered his sword, curious. Maybe she wasn't a foe, after all.

"Sothing? No. I know everything, child." A pale hand reached out of the fog and drew it aside, as if drawing aside a curtain. A misty specter of a woman appeared. Pale as bone, gaunt and sickly, she had once been beautiful, but was now too slender to possess beauty. She looked like a corpse, propped upright. Dry white hair, pulled back at the temples, spilled over her shoulders in wisps. Ornate white robes layered upon her body, giving her the only bulk she possessed. Her sunken eyes were clouded with cataracts, as milky white as the cloaked sun overhead. Her fingers crawled at the edges of her sleeves like pale spiders, climbing their way back out of sight.

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For all that, she was misty. There was a softness to her edges, as if she were only half-present. Ike peered at her, squinting a little. That softness, that mingling-ness… it was as if she were made of fog.

No, not 'as if.' She was. This form was nothing more than a condensed clump of fog, given form through so advanced control of the light upon it.

"You aren't here," Ike said at last, not sure whether to be surprised or taken aback.

"I am here. This is rely all that's left of , after the betrayal." Her pale eyes shifted upward, toward the cloaked sky. They t the sun, and flinched away. "It took everything. None of us escaped unscathed."

"The betrayal?" Ike asked, confused. What betrayal?

"You do not yet rember." She stepped out of the fog, walking across the valley.

Ike hesitated, glancing at Wisp and Mag. Wisp widened her eyes like it was obvious and gestured for him to follow. He nodded and hopped to .Whatever this woman had to say, he was curious to hear it.

"No," Ike said.

"So incomplete. You are a being worthy of pity, to rember so little. And yet…" She sighed. Her voice and form drifted, saring across the air as she wandered, lost in thought. Abruptly, her body reford, and she continued. "And yet, more complete than any of them. There may yet be hope. Yes, I think I can be allowed to have hope."

Ike chased after her. She drifted, moving as slowly as a glacier, and yet moved in leaps and bounds, sohow moving at twice his speed without appearing to move at all. "What do you an, betrayal? Who wasn't unscathed? Was it Brightbriar?"

"No, child. Brightbriar was damaged like the rest of us. Perhaps… the most of all of us." She turned to face him. One of her big, pale, thin hands drifted to her chest, pressing there. "It broke him. Broke… his heart."

Ike suppressed the urge to vomit. Don't tell …

"Not in that way," she added a mont later, chuckling. "There are many ways a heart can break, child. Love, yes. But family, friendship… these, too, can break a heart. When soone becos your support, an absolute, a being you rely upon instinctively, whom you depend upon without thought… who must be there, or else you shatter; then, child, they have beco soone who can break your heart."

Ike glanced at Wisp. She wasn't quite at that level, but if soone killed her, or even hurt her badly, he wouldn't be able to hold back. He'd be mad with rage, in fact. He didn't love her. She was more like a little sister to him than anything. But nonetheless, he could understand what the fog woman ant when he looked at her.

Wisp noticed his gaze and made a face. "Gross."

He shoved her head away. "Not like that."

"Yeah, yeah. I know."

"We were all broken, but you were the most broken of all. But then… that's to be expected. You were what they wanted the most to shatter." The fog woman ca to a halt, so abruptly Ike had to jump to a stop. She turned back. Her sunken eyes gazed at him, and for a mont, he saw her as she had once been: an epheral beauty with pearlescent skin, draped in veils, her white hair as soft as fresh-fallen snow upon her shoulders.

He shook his head, and the old her returned, broken and hollowed. Yet, those whitened eyes crinkled in a smile. She reached out, tracing a hand over his jaw.

"You can rember, can't you? Sowhere in there, you still recall … O' Pillar of the World."