The Sins

by Pegaz A

  “Wait!” Jonathan’s tongue felt numb as he tried to speak out.

  Grant ignored him, stood up, and walked towards the exit of the room. He thought Jonathan would complain about the sentence.

  “I said wait!” Jonathan called out. “The barrister never asked me if I did it! He only asked if I knew them!”

  Grant, Adam, Cale, the barrister, and the crowd all paused their actions to look at Jonathan.

  The barrister cleared his throat once more and addressed Jonathan one last time.

  “Did you destroy the Anti-Assassin’s planet?”

  Jonathan nodded his head.

  “Yes.”

  DING.

  “But everything I said about the Anti-Assassin Sect’s members is true.” He then continued, narrowly avoiding the uproar that was about to ensue. “I’m a criminal for destroying the planet and I have accepted the fact that I’ve got to take responsibility for my actions, but they’re criminals worse than I am. The members of their sect need to be hunted like the animals they are. If they’re left alone to roam the universe, more people than the amount I killed will suffer at their hands, if they haven’t already.”

  DING.

  “And there you have it.” Jonathan looked at the ceiling and smiled. “I feel relieved after confessing. It’s like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. It’s surprising.”

  DING.

  As soon as he finished speaking, all hell broke loose. Some of the crowd cried out for the Anti-Assassin Sect members to be hunted down. Some people even shouted for the release of Jonathan. Since it wasn’t his courtroom, Adam didn’t silence them without Grant’s permission. Grant was too stunned to utter even a word.

  Cale’s face went pale. A thought had suddenly entered his mind. If he’s able to blow up a planet, could he have destroyed the Adventurers Guild’s public planet to escape the fight?

  Recovering his composure, Grant walked back to his judge’s seat and asked Adam to silence the room again.

  Looking at Jonathan, Grant spoke slowly but calmly.

  “I have to admit, I didn’t expect you to confess to the crime.” He took a deep breath and the crowd hushed down again. “In respect to that, I will have the lawyers look into the crimes of the Anti-Assassin members with a fine-toothed comb. If it turns out that what you’ve said is true, I will personally order the hunt for every member!”

  Jonathan’s eyes gleamed.

  “As for your sentence,” Grant continued, “you will still go to the maximum security prison and you’re still to be labelled as a special class. However, the time of the sentence will increase from one hundred years to your death. As a Rank 9, this is usually eternity.”

  Grant picked up the hammer end of the broken gavel and slammed it down.

  I’m not a Rank 9, though.

  As Grant walked down the steps and headed for the exit again, Adam got his security team to clear the people out of the room. Jonathan looked up at Adam and raised an eyebrow.

  “How long will it take to get to the prison? Where is it anyway?”

  “In respect to you confessing and maybe uprooting a sect full of criminals, I’ll answer your questions.” Adam looked down at Jonathan. “It will take around nineteen days to reach the prison from here. We can’t use the public transport system, so we have to use our private system.

  “As for the second question, it is on a private planet that the Adventurers Guild owns, and they allow only a few people to know its location for security reasons. I’m not one of them as I only deal with the security of the headquarters here.”

  Adam then tasked one of his members to push Jonathan while the rest did crowd control and escorted him towards the private teleport system.

  On the way towards the teleport system, Jonathan’s head was reeling.

  I didn’t know the Adventurers Guild has a private teleport system like the Nobody Sect. Adam gave away that piece of information without realising he’s speaking to an enemy.

  Like Adam said, it took nineteen days to reach the maximum security prison’s location.

  A prison guard pushed Jonathan through the prison doors as he explained how the prison had ten floors. One floor for each rank, and the basement’s tenth floor only had one prisoner until Jonathan’s arrival. He was the second person to have a permanent residence on the B10 floor.

  Jonathan smiled.

  “Lucky me.”

  Chapter 50

  Prison

  As soon as he passed through the doors, the system went off. Opening the system, he found Maximum Workers had levelled up, so he placed all Idlers into Maximum Idlers with a time of 1mo 25d showing.

  The guard pushed him towards a giant, black coloured, metal round door with a round handle in the middle. Another guard walked up a ramp towards the round handle, turned it to the left and then the right in a precise order, then hit a button in the middle of the handle. The guard then ran down the ramp while other guards moved out of the way. That was when Jonathan saw the door opening.

  It was like a bank vault, only much bigger. It was at least 40 feet in diameter and as it swung open, he could see it was at least 10 feet thick. Across the vault door were ten giant metal poles, and when the door was locked, the poles would stab into the walls on both sides.

  All the guards escorted Jonathan inside the vault. To Jonathan’s surprise, it was an elevator.

  “Does this take us to the tenth basement floor?”

  “No,” the guard who pushed him answered. “This only goes to the B9 floor. To get to the B10 floor, you need to pass through a door like the one we passed, but they made that door from a special metal. You then walk down a ramp rather than another elevator. Along the ramp, we have even more guards to make sure you’re not getting out.”

  The elevator moved as they descended further into the earth.

  After a few minutes of silence, the man pushing Jonathan spoke again.

  “They assigned a guard to watch over you. His name is Miles Homolka.” The escort had a peculiar look of interest on his face. “He’s a Rank 9 Level 9 guard who’s worked for the Adventurers Guild even when he was a mortal. My name is Orvo Anttila, a Rank 8 guard who’s worked for the Adventurers Guild for less than a hundred years.”

  “Oh?” Jonathan smiled charmingly. “Nice to meet you, Orvo. My name is Jonathan.”

  DING.

  “Uh…” Jonathan frowned at the iron maiden. “Is there a way to turn the noise off? I’m not in court and I already confessed to my crimes so…”

  “Sorry, there isn’t,” Orvo said with a shrug. “Even if there was a way, I wouldn’t be able to do it without breaking any rules.”

  The rest of the elevator ride switched between either silence or casual chit-chat.

  When the elevator stopped, the doors opened and Jonathan could finally see the prison. There were big metal doors with metal bars all around it that reached the walls. The walls were a light blue colour with monster core powered lamps and other light sources trailing along.

  Orvo pushed Jonathan up to the metal door and hit a button to the side. A guard came out from around the corner and opened the door.

  “This a checkpoint?” Jonathan asked.

  “Yes,” Orvo replied. “Anybody coming or going from here needs to be checked for any weapons, storage bags, runes on their body, or anything else that could help a prisoner escape. Guards are no exception either.”

  “Damn.” Jonathan laughed. “At least the Adventurers Guild takes prisoners seriously.”

  It took over thirty minutes for the guards to go through the checkpoint. No guard would touch Jonathan in his iron maiden. Orvo was standing next to Jonathan and explained.

  “This prison has millions of runes installed all over the place,” he said. “One of the main functions of the prison is to stop Life Power and runes from being activated. However, it can only do so much. A Rank 9 can overpower the prison runes alone. That’s why the prison, iron maiden, and life cuffs boost each other’s powers on the
prisoners.”

  But the prison, iron maiden, and life cuffs put together can’t overpower my nano helmet. It’s no wonder the transcendents use it for their armour.

  Orvo pushed Jonathan again. They went through the entirety of the ninth floor, which was all made from the same light blue coloured material. There was more than one checkpoint along the way, too, and each time they had to be searched.

  It took over three hours before they came to a door similar to the bank vault door on the surface—only this door was much thicker. As it opened, Jonathan could see it was at least 70 feet thick. The door’s surface was a dark copper colour, but the middle of the door was purple.

  “So, what metal is this made from?” Jonathan stared wonder-eyed at the door. “It’s much thicker than the first door, but I can’t tell the difference other than the colour.”

  “They call the material Osmium,” Orvo replied. “It is one of the densest and strongest metals we know of. Even a Rank 9 punching it with everything he has won’t put a dent on it. But that’s only if the door is over 30 feet thick. The Rank 9 could put a small dent on it if it’s between 8 feet and 30 feet thick.”

  Before Jonathan replied, he saw a man walking towards him from the ramp behind the giant door. The man looked to be in his late fifties with thinning black hair. He was clean-shaven, tall, and brawny. Jonathan could see a few scars on his face. This person had been through his share of life and death matches.

  Jonathan looked at him with his Immortal Eye.

  Miles Homolka

  Rank:9

  Level: 9

  Sin: 29

  Miles walked up and stood in front of Jonathan, but looked at Orvo and spoke.

  “Thank you for your service. I’ll take it from here.”

  Orvo nodded.

  Jonathan knew he was leaving so he called out to him. “Thanks for talking with me!”

  He didn’t get a reply, though.

  Miles walked around Jonathan and pushed him down the ramp. Jonathan saw Rank 9 guards standing with their backs to the wall. There was a guard posted every 200 feet, which Jonathan calculated with precision. The ramp was made of the same light blue coloured material as the walls, but there wasn’t as much lighting leading down.

  “So, I’ve heard I’m the second person to gain residence on this floor.” John broke the silence. “Since you’ll be guarding me for eternity, let’s start off on the right foot, shall we?”

  A few seconds passed but Miles didn’t reply. He was about to say something else when Miles finally opened his mouth.

  “I don’t talk to criminals.”

  Jonathan smiled. “You just did.”

  “No,” Miles said. “That was to tell you I don’t talk to criminals.”

  “Oh?” Jonathan replied. “Then what was that second sentence?”

  “To explain to you that I don’t talk to criminals.”

  Jonathan thought it was funny so he kept going, but he didn’t hear any more replies.

  At the bottom of the ramp, Miles pushed him to the right and through another metal door checkpoint, but the door was over 30 feet thick, too, making Jonathan believe it was made of the same metal as the giant vault door.

  Miles pushed him into a room which was about 900 square feet. As he was pushed through the door, Jonathan took note of many things. The most important detail was that there were two guards stationed outside the door and the door was too thick for any noise from inside to be heard. The second most important detail was a couple of small monster cores inside the room, one in each corner.

  When his chair was pushed to the middle of the floor, Miles spun him around. Jonathan spotted another set of monster cores in the other two corners of the room.

  They must be like surveillance cameras inside the prison cells.

  Looking at the walls and floor, they were the same light blue colour as the floors above him.

  Miles walked around the iron maiden wheelchair and walked towards the door. He stood in front of the door and turned around to face Jonathan.

  “So, for eternity, this is where I’m staying? And, for eternity, I’ve got to see your ugly mug staring at me?”

  Miles didn’t reply to him; he only stared unblinkingly.

  After a day of silence and complete boredom, Jonathan had had enough.

  “Hey!” Jonathan cheerfully started the conversation off. “Do you know about stories people make? The ones you heard growing up? There are loads of them that teach different lessons to children and even adults. But I’ve got a question for you.”

  He paused for a few seconds. Miles continued to stare, but Jonathan could sense his longing for an answer.

  Jonathan then spoke again.

  “What do you think makes a great villain in a story?”

  Chapter 51

  Explanation

  Miles looked at Jonathan a bit differently. He was interested in listening to Jonathan, but that didn’t mean he was going to answer back.

  However, this question did stump him somewhat. What did make a great villain in a story? He’d seen villains inside this prison for years, but that was real life and not a made-up tale. You wouldn’t want to tell children about their deeds, and adults could only learn by example.

  Did being a great villain mean getting away with their crimes? Was it a reference to their actions before getting caught? Or something else?

  After more than ten minutes of thinking, Miles looked at Jonathan and spoke for the first time since closing the doors.

  “What’s the answer?”

  “I knew you’d bite.” Jonathan’s smile seemed innocent enough. “There’s more than one answer and different people think one answer is more important than another. Some people in a country I know called America think they need a British accent to be a villain. Others think the villain’s gadgets or clothing styles make them a great villain.”

  Miles was slowly losing interest, so Jonathan picked up the pace.

  “But if a villain has the right aesthetics but not the right substance, the audience won’t be pulled in, right?” It was a rhetorical question, as he knew Miles wouldn’t answer. “I believe they need an extraordinary plot with a twist to make a great villain. Even if they have all the gadgets in the world but they waste all their time away sitting inside an office doing paperwork, the story won’t be interesting.”

  BANG!

  The four monster cores in the four corners of the ceiling exploded at the same time. Miles swung into action, mostly by reflex. He drew his weapon, ready to charge at any intruders. However, he soon froze.

  The iron maiden before him was melting from the neck down the middle. As it melted, he could see more of Jonathan’s body underneath. Jonathan was smiling enough to show the whites of his teeth.

  That smile sent shivers all over his body.

  Jonathan got out of the iron maiden and stood up.

  There were no life cuffs on his wrists.

  “Before you say anything,” Jonathan began, taking his time as he stretched his limbs, “the cuffs were put on me and I really couldn’t use Life Power at all. Unfortunately for you, the guards, and the prisoners here, I don’t use Life Power as my main source of strength.”

  A single thread touched Miles. He used his Memory Manipulation skill on him.

  As the technique completed, Jonathan made his mask change back to an earring. For the first time in so long, he revealed his original appearance.

  “Close your eyes and mouth.” John used his Memory Manipulation’s Voice skill. “Don’t move. Don’t make a noise. Don’t alert anybody in any way or use Life Power at all.”

  Miles stood there, paralysed and terrified as he witnessed Jonathan’s transformation into John. The guard’s body forced him to close his eyes, following the command.

  “I remember a talk with my wife about how in stories, the villains brag about how they did things,” John continued casually as if nothing of significance had occurred. “I didn’t understand it back then. But right now, I u
nderstand it as I have a huge desire to explain to you how it all worked out for me.”

  Miles stood in the dark, horrified. John chuckled.

  “Otherwise, how will people listening to the story know what happened?”

  John took out some nano metal from his Storage Space and made a helmet. He had five spare shapeshift runes he had purchased back in the Sword Sect, and this was the time to use them. He placed one shapeshift rune inside the new helmet, tinkering with it for a moment.

  He made his threads lift Miles up and settle him in the iron maiden wheelchair. With ease, Jonathan placed his right hand onto the cool iron maiden and used his metal element to return it to its undamaged appearance.

  Once Miles was strapped into the chair, John placed the new nano helmet onto Miles’ head. He placed his index finger onto the forehead and pushed Toxin Power inside. The helmet changed shape and when it finished, Miles looked exactly like Jonathan.

  And now, it was his turn. Grinning like a mad man, he made his nano helmet change his appearance into Miles. The new Miles smiled—something that the real Miles never did.

  “Where to begin this story?”

  The reason the Adventurers Guild even found out that John had destroyed the Anti-Assassin Sect’s planet was simple. He’d written a letter telling them he did it.

  He signed it with the name Jonathan, detailed it with his appearance, and topped it off by telling them he would be at the next annual auction. Since he couldn’t walk in and hand the letter as himself, though, he had to get somebody to do that for him. That was where Patrick’s spy came in handy. He was right, too; the spy was promoted right after delivering the letter.

  But one of the hardest parts of John’s plan was acting. He had to act like killing only eleven of those enforcers was his limit. He even had to stop a part of his cultivation technique called ‘merging’ so he could spit out blood. Twice. It took that much effort to make the coward he was fighting use the Life Cuffs on him.

  Then he had to act like he’d been knocked out for a long time, which was boring as hell. He didn’t sleep to pass the time because his wife said he snored; if he snored, then the plan would fail.