Chapter 204. Château d'If (2)
“Count of Monte Cristo...!”
I charged forward.
The Count immediately moved behind a nearby pillar, clearly intending to use it as cover while shooting at me.
“Haaap...!”
I swung the Ruyi Jingu Bang, intending to smash both the pillar and the Count behind it.
But even after colliding with the staff, the pillar did not collapse.
“It’s useless! This prison cannot be destroyed! Not even by the Ruyi Jingu Bang...!”
The Count roared and pulled the trigger.
Bang! Bang!
Two shots came first.
Then, after a brief pause...
Bang!
A third.
I expanded the Ruyi Jingu Bang until it covered my entire body and blocked the shots.
If I hadn’t, the first two bullets would have struck my chest.
The third would have gone through my head.
“What do you think of my marksmanship, Nameless?!”
“You’re a nineteenth-century man, yet you’re using modern shooting techniques...!”
The Count’s shooting pattern resembled what was known as the Mozambique Drill.
He had already been a master marksman while alive.
Had he mastered modern shooting techniques too?
Yang Jian was hit by that gun.
If I take one of those bullets, it’ll be dangerous.
Those weren’t ordinary handgun rounds.
Some kind of special power, magic or otherwise, was infused into the weapon.
Even a Constellation could suffer a fatal wound if hit.
“Count!”
Using the Ruyi Jingu Bang as cover just as the Count used the pillar, I shouted at him.
“Have you been using me this whole time? Just like the B-rank Constellation ‘Young Man of Red and Black’?”
“That’s right! You finally realized it!”
The Count openly admitted that he had been using me just as he had used Julien Sorel, the ‘Young Man of Red and Black.’
“Did you never find it strange yourself? The moment you appeared in the Spirit Realm, I came straight to your throne and praised you. I gave you advice and became your sponsor. I was absurdly kind to you...!”
His voice thundered through the prison.
“I was searching for an ambitious fool like you, someone easy to manipulate!”
“So you approached me intentionally?”
“Exactly!”
He continued firing as he shouted.
The weapon was clearly an antique pistol, yet he had already fired more than ten shots without reloading.
Apparently, the bullets themselves were automatically generated and replenished.
“Do you know the story of Julien Sorel, Nameless?!”
The Count began recounting the plot of The Red and the Black.
“He was an immensely ambitious man! Though born the son of a poor laborer in the countryside, he was inspired by Napoleon’s legend and came to worship him! He wanted to become the same kind of man!”
The Count spoke as if he had personally witnessed Julien’s life.
They were men of the same era.
Perhaps they had even met while alive.
“He wanted to crawl up from the very bottom with his own strength and reach the summit of the world!”
“That ambition consumed him!”
“So what?”
“He was very much like you, Nameless!”
The Count pointed out the similarities between Julien Sorel and me.
“He was a talented young man! Calculating, yet passionate! He struggled desperately to rise higher and higher!”
His voice mixed with the gunfire and rang in my ears.
“Julien Sorel struggled among nobles and clergymen, desperately trying to climb the social ladder! Eventually, he was formally accepted as the son-in-law of an aristocratic family! But all the corruption and wrongdoing he had committed came to light, and he fell!”
"...!"
“Nameless! What about you?!”
The Count threw the question at me.
“How high do you think you can climb?!”
“Do you think you can reach the summit without collapsing like Julien Sorel?!”
“Answer me...!”
“You answer me!”
The gunfire stopped for an instant.
I shrank the Ruyi Jingu Bang and threw myself sideways.
“Count of Monte Cristo, you were a man who fell to the very bottom and then crawled all the way back to the top!”
“You were destined to die as a prisoner of Château d’If, but you rose again in glory as the Count of Monte Cristo!”
“From your point of view, does that make a failure like Julien Sorel nothing but worthless trash to be discarded immediately?!”
“Yes.”
“A failure has no meaning.”
“Were you watching to see whether I would become a success like you or a failure like Julien Sorel?!”
“Exactly.”
“You were a fascinating subject to observe.”
The Count’s bullets chased me as I moved.
But I predicted the direction of his muzzle and closed the distance in a zigzag pattern.
“So I was nothing more than entertainment to you?”
“Certainly not!”
“You weren’t merely entertainment.”
“You were entertainment interesting enough that I would not have regretted pouring everything I had into you!”
“That sounds like the same thing to me!”
I hurled myself sideways.
At last, I found an angle from which I could attack the Count behind the pillar.
Rather than waste time settling into a stance, I immediately extended the Ruyi Jingu Bang toward him.
“Nameless, you were the finest of all the countless Julien Sorels I have watched!”
The Count drew the sword at his waist.
Then he deflected the Ruyi Jingu Bang.
A slender Western blade had knocked aside the same Ruyi Jingu Bang capable of crushing even Demon God-class demons.
“No other Julien Sorel ever achieved anything as great as you!”
“That’s why I continued supporting you!”
“That’s why I kept cheering for you!”
“And now you’re betraying me!”
“No.”
“You betrayed me!”
“It would have been better if you had simply led Kang Yujin and the others and continued conquering the Material Realm like a good little piece on the board.”
“But then you began taking interest in unnecessary things!”
I continued attacking with the Ruyi Jingu Bang.
The Count parried every strike with a single sword.
“Is that why you killed Holmes?”
I glared at him.
“Did you kill Holmes to stop me from working with him and uncovering the truth about you?”
“Yes!”
“I personally killed the S-rank Constellation ‘Consulting Detective of Truth’!”
The Count admitted it without hesitation.
“When I visited him, Holmes had been organizing an enormous amount of information to deliver to you!”
“But I was faster!”
“Holmes lost his life to my bullet, and every document he prepared burned to ashes!”
“Nothing ever reached you!”
“All of it was meaningless!”
“No.”
“Holmes did leave something for me!”
“The letter M, meaning Monte Cristo...!”
Holmes’s final dying message.
Because of that...
I had been able to suspect the Count.
“Meaningless? No!”
“Holmes succeeded in planting suspicion of you in me before he died!”
