Chapter 51: Zachary’s Dark Past

"I’m not that sheltered, you know." She took a shaky breath, trying to steady her voice.

Of course she couldn’t tell Zachary that she knew this from her previous life memories.

Although Lydia barely understood how they work and which Sentinels used them, love pills were the most popular high-end drugs.

"Will you let me guide you?" Lydia took off her mask and offered her hand to him.

"No!! Just leave me alone!"

"Senior! But you will be a Mindless that way."

A dry laugh escaped Zachary’s throat.

"I’m well aware of this. Yes, of course. But I can’t drag you down to this hell with me, Lydia. Ephraim will hunt me down to the after life if I did. Hahaha."

Seriously. How could Senior Zach still joke around in this condition?

"Remember what happened to your body when you tried to guide me last time? Did you even know how I feel when I have to see you fall unconscious?"

"That was because the monster hit me hard. The head wound from the metallic table, remember?"

"Our Rank difference was too great, Lydia. My Resonance is dangerous. What if I hurt you again?"

When Zachary turned around, she finally understood why he had been acting so strangely.

Zachary’s bright green eyes had turned dark, with only thin slits of green remaining—similar to Cat’s Eye gemstone.

Lydia had never seen him like this before.

Sure, Ephraim was terrifying when his Resonance Stress was high. But Zachary was even more intimidating.

Even the space near him seemed to bend under the pressure of his unstable power.

"Senior, your Stress was getting more unstable!"

Unlike the usual manifestation of a Sentinel’s Spirit Animal, Zachary’s transformation had gone further.

His fingers had turned into black panther claws, and dark fur covered the backs of his hands. Even his face looked more animalistic.

A loud growl rumbled from Zachary as he reached for his bracelet a few times. His movements were clumsy, as if he could barely focus on what he was doing.

He reached for a sleek black gun, compact enough to fit in one hand. A moment later, he threw it on the metallic table with a heavy clatter.

"This is it."

Zachary didn’t look away from Lydia as he growled, his voice frighteningly calm despite the tremor running through his hands.

"Kill me. Now. Before I turned into a Mindless."

The words didn’t register immediately.

Lydia looked from the gun to Zachary’s face, hoping she had misheard him.

Surely he couldn’t be serious. Would Zachary laugh and tell her that he was joking? Hell, Lydia sure wished he would say he was just pulling a prank on her.

His eyes no longer looked human. His pupils had narrowed into slits, like a black panther’s. His trembling hand made Lydia even more worried.

The senior is serious about this.

"Are you kidding me? There must be another way, Senior Zach! Why are you being so stubborn?!"

With trembling fingers, he grabbed the gun. For a second, Lydia thought he might pick it up himself, but instead, he extended it toward her.

"You know what to do, Lady Valendorf."

"Senior Zachary...."

His hand shook so badly that Lydia gasped when the metallic weapon touched her palm.

He was asking her to kill him.

"Free me of this pain. Grant me this mercy, deerling."

Lydia lifted her eyes toward him, her lips parting as she struggled to find something—anything—that might convince him to reconsider.

"Just pull the trigger."

Lydia couldn’t breathe.

The gun felt unbearably cold and heavy in her hand. She had no idea how long she stood there, staring at the weapon Zachary had entrusted to her, but every passing second seemed to stretch into an eternity.

"Why do you have to be so difficult!? I’ll guide you! I can’t let you die."

With no hesitation, Lydia slammed the gun to the wall with a sharp clatter. She didn’t bother to see where it landed.

"I’ll never do that."

"You don’t understand. You will never, Lydia."

"What do you mean, Senior Zach?"

Intense pressure from Zachary’s Resonance Stress crushed the gun on the floor and bending the metal with a sharp crunch.

"I don’t want to kill you."

Lydia tried to laugh off Zachary’s words, hoping he would reveal that it was another one of his ridiculous jokes.

"You won’t. I am sure of it. Besides, I have pulled Ephraim back once."

SLAM!

The metallic table crushed inward with a deafening clang from Zachary’s fist.

The darkness in his eyes seemed to deepen as the faint tremor in his hand grew worse.

"I am not joking here. Ephraim is an S-Rank Sentinel. But I’m SSS-Rank. We’re on another level."

When Zachary finally spoke again, his voice had lost its usual confidence and charm. His eyes were all black without any light left.

"I have killed someone, Lydia. My Guide. I killed him when he tried to guide me."

Lydia froze.

She had never imagined that Zachary carried such a terrible memory. No wonder he was so afraid of letting her guide him.

He wasn’t trying to reject her help. He was terrified of watching someone else die because of him.

"You might have lucked your way with Ephraim. But what about me? I can’t stomach the idea of getting your blood splattered all over me."

In a dying world like this, death wasn’t something new. People lived and died everyday.

We—Sentinel and Guide—were dancing and courting death everyday. Thanks to Dimensional Rifts.

However, the usual playful smile never appeared on Zachary’s face. He simply looked at Lydia without saying anything, his expression more serious than she had ever seen.

Zachary wasn’t joking.

Lydia’s smile slowly faded. If Zachary was telling the truth, then the situation was much worse than she had imagined.

"Shit got out of control and he died in the most horrible, gruesome way," he rasped, "right in front of me, Lydia. How am I supposed to keep on living if I do that to you?"