I Possessed The Worst Character In The Hellish Game
Chapter 24: The Boy with Ghostly Grey Eyes [1]

Chapter 24: The Boy with Ghostly Grey Eyes [1]

"Are you completely out of your mind?!"

Jeanne shot up from the sofa, her emerald eyes blazing with a mix of fury and fear as she locked her gaze on Mikael.

"Do you have any goddamn idea how dangerous that was?"

Her voice cracked as it wavered between a shout and a plea.

"I knew you went into Mournwood alone, and I kept telling myself, He wouldn’t go deep. He probably just needed something from the outskirts. I actually made myself believe that."

"....."

"But deliberately seeking out a spirit? Trying to form a contract? Spirits aren’t pets, Mikael. They’re not stray cats you can befriend with a saucer of milk. They’re malevolent, cunning creatures. One wrong encounter.... one single mistake and.... "

Her clenched fist trembled at her side, turning her knuckles white.

As her voice dropped to something far more fragile.

"And you could have died there."

"...."

The words hung in the air between them.

Mikael just sat there quietly, letting her anger wash over him.

She had every right to do that.

He knew she wasn’t just angry but also terrified for hi.... her brother.

For the original Mikael.

If their positions were reversed, if someone he loved had vanished into a cursed forest with nothing but desperation and a half-formed plan, he would have said the exact same things.

Or maybe even worse things.

He took a slow breath and lifted his gaze to meet hers.

"I’m sorry, Jeanne."

His voice was calm and quiet, stripped of any attempt at deflection.

He really meant those words, not just for the danger he’d put himself in, but for the lie that sat at the heart of this moment, the one he could never confess.

An apology offered in the form of original Mikael.

"I know it was dangerous.... I know it was reckless. But you, of all people, know my condition. You’ve watched me struggle to cast the simplest spells while others our age advanced without even trying. You’ve seen me pour every drop of essence I had into a single thread of magic and still barely manage what comes naturally to everyone else. You know how many nights I spent practicing until my hands shook and my head throbbed, just to produce a spark of essence. And you know how many times I failed anyway."

"....."

Jeanne’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t look from his ghostly grey eyes as her expression flickered with the memories of young Mikael struggling to cast a simple magic spell.

"I’m tired.... I’m tired of being weak."

His voice broke.

He didn’t know why those words came to him so easily.

"I’m tired of being the crippled noble son everyone whispers about behind their hands. Tired of walking through a room and knowing exactly what they’re thinking.... that I’m a liability, a disappointment, the dying branch on a family tree that should have been pruned long ago."

He didn’t know why, but he felt that if it were original Mikael... he would have said the same exact words to her.

"I’m tired of knowing that if something ever happens.... if someone like Edmund Varn decides to crush me..... I’ll have nothing. No power..... No way to fight back. No way to protect myself. And no way to protect the people I care about."

"....."

She flinched at those last words, striking an old wound they both still carried.

"I didn’t want to stay like that anymore. So when I saw a glimmer of hope.... when I found that new class, something that might finally break the chains I’ve been dragging my whole life.... I couldn’t stop myself. I knew the risks. I knew what I was walking into. But for the first time in years, I had something worth reaching for."

He shook his head slowly.

"I just couldn’t let this opportunity slip away."

"You absolute idiot...."

Jeanne clenched her fists, her long hair falling forward to curtain her face.

"Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I haven’t watched it eat you alive, day after day? I’ve seen you practice until you left essence exhausted."

She lifted her head, and her eyes were wet.

"You think I was blind to it? To all of it? I’m not angry because you want to be stronger.... I could never be angry about that.... I’m angry because you didn’t trust me enough to tell this."

He reached out as he gently wiped her wet eyes.

"You’re right. I should have told you. I was afraid you’d talk me out of it. Or worse.... that you’d offer to come, and I’d end up dragging you into danger too."

"I’m sorry.....

He hesitated.

"Big Sis."

She stiffened.

It had been years since he’d last called her big sis.... years of silence and carefully avoided glances, the slow-healing wound of a rift they had both carved with their own mistakes.

"But for what it’s worth... it worked. I formed the contract."

He managed a faint, tired smile.

Jeanne blinked, her expression shifting from anguish to disbelief in the single moment.

***

Across the low table.

Sophia watched the exchange in silence, her lavender eyes missing nothing as she sipped her tea.

The raw emotion between the siblings was almost uncomfortable to witness.... but she didn’t look away.

When she had first arrived here....

When she had seen that boy standing defiantly under Edmund Varn’s crushing essence pressure, as blood streamed through his nose, his eyes, his mouth.

But still refusing to kneel.

’Foolish.’

’Utterly foolish.’

That was her first thought.

The world of Awakeners was not kind to pride without power.

It was not gentle with those who refused to bend.

She had seen talented mages destroyed because they couldn’t swallow their pride at the right moment.

She had watched brilliant awakeners fall because they chose the wrong battle, the wrong opponent, the wrong hill to die on.

Sometimes, survival meant kneeling.

Sometimes, wisdom meant bowing your head and living to fight another day.

Yes, there was also cleverness hidden beneath the foolishness.

The way he had lured Nyx with that snack he’d prepared....

It was a smart plan.

A dangerous plan, relying on far too many variables, but smart nonetheless.

Yet.

It was still a gamble.

There was no telling whether Nyx would even find the snack, or if she would even like it enough to follow his trail all the way across the city.

He was lucky that his gamble worked.

Still.

His willpower had impressed her.

Standing firm under the essence pressure of a Tier 6 without crumbling required a mental fortitude that most low-tier awakeners simply didn’t possess.

Willpower was not something one could build through ordinary training.... it was not a stat one could raise with repetition or drills.

The only way to strengthen it was to endure genuine torment.

To walk through suffering that left scars on the soul.

And even then, there was no guarantee the Willpower stat would ever increase.

That was also the reason why their world had only a few high-tier awakeners.

She had also found herself wondering what someone so young as him could have endured to forge that kind of resilience.

His Willpower stat had to be at least 5, perhaps higher.

But then she had looked closer.

And what she saw had deeply disappointed her.

His essence control was...

Abysmal.

Threads of essence constantly leaked into the air from him in thin, erratic wisps.

It was as if his body simply couldn’t hold what had been poured into it like a broken container.

It was the kind of sloppy control she would expect from someone who had never practiced a day in their life.....

Someone who had been handed power and never bothered to refine it.

At first, she had assumed he was simply lazy.

Another spoiled noble son coasting on his family name, content to let his talent rot while he played at being an awakener.

But now.

Watching the raw vulnerability between these two siblings as she listened....

She understood that there was more to this story.

He was fighting against something that had been with him since childhood....

Something that made even basic essence control a battle.

Maybe his curse.

’Interesting.’

And then there was this new class he had mentioned.

A class that allowed him to form contracts with spirits and also let him summon and use a part of their powers.

Sophia had traveled across multiple continents throughout all of Aetheris.

She had studied in the greatest libraries of the mortal realm and consulted scholars whose knowledge spanned centuries.

But never—never—had she encountered a class that could form a contract with spirits.

More importantly.

’Was it supposed to be this easy?

’To encounter a spirit, let alone convince one to form a contract?’

Spirits were not like wild animals that could be tamed with patience and treats.

They were ancient, prideful, often incomprehensible beings with their own agendas and their own definitions of reality.

She looked at Nyx, who was currently melting under Mikael’s neck scratches, her eyes half-closed in bliss.

Sophia’s eyes twitched.

’If you ignore this one.’

She almost sighed at Nyx’s behavior.

Nyx was a completely different case.

A neutral spirit might not attack on sight as an evil spirit would, but it would certainly not submit to a contract with a low-tier awakener just because he asked nicely.

And yet.

The boy claimed he had successfully formed a contract.

"You said you successfully formed a contract."

She finally spoke, deliberately pulling both siblings’ attention back to her.

"That means you encountered a spirit in Mournwood and convinced it to bind itself to you. Is that correct?"

Mikael turned to her and nodded.

"Yes. It was difficult to convince her, but yes, I did form a contract."

"...."

Sophia leaned back in her seat as her fingers drummed against her knee.

"You must understand why I find this difficult to believe. Spirits are not easily persuaded. They do not offer their loyalty to strangers, especially not to young awakeners who haven’t even reached Tier 2. What kind of spirit did you encounter? What were the conditions of the contract?"

Mikael considered his answer carefully.

"She’s a Wraith... a Red Spirit."

*****