I Possess the SSS Skill: Future Sight-Chapter 22: The Joker’s Lie

- Kyle Valtier’s POV -

Cold sludge clung to my face like a mask of filthy ice, choking my breath and filling my mouth with the salty taste of death.

The ground beneath me was not merely mud and stone—it felt like the rotting skin of a cosmic corpse, and I crawled across it like a vile parasite.

My hot tears boiled beneath my black mask, carving desperate trails across my frozen cheeks, mixing with the blood of the monsters that had stained me.

I lay on my stomach, dragging my frail body backward, digging my broken nails into the mud with a force that nearly tore them from their roots, trying to pull myself away from the entity standing before me.

But every time I tried to retreat, space itself betrayed me.

The ground shrank. The distance was swallowed, folded like a cheap piece of cloth in its hand.

Three meters.

That was all that remained. Only three meters separated the weak pulse of my human heart... from that "thing."

It was not merely a monster standing before me to tear my flesh apart; it was a black hole wearing the shape of a nightmare.

It stood there, its long arms with twisted, deformed joints hanging down in a sickening stillness.

Its smooth face, devoid of any features or openings, dark skin stretched tightly over its skull like a taut drum... was directed straight at me.

It had no eyes, yet I swore with every fragment of awareness left in me—it was "seeing" me.

It was not a visual gaze; it was a stripping of my soul.

It pierced through my mask, through the bones of my skull, diving into the deepest, filthiest corners of my mind.

It was reading my memories, my fears, my sins—turning them over with infinite coldness, like someone sorting through worthless trash.

Amid this terror that had paralyzed my entire body, a mad, sick thought flashed through my mind—one that defied every law of nature and survival instinct: what if I moved forward?

If moving backward brought it closer and crushed the distance... then if I crawled toward it... would the distance expand? Would space itself be pushed back? Was this the rule of its twisted game?

But the moment the thought formed, terror crushed it.

I refused. Every nerve, every cell, every drop of blood in my body refused to move even a single millimeter toward that entity.

The mere idea of willingly reducing the distance between myself and absolute death made my stomach twist violently, as if I were about to vomit my insides onto the ground.

"This is the end..." a broken, shattered voice whispered inside the cavern of my skull.

Surrender began to seep into my heart like a slow poison, numbing my limbs and draining my will to resist.

I half-closed my eyes as despair pressed down on my chest like a mountain of lead.

Will I die here? In this cursed valley filled with mud and blood?

I survived the Dawn Hope Orphanage.

I survived the red-lit room, the sight of Edgar’s eye dangling like a nightmarish pendulum, and Serene convulsing in her death throes, submerged in that green liquid.

I survived the magical fire that devoured the Valtier mansion, and I survived the sight of Morfind’s corpse impaled on the Eitra stake, with Victor burned beneath it like a fragile heap of ash.

Did I endure all that—suffer burns of the soul before the body—only to die like this?

Silently? Like an insect crushed beneath the wheel of fate, unnoticed by anyone?

I achieved none of my goals.

I never returned to the orphanage to burn it down over their heads and hear Lady Grace’s screams.

I never learned who funded those horrific human experiments that turned orphans into monsters in the depths of those pipes.

And I never discovered the identity of the bastard who sent the blue flames to burn my only family and leave me an orphan for the thousandth time.

To die like this? Without answers? Without spilling even a single drop of blood in revenge?

Why was my life like this to begin with? From the moment I opened my eyes in this world, it felt as if the entire universe had crafted a bloody play solely to torture me.

What did I do to deserve this endless hell?

I am not some great villain destined to fall in an epic saga, nor am I a chosen hero meant to die for humanity.

I am just a nobody! A filthy J-rank Awakened who spent eight years in degrading torment, scavenging scraps, sleeping in alleys, and fighting dungeon rats—just to climb to G-rank.

Eight years just to reach a level where I could barely be treated as a third-class human!

And even when fate gave me its sick, mocking smile... and granted me a legendary skill—[Future Sight - SSS].

What is the use of it? What is the use of giving a blind man eyes to see a meteor falling on his head when he has no legs to run?

What is the use of seeing the catastrophe if I cannot stop it—or even change a single letter of its course?

And in that moment, as I stared at the entity’s smooth face, all my masks fell.

Not the physical one I wore—but the mask I had wrapped around my shattered soul.

I remembered my own words.

I remembered that false arrogance I wore like armor in my crumbling apartment.

I had thought with "manufactured courage" when I saw the end of the world.

I told myself, with disgusting confidence, that I would become the "Black Joker." I would dance in hell.

I would wait until the greatest guilds of the world collapsed, until the skulls of S-rank heroes were crushed before cosmic entities—then I would slip in like a cunning shadow, gather their spoils, steal their treasures, and live like a crowned king upon a throne of ruins.

What a liar I was... what a pathetic, disgusting liar.

Now, as I trembled in the mud, pissing on my own pride before this towering creature, I realized the naked truth I had always run from.

The "Black Joker" was nothing but a lie I had woven from the threads of my fear.

That "courage" and that "madness" I claimed were nothing but a tattered blanket a terrified child pulls over his head in the dark—to convince himself that the monsters in his closet cannot see him.

I created the persona of a cunning thief because "Kyle Valtier" was too weak, too fragile to accept the truth—that he was completely powerless before the cruelty of existence.

I deluded myself into thinking I was a wolf lurking in the dark, waiting for lions to fall so I could devour their flesh...

When in truth, I was nothing but a miserable worm, deceiving itself and dreaming of inheriting the corpse of the world.

How did I plan to steal from heroes who fell before beings like this?

How did I believe, in my absolute stupidity, that I would survive on a battlefield where these distorted transcendents toy around?

I know... deep in my heart, in that dark room where I hide my cowardice—I know the absolute truth.

Even if I survive today... even if I slaughter millions with my cursed skill... even if I drink the blood of every guild and evolve to reach S-rank... I will still be able to do nothing.

When that "Dark Half" descends from the red sky... and when these cosmic entities walk the earth... nothing will stop them.

Not me. Not the intelligence monsters. Not Jackson Reed with his bullets. Not the Seven Transcendents with their false grandeur.

All of us—from J-rank to SS-rank—are nothing but cosmic dust waiting for the broom of annihilation.

I had refused to surrender all my life, fighting like a cornered rat.

But now... I broke.

I surrender. I surrender before a creature that may not even be the final catastrophe—but merely one of its shadows.

I surrendered because the soul that Morfind had repaired... had finally been crushed and turned into ash that could never be ignited again.

I trembled violently, as if my joints were about to shatter.

My teeth clattered so hard they nearly cracked their enamel.

I was afraid to speak, afraid to breathe, afraid it might hear the desperate pounding of my heart.

I was like a breathing corpse, waiting only for the moment when that thing would decide to erase my existence.

The giant creature continued to stare at me with its smooth face.

Absolute silence—that silence which stole the sound of rain and wind—pressed against my eardrums until I felt warm blood slowly trickling from them down my neck. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

For seconds that felt like heavy centuries, we remained like that.

It embodied the perfection of death... and I embodied the humiliation of nothingness.

Then...

Tick... crack...

The only sound permitted to break through that sacred, horrifying silence.

The creature’s head turned slowly, mechanically, returning to its natural position.

It did nothing.

It did not raise its long, grotesque-jointed arm.

It did not tear me apart.

It turned its thin back, hunched in a sickening curve that defied all anatomy.

And with one step—one quiet step that slid through space as if devouring the distance without physically moving—it moved away.

And with the second step, it dissolved into the curtain of rain, fog, and darkness.

It vanished completely, as if it had been a cosmic hallucination that never existed.

The atmospheric pressure suddenly lifted, and the wall of absolute silence shattered.

The sound of rain returned, hammering against the rocks, and thunder howled in the sky like a wounded beast.

I tried to pull air into my empty lungs, but the returning oxygen struck my dry throat like burning acid.

I gasped violently, vomited the bile from my empty stomach onto the mud, then coughed hysterically, clawing at my chest like a madman.

I could not think of why it spared me. I could not analyze the humiliation of my survival.

Because darkness had already devoured what remained of my collapsing consciousness.

My eyes went out... and I sank into a coma of merciful blackness.