072 Father & Son - Part 1 - Mark’s POV

  "My turn," I said, crouching in front of the screaming ginseng root like I was about to pluck a weed. Nerun squirmed in Greg’s hand, flailing his stubby limbs like a beetle on its back.

  “Wait, wait! I cooperated! Don’t eat me!” the ginseng shrieked, his voice cracked and hoarse from all the swearing he’d done earlier.

  I rolled my eyes. “Relax. I’m not gonna eat you. That was just for effect.” Honestly, I didn’t have the stomach for herbivore cannibalism. Plus, I wasn’t actually unhinged… just, you know, methodically persuasive.

  I leaned in. “I just want to ask a few questions. Do you know someone by the name of Ark?”

  That got him.

  Nerun stiffened in my palm. His face… or whatever counted as a face for a sentient root vegetable… twitched with genuine fear.

  “He’s the leader of Arcana,” he whispered.

  I blinked. “Wait. Arcana. Ark. That’s not even subtle. What the hell?”

  “Yeah, weird naming sense,” Greg muttered beside me, scratching the back of his head. “Ark... Arcana... Might as well start naming secret organizations after their founders like some discount villain league.”

  I ignored him and stared down at Nerun. “Tell me more.”

  “He’s not just powerful. He’s... beyond classification. Possesses a speed-type ESP,” Nerun said, voice trembling. “Probably? I can’t tell…”

  I cut in. “He can stop time.”

  “Really?!” Greg turned to me like I’d just said my dad was Santa Claus. “I thought you were joking last time.”

  Do I look like I joke?

  I didn’t answer immediately. My hands curled into fists at my sides, not from anger, but because I didn’t know how else to keep myself from shaking. “Of course, it wasn’t a joke, dumbass.”

  Greg whistled. “Damn. Now I really want to meet him. Your dad’s a real time-stopper? You’ve been hiding a shonen anime arc this whole time, Mark.”

  “Greg, shut up.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, holding up his hands, though he still grinned.

  Nerun continued in a quieter, more serious tone. “Be careful what you wish for. Ark isn’t like the rest of us. He’s not just an ESPer… some say he might not even be human. I’ve seen killers, monsters, cryptids, and war criminals. None of them scared me like Ark. The people who hired me? They talk about him like he’s a living curse. They fear him. Deep down, bone-deep.”

  I listened, jaw tight. The worst part wasn’t the fear. It was the implication that this guy was part of my bloodline. That my mom had fallen for him. That I shared DNA with someone capable of terrifying murderers. Of course, myy mom wasn’t any stranger to inflicting murders but…

  Greg nudged me with an elbow. “You okay?”

  “No,” I said honestly. “But I don’t think I have the luxury of breaking down right now.”

  Nerun glanced between the two of us. “Knowledge about Ark is scarce. Either he controls information so well it never leaks… or he kills everyone who knows too much. Without leaving a trace.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “Sounds about right.”

  One second, Nerun was still flailing and muttering some nonsense about living root rights. The next, he was gone. Not disappeared. Sliced. Into neat, clean little pieces… roots and ginseng limbs scattered like cut-up garnish on the forest floor.

  I didn’t sense a damn thing. And I should have. My ESP could track presences even through fog, illusions, and thick cryptid-infested forests. It was the one thing I could always trust. But just now? Nothing. No warning. No ripple in the mental field.

  I turned and saw him.

  Dark hair, neat but unstyled. Black suit, tailored but wrinkled, stained with specks of blood that weren’t his. He looked like someone who had been in three different wars and never took the time to change. He stood with a saber in one hand… silver, elegant, humming with restrained violence.

  Greg took a step back, conjuring a wooden staff like it could do something.

  “Who’s that?” he whispered.

  My throat tightened. “He’s my father.”

  The man didn’t flinch at being recognized. He simply stared at me like I was a math problem. His tone, when he finally spoke, was dry and neutral, like the weather.

  “Mark. Come with me. It’s not safe here.”

  No shit, I thought, staring at the chunks of Nerun. “Go fuck yourself,” I said instead. “Get away from us!”

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  Greg let out a disappointed groan. “Nope. We’re not doing this. He’s clearly the bad guy! Let’s fight him.”

  “I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” I muttered.

  Because I was already trying to hack him.

  My ESP revolved around two things: perception and presence. With those, I could assert myself into someone’s mind, hijack their ESP, or at least scramble it. I focused on him, pushed my perception forward, shaped my intent like a dagger.

  And hit a wall.

  No… worse. A void.

  I couldn’t immerse into his first perspective. Couldn’t even skim it. Ark’s mental presence was so vast, so damn alien, it felt like trying to pierce a black hole with a toothpick. It swallowed everything.

  His voice didn’t change. “I will ask one last time. Come with me.” Then, casually, like he was commenting on the weather, he added, “The next time I ask, there will be pain.”

  I brandished my butterfly knife. Not because I thought it would help. But because doing nothing felt worse.

  Greg spun his staff, even though his hands were visibly trembling from exhaustion. “Really wish I brought a gun.”

  I side-eyed him. “Can you go full Sailor Moon right now?”

  He scoffed. “You make a Sailor Moon reference but don’t know Last of Us? Seriously?”

  “Mom watches Sailor Moon a lot.”

  We laughed. A little. Because that’s what you do when you’re standing in front of someone who might be your genetically-related apocalypse.

  Ark didn’t move. He didn’t need to.

  I felt the shift in the world. The moment tension turned into a trigger.

  And I knew… we were out of time.

  I only saw a glimpse of the time-frozen world… a jagged, suffocating stillness that reminded me of the first time he introduced himself. Just hours ago. Just like then, I didn’t even register the moment it began.

  The world flickered. My knees buckled, and I hit the forest floor with a grunt, gravel grinding into my palms. I looked up.

  Black shoes.

  Caked with mud and blood.

  Ark stood there, unmoved, unbothered, as if he’d been waiting this whole time. In one hand, he held Greg up by the throat like a misbehaving dog.

  Greg coughed and rasped, “Eat this,” and from his sleeve, thorns burst forth, wrapping around his arm and flowering into a snarling, toothy bloom. A chomper. It looked like a damned venus flytrap straight out of hell.

  I blinked.

  They were gone.

  The air rushed back in like a sucked-in breath, and I found myself on my feet again without even realizing it. My body tensed, my mind raced, every nerve in my skin screaming danger.

  Then Ark reappeared, calm as ever, adjusting his suit like he was late for a dinner reservation. His saber was gone. That made it worse.

  “What did you do with Greg?” I asked, forcing my voice to stay even.

  He tilted his head ever so slightly. “I’ll tell you… if you agree to come with me.”

  Manipulative bastard.

  But something about those words unlocked a memory. Mom’s voice, low and serious, from when we lived in that cramped seaside town, back during the peaceful lull after my “training arc,” as she liked to call it. She’d made me scale back, rest, heal… but not forget.

  "If you ever find yourself cornered… completely helpless… you’re allowed to remove the limiter. Just once. But only if there’s no other choice."

  I exhaled. My hands trembled as I pulled back from instinct, from panic, from fear. And instead, I centered myself. My ESP revolved around two things: perception and presence. Everyone else thought it was about perspective… first person, second person, third person. Sure, that was the interface.

  But the engine?

  Hypnosis.

  Not the circus-act type. Not the kind that made you cluck like a chicken or forget your name. No… I didn’t mess with minds directly. I rewrote how people perceived reality itself. I could identify the Nth between cause and effect and make that my domain.

  In other words, I didn’t control people.

  I controlled the story they thought they were in.

  Perception is a cage.

  And once I remove the limiters…

  My cage becomes the strongest of all.

  I whispered to myself, steady and quiet, “I am a person without ESP.”

  The moment I said it, everything shifted.

  My aura vanished. My ESP signature… gone. No energy output. No sensory residue. I wasn’t just invisible. I was irrelevant.

  Ark’s expression twitched.

  He frowned.

  “I can’t use my ESP,” he said.

  “Damn right you can’t,” I muttered.

  But neither could I.

  Because right now, I wasn’t me.

  “I am Ark,” I told myself. I didn’t say it aloud. I just believed it with every cell.

  I have no ESP, and I am Ark, thus the Ark in front of me have no ESP. That was the hypnosis. The rule etched into reality. The perception I forced not just onto him… but onto myself.

  This was the most dangerous technique I’d ever created. Mom had forbidden me from using it because if I messed up… if I went too far… I could burn out my own ESP permanently. Shatter the framework. Lose it all.

  But this situation clearly qualified as an exception.

  So I took the risk.

  I stared my father in the eye. “Your move.”

  Honestly, I was still at a disadvantage.

  Sure, I’d disabled both our ESPs using my Nth Person, but that didn’t make me invincible. Without my powers, I was just an ordinary kid who happened to fight well. That didn’t mean much against a grown man with a saber and a past soaked in blood.

  Ark still had the upper hand. He had reach, strength, and experience. I had a knife, a stubborn brain, and a working theory that he wouldn't kill me unless absolutely necessary. Not exactly a comforting strategy.

  He took a step forward, slow and deliberate.

  “I can still hurt you,” Ark said. “Endure it. I will strike your leg.”

  That was a lie.

  His muscles tensed… not in preparation for a low sweep but something higher.

  I didn’t flinch. I watched the shift in his weight, the subtle tilt of his head. Then, he lunged with a sharp left hook aimed straight for my jaw. He thought he could knock me out in one blow and haul me off like a sack of potatoes.

  I leaned back at the last second, managing the space like it was a dance. The punch missed by a hair, wind brushing my cheek.

  Before he could reset his stance, I tossed my knife at him.

  His saber moved reflexively, slicing through the air to deflect it. But just before the blade connected, I said out loud… not to him, but to myself, to the world:

  “I can’t use my sword arm… because it’s crippled.”

  My right arm went limp instantly. So did Ark’s.

  His eyes widened in confusion as his hand spasmed, the saber falling from his grip and clattering to the dirt. For a split-second, he hesitated, trying to make sense of the sudden paralysis. But I didn’t. I already knew.

  Because I’d scripted it.

  And thankfully, I’m ambidextrous.

  My left hand shot forward and snatched the falling saber clean out of the air.

  At the same moment, the knife I threw—a beat too late to stop—embedded itself into his other arm. Ark had tried to block it with his palm, thinking brute force would be enough. It wasn’t.

  His blood hit the dirt with a soft, wet splatter.

  I stepped forward, raised the saber, and lightly pressed it against his neck. Not deep. Just enough for him to feel the edge against his skin.

  I wasn’t panting, but I wasn’t calm either.

  My hand didn’t shake. But it might later.

  “Your move,” I said quietly.

  His mouth twitched like he wanted to say something clever or menacing or parental. But nothing came out. So I stared him down. Stared into the eyes of the man who left my mom behind. The man who terrified monsters. The man I used to wonder about.

  And I said the words that ended it:

  “No more moves. I see.”

  I pressed the saber just a little firmer, not enough to cut… just enough to mark the moment.

  “It’s a checkmate then.”