God of creation system : The apocalypse

Chapter 14 : The phantom serpent

Present Time.

Nathaniel continued to trail Zhui everywhere she went through the town.

She never slipped out of his sight, and he hadn't noticed any indication that Suwi was aware someone was watching her.

Deciding to make a move, she ducked into an alleyway and turned toward the back of the marketplace.

Not many people passed through this route, making it the ideal spot for her to intercept the suspicious individual tailing her.

Meanwhile, Nathaniel kept following without a second thought, but the moment he turned the corner into a building, his target suddenly vanished.

Shocked and panicked, he broke into a sprint and dashed down the alley.

"She disappeared from my sight way too fast," he muttered to himself.

Unbeknownst to him, Zhui was positioned right above him, clinging to a water pipe to ambush her stalker.

I need to find that woman already, Nathaniel thought.

Zhui, meanwhile, was perplexed as to why a human—let alone a weak one—was secretly tailing her.

A low-tier creature is stalking me?

Dropping down silently from the pipe, she moved in to intercept him. She dropped straight onto Nathaniel's back, kicking him down to the pavement and pinning him beneath her foot.

Nathaniel couldn't react to the sudden ambush in time and collapsed to the ground, crushed under the weight of her boot.

"Looks like a little rat picked the wrong target to hunt," Zhui remarked coldly.

Nathaniel winced in agony as he hit the concrete. While she pressed her foot into his spine as if trying to crush him, purple flames flared across her hand.

From those blazing flames, a sword gradually materialized—one of her twin blades, the Rabaikasyu.

Pressing down harder with her foot as if intending to grind him into dust, Zhui angrily demanded to know why he was following her.

"If you want to live, tell me who ordered you to tail me," she threatened.

Constantly on high alert and trusting no one due to the threats hanging over her life, Zhui spared no mercy—not even for a seemingly defenseless human.

Without missing a beat, her green snake-like tail whipped out and coiled tightly around Nathaniel's neck, beginning to choke him.

Nathaniel choked out an immediate denial, frantically swearing that the accusations of him stalking her were entirely untrue.

Zhui, however, refused to be fooled, having caught the whispers he let slip earlier with her razor-sharp hearing.

"Don't lie to me. I heard what you said earlier," she shouted to intimidate him.

Knowing Zhui's capabilities and her volatile temperament, Nathaniel knew he couldn't afford to make a single mistake with his response.

"Alright, fine! Yes, I was following you, but I don't have any bad intentions!" he blurted out.

Even so, Zhui remained completely unconvinced by suspicious characters, tightening her hold around Nathaniel's throat even further.

"Hold on—let me go first, I can't breathe!"

"You're about to stop breathing permanently if you don't start telling the truth."

"What is your objective, and who sent you to follow me?" she demanded, pressing the edge of her sword right against Nathaniel's neck.

Zhui grew even more cautious, unable to fathom why a normal human with no apparent motive would trail a soul eater like her.

Nathaniel knew his life was in mortal peril. He had been caught red-handed, and she could execute him at any second.

I need to figure out a way to get out of this situation, he muttered internally, sweating profusely from sheer panic.

I'm certain she'll kill me if she doesn't like my answer.

Nathaniel's POV

By some cruel twist of fate, I had landed in the most dangerous situation imaginable. I knew that a single wrong word could send Suwi's blade straight through my skull.

I couldn't afford to mess this up; I needed a logical, convincing excuse for why I was tailing her.

"Nobody sent me! I just wanted to meet the wife of my best friend," I managed to blurt out.

My mind was a chaotic mess, and sheer terror left me with no alternative but to lie, since I had no other rational explanation for my actions.

"Best friend?" she echoed skeptically.

I doubled down on the fabrication, claiming that XXV was my closest friend.

Naturally, she wasn't buying it easily, instantly accusing me of lying.

The snake's tail wrapped around my neck was choking me so tightly that desperation took over.

"Yes! And if you kill me, XXV is going to be furious with you," I threatened.

Zhui wasn't easily swayed. Even after that warning, she didn't loosen the coils constricting my windpipe.

"Please, Suwi..."

"I can't... breathe..." I wheezed, practically losing consciousness.

At that exact moment, just as I felt like I was slipping into darkness, she abruptly released me.

I collapsed onto the ground, gasping frantically for air and writhing in pain as she lifted her foot off my back.

A moment later, Suwi demanded to know how I knew her name.

"Only my husband calls me by my name."

I genuinely thought I was a dead man for a second. She certainly didn't joke around when it came to executing people on the spot.

Once I recovered enough composure, I forced myself up. Frustration and lingering panic overrode my fear, and I ended up shouting right back at her.

"Hey! You almost killed me! Do you honestly not care about the promises you and XXV made to each other anymore?"

I was referring to the vow they shared back on the island. Because XXV possessed a kind heart—especially toward humanity—he had made Suwi promise never to slaughter humans again.

That statement caught Suwi completely off guard.

"Wait, how do you know about that promise?"

Knowing I had crossed a line by yelling at her, I kept up my indignant front, insisting adamantly that I was a genuine friend of XXV.

"Do I look like I'm lying to you?"

She shot my defense down immediately.

"You certainly don't look like someone who can be trusted," Suwi snapped back coldly.

"Well, what does a trustworthy person look like to you anyway? I happen to be both handsome and kind," I protested.

No matter how much I insisted I was telling the truth, her suspicion toward me never wavered.

True to form, because she was perpetually paranoid about everyone around her, trusting people simply wasn't in her vocabulary.

"Well, to be fair, you don't trust anyone except yourself anyway."

"That's probably why you don't have any friends other than Serphia," I added, throwing in a teasing jab.

She did not appreciate that comment in the slightest. Enraged, she swung her sword at me with a lethal threat.

"Maybe I should just slit your throat so you'll finally shut up."

Fortunately, I managed to duck out of the way of her sweeping blade and immediately tried to calm her down.

"Talk about a short temper..."

After she lowered her weapon, she continued to glare at me with narrowed, hostile eyes, as if she still planned to do me in.

"How do you know all these things?" she demanded.

I doubled down once more on my fabricated bond with XXV, embellishing the story with made-up details about how XXV and I had spent a long time together just to make it sound believable.

"I warned you because we practically treat each other like brothers, which means you can't just go around hurting me."

Suwi's sudden silence brought a wave of relief. It looked like she was actually starting to entertain the possibility that I was telling the truth, presenting a massive opportunity for me.

I could leverage everything I knew about the two of them to get closer to Suwi.

"Even if it's true that my husband told you a lot of things, you should still know that I hate being followed," she muttered crossly.

She had a valid point, so I scrambled for an excuse, claiming I hadn't expected her to attack me since all I had ever heard from XXV were wonderful things about her.

"From what XXV told me, you stopped killing humans, but that's clearly not what you're doing right now."

To that, she retorted that her only promise to XXV was to spare normal humans—not suspicious stalkers trailing her every move.

"And I never said I wouldn't kill humans, especially not a human who's secretly stalking me," she added.

Fair enough; my behavior earlier hadn't exactly been innocent, so she certainly had a justification for attacking me.

" I can't scare her about harming a normal human anymore, I thought to myself, I need to come up with a much better excuse for why I'm actually following her."