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Chapter 122: Day of Reckoning: Dusk
🕑 Added 2023-04-10 23:37:49 +0000 UTCChapter 122: Day of Reckoning: Dusk
5 minutes is a very strange timeframe. Of course, we all know that it's not very long, you can't exactly get a whole lot done in 5 minutes, and yet, sometimes they really do feel like forever. Listening to a boring teacher at the end of a lesson, waiting on the next city bus after having missed one, even meeting a family member again you would rather not have seen for another year.
Having to do smalltalk with someone you barely know, or swimming in cold water. Doing any of it for just 5 minutes would seem horrible, and probably drag out for forever.
Sometimes, to Alexander, so did horse riding. He enjoyed it, he well and truly did, it had been something he'd liked from childhood on, and yet somehow, this time felt different. He had hurried with all his power, travelled from the village all the way to Yasashiku's home via a direct path, carving a road into the landscape before it closed behind him.
That Skill was one he cherished. Of course he did, the freedom it gave him to go through even the roughest terrain on horseback was quite rare, not that he cared for it because of that rarity. No, it definitely was the simple choice of going where he pleased when he pleased. There were few people who could stop him, and even if he was stopped, it would usually only be for a moment.
Yet, this time, even with his freedom, he felt he was too slow. Because Yasashiku lived on a mountain with a forest below it, Alex had a terrible time trying to see anything going on up there. He could only grit his teeth and spur his horse as he hoped to be there in time, hoped that he would make it.
Whether he would be in time, though, was already out of his hands. He didn't know how much time he had, he could only hope that the guardian stalled for as long as possible, and if Friaminth couldn't, Alex hoped he'd give up whatever he needed to.
The old man sighed between breaths. It was frustrating to see someone young caught up in power games so far beyond him. The fact that the people threatening the guardian took someone like that hostage pissed him off even more.
Alexander clenched his teeth in anger, drawing in deep breaths of air through his nose, spurring his companion on to go even faster. No matter what, this was probably his call to get out of retirement. He'd find whoever did this, show up at their front door and give them a piece of his mind, that much he promised himself.
It would have to wait a little longer though, for now, he had to keep going with all he had.
- - - - - -
Tesla was in his study, pondering on what else he could do to perfect his creation. The designs were already so intricate, everything should be going well, yet the organs still just didn't fully grow right. Maybe he ought to start learning some surgery to fix them in place after growing them separately? He'd considered the option before, but wasn't really a huge fan of it, but if it needed to be done, he'd have to get to it eventually.
The man sighed quietly, lamenting this. Should he have just taken native birds, and selectively bred them to get something resembling a pigeon? Surely not. He would have had to accelerate their growth and lifespans to do so, killing hundreds of birds in the process. It didn't seem very fair at all.
No, no, he was doing this for himself, he didn't want to unnecessarily make other creatures suffer. Especially not when it didn't even guarantee success. He needed something else, some form of idea, anything that could get his imagination going. Maybe he needed new things to investigate before he could make more progress towards stable internal organs?
Just then, as if by fate, one of his aides entered the room. A fellow scientist with a curious mind. "Nicolai? You have a second?"
"I do, what is it?"
"We may have found a hint to your," the young golem gestured wildly at the entire room, "pigeon... thing."
"You WHAT?!" Nicolai yelled, almost knocking over the table he had been standing in front off.
"Chione thought that maybe this body-blueprint that all of us have isn't just in the body, as you've said, but also partially in the mind. Could also be a reason for the gap between stats and actual performance of worldwalkers. I suppose you could consider it an expansion of your astral self-hypothesis."
"Theory, nowadays."
"Yeah, sure, we'll see about that once you show me the proper documentation, eh?" she pushed her glasses up a little further. "In any case, it is just a theory, and without a mind that lacks a body to test it out on, we're gonna have some real trouble doing proper research."
"Unless we find someone who can travel with their mind, regardless of their body," Tesla theorized.
The golem paused for a moment, tapping her cheek with her finger. "Yeah, actually. You're right, if we manage to find someone like that, and that is a big if, we could do some proper research on it."
"WE SCOUR THE WORLD FOR THEM, DEK!!!" Nicolai yelled. "We scour the world for them!"
- - - - - -
Leon also let out a slight sigh as he placed a cold towel on Zyl's forehead. He was glad now that he'd acquired some heat resistance Skills before, because otherwise, there was a chance he might not have been able to carry his lord to the bed.
The old man couldn't see the face of the one he served, but there was no need to. He could feel the heat radiate off him in waves, threatening to burn down even the bed he laid on, yet it held. Of course, Leon could have just laid him down on the grass outside, the floor was more likely to give than Zyl's body, but he thought that any comfort he could give, he would try his best to do so.
"How is he," the old butler asked quietly, facing the young woman besides him.
"Not great," Maclroy said, sweat beading on her forehead from the heat. "He's got a high fever, and it's almost cooking him on the inside, but he can still stand that much. The problem is his... well everything else pretty much. His muscles are fine, his skin will regrow, so on and so forth. I'm worried about his core and vessel."
"Both?" Leon asked.
"Yes, both," Maclroy nodded. "He really messed himself up dragging things out. It's a wonder he didn't pass out a dozen times earlier. Actually, there's a chance he did and because he was so focused, his subconscious just kept working."
Leon didn't reply, simply gazing at the man he had served for so long now.
"His core is damaged, his mana veins all jumbled up, his vessel is cracked and barely holding together. All of that is going to take time and effort to heal. Which means I'll be sleeping a lot less for the next few days," she lamented.
"Can I help him?" Leon simply asked.
"Of course you can," Maclroy say, watching the older man's face show a bit of hope. "He's going to need proper food, and plenty of care. I can't make him eat with magic, but you might be able to get some nourishment in him, even while he's unconscious. Other than that, once he wakes up, any normalcy he can get would probably be good."
Leon nodded slowly, then Maclroy laid a hand on his shoulder. "Come on now. Have faith in him. And me, too. We'll get him back."
"Yes," Leon said after a bit of hesitation, "yes we will."
- - - - - -
Ragnarok spent a lot of time travelling as fast as they could to catch up to Alexander. He had moved freakishly fast, much faster than they could ever hope to go, though they were eventually going to see him when they reached their map marker.
"How much further is it, Eric?" Magma asked.
"Should be there soon," the dryad replied calmly, taking swift strides through the forest.
The two of them were the quickest runners among the group, at least when it came to long distances in this type of terrain. Eric, since he was a dryad, had a great affinity for Skills that rely on nature, and would occasionally step into a tree and out another a few hundred meter onwards. Magma, on the other hand, was able to simply burn her way through, following where Eric first stepped.
This was how they usually travelled through forests. If it were a snowy wasteland, Pul would be the one preparing the road for everyone else, and if it was a flat grassland, they'd really just take a carriage.
After a few more hours of running and jumping, when the two were nearing the end of their stamina once again, they decided to push through. Already halfway up the mountain, they kept going as they breathed heavily, their stamina nearing the bottom, and eventually, the forest lightened up to a small mountain trail.
Bit by bit, they made their way up, over the awkwardly spaced stairs, and the packed dirt occasionally covered in gravel. If they weren't short on time, this seemed like the type of location where Wilhelmia would stop for inspiration and write a new song. The thought made Magma smile bitterly. They certainly weren't stopping this time.
The trail itself wasn't very long, and soon enough, they made their way over the last ledge, and to the marker.
"There we are," Eric said, lifting his tired legs up the final step and gazing upon Yasashiku's residence.
Almost instantly, the smile faded.
"What are you waiting for up there? Move," Magma said impatiently, light pushing him aside and stepping up herself, only to be stunned to silence.
What they saw was sobering, immediately washing away all the fatigue from travelling as it lost its first place spot in their awareness. The sight was so surreal, too. They could tell, very clearly tell, that there once was a very beautiful spot here. A house that someone lived in, a pond that fish swam in, a forge, maybe.
"You made it," old man Alex said, sitting on the ground. Next to him was another, older man, his right arm in a sling, a cracked mask on his face, resting just above a deep frown.
"Who is it?" Yasashiku asked. "I don't remember inviting any other visitors."
"They're not here to do anything bad, Yasashiku," Alex chided lightly, then let out a long sigh. "These are the people who saved your life, I suppose."
"So they sent you here," Yasashiku nodded. "Well then, take a seat I suppose. Go on. You won't find anything more comfortable than the ground around here anymore. Ah, not there though. It's where our little buddy rests."
The old man pointed at a small formation of stones, with a small stick in the ground behind them. This was the impromptu grave he and Alexander had made for Mercury. Not that his body was around for them to bury.
In fact, everything around them was destroyed. The house no longer stood, all of it upturned, dust and rubble all that remained. The water in the pond was all gone, all the plants around there dead, the fish Yasashiku had raised nowhere to be seen. The ground was stained, upturned, with occasional craters, and there were bloodstains aplenty, too.
This place had been about as thoroughly destroyed as anything could be.
- - - - - -
The 5 minutes Mercury spent before everything went to shit weren't very long. After all, it was just 5 minutes. Zyl had handed over his spark, and Berthorn politely declined to call off his orders to assassinate Mercury. They only needed one spark, after that, his employers wanted to see his brother suffer.
So the mopaaw would die. That was all there was.
However, the person in question still had no idea. Something had been feeling slightly off for a page now, so he had gotten used to the feeling and disregarded it. He simply enjoyed how nice of a day it was. The sun in the sky, he laid on a rock, enjoying its warmth. Yasashiku was feeding the fish next to him, tossing breadcrumbs or whatever it was they ate into their hungry, gaping mouths.
Mercury didn't even practice anything. He didn't daydream, he didn't work on his core for once. It was his first break he decided to properly honor in a little while, so he didn't even swing his mind's hammer, didn't practice his rijn. It would all come with time, after all.
His skin was warm, his eyes were slightly open, and he simply enjoyed the landscape around him for, well, around 4 and a half minutes he'd guess.
Then he stopped. The eerie feeling in his heart became much, much stronger, and more urgent. It told him to run and play dead at the same time, warned him that he was, right now, in incredible danger.
For a moment, Mercury panicked, jumping up then freezing, not knowing what to do. Was Yasashiku also affected by this?
"Sensei, something is wrong! We need to run!" he said loudly, watching the old man's hand freeze.
"What is it, Starlight-kun?" he asked somewhat calmly.
"I don't know, but my <Intuition> is telling me it's dangerous!"
Then, the water of the pond stirred, and before a full 5 minutes had actually passed, a knife suddenly exited from the pool, only narrowly avoided by Yasashiku through Mercury's warning.
Everything seemed to happen at once from that moment. From the grass, something moved, shook it off, dug out from the ground and jumped at the cat. Another shape crawled out of the shadow the rock he laid on cast. A third figure, somehow, stepped out from a tree, while the thing that just came from the pond also suddenly sprinted towards Mercury.
Almost instantly, he could tell he was about to die. Instinctively, he jumped forward, avoiding getting skewered through the chest, and only receiving a shallow slash on his back thigh. "Run!" he simply yelled at his teacher, pushing the old man with <Telekinesis> as he himself tried his best to avoid the people attacking him.
Somehow, while aggressive, they all still seemed cautious, carefully pacing around him and striking suddenly. He could tell they were afraid of him for some reason, but the fear was also slowly fading. The old man he'd been living with used the boost to take a few steps back, then seemed to focus for a while, and suddenly, with a heavy noise, one of the assassins fell to the ground.
[Sudden Quest: "Attempt on your Life!"
Condition: Eliminate as many of the assassins as possible! 1/???
Reward: Based on success.
Failure condition: No assassins defeated or Death.
Penalty: <Bet> disabled for 1 Chapter.]
Mercury barely even knew what to think as the information poured into his head. Everything was so sudden to him, he hardly had the time to even comprehend what was going on. For some reason, there were highly trained assassins trying to kill him, and Yasashiku had just knocked one of them down with his mind's hammer.
But no one left him any time to think. As Mercury tried to get his head together, another bladed weapon flew at him again, dealing a cut to his front right leg. It burned very badly, too, and he could already feel the other wound go numb, which meant that the weapons were coated with some sort of poison.
Gritting his teeth, Mercury summoned all the willpower he had, and compressed his thoughts. He split his mind in two as well, thinking as fast as he could. These people were highly trained, and there was probably more than four. He needed to get himself and Yasashiku out as fast as possible.
His second zeyjn, knowing what the first had just thought, began to compress its thoughts further, forming a small sheet of them, and pushing even harder against Yasashiku, who seemed to almost grow wings as he jumped out of the way of another attack. He flew much further than he could imagine, and ended up suddenly finding himself on the side of the cliff.
Then, Mercury wanted to return to the present, but another wound laced his thoughts with pain. He clenched his teeth even harder and began to spin his special thread, throwing it around himself as much as he could with telekinesis. Hopefully it would get him a few moments to think. His mentor was now gone, certainly, right? He just had to run himself.
And the mopaaw tried just that, jumping off the ground as hard as he could, only to be caught by the tail and slammed right back down. For a moment, his vision went black, and he couldn't orientate himself, when he felt another, blinding pain in his stomach. By the time his vision returned, he saw a blade wedged in between his ribs, going quite far into himself.
Mercury screamed, the pain almost blinding. He was dying. He was actually dying, right now. This was killing him.
Somehow, he needed to get the assassins off. What could he do? What should he do?!
His mind clouded, Mercury felt his heart beat faster and saw the blood leaking out. He felt all his memories pass by his inner eye, and one of them stuck out. He gathered all the thoughts he could and screamed.
"BLOOD ECLIPSE!!"
And, already attracted by his despair, it came. The sky began to darken. It turned a blood red as the assassins paused to look up. If Mercury could see their faces he liked to imagine they were frowning.
If he was dying, so would they.
Still, he hadn't given up quite yet. Using their moment of distraction, as black clouds gathered and the sun was replaced by a scarlet circle, he pushed the knife out with <Telekinesis>. A glimpse of his Hp told him he wasn't doing very well, so he had to invest. 40 points into Vitality.
[The individual's Vitality has surpassed 100! Your regenerative capabilities grow stronger.]
Almost immediately, Mercury felt the change. The huge increase in maximum Hp made this wound seem quite a bit less threatening, and although the sudden influx of health made him feel a bit dizzy, he could also tell it helped his wound begin healing. The blood just started actually clotting when the singing began.
"This little sea of scarlet~
Lets me tear the world apart, yet~
When it's done I will still stand~
On top a barren, beaten land~"
When the voice had finished speaking, the assassins seemed to regain their wits, first trying to attack Mercury, but soon distracted by the fact that rifts opened up in the air, out of which monsters suddenly stepped.
Mercury barely had the energy to watch the fight, though he was sure that the people trying to kill him didn't do too poorly. There were certainly quite a few inhuman screeches. Barely clinging to consciousness, he saw one of the things that usually crawled out of the rifts stumble towards him, sniffing the air.
It had no eyes, yet its face was locked onto Mercury, somehow tracking him, even as he crawled over the ground, trying to get away. But his body refused to listen. The toxin was taking effect, slowing down his movement, and his heartbeat, to the point where it was barely audible. With his last moment of clarity, his thoughts already slowed down, Mercury split his mind, weaving some string to try and make the monster forget about him.
His zeyjn went into the shop, buying a healing potion for most his money, and whatever antidote he could find for the rest, then his eyes closed, and all that remained was screeches.
The creature sniffed him, listened closely to the tiny thing's chest, and could not hear anything at all. Its head was a little foggy, more than usual even, and the tiny heap of meat and bones in front of it seemed thoroughly dead.
Thus, it simply picked it up, let out a loud screech, and began retreating.
The woman sang.
"And these little eyes of mine,
they see a little fate of thine.
They see death, and they see carnage,
a river of blood, yet to be tarnished
carrying your life within,
and dragging it,
into the pit."
Immediately after, Mercury was carried through one of the portals, as the rest of the eclipse unfolded.
- - - - - -
End of Book 1:
Dying Dreams
- - - - - -
Mercury will return in Book 2.
- - - - - -
Author's note:
Hey everyone, this'll be a little longer than my usual end of chapter stuff, so I decided to post it right in here.
Thanks to everyone who has followed the story so far. It's been a joy going through this with you guys, all the ups and down, funny and serious moments. Reading comments has probably become my favourite part of writing in general, it really makes my day knowing that people care about the story I put to paper.
Well, this is it for Volume 1 I suppose. It's a lot for just one book, almost 400 thousand words. Can you imagine that? I still struggle with it, honestly. It's been a wild ride.
