2.2

Ramos! Esma! Esme!

The names of the three men looped in John’s mind, his blood boiled at the sight before him. Raina was on the verge of tears as her eyes met his, she shook her head so hard at him that her thin neck was on the verge of breaking.

Don’t you get close to Raina! Leave her alone!

He could do nothing but watch as the huge man rip apart Raina’s white dress while the poor girl looked at him desperately, begging for him to turn away from the upcoming horror.

Struggling to lift even a limb of the ground, John crawled adamantly on the ground, as long as he had strength in him, he will make sure Raina remains unharmed.

Until his body ran out of breath.

His heart, stopped beating.

Oh...

John’s whole body stiffened without notice, in an instance his vision became dark, his ears rang as his consciousness was slipped away from him. By the time he noticed it, all the blood that was meant to circulate within his body flowed out of him. With his body temperature plummeting drastically in this wintry night, even the snow outside began to feel warm to him.

Like his body, his spirit shall disappear soon.

Is this how I die? I-if only I had more power… Raina wouldn’t be…

John’s life flashed before his mind, every moment that he was around Raina, the jokes that he and Alwin spoke of, all of his time spend in A’vetheas, the life before A’vetheas…

The life before A’vetheas.

He could not remember a single face of the memories that he had before he lived in the elf community, there was only shades of figures that he could vaguely make out.

Right as his mind faltered from his body and reached to the echoes of the nameless figures in the fuzzy memories that he had. He came to a realization.

That realization took over him.

They should all die.

“I will kill you!”

The scream filled every corner of the abandoned mansion, the ground beneath trembled with great fury, sending shockwaves throughout. An astounding presence converged on the three men, dark energy hued with faint blue found itself wrapped around them.

“What’s going on?” Ramos shouted.

“Not good, not good,” a whimper came from Esma.

“N-no, no way… this kind of magic, i-it only belongs to—”

Taking up the form of an anaconda, the dark energy constricted the three men, strangling every inch of their body. The constrictions on their bodies were so huge that Ramos, Esma and Esme had streams of blood leaking from their eye sockets, their faces turned purple as their skeleton crumbled in submission to the dark energy.

At the very point where John was supposed to have fallen stood the person himself, the very same dark energy that surrounded the three men spread itself across him like a membrane.

The hole that Ramos left in his neck had disappeared, lacerations that were done onto him vanished. And there he stood, swirled by dark energy with his body completely restored.

John stretched out his left arm at their direction, swiped at the air, his three fingers commanded the dark energy to hook at their throats, forcibly entering their bodies, anchored at every cell of their body with microscopic hooks.

“Get away from her,” the command of calm rage caused the dark energies to fling the three men away from the elf girl.

They were sent into the air the next moment, their bodies smashed onto the brick walls, creating craters as they made impact.

Ka-rak!

The bricks became rubble, and as for the men, they are paralyzed from head to toe.

The men’s bodies throbbed as they their lungs desperately gasped for air. When their bodies have caused them to pass out from asphyxiation, the dark energy that surrounded the three men unraveled itself, dropping the three bodies on the ground like bags of trash.

“[Defilement].”

Sparing no time for them to recover, the dark energy swarmed their mouths once more, this time it entered their insides completely, filling all the space in their organs. Once it entered them the dark energy trashed violently, destroying them without remorse.

“Again, again, again, again.”

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As John’s cold voice commanded, the dark energy obeyed each iteration of his command, ravaging the men until their bodies were reduced to nothing but meat and bone.

“[Heal].”

The dark energy pulsed in deep-sky-blue and moved towards the pile of human paste in front of him, swallowing them whole. When it departed, the three men were no longer paste, they were in fact, returned to their undefiled bodies.

The men’s eyes were wide with shock, unable to grasp their reality.

What happened to them just seconds ago was imprinted freshly in their minds, though they were made into meat and bone from the torrent of dark energy, their consciousness remained throughout.

Ramos was the first to fall to his knees to John, the twins soon followed suit. Neither of them could accept what was happening, each and every part of their body was restored to a healthy state, unharmed.

But they had zero autonomy, grasped by an unseen force, only their minds were allow to experience what was about to happen to them.

John stopped in front of Ramos, he stared down at the brute with his furious glare, and right underneath those dark eyes was an eerie smile, one that spoke of untold cruelty, as though what happened to them a few seconds ago was only the appetizer.

Their face welled up tears, there was so much more that this trio wanted do, so many desires of theirs to fulfill. To have their fill of the riches, to beat the ever living out of those who opposed them, to be respected and perhaps someday, take revenge on the empire that they had once gave their all to.

Unfortunately, such future was no longer possible, for they who had suffered through the empire’s destruction of their homeland and escaped death countless times, had made a grave mistake for having awakened such horror.

A quick death is all the three could have hoped from the monster standing before them, for when the shadows that he controls move once more they would...

“J-John?” a weak voice stuttered

As if an angel had come for the three men’s deliverance, the elf girl croaked out John’s name, the eerie hatred in John’s eyes abated.

“John, is that you? A-are you hurt? I-I’m sorry… I couldn’t s-save you… But...hic...but…I am so glad you’re alive…hic...” she sobbed profusely at her incompetence, wiping her face repeatedly as the beads of liquid trickled down.

Raina.

The girl’s call for him drew John back from his rampage, he quickly left the three men and went to her. With an instinctive flick of his hand, a piece of black cloth appeared out of thin air, he proceeded to grab the thick cloth and wraped the half-nude Raina.

“What happened? If they so much as hurt you—”

“Waaah...” Raina clung onto him tightly, her fingers quivered as they scrunched his blood soaked coat. “You came back, you came back! You were dead, I saw you dying in front of my eyes. I-I couldn’t do a thing, I c-couldn’t...” her warm tears tickled down John’s chest as she continued. “B-because of me, i-if only I had been more competent with my magic… If only I had been better, y-you wouldn’t have to suffer in the first place… I...was ready to go with you the moment y-you…you…” her cracked voice was now muffled with continuous hics.

“Promise me this, Raina. No matter what happens, you will never think or do that under any circumstances,” John coddled the wailing elf, returning to his humane senses.

“No…hic... If you are gone...t-there’s no point—”

“And I’ll return to you no matter what,” he proclaimed firmly, putting his forehead against hers. “Even in death, I’ll come back to you as a soul, nothing will stop me, as long as you need me, I’ll return to your side, no matter how long it takes. So please, Raina. Please don’t say something like that ever again.”

“I...I...”

“It’s an answer to your Soul Oath that you always tease me about,” with that sentence, Raina stopped her sobbing, letting John stroke her head in silence. “Or maybe you never meant it at all?”

In his attempts to calm her, John had made use of one of the oldest magic ever known to him, Soul Oath. This ancient magic was one used by the Higher Races whenever they have decided to pledge themselves to a single mate for the rest of their lives. Eternally binding the Higher Race who enacted the magic ritual to their beloved’s soul.

Originally such a promise was made between two individuals that belonged to different races that would never end up together. Soul Oath became the intermediary that entangled their fates.

No matter how dire the straits would be, the rest of their lives would be connected to each other, in one way or the other. Such that those who made this oath would indefinitely end up together.

Seeing Raina was still stunned at what he said, John poised one of his arms under her knees, while firmly placed the other at her back and carried the elf girl like a bride and begun to walk away from the three men.

H-he accepted it… Johnny… The elven maiden had brought up the topic to John for him accept her offer of being her soulmate a few years back.

Raina for the longest time held feelings for John, upon her discovery of a Soul Oath she had immediately rushed to John and asked for his answer.

John at the time had blew her off under the assumption that she was joking. With his own reasoning that he was ‘just human’ and not even one with great physical prospects compared to the elves.

Raina who had her good intentions denied by her beloved had not given up after that initial incident. And as her own way of reminding how much she adored him, she would bring up the topic every now and thend to John in hopes that he would accept it.

Her cheekiness would always be returned in kind by John, each and every single time he would adamantly refuse and tease her by giving remarks that goes along the lines of: ‘Are you that desperate that you would choose a short lived human?’ or ‘I see I have no choice but to stick with you for the rest of my life then.’

Had he always known that I was being serious?

The quick shallow breaths that the three had been struggling to maintain, slowed and deepened as their lungs recovered from the paralysis, the invisible hard grasp on them softened. We are saved! That elf girl was enough to soften the monster’s heart. A wave of relief washed over them as John drifted in the distance with the elf in his arms, never to be seen again.

Or so they thought.

“Did you think I will let any of you go?”

A cruel smile appeared before their very faces, the one that moved towards them before being interrupted by the elf girl.

Their hopes were squashed when John appeared in front of them, even though he carried the elf girl he cared so much in his arms, his animosity towards them had not dwindled at the slightest.

He had not left them to live. Their fates were sealed when they laid their hands on the girl. John had purposely toyed with them, giving the trio false hope before ending their lives.

“De...de…de...” Esma spluttered his last words before meeting his end.

The hatred in John’s eyes intensified.

“[Execution].”

Esma’s head went flying from his neck, there was no blood spilled, his head rolled cleanly off the ground as a mannequin would, the judgment that befell upon him was straightforward.

As for his twin, Esme’s body convulsed fiercely upon John’s magic. A pool of red foam spewed from his mouth. He gagged once, twice, and then vomited out a beating heart.

Only Ramos remained, he was the last to be unaffected by John’s power. He held his hand to his stomach as it growled at the sight of his comrades’ execution before him. Ramos had his eyes that glued to the very scene of his friends dying in front of him.

A strange flow of adrenaline surged throughout his body, the longer he stared at the corpses of Esma and Esme, the faster his heart raced.

His body propelled him to crawl towards Esme’s still beating heart, lifting the beating flesh to his slobbering face and rubbed against it affectionately. Ramos’ eyes sparkled with great desire, panting intoxicatedly, he raised his own right arm and plunged it towards his chest.

And ripped his own heart out with strength that was beyond him.

Ramos clawed at John’s fleeting back as the boy did not spare them a look before their ultimate demise.

As timing would have it, a familiar flash of light appeared around John, it wrapped them both, returning them back to A’vetheas.