"Katush." (Water.)
1,100,067,928.
The word fell from Gabriel’s lip, becoming a wisp of violet-black mana that scattered across the lake that now pooled all around him.
"Katush."
1,100,067,918.
With every utterance, the looming number shrank. It was honestly just tiny increments, but it shrank nonetheless. Thus, the water rose without end, thus magic drowned the mountains.
"Katush."
1,100,067,908.
He just needed to speak the words. With each utterance, the souls swirling ceaselessly within him were ground up, burnt down until nothing remained.
"Katush."
1,100,067,898.
Souls became mana. Souls became strength. He felt it within him, welling up with each utterance as he pushed it further. Each soul became mana. Each soul empowered the spell they were burned into.
The water around Gabriel moved. He could feel waves wash against him, water rushing over his arms as if it wanted to bring him down. The claw moved. He could see it cut through the air as it shot towards him.
A dark yellow orb met it before it could reach him. The liquid splashed against its scales and then evaporated, a bright smoky flower forming above it before collapsing onto it. The smoke slithered across its entire body, digging into even the smallest gap in its scales to bore into its body. For a moment, its movements grew stiff and twitchy, a tremble running through all its fingers as the energy leaking out from it shrank.
Poison was something that acted against the facilities necessary for life, that was how it was in Gabriel’s past world and it was how it was in this world. Thus, the poison that Teresa threw out to protect Gabriel was capable of more than just attacking the nerves of the claw, it could also hamper its mana.
A rumbling soon followed after the claw was forced to slow down. Arioch had arrived above it and brought it down, lumps of earth clumped around the arm that smashed the claw back down to the ground. They hadn’t allowed their shock to get the best of them and acted accordingly, thus giving Gabriel the time to keep going further.
"Katush."
1,100,067,895
A band of mercenaries.
"Katush."
1,100,067,894
A wise king.
"Katush"
1,100,067,893
A killer on death’s row.
"Katush"
1,100,067,892
A widow trying to raise her children.
"Katush"
1,100,067,891
A princess abandoning her own happiness to save her country.
"Katush"
1,100,067,890
A rapist escaping from his most recent crime scene.
"Katush"
1,100,067,889
A merciless knight cutting down peasants on the orders of his lord.
Good. Bad. Kind. Cruel. There were souls of every type, coming from every walk of life. But they burned all the same. Became mana all the same. One by one they were reduced to ash that coated his soul and insides like a thin film, even their memories fading amongst the flaky rain. The fire burned regardless of the firewood.
"Katu…Urp!"
He tried to burn another soul, but a mouthful of blood rushed up to his mouth as a result. The veins in his body were twisting like snakes, the three stars dancing around his heart trembling like fallen leaves. 100 souls. This was it, here lay his current limit. If he burned more now then it would break him. Maybe just one vein at first, maybe just one small organ. But bit by bit it would stack up, bit by bit his life would grow shorter. And finally, he would just die.
Thump
A light hit in his chest. His heart was beating. His blood was pumping. He was alive.
His gaze rose. The claw was being assaulted by the combined might of the remaining knights, Arioch and Caine sending out their own attacks whenever the claw tried to retaliate with its own attacks. But still, even with all that, the claw was still rising from the pit that Arioch had smashed it into, the poison already expelled from its body.
Teresa was off to the side, preparing more poison. She probably knew that quantity was useless so she was working on quality instead, mixing and enhancing the various poisons she had prepared ahead of time. Alice…
Alice was looking straight at him. Face pale, eyes wide, mouth open. She almost looked frozen in time, a miserable expression etched onto her face. Her pupils were moving, catching up with the situation. But still, the expression hung on her face. Looking at it… that hurt more than the actual hit he got from the claw.
Then again, he couldn’t actually feel the hit he just got from the claw so perhaps it wasn’t a proper comparison. It either hit him so hard that it numbed his nerves, his adrenaline was rushing with such force that it blocked his sense of pain, or the souls currently burning were drowning it out. Whatever the case was, he could only be thankful for it right now. Moving while in pain was annoying.
"Tarman." (Gather.)
The word fell from his lips. He didn’t cast a new spell, he simply changed the first ones he cast, added to them. The souls were already burning within the spells, the power was already there.
"Tarman."
He didn’t alter just one of the spells, no he altered them all. The deep blue water that was pooling around him, threatening to drown out all other colour… It was gathering by his command. Like when a tsunami approached, all the water receded. Snow and ice had melted wherever the water appeared, so when it finally rushed towards Gabriel it revealed the bare earth of the land for the first time in several thousand years.
Deep blue water and dark brown earth, in one day the Jaws of Barong ended up seeing not just one but two things that it hadn’t seen in ages. As a result, the knights gaped slightly, their attacks relenting for a moment.
The claw immediately burst out, foregoing any semblance of defence as it launched its attacks. The ice that formed in the air made it seem like a hedgehog, thousands upon thousands of needles bursting out.
The claw jumped after the needles. Caine and Arioch had to defend themselves and the knights from the attack so they couldn’t stop it. That was when Teresa stepped in, another dark yellow orb hitting the beast before becoming smoke that seeped into it. Judging by the way it spasmed, this yellow poison of hers was probably a nerve poison to induce numbness, an extreme version of a pain-killer probably.
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"Tarman."
With one last utterance, the water finally gathered in Gabriel’s hand. What was once a lake had become a marble just large enough to fit in the palm of his hand. It looked like a dark gem, gleaming with a blue light. It would look good on Alice, for a moment he couldn’t help but think that.
But he quickly put that thought aside. Teresa had bought him a moment with her attack, the claw hadn’t gotten to launch a second attack, nor had it gotten to prepare its defences. It was still in the air, but it was the perfect time to attack. Thus, his feet moved.
"Nergal. Bring it down."
A soft mutter, barely a whisper. But he could feel the darkness that was previously coiled around Alice move. It fell to the ground like a drop of mud, scuttling across the bare dirt until it was right beneath the claw. And then it grew.
From one centimetre to ten, from ten centimetres to one metre, from one metre to ten metres, from ten metres to a hundred. A drop became a black blotch, bubbling like tar as a circular maw spun around within. Tendrils extended from the bubbling muck, rising skyward until they coiled around the talons of the claw.
The claw resisted, but another orb of poison hit it, this one clearly weaker. Arioch also hit it again, Caine taking over the role of defender. With that, the claw was forced down and out of the air, plummeting towards the human that had appeared beneath it.
Gabriel looked up at the figure that was rapidly approaching him, Nergal bubbling around him as if to keep him stable. It was sturdy, extremely so. His earlier attack had barely managed to make a dent even with all the strengthening magic he had used. Arioch had hit it twice and it had suffered an unknown number of attacks by the knights, yet its scales seemed as sturdy as ever, only a few dents and scratches visible on it.
It was sturdy beyond belief, it was harder than anything he had ever encountered. Those scales were practically diamonds. But, Gabriel knew of at least one thing that could cut diamonds. So he raised his hand and pointed the compressed lake at the falling beast.
"Devak." (Burst.)
The final addition to the spells. Three words, three simple words. Going by the classification of this world it was technically just a low-grade spell, not even a general-grade one. But the power packed into those three simple words… It really was fitting for something dubbed the Barbarian Path by scholars.
The marble of water exploded with a screech, like nails drawing across a chalkboard. Did the claw sense the danger from below? It curled up almost instantly, a layer of ice gathering around it while a pillar of ice struck it from the side to push it away. Doing so meant that it couldn’t deal with the poison seeping into it, but it must have judged that the risk was worth it.
And then the water, compressed into a line barely as thick as Gabriel’s fist, crashed into it. Gabriel heard a crack that mixed in with the screeching of his spell, drops of blood so blue that they looked like sapphires scattering through the air.
The pillar of water continued upwards even after it ran through the claw, climbing ever higher until it pierced the grey clouds above. The pillar dispersed since the spell had ended, turning back into drops of water that slowly fell to the earth. But the hole in the clouds was still there, revealing but a glimpse of the bright blue sky.
Gabriel’s gaze followed the claw, which had knocked its way out of the direct path of the water. But one of its talons was still torn clean off, its prided scales torn to shreds. Eight eyes focused on Gabriel, a dark red tint dyeing them as the ice shielding the beast faded.
Darkness covered Gabriel’s vision at that moment, the bubbling tar around him slithering up his body to form a shield. An instant later he felt something strike his side. The claw had retaliated the instant his spell finished, probably judging when he would be at his weakest. But Gabriel wasn’t facing it alone, he had Nergal and the others to cover him.
He could just barely feel his body soaring through the air for a few moments before he fell onto something soft. The darkness faded from his body and he found himself lying in a pool of water, more constantly falling from the sky like a torrential downpour. The hole in the clouds, the bright blue sky, he could still see it from where he lay.
"Gabriel!"
A sound from the side, the subdued rumbling of thunder. Ah, Alice had finally come to her senses and caught up with the situation. Good, that would make things go much smoother.
"Gabe…I’m so… Gabriel, I, I, I… You have no id… I didn’t mean…Gabriel…"
She stumbled over her words. Couldn’t get out a single complete sentence. The voice he was so used to had become hoarse to the point that it sounded as if she had torn her throat. The face that previously almost looked frozen in time was now a mess of tears and snot. The hand that clutched his was colder than the snow, colder than the ice that used to be here.
Red and violet against a backdrop of grey, with a tinge of blue. The colours she had painted onto his world… they were currently twisting, and it was because of him. The hand she was trying to hold reached out and he touched her face.
"Real…"
Soft skin, just slightly warmer than her hands. It was a bit springy to the touch, bouncing back after he pushed it down.
"Real…"
Her eyelashes tickled his finger as he swept across them. Her forehead was wet, either from sweat or from the torrential downpour he created.
"Real…"
Her lips were softer than the cheek he just touched, a little moist, kept warm by the breaths that leaked from her mouth.
"Real…"
He traced her face like a blind man trying to see. Perhaps it would be strange to say, but everything he touched had substance, everything he touched reacted to him.
Yes… This was real. This world. Those knights. This person. Those tears. They weren’t words on a page, they weren’t words and characters in a show. They were people. They were Alice. They were her tears. And he… He was Gabriel. Another person in the world.
His hand rested on Alice’s cheek. He heard the sounds of battle a bit away from them so the others were probably taking this chance to assault the claw. They found out that it could bleed, so they knew that it could die.
But right now, Gabriel’s eyes didn’t leave Alice. He was looking at her, the mouth that kept opening and closing, the tearful eyes that looked back at him. He wanted to speak, to comfort her as he used to do when she cried. But what to say?
He pondered. What would be fitting? What would be a good thing to say? He thought of a lot of comforting words, soft things to say that would prove that he was alright. But none of them would leave his mouth. His gaze rose again for a moment, catching a glimpse of that bright blue spot above.
Looking at that little circle, his hand left Alice’s face and fell back down to the water. He was sprawling now, like a kid about to make snow angels. He stopped thinking about the best thing to say. And yet, his mouth opened.
"You know, Alice? I used to think that the world was nothing but white and grey as far as the eye could see."
For the first time since he awoke in this world, he spoke to Alice properly. From person to person, from human to human. This girl that made a human, he wanted to speak with her.
"I hate white and grey. They’re dull, they’re lifeless, they made the world dull and lifeless. There was just nothing, no matter where I looked. Nothing. No one. What’s the point in living like that, Alice?"
A whim. The walk up the stairs, the walk to the edge of the roof, the final step. A whim, always a whim. Because what’s the point? Everything was dull, everything was worthless.
"Just moving from mission to mission, moving around like a husk between each one. It was all dull, all pointless. But at least in the missions I had a purpose, I had a use. But even they were grey, even that purpose was white. It was all just dull, lifeless. So how could I not just act on the whims that struck me? It wasn’t like there was a point in any of it anyway, may as well just do it and see what happens."
A life that supposedly had purpose, after he was thrown away he realized that even all of that was just white and grey. The dull and lifeless world, he was just another part of it.
Even here. A whim. Make this pitiful villainess happy. He had nothing else so he may as well just do that, he may as well just cling to that so that he could pretend like he had a mission, a purpose. At least, if he was a dagger again he would be able to forget everything else again.
White. Grey. Dull. Lifeless. Such was his world. Such was his life. Be it this world or the last.
"But the world’s not really like that, Alice. You showed me that. Where there was once nothing but white, I suddenly found colours. Where there was once nothing but emptiness I found emotions. Where there was once nothing but missions I found desire."
And yet… Red looked down at him. Violet cascaded over her shoulders. Colours. Dark and powerful, bright and piercing. They had snuck into his world. She took that grey and the dull and she painted it over with her own colours. With her hand she did something he had never managed before, she gave life to the lifeless.
"I was a tool, Alice. If you’d just left me be I would have been a great sword, I would have been a page on which you could write your assured victory and long life."
She was crying. In fact, ever since he started talking she was crying more than before. The same tears as earlier, the same miserable face. So how come he felt that he could understand that these tears were different?
Happy… She was happy now. She cried harder because she was happy, she felt more joy than she felt sorrow. Gabriel’s hand rose from the water again, colourful drops falling from his fingers. He held it up slightly, almost as if presenting it. For a moment, his gaze drift past Alice again.
A tinge of blue high above. A little safe haven from the grey that rained down petals of white. He did that. It wasn’t someone else, it was him. With his hands, he tore it up. With his hands, he tipped over the bucket of paint.
"My grey and white world, Alice. You painted it red and violet, like a flower in full bloom. You gave a tool life, you turned a page into words."
This world… He was a part of it, he was influencing it. The dull. The lifeless. He could change it. He could take colours and paint it all. And perhaps… For one person he had already done just that.
"I want to live, Alice. I want to paint. My world. Your world. I want to paint them, I want to see how many colours there really are hidden behind all that dull white and grey."
Gabriel. Alice. Teresa. Lawrence. Trisha. He felt like he wanted to paint, he wanted to add colour. He could paint the world, he could change the dull. So he wanted to leave a bit of his colour there. And this girl in front of him, who once undoubtedly saw the same world as him… He wanted to paint hers the most.
"You painted my world, Alice. Will you teach me how to paint?"
Back when they were children, she asked for his hand and he offered it so that he could have a mission. Now, he offered his hand again. Of his own volition. Of his own desire. For his own desire. And in response, a familiar pair of fingers wrapped around his, a smile that couldn’t be covered by tears adding a bit more colour to his world.