“The OneWithoutWings,” inside an olden library, a figure wearing a black, tattered cloak muttered to himself whilst holding a crumbling book. “Hm, quite the praise,” he scoffed.
Clearing his throat, he quoted the book. “He who conquered the seven ancients, he who was the most powerful and ruthless, he who is the master of onyx light… tsk, you might as well say he’s god… wait, god?” he paused, closing the book silently and putting it back on the dust-caked bookshelves.
“God… yes, that’s right,” he whispered. “That’s the perfect bait for those lunatics! But, how do I summon… the OneWithoutWings?”
The candle light flickered, and the figure stood up, making the chair creak and dust dance. Casting a final look at the bookshelves, he grabbed the withering book and left.
“The Sacred Grave, perfect,” the cloaked figure rubbed his chin before taking off his hood. A smile stretching on his face, he took out a pouch from his inner robes and hiked down to the bottom of the ravine.
“I hope this is enough,” he hummed, taking out a round, fist-sized seed from the pouch. Holding it in front of his eyes, he squinted, he pitch-black pupils shining in the night.
“Let’s see… don’t make me waste this Spirit Seed, OneWithoutWings,” he smiled, putting the spirit seed atop a boulder.
Then, he took out a fountain pen, staring at the glass masterpiece while gently squeezing it. Sighing, he pocketed the pen, opening his mouth to chant.
A few hours later, the ravine turned quiet, the cloaked figure nowhere to be found. Atop a boulder, only a rotting seed was left.
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Atop a boulder bigger than a man was a small plant. Its stem was a dark brown, nearly looking charred. Its three leaves waved gently in the air, each being different in color. One was charcoal-black, the other was milky-white, and the last was blood-red.
Arloum sighed in his mind, his leaves drooping down as a result. “Looking” around using his leaves, he searched for a familiar figure, only to twist his stem in disappointment. Without proper eyes, he could barely see a few steps away from him.
‘Tch, Where’s that brat?!’ he grumbled, sitting boredly in his empty mindscape.
‘Imprisonment is sweeter than this… life,’ he lamented.
Arloum, once known for his tyranny and battle tower, found himself reborn as a strange plant.
‘It’s odd that I need neither sunlight or water. Though, my need for energy seemingly… tripled?’ he hummed, looking at his inner body.
‘Tch, pathetic… wait, this is my body! It’s… it’s… it’s majestsic…!’ By the end of his sentence, he nearly wept.
‘Focus, Arloum. The majesty once yours is within reach. Focus,’ he inwardly manifested a body, pumping his fist in the air.
‘I have… ten points of energy, hn… Compared to my millions back then… hnnnnn!’
[Energy: 4/10]
‘At this rate, I’ll lose my sentience! Tsk, I once shunned meditation. Now it’s my life potion,’ without a choice, he cleared out his thoughts. Though, that alone took him nearly half an hour.
As time passed, the sun slowly sunk and the sky turned dark, stars shining brilliantly above him. Of course, he saw none of it when his consciousness woke up.
‘It’s slightly cold… is it night already? It’s been seven days, tch.’
[Energy: 10/10]
Feeling energized and reassured by the status mirror, he waved his leaves in thought.
‘That should last me for two more days… but the energy around me is thinning out.’
Feeling a bit urgent, he shifted his focus from his inner body to the outside world. This time, he “looked” using his whole body, though it barely helped.
‘How can a plant grow atop a boulder, me wonders,’ he huffed.
‘That brat, planting me under a rock, yet daring to shirk responsibility! Even my late parents weren't this shameless!’
Arloum, whose parents in his previous life died to give him life, ground his teeth in frustration. Inwardly, that is.
‘I’ll need to find a way to leave!’ he planned.
Obviously, he was a plant, and he didn’t need anyone’s meddlement, but the problem was…
‘I need to stockpile on energy, so I can take my roots out of this rock!’ he nodded to himself. Without a surplus of energy, he’d faint before escaping the boulder.
‘But… I need life energy from that brat!’ he groaned.
‘Escaping one prison and entering another. This time, I’m at a mere brat’s mercy, tch! Some life I have,’ he sneered, flapping his leaves and fanning himself.
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‘Now, where’s that brat? He… couldn’t have died, right?’ he laughed slowly, imagining the dangerous outside world.
‘If he died… then who will feed me? Will I die like this? Damned humanoids, you all are wicked!’ muttering up a storm, he started cursing wildly.
However, as he was thinking, he felt a gush of energy spreading to his location.
‘The air was disturbed. Is someone here? Could it be…?’ his heart racing and his soul jumping in place, he hurriedly opened his eyes.
The fog swirled, and like a ghost manifesting out of thin air, a figure slowly emerged from the thick fog.
‘The brat is finally here!’
Cackling in his mind, he watched as a youth with short brown hair and light blue eyes climbed the boulder. He was wearing a pair of dark green pants and a simple beige shirt, though it was terribly oversized on the youth’s body. Seeing the youth’s reddened eyes and tear-stained face, Arloum’s leaves twisted.
‘Is he… crying? Hn, I think that’s what you call it,’ he nodded in his mind. Leaves twisting, he searched the youth’s body.
“Hey,” the youth called out, his voice hoarse. Sitting beside Arloum, he placed a dead snake beside the latter’s stem before falling silent.
Hearing the hoarse voice, Arloum trembled. ‘What a strange voice. Did he down acid and burn his throat?’
The youth, unaware of Arloum’s thoughts, laughed hollowly. “What’s it like to be a plant?” He asked, his eyes glued to the sky… though Arloum couldn’t see the sky.
‘Being a plant sucks. I want my majestic body back. I want my tower back. I don’t want to be at your mercy…’
“I bet you’re happy, huh? Ugly plant,” the youth snickered, tears welling up at the corner of his eyes.
‘Happy? You think suffering is fun?’ Arloum scoffed. ‘...wait a minute, did you call me ugly?! I’ll have you know, I once had the most beautiful scales! Even dragons shot me envious looks! Those lizards. Tsk.’
Hearing none of his thoughts, the youth sobbed, gritting his teeth in a vain attempt to stop his cries.
“You get to eat a lot, and you don’t have to do anything… you don’t have anyone to worry about,” the youth bit his lower lip, his eyes flooded by his tears.
“I bet you don’t know,” he hiccuped, “what it’s like to cry!”
‘Brat,’ Arloum’s soul burst into flames! But he swiftly calmed himself. ‘Well, I don’t know what crying feels like. But I bet you haven’t been sealed before, eh?!’
Yelling inwardly, Arloum clapped his leaves before halting his thoughts. Looking at the youth trying, and failing, to stifle his cries, his rage gently flew away. ‘...if someone hurts you, brat, just stab them! I tell you, it works all the time!’
Assured of his wisdom, he stretched his stem and leaves, trying to reach the youth’s face. Yet, he fell short of a few inches.
“...mm?” feeling a tickle in his hair, the youth looked at Arloum, his face covered in fluids. Seeing Arloum’s leaves reaching out for him, he silently shifted next to Arloum.
‘Aha!’ With his leaves finally touching the youth’s face, he used his leaves to flick away the latter’s tears. ‘There, now you don’t look ugly.’
“Are you saying I shouldn’t… cry?” The youth asked, and Arloum slapped him with his leaves. Though, the youth didn’t notice.
‘What nonsense! I simply yearn for beauty and abhor filth,’ he huffed, his leaves bobbing up and down. Seeing this, the youth’s lips quivered, before slowly curling into a smile.
“Yeah, that’s right,” the youth nodded, sniffling while wiping the remnantsof his tears. “My… my brother wouldn’t want me to be sad all the time. Thank you, little plant.”
Giggling, the youth reached out for Arloum’s leaves, rubbing them gently.
“Sorry, I didn’t see you for a week…” the youth looked down, his eyes growing wetter by the second. “My… my brother…”
‘Tsk! It’s just a brother! It’s not like you died, stop crying!’ Arloum, annoyed, smacked the youth’s eyes a couple of times before stopping.
In the end, the youth kept crying for a long time. Giving up on keeping the youth’s face clean, Arloum wordlessly touched the snake’s body with his leaves, absorbing its life energy.
‘To think I’d be forced to do this,’ Arloum grumbled as his leaves hugged the dead snake. In an instant, his senses extended to the dead snake’s inner-body.
The snake’s veins were flooded by two energies, one was warm, viscous, and milky, while the other was foul, and bitter, rampaging like a violent torrent of water. The former was life energy, while the latter was its decaying form.
‘Disgusting,’ he clicked his tongue, focusing on his inner-body and controlling his energy. Unlike life energy, his energy was like a pile of iron dust. It was dark and heavy, though not quite pitch-black nor immovable.
‘It looks like charcoal,’ he hummed in thought, controlling his energy to enter the snake’s body.
‘Can all plants do this? To think necromancers train for decades just to see a corpse’s inner-body, tch.’
[T1: Absorption (38%)]
As his energy, dark energy as he dubbed it, entered the snake, both forms of its life energy churned, before gushing toward his dark energy. Then, without a moment to react, both energies assaulted his senses.
‘Ugh—!’ He tightened his grip on the snake’s body with his leaves. Inwardly, though, he felt like he was fed both maggot-filled milk and rotten eggs. The maggots tried to burrow into his mouth, while the rotten eggs stuck to his teeth, tongue, and throat.
‘Whoever said life energy is pleasant?!’
[T1: Absorption (41%)]
At the same time, the fog turned thicker and thicker. When Arloum finished absorbing the snake’s life energy, both he and the youth could barely see each other.
“Hey,” the youth called out, startling Arloum who was about to doze off. “Are you a spirit plant?”
Arloum scoffed. ‘I’m not that lowly,’ he tilted his stem, trying to get as far as he could from the youth. The latter giggled, watching him with a smile.
“Don’t be shy, I read it from books. Some plants can absorb magic in the air and turn into spirit plants. And, I’ve seen some druids passing by when I was younger,” he said, staring blankly at Arloum while reminiscing.
‘You saw some druids?’ Arloum stared back at the youth, squinting his eyes.
‘Brown hair and round ears. You don’t look like an elf, so how did you see a druid?’
In his knowledge, druids only show themselves in elven forest, or during war.
‘I didn’t know the humanoids send their tender bones to war these days. Times have changed, tsk.’
Seeing Arloum unresponsive, the youth shrugged his shoulders.
“I think you’re a spirit plant,” he let out a sigh. “But I don't know. I want to be druid too, but… well, even if I don’t become a druid, you’re my friend, right? Little plant?”
The youth grinned, feeding Arloum’s amusement.
‘Tsk, think what you want. I’m no spirit plant,’ he sneered. ‘I am Arcoloum Onyx, the BlackScaledTyrant, KillerOfCelestia!’
He grinned, inwardly patting his chest. ‘Of course, a new life comes with a new name. Just call me Arloum, hn!’
Then, as the youth left, he closed his eyes, focusing on his inner-body, and then to his innate skills.
‘And I’m no dumb, spirit plant. I am a TreeOfDarkness!’
[TreeOfDarkness T1]
‘And I’m not your friend!’
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“Your highness, the prince,” a cold, deep voice called out, his words echoing in the silent halls of the grand palace.
Startled, the prince turned around, only to have his mouth covered by a hand. Then, he felt a searing pain on his throat, and his voice was lost. Knees folding, the prince fell to the ground, his collar stained in red and his blood oozing on the floor.
“Have a good night’s rest,” a cloaked figure said, standing before the fallen prince. Kneeling down, the cloaked figure carried the prince over his shoulder, before chanting a spell.
Moments later, flames erupted in the middle of the hall, burning the blood on the ground as both the figure and the prince vanished