Amanda had quickly learned that escaping the grasp of trained soldiers from the Imperium was markedly different in terms of difficulty than escaping from the police had been when she had been a teen back on Earth. Though she was certainly faster than the soldiers, it seemed they had some kind of special tracking skill, and so no matter how far she ran – they always eventually caught up with her, making her need to start running again.
The planet’s surface was quite similar to Earth’s in many ways, but Amanda could tell that this planet’s gravity was far more intense than Earth’s had been. She felt many kilograms heavier than normal, and her speed of running was noticeably lesser than she remembered – though perhaps she was only feeling this slowdown because of her loss of cultivation. She couldn’t be sure just yet, but as she ran, she made sure to keep an eye out for any weak monsters to kill so as to regain her lost cultivation.
The longer that she had gone without feeding her core with more qi, the more she increasingly felt hollowed out and brittle. It was as though her bones had lost their strength, and her life had begun fading away – an ethereal sort of starvation having set in for the long term. She was resolved to bring an end to this suffering of hers, but it seemed her boy had not been wrong when he had said monsters on other planets were beyond monstrously high level, and so she’d been almost completely denied any opportunities to feast in the 4 or so days she’d been fleeing for her life.
A dense jade green fog appeared over the horizon and instantly Amanda felt her body halt in its tracks, the overwhelming aura that the fog emitted sending her to her knees in an instant. Her body began convulsing as she felt her blood beginning to almost boil, and pain racked her very essence – as though her soul was being stomped into non-existence. Yet, despite feeling as though she were being torn apart from the inside, her vision remained perfectly clear and aimed straight at the oncoming fog.
When the fog was mere inches from touching her skin, and the pressure had almost trebled in strength, a slimy serpentine head the size of a lorry appeared from the centre of the poisonous cloud of fog. If she had been in a right-minded state, Amanda was pretty sure she would have passed out from sheer terror, but instead, all she did was nothing as more and more gigantic heads emerged from the fog – each more vicious than the last.
She was at the complete mercy of the titanic beast, just as she had been at the mercy of the man that she oh so hated back in the hospital ward. Comparing the two was just about the only thing that Amanda could do in her head, even though the monster in front of her was undoubtedly stronger than that man in terms of raw power. Arthur Goodman, that monster, his aura was far more mentally terrifying than any beast could ever hope to have.
This hydra-esque creature was a monster born of the natural workings of the multi-verse/system, in that way it was just like every other monster in existence, and such entities seemed to operate on simple understandable premises and motivations that didn’t go beyond “kill anything that moves”. But he. That man was no simple monster. His aura had not been an overwhelming maelstrom of singular-minded killing intent, but instead a torrent of different and more potent emotions that had barraged her soul relentlessly.
Then, it hit.
An explosion tore apart the area around Amanda, blowing off one of her legs in the process and sending her flying off in a random direction. Her high endurance allowed her to remain conscious, just about, and as she hurtled away from the blast site – she saw that the explosion had not been intended for her at all. The hydra-like entity had been hit squarely on its central head, but though the top of its head looked singed by the colossal explosion, it otherwise seemed fine.
Then another explosive was fired at the hundred-headed beast, and this time the explosion was even more powerful as it actually seemed to actually harm the beast – sending it into a volatile rage unlike anything Amanda had ever seen before. She didn’t get to see the next few explosions, as upon impact with a tree whose bark was as hard as steel, she lay paralysed face first on the forest floor.
Once again, she was totally helpless and on the verge of death, a monster nearby, and literally a couple of galaxies away from the one person she cared about. Being back in this situation made Amanda feel as though she were back in that damn cell, being kept by the previous bastard who’d done her in previously. Ever since the apocalypse began many months ago, all Amanda had gone through was pain and heartbreak, and now it seemed as though she would die an entirely meaningless death after making her grand escape.
A part of her wished that she could let out tears in this moment. Release her frustrations with the universe in a torrent of tears, and just die with whatever semblance of inner peace one could achieve whilst bleeding out in the middle of a forest on some unknown planet, yet she just couldn’t do that. Whatever or whoever that side of her was, it no longer commanded any respect in her mind – she had changed far too much, far too quickly for her to care about what the old her thought about anything.
So, all that was left for her to feel was a ceaseless rage at the universe for what it was doing for her. And, remarkably, as she felt herself grow angrier, the less the pain in her body mattered, and the weaker the hold of the general paralysis she was experiencing became. Noticing this at a subconscious level, Amanda began piling more and more fuel into the fire of her rage, and soon she knew she had pushed herself back up onto her one foot. Then a familiar redness layered over the world, and as if it were a warm blanket dearly needed on a cold winter’s night, Amanda let go of control over her consciousness and gave in to the demonic mind that had meticulously kept her alive all this time.
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Lucas stared blankly off into the distance as he walked the endless city’s streets beside Steven – the void where once his heart had been freezing cold and unreactive. Deep inside, he knew he should feel sadder that Earth was gone, that he’d never see his home ever again, and that the millions of people who remained on Earth were now dead – but all he felt was a ceaseless apathy born out of complete and total indifference.
Every emotion that flared up within him felt as though it merely brushed against his living consciousness, like a gentle morning breeze blowing against one’s skin – the sensation entirely ephemeral and without any lasting effects. The chill that froze his heart had slowly consumed his soul ever since he had been freed from the hex placed on him, but despite his best efforts, he had been unable to resist the creeping effects of the coldness.
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“You remember what I said to do and not to do, right?” Steven asked, still somewhat unsure about whether or not he should really be taking an 8-year-old to a bar, especially old Roger’s place.
Lucas only nodded once in response, keeping his full focus trained straight ahead of him. He didn’t know why he had told Steven his biggest secret, especially as he’d only known the older boy for less than a few days, yet he had, in a moment of weakness, done so and so far, the elder lad had not violated his trust. In fact, Steven seemed to hold no hatred or suspicion of him at all and had gone above and beyond by even offering to take him to meet a new friend of his who might be able to help Lucas grow more powerful somehow. In and amongst the endless salvo of death and despair that his life had thrown at him, Lucas couldn’t help but find the elder brother-like presence of Steven at least somewhat reassuring – one of the few threads that Lucas could use to hold together his sanity.
As they walked into a markedly more deprived area, the people who walked around the two began to resemble each other less and less. Some people were humanoid in both outward appearance and inward character, but increasingly the people whom Lucas could identify as human-like began to diminish.
Lucas hadn’t yet reached the comprehension level of the Imperial Common Tongue that Steven had, but even he could tell that their appearance was not the only thing that differed about the people who resided in what had to be the slums of the great city. Their language was almost completely different to what he’d heard before, and he was pretty sure he was learning swear words far more evocative and offensive than any he’d known back on Earth at the pace of a thousand a second.
Then, as if breaking through the slurring sounds around him, a voice as sharp and clear as a diamond began to speak.
“Woe is they amongst us who will not fight for what is right!” The elegant feminine voice proclaimed, the speaker being quickly identified by Lucas and the rest of the crowd nearby as a remarkably well-dressed dressed young woman whose outward beauty was clearly a result of abundant natural gifts.
Everyone’s attention was instantly captured by her proclamation; it was as though her voice had magical hooks that once dug in never let you go.
“Good people of this city, can any of you, whether you be well informed or not, earnestly say that you remember a time that was more blood-soaked and miserable than this?”
No one in the crowd moved to respond to the question, but that didn’t matter, as the woman continued on regardless.
“Beyond that gate,” The woman continued, pointing off in the distance from which Lucas had come, “There lives a group of people whose way of life is not afflicted by the same things that plague you. They know not the miseries of loss that you all, no. That we all face. They live their whole lives surrounded by powerful bodyguards, sheltered by mighty names of their ancient god-like ancestors, even if they themselves are no more competent or impressive than any of us.”
Everyone in the crowd began to murmur their agreement, and this murmur became almost like a roar as the woman continued her speech, “We all know that this state of affairs is wrong. They all know that this state of affairs is wrong. Yet, because they live in a world free from the miseries that we all feel on a daily basis, they persist in keeping us low whilst they live the high life.”
“Fighting back against this state of affairs is therefore not only right but necessary if we are all to transcend beyond the shameful indignities that we are forced by this rigid system that they have forced upon us!”
The sound of what must have been some kind of firearm going off instantly made the crowd break out of the trance-like state that the woman’s passionate words had put them in, and they began running in multiple directions – all away from the direction where the noise had come from.
Lucas, however, was still spellbound as the sound of explosions was no longer abnormal to him, and so the weapon firing hadn’t refocused his mind on the situation at hand at all. So, he only noticed that he was being hurriedly dragged by Steven away from the pretty woman’s location when they were a solid distance away from her.
“Damn! Damn! Damn!” Steven began exclaiming to himself over and over again, clearly worried about something – something big.
Lucas, now somewhat back to his senses, asked, “Uhh Steven, what is it?”
The older boy looked down at the boy, and hesitated for a split second, before saying in an exasperated tone, “That woman was using some kind of mind magic, I just know it, and we were both totally helpless to resist. Not only that but we also nearly got arrested by the Imperial City guard because of it! Imagine explaining that to your grandfather!”
Lucas nodded gravely in response, though not really understanding what the big deal would be even if they were arrested by the police of this world – they hadn’t done anything wrong, at least not to his mind.
The sound of a door creaking open startled Lucas and Steven, but the elder boy almost instantly relaxed upon seeing that the noise had been made by an elder man opening up a crooked-looking door and then proceeding to walk over to them with a big smirk on his face.
Lucas immediately felt a pull in his stomach and a familiar stench flooded his nostrils. The man walking towards him had powerful demonic qi circulating through his body, far more powerful than Lucas had ever felt before, and though he didn’t know quite how he knew, he knew the man had killed an untold number of people before this day. Recalling the words of Jergras in their first meeting, Lucas looked around for a passage through which he could escape, but the man’s voice called out and it seemed there would be no escape.
“Ha! Kid, if I wanted you dead – trust me – you’d have died about 20 seconds ago when you two first entered my domain of influence.” His coldly edged words were almost as scary as the horrifying aura the man released alongside them, etching his point in Lucas’ mind as an incontrovertible fact. This man was far stronger than Jergras, which made Steven’s new friend the most powerful demonic-related entity that he’d ever met. Perhaps the most powerful person he’d met period.
“Now that we’ve got the pleasantries out of the way, why don’t you come on into my bar and ask all the questions you want kid?” The powerful demonic cultivator said in a voice whose faux warmth did absolutely nothing to hide the snide amusement within the man’s demonic heart.
Steven seemed remarkably content with this whole situation – a smile even present on his face.
Did he think this was some kind of joke or something? Lucas thought astounded in his own mind.
Then, he realised that the older boy hadn’t spent the last few months being fed horror stories of demons and demonic cultivators killing each other in the relentless pursuit of endless power so perhaps he just was ignorant of the danger inherent to Lucas’ being in the company of a more powerful cultivator.
“Come on Lucas, I’m a bit thirsty – let’s head on in,” said Steven, who remained somehow oblivious to the obvious tension between the two demonic cultivators.
Lucas nodded, well and truly scared out of his mind. In the presence of the monster in front of him, it seemed the cold that had gnawed at his ability to feel had thawed due to the sheer intensity of his terror. Lucas had a strange mixed feeling about this new feeling of terror. On the one hand, he was terrified beyond belief, and on the other hand, he felt elated that he felt anything at all similar to how he had felt prior to being hexed.
This internal conflict played out on Lucas’ face as he followed Steven through the backdoor of the bar into a dark strange-smelling room. A single whiff was enough and Lucas blacked out completely.