Arc 6. A seemingly endless loss
Road to a Hero:
Three Chances in Another World
Chapter 66. Hard landing
With everyone being given their battles, the most intense one is Edwards. Pandora continues to push him down the castle, punching him on his way down. Edward struggles to grab his sword from its holder due to all of the wind resistance and the constant barrage of punches to the face. He attempts to punch Pandora, but she grabs his hand and flings him into the black stone wall, dragging him through it.
She goes up, down, and all around, smashing him into various walls. The castle is built in three long towers with the platform they had arrived on connecting the three at the very top. At the bottom is the entranceway, which holds statues of fallen Anarchists and large dead bushes. While Edward continues to resist, trying his best to get her off of him, she keeps shoving him into the towers. Then suddenly she throws him into the air, then her mask begins to charge up with this purple aura, suddenly blasting a sonic blast toward Edward, forcing him into the tower. He tumbles through multiple walls, barely being able to understand what’s happening. Though, subconsciously, he takes out his sword and holds it in front of himself, using it like a shield. He looks around, finding the inside of the castle fairly vacant. Long hallways filled with ripped paintings, spiderwebs, aged and molden floors, and patches of black snow. The cold air burns Edward's wounded body, forcing him to think about his drained stamina. Then, Pandora flies at him once more, so Edward tries to defend himself. He trusts his sword toward her, though she narrowly avoids it, grabbing him with her bird-like feet, and stabbing into his shoulders. She then swings him through another wall, into one of the many rooms. It looks like a standard guest room, with a mirror, a closet, and a queen-sized bed covered in dirt. Then Pandora attacks him again, so Edward tries to hold his sword down, waiting for her to grab him.
Then once she does, he forces his sword up and through her wing, slicing through it. Her wing is thin, so it carves through it, but this angers her. Her eyes light up, causing Edwards to do the same. This sudden feeling of nothing causes him to realize something. The entire time he’s been fighting her, this feeling has been there. Every time he’s had a blank mind scared of when she’ll attack, unable to fight correctly nor think properly, it's been her. Either it was just being in her presence or she was doing it intentionally, Edward was being affected by some sort of brain fog. But this time it’s more focused, causing everything to turn black, but then the darkness seems to be a liar over something, a curtain that it pulled back for him to see the hallways of the mansion. This seems to be the last piece of the puzzle that was the assassination of Kioshi Van Helsing, as with everything against her she was also fighting off a passive skill Pandora can use by just being in the presence of her foe. He knows his body is being attacked, he knows he has just been pushed through a broken window, but he stands still, not acting. He notices Al cleaning one of the mansion's guest rooms, so he runs up to him, but when he passes a mirror, he realizes something. He is in the body of his fourteen-year-old self, and at the same time he sees this, his memories of the present become memories of the future, which become lost to him. Now, standing there confused, he begins walking through the hallway, right past Al. He then walks to his room, which is almost minimalistic. It’s a large room with only a mirror lying against the wall, and a bed lying on the ground without a frame. He walks over to his balcony, staring at the large area of land that protects him from the outer capital.
He never leaves, never gets near the gate, and never talks with any of Musashi’s visitors, on the rare occasion he has them. Kioshi is always out, fighting off anything that could hurt the country, working as its’ hero. But this keeps Edward further isolated, then to further this even more, Musashi hardly talks to him, like he wants nothing to do with him. He doesn't even train him, though Al does. Al teaches him about the world, how to read, write, dress, and every once and a while, fight. The young Edward suddenly grabs his right leg, crying out in pain. Al quickly runs in while Musashi stands outside of the double-door room, just watching.
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Al: “Young master Edward, what might be the issue?”
Edward: It’s my leg! It feels like it’s being stabbed!”
Al helps him up, sitting him down on his bed while he runs to grab first aid. While Musashi stands ready to help, Edward sits still, holding his leg tightly. Then something catches his eye, in his mirror, is a raging flame with a faint shadow within. The pain in his leg vanishes while he slowly moves toward the flame. The shadow is large, muscular, and seemingly staring at him. He looks at the figure's right eye, or what should be there, only seeing three faint scratches, being transparent to see the flames from within. Everything in his body is resisting, trying to get him to back away, but he continues moving. He puts his hand over the strange eye, and the figure grabs him. Its’ arm faces through the mirror and pulls the young Edward through, and as he falls through, his body ages, his memories return, and he finds himself mid-air. When he looks to see what the pain in his leg is, he watches as Pandora has bitten into it, using it to swing him from wall to wall. Her beak is piercing his right tibia, completely clamped into his leg. Every time she moves his leg twists and turns, causing so much pain he begins to fall in and out of consciousness, though he’s still holding onto this sword with a death drip. With every second that passes, he gets closer to the ground, causing him to realize that Pandora is going to crush him. Unable to use the dragon's fist or any other technique, he’s lost within himself. But that’s where he finds the way to victory and explodes with rage.
Edward {Do it…even if it kills me…drown it all out. SUCCUMB TO IT!}
While they continue to barrel toward the ground every sense in Edward's body shuts down. For a brief moment, there’s nothing; there’s no pain or any other sense to think of. The light in his eye fades out, causing Pandora to assume he’s died, so she stops. And because of this, they lose their momentum and simply sit in the air floating. Pandora is a personality; a soul controlling Rosine's body, but Rosine is watching as well. But she notices something Pandora doesn't, she can feel something coming. Edward had never let go of his sword so his hand is still gripping onto it, but the rest of his still muscles explode. Edward grits his teeth while blood flows out of it before letting out a raging scream of fiery conviction. Pandora, frightened, attempts to drop Edward, but he is too fast. In this primal state, he was able to forcibly use the dragon spirit even though Pandora was messing with his psyche, so he forced himself to be the strongest he could be. On top of that, Pandora isn’t a combat-focused being. Her abilities neutralize her opponent so she can pick them off, however, Edward is different.
His strength isn’t reliant on mana, so he just happens to be her natural enemy. He flings his right arm up, slicing through her wing and slamming into her shoulder, crushing it in an instant. Pandora screams out, letting go of Edward's leg, attempting to let him fall. Then suddenly she feels something on her foot and looks down to see Edward holding onto it, pulling himself up to stand on top of her, holding his sword high into the air. She tries to charge up another sonic scream, but it’s too late. He plunges his large sword through her stomach, resulting in a horrific scream from Pandora as well as a complete loss of sense. At this point, the armor began failing and they began falling to the ground once more. Pandora’s armor begins decaying extremely quickly, retreating to its original egg-like shape before both Edward and Rosine crash into the broken fountain right underneath them. But once the dust settles the winner is clear. Whether it be divine intervention or blind luck Edward had managed to defeat one of the Sects Pillars.
Rosine: “_______”
Rosine was the daughter of Queen Elizabeth of Ravoria, a soldier in training, but was integral as a vessel for Pandora all at the same time. Whether they forced her into the role she chose is unknown, she was important, but with every bone in her body shattered, she can do nothing. Edward took some heavy damage but his armor, tough body, and Rosine's body were all able to save his life. So Rosine is forced to watch as Edward slowly turns to her, lifting up his bloody blade and covering the eternal eclipse in the sky, creating a large shadow over the body. She attempts to scream but the blood pooling out of her mouth hinders her, leaving her last words unknown. And then it was over; just like with Moro, Edward cleaved through Rosine’s skull. He took a moment to rest, feeling overwhelmingly intense pain in every inch of his body, but he kept moving. He looked up to the platform above before he walked toward the castle's main entrance which was right in front of him, but he took the egg of sin from Pandora’s body before he left.
Edward is forced to stop once the pain becomes too much, dropping down to the ground. He dropped his sword as well, attempting to grab it without luck. With the various cuts across his body as well as his ruined leg he’s bleeding out fast. So he rips off a bit of his pants around the wound and wraps it tightly around it, creating a tourniquet to hinder his demise. And with that he grabs his sword, gets up, and begins slowly struggling through the castle with the top in mind, never saying or thinking anything as he’s purely moving on adrenaline and instinct.
End of Chapter sixty-six