The consecutive images were flooding Robert’s mind. The pictures of the past events, where he fought on the different battlefields. The countless rows of enemies had been killed, starting from the deeply engraved alien that invaded Earth to ordinary humans, huge lizards, and real demons. The faces of the people he met and lost during his mostly undesired misadventures. William the “Aspen”, Lawrence the “Wolf”, Beth, Garold the Sniper, and even Billy. There were so many that at some point they merged into one – his own as if it was Rob himself who was lost but not them.
His mind continued to shove the scenes of the events from the dreams that never occurred, despite all his attempts to fulfill them. Everything was mixed chaotically to the point where incompatible and impossible memories were created, making him wonder what part of them was truth and what was just a sick imagination. Because Rob felt he was sick, slowly crumbling under the pressure of the situation.
The whole event with a maniac in a well-dressed suit went in flashing scenes, barely making it through the veil of drugs. The flame brought a short moment of clarity, but the darkness took it away just to send him into a deeper pit. The following experience was awful, questioning his sanity. At some point, Rob wasn’t even sure if he was alive and not died there in the night club under the bullets of the mercenary’s group. Inability to move, to speak, to breathe. Under the constant stream of sedatives, he could barely register the reality, thinking it was just a dream. Or, more likely, a never-ending horror.
Only the pain managed to return him back once in a while, alas not for long as it was too terrible to endure the events without any consequences to his broken inner self. Being cut into parts, almost dissected, while keeping most of the sensation had hit him hard. The replacement of the bones took another toll on Rob’s mind, preventing any attempts to break free. Not that he had any chance, being literally nailed to the tough cold surface of the metal table before being tied with chains. In that situation the scared face of the scientist was the single light spot, easing the pressure on his mind. Unfortunately, it disappeared soon, replaced by another terrifying experience.
After dying and getting on the stone plateau of a fake god at the beginning of his travels through realms, Robert had a random thought about being a museum figure of some insane interdimensional collector. He never thought it would become his harsh reality when he found himself stuck in the unmoving body. The latter felt odd, simultaneously familiar and not. However, no matter how he tried, Rob failed to make even a single motion. He didn’t lose his senses as the wish to scratch a few spots here and there was another torture. The real shock came when he failed to conjure the steel to break free. It felt like there was no space for it at all, and Robert himself was stuck in a tight invisible bubble.
All his attempts to push the force shield from himself had failed. It wasn’t hard to deduct after hours of testing and his study what was the thing that prevented him from moving. However, the understanding didn’t help. His ability always worked from his skin. That was the reason why he was left bald when he tried to create a helmet. Moreover, each creation of the Energy Blast gave off the feeling of blowing the part of himself. That led to the situation where Robert simply couldn’t summon any steel inside himself as the place was already occupied. On the other hand, there were no empty spots for it. Even his jaw was forcefully attached to his upper teeth, preventing him from opening his mouth, while all oxygen came somewhere from inside.
It took some time for him to find tiny gaps where his ability worked, but that was the moment when the realization hit him. The weird feeling in his body and energy shield – everything indicated that he had the source of the generation right inside himself. And even if he would break free from the prison and even destroy all his skeleton frame, Rob would be completely harmless as if not dead at once. Theoretically, he could replace it with his steel, but practically he lacked the skills necessary to achieve it.
It's not the first time when I am in a deep shit. I just need to train more to get to the needed level! I achieved it twice, nothing impossible given enough effort.
Unfortunately, it appeared harder than he thought. Especially, when his mental sanity was getting hammered by the cruel reality. Just at the start of his attempt, the group of people came, barely hiding their emotions. Observing him as if he were the beast in the cage of the local zoo, they laughed and smiled as if everything was perfectly fine. Then the second group came. Third. Fourth. They continued to come, looking at him with different looks – full of disgust or hatred, with clear joy or boredom, with hungry gazes on his nude body. The only thing Rob never saw was sympathy. Not a single trace of it as if he was already labeled by the society as a monster, getting all the blame by default.
After fighting in several wars and killing his way through the Tower, Robert was already barely treating the value of human life as something precious. Too much blood was spilled by him. Too much dirt was seen and experienced. Too many examples of meaningless death because of greed, power struggle, or hatred. Abraham’s treachery deed was another hit on his belief in humanity as a society that cared for each other. No, for him, it was always a den full of wild beasts, ready to tear each other for their own profit. However, the final nail in the coffin, or precisely speaking many thousands of them, were the tourists that came to eye him.
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Old and young, women and men, rich and poor – each of them didn’t see a human in Rob, no matter whose eyes were looking at him. Just a bloodthirsty beast. No one questioned the information about the event. No one tried to find the truth. They simply believed what they were told, nodding like obedient puppets. There were no attempts to protest against the state of the frozen state he was kept in. Not a sign of kindness, but a lot of hatred. Therefore, it ignited the hatred in return, no matter how innocent they were.
Robert simply couldn’t feel anything good toward those ordinary people, who were calm discussing the best way of his execution. Or that their “humanitarian” ideas on how to “improve” his prison with constant physical torture. Even the interaction with the guests was when a company of some activists threw paint over his motionless figure in an attempt to attract attention to the waste around the orbit of the planet. That was the final moment when something died inside him. Instead, it added fuel to his hatred, giving him more energy to overcome his situation and not go insane. The latter was really a hard task.
Without the ability to move even with a finger, to feel any food or water, without any privacy, and without basic interactions with others, Robert slowly started to succumb to the pressure. The maniac’s occasional appearance was made even worse as the mad mumbling of the psycho wasn’t something that Rob wanted to hear. Or feel, as the man barely kept his drool from dropping on the floor. It was a single moment when Robert was happy to have an energy shield protecting him from that preventer. Still, the increased frequency of flooding images that started to mess with his head was a bad sign. Only because of his experience of solitude on the island and inside the Tower, did Robert feel some confidence in making through it. The hatred helped him to strengthen his resolve, powering his mind with an invisible force.
The hatred and the anger toward his own weakness. Rob blamed himself that after a relatively short stay in the Tower, he immediately gave up on his search for power to have fun and rest. And why? Because he had to kill some people, which affected his mind with guilt? They weren’t innocent in the first place, as to get to the point where they could physically meet him could only be done by murdering the creatures. Their fight was fair when only one party could survive. No, it was his remnants of the morale that was pushed onto him by the instructors on Earth. To value other’s lives. To protect humanity as a shield. But why would he do it if those others didn’t deserve it at all?
He would never blame himself for the killing of the random ant, so why would he treat other humans differently? From his pitiful experience, it was humans who would more likely aim to hurt others, not ants. Was it only because of the fact that they were the same specimen as Rob? However, considering all his changes in physique, he couldn’t be named as one. Even Aether called him a highly adaptive hybrid. Hybrid, not a human. So, what was the reason to bother? Why would he stop himself from a chance of growth just because it could hurt someone else? The more Robert questioned himself about it, the more he understood that it was his own idiocy.
I need more power to prevent such things from happening… More power to break any restraints that someone tries to put on me… Now I finally get why all those typical heroes aim to the top of the food chain. But I am not like them. No, I know the price of the power – humanity showed what they can do for it. And I am willing to pay any price, even if it’s the lives of tens of thousands… That number can’t even shock me as I personally saw the world that was going to be destroyed. Maybe not even once… So, yeah, to hell with them all!
Maybe it was the hatred and anger that was speaking inside Rob’s broken mind, but he did feel that way. Obviously, it didn’t mean that he would kill everyone on sight or decide to proclaim the grand goal of burning multiple worlds to the ground. Not in the slightest. It just noticeably widened the range of his potential actions, without a need to look over the thoughts and even lives of others. Simple as that. Rob was sure that there were still some self-put limits hidden inside his burned soul, but now he wouldn’t even bother with trying to be careful during the fight among the civilians. The latter showed how their innocence was more like a turning blind eye to atrocities, if not participating in them silently.
But first, I need to get out of here in battle state, and not like a boneless sausage…
This thought gave him a goal, almost creating a distant light in the world of everlasting darkness. It didn’t change things for him, as Rob still had to endure the crowd of onlookers, their comments, their attitude. Sometimes the pressure on him appeared too heavy to handle and he crumbled into oblivion with multiple chaotic dreams, visions, and memories only to wake after some time to make another attempt at escape. In such conditions, it wasn’t difficult to lose track of time.
Several times Robert was dangerously near to giving up, trying to explode himself with Energy Blast. Each time the very same hatred and anger halted his actions in the last moment, giving him a reason to live. Another one was a tiny red flower that was on the edge of his sight. Clearly artificial, it was nothing special for anyone, except Rob. Being on the side of the usual spot for the tourists, gave him something to focus on, when the inner thoughts were too dark, and the outer world was not better. Plain, almost dull, the flower was like a saving lifebuoy in the ocean of madness, keeping him afloat in the critical times when the toll of the circumstances appeared to be too huge. Only enormous willpower prevented Robert from giving it the name.
Not today, Wilson… Okay, let’s start from the beginning. All my bones are replaced with obsidian steel. But it’s steel, nevertheless. So, if I can’t destroy it with micro Energy Blasts to give the empty spot for my regeneration to kick in, I just need to make it mine. I was told that Wepwakor ripped off all my elemental affinities, except the steel. We will see how it works… It seems I have all the time in the world, which, considering my training conditions, isn’t a positive thing. Sucks to be you, Robert.