Prisoner
Back in the Space Station. Just as Heian Ciemnosc and Antonio's figures disappeared from the smallish platform, when a group of 5 early Second Step cultivators walked forth. They were stopped by a safety measure blocking their path up the platform. It was a simple letter warning them to be cautious. The group looked at the engineers in charge, then at the guards, wondering why. But the latter didn't know it was happening until the portal they just activated started making some noise.
Pvssshhhtivvvv~! Like an electric outburst, the portal that flashed into the distance stopped instead of disappearing, zooming far from what the naked eye could see into the blackness of the world. The other cultivators, waiting their turn, looked at it without much emotion, wondering what was happening.
“Hey, go check it out!” A guard suddenly said, exhibiting his Third Step middle realm’s cultivation base to wake the dumbfounded engineers up. They jolted and looked at each other. Their heads moved and shook like restless chickens before they started working on their panels and calling for assistance through their emblems. They were almost all at the Second Step, but 2 of them, who seemed the leaders of this portal, were at the Third Step. But even they didn’t have a clearing of the situation.
“There’s nothing! We can’t see what’s happening!” An engineer shouted back as more guards yelled at them. The latter were restless and fearful, and the former started feeling was absolutely wrong. Their panels said nothing, and when a Craftsmaker went ahead, knowing the risk of using his Spirit Sense on the stagnant portal’s activated tunnel, he dropped on the floor with his body slowly melting into blood.
“Aaah!” - “Hell, no!” - “What’s- what is going on?!” - “Stand back!” - “We’re figuring it out. Just keep retreating until we have a solution!” - “Damn it! I know what it is!”
To cultivators, to see this kind of death only reminded them of survivors or stories from lost writings put on the Universal Conveyance or some hidden books in organizations about non-Fauna, terrifying things that can be found anywhere and nowhere at the same time. They were terrorized when the engineer dropped dead ass and melted in his own blood.
Luckily for them, however, another engineer stepped into the middle and looked up. His countenance was already fearful, but when he stared at it, not daring to extend Soul fluctuations, let alone its energy to read with it, his body shook, and his skin paled. “It’s… this is… a Disas~~~-...!”
Wooooooooouuuuuuuaaaaaaaannnnhhhhgg~... Before the engineer could finish his words, the world surrounding this portal and its immediate surroundings facing the open space changed. It was like something took control of everything, and time had stopped. There was a sudden glow, a flash from the stagnant portal, so high-intensity that it could blind even Non-Mortals!
However, this glow wasn’t the usual type. It was also as if it had stopped in time. It did not move, nor did it expand. Like a brush simply adding a contouring circle around something, it looked like a distinguishing aura surrounding the base of the stagnant tunnel portal. Everyone could see it as if it was impossible to take. Their eyes darted towards it when it appeared… But, at the same time, they couldn’t see it. Because it happened in less than an instant. Only Godly cultivators might’ve been able to turn their heads.
SPLAS- KABAAAAANNNGGGG~!!!!~!!!~!!~!!~!!...
In the next instant, the glow was bested by something more material, something… more. It expanded from within the portal and moved like a slowly framed motion picture, suddenly extending towards the crowd and the space around the cultivators but constantly stopping before continuing.
“AAAAAAAAAH…!” - “Wuaagh-” - “Mommyyyy…!!” - “Ah n…!!!” - PPPPPPUUUFFFSSSIIIEEEEEETTT~!
It was unstoppable. The guards immediately became black sticks within the unknown explosion, turned into sweet nothingness within the time it took a thought to form. All guards were alive in one moment, and everything that made them living beings was disintegrated half an instant later. The engineers followed suit. But unlike the guards, most gathered near the panels.
The Craftspeople turned to nothingness together, while the guards had an instant to slightly move their bodies before becoming nothing. Then, the explosion sounded like a chain reaction, with nothing but the world betraying them, exploding and destroying anything it touched for no reason. The cultivators around the platform were affected.
They could see as the explosive ‘booms’ and ‘bangs’ closed in on them, and they could do nothing. In under 3 seconds, those who reacted to turn around and fly to safety, ignoring the Space Station’s laws and crazed for survival, became more black sticks with humanoid shapes within the explosions before disappearing forever.
… A few tens of thousands of kilometers away, in the district where the Crimsonbreaking Faction chose their residences. Everyone was touring the place, looking for intelligence gathering on miscellaneous stuff and where to eat, drink, or fuck. In an ordinary-looking hotel, Ruo Wei and Loma turned their heads and became somber as they stood up with clenched fists inside a hotel room.
The other teammates sitting around the living room in sofas and chairs lowered their heads, and their expressions changed before looking in the same direction as Ruo Wei and Loma a second later. This meant only one thing if a cultivator or citizen did it... even to civilians.
“Seriously, what the hell just happened?!” - “Team Leader did something naughty?” - “Ugh… prepare the Frigate. Time to go hunting for our own Team Leader, siiiiiigh~!”
Ruo Wei ordered the people. Nobody flinched and instead moved at her words. She didn’t have leader material, at least not now, but she was their ex-boss’s ma’am and their current Team Leader’s sisterly figure. They couldn’t say no even if she wasn’t since she was the most senior, and Loma obeyed her contentedly.
The rest of the Defensive Frigate’s crew members had less reason to listen to her, but since the beginning of the 3 months’ extensively tough space training, Heian Ciemnosc had brought Ruo Wei with him in his piloting and semi-commanding lessons, so they knew to also listen to the Eternal Return Team’s mommy.
***
An unknown distance away from where the Space Station Heian Ciemnosc tried using a stable portal to investigate the mission’s target.
Whuuu- weeesh!... Weeesh! Swuaashh~! Splash! Splash! Splash~... “Uggh…” Heian Ciemnosc couldn’t open his darkest eyes but could feel the sand trying to enter his skin from the back, and he heard the sounds of waves crashing and longingly retracting to the sea so they could crash onto the shore again.
‘God…dammit…’ Heian Ciemnosc’s body had never felt this heavy. He could move to stand up, so he leaned to his sides and tried using his shoulders as how one and only heavyweight to gain a foothold instead of remaining sky-gazing. When he could finally lean on his right shoulder, his darkest eyes obtained enough gravity aid, and Heian Ciemnosc witnessed the first image after suffering for who knew how long.
‘Sand…’ Heian Ciemnosc’s Spirit Sense was practically useless, and his dark Soul was as dormant as Sara after he helped him or granted tons of knowledge to his pathetic ass. All Heian Ciemnosc saw was sand, overshadowed by his sideways lying body, nearly a corpse, and he even felt his arm and chest’s right side crushing each other with what little weight he had on him.
‘Fuck.’ Heian Ciemnosc reunited power from nowhere and used his left hand to stand up, only to discover he had no left hand. “Huh?”
Heian Ciemnosc looked at the half a forearm danging from his elbow, lifeless. His gaze focused a lot more, and he could now see a couple meters from where he lay. The other half of his forearm, with his left hand still attached was 1.5 meters away. Heian Ciemnosc helplessly grimaced as he began a game of moving like a crab. Only his head and feet were the crab’s legs, and he became aware of his situation as pain flooded his sorry ass.
‘My back must be opened-’ Heian Ciemnosc was thinking when he heard a loud ‘crack’ from his back, at the middle, and momentarily stopped before continuing. He did everything in his power not to crash more waves but back into the ocean with a holler. After 2 minutes, Heian Ciemnosc dragged his 80% deadass moving corpse to the half-a-forearm.
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“...!” Heian Ciemnosc’s darkest eyes widened as he slapped his back on the sand again, sending millions of pain bouts into every fiber of his being. They trembled, oscillating between dilating and shrinking their contents while his right arm tremblingly moved to grab his limb.
“Cough, cough, cough, cough…” Heian Ciemnosc started coughing dark sand grains covered in liquid after he bumped his back on the ground again. Nevertheless, Heian Ciemnosc successfully picked his left half-a-forearm and hand. He raised his left arm as much as he could and brought his cut-off limb to it. Heian Ciemnosc felt his dark blood reuniting, forming transparent-thin traces that became thicker after joining. Heian Ciemnosc heaved a relieving sigh once he confirmed the pain coming from his whole left arm.
‘Ah… back at basics,’ Heian Ciemnosc thought as he could feel a tiny trace of Spirit Sense extend within his body. With the injuries he was suspected to have, Heian Ciemnosc’s status was so horrendous that he had to depend on his medical knowledge of the body, comparing all similitudes between Races, in order to survive. Right now, he was even struggling to scan his own half-a-corpse.
Were it any other cultivator who somehow managed to survive after suffering. who knew what, and for as long as Heian Ciemnosc remained unconscious, they wouldn’t even have begun thinking and might still die in their conscious-less state. Not Heian Ciemnosc. He wasn’t just sure his life was secured. He felt his Spirit Sense rapidly grow, iota by iota, in his inner being while his dark Soul flickered once every 2 minutes.
After 10 minutes, Heian Ciemnosc’s Spirit Sense and mental capacities recovered enough to look inside himself. He ignored every damage to his body and entered his endless, pure darkness. While his body was atrocious to witness, and he needed to determine everything for any possibility, Sara was more important.
“... Sara?” Heian Ciemnosc looked for his mysterious lolita-tall. He spoke, although he didn’t need to. And just 5 seconds after he did, he found Sara with her legs picked up and her thighs against the front. When he arrived before her, she looked up, and her pink eyes with the floating dark cross in the middle shone and spun, thrilled!
“Where the hell were you?!” Sara said, exploding her short body on his chest. Heian Ciemnosc shut up and embraced Sara’s ‘frail’ body. Sara closed her eyes, rubbing her face on his bare chest. After a couple minutes, she lifted her head, separated from him, and sternly spoke with an equally stern expression, “You need to focus on healing. This is a great opportunity! You’ve started learning those battle array formations. There’s nothing to hesitate about now. Just look for the right moment and delve into it.”
“Mn… I’ll have to leave this place. I didn’t realize I would be so badly injured that I couldn’t even multitask. My consciousness outside my inner being was gone after I came here.” Heian Ciemnosc held her arms and said. Sara nodded and drew a long rectangle figure. It became flappy, like paper, before placing it on his hands, which she held.
“If something happens, prepare whatever Fast-Alarming talismans your Master and wives gave you. I’ll implant something on them to bring you support immediately. Okay?” Sara’s damn serious eyes brought Heian Ciemnosc down to the ground. He picked her such small hands and softly promised her, “I will do whatever my wife tells me to do.”
“Which wife?” Sara asked, arching her right eyebrow with the same countenance and tilting her head rightwards. Heian Ciemnosc was speechless. “...”
… Time passed, and after Heian Ciemnosc returned his consciousness to the outside world, he waited another 10 minutes before he was able to finally scan his body with a 1 cm Spirit Sense range. All his bones were either crushed, missing matter, or damaged. His organs resisted whatever hit him, but they had taken considerable harm, and he needed to sit tight and do nothing for who knew how long.
His pale skin was somewhat tainted by a dull-gray color, but as his [All-Devouring Force Chronicles] 5th level commenced self-repairing, it dissipated, and his paleness returned to its full glory. However, his wounds were too many and a bit too much.
Several gashes from half a meter to a whole meter long decorated Heian Ciemnosc’s pale body. The rest were either stab-like wounds, where his bones could either be seen or not at all because they were missing. So was the flesh and blood around them. But while the loss of mass was diminutive, it was scary, to say the least. Yet, it did not impact Heian Ciemnosc’s mentality as he continued to wait and recuperate.
Heian Ciemnosc’s back, for example, was as if something had just absorbed his flesh entirely, leaving only the back of his ribcage to show, with organs and flesh that belonged to other parts of his body mingling in between. It took Heian Ciemnosc 1 hour to place everywhere where it belonged. It wasn’t that painful and was even less painful as his body regenerated mass. It was utterly slow, but it happened at an impossibly slow speed to the naked eye but happened.
2 hours later, Heian Ciemnosc could finally stand up. He wanted to wait more and recuperate, as his little Sara told him to do, but he and she knew there was something he must look for before finding the right place. Antonio’s body was just beside Heian Ciemnosc before the latter lost all consciousness.
Heian Ciemnosc was more powerful and capable than Antonio from so many different angles that Heian Ciemnosc couldn’t help feeling immensely aware of Antonio’s well-being. When Heian Ciemnosc managed to stand on his feet, it was darkening everywhere in the sky. He quickly scrutinized the beach where he rested and found it to be a small corner of a jungle, but his Spirit Sense couldn’t help him as it was only about 10 cm in range.
Heian Ciemnosc inspected the jungle with his naked, darkest eyesight before looking down at his bare body. His pants were gone, and so was everything from the center of his torso to below. Thankfully, his rear and lower front were only cut slightly. His lower legs and feet had the less amount of wounds, but they were still as ghastly as the others.
Heian Ciemnosc took all his clothes off, letting another flawless dark coat drop on the ground to become dust or a living being’s material for their home. Then, the naked, pale barbarian entered the jungle without a care for his bare body and open wounds. After Heian Ciemnosc went through his run in the Sinvonnia Kingdom, finding himself incapable of using long-scale detection didn’t bother him a bit.
Fwlosh, fwuosh, rustle~~.
Heian Ciemnosc stepped on the fresh, slightly obscure brown dirt and sunk his feet into it. It didn’t feel any different than hanging them in the air for him, but it still brought strange comfort and a pleasant sensation. Heian Ciemnosc closed his darkest eyes and lifted his chin, extending his neck to enjoy.
Fuut, fuut, fuut… Heian Ciemnosc began walking deeper into the jungle, already scanning his surroundings as he could still perfectly see under the world’s night. He formed perimeters and scanned areas from afar until he found several sections with strange abnormalities in the vegetation, especially in the trees’ tops as they were opened, and some nearly fell off, forcefully leaning to the side.
Step, fuut- rustle, rustle~~... Tap, tap.
Walking through a strange, circular perimeter in which the leaves and branches from trees and bushes formed, Heian Ciemnosc found the light of the stars descend onto a small 20 x 20 meters circumference where fabric and a third of an emblem lay amidst the rest of the flattened vegetation and a broken, 15 meters thick tree trunk.
“...” Heian Ciemnosc looked up after looking at these, only to become wordless and pensive. The thick tree should’ve been taller than 40 meters, but now, its top was gone, and it had been forced to form an area around it. It was only 3 meters tall now and charred black except for its branches and leaves. However, these were too few compared to all this tree type should have at its age.
‘... You left a path of survival to everything else while giving yourself up… not bad. But it’s a sign of weakness…’ Heian Ciemnosc looked at the tree for the last time before walking around to pick the fabric and emblem. The emblem was Antonio’s, and those pieces of torn cloth belonged to Antonio’s clothes. Heian Ciemnosc brought them to his face to sniff them and confirm his more than obvious suspicions.
Step, rustle, crack. Heian Ciemnosc continued touring around the tree trunk, touching it as he walked past. The tree trunk started shrinking in size, crumbling into charcoal ashes as Heian Ciemnosc’s pale hand grazed it. Somehow, despite being a cruel act to send it away, it seemed fitting with his pale skin and the black charcoal ashes.
“Oh, Antonio…” Heian Ciemnosc suddenly stopped. His lowered head was kept low, and his body halted as he contemplated the sight of the ground, hugged by some leaves and branches. A severed head with a third of its dorsal spine still connected below the neck. Its flesh was still rosy but seemed a little gray, although not because of its decay.
Antonio’s eyes were hollow, but his eyelids were nearly closed, narrowing as if he was dozing off on a sofa with his head thrown backwards. The ajar mouth made it even more convincing, but the skin’s paleness and the flesh half a meter before what remained from the dorsal spine, belonging to what was once Antonio’s torso, clearly indicated the fall of another known for Heian Ciemnosc.
Crouch. Heian Ciemnosc bent his knees and lightly placed his pale hands on each side of the head. It had become slightly elongated and missed the lower half of its back. Heian Ciemnosc thought to himself on his mind as he employed his natural technique, ‘Ah, this is going to hurt and weigh on me.’
“!” Heian Ciemnosc read nature on Antonio’s remains. He first confirmed Antonio had no play on what had happened. It might have been a condemned Space Disaster striking just because it could. Or maybe… maybe it was the long trail, bloody scent Heian Ciemnosc carried after all these years since he went to the Far East Region in the Blackotia Kingdom.
It didn’t matter now. Whatever happened happened. Heian Ciemnosc looked at the slowly dissipating black ashes nearby, drifting in the wind like a flock of birds flight-dancing in the sky for no reason. He returned his darkest eyes to Antonio’s face before looking at his other wobbly, gooey, fleshy rests. Heian Ciemnosc looked up with his eyelids down, feeling weight upon them, and sighed through his canines. “Sigh.”
Rustle, rustle, rustle~! Carrgh, caaarggh…
Heian Ciemnosc placed the head on the ground. It had already met with the nature in this place, and more so with the tree that stopped its way to become nothingness. Even Heian Ciemnosc experienced parts of his inner body disappearing, and more than half of Antonio’s brain disappeared. Were it not for this tree, Antonio would’ve never gotten a burial.
Thus, Heian Ciemnosc moved his hands back and forth in a scooping motion after removing the leaves on a small spot while Antonio’s head and gooey flesh were filled up with dirt and gained an earthy scent and touch to their appearance.
…