Chapter 179 - Recovery

Maen stumbled down the road, barely keeping himself from falling over as his own blood, redder than his hair, tainted his vision. Unfortunately, no one seemed to notice him. Exactly like that…giant man—no, monster, said it would be.

"…someone…help…" he yelled with all his might, yet it came out as nothing but a whisper—inaudible.

I…I need to keep going, he reminded himself, turning his head back to see if that monster had appeared from somewhere to chase him down.

He didn't know how long it'd been, but when he came to, that man was nowhere to be seen. In other circumstances, he would have gone back inside the hotel to save whomever he could, but not this time.

Suddenly, his body shivered, and a primal terror clawed at him from within at the very thought of coming across that monster once more. Did he kill everyone in the hotel?

No no no no, he hyperventilated. I…I need to get out of here. Get help! Only I can help them.

So, he limped away, trying to stop the bleeding wounds with his hands. It didn't do much, but that was the only thing he could think of when his powers were already all spent just sneaking out of that death trap.

He tried to intercept a passerby and hold onto them for dear life, but in an awful state of affairs, anyone he tried to approach swerved out of his way or outright turned around.

Could it really be the end? Was he not even in the same world as everyone else? The thought sent him deeper into the hells of despair.

No. No no no no no, he chanted, not ready to give up just yet.

In this cycle of hope and despair, he crossed the timekeeper lane's intersection onto the next one as his head hurt and body ached when—

"Oh, Mother preserve thee. What is wrong with you, young lad!?" shouted an old gentleman standing by the corner store as he rushed to hold Maen by the shoulder.

His eyes, which were closing under fatigue and pain, suddenly snapped awake as warm hands supported his weight.

"Good heavens! Someone fetch a constable at once! This poor boy's been savaged!" Shouted the passerby who was walking next to him, oblivious to his plight until just a second ago.

Maen almost couldn't believe it.

"My word! He doesn't need police. He needs a doctor! Has there been an accident at the clock tower?" Another person joined in, suddenly aware of his injuries.

Yet, even as hope rekindled in his heart, a heavy stone continued to weigh down in his heart. That…that monster is still alive. On top of that, not one person questioned how he'd suddenly appeared out of nowhere. They didn't even react to the abnormality at all.

"Lord have mercy! You there, boy! Run and fetch Dr. Thornton from Harley Street!"

"What blasphemy?" Interjected the gentleman supporting him. "Who needs a doctor when Mother's healing church is in the next district?" Helping Maen over to a bench, he hollered, "Someone call a carriage. This lad needs mother's care."

Finally in a safer environment, Maen's eyes threatened to shut on him, but the thought of what would happen to his fellow tenants if he did nothing was far too overwhelming for his mind.

.

.

.

"…help…" he eked out.

"Huh?" The gentleman next to him leaned closer with a confused look. "Can you say that again, lad?"

"…help…the…hotel," he managed with difficulty, each word more painful than last.

"Bloody hell, mate," interjected another man from the bunch who'd gathered around, "What hotel? Did ye hit yer head? Well—ye did, but nay. No hotel 'round here."

Maen let out a cold breath. Have they…really forgotten all about it? Just what is this trickery?

He mustered all his strength and raised his arm, pointing a finger in the hotel's direction, "…they…need…help…"

"Blimey! What's happened to you, lad? There's nothing there." The crowd nodded in assent as if that was really how it was. This almost made him wonder if he was still stuck in some nightmare.

This new wave of terror gave him a second wind, and he breathed harder as a thought crossed his mind, and he uttered, "Ki…Kingsmen."

He knew. If all these unenlightened individuals couldn't sense the hotel, then calling for police or the like wouldn't do much good in this situation. Those punishers were the only people except fellow observers who might be able to sense the abnormality.

And how would he ever find an Observer in this state?

"No, lad." The gentleman shook his head, "You don't need those devils. What you need is mother's tears and her gentle embrace."

"Kingsmen," Maen repeated a bit more strength to his words this time.

The gentleman frowned, and the small crowd began to chatter when suddenly, Thump!

Everyone snapped their heads upwards towards the noise, but Maen couldn't manage it. Still, he realized what just happened. On the building across the street, a figure blotted the dying rays of the setting sun, casting a familiar yet menacing shadow across it.

Gods are helping me! he rejoiced.

The silhouette's cape billowed in the wind, and a domineering voice reached his ears, "What is going on here?"

The gentleman next to him perked up his nose while most others bowed slightly, "Mi—milord, this poor chap suddenly came out of nowhere with all these injuries. We were just trying to help him. I—I swear on me mother's grave, we aren't organizing a riot."

No. What are you doing? Maen felt a sense of urgency gripping him. If he left it up to these people, the Kingsman would leave without understanding the gravity of this situation.

"Mmmmm," he managed to moan, if not speak, as he pointed in the direction of the hotel once again.

All eyes turned back to him, and he pointed again and again and again.

"Lord, you see this, right? He's hit badly in the head. Keeps mumbling about some hotel over there. What hotel, milord? Clearly, the chap is having a rough day—"

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Whizz

Suddenly, the shadow disappeared from the building across, and a figure descended using its unique tools in a graceful arc. Without any fanfare, the voice behind the face cover commanded, "Everyone, leave!"

The crowd was stunned for a second, but no one dared to disobey and escaped after giving Maen a pitying look. The gentleman next to him tried to help him up, but the Kingsman stopped him.

"You leave, too. I'll see to his injuries."

"But such is not the etiquette of our beloved Elmhurst," began the gentleman next to him, only to shut up the moment those eyes became sharper.

"May Mother preserve your life, lad." He patted Maen's shoulder lightly and got out of there, too, chanting some prayer.

When no one was left in their surroundings, the Kingsman in the deadly gear gave him a knowing look, passed him a small vial, and asked, "Start from the beginning. What did you encounter? Don’t skip any details."

Maen's body was failing him, so he accepted whatever was in that vial and gulped it down in a single shot. He didn't care what was inside it, as long as it meant he could help the people stuck in the hotel from the terror of that monster.

Warmth slowly returned to his body, and so did all the suppressed feelings and emotions that he'd thought crushed under that tortuous smacking.

Before long, he had enough strength in his body to speak without huffing for five seconds between each word, and so he began.

.

.

.

In pained words and shaking whispers, he recounted everything that happened right from the start all the way to the end.

He made sure that the features and strength of that giant monster-like man were made very, very clear because he wasn't sure if even Kingsman could compete against that thing. He didn't want the city to lose a protector because of his failure to communicate.

The moment he was done, the tall man in a leather trench coat and tricorn hat narrowed his eyes and mumbled, "I knew something was off here. Still, I…don't see it. I don't see any hotel."

Maen almost panicked when he heard that, but luckily, the next words stopped him from going unconscious out of sheer anxiety.

"I'll need to call the experts."

Hope shone in Maen's eyes once again, and right when he made to question further, a string shot upwards as the figure whizzed alongside it. Before Maen could say something, the Kingsman was gone, leaving behind a few words in the air…

"Get out of here and see a real doctor."

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Vern sat on the misshapen ground amidst chaotic towers in white sand, his eyes closed as a shimmering sphere rested in his hands.

After a while, he opened his eyes and mumbled, "The efficiency is really terrible." He remembered pouring at least four times the amount of representation in the insight sphere than what he’d just recovered—rejuvenating his otherwise barren thought space.

It was an…interesting experience.

Ever since his enlightenment, he'd gotten used to always having his perception—except when his memory was altered, but that didn't count because he couldn't consciously analyze its absence. But now he could. Perception was like another sensory organ but higher. And not having any flux in his thought space felt like that organ had essentially died.

Well, not exactly dead. Regardless, it almost felt like his eyes were closed once again, and that subjectivity was nothing but a sham.

Shaking his head, he unleashed his perception, and the moment he did, it reminded him of the terrible state of his body. His skin was shredded in many a place but by a very peculiar energy.

Touching the wounds with his hands didn't do the nuance of the situation the justice that observing it with his perception did. After all, what was absorbed from his skin wasn't all the eight fundamentals but just one.

If it weren't for the stupid amount of pain that wrecked his body and the lack of a proper methodology, he wouldn't have minded testing the effects of a single isolated fundamental when compared to others.

After all, the fact that his skin was injured meant there had to be a certain amount of dissolution involved in the process. But how much?

"Not right now…" he reminded himself, eyeing the blood seeping out of his makeshift bandages.

Yet, the moment these distractions were shelved away, his mouth twitched, and he struggled to hold back a yelp of pain. Settling on gritting his teeth, he unfurled the knot of the 'bandage' on his arm and came face to face with the gruesome wound hiding underneath it.

In the outline of jagged teeth, a huge chunk of his skin was missing on his arm, showcasing the flesh underneath. His head felt light, but he held on and scooped a handful of white dust in his empty palm.

Holding it over his wound, he slowly let some of the dust seep through his fingers as his eyes shone with a brilliant ring of black and white.

Vern from a couple of months ago would've been horrified by the sight of sprinkling some dirty dust over a fresh wound, but things were different now.

The moment the dust particles reached the surface of his skin, they suddenly halted mid-air as the skin right around the wound began to stretch and close in like some ink mixing in the water. Alas, the bite marks were too numerous and too wide to be covered just by stretching his skin.

That's where this dust came in. The moment his stretching skin came in contact with these particles, it enveloped them, fueling their expansions—halting any and all bleeding.

One after another, the open wounds began to close at a visible rate as he let more and more of the dust settle and regenerate the skin for him.

A small part of him was apprehensive because of what Cedric had mentioned about not trying to heal himself, but a much, much larger and logical voice in his head used that very argument to reason that this was the best method of healing for this specific injury.

Cedric had warned him not to use such healing methods too much because most injuries in real life were a result of a loss of most of the eight fundamentals from a human's representation or body, and trying to fix that with just one was a terrible idea.

Here, however, things were different. After all, those phantom maws had primarily stolen structure off of his body, and what better material to heal than the almost pure condensed structure itself?

Yes, this dust might not be a hundred percent structure, and maybe even had a big chunk of cognition aspect to it, too, but his perception told him it was far more pure than his skin could ever be in terms of isolated structure. And that was enough in this situation.

Why? Because things were more dire than they looked. Because he was beyond tired mentally and physically.

Because this stupid space hadn't collapsed even after the captain died! Heck, Vern didn't find the cage on the man's corpse. This was to say that this artifact essentially held him imprisoned here.

As he sprinkled white dust on one wound after another, he distracted himself by planning his next steps. He wasn't sure how to deal with this whole situation.

Eyeing the two pillars still standing on the other edge of this world, he lamented, I really don't want to resort to destroying them and possibly have this whole space implode with me in it.

But what else was he to do? He didn't see or perceive any convenient exits, nor did he notice any flaws in this world besides the pillars.

Maybe I can wait until it runs out of energy? Surely, it had to have some limits. But he wasn't very optimistic about that idea either. This is, at the very least, a third-shade perceptual artifact. It could very well have enough reserves to outlast him.

"Ahh," he suddenly jolted back in pain as he accidentally overextended the skin around his back. Trying to keep his mind occupied, he reasoned, Surely, someone else would come across this cage out there long before that happens, right?

But what if it ends up being one of these raiders? He'd incapacitated four and ended another, but that still left one more to stir the pot. What if that guy decided to take him back to their headquarters or something?

The thought made him grimace. That would be the worst-case scenario. This was one of the reasons why the first thing he did was heal himself. If things really came down to it, he wasn't going to go down without a fight.

Feeling frustrated at being unable to conclude this situation even after beating all odds and winning against such an opponent, he healed himself in disappointed silence.

Seconds turned into minutes as his wounds slowly disappeared, sometimes forcing him to jump back into the insight sphere to recover more flux for the process. Fortunately, he'd infused it with quite a bit of his thoughts over the past weeks in preparation for situations just like these.

However, it seemed there was a limit to how much it could store, as the efficiency of the conversion rate was only going down and down the more he squeezed out of it.

Yet, there was little else for him to do than wait and try to recover.

With every minute, his anxiety continued to mount, thoughts of what was happening in the outside world gnawing at him. Did the hotel people finally manage to break out of their mental spell?

Or what if that last raider got up and is erasing everyone's memories right now? Maybe worse, their leader—that woman with the staff, was back? He didn't know. He didn't know.

That's when the grays in his perception suddenly fluctuated.

All his instincts activated in an instant, and he gripped Duality before rushing behind a cover to hide from the line of sight of this anomaly.

He zeroed in on his perception and intently observed every minute change as a new form began materializing in this space.

Before long, it fully formed, and Vern couldn't help but be shocked.