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Chapter 431: Prisoner of Fate
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It was only 1.2% —but it was energy from an actual and genuine Elemental Dragon, enough to actually torch an entire army of men in a single moment.
Yet the BMA’s [Energy Core] used it to power its main drive and make its performance better… so the idea of it was impossible to comprehend.
[Sir, adjustments are enabled with the additional energy to the Energy Core. Recharge time is now at 24hrs before the boost is used up. Our current Energy Levels are at 8%.]
Electra was stunned.
Although it was very simple for her to recreate a lightning prison, or even put more ‘essence’ into it to make it stronger, the fact remains that it was still really shocking for her to see her innate ability to be rendered useless just like that.
“I will come with you, no need for this prison.” Siva said as he accepted the responsibility.
Although he didn’t mean to sound arrogantly cool, but seeing him did it and hearing his words made Electra fume in anger —which was still a sight to see on its own.
He knew himself. If he doesn’t do this, then there will be the sense of guilt that will torture him for as long as he lives… and although he can’t bring them all back to life, at least he can accept punishment aside from death and detention that the Lightning Kirin Tribe will bestow on him.
“Please, lead the way.” Siva prompted respectfully.
Electra hissed, clicking her tongue. She stomped her foot on the ground and pointed at the far north of the forest, saying, “There is a passage way over there that leads to an underground cave tunnel to the Inner Continent…”
After she spoke, she summoned a lightning spear on her right hand and a lightning whip on her left.
Then she added, “Escape and I will bring you with me with or without your five limbs.” (AN: trivia)
Siva gulped. He didn’t doubt it. She would do it for he could really see just what kind of level of self-restraint she had been using to suppress the hate and anger swelling inside her heart.
Electra placed herself behind Siva within a flash of light and without further warning whipped his back that rendered Cortana screaming.
[Ah, that’s…. that’s good! More! Do it more!]
“Get a move on!”
“Ah!” Siva was surprised by something and he was forcefully pushed to his fours, with his behind on a gallery display for Electra to whip it.
“I don’t have time to waste on you. Move it.” She said coldly with contempt in her expression… in fact, looking at her now, with a lightning spear that looked like a long stick and a whip on the other hand… made her look more like a real queen of a certain fetish, than a dignified queen of a land.
Then, her whip lashed and hit Siva’s hind again.
[More! More! Energy Levels are rising! Her whip is really full of energy, boss… make her whip you a lot more… tell her insults… tell her about how you wanted to slap her butt earlier… tell her about…]
“…”
Siva was stunned.
Just that one whip strike had charged the Energy Core of the BMA with 0.1% power.
—should I listen to Cortana’s advice or should I try to maintain my dignity and pride?
A conflict arose from Siva’s heart… and mind.
The attack doesn’t hurt one bit but there was force in it that makes him lose his balance unwittingly.
On one side, there was the benefit of the Energy Core getting charged up. On the other hand, there was a matter of his dignity being tainted if he let her whip him more like that.
But then again, this chance might not come again, and because he also had his promise to himself to be practical, he decided to forgo the matter of his dignity being tainted and followed his needs of practicality instead. After all, no one knew what he was going through right now.
“Weak.” He lowly muttered, embarrassed of the thought and reason why he had to say that. In fact, he was already beginning to regret the decision.
As expected, the ‘Dragon Girl’ exploded like a real volcano and she yelled at him, “Who are you calling weak!?”
Siva swallowed, “Your whip… if that’s the amount of energy you can put into your whip, then you can just forget it for it just stains my dignity being hit by that weak lash.”
It wasn’t him speaking. It was the “script” provided by Cortana. He was just reading it with a shaky voice and tears on his heart.
He was really regretting it now.
“H-H-How dare you insult me!”
CRACKLE!!!
More ‘essence’ was put into the whip and it lashed on his back, making Cortana cry in joy.
[Energy Levels charged at 0.2% per whip! These lashings are awesome!]
—I wish you’re the one being whipped right now!
This sight continued until seven hours later where the whipping had reached a saturation level and had charged the BMA [Energy Core] to 90%.
Cortana also reported that if he were to maximize the BMA’s performance output with this Mana-type energy, he wouldn’t have to boost the BMA Core for the next seven days and still get 10km of the BMA’s Absolute Domain.
It was fair trade in exchange for the sacrifice his dignity suffered and so he went on and agreed.
Siva had seen himself pass through the ruins he’d last seen almost a month ago, and then went deep in the mountain range behind the ruins, and thru a thicker and more ancient-feeling forest that finally led the two of them into a deep lateral cave filled with vines, moss, and smelled of decay.
—which Siva ignored because he had been used to this kind smell before.
“Jump.”
“Here?”
CRACKLE!!!
Electra didn’t like being questioned and only made her point again with a lash. The energy was good and all but the force of the physical aspect of that attack was enough to actually neutralize even the weight of the BMA so he was rendered helpless to it, with proof being him in all his fours.
“Jump.” She said, looking down at him. Her eyes in that stare-down attitude is all he needed to tell him that she wouldn’t speak another word again and will only lash at him again if she were questioned a third time.
Aside from her platinum-silver outfit that does not have any spark of the queenly presence on it; the Electra right now would NEVER FAIL to arouse those guys with interests on these kinds of stuffs.
It was a different kind of queen and it was actually interesting even to Siva’s perspective.
—oh shit… what did I just admit to myself?!!
Too late for further thoughts, Electra was on her last dregs of patience so she kicked Siva from the back and followed behind him as they took the fall.
[Boss, this is a really deep fall. Even with the [core] being this charged up, I can’t still scan the end of this cave tunnel.]
‘More importantly, this is a really straight downward fall from the surface, ain’t it?’
[Analyzing scan data. Initializing Real@D display.]
After Cortana’s prompt, a bluish-green world was revealed in Siva’s vision, filled with the edges and pointy ledges of rocks, stones, minerals, and a few more materials which the labels of the scan cannot distinguish.
Night Vision was useless here because of the lack of even the smallest speck of light to reflect it back to his eyes.
What was noticeable, however, is the fact that the edges were all pointing upwards and based alone on how the 10km domain of his BMA had scanned the surroundings, it would seem that this large hole that’s 200m in size were created by blasting some sort of something from way deep down below.
And to add more spice to this interesting fact, the blast angle was a straight 90^ line towards the very surface, to where they came from.
‘This hole is what she used to get to the surface continents… does that also mean that this hole is connecting directly towards the Inner Continents?’
—are there many more holes like this in Terroa?
The latter thought implied something scary. If there are other holes like these in Terroa, then there is a large chance that the Demon Armada had already long discovered them.
Siva frowned but he kept on falling in a standing position with a straight back and as if he wasn’t the one falling and it was his surroundings instead are the ones that’ve been moving upwards around him.
His falling speed increased further and further as the laws of gravity and velocity applied to him, with the given acceleration of the BMA’s weight.
[200 knots and still increasing…]
Cortana’s calm assessment was dreadfully scary in a sense. The deeper one goes, the denser the Mana becomes, impeding the breathing, crushing the internal organs, and eventually will crush bones and flesh into a mush of what used to be a person.
But Siva was different, thankfully, for the pressure of Mana does not work on him, for an odd reason, because of his curse. He cannot be affected by a pure Mana pressure generated by something in this deep abyss.
Furthermore, he doesn’t need air to live; and since he cannot generate Mana as well, anything purely Mana-made does not affect his constitution at all.
That’s why he was very relaxed right now and was still able to think and analyze the situation and his surroundings while still falling.
“Hmp.”
CRACKLE!!
Within the silence in the darkness, a flash of light along with a crackling of lightning buzzed above his head and when he looked up, he saw Electra, who he was yet to know the name of, became like a ball of electric sun as her aura radiated light and buzzing electricity that illuminated the entire area in his immediate vicinity.
Just like Siva, she was also falling in a relaxed way as if their current speed was actually so boring and so slow that she could sleep and still wake up with their falling not being finished yet.
“How long do we have to fall like this?” Siva asked with actual kindness, “It’s been five minutes but no amount of distance is seemed to be generated by this freefalling of ours.”
“You talk so much for a prisoner. Back then, you didn’t even say a word and massacred my people so I am surprised that you’re talking so much right now… heck, I’m even surprised you have friends.”
She was clearly mocking him using the situation in their ‘first meeting’ back then. She realty hated him and was feeling annoyed by his presence.
Deep in her heart, she could feel it as well. It’s like she was a prisoner meeting a warden, or like being a mouse in the presence of a tom.
She really wanted to trash him so hard right now.
But if she did that, then she couldn’t prove herself to her mother, to the clan, to the Dragon Race, and to herself… in front of her father’s empty grave. It was pure mental reasoning that has kept her from striking Siva down with a lightning strike.
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“Don’t talk. I don’t like hearing your voice.” She just said and closed her eyes… waiting.
The wind resistance helped slow their descent but their weights still continued to push through with it, and even made Siva wonder just how she was able to keep up with his falling speed despite being that skinny and seemingly weightless in appearance.
—is it her garb?
Siva felt really puzzled by her. She looked really regal with her clothes but it didn’t have any form of a lofty royalty befitting her status. It can be said to be lacking if thinking of her identity as the ‘queen’ of Anazon Forest —a Danger Zone.
—not even the wind is making her dress flutter…
Siva’s cape, despite the flapping effect, wasn’t a piece of cloth as well but is actually thinly seamed Black Ironwood Alloy strips the thickness of a hair.
Ten minutes became twenty… Siva finally reached the limits of his acceleration as the wind resistance as well as the pressure of Mana towards the BMA had created an equilibrium between them. If it was just him, he would have accelerated more using his BMA’s Absolute Domain, but there was a reason he didn’t do it.
He wanted to buy more time to create more Liberty Drones to deploy around him.
An hour passed, Siva had already begun to wonder just how deep this cave was.
Another hour passed by but time continued on…
—this is really impossible. It’s been six hours. If we were still falling towards the center of Terroa, then we would have long since reached the core a few hours ago…
—this planet isn’t simple…
—this is Spatial Manipulation!
Siva had no recollection of this on his time as the [God] who rampaged in the universe. In fact, Siva’s last [memories] were the scenes ‘before’ the dawn of Ragnarok… with the rest being jumbled images of a fast moving world around him as if he was an unshakable rock and time itself flowed through him as he remained there unmoving… until he heard a knock on the door and a familiar face smiled at him, bringing back the colors he supposed he had lost long ago.
But that colorful world also ended just like that; and he clearly remembered who did it.
Sefirah…
‘I may have remembered my time as an Immortal but there is still so much I can’t recall during after I was dubbed as the third of the [Trinity Gods].’
—do I really deserve that?
—I really can’t remember any of this at all…
Eight hours after he had fallen into the hole, Siva’s thoughts were riled up when he heard a yawn not too far away from him. He looked up and saw the Vajra tapping her dainty little mouth.
—she did fucking dared to fall asleep…!!
Siva gritted his teeth.
—and here I was… actually being man enough to face the punishment of the Lightning Kirins only to be slept upon by a mere child…
Siva was (mentally) millions of years old and so in his eyes, even if Electra was thousands of years old —which is impossible since she’s yet to grow her horn— she would still be a kid in front of him.
—why can’t I draw my wisdom and experiences?
Supposedly, and logically, Siva should be acting like a sage in every matter —tackling things like in a mysterious and sagely manner— but he couldn’t bear with it… it wasn’t actually his style. In fact, he wondered only just now, he actually didn’t have a speck of sageness in him.
Back then, if he had a problem or an issue, he will order someone to solve it for him.
Back then, if he had someone who summoned his ire, he would trample him.
Back then, if he lacked many things, he would only ask the owner of that thing and they will politely gift it to them with a beaming face.
Back then…
Back then……..
Back then…………..…
Back then……………………..
Back then, he used force and violence to solve all his problems —which he now couldn’t do because he simply didn’t have the strength to be arrogant.
He now realized that all those years he had honed his strength to be able to defend himself and fight his enemies, and did nothing else, were wasted.
Siva now only realized that he actually didn’t have a speck of sagely wisdom that could help himself on a desperate need of information and tactics. All he knew was clash head on with a problem and force his way forward with brute strength.
—the demons’ forces are stronger and numbered more than before...
—brute strength won’t help much this time around.
Reflecting upon it, Siva really regretted a lot of few things… but he also knew that things aren’t too late so he could still catch up with what he’s lacking. He will still pursue strength, true, but he would not just focus on his personal strength, he would also feed his mind and surpass his old limits thru information.
—first things first… I have to learn how to control my own temper.
—I am a prisoner right now…
—I chose to come here and since she can’t bind me, she chose to trust my words instead… there wasn’t even a point in me trying to trick her or anything…
After listening and watching her finish yawning, the ‘calm’ Siva asked her a question, “How long are we going to fall for?”
Perhaps she had a good sleep, her expression is still not that stiff and cold so she answered, “By my calculations, we should get out of this tunnel within the next two or three days… but if we can double our speed, then we can cut it by half.”
Siva’s face twitched.
—two freaking fucking days!? So, just how did this thing ended up in the middle of Terroa?
Asking this question, a sudden realization hit Siva.
—Terroa…
—this kind of spatial magic isn’t made by Gabriel since this planet and its first inhabitants, the Dragons, have long since been living in the Inner Continents long before he was even born…
—this is this planet’s secret!
—the Devil Gods invaded because they want the four things that Terrans have; their light which is also their life spark; their worlds which are rich in resources; and then the [Memory Crystals] which were born only in a world governed by Terra’s Will...
—those are the three things of the four…
—but Gabriel told me about the secret of Terroa...
—is this perhaps the fourth? The planet itself!?
Siva also thought about Gabriel’s words which are also words that Janus and his parents said on their short meetings…
. Everything that has a beginning has an end…
—what is the beginning? When was it?
—what will be ending? Why does it have to end?
—why do I know that I am the one ending it?
—who started it all?
—how did everything began? Why start it?
—when is it going to end?
No.
—when should I end it?
……………
………
……
…
..
.
.
That’s not the right question.
—how should everything end?
How should everything end.
That is the right question.
*GASP!!
Siva opened his eyes and found himself still in the tunnel, falling, and the bluish-green rendering in his surroundings continued to go up while he fell down.
He panted, again, chased his breath and touched his chest as he felt the lingering sensation of that voice coming from his… heart —no— his soul… it came from the depths of his soul.
CRACKLE!!
“You were planning on attacking me?!!”
The sound of lightning crackling from above him caught Siva’s thoughts the brightness of the light it made him glare at it.
—How long?
Siva wanted to know this out of everything.
“How long was I blacked out?”
The lightning spear and a sword were on the girl’s hands and her black-less eyes glared at Siva with a menacing intent.
She clicked her tongue, “I shouldn’t have fallen asleep… this is a mistake in my part… I shouldn’t have trusted you. I was close to dying… I shouldn’t have pulled down my guard!”
It was unknown whether she was murmuring or is actually thinking out loud, but Siva understood the situation from her words. It would seem that he’d lost consciousness while being on his thoughts and it had lasted long that she fell asleep again.
—meaning, it’s around four or more hours…
Siva felt the shivers. This thing never happened to him before so why now… how did that voice pull his consciousness out of his system and even put him to sleep for that long?
‘Cortana!’
[Boss! I was pushed out of your system for a good hour and a half just now…]
—my predictions were correct, it should be around four or more hours that I was out…
—and that voice can push Cortana’s monitoring out of my main thoughts as well… how scary…
Siva had become reliant to outside powers like that of Cortana’s when it came to things that he doesn’t have absolute control with.
It was a form of strength, yes, but he also knew that if his old self would see him right now, that guy would have disdained him.
Because the ‘Siva’ of old relied on his strength to do what he wanted… he had never once relied on an outside force like Cortana’s to do the tasks he’s been unable to do in the past.
In fact, back then, if ‘Siva’ can’t make something a part of his strength, he’d rather just destroy it so his enemies won’t be able to use it against him. He wasn’t a fan of keeping potential threats close to his abode. He wasn’t stupid like some greedy MC of some novels who wanted to hoard everything in their vicinity and justify their strength by making it theirs thru sheer luck and coincidences.
……and they called themselves heroes? Pathetic.
True strength is acquired by hard work, training, and a good amount of skills and ability. Those who rely on LUCK to be strong are pathetic pieces of shit and wasn’t worthy of being called strong at all.
If anything, they should be called “LUCKY” and not anything else.
LUCK is not part of strength. Strength gained from a bunch of lucky encounters and chance meetings aren’t strength at all.
Someone who claimed himself ‘powerful’ through a foundation gained from sitting down on a mattress and murmuring empty words, then going out in the open and adventuring… relying on LUCK to get his so called ‘bottleneck’ broken through is a pathetic piece of shit.
One proof of this is when so called “lucky one” is faced against someone who had real and genuine strength… take away their LUCKY foundations and take away their items, their treasures, and their use of whatever energy source they have…
When it comes to a battle of pure ability and skill, their differences in foundations makes the winner quite obvious without another word more.
Everything else is just icing in the cake.
If he had only trained his body over and over, until he broke his bones and rebuilt it, rent his muscles and healed it… until he made every cell and fiber of his being used to pain, suffering, stress, and the repeated healing, improving his constitution to a monstrous level while mastering his “arts” and as well as improving his mental psyche, THAT is what is called real strength… and it doesn’t have those things called ‘bottlenecks’ which only the fools who sit down all year have.
Heck, what strength can you get when you just sit down and do nothing? It was a truly pathetic kind of strength… if it’s even called strength at all.
Talent is just talent… without training, exercise, the proper practice of one’s “arts”, without the repeated rehearsals and drill masteries, one cannot gain true and genuine strength to defeat one’s adversaries. For in a battle of life and death, LIFE and SURVIVAL is given only to those who could defy the odds with skills and ability.
Siva believed in this to a religious level.
He had engraved this truth in the deepest recesses of the marrows of his bones.
…only, now, he added something else to this logic.
Items…
Whether this is a game or not, Siva learned that the strength of one’s body and mind is just a part of an overall equation of calculating strength.
Siva had once asked before, what was different now and the times back then…
…well, this is the answer.
Because back then, he lived for himself and so the enemies will only come for him, and nobody else.
This time, however, he was fighting for his brother and his parents’ lives; the survival of Terroa in this war is also the survival of his loved ones.
The scale of his struggles, the scale of his enemy, the scale of the consequences if he lost… is too big for him to be stupid and adamant to his former religious belief of personal strength alone and nothing else.
The scale of the WAR this time is different than in his former life.
The price of losing is too much for him to bear.
The war last time was for the Universe and there is a large army of resistance to help carry the burden.
But the war now is too personal.
So he had to smarten up.
Items…
Cortana and his arsenal is a large number of what he now calls his “current strength”. So what if the old ‘Siva’ would disdain him? He was himself, in the first place, and the two are one. He was just being practical… for current time is a time of an extreme desperation; and desperate times need desperate measures to succeed.
‘What were your last recordings?’
[Data analyzed says that the deeper your mind is focusing on a single thought, and the more you put your mind to strain in concentration of that thought, the higher is your brain activity —meaning— as the stress you put your mind into becomes greater, the higher it has the chance that that blocked region in your memory cortex will pull your mind to it. Thus, it will result to this instance of blacking out.]
‘In short, the more agitated I am, the higher is the chance that I will be pulled there again?’
[Yes sir.]
Earlier, Siva was thinking deeply about the situation he was currently at. He was ‘agitated’ by the sheer thought of the pressure Janus, Gabriel, and his own parents, had put on his shoulders about the so called [key] for the survival of Terroa.
Although he hated thinking about it, he can’t help but brood over the thought because even though it was still unclear to him, what was clear about it is the fact that everything that had something to do with that [key] is something that had to do with him, the [Siva] after Ragnarok.
…and what’s scary is that the [Siva] after Ragnarok is an unreliable black card in saving this planet.
Saving this planet eventually saves his family…
……saving his family is his main goal.
Everything is damn connected so thinking of one thing leads to another and the deeper he goes, the greater the pressure… and the greater the fear he could feel with the price of failure.
Why won’t he become agitated? He was just a boy, after all, not even a full-pledged adult yet.
He may have lived millions of years in bitter battles after bitter struggles, mentally, but deep down his heart, body, and soul, he was just a boy who only wanted to reunite with his family.
Fate is a hateful thing, for some folks, for it is like a spider… and its web is all around you.
When you’re caught in its webs, it was very hard to extricate yourself from its bindings; for the greater your struggle is, the more the web of fate pulls you in its embrace.
Having realized himself being this deep in the web of fate, Siva could only resign himself to continuing with it deeper… travel deeper into the web, go with the flow, struggle to survive, fight... in order to live.
Since he can’t free himself from this atrocious web of fate, he could only fight on, struggle, and make the web… slowly, but surely, a part of his —a part of his own strength, someday, thru the help of his Liberty Drones, the IPU, and Cortana.
‘Remember, Cortana, that you must ensure that the External Databank is not connected to anything at all… aside for you…… and most especially, do not let [me] inside it. When anything tries to invade, it’s still better to disconnect it physically than risk your [source code] being hacked or injured by the attempt.’
[Yes sir.]
‘Now that we’ve analyzed how long I was out, there is a matter of pacifying this beautiful witch.’
—everything happened within a few seconds as his and Cortana’s replies were delivered thru their neural link which was their physical connection on the real world-side of his brain.
The spear and sword in the Vajra’s hands were all ready to strike and just as she was about to put her strength to it, Siva pulled himself ‘downwards’ with the help of the Absolute Domain.
“Wait!” he cried, “It wasn’t on purpose!”
“I felt it in my soul…!! I felt you intent! And you still want to trick me now?!!”
No sound was made when Siva pulled back to get out of the strike zone of the attack.
[Energy charged at 0.3% on that attack, sir.]
Her ‘Lightning Strikes’ were beneficial to the BMA but the force of the physical attack applied to it is still too great for the BMA to receive bluntly.
“Akh!” Siva may have avoided the lightning sword but he was still hit on the shoulder by the spear.
He was already pulling back but he was still further stricken down by the lightning spear. Although the resulting energy absorption was good, Siva still felt the pain —it was real pain.
—lightning is the bane of Dark-type existences!
And yet he was playing with it as a weapon…
“I only need your head and torso… I don’t need to bring you in completely with your limbs!”
The hissing words were scary. Siva didn’t fear the cutting of his four limbs. What he feared was the cutting of the fifth.
“Wait… I’m telling you the truth! It’s wasn’t me…!!”
“Lies!”
CRACKLE!!!
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She’s really furious…!!
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Next Chapter: struggle… struggle more… hahaha!