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Volume 3
Chapter 33: The Devil Within
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Seeing the bullets pass through his face, a look of utter disappointment drew off Siva's face.
From his mask, Karim could see him gritting his teeth.
Anger rising from his chest, Siva used his right hand to point the gun's barrel again. While he was using his legs to balance himself, he activated his booster on the back and accelerated.
The monsters growled and jumped, beaks pointed at the dashing Siva.
In that short moment, Siva's left hand was dancing in midair. His fingers moved like playing piano, and on his right hand appeared the Black Ender sword.
From his left, the Bing monsters came. In front of him, the subject of his insurmountable hate.
He swung his sword with all his might but Karim saw through its trajectory and avoided its path. But what he did not expect is that the force of the weapon was that strong that it shattered where he stood as it touched the ground.
He jumped away, failing to counter, while he looked right to see the monsters pecking on where the two of them used to be,
Unable to regain back his composure, and also overcome by surprise, Karim used his Nagitana to stab the ground and he did a pole twist and kicked a Bing on its chin to counter its attack.
But he failed to see one other thing.
He thought that Siva was going to do the same thing to the Bing that followed him but he ignored them all and was just aiming to cut his head.
"What crazy..."
Pulling his weight at the last second, he avoided the beheading slash who then slashed through the Bing he kicked in the chin earlier.
Its blood was spilled on Siva and Karim jumped away, watching him struggle.
Siva used his empty left hand to grab the monster's right shoulder bone, pulled himself up, kick the air with his sub-boosters, and rolled like a catapult, throwing his black sword towards the shocked Karim.
"Son of a gun!"
Such crazy, ugly, and unorthodox fighting style was unheard of... no! It was unseen and he can't even put a label on it as it was just plainly out of ordinary.
Even saying that it was special was insult to its rarity.
Siva's fighting style is like a combination of desperation and acrobatics. Using all possible loops and nook to balance his attack, disregarding his defense just to NOT let his attacking momentum die.
With the sight of the teeth gritting Siva, Karim blocked the thrown sword and was knocked a bit back.
He wasn't in the proper balance to block it and he had forgotten to use his ability to render the attack immobile.
His vision was blocked by his defensive stance and when he looked back at Siva, he was already diving towards him, leaving the monsters following behind.
"What the f..."
A giant hammer appeared in a split second in his hand, and Karim didn't think twice to dodge its crushing blow. It hit the ground where he stood and, for the second time, the attack shattered the floor.
But this time, the AOE was even larger, like it was a size of one of the Bing monsters, 15 meters wide with him in the dead center.
He was in mid air and tried to counter, but Siva's mask covered face was looking at him, abandoning his giant golden hammer, and dashing forth using his Flight Armor's booster blow.
Siva combed his fist and a gun on his right hand appeared. With a smooth arc, he aimed at Karim's head and the latter stabbed the ground to change his jump direction midway.
BANG BANG BANG!!!
Three bullets were released and it almost went through Karim's head, grazing through his thick helmet.
It hit the locks and the helmet was released, the third bullet hitting the inside of the helmet, pulling Karim's head back, outbalancing him.
"K-Shit!"
Siva gave him a roundhouse kick, using his momentum to add damage power and Karim was hit straight on to his chest, snatching his air.
The Bing monsters following him all pecked over their previous location, like real chickens, they used one eye on the one side to check where the two were.
The one that Karim attacked recovered its bearing and it flapped its no-flight wings and raised its head.
Karim saw this as a sign of this monster's ability and with it, the rest of the flock also flapped their wings like a rooster in early morn.
With a small click, came that sound.
BIIIIING!
And five bright lights in succession engulfed the whole area where they were.
Karim was able to close his eyes in time and so he was not damaged at the least but then he felt something hard hit his left flank along with a large booming sound.
In slow motion, his brain immediately processed the sensation of an impact.
Something big, something fast, and something powerful made contact with his left arm and body. It created an impact akin to that of a punch but in a much larger scale and in a much deadlier degree.
He felt his foot leave the ground, gravity became hard to follow. With it, he felt electrified, stunned, even a bit puzzled.
Then he hit a tree and broke it, then two, then he felt he hit the floor. His vision was black, he felt rolling in the ground. He also felt that he broke a rock enough to be a table's size, and was unable to stop his roll and felt like he was a human paper doll.
When he felt that he stopped rolling, he began to scan his senses of what happened to him.
It stated just a few moments ago, he knew that the Bing monsters were going irritated and used their main head weapon of blinding their enemies.
He closed his eyes to void being stunned.
The Destroyer shouldn't be able to move. So just where did the attack came from?
At that thought, he remembered his face.
He doesn't have a face.
It was covered in an anti-glare mask.
"Ah!" He realized. "Shit."
He opened his eyes and saw him, fighting the Bing monsters 30 meters away.
Using his acrobatic moves, he was fighting them in an ugly manner. He grabbed their bones, used anything on their bodies as foothold, and then pierced their eyes in an ugly manner using his sword.
Then, he would electrify them, stunning the monsters for a moment, then use that opening to finish them off.
He did this over and over until all six monsters were gone after a few tries. No part of his body was listening to his orders. He wanted to move, use this opening to finish his mission and kill The Destroyer, but he was in a state where all he could do was look at him.
Siva was staggering, he was tired, he can see it.
From his spit of rage, he depleted his stamina, he used all he had to have that opening that took him down.
Did he knew when the monsters are going to use their diamond heads? Did he plan to use them to make him close his eyes? No. It was all luck. It was all chance.
Karim had this notion that The Destroyer's attention was fully focused on him and that there was no time for him to notice that the Bing monsters are using their main blinding attack.
From their clash, from the moment he snapped out, he knew that he was the kind of fighter to ignore everything that has nothing to do with his target.
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He was the kind who will throw his all out in order to win. This guy is strong in this sense. His weakness is that he let himself be eaten by his deductive side.
If only Karim had used his real martial artist side, then his senses wouldn't have betrayed him.
What his mistake was is that he relied to the abilities he inherited from the game. «Deva's Path», a MOD that he looted from a boss raid that gave him the ability to manipulate attraction (Draw) and repulsion (Spurn) forces with objects and people.
It was just a normal MOD and can be unlocked by the junction system. It was an ability that centered around Telekinesis. Adding some accessories to shorten cool down time, cast time, and then junctioning it to reverse cast, you can have the same effect as Deva's Path.
But the problem is him.
He relied on it too much and so he failed to be the martial artist that wanted to face The Destroyer in a fair contest of strength.
But regarding that, The Destroyer was also like him.
He wasn't a pure martial artist by talent nor practice, he was a player of Terroa and as well as a fighter in the real world who had something in shoulders.
That something is what he felt when he first avoided that downward slash of his jet black sword.
If he had parried it, he would have been pressed to the ground and lost his precious double edged Nagitana.
With a mysterious persona, The Destroyer is someone who cannot be measured by mere normal scales of strength. His power, his will, the way he had it, the way he controls it, the amount of sheer intent he had on his attacks, it was something that can only be achieved if a person had something heavy on his shoulders.
In his time in the Martial World, both underground and the ones in sports, he had only seen very few people like him where each attack he unleash becomes a lethal, deadly blow.
PANT PANT PANT...
Karim could hear his breathing and with his blurry vision, he tried to focused his sight.
He saw the pair of feet stopped in front of him. When he was 5 meters away, Karim smiled at the man who looked down at him with a gun.
"Why?" He asked.
His tone was both cold and acidic, rage could be felt in his restrained voice. But Karim felt like this was some sort of fate. A strong warrior coming to finish a strong foe.
"Hehehe... it was just by chance. You see, we..."
But then in the middle of his sentence, he was stopped.
Karim's face distorted into a look of disbelief. Could he have failed to measure even his sense of honor? Is he a person who fights not with honor but with something else?
"—why did you lie to me?"
"..."
He was puzzled, but his facial muscles were too tired to even show that.
"Answer me! Why do you want me dead?!"
A few seconds passed, Siva removed his mask. In his face shown the image of a person who was fighting with only his sheer will to not kill the man in front of him.
His anger was so great that he was crying.
Gritting his teeth, hand with the black gun trembling and the finger on the trigger was going in and out.
When Karim was still keeping his silence, the man shot his knees. He shot his limbs, he shot his balls.
"Argh! Fuck! Shit! SHIIIIT!!!"
"Answer me!"
No mercy. No hesitation. In fact, The Destroyer looked like he had more things to make him feel before he give him the deliverance of his salvation. Death.
But then, when that thought entered his mind, Karim's expression began to grim.
In his calculation, he forgot that there was one thing that this man could do with his anger.
Physical torture is just the least, the lightest thing that this man could do to him. The worst is, he could trap him in this Virtual World and repeatedly torture him until he got what he wanted.
With his current where he's unable to move his hands, he couldn't access his player window, thus makes him unable to press the log out button.
And just when it seems that he understood the message he gave him, Siva's gun then pointed at his stomach and he acted as if to pull the trigger but stopped.
"Wait! Wait!"
"Talk. It seems that you understood what I want to do so make sure you tell me everything."
Karim bit his lips and terror began to crawl on his spine and skin. This man wasn't an honorable man. He was cruel, he was brutal, the way he fights wasn't at least a means to win in any way... it was actually just the way he fights!
And although it can be said that he was the kind of person to do anything just to win a brawl, he was also the kind of person that will murder the world just to get what he wants.
So that narrows down everything that happened to the reason why he was inside this world.
His reason for fighting was much, much heavier than he thought that he would go so far as to actually torture a player for the reason he had attacked him.
"I... I was given an order to... to assassinate you."
"Why?"
"Like I said, your quest is a hindrance to us. What we wanted is to be the greatest Guild under the flag of The Union of Seven Nations. And that can be achieved with the help of the Excalibur as proof of our guild's might."
"And you would assassinate me just for that?"
"Just for that?!" Karim yelled in disbelief. "You call it 'just' in that tone?! Do you even know how great the flag of The Union of Seven Nations are?!"
He was screaming, he was yelling. Anger can be seen drawn all over the complexion of the early weakened man that is Karim.
But the man in front of him had a colder expression.
"I don't care." He said acidly.
Karim's heart skipped a beat.
He saw a man, whose shadow coming from the fires of destruction behind him, filled in darkness. His eyes hid in the sullen veil of his wrath. He could feel his breathing calm but full of hatred. Karim's senses told him that the man who stood before him had a dark soul who had resolved himself to destroy everything that goes against his plans.
Then his eyes dragged into the gun's barrel moving slowly in front of him.
On Karim's vision, he saw the camera balls rotating on their places, watching the man's back, at the side, and then above.
If he died here, then the last images that he saw would be synched with the last images that these cameras also caught.
His reason for taking them out is to be a reference to further improve his martial arts.
But now that his ideal situation had been reversed, he saw a darker side of the one called The Destroyer. With the gun barrel seemed to take its time pointed at his face, Karim's inner senses suddenly felt the fear.
This is a game but how could he feel fear?
He had heard this once from Loni's stories of her short encounter with this man. There was something in the way he fights and the way he handles situations that can frighten even the great Ranger Henna.
She, Henna, had quit the game with unknown reasons.
And it was also at the time when a warning was sent.
[Do not make contact with him.]
This line was dissipated on all the allies and tied guilds and groups with the TOS Guild. Helium wasn't an exception and they felt curious as to how and why they were warned to never meet this man.
He could still remember how Cramer told his stories about their fight.
Even if he was dying, that's where he could find more strength. There was something in his eyes that could frighten any man who had never faced death and stared at him.
If so, then it all comes down to reason.
As he stared at the gun's barrel, Karim's mind asked:
What is the reason why The Destroyer is this strong?
Where is this feeling of fear coming from?
The answer to that question dawned on him in the form of a train of memory. It starts when he met the boss monster who owned the Deva's Path MOD, he was just a mere B-rank hunter back then.
He remembered the fear he felt facing a monster that could wipe out an entire platoon of B-ranked hunters.
There were 4 platoons sent to hunt down that boss mob but only two squad counts, him included, returned to the unknown Helium Guild at the time.
All those players, dead.
He saw it all happen. Even if you say that this is a game, every detail around him felt so real that it was really frightening to some degree.
But what's actually scary is the fact that you could feel the tingling pain of being torn to shreds by a massive razor sharp claw in a four armed beast.
When he was still a sport-runner, an Olympian Athlete that went toe to toe against world renown spear artists, and even before that, when he was practicing the art of spear under a martial arts house, there was the sense of danger lurking with a wrong angle of an attack.
Even if it's just practice, when he thought of the fact that the pain was real, the fear would cripple your muscles, rendering you unable to move freely.
Conquering that fear is also another matter.
He learned its art, slowly, surely, step by step. Being a professional on its art came when he conquered that fear of danger.
With the passing of time, he forgot how to feel fear until he became the person he is now who only opened his mouth on the topics that piqued his interest.
Then he heard his stories of this man who hunts all the monsters in the forest near Aarun.
While he was investigating the legends of the most legendary weapon in the game, Excalibur, in a trip to the Walled City of Aarun while chasing the its tail, he heard this rumor.
He went to check it out and saw this masked man in the forest who fought hordes of monsters alone. In the game, solo players are a rarity. No, In fact, they're an extinct bunch that was unheard of.
Firstly, monster hunts in Terroa are so difficult that it would even get an S-ranked hunter an hour to hunt down a C-ranked monster alone.
Monsters are different from Predators. They are more aggressive and more powerful.
To hunt Herons alone in the forest, and not just one, but actually three or more of them, is not only a feat, it was legendary!
He wanted to fight him, but he had a duty to fulfill to his guild. And that was when they discovered a new and safer way to chase down the legend, thus he had forgotten his excitement of having to fight him.
All his fear of dangers in the game was gone. He was like a stone golem who can think and react. Fearless, he was, in his guild, for he along with Jack and Jin, had been partners through thick and thin.
So why now?
How?
Just what is it that made him remember all these things and the fear that came with it?
"Ah!"
This man, his will to kill him was real.
Beyond the fear that a monster mob can give, beyond the fear of losing money or his avatar in the game, and even beyond the fear of practicing the martial arts of the spear, the fear that he felt looking in those eyes...
The Destroyer's name, was not just a name. It was his real intent all along.
Karim found his answer.
If this is not a game, this person would literally kill the people that stand in his way. His instincts as a martial artist, his sense of danger kicked in and this, he realized, is the real identity of the man named The Destroyer.
The weight that holds this man back were too great to be able to be trampled by the sheer weight of glory and honor of belonging under the flag of The Union.
What he carries on his shoulders were far too great of a cost that he could create this fear in his heart.
Killing intent. That's what his teacher called it.
He remembered the teachings in the martial arts school, plastered in the wall in shining big letters.
[Never cross a river unless you are confident you can swim it through.]
In the language of the fists, it means don't start a fight with someone whose prepared to die in the fight unless you are prepared yourself.
Karim realized, he had made a grave mistake.
I don't care.
His words echoed in his mind.
The Destroyer's lips moved and Karim's mind came back in that slow motion moment.
"I will kill your team. You will pay for this. You cost me my time and you endangered my goal. I will never forgive you. Your death will be slow. It will be painful and you will not enjoy every second of it."
There wasn't even a chance for him to reply.
BANG BANG BANG BANG...
One bullet on the leg, Karim screamed in pain.
The second bullet hit his hand, and he screamed again.
Four, five, six, the bullets hit his knees again, his right elbow then his left shoulder, and each shot came with the low electrifying pain.
Even if the game boasted of a 70% less pain from the actual pain you could feel, Siva was a different case that he basically knew where to hit that would cause more pain.
What more, he aimed at his bones to hinder movement and he avoided any vital spot where it could cause the sudden death. It was as if he was graced in the art of torturing people and taking lives.
Screw morality.
His brother's life is in the line. These people messed up with his plans big time.
They wasted his time and tried to kill him but what he would never forgive is that he was sent away to where he should have been.
He was not only tricked, he was duped and was lied to.
Screw their different missions! He was prepared to even fight off an army!
With each shot of his gun, with every scream of pain from Karim, Siva never batted an eyelid. He watched him yell in pain and begged for his demise. And yet he never gave him that pleasure and instead kept on to his word.
His death will be slow.
His death will be painful.
He will not enjoy every second of it.
And he will forever embed this pain in his memory as long as he lives.
With that, he believed, he would lose one less enemy.
And with one less enemy, the less things he had to worry about. He cast down his eyes and he never gave him a second to recover. Every bullet had a rhythm, a sort of melody to deliver the most of the pain.
On every interval, Karim's screams became louder and louder. And until a few minutes had passed, the tears on his face flowed like a river and he begged for Siva to give him relief.
"After you die, tell this to your commander." Siva knelt down and summoned his dark sword. He pointed its tip on his face and hissed, "I'm coming."
Then he stood up, the sword's tip on Karim's left eye.
"No... please, not like this. No, no, NOOOO—"
KASHAK!
[You died.]
[Game Over]