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Volume 5
Chapter 21: Obsessions
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“Aaaaaaarrrgghhh!!!” the demon cried aloud as the pain of losing his good arm with a slash of a sword almost took out his breathing.
“I won’t let you escape!” Siva’s hissing calm voice is like a declaration of a Death God.
With two succeeding twists of his body, Siva hacked off the demon’s legs and its already cut left arm. And he wasn’t contented yet, he let go of the Black Ender that was followed by a flash as it vanished in midair before begin replaced by the resplendent golden hue of the God Hammer.
“Noooooo!” The demon cried in the Terran language and as it echoed in Siva’s ears, he smashed him off to the ground as if swatting a fly.
BOOM!
A massive ring of wind spread out from the point of impact and like a meteor the demon sped towards the forest floor.
Siva wasn’t done yet and he dived down, kicking the air for added momentum.
The Mjolnir vanished as he materialized the full set of Dragunov. BOBOOM! BOOM! BOOM!! In just two seconds, four loud consecutive explosions of power rattled the wind as four rings of rippling powerful force also spread from the point where Siva hit the demon’s body.
“This will finish you off!”
With Siva’s final words, the Dragunov dissipated and turned into countless specks of lights as he held high up a mighty black sword.
FLASH! Not even a second passed, his body was now wearing his flight armor. Following a full thrusting motion, the exhaust bore of the back thrusters emitted the black colored particles that gave off an illusion of him having black colored illusory wings.
The wings flapped and the demon’s eyes were somewhat attracted to Siva’s red-eyed mask as it flashed with a red glint for a moment before Siva’s voice rang on its ears.
“Die.”
With a final thrust… the sound of the sword stabbing on the demon’s body filled both their ears. Bones and flesh mangled inside as the mechanical function of the Black Ender grinded the demon’s innards.
One meter to the ground, Siva poured all his weight and strength in his arms as he braced himself pushing with all his might and nailed the demon on the forest floor.
CRAAAAAAASH!!!
With their weights and coupled with the generated momentum from Siva’s suicidal attack, the forest floor made a crater that was 30m wide with cracks even spreading even further. In its center was the demon while Siva knelt above it.
Following the stunned expression of the demon, Siva was still doubtful so he sent electricity to travel on his sword and stunned the demon.
Not finished yet, Siva raised the sword and stabbed the demon’s head, sending another charge to fry its brain to totally kill it.
Panting, Siva… was now contented.
After a moment, he glanced up to see the sky-blotting number of falling demons that was almost just 500m away from him. Then he looked down. The demon was dead. Blood on its mouth, the Black Ender on its righteye, he had made sure that the demon was really dead before he thought of the words he heard from it earlier.
He murmured, “I am no god.” and then pulled out his sword and removed the head from the neck.
The demon, now… was truly dead.
Siva threw the head somewhere and then flipped the demon’s body on its stomach, pulling something out protruding from its back.
He used the Black Ender like a carving knife and stabbed the border of the object, disconnected mucus-like substances that connected it and the demon’s spine.
This was the Black Ball, the source of power of demon commanders.
Siva quickly pulled out a nano cube from his inventory and enveloped the Black Ball in a spherical bag. He then put the item in his inventory but did not leave immediately. Instead, he looked up and then spoke with a tired voice, “In the end, I would have to use my last Plasma Smoke Screen.”
“On your mark, then.” Thorn’s voice said.
“Just say the word.” Volt followed.
After Thorn and Volt’s voice rang on their auricle communications line, the roar of monsters could be heard converging around Siva. The wind picked up, bringing in what’s left of the Plasma Smoke Screen they dispersed earlier with it.
In close than a few seconds, the entire field around Siva had become covered by the plasma smoke screen and the Plasma Bursts from the weapons the demons from the sky were rendered useless.
In fact, Siva even pulled out the last of his Plasma Smoke Grenade, holding it in his hand like a diamond, before activating its 5-seconds timer before throwing it off far in the distance against the wind.
One by one the demons fell around Siva but Siva did not mind them as he used the fog as cover to pull out his guns and shoot any demon close to him down while fully activating Killing Zone.
Flashes of light could be seen in the thick fog that formed around him and his silhouette could be seen on every sound of his guns being fired.
The monsters roared as they were attracted by the call of slaughter towards Siva’s direction. They all trampled against the demons where the two Lapis led the pack straight towards him.
Even though the advent of these monsters was the biggest threat to Siva, it also brought with them his long waited batch of Plasma Smoke Sccreen.
And just when Siva saw the silhouettes of the two Lapis going straight at him, he stopped shooting demons and only stood there calmly around the disoriented ranks of the demons who battled against the monster horde.
While releasing the Flight Armor, Siva sighed in relief and then relaxed his shoulders.
He took four steps back towards the fog of cold bluish white mist and then, there… he waited.
He waited for the two extra prizes in this gamble.
“You’re both mine.” He said and chuckled.
After his chuckle, he laughed. The laughter was just first muffled with the chaotic sounds of the war going on around him but as the seconds passed by, even the two who were standing in the air far away could not help but shiver down to their spines.
The first to react was Thorn, looking at Volt with wide eyes of astonishment, “Hey, is this…”
Volt wryly smiled.
It wasn’t his first time hearing it but when thinking of the circumstances where he always heard this laugh, he could only utter a sigh.
Nodding, Volt stared at the direction of the foggy area and spoke, “No matter how much he tries to hide it, this… laugh… is a part of him.”
Thorn gulped down. “The Destroyer…”
Laughter echoed from the sea of fog, gradually becoming louder and louder, spreading across the forest, carrying the emotions that the person felt.
A bitter gamble, won through luck and unthinkable amount of coincidences. Whether it was part of his strength or not, Siva felt that surviving this kind of battle and unthinkable odds was, somewhat, part of his strength if nothing else.
And so he tried to laugh it off.
His shoulders were trembling, he was laughing so loud that slowly, little by little, the demons could hear it even attuned it as the song of demise because of the horror that all these monsters brought on them.
While the ground shook and the air trembled, the sound of that roaring laughter resounded in every direction.
Finally, Siva raised his head as two looming shadows covered his sky but instead of retreating, he smiled instead as his body even relaxed and released all of his tension from the battle earlier. A spark flew off from his right hand that then transformed into a net of a spider web of chained reactions following its location as core.
Even the flow of time seemed to have been affected.
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Everything went slow around him as he watched it all happened like a playing of a movie.
It only took a single spark to ignite a wide explosion of electricity, frying everything that his Killing Zone had reached and electrified anything that the plasma smoke screen had covered.
A bright light of lightning flashed followed by the sound of thunderclap. The explosion rattled the air and the land, the forest shook and monsters roared from afar. There were even those flying creatures that flew off in the distance who were surprised that their initial instincts were to get away from there.
Right after that, everything became silent that even the howl of wind shied away.
Thorn and Volt up in the air stared at the aftermath of their reckless endeavor. They couldn’t help but feel frightened at the massive scale of its destruction.
Everything around a certain point was burnt into charcoal black. Those S-Ranked monsters that had thicker skins than those alien demons were either dead or have lost consciousness. The two Lapis Lazuli closest to Siva aren’t dead, but all of the demons had their brains fried from the inside of their bodies.
Their hearts stopped, they were deader than dead.
Only the lingering smoke of the aftershock of his attack was left. His tattered white cloak was the only color left in this world of burnt trees and monsters, fluttering in the wind, dancing as if it was boasting.
Looking up, Siva saw the retreating warships that now had no commander and doesn’t want to risk the destruction of their entire small fleet against what they deemed to be reinforcements coming from the nearest Terran Civilization. Their location had been discovered and so they had no more reason to stay in this place without a commander.
Siva heaved a sigh and then looked at the two unconscious Lapis Lazulis.
“In the end, I can only render them unconscious…”
At this point, he accepted the fact that he was still too weak to ultimately deal a killing blow against the real strength of an S-Ranked monster.
Majority of the monsters around them were all just unconscious. And even some A-Ranked monsters that had a spot on the top of the rank list were also just unconscious from receiving a large deduction to their lives in that one moment.
Siva was still to have the strength to completely kill one off.
After his lament, he pulled up a Storage Warehouse and then sets of chain ropes. He did not dally any further as he started to tie up the still living monsters with the help of a Spider Truck’s crane function.
Like a zombie he quietly worked. Thorn and Volt joined in not an hour later as the two took charge of two of Siva’s Spyder Cargo Trucks that he popped off from a capsule since earlier.
Everything went in to one of the Storage Warehouses that Siva pulled up from the spoils he received from Dragona.
Storage Warehouses had the capacity to freeze and hold perishable goods. It was a very expensive and a very rare type of storage item and it can only be found on first class Capsule Shops on advanced cities.
Although, the downside of this thing is that once it was pulled out in a place, one must leave it there.
Storage Warehouses can’t be carried around like any regular item. But Thorn and Volt ignored this and only focused on helping Siva out on the haul. It wasn’t the right time for them to think about it right now.
The entire endeavor lasted for two hours and the two leaders there with Siva nearly had a heart attack with the mere thought of the money they would gain if they could sell all of these monsters and get all of their monster resources.
In fact, Thorn even looked at Siva with an expressive eye as the latter seemed to move as if it was an occasion that was normal to him.
Eventually, he can’t hold his curiosity and asked, “Do you always do this?”
Siva only gave him a sidelong glance and continued to work to finish up, saying: “I only started just a few months ago… and with the nature of my situation, if I don’t take up risks in exchange for more strength then I can only dream of…” Siva stopped at this point as he paused and looked at Thorn. “I am in a very desperate situation, anyways, and even though you guys with me right now is a violation of the deal I made… at this moment, saving my brother takes priority.”
Thorn and Volt looked at each other.
While Siva cleaned up the remaining unconscious monsters in the outskirts of the still burning crater, a look of respite could be seen on the two’s faces.
This forest had been leveled by just a single person. If there are other powers out there with the same kind of destructive ability like Siva, then this game world would have been dominated by them long ago.
Thankfully, so far, there were only two that’s known –Siva and Rogue, and although there are many other aspiring players who wanted to reach the level of might and fame as Siva, they knew they these people will be far too left behind when compared to him. It’s because first, Siva had a weight on his shoulders too heavy from the reasons those guys started this game. Second reason is… it’s because Siva had already been the ‘key’ to the Grand Quest and is in possession of the most terrifying Initial Ability in the game…
The Killing Zone.
With that alone, who would want to stand toe to toe against this man that while they put forth enormous efforts to increase their strengths, all Siva would do is activate his Killing Zone, flip plasma screen grenades, ignite it, then BOOM, everything ends.
If Siva continues these kinds of suicidal-yet-rewarding efforts, then he would be, in no time, become the very [God] that everyone saw in that cinematic video.
Thinking up to this, the two couldn’t help sighing to themselves. They couldn’t even make a smile.
Because if it was anyone else, then he would have been laughing his heart out, gloat over his achievements, then brandish his might to rule over some –or even establish his own kingdom.
But Siva’s circumstances were different than theirs or to anyone else. It was unique. It was too heavy of a burden and too high a price for him NOT to pursue the strength to become the strongest. To Siva, strength in this game is equivalent to the strength to save and protect his only family left.
Volt knew it…
Thorn had realized it…
And thus, they could only look at his back as he put all his soul into doing his work.
–every monster they have harvested here will all belong to Siva… to craft his Dark Tech Weaponry… to become stronger than he is now.
The reason why they were here was to help him.
Volt chose to.
Thorn had to see it through to the end. He thought to himself, “If «Project Salvation» is truly in effect and if my guess is correct that he is at the center of it all, then I will have to apologize to him in the future. In order to protect the real world, I will even sacrifice an innocent’s life just to realize it…
“I entered this world because of my father’s failure to hide his greed… I shall see to it that it will not come into light no matter the cost.”
Despite these thoughts, Thorn helped. Because he also knows that on the other side of the worst case scenario of Project Salvation, there is also the small possibility that an opposite of a Destructive Human-God will emerge.
And thus… he had to see it through to the end.
When everything is going haywire, then he will act.
*****
Castle Garden
Scion was seated in a wooden chair adorned with a beautiful design. In front of her was the sea of many colored flowers that fluttered in the gentle wind.
The smell of their sweet fragrances combined into a very distinctive aroma that made her smile as she closed her eyes to savour the relaxing breeze.
A tiny stream of bluish crystallite water flows not too far away and the sound of it was like a tuning of the feeling that can inspire a hymn from times of yore.
She was under a cherry tree, blossoming with pink colored petals. The branches’ shadow cast a shelter for the fairy on its shed. While the petals danced and drifted in the gentle winds, the petals scattered and filled almost all areas around this secluded place for immortals.
One petal in particular drifted too far from the center of the garden until finally landing in the hand of a knight that had a long golden blonde hair.
Kladis stared at Scion as if mesmerized while his other female servants all had red faces as they looked at their master.
Seeming to have noticed the eyes that watched her, Scion turned her head and saw Kladis in one of the pillars in a corner of the garden, hidden by the shadows of the building that surrounded the place.
When their eyes met, Kladis gave her a handsome smile and Scion couldn’t help but actually staring at the man who started walking towards him.
Kladis was indeed handsome, no doubt about it.
He was graceful, charming, and aside from being the jerk that lasted on Scion’s impression until now, she would have been able to compare this man with him, Rex Kingsley, the only man in her mind.
“Fairy of the Lake…” Kladis uttered in a sweet and soothing, serenading voice, “Heralded Archmage of the Circle of Magi and the most beautiful woman in the world –or not. I’ve actually met the person called Malecite and to be honest, she’s a total bombshell and is a complete opposite of a faded woman who satisfies herself in this boring place.”
The last word seemed to have been added after a pause and for the first part, Scion felt that Kladis was another man. The last part though proved that he was still the most sarcastic jerk she had ever met.
She scowled at him and turned her head away from his direction and just continued to watch over the beautiful garden in Kladis’ castle ignoring the man.
“Aigooo… is someone affected by my random and completely self-uttered muttering?”
Hearing these words, Scion clenched her fists as she snapped a glare at him. “What do you know? I like silent and peaceful places.”
After saying this, she stood up and went towards the wide expanse of the flower garden, laying on the soft grassy floor and bathing on the warm light of the sol.
With her legs joined together, she stooped down and picked up a butterfly that jumped on her finger without any sense of danger at all. This action was as beautiful and graceful as an immortal appreciating the beauty of the mortal world.
The «Fairy of the Lake» was a title given to her by the vast numbers of players who worshipped her beauty.
Many powerful players would even flock to her doors just to court her. And just like how Prince Volga –a real prince in both worlds– became addicted to her beauty that he would do anything for her, Scion’s real appeal lay at the fact that she had an innocent charm that pushes all men to want to taint her.
It was this charm that lit the obsessive desires on the heart of Kladis. No matter what, he would use all and any route just so he could get under her skirt.
As such, since the information he’d gathered about Scion all say that she is resistive to sweet nothings and smooth talking, Kladis instead chose the route of a jerk who she can argue and be irritated about.
Slowly, he’d make his way until he gains her trust.
Kladis sighed, “I take that back. You really are the prettiest girl I’ve ever met.”
He said those words as if he was just murmuring to himself. It wasn’t too quiet to warrant suspicion but it was also not too loud that it would seem that he was really making her hear it.
Right after saying that, Kladis left and turned to the same direction he came.
And from the flower field, Scion spat an eye at his back, pretending that she didn’t hear those words.
When she was sure that Kladis was gone, she picked up a flower and sniffed it gently. Her cheeks blushed and she smiled a very endearing and charming smile.
“I am… pretty?” She thought.
Not even Rex had told her that she was pretty in the same manner that Kladis spoke about it. It was as if there was something stopping Kladis on uttering such words…
…as if he was afraid that if he did let his heart control his actions, he might affect their mission or all of their carefully laid out plans.
These thoughts entered her mind and she blushed even redder.
“It’s like a TV Drama…” she thought. And just as soon as she did, Rex’s image entered her mind and a tinge of pain pinched her heart. She shook her head.
“No. No matter what, he’s still just a jerk! There’s only Rex… for me…”
Although she told this to herself, she was still affected by Kladis’ compliments. She is, after all, a woman and no woman can remain calm after being called ‘pretty’ in the way that Kladis spoke of it.
Sniffing the flower one last time, she sighed and looked up, resting the hand that held the flower on her lap while letting herself bathe in the warm light of the sol as the cherry petals drifts around her.
The whistling gentle wind accompanied by the stream of crystal clear water, her beautiful countenance was just like the rumors of her legends.
Fairy of the Lake…
–a beautiful existence that seem to carry the emotion as if she was eternally waiting for someone to return.
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Kladis is advancing!!
What’s going to happen to the fairy now?!
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