The Roamer
Chapter 15: Welcome to Hell!
Aeolus was currently falling deeply into something, and everything appeared to be black and white. There was no color no matter where he looked, as if he had gone in the past to the times where even earth didn’t exist!
After an hour or two of falling, he finally hit the ground, or something similar to it. He looked down, and just saw a black ground. He looked up, he saw a rocky ceiling with spikes hanging from it. He looked left and right, and only saw the same black and white scenery.
‘Did he really just send me to hell?!’ Aeolus roared within his mind, clearly mad that such a situation had occurred. How was he supposed to conquer the world when he was down here? This truly was an abuse of power that the man had, and he even wasted a decade of his life to send him here!
Aeolus tried to yell in frustration, but he realized that he couldn’t even speak. Actually, it wasn’t that he couldn’t speak, it's just that the gravity here was so strong that he couldn’t even open his mouth. Now that he thought about it, he was struggling to just sit up too.
‘This… is quite the issue I’ve just stumbled upon.’ Aeolus mumbled in his mind, and then tried with all his power to stand up. After a minute or two, he had finally stood up, though he was slouching. He tried to walk, but even with using all the techniques he had, he could barely take a single step.
‘Well, at least I can still use my spirit’ Aeolus thought to himself just so he could comfort his mind. He sat down after realizing that struggling was futile, and began to just harmonize with his soul. If he couldn’t go anywhere, then he’d just take this time to improve his spirit.
Besides, he didn’t even know where he was and had no way of getting information either, so it would be dumb to just walk around and risk something happening in this unknown location.
He began to comprehend his soul to a deeper level, one that he had almost never reached before. In reality, he rarely just sat down and peaked into his soul like this since he liked to be active, so he hadn’t gained as much as he could using this method.
After a while, Aeolus found something deep within his soul, information from one of the many people that he had taken the souls of. The information was that techniques and attacks could be fed to other techniques and attacks to bolster their power, though the techniques and attacks that were fed would disappear forever.
Once he realized this fact, he felt as if he had just gained enlightenment at the level of unlocking a whole new layer. He thought of the spirit infusion technique and flowing water technique, and along with his leach attack, he began to fuse every other attack and technique he had into them.
To be honest, he rarely used attacks, and would mostly just use his spirit infused body to fight, so it wasn’t that big of a loss for him when it came to attacks. Techniques, on the other hand, were somethin he utilized a lot, so much that most of them had become second nature. However, he knew it was worth it when it came to evolving the two techniques and main attack he used the most.
After about half an hour, he had fully infused every single attack and technique into the main ones. Suddenly, his soul within his body began to grow out and extend, so much so that even his outer layer of body was covered by it. He finally saw what his soul looked like in person, so he was very surprised at the sight.
All the layers were changing in size, and the colors of the layers changing into a deep green and blue, probably representing his affinity with the wind. After ten minutes, it seemed to have finished, and went within his body. Aeolus took a deep breath after it came back to him, as he understood that his spirit just had a rebirth.
He saw his spirit arm more vividly, as if it was becoming a real arm at this point in time. Aeolus felt around his body for the spirit flowing through him, and saw that the power had a dramatic increase. It was especially so when he checked his outer layer, and saw that the thin layer of spirit covering his whole body had expanded so much that it almost gave him his own domain, forming a bubble around him.
‘I’ve powered up so much that the first layer couldn’t handle it anymore, so it had to undergo a rebirth just to handle me!’ Aeolus realized, while also smirking to himself. He had truly broke the boundaries, it was like blackmailing a person to give him money. He forced his soul to rebirth and get stronger if it wanted to handle his power.
Of course, this doesn’t come without risks. Doing such a thing will set you up for failure in the future, as the amount of layers you’ll break through will probably decrease from exhausting your soul into rebirthing, but this didn’t matter to Aeolus as he was only going to reach the third layer anyway, so might as well be as strong as possible with those three layers.
Of course, he was handling it brilliantly. He was probably already stronger than the man who sent him here with his black hole attack, and he was at the third layer! If each of his layers had this type of power, then by the time he reached the third layer, he’d have the power of a ninth layer cultivator!
Of course, since he only had the potential of three layers, he wouldn’t just casually form the last two layers, as he wanted to power up as much as possible before he formed them, so they would be as powerful as he could get them.
Suddenly, he heard a howling to his left, and immediately stood up and booked it. Powering up so much let him feel as if this environment was almost nothing now, so he was good to go, though he was still breathing hard. He ran into some cave he found, and camped within it, waiting for the creatures to pass by.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
They began to pass by the cave, and their appearance was horrifying. Some were huge winged beasts, while others seemed to be skeletons, and some were just blobs full of random things, including human organs. Aeolus began to feel his head throbbing, and he could understand why. His mind just couldn’t believe that such a sight was real, how could it be real?
Yet, it was all right in front of him, and passing by him. He tried to hold his breath as long as possible, as he didn’t know how strong their hearing was, maybe even a breath was enough for them to hear him. After a few more minutes, the horde had passed, and he finally released his breath. He immediately rushed out and ran in the direction they came from, trying to avoid them as much as possible.
‘Actually, how do I know that they are bad?’ Aeolus questioned himself, not fully sure that they were definitely enemies. Maybe they were other unfortunate people who had experienced a fate similar to his, and this was their end result?
‘Well, I’m going where they came from, so there might be some sort of village or town where they came from?’ Aeolus thought to himself, and thought that it made sense. He began to run even faster, wishing to reach his new goal faster.
-- sequence 2 ---
After a few days of running, he found some sort of village, with many other odd creatures within it. He took a deep breath and began to prepare himself to run if they were truly hostile, and walked into the village. He attracted many weird and hostile looks, as if he was an enemy from long ago.
“Why is a human here?” asked someone within the crowd, who Aeolus clearly heard.
Actually, the more that he listened into the crowd, the more he heard about comments relating to his humanity.
‘Crap, did I mess up by coming here?’ Aeolus thought to himself, with sweat dripping down his forehead. Still, he kept walking forward, knowing that if he just roamed around, he would find no way to get back.
“Cease damned human, explain yourself! How did you get here, and why are you here?” roared some weird monster that had a halberd the size of a fully-grown person. Sweat began to trickle down Aeolus’ forehead even faster, as he realized that even the little beasts were stronger than him.
“I was brought here by some attack on earth that sucked me in and dropped me here.” Aeolus replied honestly, not willing to risk lying. If these things had the power to read minds as well and found out he was lying, who knows what would happen.
“It’s been so long since a human has come into hell, and whenever they come, it’s unconventional. However, your way of entering is even more unconventional.” the guard said with a confused face, not quite understanding what was going on.
‘Basically, this human was fighting with another human, and his opponent sent him down here?’ the monster thought to himself, not quite sure about what to do in such a situation. Usually, humans only came once every decade or so, and it would be through a summoning of a random human. However, not only had he not been summoned here, he came here only a month or two after the last human left. He had truly broken the balance of the rules of hell, so he didn’t know about what to do.
After a bit of thinking, he decided to tell the lord of this town about the news. He excused himself from the human, and immediately flew towards the lord. After a few minutes of flying, the monster had reached some huge castle. He entered the castle, and immediately rushed into the grand hall.
There, he found the lord dining with lords from other towns, thanks to an invitation he sent out to dine together. He rushed to the lord, and bowed on the ground.
“Speak, why are you here?” the lord asked calmly, not willing to give the guard trouble.
“Sir, a human has arrived in our town, and I don’t know what to do in such a situation.” the guard replied immediately, not willing to waste even a second of this great figure.
On the other hand, every single lord within this grand hall had faces that made it seem like they were about to fight the greatest enemy within the world.
“How can this be, didn’t the last human just leave a mere month or two ago!?” roared the lord, not willing to believe in such a thing. Even he didn’t know about what to do in such a situation, so he just rushed out to meet the human, with the other lords following. They talked telepathically with each other on the way, and came to a decision about what to do.
After a minute or two of flying, they reached Aeolus, and descended onto the ground. They all observed him, and found him to look quite different from the ones they summoned. He was only wearing rags, and was extremely dirty.
“Uh, excuse me, but can you tell me where I am and how to get out?” asked Aeolus in a shy tone, as if he was a boy asking a girl out on a date. On the other hand, the lords were feeling an even bigger headache rising in their head, how come this brat didn’t even know what this place was?! Even if he had only heard of it in words and never actually learned about it, he should have been able to relate the words he heard to this place.
“Child, do you truly not know your current situation?” piped the lord of this town, who had a headache rising by the minute.
“I’m sorry, but I got sent here during a fight due to one of my opponents attacks, so I didn’t come here on purpose…” Aeolus said to the lord, while pointing his head down. He knew that he was the one intruding in on their home, so of course he wouldn’t hold his head up arrogantly and order them around.
“I see, this is truly unpredicted… well, you won’t be able to get out of here for at least two years since you probably just got here, because we demons have to set up the gate for you humans to leave. Meanwhile, we decided to let the audience and lords pick who gets to house you while we prepare it.” the lord replied as calm as he could, as he could not seem weak in front of a mere human child.
He looked towards the audience, and nobody looked like they wanted to take him in. Aeolus turned his head towards the lords, and only one or two were actually contemplating it. After a few more minutes of silence, everyone had yet to decide who would take him in.
A monster the size of Aeolus stood out, and raised his hand. Everyone looked towards him, and were immediately scared off. This old monster was currently one of the weakest monsters in town, but used to be one of the strongest in all of hell. He was an old instructor of the demonic army who had retired, Quachiong*.
Even the lord's couldn’t rival him before, but they could easily squash him now. Even a newborn monster had a chance of squishing him till’ he died.
“You’re quite the amusing little human, so I’ll teach you a few things about cultivation before you go.” Quachiong said, while gesturing to Aeolus and telling him to get to where he is.
“This… do I really have no say in this?” Aeolus muttered, clearly not willing to go with the old man. Unfortunately, as soon as he looked towards everyone, they all turned their heads away, so he realized nobody else was going to take him in.
He didn’t hold his head up, and walked towards Quachiong. On the other hand, Quachiong was inspecting Aeolus’ soul.
‘This brat is quite impresssive already, but I can refine him to a stage many times higher then this.’ Quachiong thought to himself, and then showed a smirk to Aeolus. Starting from this day, he was planning on ruthlessly refining Aeolus into a monster during battle.
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EXPLANATION
*1: Literally just made that name up on the spot, but watch me get some sort of copyright even for doing that XD.
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ABOUT ME
Name: Abdul Kareem
Age: 13 (Almost 14)
Occupation: Middle school
Goal: Idk, I’m just making a novel for now
Location: Why would I say that?
Relations: I’m not married (duh)
Favorite food: da asian stuf!
Anyway, on a more serious tone, this is my first novel I’ve ever tried writing. Thanks for being with me on this first experience! If you could also somehow get others to read this novel too, I would be pretty grateful! Very Happy [https://www.royalroadcdn.com/public/smilies/biggrin.png]