Free Web NovelChapter 40: D Rank
Ash was left shaking as he collapsed back onto the ground.
At least the courtyard he remembered still looked like the courtyard he was seeing. That was a positive. Even if the paving stones were pressed against his palms, and he was still kneeling in the crater he created with Kasz’s knees.
Ash tried to think of Azure. Fried.
He tried to think of Phoebe. Decapitated.
No matter the thought, what had happened to them, had happened to them in his mind. He was beginning to deteriorate under the collective knowledge that had been rewritten.
Ash couldn’t think. Or rather, he didn’t want to think.
He tried to compose himself, but it was only getting worse. Trying to stand up made him think he no longer had legs. Pushing up with his arms made him think he had tree logs for arms.
Then, the void did something it had never done before.
It turned inward.
It didn’t point towards Kasz across the courtyard. Or toward an academy student’s Shade to feast on.
The void pointed towards itself, executing an emergency repair cycle, bypassing Ash’s conscious direction, taking control of the situation itself.
Ash could feel what it was folding itself around.
Synaptic Misfire.
It was the ability he had extracted from Professor Olley’s Shade. He rarely used it since he couldn’t get the picture of the silhouetted man out of his mind whenever he executed the ability. The void had identified it, isolated it, deemed it the least valuable extraction in his toolkit, and consumed it.
The erasure was exactly that. Like a word written on a piece of paper erased to the point it left no trace of there ever being a written thought on it. The void had used what it had as fuel and injected it back into Ash.
Ash’s arms stopped shaking. He was finally able to stand on both feet without trembling.
He became aware of Kasz watching him like he was a science experiment.
Kasz had stopped moving, He still stood ten feet back away from Ash, keeping himself away in a measurable distance. His arms, previously crossed, shifted, unfolding to his sides once he saw Ash stand again.
He didn’t look angry that whatever hypothesis he had formed about Ash was shattered. If anything, he looked happy that he was proven wrong.
"Unexpected," he finally said aloud, though the words didn’t seem like they were meant for Ash.
Ash’s body told him the current resources he had at his disposal. Which was shorthand for none. He focused on his breath, which was just barely visible in the chill of the courtyard.
Ash shifted his weight. A loose paving stone slid under his heel and he caught himself on his back foot. Kasz’s eyes tracked the movement, as Ash straightened himself and clicked his jaw open and shut. Ash brought his hands up, not into a stance, just up and level with his ribs.
Kasz’s attention to him changed again. "You’re not going to do anything looking like that," he said. "Not right now."
Ash knew he was right too, but he kept himself standing for what was to follow.
Kasz looked at him for just a moment longer, then turned away, completely dejected from continuing the fight any longer. He walked away, stopping just at the courtyard’s edge. He looked over his shoulder at Ash, left standing at the wreckage of the courtyard.
"You’re nothing like Zelthra," Kasz said. freēwebnovel.com
From the tone of it, Ash felt he should be embarrassed. That whatever expectations Kasz had about him weren’t met.
Ash watched him walk away. His coat was torn at the knees, the gold buttons ripped free from its threads where the gravity field had caught it. He walked steadily, like he hadn’t even been in a fight to begin with.
Ash was left in the wreckage around him. His mind tried to recover. The false certainties were still present and persistent, but at least it was starting to slowly seperate from itself. The false knowledge was beginning to lose its grip on him.
He heard footsteps come through the courtyard’s entrance.
Phoebe was the first one to come through the doors. She took in the state of the courtyard, but focused on the important questions first.
"Are you alright?" She asked up close.
"You’re—" Ash began to say. His mind was slowly filling in the gaps. Phoebe was not decapitated. Her body was perfectly held together. It felt like relief, even though nothing had happened to her. His mind was reacting to a death that had never occurred. "I don’t know." Ash admitted.
She brought herself closer, before pulling back when she heard the next set of footsteps.
Azure came to Ash’s vision next. Her skin was still as flawless and perfect as it ever was. No sign that she had so much as a papercut, let alone blistered skin from being fried alive. She put a hand on his cheek, letting her Shade engulf him in its warmth. "Can you sit down for me please?" she asked, which sounded more like a direct order than a question.
Seth was the next person to arrive. He was calm and not shaken up at all seeing the wreckage around Ash, or the state he was in. He shook his head. "You still able to stand?" he asked.
"Yeah. I think." Ash said.
"Good."
Evelyn was the final one to arrive. She didn’t come carrying a sword or in separate chiseled ice pieces, but wore an expression that said she felt it was her responsibility.
"A Gate?" She asked.
Ash didn’t respond.
Ash’s eyes moved between them again.
Phoebe stood there impatiently, arms folded, looking more annoyed than concerned. Azure’s hand was still resting against his cheek, her warmth impossible to mistake for a hallucination. Seth looked exactly as composed as ever, already assessing the situation instead of reacting to it. Evelyn lingered a step behind the others, carrying that familiar guilt she always seemed to collect whenever someone else got hurt.
They were all here.
Breathing. Talking. Whole.
"I’m glad you’re all okay." He said with a crooked smile. "Thank you," he added.
The four looked at each other in confusion, then at Ash again.
"Can you fix him up?" Phoebe asked Azure.
"I’m trying what I can, can you help him up to the bench over there please?" She responded.
The four continued watching over Ash, until responders were able to come and clean up the situation.
---
Ash awoke back in his room. He checked the time on his phone, seeing it was two in the morning.
"Was it a bad dream?" He told himself.
He thought about the catastrophes he had felt his friends suffer through. They were all still perfectly fine in his mind.
Then he tried to reach for Synaptic Misfire. He didn’t have anyone to test it on so he used it on himself, to find the ability failed.
"It did happen then," He confirmed, lifting his shirt up to see the patches of bandages left on him.
He took a walk to the courtyard to see the damage still there. The crater, jagged stones, and blood sprawled across the canvas of the courtyard.
The only difference was the area was zoned off with maintenance tape and numbers marking down parts of the courtyard. He imagined they’d probably ask him questions about each of them.
He stepped over the maintenance tape. His shoes came down on a piece of broken stone and rolled. He caught the edge of a marker flag to steady himself, letting go once he was stable.
He dragged himself further along to find what he was looking for. The awakening stone.
Ash had walked past this more than a hundred times without stopping. After he was deemed a Null rank, he stopped caring about what it told him. Now, he stood in front of it.
He wasn’t asking it to return a different result. He demanded it.
He slammed his palm down as much as the stone could contain. His arm locked at the elbow and his shoulder came forward over his wrist. The skin under his bandages pulled tight and one of them tore at the edge. He didn’t move his hand. A bead of sweat ran from his temple to his jaw and dropped onto the surface. He kept pressing.
The stone was calibrated based on a person’s profile. It read the established classifications and returned a result against it.
He placed his hand on the testing surface, letting it read him. It took longer than any other time he ever had to go through this. He could have stopped it at any time, but he kept his hands pressed against it, until the stone finally found what it was looking for.
The display surface illuminated faintly.
[ DOMINION: OBLIVION ]
[ RANK: D]
[ DESCRIPTION: — ]
Ash looked at it for a long moment. All the suffering he went through, all the torture he experienced. It only resulted in the lowest ranked classification normal systems had.
He finally released his hands off the stone and walked back through the wreckage he caused.
"Kasz, what are you?" Was the only thing on Ash’s mind.
