Free Web NovelChapter 8: More Than Lines of Code [3]
Zen’s ghostly grey eyes widened in horror, looking at the thing before him.
Thomas was crouched low, a few paces away from him, as his eyes burned with a red glow that seemed to drink in the light of the full Red and Blue Moon.
The right side of his face had turned into something grotesque--
His skin was sloughed away in ragged strips, exposing thick black muscle tissues and ugly black blisters that covered part of his face.
He opened his mouth, revealing multiple canines jutting out in different directions as a thick drool of saliva dripped down from his jaws.
He let out a low guttural animalistic sound from his throat.
*Grrrrrrr--*
Zen was too stunned to speak.
How could he have misjudged this?
Thomas was probably a low awakener with a low-level talent unsuited for combat, likely Level 11, Tier 1.1, or even lower.
In a world where advancement meant your rank magnified the risk of losing control -- where a psyche and an essence could turn against you -- most non-combatant awakeners chose to live a quiet life.
And the Church also enforced this wisdom.
By the Church’s and the Empire’s law, it was forbidden to rank up after Tier 4 if your willpower is below the threshold.
It was an absolute law meant to shield citizens from the Madness that follows.
But not everyone chose to follow it.
Some ignored the restrictions out of raw hunger for power, driven by their own ambition and desperation. Others ignore it because they believe they’re the only ones strong enough to defy the odds, wanting to play god.
Most of them complied out of fear. The Empire didn’t merely advise this rule; it enforced it, and those caught breaking this rule faced imprisonment or worse.
Then there were others who followed this rule out of faith. All Seven Churches endorsed this law, and defying it meant defying their gods.
Normally, it was very hard for anyone to lose control below Tier 4, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.
In some rare cases, it did happen.
People lose control and turn into something monstrous.
In this case, Thomas became a monster due to the forest’s Madness, and the full Red Moon and Blue Moon above amplified this effect.
And Zen was the one who brought him here.
He was the one who had waved extra gold coins in front of him.
Thomas had mentioned his seven-year-old daughter along the journey--How, once his debt was paid, he could finally buy her the books she’d been begging for.
He’d said it happily, full of pride that she was so fond of reading.
Now, that girl would lose her father, his wife would lose her husband.
They would lose their financial support, the pillar of their small, struggling world--Their provider, their protector, the man who held what little they had together.
And it was all because of him.
’This is my fault.’
The blood of an innocent was on his hands.
The corruption had spread too much inside Thomas.
Zen couldn’t save him anymore, especially not on the night when both the Blue Moon and the Red Moon hung full in the sky together.
He knew the forest was likely twisting his thoughts, amplifying his guilt into something monstrous.
But that didn’t make his guilt a lie. ƒrēewebnovel.com
Even if every emotion he felt right now was chemically manufactured by the madness effect.
The fact remained that Thomas was here because of him.
Thomas, who was slowly turning into an aberrant, an awakener who had lost control due to Madness.
Thomas lunged at him, his one arm elongated, his tendons torn, muscles swelled and blackened as they bulged into something grotesque.
He swung at Zen with a powerful force.
Zen tried to dodge; his instinct screamed at him to jump back -- but his mind was already a mess with ’Madness,’ and his lowly physical stats didn’t help either, as he was a second late to dodge.
Boom!
The blow connected with his arm and chest, sending him airborne.
Zen crashed straight into the side of the carriage as pain exploded through his whole body.
The carriage itself tilted under the impact, but it somehow settled back onto its wheels with a heavy thud.
Zen slid onto the ground as he coughed blood.
A pain unlike anything he’d ever felt was tearing through him.
He wanted to get up, wanted to move from that position, but his body and mind refused to follow his instincts.
Thomas was already moving as he dragged his monstrous arm, dragging along the ground, gouging furrows in the soil.
But the right side of his face was still human with pale skin. His brown eyes were shaking as a single tear dropped from his eye.
His mouth trembled as he tried to speak, but only a guttural sound escaped.
Zen forced his body to respond as he rolled to the side, coughing blood.
He raised his hand as he pulled the Essence from his core.
He was trying one of the most basic spells that he remembered from Mikael’s memories -- [Essence Bullet].
He focused on pushing Essence along his arm to his index finger.
A tiny grey point of light flickered at his fingertip as the outer layer of the magic circle began to form, as the glowing lines etched themselves in the air.
Thomas stumbled closer.
Zen traced the internodes of the spell with a desperate precision--
The stabilization ring, the acceleration spiral, the compression seal.
The spell circle was three-quarters complete.
’Almost there.’
He could feel the spell’s structure cohering, the final internode just inches away from linking together --
Tzzzz--
The magic circle shattered into tiny sparks of grey Essence as recoil stabbed his arm.
Thomas’s elongated arm swept to the side as Zen threw himself back in a desperate motion.
But it wasn’t enough as the limb caught him square across the shoulder, sending him tumbling like a ragdoll as he slammed into a fallen log on the ground.
His back cracked as his vision went white momentarily.
He lay there gasping heavily, squirming in pain as his vision swam.
’G-get up. You can’t die here.’
He crawled onto his knees as blood dripped from his mouth.
He raised his bloody arm again.
The outer circle of grey light hovered over his index finger.
Essence threaded into his finger as internodes formed the inner ring, then second, then third.
He just needed to hold it together.
The process was already much faster than before.
He pushed his will into the compression seal as he urged the final link to connect.
The spell circle trembled and --
Tzzzz!
-- Broke apart into tiny sparks of Essence as he felt the backlash jolt his arm, frying his fingers. ƒгeewebnovёl.com
AAARGH!
Zen screamed in frustration.
He could feel the spell this close waiting.... but every time he tried to complete it, something inside him wrenched it apart.
It was like trying to force a key into a lock that kept changing shape.
Thomas roared. He was already in front of Zen.
Zen, with his bloody, beaten body, scrambled sideways.
This time, the transformed hand was much faster, as a heavy black fist crashed into the dirt where his head had been, forming a small crater.
Zen managed to roll back and get on his feet as he stumbled back again.
’Why won’t this work?’
’Why does Essence keep rejecting me?’
The Forest’ Madness’ again started to affect his emotions.
Another swing came, and Zen tried to duck under. But a shin-high kick from Thomas swept his feet out from under him as he crashed onto his back, the impact knocking the air out of his lungs.
Thomas loomed over him, his horrific face torn between raw fury and weeping confusion.
Zen rolled desperately as the black, swollen fist missed inches away from caving his chest in.
He kicked out, his feet connecting with Thomas’s chest.
It felt like he had kicked a boulder.
Zen didn’t give up and used his chest to propel himself backward.
He raised his blood-slicked finger again.
It was shaking, his vision swam, but he didn’t stop.
The magic outer circle formed again as he forced his Essence, trying to connect the internodes.
Stabilization ring.
Acceleration spiral.
Compression seal.
He poured everything into it, every ounce of his desperation.
Yet.
Tzzzz--
It broke again on the final step.
Zen stared at his fingertip in hollow shock.
He didn’t give up.
He tried again.
Tzzzz---
Again.
Tzzzz--
This time it broke on the first circle.
Thomas’s human eye leaked tears as his mouth moved, trying to form the words.
His monstrous arm snatched forward and caught Zen’s leg.
Boom!
Before Zen could react, he was hurled up and smashed to the ground, forming a small crater as his vision went white.
Boom! Boom!
Thomas smashed him on the ground twice before he threw him forward.
Zen’s back crashed into the tree trunk several meters away with a sickening thud.
Zen just lay there, his back supported by a tree trunk.
His whole upper face was covered with red as his black hair fell forward, hiding his eyes.
He stared at the ground.
He raised his red hand again in a slow motion, calling the Essence from his core.
Tzzz--
Again.
Tzzz--
Again.
Tzzz--
.
.
.
.
In just a few seconds till Thomas reached in front of him, he had tried that spell more than 15 times.
Thomas loomed over him as his massive black arm slammed into his chest, pinning him against the tree trunk.
Zen’s feet left the ground as his body was held aloft.
From up close, the transformation looked even worse as black fiber muscles twitched independently.
But the left side of his face was still human with pale skin. His brown eyes were shaking as tears dropped from his eyes.
His mouth trembled.
"W-what.. i-s... h-happe-ning... wit-h... m-me."
The words came out stuttering from his ripped throat that was no longer in his control.
"Y-you-ng... l-l-lord... p-pleas-e... sa-ve... m-me."
"I-I... d-do-n’t... wa-nt... t-to.. d-ie."
Zen’s eyes widened, hearing those words, and something inside him shattered.
His mind fractured into a thousand jagged pieces.
Each one was reflecting a truth he was running from.
He was always thinking of these people as NPCs -- as nothing but game characters.
That was the ugly truth about him.
From the moment he had woken up in this body, in this world, he had treated every face around him as an NPC, a quest marker, a mechanical piece of a system designed to be optimized.
Whether it was Jeanne, the shopkeeper, the carriage drivers -- even Himself.
Zen had been treating even Mikael-- himself as nothing but a character.
He was still thinking of all this like a game.
But what if this wasn’t really a game?
What if the game he played, Eclipsed Realms, had been built based on this world and not the other way around?
There had been memes back on Earth about how the game felt so unreal that it seemed to be designed by Aliens.
What if some cosmic power, some god, had plucked this reality and pressed it into the shape of a game?
What if these people he had been seeing weren’t really the lines of code but real people?
The thought itself terrified him.
But he couldn’t deny the truth in front of him.
’I get it now.’
He had placed a lock on his own heart the moment he had realized he wasn’t on Earth anymore.
He had been so afraid of losing himself in this nightmare, losing his own emotions, his own identity, that he had refused to be anyone at all.
He had told himself he was just Mikael Morwell, a role he was playing.
A mask he could discard.
He had said before that it felt as if the Essence were rejecting him.
But in truth, it was he who was rejecting the Essence.
He was the one who was rejecting this world.
Essence began to flow from his core, streaming through his arms to his right index finger.
He wasn’t just Zen Ashcroft anymore.
He was also Mikael Morwell.
Even if only for as long as he remained in this world.
He would be Mikael Morwell now.
He would not deny his own identity.
Thomas’s human eye continued to shed tears as his jaws opened wide, intending to bite off Mikael’s whole head.
Foul-smelling drool dropped down on Mikael’s face, mixing with blood.
Mikael kept his hand low, waiting for the right moment.
His index finger glowed grey as essence surged into the forming magic circle.
This time, the essence flowed much more easily than before, and the remaining resistance was just because of his Curse, Soul drought.
The stabilization ring.
The acceleration spiral.
The compression seal.
He was now inches away from linking the final internode to complete the spell.
Thomas’s jaws were just about to bite his head off.
The internode finally connected.
A bright light flared at his fingertips and aimed at point-blank range at Thomas’s human eye.
The one part of him that still knew who he was.
But he couldn’t afford to die here.
"I’m sorry."
BAAANNNGGG -!
"I’ll carry this sin with me."
The [Essence Bullet] tore through Thomas’s human eye like a bright lance of grey energy that punched a hole through his brain.
It erupted from the back of his skull in a spray of blackened blood.
The crimson and Blue light of the moons painted the gore in surreal hues as it splashed across Mikael’s face.
******
