Kingdom's Bloodline, page 205
The moment he thought of seeing through the darkness, without warning, he felt the nearest being to him.
It was a ball of light. A colorless ball of light.
*Bang!*
Another violent knock.
The colorless ball of light that suddenly appeared in the darkness seemed foggy and blurred, as though it could not be touched. Before Thales could react, the ball of light moved slightly.
Lifeless words then rang beside Thales' ears.
"Rude."
Thales' field of vision shook.
'What?
'This ball of light… is conscious?'
"Eh?" the colorless ball of light asked. His tone was still insipid. "I have not seen you before. What is your name of origin?"
'Name of origin? Mystics… Mystic energy... The first declaration among Mystics…'
Thales recalled a few familiar terms from his memory, which felt as though it was separated from him by a veil.
He immediately shuddered violently. But before he could dwell on things, the ball of light suddenly went further and further away from his vision.
"Hey!"
The insipid voice became increasingly faint, as though it was shouting from a distance. "Who are you?"
Thales paid no heed to it. He felt as though his consciousness was fading away.
*Bang!*
Thales felt his field of vision shake again.
He came across a pile of metallic gray… sparkling debris…?
Different from the ball of light just now, this pile of debris seemed to be lifeless and without consciousness. However, just when Thales became confused of his surroundings…
A brown mist appeared in front of him.
This mist gave him the same feeling as the metallic gray debris. It seemed to be lifeless, and could not speak.
Just when a thought came to Thales, the pile of debris and the mist moved slowly away.
*Bang!*
There was another knock. Thales was starting to get used to it.
Soon, a green ray of light appeared before his eyes. But this ray of light had consciousness. The green light kept changing shape, from round and square, to cylindrical and rectangular.
"Oh my!" A gentle but rude voice came from the green light. Just like its owner, the voice fluttered about. "Which idiot is this? Are you retarded? Why are you knocking on the Door?
"The boss, Freuland? The little idiot, Asda? The old ghost, Zarkel? The fierce Kirei? The adorable top student, L? Or are you the flat-chested Giza?"
'These names… are kind of familiar?'
A few questions appeared in Thales' mind.
'This is…? Where am I? What am I… doing? Why can't I… remember anything?'
"Hey, hey." The voice that came from the green light continued to laugh. "Don't tell me that you're Taurus, the legendary big guy!"
Thinking of these few questions, Thales' thoughts suddenly became chaotic. Amid the panic, the green light suddenly disappeared before his eyes.
"Haih, why did you leave…? Don't tell me that you're really Taurus…"
The green light's voice echoed from afar.
"Don't rush off… You are my idol… at least give me your signature first…"
There were two more knocks, and Thales encountered two strange but lifeless and soundless beings—a silver wall of light and a golden cube.
Just when Thales was feeling bewildered and lost, a faint, purple light appeared before him.
This purple light only glimmered slightly, but it seemed sharp. Thales could almost not look straight at it. Its reaction was also very simple.
"Go away!" It seemed to be a bad-tempered being.
"Get lost!" The fierce voice continued. The faint, purple light disappeared after that.
Thales was slightly stupefied. A question appeared within his boundless consciousness.
'What's going on?'
The next moment.
*Bang!*
After another knock, Thales came before a glimmering, human-shaped outline.
'A human outline?' It glimmered with a familiar blue light. 'Another?
'This feeling… it's like I'm flowing endlessly… but omnipresent at the same time?'
A familiar voice echoed slowly from the outline.
"Stop knocking on the Door… Thales."
A thought appeared in Thales' mind. 'It knows me? This familiar voice…'
"All of us felt your presence."
'All of them? My presence? Me?'
At that moment, it was as if a lot of memories suddenly returned to Thales' mind.
A thought appeared in Thales' mind.
"Wait, you are…" Thales stared at the ball of light puzzledly. An indistinct name appeared in his hazy mind. "You are Asda?"
The blue light's outline sparkled a bit. Thales confirmed his own guess.
"I am trapped underground. I don't know what happened to you, and why you can knock straight on the Door…"
Asda the Air Mystic's pleasant voice echoed from the blue light. He sounded calm and steady, without any extra emotions. "But this is too dangerous. You must leave your basic form immediately."
Thales was puzzled. "What?"
However, 'Asda' did not answer his question. The Mystic anxiously said,
"Listen up! They felt it, too. They will definitely come for you! Before you are completely sealed… Escape now!"
Chapter 181: Phantom |
"I… what happened to me?"
Thales felt as though he was levitating in the sky. His mind was incredibly relaxed. He asked flatly, "Where am I?"
"Listen to me." Asda's voice echoed from the glowing silhouette. "I am unsure how to explain your current condition. From what I know, you are merely a contactor who knows little to nothing about mystic power or your name of origin, let alone becoming a Mystic…
"I can sense that you are not a Mystic … You are not one of us, yet… you are indeed 'knocking on the Door'…
"Like a clumsy newborn who was lifted ten thousand meters from the ground, you are in imminent danger…" the Air Mystic's voice trembled slightly.
"Danger?"
Thales did not know how he managed to speak, but he did anyway. "What do you mean… knocking on the Door?"
A hint of anxiety appeared in Asda's voice. "After passing through the first threshold, the Mystic in question shall exit his or her physical body and shift into his or her basic form. Taurus called this transformation 'knocking on the Door'…
"A Mystic who has 'knocked on the Door' will connect to other Mystics psychically. It's akin to pounding on THEIR Doors. In other words, a Door Knocker is like a lit torch in the dark. Since then, he or she will be watched by the other Mystics. Parties with malicious intent can identify your exact location—"
A dull sound echoed. Thales almost thought it came from within his mind. Its sharp, ear-splitting echo lingered, causing him to feel incredibly restless and uneasy.
'This is…?' He had an eerie premonition of imminent danger.
*Thud!*
Another dull thump, like a slow heartbeat, the sound carried tremendous weight and shook his heart.
At that very second, Thales sensed the presence of a strange entity in the void. A wave of panic washed over him. He was not the only person who felt that way.
"They're here!"
Asda's voice became agitated. "Go! I don't have much time to explain. Return to your physical form now!"
Thales gathered some of his hazy thoughts, trying hard to think.
'Right. No matter who "they" are, they definitely have no good intentions.'
Thales lifted his chin, staring at the diminishing 'Asda', or rather, his silhouette.
In that instant, from the depths of the black void, two hostile and relentless gazes shot at Thales. They inched towards him.
Horrified, Thales' thoughts raced like a rapid stream.
'I need to leave now. I must… go. But where should I go?'
"Think about who you are… think about your next move… think about the incident before you 'knocked on the Door'…" said the glowing figure anxiously. "Do not wallow in the comfort of your current condition and lose yourself in the process!"
'Who am… I? Is that important?' Thales thought.
"Thales!" A clear voice came to him from nowhere, filled with fear, youthful, yet quivering.
He felt his mind jolt!
Suddenly, the darkness that enveloped the boy dispersed. Asda's silhouette vanished before him.
The visions he had stored in his memory—the ocean and the desert, the people and the beasts—were slowly receding, like a backdrop in a theater that came down abruptly, revealing the blank wall behind it.
Visions of snowflakes, corpses, and streets that fell into ruin flashed by. Followed by the grand, majestic Heroic Spirit Palace, halfway on the mountain that overlooked Dragon Clouds City. Followed by the blood hydra, and at last, the interior of a giant tentacle made of human flesh.
'Where am I… now?' he thought in a haze of perplexity.
…..
In the scarlet interior of the gigantic tentacle made of mangled corpses and minced flesh, Little Rascal knelt, wailing, gazing at the boy who was hung and impaled.
The Blood Mystic, Giza Streelman, stared coldly at the girl, who wept on the ground made of flesh.
"You… you've killed him…" Little Rascal's cheeks were streaked with tears. She gazed at Thales tearfully.
Giza frowned. The blood-red veins on her face faded.
Little Rascal seemed to think that Thales was very much dead. She sobbed, reached out a hand for his gruesome corpse. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
"I'm sorry…" Little Rascal bit her lips, weeping.
Giza watched Little Rascal. The coldness in her eyes melted into tenderness.
"Child." Giza, who was pasted on the flesh wall, comforted her like a girl whose candy was snatched from her hands. "Don't be sad. It's not his fault… And not yours, either…"
Giza closed her eyes in a wave of desolation. Two tentacles reached out from the flesh wall behind her.
"It's ours."
The tentacles slithered towards Little Rascal.
"Go, little lady," Giza said sadly, "Stay alive… forget about what happened today. Cherish your identity as a human."
*Hiss…*
Almost immediately, the terrified and distressed little girl was hauled by the tentacles into a deeper layer of the flesh wall, and she eventually vanished.
But a second later, the Blood Mystic opened her eyes abruptly, and let out a scream.
She turned to look at Thales 'corpse', which hung mid-air.
"Why…" Giza turned around slowly with a puzzled look. "This is impossible..."
She watched Thales open his eyes, his body impaled by numerous tentacles.
'Ah. It looks like… I'm back.'
As though he had just woken up from a deep slumber, Thales slowly widened his eyes, staring at the person before him in a daze.
His thoughts were a mess. He could hardly remember what happened to him.
'This place is… This is...
'Eh? Are those… severed hands? Internal organs? Eyeballs? Human flesh?!'
Thales discerned his surroundings.
'Wait.'
He put in every effort to divert his attention from his chaotic state of mind, and stared straight ahead.
It was a blood-red, naked, young woman merged into a sea of flesh, and who eyed him oddly. Thales felt a chill.
At that moment, tonight's memory flooded back into his mind like tidal waves: Northland, King Nuven, the archdukes, the duel, Asda, the Mystics, Black Sword, Ramon, Little Rascal, Giza, the hydra, the destroyed Shield District, the Blade of Purification… and… towards the end... when he was impaled by Giza's countless tentacles.
The last thing he saw was a spike that jabbed into his left eye mercilessly.
'No.' Thales' whole body shuddered. 'No!'
Fear, panic, anxiety, worry, puzzlement, confusion…
All the emotions he was deprived of returned to him in that very second.
Seeing the Mystic before him, his breathing quickened.
The misperception of emptiness and feeling of isolating himself from everything which he experienced earlier felt like a dream now.
"What on earth…?"
Thales came to realize that his limbs were still bound by the tentacles. What scared him more were the numerous spikes lodged in his body and through his torso, with one in his left eye, one through his throat, and another through his heart. There were more nailed into every inch of his skin, making him look like a hedgehog suspended in the air.
Thales gasped, his heart was filled with terror. He felt exceptionally nervous about the spike in his head, the one that jabbed into his left eye socket and out the back of his skull.
'But… eh?'
Thales noticed something peculiar—the places where he was pierced did not bleed.
'No pain? No irritation? What's going on? I…' In his panic, he could feel the tentacles and spikes pierced through his entire body. 'What's happened to me? Did I become a ghost when I died?'
It was Giza's reaction that answered his suspicions.
"Why are you…?" Giza stared, wide-eyed, at the prince, her voice filled with confusion and astonishment. "Why are you not dead yet?"
Hearing this, Thales was startled. 'Why… am I not dead?'
He stared at Giza nervously, then looked down at the spikes that pierced through his own body.
'I-I'm not dead?'
Giza's face darkened. The blood red patches on her cheeks trembled aggressively.
"Then we shall go through it again!"
"Wait—" Thales panicked. His heart was pounding violently.
The Mystic ignored him. A second later, the spike on the tip of the tentacle that stabbed into Thales' left eye suddenly pulled back, made a sharp turn, and broke out through the top of his skull.
Sensing the movement of the tentacle, Thales shuddered abruptly.
'I…' He stayed still. 'Wait a minute. I felt nothing… Nothing at all?'
Thales was alarmed, then sighed slowly with relief. 'I'm… fine?'
He felt as though it was not him who got pierced by the spikes.
"Impossible!" The blood-red patches on Giza's body grew and stretched. She narrowed her eyes and an uncharacteristically intense look appeared on her face. "Your whole body is skewered. Why do you look unharmed? You can't even feel the pain?!"
Thales was about to answer that he had no idea what was going on when Giza's expression turned grim. She seemed to have noticed something.
With a grimace, Giza raised a finger. Immediately, all the spiked tentacles that impaled Thales began to writhe.
Thales felt his scalp crawl, watching the squirming tentacles on his body.
'This! Oh god!'
*Hiss...*
The familiar hisses of flesh sounded from these murder weapons.
Several tentacles began to wriggle to other parts of his chest, skewering and slicing his upper torso, slashing and impaling his skull and brain. It felt as if someone was carving him up with knives.
Nevertheless, Thales did not move a muscle. He just stared at Giza blankly. His gaze then traveled between the tentacles, as though he was not being butchered right at that moment.
The slashes and stabs went on for ten seconds until Giza stopped and all tentacles and spikes slowed down as well.
"How can this be …?" Shocked, the Mystic shook her head. "The attacks don't work on you?!"
Thales was panting, unable to answer. His mind was a mush of panic and terror.
*Slosh….*
The tentacles and spikes retracted from Thales. There was no wound or blood on him, even his clothes remained intact. As it looked now, Thales was merely a wraith-like shadow with colors. The boy was astonished.
'I'm, this is… a physics-defying situation? But… my arms and legs. They are still bound, aren't they?'
Ignorant about his current condition, he gaped, unable to respond. He vaguely felt a sensation similar to the one he experienced back in the void dimension.
Thales suspected that no matter how fearsome Giza's spikes were, when she ordered the tentacles to attack him…
... All her attacks seemed to miss.
All of a sudden, Giza's expression changed drastically. As though thinking of something, she gnashed her teeth, which was very uncharacteristic of her, and raised her chin up.
"Zarkel!" she bellowed. "Zarkel Tudor! Show yourself! You despicable meddler!"
The Mystic whipped around, glancing at her surroundings. Her voice burned with fury. "Was it you? You wretched old man! It was you, wasn't it?"
Her voice echoed in a sea of flesh and blood.
A few seconds passed. There was no response. She could hear only the buzzing of flesh as they rubbed against each other.
Giza felt a slight jolt and realization dawn on her.
The Mystic turned around to face Thales. Her eyes glimmered with a cryptic, peculiar emotion.
"No, it wasn't Zarkel…" Giza mumbled. Her eyes wide with bewilderment. "It was… you?!"
Giza extended a tentacle. It pierced through Thales' torso.
When she drew back, the spot where Thales was stabbed seemed unharmed, as though he was a phantom. Giza refused to believe that. Another tentacle of hers shot up. The spike on its tip lodged into Thales' right arm.
Just like before, the spike went right through his bound right arm. He was left completely unscathed.
At this point, Thales had not the slightest idea what had just occurred.
Giza frowned, stuttering, "This is-This is your ability?"
'Did he lose control due to the mystic energy interference?
'Impossible. If he was losing control, how could it end up like this?'
Thales panted while still dazed. He peeked at his bound limbs, then at his body.
'My ability? What sort of ability is that…'
Giza raised her eyebrows, shaking her head vigorously, as if she had just witnessed the strangest occurrence.
"You are just a contactor. Why is it that you can use mystic energy?" She scowled, as though she was reminded of something, and her expression darkened.
"It was you… you were 'knocking on the Door'?"
