Chapter 155 – Grudges (I)

Chapter 155

Grudges (I)

The sun had just cracked over the horizon as a chilly squall swept over the empty and hollow landscape. Where once tall mountain peaks stood proudly like giants now lay a flat so barren one couldn’t even see a single blade of weed growing anywhere.

There was only dust and tiny stone pebbles and an occasional bird sweeping overhead on its way to the greener pastures.

Even the prying and curious eyes who came early on were gone, for there was nothing to see but ashes and nothing to hear but silence.

And yet, at its heart, the dirt stirred and the ground quaked. A few hawks landed around it, their beady eyes staring curiously at the odd movements.

Suddenly, a hand ripped out through the dirt, causing the birds to cry out and fly away rapidly while dust spread outward. The fingers were covered in thick layers of dirt and blood, and they dug into the ground, breaking it easily, as though it were porcelain.

Before long, a larger hole opened up, and a silhouette emerged from the cracked dirt, covered from head to toe in dust. Long hair flew out, blasting particles of wind everywhere, while the figure’s eyes slowly opened.

The man appeared young, somewhere in his early twenties at the latest, with starkly red eyes as though infused with blood. His body was rather lean and tall, cracking almost six-five, though his robes were tattered and destroyed, covering only a few bits here and there, revealing a chiseled, dehydrated figure.

He coughed, spitting out dust from there too, and slowly looked around, his gaze confused, angry, and melancholy.

“… it’s gone?” He mumbled in a hoarse voice, as though he hadn’t drunk water for weeks–which his cracked and parched lips very much attested to.

He sighed, swiping upward against his greasy hair and moving it away. His gaze landed at the sky that was just beginning to burn with the morning sun, something seemingly caught in his throat.

“Did they manage to get away?” he mumbled yet again. He instinctively tried to reach into his spatial ring to pull out some water but forgot that it was destroyed.

Everything was destroyed.

When the last of them burrowed inside that mountain pass, he collapsed it and turned to face over twenty attackers. No matter how strong he was, he was quickly overpowered and subdued. But… they didn’t kill him.

Instead, they captured him.

At the same time, he watched countless friends and kids he’d known their whole lives dying one by one, and the old Ancestor trying desperately to reverse the situation.

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The sky and the earth bled crimson, and the anguished cries could write a symphony.

But then… there was only silence.

All he could recall was a pillar of light bursting into the sky and expanding for a brief flash of light–one that consumed everything… as it should have consumed him.

But it didn’t.

No… no, it did.

He remembered.

The searing of his flesh, the melting of his bones, the agonizing sensation of having blood boil within him as he was dying… it was real.