174 Chapter 90: Chang Lu (Part 2)

Chang Lu: "AAAGGHH!!!"

The excruciating pain caused by the vines wrapping around him like an anaconda immobilizing his prey causes the Hellfire to click his teeth and swallow his breath, and prepare to use one of the most overused patterns of Psychic abilities.

Sona: "Ha!"

She smirks, knowing what he'll try to do.

And so, as Chang Lu teleports out of the grasp of the vines, and appears right before Sona to punch her in her back, ready to break her femur, he finds that he no longer has something he needs to go through with his plan.

That something - that very important something he needs so he could punch Sona with all his might - that something is gone.

Chang Lu: "M-my … my … hand!"

Blood spurts forth and paints Sona's back red as the Hellfire falls on the ground, unable to understand anything.

Sona: "When put in a difficult position, no matter who it is, they revert back to their basics and their strong suits. That makes it predictable, far too predictable."

She smirks, mocking him as he rolls on the ground without his right arm.

The rabbit-like Spirit, with his right arm in its mouth, walks to Sagzear and presents the arm.

It is as if a soldier taking revenge for a fellow soldier and then offering tribute to show that the revenge has been taken.

Chang Lu: "You … this is not the end, not for ME!"

Writhing in pain, he shouts at the Spirits and their master.

Sona: "Well, then this might be."

Concerning his current position of lying on the ground, he expects Jin, the mole-like Spirit, to come out of the ground right beneath him and attack him. So, he prepares himself to use pyrokinesis to scorch the Spirit back to nothingness without letting all his opponents realize it.

However,

Chang Lu: "W-why … why is my … body … so hot!?"

He asks as his own body keeps rising in temperature and constantly sweating.

Chang Lu: "Wait!"

But, upon a second check, he realizes that it isn't exactly his body that's heating, the clothes on his body are what are heating.

And as he realizes this, he sees the fire-fox-like Spirit, Kite, standing right next to him, looking at him like he's prey.

In any other situation, he would have easily stopped Kite, but in this situation, at this moment, he can't, because not only does he have to deal with the pain of a missing arm and the bleeding caused by that, but he also has to deal with the pain of nails tearing through his abdomen because he got distracted by Kite and failed to stop Jin from attacking from beneath him.

Chang Lu: "AA-AAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"

The pain he's going through may knock a normal person unconscious. And even for a Hellfire like him, it might be too much.

As such, he is unable to focus in time to stop Kite, and so,

Chang Lu: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

His clothes ignite and blow up like a bomb while Kite and Jin get away from him.

Sona: "Ha!"

She scoffs, as she sees the Hellfire literally being burned from the blast of his clothes, and his wounds hurting far more than they did before.

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A young, brown-haired Psychic of average-height sat in the middle as he looked over the 'ritual'.

His rituals were something most people would call 'experiments', or rather, 'inhumane experiments'.

What else could you call it when someone uses dead and alive humans as test subjects to 'research' Psychic energy?

Regardless, completely unfazed by the lack of humanity within him, the Psychic continued to watch over his experiment with a grin.

Unlike actual scientific experiments though, this experiment had no formula or theory. It was like a kid trying to mix two chemicals to see what happens without knowing anything about what WILL happen.

And while this experiment, where he extracted Psychic Potential from dead Psychics in liquid form and injected it into the brains of dead non-Psychics, wasn't the first of this kind, it was certainly one of his most morbid ones.

But, to his surprise,

"AGH!"

One of the dead bodies the Psychic Potential was being injected to suddenly moved as if it had gained its life back.

The Psychic got up from the comfort of his chair and stopped the experiment to study that change but, even after stopping the experiment, for some reason, the Psychic Potential and the Psychic energy in the air kept being sucked in by that one dead body.

It was the dead body of a 12-year-old boy, and the more Psychic Potential and Energy it sucked in, the more powerful its attractive force became.

Then, as it happened, the Psychic smirked, realizing that the dead body had become a magnet for Psychic Energy, something he simply labelled a Psychic Magnet.

This Psychic Magnet was continuing to suck in Psychic Energy around him, and it had grown powerful enough that using any complicated Psychic ability might backfire because the Energy required could get sucked in half-way through.

So, even though the experiment's result filled him with a grin, the Psychic had to find a way to stop that magnet, temporarily at least.

The best way to do that was to Mind Control his brain into retiring, something that would send an alive person to coma.

And, obviously, using the Psychic ability of Mind Control was dangerous near that magnet, but the Psychic had the confidence to do so regardless.

But, just then,

"Is someone here?"

He heard a voice asking so from outside the chamber he was in. He clicked his tongue and hurriedly tried to do the Mind Control, causing it to not be done properly and the brain that was to be put to sleep ended up being put to slow motion.

While it wasn't perfect, that had caused the Psychic Magnet to decrease in power, so for the time being, it was fine to leave it like that.

Hence, the Psychic went out of the chamber, up to the ground floor, and received the visitor, acting like the curt priest he wasn't.

Minutes later, however, he came back down to the chamber with the visitor, having thrown away his facade.

"Why did Julius sent one of his whores instead of coming himself?"

That's what the visitor had introduced herself as. It was a lie, but that woman may have been the one person in the world who could lie to a Psychic and not get caught.

Woman: "Well, I guess Mr Rome was busy."

The Psychic clicked his tongue, knowing what 'busy' would mean when talking about Julius Rome.

Woman: "Mr Dietrich, is this … your workshop?"

She asked as she saw the nauseating place filled with the stench of dead bodies and poisonous chemicals.

Halogen: "Well, what else do you think it would be?"

Ten years before the Hellfire would have learned how to keep his priestly persona 'on' at all times, he was just a youngster with quite a bit of edge in him. And the annoyance he was feeling was clear on this edgy youngster's face.

Halogen: "Well, anyway, wait here while I find the book."

He said, as he went to a different corner of the chamber, to a place filled with bookshelves, where a book that Julius Rome had wanted from Halogen was kept.

As he started trying to find that book though, the woman turned her eyes to the corpses, the experiments, and made an expression of pure disgust at Halogen.

The reason she had been there was to confirm everything she had heard about this sick 'priest', and the mission she had given herself was to do nothing more than that, for the time being.

But,

"Ugh!"

A body, which was supposed to be a dead body, moved.

The body of the 12-year-old boy moved.

Woman: "T-the … this body … just moved!"

Halogen: "Yeah, it's become a Psychic magnet. It's kinda dead and kinda alive."

Taking her by shock, the Hellfire revealed so without a care as he kept searching for the book.

Woman: "W-who was this boy?"

She had many questions in her mind, but for some reason, that was what was formed into words first.

Halogen: "Not that it's any of your business but that body belongs to a 12-year-old Spirit-user who died by being drowned in a lake. From what I know, he was murdered that way by the people around him because they found out that he was a Spirit-user and, not knowing anything about our world, they thought he was a demon fiend or something."

That was why, as the murder was done with religious fear in mind, it wasn't hard for this 'priest' to get a hold of the body.

Woman: "B-but, what about his Spirits?"

Halogen: "He only had one. The Spirit tried to stop them but they overpowered it with numbers. The boy's death then caused the Spirit to return to the uncontracted state."

It was a tragic story, with no silver lining whatsoever.

Hearing it, the woman looked at the boy, bending over to look at his face, the face that looked like it was sleeping peacefully, the face of a doll that was gaining power that would lead to his self-destruction.

Woman: "Damn my stupidity!"

The woman cursed herself, because of the decision she was going to make.

Woman: "If only I could ignore this, nothing would have gone wrong."

She muttered under her breath.

And then,

Halogen: "Hey!"

A chilling voice came from right behind her,

Halogen: "Who are you really?"

With the book he was searching for in his hand, he asked as he noticed something strange about her existence, something she had so masterfully hidden for so much time.

Woman: "I guess, I am just like him, a Ghost of a Spirit-user, who was murdered because of fear."

The woman said, no longer caring about her original purpose in coming there.

She knew that the Hellfire was going to attack her, and she knew that she didn't stand a chance against him, so she used all the power she had, to blind him, to stall him, to trap him, to slow him down, as she took the doll-like boy and ran away.

This was ten years before the boy would run away from her and be found by the Phoenix.

And it was fifteen years before,

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Chang Lu: "Aaaahhh!!!"

He is defeated.

No more tricks, no more cards hidden up his sleeve could turn the tables now.

The result of the match is now fixed as Chang Lu's body has burned enough to make death a certain future.

So, even though the blast is over now, it doesn't matter.

And, lying on his death bed, as the Hellfire sees the Spirits and their master who defeated him with a blurry vision, he sees them clearer than ever before.

Chang Lu: "Ha!"

He scoffs at himself as he sees them, as he sees that team of Spirits that know perfectly well what it means to work together, that know perfectly well what Spirits and contracts are all about.

Having lived as a Psychic for more years than he did as a Spirit-user, Chang Lu may have forgotten all that and thought that he could defeat any Spirit-user because he knows what it's like to be one, but in truth, the facade of 'never losing to a Spirit-user' was just that - a facade.

Chang Lu: "HA! Ha! Haha!"

And so, he laughs at himself as his death draws near.

Knowing the fact that he's a doll whom death had once graced and then allowed to go back, there's no way his broken-down life that was formed out of Psychic Potential rather than an actual soul could ever become an actual Ghost.

Hence, this will be the end.

He won't die and become an actual Ghost, which means his existence will be over, lost forever in the maze of nothingness, in the abyss of the devilish darkness.

But, before dying, there's one thing he needs to see, and even death would stall itself, just to make him see that, to make him realize that.

Chang Lu: "Y-you!"

His words are uttered with such low pitch that no one can hear.

However, that's enough.

Looking at that rabbit-like Spirit, looking at it and realizing that his untimely death didn't cause his Spirit to wander around and be lost forever, but that the Spirit found a new partner, someone who cherishes it just as much as he himself did, that's enough.

Maybe the fact that the Spirit can't remember him is the punishment for every single sin he has committed as a Hellfire, and if so, that's fine too, because one of the only two existences he cared about is living a happy life, and as for the other one,

Chang Lu: "P-please!"

With all his might, he begs for that other one,

Chang Lu: "P-please ... if you see … her,"

He asks the Spirit-user who defeated him, the Spirit-user whose elegance and beauty is just like his foster mother's, but does not feel as distant or unreachable.

Chang Lu: "Please … tell her … I'm sorry … for … running away!"

And the Hellfire extinguishes, and it extinguishes not as a 27-year-old Hellfire, but as a 12-year-old Spirit-user and a 22-year-old Psychic Magnet.

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