Smoke

Smoke passed through the empty corridors until he arrived at Archer's room. Without hesitation, he entered it without a problem and reached inside, only to find the boy sleeping peacefully on his bed. He did not want to waste time anymore and zoomed toward the unsuspecting prey when he felt the chills on his body and stopped on his track.

"Why are you here?" the boy asked blandly as he got up from bed, his eyes peeled on the floating smoke. "An Orb Master with a transformation Ankh? Interesting."

Smoke did not expect Archer to be awake. This was the first time for him to be detected in his smoke form easily, and the way Archer responded to him caught him unguard. Vigilant, he moved back and asked, "Why did you not sound surprised? Did you expect this to happen?"

The boy laughed and folded his arms on his chest. "Not that I am expecting anything but there's nothing to get astounded of in this kind of situation."

"Trying to act tough, huh?" Smoke was about to speak again when he noticed something different from the boy's looks and continued, "Wait a minute. You're paler than the boy...you, you are not Archer!"

"Sorry to tell this to you but I am Archer. Now, tell me why you are here?"

"Just doing some late inspection..."

Rehcra snorted and waved his hand and a white orb appeared beside him, which turned into a white lamp. As soon as it appeared, some white smoky cloud appeared out of its opening, filling the room. Unbeknownst to Smoke, Rehcra was already out of the cloudy prison, leaving Smoke alone inside. He could even see what was happening within the cloudy prison clearly despite the clouds being opaque. "Since you love to become smoke, why not try playing with my smoke and become invisible forever."

Smoke felt the shivers when he saw the smoke and tried escaping back through the door but some kind of an invisible wall was blocking his path. Alert, he looked around and realized that the white mist covered the room entirely, and he could not even see anything except Rehcra's smoke. Bewildered, he gathered his energy and blasted swirling smokes around him but he was not able to remove them. Desperate, he even intensified the power but his situation remained the same. He was getting scared by this unexpected trouble and shouted to calm himself, "Where are you?! Show yourself!"

Rehcra noticed what his enemy was doing and chuckled. "I've already noticed your strength. Too bad you are too weak to destroy the evolve lamp's power."

"I don't believe this!" Smoke expanded in size and became more visible, becoming a humanoid smoke and punched against the white clouds but to no avail. This went on for half an hour until he felt that his body became tired. He was getting concerned that his limit was approaching and tried a different tactic. This time, he chose to become more diplomatic and said, "Hey, kid. I meant you no harm. Your dad just asked me to check on you if you are doing fine."

Rehcra snickered when he heard his excuse. "Really? If that is the case, why don't you just stay here until morning and wait for my Dad to see you? I bet he would be happy to treat you for breakfast."

Smoke was getting annoyed and began rotating until he became a small tornado made of smoke.

Rehcra sensed the increasing power coming from Smoke and immediately summoned another orb, this time the red one, which transformed into a weed.

Weeds could be found almost anywhere and were known for their ability to thrive even in dangerous locations. As a red Ankh, it can easily strengthen the toughness of any Ankhs, thereby making it harder to destroy.

Rehcra wanted to crush Smoke within the smoky barrier but Archer's body strength and Ankh rank were preventing him from doing so. With this enhancement from the red orb, he now had the confidence to stop any of Smoke's attacks.

Smoke, on the other hand, was getting more anxious because this was his strongest attack - the tornado smoke - but he could see that the cloudy walls were not budging at all, like cotton crashing against steel. He kept on bombarding them with his power until he realized that his Aether was sapped dry and he changed back into his human body. Desperate, he was now lying on the ground - tired and wasted.

Rehcra entered the cloudy prison, walked closer to Smoke and looked down. "So, can you now tell me why you are here?"

"I'll never tell you anything, boy. If you think that I am afraid of you, then sorry to say, you fuck up big time." Smoke tried standing up but his body did not cooperate. Disgruntled, he just lay down listlessly and hoped that he could recover his Aether back.

"I don't care whether you are afraid of me or not. I'd just like to know who sent you here, that's all."

"I've told you like a thousand times already that I'm just a worker here, doing some late-night inspection," Smoke lied blatantly, doing what he could do to catch Archer's attention and recover as soon as possible.

"Well, I do want to know the truth from you but if you still play that way, then fuck the truth. Not that it matters anyway." Rehcra summoned another Ankh, this time the blue one, which disintegrated as soon as it was called out. His body was enveloped with the blue light and morphed slowly before his enemy's sight. Both of his legs and arms lengthened, the feet and hands transformed into paws with sharp claws protruding out of it. Before his enemy's sight, his body became more robust and furry, standing in all-four like a majestic predator.

Smoke trembled while he saw the transformation of Archer. "Why...how many Ankhs do you have?! How can you become a Devouring Scourge Lion?!"

Rehcra, now a full-fledged blonde lion, was 1.2 meters tall. Originally, this was just a normal earth-type Desert Lion. But because of his ability to evolve Ankhs, it became a Devouring Scourge Lion, a very rare type that had no elemental strengths. Despite the disadvantage, what made it fearsome was its ability to devour and absorb Ankhs, thereby possessing some, if not all of its target's skills.

"Is that truly the question that you want to ask right now?" Rehcra walked closer until he was only a few inches away from Smoke and continued, "You still suffering from Aethersia? Too bad, you're gonna be my meal."

Smoke's eyes widened and shouted, "Wait! Wait! Don't eat me! I can tell you who sent me...the Orbus office! They're the ones who sent me!"

Rehcra stopped moving and his eyes squinted while saying, "Go on. Why did they send you?"

"It's because they are interested in you. They want to know why you fainted after the Orbitalization ritual."

"Hurry up and explain everything before my patience runs out..."

Smoke bobbed his head like a chick and said, "Okay. This morning, the Aether detector captured an increased energy fluctuation from the Crystal Pillar's direction. And we are not just talking about an increase, rather an incoming exponential surge that had destroyed most of the Aether detector machine. Our researchers tried locating the source and found out that it did not come from Orbus Major nor the Crystal Pillar. Oddly, the remaining machines are pointing out that the source was coming from the base of the Crystal Pillar. Experts said that this unknown energy could threaten the stability of Armira and Orbus Major and we are looking for answers. That's where you come in because this happened at the same time when you were taking the examinations. We already investigated the rest of the kids who took the Orbitalization ritual together with you and they did not experience any anomaly. It was just your case which is different."

"And me fainting made you believe that I know something about this incident?"

"Yes..."

Rehcra believed Smoke's statement and transformed back into his human body. To safeguard himself from any unnecessary troubles, he decided to create a Spiritual Dagger Binding Pill, a type of forbidden pill mainly used for binding people into contracts.

Without hesitation, he resummoned the lamp to produce wisps of white smoke, which served as the coagulant to create the pill. When he noticed that it was almost the size of a human head, he then called out the black dagger Ankh and let the white smoke covered it thoroughly. It lasted for about a few minutes before the white smoke dissipated. The black dagger Ankh slowly disappeared as well and what remained was a black pill.

Rehcra rubbed the white lamp again and it started emitting wisps of smoke, expanding and shrinking in size periodically, until it slowly transformed into a scroll. With a snap of his finger, the white lamp disappeared, and the black pill and the scroll floated forward until it reached Smoke, who was lying on the floor. He noticed Smoke was bewildered and he smiled and said, "Eat the pill and sign the contract with your Aether, and you will be free."

Smoke's eyes widened, convinced that the pill was not beneficial for him. He looked at Rehcra and reluctantly asked, "What's the effect of this pill?"

"The black pill is called the Spiritual Dagger Binding Pill while the scroll is the Covenant Parchment. You see, these two are needed to create the binding agreement, wherein a person, that is you, writes what he promised to do on the scroll and takes the pill to finalize the agreement. Of course, that person, that is you again, can choose to disregard what he wrote in the first place. The only worse thing that could happen to him is to become a mindless, debilitated fool. Nice, ain't it?"

Smoke knew that he had no choice but to follow what Rehcra instructed him to do to avoid becoming a lion's meal. He grabbed the scroll and read it, and much to his dismay, what was written was oddly specific, that is, Rehcra just wanted him to be his working slave for 20 years and not divulge any information to anyone about him nor do anything that could harm him intentionally, in any way.

Originally, he was a timid person. Even when he became an Orb master, he was still a coward and would only do missions that he could safely do. He thought that kidnapping a helpless boy would be as easy as eating a pie but he did not expect that the boy was a cunning devil. He did not take chances and signed the scroll with his newly-restored aether and ate the pill. Much to his surprise, it tasted citrusy, like tangerine, and swallowed it with gusto. He realized that there was a sudden increase of aether inside his body and his strength was restored. Slowly, he gathered his courage and stood up, only to find out that his body was stronger than usual. He summoned his Ankh and noticed that it was shiny, with a trace of black lines swirling in the middle of the orb. It then morphed into a bluish-black smoke, giving it a more regal look. Curious, he looked at Archer and asked, "What happened to my Ankh."

"It simply evolved," Rehcra said as he moved closer to Smoke and continued, "You can investigate it later but for now, we need to talk. Is there anything else that you failed to mention to me?"

"My partner Screen is in the monitoring room. He has his Ankh spying on us right now and we need to settle it or he might alarm our boss."

Rehcra nodded and thought for several minutes before he started speaking again, "This is what we are going to do..."