Chapter 8: The 7 years of Hell [2]

I was stuck in the vast physical darkness, enveloped by an almost perpetual abyss, at least a few miles under the ground.

I looked around me, trying to take note of the room I was left in. Straining my eyes, I slowly circled the perimeter of the chamber, gently feeling the walls of the panels as I passed by. Feeling defeated, I sighed heavily.

I sat down cross-legged on the floor, pondering what I should do. The first thing that I knew was that I could not panic.

This defence system was engraved in my mind thanks to my parents, who taught me what to do in an emergency.

While this current predicament probably could not be classified as an emergency, it was the only valid option I had, and I decided to stick to this whenever I could.

Piecing the information together in my head, I recollected that the last thing Aunt Mary had told me was that I needed to be able to differentiate between myself and the world.

Unsurprisingly, this ominous clue had me completely stumped.

Aunt Mary had stranded me inside with nothing.

No light;

No company;

And no information.

***6 MONTHS FROM ABANDONMENT***

I was able to hear a soft whir of a magic spell echoing within the walls, but apart from that, nothing changed except for the passing of time. Weirdly, my body could not feel any feelings of hunger or sleep, but my brain still remembered those feelings, and it drained my mental stamina extremely quickly.

It seemed that the magic spells used worked once every 12 hours or so, replenishing my body's nutrients to their original state, and getting rid of the melatonin being produced under my conscience. It felt like a jolt of electricity passing through my bones, and after the repetitive exposure to it, my mind had become numb.

At this point, I had begun to question my purpose of even being here with no hope to achieve my goal. My eyes started to become tired after my first day of isolation, and my mood had become largely unstable, shifting from anger at aunt Mary and the world, and in the next moment was peace at the fact that there was no one to disturb me.

During my mood shifts, I tried many ways to escape, such as punching the walls of the room and blowing abnormally huge dents in them in my fits of anger.

One thing to note was that whenever I seemed to get angry, my mind began to feel more and more distant every time. While I was able to use much more strength and power, I was starting to feel as if my body was not my own, and I was only controlling it like a puppeteer pushing the strings of his marionette. This was only beginning to feel more prominent during the recent few shifts.

Each time after I blew off some steam, I went to sit back down around the middle of the room, simply thinking of the eerie isolation I was in, and recorded in my mind what had happened all this time. I had noticed that my memory had become very proficient over this period, in that I was counting every jolt of replenishment I got over a day.

This was the only way to keep track of time for me, as I simply lived in perpetual darkness.

So far, no progress had been made in the mana department.

***12 MONTHS FROM ABANDONMENT***

Even after all of this time, aunt Mary had not visited me once.

By now, I had forgotten the very facial structure of a human, and colours were now a distant memory. All I knew, was the pigment of black.

The structure and dimensions of the room were now ingrained in my mind like it was muscle memory, and so the absence of light no longer affected me much.

After being in seclusion for a very long time, people begin to look at the world differently and see things others do not. Likewise, I had also matured immensely, and my line of thought had sharpened to become quick and intuitive, perceiving matter in a different way.

The price I had to pay for this was my sanity, and as any normal human would, my mind was completely broken.

I could no longer feel intense emotions nor understand them.

Emotions were simply a useless vent of feelings derived from the mind, influenced by one's surroundings and circumstances. And after being isolated in one area for an extended period of time, my mind had deemed it unnecessary to remember such things, as there was no new stimulation for me to experience.

As a result of this, I noticed that I kept things to myself much more, and I also assume this was the reason for the stopping of my mood shifts.

Anyway, as I have mentioned that my line of thought had become sharper and more logical, I had also begun to see progress in my manifestation of mana.

Realising that matter outside of the body, and matter inside of the body were the same, I had gained access to a visualisation of the inner realm in my body.

Perhaps shaped by the darkness of the physical world I could see, the inner realm was also a huge, never-ending abyss, embodying the silhouette of my body. I could feel the soft glow of mana conglomerating at the centre of it with my mana being the size of a fist and the colour of a royal blue diamond.

I was now able to feel the untapped, pure blue energy within my body, swirling around itself like the orbit of an atom. It was situated mainly around my heart, however, I also learned that bits of it flowed around pathways in my body, circling through like a circuit. I assumed this was the energy that moved our bodies and was essential for life.

Even though I could feel the mana inside my body, it is worth mentioning that I was still unable to manipulate it, and turn it into real magic.

***18 MONTHS FROM ABANDONMENT***

By my calculations, I had deduced that I was now around 6 and a half, and my body had undergone significant and rapid changes. Due to my lack of sleep, my already silvery-grey eyes had now turned a blurred and dull grey ashen. My pupils also learned to adapt to natural darkness, and now I could no longer differentiate between light and dark.

My body had grown about 4-5 inches, and the hair on my head now reached my shoulders.

Each day for the past 6 months, I had trained in all of the exercises I could remember my mother doing. I had done pushups, sit-ups, burpees, and yoga every single day. As the hero, she had trained every week to keep her body in top physical performance, and I had replicated everything I could remember.

What concerned me, however, was the fact that I couldn't remember my mother's own face, and all the memories I had of us just had her face blurred and blacked out like it was a video game.

My routine had become to train, train and sit, meditating and trying to push my mana.

Recently, I had made noteworthy progress in my quest to manipulate the energy within my body, and I had successfully managed to push and focus the flow of mana to one area inside of my mana circuit. This meant I was able to individually strengthen parts of my body at a time, however, this also would mean that everything else on my body would become much weaker.

To combat this problem, I made a few changes to my mana circuit inside of my inner realm, permanently pushing the flow of mana past my head instead of only going through my lower body. This flow of mana also flowed through my eyes, naturally strengthening them to adjust to the dark, without focusing on pushing mana to them and causing the rest of my body to go limp.

This had naturally turned my eyes into an irreversible hazy light blue, which gave out a soft light inside of the contrasting darkness.

This also brought my attention to the fact that mana was able to seep out of the body and into the outside world, and for a few days, I solely concentrated on mana meditation.

WHHHHRRRR...

The sound of mana began to pulse within my body, and a visible blue light started to emanate from my skin. Slowly, I started to increase the output of mana flowing within the circuit, using more and more energy from the ball situated near my heart. I started to feel a strong burning sensation on the surface of my body, as sweat started to drip from my forehead onto the floor.

"RGGHHHH..."

Gritting my teeth, I pushed out more mana into the circuit, feeling like it would burst and explode. I could now feel drowsy from the depleting mana storage in my body, but I kept pushing on. If there was one thing I learnt from this dreadful isolation, it was that willpower was the way to avoid failure.

If an ordinary person were to try this, they would have died from mana exhaustion, since the mana core holding the bundle of energy was essentially their life source. But Raymond Steelheart was not nearly an ordinary person, as he was the son of the Hero and the Demon King.

'PPWHVOOM'

A loud sonic boom resonated within the room. Ray felt extremely drowsy, feeling as if he could pass out any minute. Nevertheless, he opened his tired eyes and looked around him.

Normally, he would be met with the same drearily dark room before him, but this time, he could literally feel small blue molecules floating around the entire space. The small blue molecules gave off the same soft glow as the mana from within his inner realm.

It felt to him as if the whole room had now become an extended part of his senses, and he was able to feel anything that happened here like the nerves inside his body.

It was exhilarating.

For the first time in a year, Ray started to feel a growing positive emotion lurking in his heart, brightening up his dull face. It gave a glimmer of hope, fighting to get past a mountain of trauma built over his seclusion.

But this sensation was over as soon as it had started. Slowly, each of the mana particles started to draw in together like a black hole, forming a similar swirl of energy as his mana core.

Suddenly, the mini black hole started to rotate faster and faster, producing a louder sound like that of a washing machine.

The blue light particles that were not drawn in became engulfed by the darkness within the room.

BOOM

Ray's brightening eyes returned to the dull look he had within seconds. The buildup of unexplained emotions that were piling on top of each other within him dissipated into thin air. He felt empty.

My Mana Maze had failed.

An overwhelming wave of sadness crashed upon my mind. Yet I simply did not have the energy to let out any tears.

'I can not be engulfed by emotions anymore. Emotions are unnecessary and worthless. All I have is myself.'

This is what I repeated to myself in my head.

I could only stare in the direction of where the explosion had happened. What did I do wrong? Was that the way to do it?

My light blue gaze hardened as the gears within my head began to turn. Logical thinking was what I needed the most right now.

I needed to piece together all the information that I had.

I got up and walked around the circle of the room aimlessly in an attempt to jog my memory.

I thought back to where I had first entered this mansion, I had met aunt Mary, I had found out my parents had died, and I was first locked in isolation.

Distant words started to replay inside my mind. And with a cold and flat voice, I said.

"That's it. I know what I did wrong."

______

Could you guys vote on what you think in the paragraph comments pls? Depending on this would be how quickly I can update.

-The length of this chapter was good, keep it up.

-Increase the word count rn.

-The length of previous chapters was fine.

Thanks for reading :)