Chapter 49: Levi vs Stingers [3]

'ugh..." Levi could not help but moan in pain as he slowly, but surely regained his lost conciousness. He was disoriented for a while as it took some time for the memories of what happened to come back to him.

As his memories came back to him, he was suddenly assaulted by a splitting headache. It felt as though some one had grabbed a complex textbook and slammed it diectly on his brain several times that its contents had managed to automatically stick to his brain.

"Urgh...my head.." Levi unknowingly muttered under his breath as he involuntarily pressed his temples, in a useless attempt to supress the pain. One could only imagine how much pain was required to get somebody like Levi to react that way. Then again, physical afflictions were much different from mental ones. 

"What did you say?" Asked the elder, he did not seem to have heard what Levi said under his breath. It was then that Levi realised his grave blunder earlier. But he did not fret. Instead, he just calmly responded to the situation in the way he knew best.

"Huh? It was nothing. Just felt something prick my cheek is all" Levi lied as naturally as breathing. Once again, the prowess of his rather decietful tongue came to his rescue.

"Is that so...Well, since there isn't a problem, I shall just get back to what i was saying earlier. Where was i? Ah yes, my name. Listen closely human, this is how a name should sound."

"My name is Kadal El Territh and I am the esteemed elder of this group of stingers." Kadal introduced himself in a seemingly grandiose manner. From his facial expression as well as his minute body language, it was quite obvious that he was a very proud existence. 

But Levi could not care less about the stinger's name or ego at this point in time. He had other scores to settle with someone else.

'Grim! You damn bastard, you did that on purpose didn't you?' Levi confronted his partner, the perpetrator of his current situation, as the pain from his head subsided sigificantly. The latter just acted ignorant and transmitted back the mental equivalent of a shrugg in response.

The nonchalant response from his partner annoyed Levi, but he did not have the leisure to dwell on such trivialities right now. There were more important things to tend to.

'firstly, how long was I out for?' Levi asked, first and foremost.

'roughly about ten seconds, I was not keeping count.' Grim responded. At the reply, Levi felt a small but still relevent feeling of hope well up in him. The reason for which he had asked the earlier question was to determine the state of the cleansing process he had begun a little while ago.

'i see. Then the cleansing?' Levi inquired. A little scared and at the same time, impatient to hear Grim's answer.

'unfortunately, if you had lost concentration for even a single second, the entire thing would have come undone and the gathered poison would have dispersed. Resulting in you having to start from the beginning, but fortunately, I took care of everything.' Grim explained. His explanation was good and all, but it was only his last few words that actually managed to draw Levi's attention.

'what do you mean by "I took care of it"?' Levi queried as the words had raised more than a little suspicion in him.

'why are you even asking all of this.You can easily check for yourself.' Grim replied in a seemingly nonchalant manner, yet the excitement in his voice was undeniable.

At this, Levi actually wondered why he had not started by doing that in the first place. Was he becoming too over reliant on Grim? Was it just in an instinctual attempt to hold on to a false sliver of hope? Or was it something else...

'stop getting sidetracked. That is not what is important right now.' With the single thought, Levi snapped himself out of his own introspection and banished the thoughts to the back of his mind. He decided to deal with the issue later on.

Sensing his aether vessels, Levi noticed that the impurity cleansing process was going on just fine without him even having to think about it! The entire process was carrying itself out, like one of those bodily metabolism processes! Levi could not believe his eyes.

'h-how?' He asked inwardly from a lack of a better word to fully express his confusion. It was evident as he could not even stop his mouth from visibly gaping ever so slightly in abject surprise.

'how? Seriously, what the fuck do you mean how? Did you not even check the memories I sent to you?' Grim asked. Apparently, those were the last words he was expecting from his partner as a reaction.

'.....!' Levi could say nothing more and just procceded to doing what he ought to have done a long time ago.

Going through the memories which Grim sent, Levi became painfully aware of the immense gap between himself and the latter in terms of inteligence. The two could not even be compared as Levi barely grasped anything from the forcibly implanted memory fragment.

Out of the entire fragment, he could only glean two things. The first was that the experiment seemed to have been going on for a significantly extended period of time before now. The numerous theories and hypothesises bore witness to the fact.

'maybe about five days ago...' Levi idly wondered.

The second point, and the most important point of them all was that through a series of calculations involving the wavelenghts of souls and other gibberish which Levi could not even begin to comprehend as he did not like riddles, Grim was now able to control Levi's aether!

The new found ability would undoubtedly prove invaluable in the future as it opened up a lot of possiblites for the two, but Levi's naturally sharp instincts made him very suspicious.

Most people in his shoes would end up getting lost in the excitement of discovering such a useful ability that they would fail to notice a crucial flaw.

'If you can control my aether without my permission, then does that not mean that you more or less have control over me?' Levi asked the question which bothered him.

He absolutely despised the feeling of being under someone else's control. He strongly detested being forced to respond to the every command and dictates of another person and being subject to another's every wish and command.

To put it simply, he did not like the feeling of not being in full control over himself as he had already gone through it once in his past life. He utterly refused to give in to another in this life, and would fight to his very last breath against anyone or anything that threatened his full control.

Grim was not an exeption to this personal rule.

Sensing where this was headed, Grim tried to pacify the situation. He said: 'relax, I am not trying to steal control from you or anything of the sort. And even if I was, I could'nt.'

'why not?' Levi asked, he was still a bit suspicious.

'Simple. The wavelenght of our souls have to correlate with each other before i could even do anything. That is, I need your consent before I am able to start using your aether. I was only able to do it this once because you were unconcious at the moment, if you even tried a bit, you could easily relinquish my control. But you should already know by now that I don't mean you any harm.' Grim explained.

Verifying the validity of Grim's words through their telepathic link, Levi's suspicions died down to a minimal level. They were still there, only less than earlier.

'sorry, but I can't ever fully trust another person.....and also, I ban you from activating this skill of yours without my permission or when I am unconcious, unless of course the situation is truly dire.' Levi said, setting the boundaries that shouldn't be crossed there and then. A rather wise move on his part.

"Hey! Human! Are you even still listening to me?!" A voice from beyond the horizons of Levi's mind interrupted his conversation with his partner. The voice practically oozed an annoyed irritation at Levi's attitude. It was none other than the annoying stinger elder that had poisoned him.

'Ugh, this guy again. Hey Grim, how long till the cleansing is done?' Levi queried his partner as he could not wait to just grab the unfortunate stinger in front of him and just rip him apart limb from limb.

'Almost done....three, two, one...you are all set.' Grim responded just before reliquishing control of the aether to it's rightful owner. 

After all, It was only right that Levi was the one to do the honours of finishing off the entire thing as It was his body.

'Good.' Levi responded, not even bothering to hold back the smile which had tugged at his lips on the outside. There was no point to it after all, death was all that awaited the creature before him. 

'Aether burst!' Levi roared inwardly, followed by the timely release of aether, as well as the impurities which had been forced into his body. 

"WHAT?!" Kadal yelled out. The sudden and unexpected burst of power undoubtedly took the stingers by surprise, but what shocked them even more was the absurd fact that the human which they had paralysed was....standing up?

What sorcery is this?

'The life essence of all creatures is made up of mana as nothing can survive without it. As it is practically the life force, it is also partially responsible for many bodily processes, that is why the core fracture is so dreaded. By ridding the poison of its primary constituent, mana, you have effectively reduced the toxins to mere bodily fluids.' Grim explained, correcting Levi's earlier definition.

'i see...' Levi responded in his stride, not even thinking about the matter twice as all of him was now focused on the beasts surrounding him.

'Hey Levi, how about we do something like this.....' Grim said and explained hs relatively simple plan to Levi. Fortunately for him, and terribly unforrtunately for the enemies, Levi thought it was a great idea.

'Wonderful, let us do just that.' Levi responded, before opening his mouth to speak to the creatures who were already cowering in fear all around him.

"I am sure you all had a blast then, but now it's my turn." Levi said, all the while beaming a smile which could send chills down the spine of the devil himself. 

Aether flared all around him, as Levi took a single step fo

rward. He said,"It's about time we finished this."