Chapter 78 - Wounds

Third Person’s POV (12 yrs. and 8 months old)

In a split second, the gathered light energies on the elemental magic circles formed various weapons, glave on fire, sword on water, fan on wind, spear on earth, needles on ice, shurikens on lightning -this one they did not recognize-, chains on arcane, flowers on nature,

Scythe on light moon, arrow on dark moon, just as the weapons formed, the dread came back full force, stopping everyone on their tracks for a second, disorienting them. And when they recovered, exactly five lightning balls were floating near them.

Everyone feared what’s to come as they know that being electrocuted will hinder their movements, bright flash covered everyone’s sight, and the electro balls exploded, electrocuting anyone caught in the blast.

The flash of light subsided, as silence befell on the area, then a swift passing of air was heard, before another, and another, until all twelve swift movements passed, as everyone flew or went the same direction.

In front of them leading was Allen, blood could be seen dripping from his mouth, in fact all of them were caught by the spell as they sustained damage. Minor. The group flew faster in a wide circle as they were being chased by the weapons created by the magic circles.

Fire glaves rained down on the groups path, and they avoided swiftly, albeit the numbers being hundreds falling down on them.

“Split up!” shouted Allen as the group obliged, avoiding the instant thrust of earth spears.

“Dive Down!” he said again, as the group avoided the shuriken formation atop the sky creating an electric zone.

“Jump on the trees!” Allen said, as he used his leg on a tree to propel himself on a different direction avoiding an ice needle that stuck itself on the tree for a second before freezing it solid.

The group did as what he did, avoiding several needles here and there, the shuriken stopped their electric zone and gathered into one, then spun itself and plunged to the earth.

Everyone gathered back in an instant and flew up on the tree lines as the shuriken summoned lightnings in eight different directions in a line, the group was left unscathed as they were in between the lines.

Allen’s senses tingled, and this one he knew well.

“Get ready to burst forth!” he shouted, as dozens of water blades descended from the sky causing water surges that left bubbles in the air, Allen dashed on one popping it in the process, the other five did as well.

The rest turned to avoid them, but Icarus got caught in one by accident when the bubble formed right on top of him.

“Quickly burst out!” shouted Wilbert, water started to fill in on the bubble, hissing sounds could be heard and seen as Icarus’s fire was slowly being put out. He swung his sword in an arc popping the bubble.

But the water that formed inside the bubble turned into a small dagger and thrust itself towards the unsuspecting Icarus, Icarus got stabbed on the back, as he shouted, everyone turned around at his cry.

The water dagger evaporated into the air just as Icarus’s blood gushed out on his back. Riyah immediately flew towards him and looked for anything amiss and when she looked at his back, her eyes widened.

Before she could say anything the bubbles filled themselves half full and a series of pops reverberated, creating dozens of swords in the air and flung themselves towards the siblings.

Riyah in her emotional state, spread out her magic as ice covered the swords near them and broke into pieces, but there were more, Icarus noticed his sister giving her all in defending him, he healed himself quickly and joined in on the defense, as he conjured flames to evaporate the water blades.

“Go! Leave this to us!” said Riyah, looking at Allen as she drew her sword, imbued it with cold energies and slashed forward creating an ice wave that stopped several blades, breaking them down.

Allen nodded and flew away with the group, but before they could do anything, chains flew out of thin air, restricting their movements, even the unconscious princess wasn’t spared as she was held in both her arms and legs.

“What’s this?!” shouted Granarados.

“It’s Ken’s arcane magic, in the form of chains if we don’t free ourselves from this, we-“ the group shouted in anguish, as their minds felt like it’s being torn apart, Allen could not finish what he said, for the ringing inside his head almost made him faint right then and there.

“RAWR!” shouted Saber, shadow magic emerged from his finger tips corroding the chains that binded all of them, and with a strong tug, made the chains snap, Glen got to work on destroying the chains on the princess, and then carried her on his back again.

The group fell to the ground, but felt eminent danger, after touching the ground they pushed themselves away from the location as earth spears struck again. They could not waste any time to talk some more as crescent wind blades bombarded them.

The fan was high up in the air, waiting for the smoke to subside, everyone flew up into the sky to see it, the fan then channeled a zone where everyone would get sucked into the center, which is the fan.

“Everyone! Hold on!” several of the group held on to trees or used rope conjured by their magic to not let themselves get caught on the wind vortex. Pollen emerged from out of nowhere, the group recognized them as sleeping pollen in an instant.

They all suck in a breath as the pollen passed through them, and into the vortex, the wind also subsided, the fan nowhere to be found. They survived the sleeping pollens.

“Wait, we’re forgetting someone!” said Celine, they looked at the direction were Icarus and Riyah were fighting, but they were not there anymore.

Flin flew to check out their condition, while in the air he saw them lying on the ground, bruised and wounded.

“Everyone, this is ba-.” He could not finish what he wanted to say as a silver light burst forth from nowhere and struck him head on.

“AHHH!” he flew sideways and unto the ground, knocking him unconscious, a sizzle of smoke was visible in the air, as the stench of burnt skin could be smelled.

The group did not know what to do as they were frozen in place. No, this cannot end like this, thought Allen. Allen flew up, and conjured a healing barrier over the avian siblings and Flin, gradually healing their wounds.

Glen and the others rushed forwards as another spear burst forth from the ground, but the spears caught up to them caging them inside. Allen turned to look at the situation and was disoriented for a moment, as he did not notice a water blade rushing towards him.

He faced the barriers again but was late to react as the water blade thrust forth on his abdomen.

“ALLEN!” shouted Lila, Allen fell to the ground, with the water blade stuck in his stomach, his vision blurred, closing his eyes, succumbing to the darkness.

The group jumped again, but the panther siblings flew towards the direction of Allen and destroyed the blade stuck in his stomach, stopped the bleeding, closed the wound, and applied first aid, using raw magic.

The process almost took a toll on them, almost, but the lightning shuriken each appeared behind their backs, eyes widened, they wanted to warn the other but the shurikens struck in the blink of an eye, electrocuting both, and they fell unconscious.

“SABER! LILA!” Celine shouted, flying towards their direction, but was struck sideways with a fire ball followed by fire glaves raining down in on her form. Wilbert watched wide eyed as his childhood friend suffered the brunt of glaves.

But she endured as she flipped, and used the ground to propel herself into the air, aimed an arrow towards the glaves, shot out a light arrow that bursted the formation of the glaves, and all fell down, Celine also fell down to the ground, Wilbert immediately approached her.

“Are you okay?” asked Wilbert.

“Yeah, I’m- AHHH!” the ringing came back full force, striking everyone in the area, and with her weakened state, Celine also fell unconscious. Wilbert clutched his head and stood up, and shouted into the air, as the mental attack on him was far worse than the others.

Coralia and Trunk didn’t fare well as the arcane chains held them down albeit escaping the earth cage, Granarados fell beside them, weakened, and bruised as dark arrows chased, but eventually caught up to him, protruding behind his back.

“What… Is… This… Power.” said Coralia, she looked at the sleeping form of Ken, and thought how terrible of a power does he hold, slowly she felt herself succumbing to the dizziness and the pain.

Although she and Trunk joined together to bear the pain lesser, they did not expect it would be this much pain, they hadn’t met someone who could defeat them, so much as kill them, but they felt the presence of death in this situation.

Granarados was unconscious now beside them, and she too, then closed her eyes, as she and Trunk fell into sleep.

Everyone was left battered up and beaten, some unconscious, some, wounded, none could fathom the destruction this had made, and in everyone’s mind who did not believe in Ken, was that they regret ever tagging along.

But one person remained standing, enduring the pain,

But he slowly kneeled as the mental strain took a heavier toll on his body, he could not understand why this was happening, for in the past, none of this happened to them.

They would leave this phenomenon unscathed, as they all worked hard to avoid every single spell, but this was the first time, where they saw all the weapons take action, and went after them, hunted them down, and…

killed them.

‘Why?’ he thought, as he finally succumbed to death.

Light burst forth from the three circles as they swept on the surroundings, encasing everything in white light, even the form of the kneeling Wilbert.

The light subsided, and everyone was left sleeping on the ground, some still on their animal form or magical beast form, tucked snuggly on a makeshift beds on the ground, series of green and blue light spheres, the size of a marble floated in the air creating a serene atmosphere.

The spheres gradually gathered on each individual, healing them, and lifting the mental strain on their minds, the spell regeneration activated as magic circles the color of green appeared below everyone, and disappeared just as it arrived.

Ken, who was sleeping, woke up, and rose from his posture, but he had white eyes and silver hair, he held out his hand, calling upon his power to lift everyone including their makeshift bed of leaves and gather them around him.

He observed for a full minute, before settling them down to the ground.

“I hope to meet you all again.” said Ken, but this voice was not his own. Ken’s hair returned to black and he fell back to sleep again, on the ground, on the field of flowers, as if everything from before did not happen.

Silver light dispersed from his form and rose to the sky.

-Inside Ken’s subconscious-

“Open Main Menu.” said Ken, a small window presenting the words Skills/Spells, Customization, Quest/ Mission, Talent Tree, Status, Map, and Concept, encased in boxes appeared in front of him.

“Main Menu still works, nice, even though I could just call out the windows of these options, it’s still good to know that I have a formal way of opening each one.” He said.

“Are you talking about this to me or to yourself?” said White.

“No one in particular.” A sudden red dot appeared on the Notification Tab. “What’s this? Didn’t I already turned off all the notifications coming to warn me.” He looked at White, with a raised eyebrow.

“Don’t look at me.” White said.

“Don’t worry, I’m not accusing you.” Ken pressed the tab, and it allowed him to open the window of ‘Notifications’. “Good thing this works too.”

A message with the title “???” could be seen at the top of all the notification messages with a red dot, all the messages at the bottom either had the titles of “You have earned Mastery Points on Fire/Water/Wind/Earth/Lightning/Ice/Nature/Arcane/Light Moon/Dark Moon/Healing/Sword/Momentum/Memory/Protection/Enchant Spells” or “You have earned Mastery Points, which skill would you like to use it on?”.

The former had almost filled all of Ken’s notifications, sometimes in an orderly manner, while the latter was hard to come by.

But this particular message was new. Ken opened the notif and a message was left inside. He read…

‘Dear Host, I have come visited you for a while, but it seems that you are asleep, I hope next time we can have a conversation while you’re awake.

Sincerely, Luna.’

“Who’s this?” said Ken.

“I don’t know.” both looked at each other for a moment. They then looked at one particular word on the notifications.

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