Chapter 59: A Moment of Respite

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"To Realize My Dream, I Will Perch On Top Of Their Corpses."

- Griffith, (Berserk)

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<(Omniscient POV)> 

"Take that you undead fucker. Let's see you recover from this." Essence, Ducra's daughter mocked as one of her hands clad in crimson colored aura of chi mercilessly crushed the heart of the Untitled sibling in front of her.

"How? This is impossible. I am a true immortal. I can't be killed." The female Untitled uttered with a voice of disbelief as he felt the clutch of death on him getting strong while failing to heal himself.

"An immortal can kill another immortal even without any special immortal-slaying magical weapons. You should have studied more about how the supernatural world works instead of always trying to show off your mystical powers and chi sorcery. Could have saved your life." Essence smirked as she nursed the injury on her stomach while walking toward the direction where she last saw her mother fighting one of the other Untitled siblings all while the dead Untitled slowly turned into black specks of dust and evaporated away into the wind. 

"Are you finally done, daughter? You took quite a while. I thought I taught you better than that." Ducra snarkily commented as she calmly stood in front of dozens of destroyed undead bodies that were no longer moving or twitching.

"I am guessing that you took care of the one you were fighting then?" Essence said with an ugly expression on her face making it clear that she didn't at all like her mother questioning her abilities. 

"I did, I sealed the brother whom I was fighting before. He is now forever imprisoned in the fiery pits of the inner circle of hell with no chance to ever escape, never to return again." Ducra answered with a slight undertone of resignation lingering in her otherwise impassive voice.

"I see. I guess that counts as a victory as well. Now, let's go. We have six more rotting monsters to kill. Let's kill the rest of the Untitled and end this war forever, only then can we have peace..."

"No, we don't. We have done our part, we have defeated the ones whom we were destined to defeat. Now, it's time for us to lay down our weapons and keep our trust in the Knight of Vengeance. His fate is the one overshadowing the fate of my other immortal siblings." Ducra mysteriously said as she took out a small smoking pipe from inside her cloak and began to smoke it in a relaxed manner like she didn't have anything to do with this entire thing at all.

"Do you mean Bruce by your needlessly jumbled-up words Mother? Have you finally gone mad? You are placing your trust in fate, of all things? And a little boy whom you hadn't even met a month ago? Have you finally gone crazy from all the centuries of pent-up frustration?" Essence wore a scowl on her face as she looked at her mother with eyes full of disbelief and confusion.

"Maybe I have grown a little crazy, yes. I guess we will see soon just how much crazy I have become. After all, his battle should be over by now as well. Let's go and see if he is still alive. Who knows, maybe that kid will give us a surprise." Ducra smiled as she began to walk slowly in a certain direction while making a small gesture at her daughter to follow after her. 

Essence had no idea about what her mother was talking about. All she knew was that she wanted this entire ordeal to be over. She wanted the Untitled dead no matter what. She had always thought that she could sacrifice anything to achieve that. Yet when it came to actually defeating the evil group, she hesitated in involving others in it. Unlike her mother, she didn't want to drag others into a problem that was basically theirs. Even though she really wanted revenge for all the All-caste monks who had died in this war against the Untitled, she didn't want to do it at the risk of the lives of Bruce and Nyssa. 

The two might not be the most social and warmest of persons, but they definitely had good hearts in them. However, most important of all was the fact that even though Essence would never admit it in public, she still considered the two of them her friends, allies that she trusted. And she didn't want to be the person to bury her friends.

As Bruce had once said to her, those who break the Rules are Scum, that's true. But those who abandon their friends are worse than Scum.

***

"What?... How did this happen?... We were supposed to be the future conquerers of this realm. So, how come are we all being slaughtered like animals?" An Untitled male, the last of his creed groaned in pain as he felt the All-blades penetrate his soft darkness-filled heart.

Weakly looking all around him, he saw all that was left of his siblings was just lifeless black dust. He knew that they had lost the battle the moment the monster in front of him had hunted one of his sisters effortlessly while treating it like some sort of practice game but in his utter arrogance and pride, all of the Untitled had denied the obvious and continued waging war instead of fleeing.

If he had fled the scene in time, he would have at least kept his life but alas, he wasn't so fortunate. In his utter anger, while being drunk in power, he and the other living members of his clan had tried to kill the boy who had dared to attack them. However, what he hadn't known at that time was that the boy was not at all a human. He was a monster, a demon in human skin who only treated them as practice dummies.

"You, who are you, you bastard?" He painfully groaned, probably his last words as he could feel his body quickly burning up under the heat of the All-blades.

The Untitled leader was not at all proud of his choice of last words but he wanted to know the name of the one who killed him, the identity of the being who slaughtered him as well as the reason why such a scary monster like this boy had targeted their clan. He wouldn't be able to be at peace if he didn't know at least that.

"You really wanna know, don't you?... Well, I could tell you but guess what? I am not in the mood to talk right now. So... just die." The boy bared his teeth in a twisted cruel smile as he twisted his sword inside the Untitled slightly, lighting up the mystical sword in a brilliant glow that immediately burned up what remained of the immortal necromancer.

"And that brings the count to 6. These guys really are like cockroaches. No matter how many I kill, there are still some of them remaining. Huh? Are you done as well, Nyssa?" Bruce asked as he looked at the assassin slowly approaching him with steady yet silent steps.

"Yes, I am. I killed the entire undead horde they had awakened from the dead. I even found our Assassin team. Quite amazingly, they are all still alive. A miracle truly since they were supposed to be the litter of the runt." Nyssa informed in a nonchalant tone, seemingly not caring about them at all.

He was incredibly fortunate to not lose even a single person from the team assigned to him. The attack by the Untitled was so merciless that the single attack had wiped out more than ninety percent of the surviving All-caste members leaving only a few monks alive. This alone could show the severity of the battle that had just taken place here on the mountain between the two supernatural organizations.

"Are they all right? Do they need any emergency medical attention?" Bruce asked with a frown, feeling somewhat responsible for not helping them in time and instead just focusing on trying out his new pair of swords.

"No, but they definitely need some motivation. They looked like they wanted to kill themselves in shame at not being able to perform as well as they expected themselves to perform." Nyssa joked.

"Well, I think I can help with that. We should also find Ducra and Essence as well. I sure hope that they are still alive. Let's goooo.... oh shit" Bruce had fallen down with the first step he took. His body was deprived of any chi or energy to move, even the twin blades in his hands disappeared from a lack of chi necessary enough to maintain them.

"What happened? Are you all right? Are you hurt or something or did you get some internal injuries?" Nyssa asked, worried about him.

"No, i-it is just t-that I think I used too much chi playing around with my new toys. Maybe, I should first learn the basics of chi management or something." Bruce weakly chuckled as he felt the heavy exhaustion kicking in his body, something that happened for the first time since he went through the entire body enhancement procedure. 

'I guess I don't have the infinite amount of chi hack, do I?' He thought to himself as he felt his eyelids getting heavier. 'Never could I ever even in my wildest dreams imagine that I would one day be losing my consciousness like this after pushing myself so hard in a battle like some shonen protagonist.' He chuckled to himself as he silently continued to lie on the ground, waiting for his chi reserves to regenerate from meditation.

He did not even have enough energy to try to regenerate his chi using his breathing techniques.

He had heard of Ducra and Essence fighting with two of the Untitled. He could only hope that the mother-daughter duo succeeded in defeating them because he knew it as a fact that he would not be able to get his sword up and working again for the next couple of days. That's how much drained he was from constantly using it at such a huge power while performing extremely fancy moves and maneuvers. 

The only reason he was so brave at sleeping in the open while still having possible enemies close was because of the fact that he knew Cortana was always active on his watch and listening to everything. She could protect him using the various little yet deadly tools hidden all over his body if she ever sensed that he was in some sort of danger. For example, a small EM wave-based forcefield that could be generated by the belt he was currently wearing alone could protect him from a full-powered missile strike from an army.

"Bruce, can I ask you something?" Nyssa asked with some minor hesitation in her voice as she also laid down beside him to rest, not caring about the team that was loyally waiting for her.

"Yeah, sure." He answered in a lazy voice, barely being able to keep himself awake.

"At that time before you rescued me there, for a few seconds I thought I was gonna die. I looked back into my life but I did not find anything that I had ever done in my life that truly made me happy. Whatever I had done, I had done for my father. I never even had a boyfriend or anything. So, I promised myself that if I survived, I would... I would at least try to date someone, to experience how it feels like to have someone who cares for you and to care for him in return. But, I don't really know anyone worthy enough to be with me. But then I thought about you. So, will... w-will you... can you be like, I mean do you want like, go out on maybe some sort of umm, like you know... Do you want to go out with me Bruce?" Nyssa finally asked with a light red blush spreading on her cheeks.

"Hmm Hmm. Yeah sure." Bruce muttered almost incomprehensively, his mind befuddled with exhaustion and desire to just let go and get some sleep, something that Nyssa failed to realize and attributed to shyness instead.

"Oh. Wow, Thanks, I guess... That was easy. I was afraid that you would reject me or say something like you already have a girlfriend or something like that. I guess I was thinking too much into it." Nyssa happily remarked, glad at not having to face rejection at the very first proposal in her life.

Bruce however didn't reply. He had already fallen asleep due to a serious lack of chi and was in no position to continue the conversation or even realize how deep a hole he had just dug for himself, something that would severely drain both his physical and mental energies than the pair of mystical swords ever could.

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