Chapter 6170Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhtiLyIRzoG
Not all fun things are good for health
I hate Galvarinus. I came to that conclusion when we reached the top of the plateau where the temple stood over the forest.
I turned back and looked across the ocean of green leaves that we had finally crossed. It took us a straight twelve hours to cross the ocean of leaves and as the sun was finally sinking, we had finally made it to this central plateau that rose right in the middle of these hills covered in dense forest.
In the twelve hours swam through the forest, I was almost eaten by trees three times, almost got strangled by a giant snake, entered a boxing match with mutant Chimpanzee equal to my size, ah and I can’t forget the mammoth who almost served me flat, and off course, there was the whole scene with the manticore. All while Galvarinus was handling surveillance.
‘Hey, it was far less animals than what would have been if I wasn’t here.’ Galvarinus complained, I admit, he was a little more edgy when I pointed that out, but I was the one almost getting eaten all this time.
‘Easy for you to say, all of them wanted to have a taste of me.’ I noticed they were all aiming for me. Was I that easy of a target? Because last I heard, the predators were experts in whitling out the weaklings.
‘Ah,’ Galvarinus nodded, ‘Well, every predator here sees you as a big – and I emphasis a lot on the big – source of energy, so of course they will chose you over me. Except for the Chimp, he just wanted to duke it out with someone his size.’
‘Hahaha, very funny,’ I shivered, ‘I am still considering whether I should sit or not. I doubt a few of my bones at the hip are out of place.’
‘Don’t worry, the people we are waiting for are actually experts in healing and medicines,’ Galvarinus told me.
‘As a matter of fact,’ I pointed out, ‘What in the world are you drawing?’
Ever since we landed on the plateau; of course, after scolding me for being a baby girl, Galvarinus had been scribing something on the ground with what looked like a solid stone chalk, like the ones they use on blackboard except this one was writing on whatever it was used on.
‘What I am drawing,’ he explained, ‘is a simple target gate. It is a two-way warp gate that can be used as a signal as well. All you have to do, is make one of these on one side, and send someone to the place where you want to go. The receiver checks whether it is safe to warp or not and once he is satisfied, he draws the mirror circle like I am doing, pours some spiritual pressure in and boom! We have a warp gate that can remain open for until the receiver has enough energy to maintain it.’
‘Hmm,’ I admired as I saw Galvarinus creating intricate details and markings that I did not understand at all. ‘So, this is how you use a spiritual energy?’ I pointed out curiously as the mosaic of symbols became ever so abstruse.
‘Yes,’ Galvarinus chimed in, ‘You see, normal people cannot use the excess spiritual energy they precipitate. It radiates from them and gets dispersed into the air. People like us, we are same; but the difference comes with what we can do with it. We don’t simply radiate it. With practice, we can store it, bend it, transform it, burn it, share it. If you have the skill, you can pretty much do anything with your spiritual energy. And since you wanted to know if you were one of us or not, why don’t you try it once.’
Galvarinus looked towards me with a sneer as he pointed out with his free hand towards the circle.
‘Yeah, why not… wa-wait!’ I retorted and stepped back, ‘What do you mean you try?’
‘Why don’t you try and be receiver end of this warp gate?’ Galvarinus offered with a plain face.
No-no-no-no! You can’t say that with that plain face.
‘You can’t be serious, can you?’ I whimpered.
‘Oh snap off,’ Galvarinus beckoned towards me, ‘All you have to do, is try and put some energy into the circle, once it has enough energy you step back and watch the fireworks.’
‘Those can’t be safe!’ I pointed out, I remembered something that Galvarinus mentioned to me just a while back. ‘Besides, didn’t you say that this warp gate thing was something that was very complex and risky for first timers and they risk failing it and stuff.’
‘You can’t be afraid to fail even before you try it?’ Galvarinus pointed out with a poker face. ‘Besides, you aren’t going to be doing the complicated stuff, its already done within the circle, you will only be feeding it with spiritual energy.’
‘How am I supposed to feed something I can’t even see?’ I asked in bewilderment.
‘You can’t, since you haven’t tried!’ Galvarinus told me as he finished the circle and stood up clapping the dust of the chalk off his hands. ‘Now come here and put your hand right here, at this spot, if you do it right you will get a chance to use your own spiritual energy for the first time.’
‘Wait,’ I said and took a few steps back, ‘I think I am gonna pass. You see, I am just a newbie and it is best if I don’t risk doing something this complex…’
Yes, when Galvarinus mentioned it to me that the warp gate was something that could have killed me without a moment’s notice, separating my soul from my body just by having a mere doubt. I didn’t want to risk any sort of connection with it.
What if I messed up? There were people who were about to use this gate, right? What if I messed up and they…
‘Now, now!’ Galvarinus’ face tightened up, ‘I think we just talked about you not being a girl just a few moments ago.’
‘More like you scolded me, but this is different,’ I tried to retort but Galvarinus vanished, reappearing right behind me with his hand on my shoulder.
‘Listen kid!’ He said in a heavy tone, ‘Believe it or not, you are standing a mere 7 hours away from possibly being wiped out of this world. Are you telling me, you don’t have the guts to try and save yourself in whatever manner possible? Are you going to chicken out just by thinking that you might go wrong? You miss all the opportunities you don’t take! Now go and do as I said, those two people being here is more important than me being here, we can’t move forward without them!’
Galvarinus pushed me gently. I looked back at him, and my eyes went wide. He was smiling with his arms crossed.
For a brief moment my vision blurred. There was a sharp pang and I blacked out.
**
‘AGNUS!’ the voice of a man pierced the sky. ‘You don’t have to do this Agnus! There has to be another way!’
‘No Amarcus! This is the only way! Take him! You have to raise him well; you are the only one who can!’
‘No, I can’t do it without you! Please!’ The man cried as his voice broke down like a glass.
‘I was born with this weight on me, I have to take it on!’ the female replied with a strong, yet shattered voice. ‘It was fun, being with you… I am blessed with this life, and I can’t ask more from it.’
There was a huge blast and the entire place went silent.
‘AGNUS!’ The man cried behind the woman.
Suddenly, there was a whizzing sound and the whole place was filled with a miss-mash of different overlapping cadences.
‘No… where is he going! Somebody! Grab him… Why! WHY!!! I can’t move… NO!!!!!!!!!’
The howl that came next, was the cry of a soul being ripped to shreds.
**
I found myself looking back at Galvarinus. What was that?
My breathing was slow, yet calm. My senses, what was going on with them? I had never felt this. Every single cell of my body felt responsive. I could feel it, every single point in my body, was overflowing with it.
The voices that I had heard, the cry of that man. Every single fiber of my body, from the bones to muscles felt his anguish, his loss. The weight, of his devastation.
Why, did I just hear that? My vision was back and I felt extremely disoriented. It was as if I was listening to something from someone else’s memory. All I saw was darkness, but the voices were crystal clear.
And for some reason I knew what the woman, Agnus, was aiming to do.
Who was I? People like them existed around the world, people who fought to protect the ones they love.
Whom, did I have?
There was a pull towards the ground as I gathered the fragments of my existence. Quite literally.
For that moment, I felt each part of my body as a separate entity. The world around me felt as if it had evaporated as I bent over the edge of the figure where Galvarinus pointed.
When I found what he meant, my vision tunneled, the hexagon at the ground that Galvarinus had mad was the one thing that existed.
I took my hand and plunged it straight through the ground. It went through solid rock as if it was air.
Then… it happened.
The sound of the blast was like that of a huge firework going off right next to you. The air was blasted away creating a huge vacuum. Swirls of dust rose to cover the entire area stirring up a dust devil right where I was kneeling.
But nothing fazed me. Nothing even felt as if it was touching me, so I didn’t falter.
A few seconds later, the dust devil settled down and right in front of me, stood a tower of light piercing through the sky like a sword made out of pure gold.
I looked around at myself. I was glowing, the same shade of gold as that of the tower of light as the energy flowed through me.
The energy. Galvarinus was right, I could feel it. Like my very own breath. I could sense it, like the skin on my bones. I could bend it, like the way I control my vison. And I could control it, like the muscles inside my body.
‘This is…’ I tried to form my words. The scene that I was witnessing, that I was making! It was beyond anything of my comprehension. The words… they failed me, for the first time since I was a child.
‘Magnificent!’’ Galvarinus completed the sentence for me. I couldn’t see him, but his tone was that of a child receiving his favorite present for his birthday.
‘Ayu, you can stop now, that is enough,’ Galvarinus called in the same excited tone, ‘oh, just pull your hand out of the ground. Jeez, I thought you were full of it, but you were beyond what I calculated.’ He added.
Beyond his calculation, so even Galvarinus, someone who was considered as one of the top brasses of the Eirineftes was left bewildered by this scene.
‘What exactly, went out of your calculation?’ I wondered.
‘Ah,’ Galvarinus tried to explain, ‘take it as we just miscalculating a little bit of your potential energy reserves. We had a clue that you had some good quality reserves, but you are a little bit better than average at the very least. With some training…’
As I saw him, his face turned distant.
‘I see,’ I said, when he put it that way, it was hard to comprehend what I had done myself. ‘Well, for some reason, it felt natural to me.’
‘It did?’ suddenly, Galvarinus’ face contorted, ‘Can you define natural?’
‘Well…’ I tried to explain it in the best way possible. Like how it felt like I was just using an extended version of my body, like how the energy felt like part of my senses and my body itself.
With each detail Galvarinus’ face lit up even more, gradually thinning into the serious mode that I had only seen once until now.
‘Ayaan,’ he said in a firm voice, grabbing my shoulder, ‘whatever you do, don’t use spiritual energy until I say so.’
‘Wait, what!’ I complained, immediately I felt shocked, why was I reacting like this?
‘Listen,’ Galvarinus tried to explain.
‘No, you listen,’ I tried to argue. ‘I have been doing everything you asked me to do, you even forced me to use something I was not accustomed to and now that I have done it, I want to keep using it…’
‘Ayu,’
‘It felt so good,’ I tried to reason, I couldn’t let this power slide me, the feeling of being able to use something like this, I felt… special, I felt… powerful.
I could do anything; I could achieve everything I desire. With this power.
I looked at my hand, ‘I want to use it even more,’ my face turned towards Galvarinus but it was too late.
‘AYAAN!’ it came out of nowhere.
As my consciousness faded out, my head felt light. Not by falling unconscious, but by something entirely else. The golden glow had faded off my body and all my muscles went straight limp.
‘Wait,’ I wondered, ‘Why was I arguing in the first place? A moment ago, I didn’t even know what spiritual energy was like and now I was so obsessed that I was arguing with Galvarinus about using it more!’
Was that really something I desired? It felt… as if I had not said those words of my own volition.
But was I wrong? I felt like I had found the best Burger in the world on a lifetime free supply coupon.
Then I heard her voice again, the lady that I had heard in that white space. The same voice from back when I was warped.
‘There are two sides to every coin. If you dive into the roaring sea, you must prepare to fight the waves, even if you ride the wildest storm!’
The last thing I said before I completely blacked out, was…
‘Sorry, Galvarinus… looks like it wasn’t that easy after all.’
170Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEOFlNrYflw
