Chapter 70: The Bathory Family[3]
Darkness enveloped Xior, his eyes felt too heavy and his breath was too slow. The hole in his chest stayed there, it didn’t regenerate as it should.
The same feeling from all those years came back. It was death, it was slowly creeping up his spine.
He wanted to protest against the feeling but what could he even do? His skill was not working, he was losing blood and was crushed under rubble.
It reminded him of the times when he was weak, during the gate incident then when he was a slave.
He kept on suffering and along the way found people who made him want to live...a normal life.
All he ever wanted was a normal life, free from the atrocities of the Tower. His dream of a normal life slowly faded into being a naïve wish.
He was torn apart when his parents didn’t return from the Tower, it only pushed the wish into the deepest darkest parts of his consciousness.
But now he was not the helpless boy from before who could only dream and do nothing to achieve them.
He had power now, he was strong after suffering for so long. He wanted revenge against Derek and the others but he also wanted to take revenge against the Tower.
Against the monsters that reside on the top floors, he would bring down the gods with him if it meant he would be able to live a normal life later on...no, if the people around him were able to live a normal life.
He was selfishly selfless, he wanted to live a normal life as well...he wanted to be happy with them but at the same time he had to be the one to endure for their sake.
So that all of them can look towards the future without having to worry about anything.
...h..m...m..m
...
...
A sound came to his ears bringing his attention towards the sound, it felt like someone humming faintly.
His barely intact consciousness tried hard to clutch at what direction the humming came from but he couldn’t make sense of it.
This blood spear was different, it not only injured him but also had been sucking his blood. His face was now pale, his black eyes barely open and his mind drifting into countless thoughts.
His jaw tightened out of nowhere, a pressure pressed onto his head. His hazy and disoriented mind felt as if it would explode under the pressure.
His eyes shifted, they were replaced by rubies of the finest quality, deep in fear. Then his surroundings also changed.
The world around him collapsed and formed anew, the rubble on top of his disappeared, he found himself laying in a field of pale tall grass.
He looked at the sky and saw nothing there, the ground was uneven but he kept laying down. Then the humming sound from before continued.
It grew louder and louder as if the person humming was walking towards him. He got up and sat on the ground and looked around, his eyes widened as he saw a lone black hole looming over in the horizon.
It was the Abyss, the place he suffered the most. He was confused, why was it always the Abyss.
He slowly got up and looked at his body, it felt alien to him. He was slightly shorter than he was and white hair which went past his waist.
In the distance he saw a person walking towards him, it was the person who was humming. She was a short woman with a petite body, her white hair flowed in the wind behind her but her face...he was not able to see it.
It was blurry, but even so he saw that she had red eyes, which were so deep as if they had carried the sorrow of a millennia.
Yet she had a small smile on her face, she came closer and walked up to where he stood and looked up.
Her gaze felt as if a thousand people were looking at him, his heart started to beat wildly so that the beat could be heard easily.
Her pointy ears perked up as she put her ear on Xior’s chest.
BADUM! BADUM! BADUM!
His heart beat too hard and too erratically, but she never uttered a single word. She kept on humming.
Her soft hands grabbed his neck and lowered it, Xior thought she was going to hug him but then he felt a sharp pain as she bit the side of his neck.
Blood trickled down from the side of her mouth, her fangs were deep inside his neck. His whole body shuddered.
This was not real but why did it feel that it was, but he endured. After some time she was down.
He lay down on the ground once again and looked at her who sat near him, her face was blurry but he still could sense the warmth in her expression.
"It’s time for you to go back now." She muttered.
His world once again broke down and he found himself underneath the rubble once again. The blood tendril in his chest had melted and so his skill started working again.
The gaping hole in his chest regenerated but he didn’t rush to get out of the rubble.
He heard some men still in the room, maybe they hadn’t left. So he moved his arms and grabbed the heaviest piece of debris and threw it towards the entrance.
It hit the guards at the entrance and startled them. They took out their weapons since they thought Xior would jump out but to their amazement the other pieces of debris came flying and hit them.
Their groans filled the room as Xior got up from the hole he made in the wall, his gauntlet was still tightly strapped on his arm.
He moved his shoulders and pressed on the ground hard, his feet cracked the floor of the room as he shot towards the guards with such speed that they couldn’t even keep up.
The leader formed a shield of blood to guard against his attack but as Xior’s hand touched the shield it cracked and his punch landed on the leader’s face.
Seeing their leader down the others ran away before Xior could trash them, he walked towards the leader who was down to interrogate him but his body stopped moving.
It was as if it didn’t belong to him, from the distance a guard just like the leader walked towards Xior.
But there was a difference between him and the one he just punched. The new guard had better armor and a red cape on his back.
Xior put pressure on his body, he felt as if he would break every single bone in his body if he went against this but he couldn’t back down.
Not when he was reminded of his original goal he would never lose, he pushed against the force making his body stiff.
With loud cracks his bones broke, his muscles tore and he screamed in pain. But at last he freed himself from the blood manipulator.
*****
Becca, Alice, Meeka and Beatrice all ran in a different direction as a ship docked on the shore. From it jumped dozens of armed guards which started attacking them.
Due to their sheer numbers they had no choice but to run, with Xior not with them he couldn’t think of taking them on.
So they ran away, the guards also split up while seven of them ran towards the entrance of the underground city.
Their loud thumping trampled the grass as they ran behind the blood trails left by the women.
It was bad, the blood which dropped on the ground was only getting sucked downwards and being used to satiate the hunger of the Mother.
Back down, Xior struggled against the blood manipulator but he managed to cut his neck off to kill him.
He didn’t think of anything else and ran towards the surface but he was blocked by seven figures wearing the same armor as the blood manipulator.
He charged them as he had to save the women above, he retracted the claws of his gauntlet and took out his sword from the inventory and slashed at them.
An arc of fire jumped at them from his sword but they dispersed and dodged the fire and encircled him.
Then one jumped towards him and clashed his sword with his, Xior blocked the strike and punched the guard in his solar plexus which made him cough hard and fall down gasping for air.
Then two others jumped at him, one with an axe and one with a sword, he ducked under the axe swing and kicked the leg of the one who had the axe.
He staggered forward and his helmet was met with Xior’s boot which made a dent on it as he was blasted away.
The one with the sword swung vertically but Xior grabbed the sword with one hand and head-butted him not before kicking him.
He thought they were easy but then the three he had beaten down got up and stretched their bodies as if nothing happened.
From the helmet their blood red eyes could be seen, he understood these were the elites of the elite and this fight wouldn’t be easy.