The golden text didn't fade. It hung in the air. It should have dazzled him with its clean, golden glow, but Elio was practically unfazed.
[User has successfully fused with the Bi-Vessel System.]
[Sacred bond with the Dark Entity successfully severed.]
[Dark Constituent Stability: 25%]
Elio stared at the words, his breath hitching in his chest. He didn't feel "successful." He felt like a hollowed-out tree.
He reached out a trembling hand, his fingers passing through the golden light as if it were nothing.
"Go away," he whispered, his voice cracking. "Just... leave me alone."
"Trickery." His voice was a dry rasp. "Just another trick."
You're probably saying "What the fuck," right?
It's because he had seen things before. Shadows that moved when they shouldn't, whispers in the corners of his room that should be too much for a kid.
He had spent six years dealing with things he couldn't explain, things he couldn't grasp but always saw regardless.
He remembered being six years old, staring at a puddle in the village square and seeing a face looking back at him that wasn't his own. A face with eyes like spilled ink, a blob of darkness that eerily moved in the water.
His nights were always horrors.
Every time he'd run to his parents, sobbing about the shadows and darkness that whispered his name, they had just held him too tight.
"It's our fault, Elio," his father would mutter into his hair, his voice always thick with a guilt he couldn't name. "We made a choice we shouldn't have. But we'll fix it."
His parents had always looked at him with that heartbreaking mixture of love and terror, promising they would 'fix' it.
They never explained anything, and he was continuously drowning in his darkness.
And now, a glowing 'hallucination' is telling him about vessels and a wyrmling while he looks like a diseased boy.
Another stuff he didn't understand.
The screen flickered and vanished, but the warmth in his chest remained, a rhythmic thrumming that felt like a second heartbeat trying to sync with his own.
He had somehow managed to cancel his beast's manifestation, contently watching how the useless white spots disappeared from his skin and the pathetic tail receded to where it came from.
With a heavy breath, he turned away from the Serenum Hall and ran into the broad streets of the capital city.
He began to wander.
∆∆∆∆
The capital city of Serenum was a true masterpiece. It was a city built with substantial wealth, where the very stones seemed to be reinforced like iron tanks, buildings stood like monuments, wide streets opened and linked to many others that added to the city's beauty.
The city was flourished with adornments that probably cost the lives of some individuals, marred to the buildings that were carved stylishly despite their rigidity.
All of these testified to the city's incredible assets and the strength of tamers who had elemental affinities that made the very existence of the city possible.
Every corner screamed wealth in one way or the other, and boy, was the atmosphere enriched with mana? Hell, yeah.
Silver Rank tamers, Bronze Rank tamers, Iron Rank tamers and even a few Gold Rank tamers.
The difference was stark!
Iron Rank tamers were the ones pushing carriages and jumping from one side to another in their endless errands.
Most small shop owners were Bronze Rank, merchants were mostly Silver Rank, and few of the big ones were Gold.
The patronizers? They varied.
Elio passed apothecaries where the windows were lined with crystalline jars containing the parts of beasts.
He saw smiths hammering at one metal or another, beast cores being melted and forged with weapons or other accessories.
This was the kind of world he was supposed to be a part of, yet he was walking the streets as a pariah.
Memories of his childhood washed over, uninvited. How he got bullied, how other kids distanced themselves from him, how his mind would sometimes be overwhelmed with so many dark thoughts that he'd begin to question his age.
Another ping rang in his head.
[Dark Constituent Stability: 22%]
Elio didn't even look up. He continued his stray walk.
His mind soon ventured into thoughts about the academy, how he had planned to become a successful tamer. His parents had sacrificed their harvest, their luck, and eventually their lives just to get him there, yet he failed them.
"The whole world is against me, isn't it?"
He began to think he was truly cursed, that the villagers weren't wrong with their thoughts.
"How do one explain all of these? I'm definitely cursed."
His feet took him away from the sunlit avenues and into the deeper, narrower guts of the city. Here, the buildings were taller, leaning toward each other until the sky was just a jagged ribbon of blue. The smells changed—rotten vegetables, damp stone, and the sour scent of unwashed bodies.
He was passing a particularly dark street, his mind a blurred loop of guilt and anger, when a sound caught his ear.
It was the sharp cackle and the rhythmic slap of flesh, like someone, or a GROUP was preparing to thrash someone.
Elio's eyes suddenly widened.
He stopped. Normally, he would have run. His survival instinct was honed by years of being the village target. But today, the grief in his gut was a heavy pool, and it was turning into something sharper. Something reckless.
[Dark Constituent Stability: 20%]
His legs pushed him toward the shadows, his heart hammering against his ribs.
In the dim light of the narrow street, a man was being cornered. He wore a long, travel-stained coat and a wide-brimmed hat that was pulled low, casting his entire face into shadow.
Surrounding him were four men. They didn't wear the polished armor of the city guards. They wore scavenged leather and heavy boots, their faces twisted into the bored cruelty of professional thugs.
"Don't make this difficult, old man," one of the rogues hissed. "We saw you at an apothecary. That satchel of yours smells like high-rank mana-herbs. Hand it over and other nice possessions you have, and maybe we won't feed your fingers to our beasts."
The man in the hat didn't move. He stood perfectly still, his hands casually resting in the pockets of his coat.
He didn't even seem to be breathing.
No one could read his mana. They couldn't perceive his rank as a tamer. He felt... empty.
'They're going to kill him,' Elio thought.
The thugs shifted, their boots scraping on the grit. One of them summoned a beast, a small Bronze Rank Troll Dog that materialized beside its tamer, its canine fangs dripping with saliva.
"Now, are you gonna give it? There are three more beasts waiting." The leader demanded, a perfect, cynical smirk plastered on his face.
Something snapped inside Elio.
It wasn't bravery. It wasn't a heroic urge. It was a boiling, white-hot resentment for the world that let the strong devour the weak and something deeper, something that stirred in his chest.
His thoughts weren't completely his. He needed to pour the heaviness he felt on something.
"GET AWAY FROM HIM!"
The scream was raw, tearing at Elio's throat.
Again, he wasn't rationally thinking.
Before his brain could register the suicidal stupidity of the act, Elio launched himself. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't summon the Bloat Lizard. He was just a ball of tattered cloth and concentrated fury.
He crashed into the back of the leader, his small fists hitting at the man, his legs locking around the thug's waist with desperation.
"I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL ALL OF YOU!"
[Dark Constituent Stability: 18%... 15%...]
The thug let out a startled yelp, stumbling forward as he saw a kid with eyes that looked like a mixture of black and hazel.
The other three rogues froze, their eyes widening. They didn't look scared, they looked baffled.
A soot-stained kid was trying to bite their leader's ear off?
The man in the hat didn't move. He simply tilted his head, the shadow of his brim shifting just enough to catch a glimpse of the boy.
[Dark Constituent Stability: 11%... 10%...]
[WARNING! WARNING!! WARNING!!!]
[Abyssal Wyrmling is stirring.]
[Dark Mana escaping in 10… 9… 8…]
Elio didn't see the warning.
He only saw the leader's fist coming to strike him, and for the first time in his life, he didn't care if it landed.
He just wanted to hurt someone.
————~~~~~————~~~~~———
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LarryCashbox.