Book 1: Chapter 19

The Lightning Emperor walked back into the hut and seeing that the boy had fainted, he laughed. “Not so tough now, eh?”

“Now we’ll just wait for that Baccaus to come scrambling back here. Though I suspect he wouldn’t dare trade two saint equipments and the holy book of the wizened for a little brat. Either way, I got a grade 7 defensive magical equipment from this trip.”

The Lightning Emperor made himself at home and sat on top of the wooden dining table. He casted a Lightning Coffin to encase Cyil, just to make sure Baccaus couldn’t teleport in and grab the boy. Afterwards, he took out some smoked meat from his spatial equipment and munched on it, quietly waiting for Baccaus to come.

While the Lightning Emperor was doing all of this Cyil was in a dark place.

***

Cyil opened his eyes to find that he was floating again in that pitch black space he had entered during his first meditation period.

Cyil willed it and his floating body instantly grounded itself onto the dark space.

“Why am I here again? How did I get here?” Cyil asked himself. The last thing he remembered was talking to Betsy. He had asked Betsy to come to bed then….

Like a bursting dam, everything that Cyil had been subconsciously repressing gushed back to him. All the events that took place from the time Betsy was vaporized to the time the Lightning Emperor kicked him unconscious--all of those thoughts returned in a blink.

Cyil fell to his knees, clutching his head in agony. Tears welled up in his eyes.

“BETSY!” Cyil cried out to the empty blackness where the sound traveled on to oblivion, swallowed up by space.

The tears in Cyil’s eyes did not fall and he blinked them away. What replaced them was a sharp, murderous gleam.

“Lightning Emperor you said your name was,” Cyil murmured under his breath. “Lightning Emperor,” Cyil repeated. “Lightning Emperor,” Cyil said again for a third time. “I’ll kill you!”

*BOOM*

Cyil’s eyes turned completely gray and a visible shock wave exploded from Cyil, blasting outwards. A plague of gray mist creeped from out of the darkness and swirled inwards towards Cyil’s now floating body. The mist rushed into Cyil, hungry and excited!

Like a black hole, Cyil was the focal point of the endless gray mist that was now seeping into him.

As the gray mist entered, Cyil felt strength surge through every cell in his body. Yet Cyil also felt himself lose control over his body but he didn’t care. As long as he could kill the Lightning Emperor and avenge Betsy he would do anything!

Cyil could feel that the gray mist would grant him boundless strength. Enough to kill the Lightning Emperor. This feeling grew stronger as more of the gray mist was absorbed. Soon, Cyil began to hear voices goading him on. Their whispers were enticing and promising:

“We can give you strength. Accept us.”

“Give in to the anger. It’ll give you strength.”

“Don’t resist us. We’ve always been near you.”

“Let go. Just let it all go.”

“You’ll be fine in our hands. Trust us. Leave everything to us.”

Cyil thought something was wrong but his mind was preoccupied with revenge and the anger pushed him onwards. “Okay,” Cyil nodded and let go of all thoughts and resistance, allowing the gray mist and voices to do what they had promised.

***

Baccaus was quietly moving through the black space. He had long since given up on using spells to attack and instead choose to preserve his energy. He felt like he had been flying around for a long time but didn’t know exactly how long. He had tried a lot of different things but couldn’t get out of the space so Baccaus decided to just continue in one direction until something came up.

As Baccaus continued to fly through the dark space, he suddenly felt an enormous shockwave to the left of him. The shockwave knocked Baccaus senseless and flung him down onto the invisible dark ground. Baccaus slammed onto the ground and almost coughed up some blood from the impact.

“What in the Nakrul was that?!” Baccaus knew that if he were closer to that shockwave he could have very well died! What sort of energy was that strong that it could kill him with just its shockwaves. Baccaus was a bit frightened by the prospect but he was more curious than anything.

“I need to find the source of that shockwave. It may be a way out of here. In any case, it’s better than this aimless wandering.” Baccaus shot into the air and doubled on his speed towards the origin of the shockwave that was still very far away.

***

The Lightning Emperor chewed on his favorite smoked meat. He had just started on his second piece when he noticed a strange gray mist seeping out of the little boy.

“Hmm?” The Lightning Emperor was intrigued by the appearance of the gray mist. He didn’t sense any danger from the mist or expect any danger from the little boy. He was a Rank 8 Level 6 mage after all! No, what the Lightning Emperor hoped was that the grey mist was from another magical equipment Baccaus had given to the boy.

The Lightning Emperor hopped off the table. He took a step towards Cyil then immediately flashed backwards.

Sweat rolled down the Lightning Emperor’s forehead. With that step forwards he had felt that he was walking towards Death. He had no other reason but his battle hardened instincts to tell him that the gray mist was bad news.

Still, the Lightning Emperor was angry. It was good no one was around to witness this embarrassing scene, otherwise the Lightning Emperor would have had to dig a hole to hide in. What an embarrassment that he, a rank 8 mage, was frightened by a little boy who wasn’t even a rank 1 mage!

Despite his anger, the Lightning Emperor trusted his battle instincts. They had kept him alive in many dangerous situations.

As the Lightning Emperor was hesitating over what to do, the gray mist floated onto the Lightning Coffin and something unbelievable happened. The Lightning Coffin didn’t break, but its elemental energy was being drained! It was decaying so fast that the Lightning Coffin almost instantly disappeared.

When the Lightning Emperor saw what the gray mist had done he almost shat himself. “Fuck! That’s the Death Aura! This kid is a Death Saint?!”

The Lightning Emperor was now utterly terrified. He didn’t care about his status anymore because a Death Saint was not someone to be messed with. “Fuck!” The Lightning Emperor cursed again. He cursed the guild leader of Black Hand for not telling him about the boy’s background and he cursed himself for acting so rashly.

The Lightning Emperor vaguely remembered the boy muttering about being a saint when he was talking to his dead friend, but at that time the Lightning Emperor just thought it was crazy talk.

“Damn.” The Lightning Emperor’s first thought was to flee, but he quickly threw out that idea. “I have to kill him right now. Otherwise, he will chase me to the ends of the Nakrul to kill me. I have to kill him now while he’s weak and defenseless!”

The Lightning Emperor quickly made his decision and acted decisively.

Chain Lightning!

Wads of lightning bolts swam down like serpents from the cloudless sky and struck the gray mist which was now covering the majority of the hut.

The bolts entered the gray mist with a vicious ferocity but before they could penetrate even a foot in, they withered away.

“Not gonna be that easy, huh.” The Lightning Emperor truly didn’t want to come in contact with the Death Aura so he used a long ranged attack, but it didn’t work at all. From what he had read about Death Saints, the Lightning Emperor knew that attacking from outside the range of the Death Aura was the second best choice (with the first simply being to flee). He just hadn’t expected his attack to be so weak.

What the Lightning Emperor had read was true. Long ranged attacks were the best method when fighting a Death Saint because their Death Auras could only expand so far and decay so much. What the Lightning Emperor didn’t know was that his attack wasn’t weak at all. If his attack were used on a normal Death Aura his attack would reach the Death Saint with at least half of its power intact. But sadly, what the Lightning Emperor was facing was the Death God’s Aura!

The history books didn't have much information on Death Saints to being with, not to mention the Death God’s Arua!

“I’ll have to go in the Death Aura and kill him in an instant. I don’t know how long I can last but I have to act before this Aura spread even further!” The Lightning Emperor summoned all his defensive equipments and took out his treasured weapon-- a grade 8 offensive magical equipment called lightning splitting sabre.

The Lightning Emperor revolved a massive amount of wind, light, earth, fire, and water particles around himself, creating a lightning elemental armour. The combination of the various elements made the lightning that the Lightning Emperor used. This was different from Baccaus’ two elemental fusion attack because the lightning was naturally developed for the Lightning Emperor whereas Baccaus was forcing the two elements (wind and darkness) to fuse.

In any case, those who have an elemental body outside of the normal 6 (Light, Darkness, Wind, Fire, Water, and Earth) are called mutated elemental bodies and lightning was a very much esteemed mutated elemental body...

“Time for you to die now boy!” Forgetting about the saint equipments that the boy might be worth, the Lightning Emperor prioritized in killing Cyil first. The fear of a Death Saint was evident.

Sonic Flash!

The Lightning Emperor rushed into the Death Aura. It was almost like the Lightning Emperor had teleported since he was moving so fast.

As the Lightning Emperor reached Cyil, he ignored the fact that his elemental armour had already been decayed and swung his sabre at Cyil’s waist; the Lightning Emperor intended to bisect Cyil and charge straight through to the other side of Death Aura in one breath.

The sabre cut out as fast as a lighting bolt.

With the full strength of a rank 7 warrior bolstered with rank 8 mage’s magic amplifications the sabre carved its way past the dense gray mist surrounding Cyil.

As the sabre drew closer and closer to Cyil, the Lightning Emperor grinned, breathing out a sigh of relief. Then his sigh froze midway and time seemed to have stopped. His sabre no longer budged and his body felt heavy and slow, as if he were an old man.

As if forced to, the Lightning Emperor inadvertently turned his head to look at the boy’s face. Staring back at him were two big eyes void of anything but that same grayness that was Death.