I am the Only Son of Nyx

Chapter 178: Body Tempering with Kaelmorath (2)

Kai continued on his body tempering process, enduring attack after attack.

And with it, his body grew.

Bone by bone. Tissue by tissue. Organ by organ.

Noxian’s rigorous and gruesome training had made his arms burn—and his blood boil from having to feel the pain of a hundred years. But this was an entirely different species of pain. The kind he would suffer in battle. The kind that left something behind when it healed.

Swoosh—!

A war hammer swung from the side, cratering his chest, slipping past his defense perfectly.

Kai felt his ribcage shatter inward; the sharp splinters stabbed into his lungs like a handful of needles. He coughed up blood but remained standing. And before the scream tore out of his throat, the blob’s energy flooded him.

His broken ribs pulled back into place, the splinters reformed, and his punctured lungs sealed.

By the time the pain vanished, he was breathing again, and the scream never rang.

Once he recovered and raised his gaze, the living corpses had already stopped.

It was a long pause that made his eyes narrow.

"Must be the start of level two..." He uttered silently.

Just as he said that, two living corpses twitched and their red eyes flickered in unison.

Even though the pain was making him lose his mind, it was far more manageable as the blob healed him before the pain could really settle in his mind. Each one left behind phantom pain, but it’s still far better than a long-lasting pain.

Kai sacrificed his arms. His torso. His legs. Even his head.

Both living corpses attacked in coordinated waves, one high and one low, fast and heavy, and Kai threw his body in front of every strike that threatened the blob. His hard femurs cracked after absorbing a low sweep. His sternum buckled after catching a thrust. His skull fractured when he ducked too late and took a pommel strike to the temple.

Every time, the blob mended him and made him stronger.

Swish—!

Shit! When did that one get there?!

Kai saw a living corpse already slipped past him and slammed its axe into the blob.

It was sliced into two before his very eyes.

And almost instantly, the blob absorbed the energy it gave to Kai to mend its body, returning it to normal. On the other hand, Kai could clearly feel that his body was losing its durability. Just as Kaelmorath said, failure meant having his hard-earned bodily strength taken away.

Not all of it, but enough to make Kai feel it, and this made him even more ferocious.

Enduring the pain once is one thing; he wouldn’t complain.

But enduring it two times annoyed him as the pain only stacked, thanks to the phantom pains.

An unknown amount of time passed.

And when the attacks ceased, signaling the third and final level, Kai straightened. His chest heaved up and down heavily. Even though the blob healed and strengthened his body, it was not the same for his stamina.

It was exhausting to protect the blob and suffer a grievous wound.

Even so, Kai looked down at his own body—it was now a monument to reforging. The aches were still there, a deep-set thrum beneath the skin, but beneath the ache was something else entirely. Density. Mass.

A sense that the frame carrying him had been upgraded piece by piece, sacrifice by sacrifice.

Right now, his body was somewhat numb from the body tempering process.

And he allowed himself to smile as he was quite sure his body had become even more durable than it already was before he came to meet with Kaelmorath. However, that smile was fleeting as when the numbness disappeared, he felt something else entirely.

Kai was struck by the culmination of phantom pains that had accumulated until now.

He suffered severe traumas so many times across his entire body that when the numbness in his body disappeared, the phantom pains hidden underneath came at him all at once. It didn’t make him scream, but it did make his body lock up.

Freeze.

But he was given no time to idle as level three started.

Multiple living corpses’ eyes burned brighter, and they would come not in twos but in a tide, and Kai would need to move, or else the progression he gained would all be lost, taken away by the blob.

Despite the urgency as the living corpses were about to attack, he wasn’t ready.

I have to... But I can’t. My body is not listening to me.

Perhaps due to the accumulated pain that he had suffered from start to finish, but his body was now locked up. His hesitation to protect the blob overwhelmed his body, forcing it to completely ignore his mind, which was telling it to move.

Just then, Kaelmorath’s voice seeped into his ears.

"The Reckless Fray Ending also dwelled in righteousness."

Kai looked to the side and saw Kaelmorath standing by the broken cathedral’s entrance.

He was watching Kai closely, knowing exactly what was happening.

"Not only would your body need to be strong to pay the price of recklessness, but your will would also need to be strong," Kaelmorath continued and crossed his muscular arms. "You’ll need to be willing to put yourself in danger, even knowing the pain that you would feel."

"Be willing to put myself in danger regardless of the pain...?" Kai repeated silently.

Slowly but surely, he began to understand the Reckless Fray Ending.

It revolved around paying the price to protect the weak and the dear regardless of what it’d do to him, and frankly, this wasn’t what Kai expected. He didn’t know that the recklessness would be tied to selflessness.

Even so, he didn’t mind.

Kai’s eyes returned to the living corpses that were already twitching and beginning to move.

He gritted his teeth and looked down at his body.

Come on.

Ferociously, his mind fired an electric pulse to his body through a command, telling it to respond to his will to protect the blob. It wasn’t easy to make his body listen, but the command started to go through.

Four living corpses lunged forward, weapons drawn and ready to strike.

Kai’s eyes bulged, "Move!"

Swoosh—!

He exploded forward, a blur of desperate motion—and met the four living corpses before they could reach the dark blob. Perhaps it was the adrenaline inside him, but he could see the world in slow-motion, allowing him to parry two vertical strikes with his forearms.

Then, he blocked the third with his shoulder as there was no time.

And the fourth came low—a horizontal slash, and he stopped it with the sole of his foot.

A grunt escaped his lips as the blade sliced through skin and lodged deep until the bone.

Pain seared up his foot like liquid fire.

But he couldn’t take a second to breathe; he needed to move right now.

Kai gritted his teeth so hard they cracked—he forced the sword back with his wounded foot and stomped it to the ground. His knuckles shattered against the living corpse’s hand, the one that is standing before him, but he didn’t care.

His punch was strong enough to loosen the living corpse’s grip on its sword.

It fell; slipped from its unnaturally loose fingers.

Kai caught it; the sword was now in his grip, and with a weapon, he fared far better.

The living corpses were strong, monstrously strong as each swing carried the weight of a train, but their arcs were predictable. Deliberately so. The training wasn’t designed for him to win through combat skills.

It was designed for him to stand between the threat and the blob without hesitation.

For him to temper his body and make it more durable to pay the price of recklessness.

And the predictable arcs made it so that he could do that.

Because of that, the sword in his hand didn’t stop the living corpses’ attacks from landing on his body. No. It was used to block the attacks that were aiming for the blob and let the others through undisturbed.

"Haargh!"

A fist cratered his stomach; the intestines inside him burst, and the pain detonated in his core.

Crack—!

A blunt weapon hammered his skull, cracking it with a sound like splitting stone.

Kai thrust his bare hand out to catch a sword aimed at the blob as the sword in his other hand was busy, and he was fighting four living corpses at once, but his timing was bad. The blade broke every finger except his thumb.

He screamed through clenched teeth and knocked the sword aside with his ruined hand.

No matter what, he couldn’t let any attack touch the blob.

Gruelling; that was the only word for what happened in the next hour. Kai wanted to scream Kaelmorath to stop the living corpses a hundred times in the span of minutes; the words were clawing at his throat.

He thought it wasn’t worth it.

Completing the Retribution Ending Fragment isn’t worth it at all.

Perhaps it was impossible as he couldn’t keep up; too exhausted by the pain.

Every rational thought screamed at him to quit, as after all, there are other Ending Fragments out there in the House of Night that didn’t involve putting him through torture like this. But every time he wanted to give up, he stopped himself.

He remembered the promise.

He told Bella that he would grow stronger, and he would.

A man is measured by his words, and he won’t ever go back on his promises.

Once the mental shift happened, things started to feel different; the pain registered differently in his mind. Not as suffering, but as fuel. An electrifying jolt that woke him up, and made him understand that each broken bone, each torn organ, each screaming nerve was only the clear sign of him getting stronger.

At this moment, pain became a language, and his body was learning to speak it.

By the end, Kai was on his knees. Bruises and blood coated every inch of him. A dull sword pierced through his right lung; the hilt swayed with each of his laboured breaths. And all the living corpses pulled back, giving distance, and their eyes dimmed.

Behind, the dark blob pulsed.

Crimson energy flooded into his body, mending wounds, knitting bones, and sealing the hole in his lung. His fingers straightened and fused. His skull smoothed over. And the blood flaked away, leaving fresh skin beneath.

Kaelemorath stepped out from the broken cathedral.

He grabbed a dull sword from one of the living corpses, and then stopped before Kai.

Strangely, he raised the dull sword and swung down at Kai after the crimson energy vanished.

And the moment the sword touched his skin, it shattered.

"Congratulations," Kaelmorath nodded firmly. "You have completed the Retribution Ending Fragment."