"You are awake! I was almost scared to-" the ego exclaimed in excitement as he returned to Elias’s side. But when he looked at the boy properly, he could barely utter the next word. "...death."
Elias looked the same as he did when they first met, but something was different about him. His eyes looked somewhat lifeless as he held on to a small emblem in his hand.
His eyes were a little bloodshot, the whites crisscrossed with a lot of tiny red veins. The irises seemed dull and clouded, like a sky that was about to rain. They held a hollow and exhausted look. There were even a few dark circles under his eyes.
"What happened to you?" The ego mumbled, watching Elias who looked like he had gone through a lot within the last few hours.
Elias looked back at the ego’s physical body and smiled, "Nothing happened to me."
Even though his words said otherwise, the ego could see that smile couldn’t be any more hollow.
"I am sorry for leaving you out for so long. You can return and rest now. I will handle the rest." Elias reached out his hand, gently touching the jet.
"Wait, I still have to say-" the Ego tried saying something, but before it could complete, it disappeared. It was sent back to the class storage.
Even Astralious was confused about what had happened to Elias. The moment the merger began, everything around him seemed to have turned black, and he couldn’t see anything.
It was only now that he was able to see properly, and he was left utterly confused. He wanted to ask Elias what had happened, but at that moment, even he chose to remain silent.
Elias’s old clothes burned into nothingness. New clothes materialized around his body, accompanied by a long black robe that slid across the floor as he stepped out of the storm, or what remained of it.
"It’s you!" Rey exclaimed in shock the moment he saw Elias. "How are you still alive?!"
Even though he could see a familiar silhouette within the storm that had reminded him of Elias, he didn’t believe it. He had killed that child with his own hands. So how could he be alive? But after the boy stepped out of the storm, he couldn’t deny it anymore.
He thought of all the possibilities, and only one made sense to him! He had been fooled! He never killed Elias in the first place. That’s why he never found the Growth Stone. He had to fight with everyone else, all because of this boy who had fooled him!
"You schemed against me!" He clenched his fist as everything started making sense to him. Every humiliation he went through was because of the boy and no one else!
"So the storm was from the use of a growth stone!" he exclaimed, justifying the appearance of the storm in his mind as well. "You already used it, didn’t you?"
"Who is he?" The Soul Beast landed next to Rey, returning to her human form as well. She could see that Rey had some kind of enmity with the boy, but why? She was certain that the two boys were in entirely different leagues already.
"He is the bastard child of the Ashborns!" Rey said with clenched teeth. "He is the one that I should’ve killed a long time ago already!"
"The child of the Ashborns?!" The Soul Beast and Astralious said at the same time, both in different places.
The most shocked person in the entire place was none other than Astralious who had been cursing the Ashborn Family all this time, even telling Elias to stay away from those bastards. And that boy himself was one of them?
"That is right." Elias raised his left hand, revealing the emblem of the family that carried the ouroboros symbol, a mark that was known throughout the world.
"I am the youngest child of the Ashborn Family."
At the same time, his robe also started changing as a serpent materialised on the chest portion as well as on the back of the robe. Elias wasn’t denying his identity anymore. He was wearing it openly, accepting the name, the sins and the responsibility.
"Didn’t you want to have revenge on that family? I will give you an opportunity! Go and kill that bastard right now!" Rey told the Soul Beast right away.
Even though he wanted to kill the boy with his own hands, he had already been defeated many times. Even though he didn’t want to accept it, subconsciously, he was scared, after the boy seemed to have gone through his first evolution.
Even if he could defeat Elias himself, he didn’t want to risk it. He commanded his Soul Beast, which was at least comparable to a human with their third evolution.
"Me?" The Soul Beast looked at Rey in disbelief. She wanted revenge on the Ashborn family, but even she wasn’t a fool.
Almost all her instincts at that moment were warning her that the person standing before her wasn’t human. She felt as if she were standing before another high-tier Fable. No, she was standing before something even greater.
"That’s right! Go and kill that bastard! After we return, I will help you evolve into a Constellation! Let’s start the destruction of the Ashborn Family with the death of their youngest son!"
This time, he didn’t just tell the Soul Beast to do something, but used a command as well. The contract on the back of her neck started shining. Her body moved on its own as she transformed into a Soul Beast and rushed towards Elias.
The closer she got to him, the more her instincts warned her. They were telling her that if she didn’t stop, she was going to die. Unfortunately, the greedy contract had become her biggest shackle at that moment.
Since she couldn’t resist the command, she tried to fulfill it while surviving, roaring madly as she rushed towards Elias.
She soon reached within twenty meters of the boy, who wasn’t even paying attention to her. Elias was instead looking at the emblem and putting it back in his pocket.
The Soul Beast was within ten meters of Elias when he finally shifted his attention to her. He slowly raised his finger, and a shadow blade emerged from the ground, rising from the Soul Beast’s own shadow.
Even a powerful weapon couldn’t leave a small scratch on a high-tier Soul Beast, but to Rey’s disbelief, the large shadow blade managed to slice through the Soul Beast, cutting it in two.
Elias slowly stepped closer to the Soul Beast, whose eyes were still open, even in death. She couldn’t believe what had just happened to her.
That kind of attack wasn’t something that a child could make. It was definitely on the level of a high-tier Soul Beast, and a mutated one at that.
Elias walked past the Soul Beast’s corpse, leaving two gems on each half. He started another merger in the back as he approached Rey, who was still standing with eyes wide open in disbelief.
Before he could even snap out of his daze, Elias was right in front of him.
"This can’t be real... It’s definitely a dream. Right?" he asked Elias, behind whom two more storms materialized, but much smaller than before.
Elias placed a hand on his shoulder. A blade came out from his hand’s shadow and passed through Rey’s throat, leaving a hole.
"It’s a dream..." Rey’s lips moved, even as blood gushed out of his throat. He fell to the ground with a thud, still believing that he was going to wake up from this dream at home.
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Even the pain wasn’t enough to make him believe that something like this could be real.