Chapter 110 Volume III - Chapter 31: A Little Lesson
I let go of my clenched fist and teeth, squinted my eyes, and looked at the girl shouting insults.
"You're right."
I felt something stirring inside me, as if a string had snapped, releasing all the thoughts I had been suppressing.
"I'm so badly injured that I can't even walk properly without a cane. You're right, my body is so messed up that I can't use mana properly. You're right, I'm helpless right now, powerless. A skinny kid could beat me with a little effort."
I couldn't suppress the anger rising inside me, all the thoughts I had been holding inside started to leak out. I fixed my cold eyes on hers and immediately saw her eyes widen slightly as if she had seen something horrifying.
"But there's something you haven't taken into account. My body may be weak, it may not be able to handle the mana. If I push myself, I might even die."
I took a simple, short step.
"What makes you think I care about my body condition after all?"
The sound of my footsteps echoed through the building.
"So what if my recovery takes longer? So what if I'm in more pain? So what if my wounds open? As long as I don't die, there is no problem. I know when to stop, I know my limits, and I know that I shouldn't hesitate when people like you get mouthy, or I'll give you more material. Then I don't see a problem with using mana as a one-time exception. There's nothing stopping me from teaching you a little lesson."
A teal glow surrounded my body. Transferring mana to the Absolute Mind didn't cause me any problems as the system drew the mana directly from my body, but the mastery and active skills were different. To use them, the mana had to move, but it hurt to move the mana, literally weighing my body down. Even the simple movement of the mana was difficult for me. Still, I resisted and suddenly a strong wind blew toward them.
All three of them staggered under the force of the wind. The well-built one of them resisted the wind and tried to take a step toward me, but as soon as he did, I fixed my eyes on him. Our eyes met, and then the boy suddenly started sweating.
"I don't care about my body if I have to deal with the likes of you."
"Wh- what are you standing there Mateo, come on! Don't tell me you're afraid of someone with a cane!"
At her words, the built boy still hesitated, but he gritted his teeth, tensed slightly, and then started running toward me.
"HAAAAA!"
His shout was so loud that it almost made my ears ring. Beads of sweat were running down his forehead, his eyes were looking at me with fear, but he kept running.
"Pity."
I raised my hand and simply drew a line in the air, directing the mana I was pushing through my body with force and pain.
The wave of wind from the line I drew staggered the boy the moment it hit him, and I had only drawn one line when I felt a warmth in my nose, it was bleeding. My body was in such a terrible state that it couldn't handle my mana.
"Oh? You didn't fly away?"
I drew another line. The amount of blood coming from my nose increased, the weakness seemed to hit my body for a moment, but I ignored it again.
The boy took another step back, but he didn't collapse again.
"Hahaha! You're pretty tough, huh?!"
I drew three more lines and in the meantime, I felt blood rising from my throat as well as my nose. I felt a pain in my stomach, my breathing became irregular and my heartbeat quickened. I had only a smile on my face as the blood trickled down my lips.
The waves of wind that came out of the lines I drew were not sharp. Rather, they were like a blow, applying a simple force where they hit, rather than cutting into the boy.
Of course, the force I applied was not a 'simple force'.
"Come on, withstand this!"
Instead of using only my index finger, I opened all four fingers.
Because of the efficiency effect of my passive skill, the wind spell consumed less mana than usual and was stronger than it should have been. On top of that, my mana capacity was also quite high. So my wind magic was quite powerful even though I used less mana, but this time I didn't bother to spend it efficiently. I used most of my mana in one go.
The world started spinning, my vision blurred for a moment, but it was different from normal blurs. This time it was red, blood was even coming out of my eyes. My legs were shaking, and my balance was off, but I kept standing with the support of my cane.
My body was literally crying blood. Perhaps my recovery would take much longer than usual because of what I had done, but in direct proportion to that, my attack was stronger than ever.
The four waves of wind that shot out from the four lines I had drawn with my fingers hit the boy I was aiming at specifically to knock him off balance so hard that he was thrown upside down and thrown even further back than his friends, as if he had been hit by a truck.
When he hit the ground, he hit his head on the floor and instantly fainted. The skinny boy and the girl who remained standing looked at their friends and at me in horror.
I was like a zombie, I was shaking, my wounds were open. It hurt a lot and leaning on my cane was getting harder every second, but it was so... satisfying!
"Are you afraid of me?"
The smile on my face widened involuntarily. A sharp pain shot through my whole body, my body couldn't take any more mana, but I ignored it and approached them.
The girl tried to take a step back, but her whole body suddenly began to tremble. Her eyes staring into mine trembled like her body, as if she had seen a ghost, and she tried desperately to look around, but she couldn't take her eyes off me. She was scared, so scared that her body refused to move the way she wanted it to.
It was a nice feeling.
I liked it.
So... I wanted more.
"It's a pity he fainted. Let's continue with you then, shall we?"
It's fun... Seeing them terrified, seeing them afraid of me, seeing them unable to control their bodies...
"M- mo- monster!"
"Z- zombie!"
This... is amazing!
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I paused for a moment as a system notification appeared in front of my eyes. Silence suddenly descended on the building, even more intense than before. The pain in my body became more pronounced, and my smile disappeared.
I heard a voice in my head, as if I had just noticed someone who had been shouting at me from a distance.
'COME TO YOUR SENSES AIDEN!'
My eyes widened as Sith's voice echoed in my mind, loud enough to ring in my ears, and I realized.
I... what am I doing?
I stepped back and looked at the duo in front of me, trembling with fear. The skinny boy had a wet spot on his pants, he had peed his pants in fear.
The only time the Absolute Mind had no effect was when my wiera side started to come forward. I was so out of it that I had forgotten even that, hadn't realized it.
I was...
No.
I turned around, I left the building as fast as my body would let me. Every step I took sent such a backlash through my whole body that my organs were shaking like a building under a load it couldn't carry.
My vision was darkening, I was becoming more and more numb, but I resisted. I threw myself into a wooded area. When I reached a place where no one could see or hear me, I dropped to the ground and held my breath.
I quickly pulled a dimensional button out of my pocket and opened it, I poured the vial containing the potion the doctors had given me as medicine down my throat and tried to calm myself down. Still, the world wasn't going black, my consciousness was slipping away from me with every passing second.
I bit my lip and poured another potion down my throat.
Even though I was a hybrid, as a wiera my body was already more resilient than normal and healed fast. With the two potions I drank on top of that, I had high confidence that I would be able to recover without the need to go to the hospital, even if it would be painful and not short. Of course, my recovery time would be longer, but no matter what I did, I couldn't stop myself from losing consciousness.
No... I'll be fine, I'm not going to die just because I used some mana. I'll just pass out and when I wake up I'll have recovered a bit from the potions I drank, I'm sure...
I closed my eyes, the faintness was slowly taking over my mind, but then I remembered that moment again. What I had done, the look on the girl's face, the scream...
Just then a thought came to me that made me feel as if the whole world had stopped.
I... am I becoming more and more like it?
'You understand now, don't you?'
My head reflexively jerked up at the sound, and I saw a silhouette standing in front of me.
It wasn't hard to make out who it was, with its dark brown, unkempt hair, violet eyes, and a slight smile on its face.
'This is not something I do on purpose. As time goes by, you go crazy yourself.'
He could have been lying. In fact, he had no reason to tell me the truth, but my brain automatically rejected what he said as false.
I felt my thoughts getting more and more tangled.
I...
'With or without me, you'll be hurting people before you know it.'
He kept the smile on his face and narrowed his eyes.
'How long are you going to keep playing this game?'
He grinned as if he was having fun. Meanwhile, my muscles were losing strength, my vision was getting blurrier and blurrier. The connection between me and the world was slipping away.
'Remember, Aiden. We are not separate entities. I am you and you are me.'
And with that, his body started to fade into thin air, practically vaporizing. As he slowly disappeared from my sight, it was as if he was insulting me with the smile on his face.
When he was completely out of sight and everything around me started to blur together, I heard another voice echoing in my mind.
'Aiden! Can you hear me? Aiden! Shit... not again!'
I didn't care though.
'Aiden! Hey, Aiden!'
My world went completely dark, my eyes closed, but all the while I could think of only one thing.
Am I... a monster?
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