Chapter 97 Volume III – Chapter 18: The Game of Two Madmen

I tried to breathe in and out. The air was getting into my lungs, but every breath I took hurt, it was strange because I didn’t expect to wake up suddenly in such a state.

I tried to move but my muscles wouldn’t let me. My whole body was literally writhing.

Still… I’m alive, doesn’t the fact that I can feel pain mean that I’m alive?

So I thought, how did I end up like this?

The last thing I remember is that Aiden and I were at one of the marked spots. After that… it’s a blur, I don’t remember anything.

“W- what…”

“Wake up, sweetheart! We’re playing a very fun game here.”

My vision suddenly changed, the sky that I had been seeing blurry suddenly turned dark. A tremendous pain from my right palm suddenly spread through my whole body, and tears flowed from my eyes.

The pain was so sudden that I couldn’t even hold back my scream.

To understand what had happened, I looked at the source of the pain, my right hand, and saw that it was nailed to the ground with a dagger.

My eyes widened, and for a moment it felt like the whole world had been turned upside down. A feeling, a sense of danger, more intense than I had ever felt before in my life, began to scorch me at that very moment.

I must escape…

I must run…

I have to run…!

I tried to stand up, I struggled to remove the dagger that had nailed my hand to the ground, but just then I saw the figure in front of me.

He had eyes of a shimmering violet color as if there was a flow in his eyes. It looked beautiful, radiant. Yet the person with those eyes was not as beautiful as those eyes.

With his stubble and long hair, he was actually an ordinary man. Yet the disgusting smile on his face, the sinister expression… instantly altered the beauty in his eyes.

When the man ignored me and broke one of the fingers on my left hand, a tremendous pain spread through my body again, but this time I was able to hold back my scream.

So I understood, this man must have been among those who attacked the academy, but… why is he doing this?

Why is he torturing me?

Another finger was broken.

The intensity of the pain prevented me from thinking, but that’s when I realized something else: I wasn’t the only one here. Around me lay a pile of students’ bodies and they all had one thing in common, they looked like they had been tortured just like me.

My teary eyes looked around, and as soon as I did, I felt something familiar, something strange coming from right next to me.

I knew this feeling, this confusing yet pleasant feeling that didn’t belong to this world, that I could never describe.

Aiden was right next to me. I didn’t know if he was alive or unconscious like others, but I was sure he was there.

So I gritted my teeth, and the helplessness I felt inside disappeared a little with the feeling that enveloped my body.

I didn’t want to give this man what he wanted. He was making us suffer for his pleasure, we were like toys to him, so I refused to be his toy.

No matter how much he hurt me, I bit my tongue if necessary and refused to cry or tremble.

After a short time, I realized it had been a mistake. The only thing I had succeeded in doing was to provoke him even more.

Flames burned my legs. My arms were skinned. My hair was plucked. I received countless cuts to my face, not too deep, but… no matter what, I didn’t die.

I was healed, over and over. Just when I thought it was over, just when I thought maybe I could rest, the next one started.

When I finally lost track of time, when I could see nothing but my tears and the earth, I no longer cared about my pride.

I cried, more than I had ever cried in my life. I screamed and shouted as if my throat was torn.

I wanted it to end, I even wanted to die if the pain would go away, it didn’t matter if I could survive. So I begged, not even making sure that my voice would come out.

The pain had reached such levels that I was disconnected from the world. I was so unsure of what was going on around me that I finally realized something.

The pain was still there, yet… the man was no longer trying to hurt me.

I tried to close my eyes, I wanted to give myself over to unconsciousness.

Just then a warm sensation enveloped my whole body, the same warm sensation I had felt from the very beginning, over and over again, at the end of every cycle.

When I realized that I was being healed, my eyes opened quickly. An intense fear filled me, the thought that the same cycle would start again clawed at the already collapsed barriers of my mind.

Yet it was not what I expected. This time he had really let me go.

It was finally over.

I wanted to bury my head in my arms, but as soon as I did that, my arms started to burn so badly that I couldn’t even rest. It hurt so much that I couldn’t faint.

My eyes watered again. I didn’t care about crying, I just wanted to relieve the pain.

“You…”

As I was thinking about how I could commit suicide, I heard a voice that echoed in my ears like no other.

For a moment, all the thoughts in my mind were cleared and I became rigid.

That strange, otherworldly feeling enveloped my body again. It was so intense that it even slightly overpowered the pain. It was so relaxing, so peaceful that it cleared my mind.

I couldn’t move a muscle, but I still wanted to see it. I wanted to tell him to run away, but as soon as I managed to lift my head, I froze.

This was not the sight I expected to see. I expected him to be injured, maybe dying. But Aiden was smiling compared to all the scenarios I had imagined in my mind. He was smiling in such a mischievous way that he looked creepy. There was such an ominous, disturbing air around him that if I approached him, my soul would be sucked out of my body.

It was the complete opposite of the comforting feeling that enveloped my body.

Yet none of this mattered. What mattered was his left eye, his purple left eye that, like that man’s, shone with an ominous beauty.

“Wanna play a game?”

He didn’t seem to be who he was as an energy that seemed to be the same thing that gave his eye its color slowly wrapped around his body.

Is he like him? Was Aiden someone like that man…?

No…

That thought quickly left my mind. He wasn’t like that. If he was, I would have sensed danger from him from the start. Even the slightest hint of it would have alerted me.

He was not himself right now, that was the only explanation.

“Hahaha! HAHAHA!”

The man standing in front of him burst into laughter, his hands on his face as if tears were coming from his eyes.

“So you went crazy… I’m really having fun today, I’d love to play with you more but we gotta go man, so I’m gonna end this real quick.”

The same purple glow that had surrounded Aiden now enveloped his body. It shimmered and shimmered, intensified, and then began to concentrate on his hands.

Aiden had done nothing in response, the glow around him was the same.

Already barely able to see them, my vision blurred for a moment, the voices fading slightly into each other. I realized I was about to faint.

Fainting was actually too tempting. It was even a blessing to faint when my whole body was hurting more than I could ever imagine. Still, I wanted to stay awake for a few more seconds.

My instincts, my skill that had almost never let me down, told me to stay awake. So I resisted, I fought my faintness and started to watch what was happening as best I could.

“Don’t worry, we will take good care of you where you are going.”

After those words, the man disappeared from sight, suddenly appearing in front of Aiden. He was so fast that it was like he was vaporized in an instant, he must have been at least a B or B+ grade.

Aiden couldn’t dodge it, and that’s what happened. The man’s fist landed right in his face.

I expected him to be thrown back, to be thrown meters, but that didn’t happen. The punch caused him to take a step back, wiping out his smile. It caused a slight redness and swelling on his cheek, but nothing more than that on his body.

The purple energy around his body was concentrated at the point of impact, almost solidified. There were cracks in it as if it had acted as a barrier.

“You know how to solidify caora, what a gem you are!”

Aiden rubbed his cheek where he had received the blow. He put a smile back on his face and spoke provocatively.

“Can’t you? We’re playing a boring game then.”

The man forced his smile wider and attacked Aiden again, but this time more mercilessly.

The purple energy that could solidify around Aiden shattered and reformed over and over again. In the process, Aiden was trying to dodge the attacks, but he was slow and his body was full of bumps and bruises. There was nothing he could do but barely defend himself. In fact, he couldn’t even do that.

He was going to lose.

I tried to breathe as the one-sided fight between the purple-eyed man and Aiden continued.

I was hypnotized, as if all the pain in my body had disappeared. Their movements were so fast that I couldn’t see them, it was a fight like I had never seen in my life. They kept changing positions, fighting here and there, but the rhythm was broken in an instant, just like what was happening.

Aiden took a hard punch right in the stomach and vomited a mouthful of blood. The attack was so strong that he was completely off balance and of course, the man didn’t let it go to waste.

He grabbed Aiden’s hair and pulled his head down, driving his knee hard into his face. Aiden collapsed before he could do anything.

His nose was crooked, he was breathing fast and his smile was gone, again.

When the man saw this, he smiled and pulled three daggers out of his jacket. The daggers slowly covered in a bright green glow as they were in the man’s hand and then the man threw them toward Aiden.

The daggers plunged into the ground surrounding Aiden, and then a faint connection formed between the daggers, forming a triangle. When this happened, more red lines appeared on Aiden’s body than I could count.

The blood oozing from the numerous cuts stained all his clothes red, and his muscles trembled as if refusing to move. But despite all this, his expression did not look as if he was in pain. His whole body was shaking, but he didn’t seem to feel pain, even though he seemed to be straining.

“So? Is that it, Aiden? Apparently, you’re incapable of defeating me…”

Without looking at his face, Aiden spat to the right. A tooth popped out of his mouth along with his blood, but even as he did so his body stiffened.

“Come on! I’m waiting for you here, get up! We’re not done yet… You’ve really pissed me off!”

Aiden took a deep breath, the purple energy around him slowly began to be drawn into his body.

One by one, the purple energy covered all his wounds like a blanket and turned into purple vein marks on top of the red spots. The moment this happened, his body stopped trembling. It was as if that purple energy was mimicking the damaged parts of his body.

Aiden stood up like that.

The intensity of the purple energy around him had noticeably decreased. He was using a lot of it to keep himself upright, but at least he could do what he wanted.

When the man saw this, his smile widened, and without waiting for a second, he threw punch after punch at Aiden.

Aiden took the first punch in the face, his head turned so suddenly that for a moment it looked like his neck was broken. But his expression didn’t change, he didn’t even take his eyes off the man.

The second punch was in the stomach and sent him stumbling backward, causing him to vomit blood again. Yet he did not avert his eyes, as if he was carefully watching and analyzing the man’s every move.

The third attack was not a punch, but a kick, aimed right at his thigh. Just like that, there was a crunching sound from Aiden’s leg. His leg was almost dislocated, but he managed to get through it with only a fracture using purple energy.

After Aiden knelt down, the man waited before attacking again. He was looking at Aiden with a smile on his face, practically insulting him.

The purple energy around Aiden moved toward his leg, forming a veined structure there too. Then, when he stood up again, the intensity of the energy around him had decreased a little more, although not that noticeably.

After he got up, the man’s vision blurred again, he attacked again as Aiden stood up, but this time something unexpected happened.

I heard the sound of bones crunching again, there was almost a rush of air from the attack and then I saw purple veins running along Aiden’s arm.

Aiden had caught the man’s fist in mid-air, even though he had broken his arm.

“It was impossible for you to see him.”

The man was really surprised, he meant it.

“I didn’t see it.”

With a quick movement, Aiden tapped something on the back of his foot with his heel.

So I saw something that I realized for the first time, a black box.

I couldn’t make out what the box was, it was a small black box. Above the place where Aiden hit it with his heel there was a button, which when pressed, a red sign appeared on the box that filled up quickly.

It was a tiny gate device.

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