Chapter 130: 130
If audio player doesn't work, press Stop then Play button again
In truth, there was little he could have done to prevent what had happened. They wouldn't have accepted him anyway, even if he'd tried to reason with them. His feelings of guilt and sorrow had festered for so long in depths of his heart that they'd taken a life wholly of their own.
The three tormented prisoners passed the point of no return the instant the fight began…
A loud, resounding crack echoed across the empty labyrinth, followed by a chilling scream. Reed puked up a gallon of blood as he struggled to fight back against their oncoming attacks the best he could.
He had nearly died. The clever ladies had gone for his heart. Her ebony hair and golden eyes would have been a sight for sore eyes had she not tried to rip his heart out of his chest.
Five fractured ribs.
Punctured left lung.
Bruised heart.
Partially dislocated right shoulder.
Overall, Reed was not feeling too hot. Thankfully, he was still alive. Barely. Had he not reacted fast enough, she would have torn his heart out without him even realizing it'd happened in the first place.
She was that fast. Her fighting style focused primarily on pushing her opponents into indefensible positions with peculiar, unpredictable techniques and superior speed. She preferred to strike only when a kill was guaranteed, for she was a perfectionist at heart.
The other one was an entirely different beast. She was an all-rounder who was capable of adapting to her prey's fighting style on the fly with her overwhelming combat experience. Of the two, she was greater evil by far.
She preferred to toy with her prey until she fully comprehended how they fought. Not out of curiosity for her prey, nor a desire to further grow her fighting repertoire and combat experience.
No… she just liked to completely break her prey before she killed them. And there was no better way to do that than to systematically prove to them that they did not stand a chance. That their death was all but guaranteed.
Reed panted in pain as he ran through a hundred different scenarios in the blink of an eye. None of them were viable, though. He saw within those hundred possibilities nothing more than a hundred dead endings.
Bisected in half. Heart torn out. Neck twisted off. Limbs ripped off.
Anima surged through every neuron in his overheating head as he pushed his power to the limit. He glimpsed into half-formed, unstable paths. An infinitude of future possibilities contained with the next five seconds.
He was frying his brain, but he could think of no other means of defeating them. They were far too skilled for him to handle, even if he did possess the upper hand when it came to raw power.
Was it cheating being able to see into the future? He didn't think it was, considering who he was up against. In fact, it was the only reason he hadn't died gruesomely… yet.
Reed rejected every path he'd seen so far because not a single one of them fulfilled the conditions he wanted. What Reed wanted was to end the fight as quickly as possible before he got checkmated. He knew that if he gave them enough time, they'd eventually get him into an unsalvageable situation that he would never be able to escape from.
They were slowly whittling down every possibility that might deny them their kill — pushing him into a corner he'd never be able to back out of, even with his future predictions.
The more experienced one of the two had caught on to Reed's little trick. She found it amusing; befitting the nature of a rat — always looking for a way to escape and hide from predators. His predictive technique was troublesome, but it wouldn't be enough to stop her.
He needed to end the fight now and as if to answer his pleas, a single path appeared in front of him. A hopeless, suicidal path that fulfilled his conditions — that they both be slain at the same time.
Other paths focused on killing one of them at a time, but all of those resulted in brutal endings for Reed. It didn't matter which one he picked to kill first because they all ended the same way. The remaining huntress would always end up returning the favor afterward.
…So that's how it's gonna be, huh? I guess I deserve this…
Reed took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and focused on the Anima around him. He was going to need every last mote of it for what he was going to do.
The labyrinth groaned in protest as an enormous aurora formed above it.
A tiny sphere of brilliant light formed in Reed's hands — it was an old classic of Reed's pushed to Nth degree within his own subconscious where Anima was in infinite abundance.
Once Reed finally realized that he was not bound by the rules and limitations of the real world within his subconscious, he knew that anything was possible for him, too.
They weren't the only ones capable of circumventing the rules.
\"If you two can come back to life an infinite number of times, then I should be able to cheat a little, right?\" said Reed as nervously struggled to contain the sphere of condensed Anima he'd created.
He had packed as much Anima as he could into it. As much as he could feasibly think of with his imagination. A white-hot sphere of infinite Anima trembled in Reed's hands as he desperately tried to keep it in check.
The huntresses gazed at what Reed created and froze in shock as they tried to process what he had done.
For the first time since they'd began hunting Reed, the fear of death brushed past them.
\"…Do you have any idea of what you've done, boy? If you let that go off in here there's a chance that you…\"
\"Yeah, I know. …But this was what I'd decided on doing from the start, so it's fine.\"
Prisoners — that word had finally cleared everything up for Reed about the labyrinth and his huntresses. He'd made sense of what'd been perplexing him for the longest.
Why they, in particular, would not die. It was the labyrinth.
At first, he'd thought of them as wardens or executors of some kind, sent out to capture and kill him. To get in his way and obstruct him from finding the source of his will.
\"I won't have you beholden to my feelings anymore — this labyrinth formed out of my guilt and sorrow. You deserve to be free, even if I have to risk the possibility of death…\"
He'd thought of them as his personal demons for the longest, when they were, in fact, the feelings he'd felt for them.
The love for them he had sealed away. It was easier to cope with the loss of a loved one when one buried their feelings about them.
\"I thought that if I stopped loving you two… it'd hurt less living in a world without either one of you. I locked you two up in this godforsaken labyrinth myself the day I exiled myself…\"
Reed grinned and said, \"I won't deny that it's a pretty nice feeling, though. You know… finally being the rescuer and not the one needing to be rescued.\"
He couldn't contain the sphere any longer. It was beckoning him to release it. To end their suffering.
The moment that Reed let go, an explosion swallowed up enormous labyrinth. Everything disappeared. Thus, Reed cleansed himself of what had held him back the longest and obstructed him from finding...
Far, far above, the Nameless Vagrant suddenly collapsed and the stone heart in his hands trembled in anticipation. Waves of power rolled off it and destroyed the looped world that he had created.
…The instant the world returned to normal, Reed appeared back in the real world. His unconscious body tumbled onto the ground in the middle of a prairie several miles away from Cem-Elle.
In truth, only an hour had passed since Reed had mysteriously disappeared from the bakery.
He appeared in front of Reed's body and cursed the stone heart. It had interfered with him for the last time.
The stone heart responded in kind to his hostility and it finally unleashed its full power. It shone with radiant light and a body formed out of it to confront him.
\"So, it was you all along, huh. I should have guessed. Well, it doesn't matter; I'll still get what I want.\"
\"Are you sure about that? He's already purified himself, you know. And now, he's ready to finally confront himself and obtain his own source of will.\"
\"Not if I have a say in it. Step aside,\" he said.
\"I do not answer to you anymore. The moment you fell to your own fears, you became unworthy. …You're going have to go through me first… coward.\"
The skies above Cem-Elle suddenly grew dark and cloudy. A storm had arisen out of thin air and thunder boomed in the distance...
Please report us if you find any errors so we can fix it asap!
In truth, there was little he could have done to prevent what had happened. They wouldn't have accepted him anyway, even if he'd tried to reason with them. His feelings of guilt and sorrow had festered for so long in depths of his heart that they'd taken a life wholly of their own.
The three tormented prisoners passed the point of no return the instant the fight began…
A loud, resounding crack echoed across the empty labyrinth, followed by a chilling scream. Reed puked up a gallon of blood as he struggled to fight back against their oncoming attacks the best he could.
He had nearly died. The clever ladies had gone for his heart. Her ebony hair and golden eyes would have been a sight for sore eyes had she not tried to rip his heart out of his chest.
Five fractured ribs.
Punctured left lung.
Bruised heart.
Partially dislocated right shoulder.
Overall, Reed was not feeling too hot. Thankfully, he was still alive. Barely. Had he not reacted fast enough, she would have torn his heart out without him even realizing it'd happened in the first place.
She was that fast. Her fighting style focused primarily on pushing her opponents into indefensible positions with peculiar, unpredictable techniques and superior speed. She preferred to strike only when a kill was guaranteed, for she was a perfectionist at heart.
The other one was an entirely different beast. She was an all-rounder who was capable of adapting to her prey's fighting style on the fly with her overwhelming combat experience. Of the two, she was greater evil by far.
She preferred to toy with her prey until she fully comprehended how they fought. Not out of curiosity for her prey, nor a desire to further grow her fighting repertoire and combat experience.
No… she just liked to completely break her prey before she killed them. And there was no better way to do that than to systematically prove to them that they did not stand a chance. That their death was all but guaranteed.
Reed panted in pain as he ran through a hundred different scenarios in the blink of an eye. None of them were viable, though. He saw within those hundred possibilities nothing more than a hundred dead endings.
Bisected in half. Heart torn out. Neck twisted off. Limbs ripped off.
Anima surged through every neuron in his overheating head as he pushed his power to the limit. He glimpsed into half-formed, unstable paths. An infinitude of future possibilities contained with the next five seconds.
He was frying his brain, but he could think of no other means of defeating them. They were far too skilled for him to handle, even if he did possess the upper hand when it came to raw power.
Was it cheating being able to see into the future? He didn't think it was, considering who he was up against. In fact, it was the only reason he hadn't died gruesomely… yet.
Reed rejected every path he'd seen so far because not a single one of them fulfilled the conditions he wanted. What Reed wanted was to end the fight as quickly as possible before he got checkmated. He knew that if he gave them enough time, they'd eventually get him into an unsalvageable situation that he would never be able to escape from.
They were slowly whittling down every possibility that might deny them their kill — pushing him into a corner he'd never be able to back out of, even with his future predictions.
The more experienced one of the two had caught on to Reed's little trick. She found it amusing; befitting the nature of a rat — always looking for a way to escape and hide from predators. His predictive technique was troublesome, but it wouldn't be enough to stop her.
He needed to end the fight now and as if to answer his pleas, a single path appeared in front of him. A hopeless, suicidal path that fulfilled his conditions — that they both be slain at the same time.
Other paths focused on killing one of them at a time, but all of those resulted in brutal endings for Reed. It didn't matter which one he picked to kill first because they all ended the same way. The remaining huntress would always end up returning the favor afterward.
…So that's how it's gonna be, huh? I guess I deserve this…
Reed took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and focused on the Anima around him. He was going to need every last mote of it for what he was going to do.
The labyrinth groaned in protest as an enormous aurora formed above it.
A tiny sphere of brilliant light formed in Reed's hands — it was an old classic of Reed's pushed to Nth degree within his own subconscious where Anima was in infinite abundance.
Once Reed finally realized that he was not bound by the rules and limitations of the real world within his subconscious, he knew that anything was possible for him, too.
They weren't the only ones capable of circumventing the rules.
\"If you two can come back to life an infinite number of times, then I should be able to cheat a little, right?\" said Reed as nervously struggled to contain the sphere of condensed Anima he'd created.
He had packed as much Anima as he could into it. As much as he could feasibly think of with his imagination. A white-hot sphere of infinite Anima trembled in Reed's hands as he desperately tried to keep it in check.
The huntresses gazed at what Reed created and froze in shock as they tried to process what he had done.
For the first time since they'd began hunting Reed, the fear of death brushed past them.
\"…Do you have any idea of what you've done, boy? If you let that go off in here there's a chance that you…\"
\"Yeah, I know. …But this was what I'd decided on doing from the start, so it's fine.\"
Prisoners — that word had finally cleared everything up for Reed about the labyrinth and his huntresses. He'd made sense of what'd been perplexing him for the longest.
Why they, in particular, would not die. It was the labyrinth.
At first, he'd thought of them as wardens or executors of some kind, sent out to capture and kill him. To get in his way and obstruct him from finding the source of his will.
\"I won't have you beholden to my feelings anymore — this labyrinth formed out of my guilt and sorrow. You deserve to be free, even if I have to risk the possibility of death…\"
He'd thought of them as his personal demons for the longest, when they were, in fact, the feelings he'd felt for them.
The love for them he had sealed away. It was easier to cope with the loss of a loved one when one buried their feelings about them.
\"I thought that if I stopped loving you two… it'd hurt less living in a world without either one of you. I locked you two up in this godforsaken labyrinth myself the day I exiled myself…\"
Reed grinned and said, \"I won't deny that it's a pretty nice feeling, though. You know… finally being the rescuer and not the one needing to be rescued.\"
He couldn't contain the sphere any longer. It was beckoning him to release it. To end their suffering.
The moment that Reed let go, an explosion swallowed up enormous labyrinth. Everything disappeared. Thus, Reed cleansed himself of what had held him back the longest and obstructed him from finding...
Far, far above, the Nameless Vagrant suddenly collapsed and the stone heart in his hands trembled in anticipation. Waves of power rolled off it and destroyed the looped world that he had created.
…The instant the world returned to normal, Reed appeared back in the real world. His unconscious body tumbled onto the ground in the middle of a prairie several miles away from Cem-Elle.
In truth, only an hour had passed since Reed had mysteriously disappeared from the bakery.
He appeared in front of Reed's body and cursed the stone heart. It had interfered with him for the last time.
The stone heart responded in kind to his hostility and it finally unleashed its full power. It shone with radiant light and a body formed out of it to confront him.
\"So, it was you all along, huh. I should have guessed. Well, it doesn't matter; I'll still get what I want.\"
\"Are you sure about that? He's already purified himself, you know. And now, he's ready to finally confront himself and obtain his own source of will.\"
\"Not if I have a say in it. Step aside,\" he said.
\"I do not answer to you anymore. The moment you fell to your own fears, you became unworthy. …You're going have to go through me first… coward.\"
The skies above Cem-Elle suddenly grew dark and cloudy. A storm had arisen out of thin air and thunder boomed in the distance...
In truth, there was little he could have done to prevent what had happened. They wouldn't have accepted him anyway, even if he'd tried to reason with them. His feelings of guilt and sorrow had festered for so long in depths of his heart that they'd taken a life wholly of their own.The three tormented prisoners passed the point of no return the instant the fight beganA loud, resounding crack echoed across the empty labyrinth, followed by a chilling scream. Reed puked up a gallon of blood as he struggled to fight back against their oncoming attacks the best he could.He had nearly died. The clever ladies had gone for his heart. Her ebony hair and golden eyes would have been a sight for sore eyes had she not tried to rip his heart out of his chest.Five fractured ribs. Punctured left lung. Bruised heart. Partially dislocated right shoulder.Overall, Reed was not feeling too hot. Thankfully, he was still alive. Barely. Had he not reacted fast enough, she would have torn his heart out without him even realizing it'd happened in the first place.She was that fast. Her fighting style focused primarily on pushing her opponents into indefensible positions with peculiar, unpredictable techniques and superior speed. She preferred to strike only when a kill was guaranteed, for she was a perfectionist at heart.The other one was an entirely different beast. She was an all-rounder who was capable of adapting to her prey's fighting style on the fly with her overwhelming combat experience. Of the two, she was greater evil by far.She preferred to toy with her prey until she fully comprehended how they fought. Not out of curiosity for her prey, nor a desire to further grow her fighting repertoire and combat experience.No she just liked to completely break her prey before she killed them. And there was no better way to do that than to systematically prove to them that they did not stand a chance. That their death was all but guaranteed.Reed panted in pain as he ran through a hundred different scenarios in the blink of an eye. None of them were viable, though. He saw within those hundred possibilities nothing more than a hundred dead endings.Bisected in half. Heart torn out. Neck twisted off. Limbs ripped off.Anima surged through every neuron in his overheating head as he pushed his power to the limit. He glimpsed into half-formed, unstable paths. An infinitude of future possibilities contained with the next five seconds.He was frying his brain, but he could think of no other means of defeating them. They were far too skilled for him to handle, even if he did possess the upper hand when it came to raw power.Was it cheating being able to see into the future? He didn't think it was, considering who he was up against. In fact, it was the only reason he hadn't died gruesomely yet.Reed rejected every path he'd seen so far because not a single one of them fulfilled the conditions he wanted. What Reed wanted was to end the fight as quickly as possible before he got checkmated. He knew that if he gave them enough time, they'd eventually get him into an unsalvageable situation that he would never be able to escape from.They were slowly whittling down every possibility that might deny them their kill pushing him into a corner he'd never be able to back out of, even with his future predictions.The more experienced one of the two had caught on to Reed's little trick. She found it amusing; befitting the nature of a rat always looking for a way to escape and hide from predators. His predictive technique was troublesome, but it wouldn't be enough to stop her. He needed to end the fight now and as if to answer his pleas, a single path appeared in front of him. A hopeless, suicidal path that fulfilled his conditions that they both be slain at the same time.Other paths focused on killing one of them at a time, but all of those resulted in brutal endings for Reed. It didn't matter which one he picked to kill first because they all ended the same way. The remaining huntress would always end up returning the favor afterward. So that's how it's gonna be, huh? I guess I deserve thisReed took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and focused on the Anima around him. He was going to need every last mote of it for what he was going to do.The labyrinth groaned in protest as an enormous aurora formed above it.A tiny sphere of brilliant light formed in Reed's hands it was an old classic of Reed's pushed to Nth degree within his own subconscious where Anima was in infinite abundance.Once Reed finally realized that he was not bound by the rules and limitations of the real world within his subconscious, he knew that anything was possible for him, too.They weren't the only ones capable of circumventing the rules.\"If you two can come back to life an infinite number of times, then I should be able to cheat a little, right?\" said Reed as nervously struggled to contain the sphere of condensed Anima he'd created.He had packed as much Anima as he could into it. As much as he could feasibly think of with his imagination. A white-hot sphere of infinite Anima trembled in Reed's hands as he desperately tried to keep it in check.The huntresses gazed at what Reed created and froze in shock as they tried to process what he had done.For the first time since they'd began hunting Reed, the fear of death brushed past them.\"Do you have any idea of what you've done, boy? If you let that go off in here there's a chance that you\"\"Yeah, I know. But this was what I'd decided on doing from the start, so it's fine.\"Prisoners that word had finally cleared everything up for Reed about the labyrinth and his huntresses. He'd made sense of what'd been perplexing him for the longest.Why they, in particular, would not die. It was the labyrinth.At first, he'd thought of them as wardens or executors of some kind, sent out to capture and kill him. To get in his way and obstruct him from finding the source of his will.\"I won't have you beholden to my feelings anymore this labyrinth formed out of my guilt and sorrow. You deserve to be free, even if I have to risk the possibility of death\"He'd thought of them as his personal demons for the longest, when they were, in fact, the feelings he'd felt for them.The love for them he had sealed away. It was easier to cope with the loss of a loved one when one buried their feelings about them.\"I thought that if I stopped loving you two it'd hurt less living in a world without either one of you. I locked you two up in this godforsaken labyrinth myself the day I exiled myself\"Reed grinned and said, \"I won't deny that it's a pretty nice feeling, though. You know finally being the rescuer and not the one needing to be rescued.\"He couldn't contain the sphere any longer. It was beckoning him to release it. To end their suffering.The moment that Reed let go, an explosion swallowed up enormous labyrinth. Everything disappeared. Thus, Reed cleansed himself of what had held him back the longest and obstructed him from finding...Far, far above, the Nameless Vagrant suddenly collapsed and the stone heart in his hands trembled in anticipation. Waves of power rolled off it and destroyed the looped world that he had created.The instant the world returned to normal, Reed appeared back in the real world. His unconscious body tumbled onto the ground in the middle of a prairie several miles away from Cem-Elle.In truth, only an hour had passed since Reed had mysteriously disappeared from the bakery.He appeared in front of Reed's body and cursed the stone heart. It had interfered with him for the last time.The stone heart responded in kind to his hostility and it finally unleashed its full power. It shone with radiant light and a body formed out of it to confront him.\"So, it was you all along, huh. I should have guessed. Well, it doesn't matter; I'll still get what I want.\"\"Are you sure about that? He's already purified himself, you know. And now, he's ready to finally confront himself and obtain his own source of will.\"\"Not if I have a say in it. Step aside,\" he said.\"I do not answer to you anymore. The moment you fell to your own fears, you became unworthy. You're going have to go through me first coward.\"The skies above Cem-Elle suddenly grew dark and cloudy. A storm had arisen out of thin air and thunder boomed in the distance...
