“Who the hell does she think she is to act like a mother all of a sudden?!” Michael roared, smashing the door behind him. He’d returned to his room to be alone and think about what happened. However, being alone made him recall his mother and everything she said. Just seeing her through fresh memories was enough to fill Michael with uncontrollable rage and anger all over again.
‘She didn’t even recognize me, her son. What a bad joke.’ Michael scoffed and continued to curse his mother in his heart.
“Does she think she can leave and come back whenever she wants? Why the hell should I trust her with Danny’s Living Soul? And what even is that bullshit about reincarnating Danny? I sensed the lifeforce and sentience in his Soul. Why is it necessary to reincarnate him rather than trying to find a new vessel for him or something along those lines?!”
If his mother was still powerful, Hesta and his father must be just as strong at this point. They should have the means to find people who could transfer a Living Soul into a suitable vessel…right? At least, they should have the capability to search for someone and collect the materials needed to create a new vessel.
Why did they have to reincarnate him at the cost of his memories? Was it because of the Hellbound Cataclysm? Michael had no idea what that was, but his mother said something about the curse devouring Danny’s Soul. If he removed the curse with Extraction, everything would be fine. In fact, if every member of the Fang family was cursed, wouldn’t that mean that his mother, Hesta, and Michael possessed the same curse? They were still alive and nobody was afraid of them being affected by the Hellbound Cataclysm.
‘Does that mean I need to find a suitable vessel for him to restrain the curse? Well, if I can remove the curse without a vessel that would be fine as well.’ Michael’s mind was a mess. He tried using Extraction on the Miniature Coffin Keychain once again but only sensed Danny’s Living Soul. He didn’t want to touch it, knowing that he didn’t possess enough power to extract his Living Soul in one go for now. Observing the mass of energy that had fused with Danny’s sentience and lifeforce, Michael’s eyes grew moist.
However, instead of turning into a weeping child from happiness, his expression soured quickly. His thoughts drifted back to his parents and the fact that they were still alive. They never searched for their children even though they had been living in their old place until last year. What did that mean? It was simple. Their family never thought of meeting them in the entire decade the two boys were left to fend for themselves. All they did was send a message into their family group chat every blue moon. The content of their messages was useless as well. Something within Michael rumbled, and the turmoil of emotions deep within him intensified. At first, he didn’t feel much. Michael thought that he had gotten a little bit more emotional because he saw his mother again. However, the anger and fury deep within him grew stronger and more terrifying. Killing intent oozed out of Michael and for the first time in forever, he wished that his parents were actually dead.
‘Danny died because they abandoned us. They deserve to die…’ Michael thought, finding himself shocked and in disbelief as the thought formed in his head.
Was that really what he thought? Did he really think Danny died because his parents abandoned them? Thinking about it, it might not even be that far-fetched to think that his parents, and Hesta, were at fault for their misery. But did that mean it would have been different if their parents had been with them until now? Maybe, Danny would have died, either way? What about himself? Would Michael be this powerful if he didn’t have to become independent from a young age? Would he have thrown himself into one danger after another if he hadn’t required power and hadn’t been desperate to grow strong? Michael didn’t know.
But he knew that the hatred and anger within him was growing more intense by the second. ‘I should let off some steam,’ Michael thought, manifesting the Runic Gate to the Untamed Jungle in front of him. However, the anger didn’t subside as the Runic Gate opened. On the contrary, it felt like his mood was getting worse.
The moment he entered the Runic Gate, Michael lost control of his emotions. A roar resounded from the deepest part of his existence and golden stigmatas spread through his entire body. The stigmatas were intricate and highly complex. Their faint golden light flickered as they connected one by one. However, only stigmatas glowed brightly. They unleashed tremendous amounts of altered energy. But that was not all.
The three isolated stigmatas, the Cursed Seals he’d unsealed in the last battle against the Tekur, were fully activated, bursting forth with an ancient presence that affected not only the living around him but Michael himself as well. Something was different compared to before. Something was wrong…really wrong.
Michael’s vision blurred and everything around him turned black for a second.
** .𝒎
The next time Michael opened his eyes, he found himself in the Untamed Jungle. At least, he hoped that it was the Untamed Jungle.
A disgusting stench permeated the air all around him, and it didn’t take long to find out where the stench was coming from. Monsters were the source, or their corpses, to be precise. There were thousands of them, spread out all around him and stashed up in large piles for everyone to see.
Michael was in the middle of a large clearing, and the nearest towering tree was at least 100 meters away from him. Yet, not a single inch in between those 100 meters was void of blood, intestines, or monster parts. Even the trees all around him were covered in blood, body parts, and entire corpses, hanging down the thick branches of the unmoving giants.
The small mountains of monsters all around him had been decimated – quite literally. Michael’s eyes went wide. ‘What happened?!’ He wondered, his heart skipping a beat. ‘Did I do that?’
Numerous questions flashed through his mind, but there was no answer. At least not until he was assaulted by a bad headache. Snippets of memories resurfaced in his mind as he held his head to fight the pain. Michael recollected bits of what happened after the world around him turned black.
Everything around him was blurry but he remebered having entered the Runic Gate. He emerged in his territory but didn’t stay for long. Tiara and the Forest Elven Adventurers approached him, but they retreated in fear upon reaching the range of Michael’s presence. Even though everything else was blurry, Michael clearly recalled the fear in their eyes. They didn’t know what happened to Michael, however, everyone could tell that they were going to die if they dared to take a step closer to Michael.
Tiara ignored the warning and was about to approach Michael, but Lilica held her back. A mere moment later, the area around Michael disappeared. The energy around him was devoured in an instant and the ground disappeared as if someone had neatly cut it out of the fabric of the Origin Expanse.
Michael’s memories revolving around his territory faded. The next thing he remebered was fighting the monsters of the Origin Expanse. Fighting might be an overstatement. He wasn’t fighting them. He obliterated them, one monster horde after another as the Dome of True Extraction, amplified with three Cursed Seals, decimated his enemies. He dissected them layer by layer while they were still alive, and fiercely fighting against the invader.
Michael recalled that Lilica and the other Forest Elves said that the population of monsters in the Untamed Jungle was too high and that they had to take countermeasures to cull a few monster hordes around them, so he didn’t expect himself to have ventured deep into the woods all by himself to decimate the overpopulation of monsters single-handedly.
He didn’t even know how deep exactly he had ventured. The clearing was new to him and so were the monster corpses around him. Some of those monsters hadn’t been reported yet. Was he still in the middle area of the Untamed Jungle, or did he already venture into the main part of the Untamed Jungle where the truly terrifying monsters resided?
Michael couldn’t remember how much time passed since he blacked out, but given the number of monsters he’d massacred, it must have been a while.
He wanted to stand up, but his body didn’t obey his order. Michael endeavored to channel energy through his body, but his energy veins cried aloud in protest.
‘Did I overexert my energy channels? Or did I injure myself again like I did against the Tekur?’ Michael wondered before using Archangel’s Grace with the Heavenly Realm Soul Technique.
It was painful to use his origin energy to create Soul Energy, but Michael was fortunate that exerting Archangel’s Grace didn’t drain his energy. All he had to do was access Archangel’s Grace and utilize the power the Soultrait Shard accumulated while he had been with Maria.
The soothing feeling of Heavenly Realm shrouded Michael. It alleviated the pain of his screaming energy veins and the pain that spread all over his body.
However, his mind was not in sync with his body.
Michael recalled his mother’s warning and realized just how dangerous the Cursed Seals were. He understood that he had to learn how to control them and that he could never allow the thing within him to take control of his body. Michael didn’t want to push his luck, and he certainly didn’t want to imagine what could happen to the people around him if he were to lose control of his body once again.
Today, he killed thousands of monsters, but what would happen if he lost control of the Cursed Seals in a city, or with his friends around himself?
Michael was afraid. The power residing within him was extraordinary, but also exceedingly dangerous and violently explosive.
But something else drawn his attention. His eyes fell onto the Miniature Keychain and a soothing feeling washed over his entire being.
Soon, tears began streaming down his face.
“I…can save him…”
**
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