BBBBBBBBBBOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
A violent explosion the likes Cynrik had never generated before occurred when the BlackFire Cyclone made contact with the severely wounded Jörmungandr, instantly bathing Cynrik’s SOC in bright light and then smoke.
Unfortunately, because he was too close to the impact zone, Cynrik was swept away by the forceful explosion and hurdled through the air like a kite with its strings cut.
Cynrik flipped through the air for hundreds of meters, out of control of his own body. Then, wracked by painful spasms, it was all he could do to tuck in his head and prepare for the collision with the ground he knew would soon come. He was vaguely aware that upon being knocked away from ground zero, his Æsir Mode had been shattered like a bubble popping, and his Húðflúr had long since deactivated.
CRASH
As expected, like an arrow at the end of its line, Cynrik eventually made contact with the ground in a devastatingly painful way. First, he slammed into the hard surface of the soil before bouncing another two dozen meters, carving through the rocks with his shoulders and back, cutting a long person-shaped cavern.
To make matters worse, with each tumble he achieved, Cynrik could feel the crunch of his bones and joints along the way. When he finally stopped, his body was a mangled mess barely held together with a thin but firm layer of Dark Mana, which he had constructed at the last second before colliding with the ground to mitigate as much damage as possible.
His armor was utterly in tatters and had long since disintegrated into nothing, exposing the wretched state of his torso, arms, and back to the open air. Cynrik wasn’t sure when, but his Kodachis had disappeared from the places on his hip and back and were lost somewhere in between where he smacked the Serpent and his landing zone over two hundred meters away.
Unable to move for the moment, Cynrik stared emotionlessly up at the stormy sky, filled with Fire and Dark clouds, wondering why he thought it was a good idea to detonate his Fyrstr Form so fast instead of giving it time to charge up and gain some distance.
Cough, Cough
Feeling as if his whole body was only an instant from shutting down completely, Cynrik weakly lifted his head and found a worried Tobs floating parallel to his motionless body, examining the extent of his injuries.
“Give it to me straight, Tobs, am I still pretty?” He joked, knowing just how bad of shape he was presently in.
-Idiot, fucking idiot, what the hell were you thinking. Not only have you sufficiently broken over 70% of the bones in your body, leaving almost nothing fully intact, but if it weren’t for Brance continuously healing you with all his might, you would already be dead.-
-And all that is ignoring how badly poisoned your body is right now; look at yourself, Cynrik, for crying out loud, the majority of the skin on your upper body and face has turned a deep shade of purplish green, and you are leaking pus from all the ulcers and sores.-
She angrily scolded Cynrik, breaking her cold and generally expressionless attitude with emotion coming forth and a change in her speech pattern.
“Yeah, but I am still pretty, right? The rest is neither here nor there. You know that I had no business fighting that guy as well as I do. By my estimate…cough…he had to be somewhere between Tier-4 and Tier-5, which means he outclassed me in every possible way.”
-Gah, NO, YOU ARENT STILL FUCKING PRETTY; YOU LOOK LIKE AN INFECTED MEATBALL RIGHT NOW!-
“Hehe, COUGH, meatball.” Cynrik smiled after coughing a few more times but was silenced by a notification that made him freeze in place as he read it.
-Warning: You only have 5% of your HP pool intact; it is advised you heal immediately.-
Cynrik raised an eyebrow as the notification popped up, and Tobs read it aloud in her usual monotone voice.
“Aye, look at that; I’ve still got 400 HP, and it’s steadily rising with Brance’s help hehe *cough cough cough*.” Cynrik tried making light of his situation, but by the time he finished his sentence, he was racked by blood-soaked coughs, and his body spasmed from pain.
Seeing this, Tobs’ face transitioned from blank, to angry, to sorrow-filled, before finally resting on concern, which alerted Cynrik when he noticed.
“Lemmie guess, he isn’t dead, hahhh, that bastard is like a cockroach.”
Tobs responded by opening a monitor and showing the current state of Jörmungandr. Fortunately, the humanoid Serpent was in much worse shape than the temporarily disabled Cynrik.
Aside from the still-raging BlackFlames coating the immediate area surrounding the downed Jörmungandr, visible contusions and damage pained the being just as much as his own blood did. Gone was the handsome face he had initially shown upon transforming, and in its place was a mangled mess of flesh, with chunks hanging off.
The left side of his face had been completely obliterated as jagged scorch marks dotted his entire body, with the bulk of them searing the exposed bone stump that was formerly Jörmungandr’s left arm and leg.
Cynrik had completely destroyed those two limbs as it was the first thing to make contact with the Midnight Sun Cyclone. However, unlike Cynrik, who could still joke around, even when subjected to intense pain and agony, Jörmungandr was rendered immobile.
-In your last attack, Æsir Spirit Jörmungandr suffered fatal injuries; he lost both his left arm and leg, and the damage sustained to most of his left side is too extensive to be repaired, even with a [Major Healing] spell. He has suffered intense burns to over 90% of his body, and the internal damage is beyond what you are experiencing.-
“So what you are saying is he’s still alive…after all of that, fuck, alright gimmie a second, I got this,” Cynrik grunted loudly, forcing his body to move against the stiff muscles and broken bones. After struggling for nearly five minutes, he was on his feet, albeit crouched and barely stable, but on his feet nonetheless.
“See, COUGH, totally fine, I got this,” Cynrik said through gritted teeth.
Tobs blankly stared at her Host’s sorry state, who now appeared as if a weak puff of air could knock him over without much difficulty, and sighed softly.
“Woahh, on second thought, I don’t got this….”
Thump
Unable to stand any longer, Cynrik collapsed to the ground on his butt, panting heavily, and wiped the blood from his eyes, nose, and mouth.
“How, huff, how far away is he?” He asked while trying to catch his breath. His eyes drifted along the length of his exposed purple, pus-filled, cracked skin as he spoke to Tobs.
-Approximately two hundred and thirty-three meters from your current position. Cynrik, you really should deal with the poison. Those wounds affecting your SOUL and not your actual body will only fester and worsen if you don’t.-
Cynrik’s eyes narrowed as he watched his purplish-green sickly skin bubble and pop with pus-filled pustules.
“Yeah, I know, the only question is…how? I could try burning them off in theory, but I don’t know what kind of reaction my body will have. I can’t let myself go into shock with Jormie still alive.” Watching his arm spasm uncontrollably, Cynrik tried snapping the fingers on his left hand to create a spark but failed miserably and only managed to increase further the pain he was experiencing.
“Any ideas from the floating peanut gallery, Tobs?” But when Cynrik looked up, she was no longer beside him and had vanished from sight.
“OH YEAH, GREATTT, GO AHEAD AND DO THE DARK KNIGHT DISAPPEARING ACT ON ME! TSK, fucking big help you are.” Cynrik clicked his tongue and voiced his complaints to the sky.
“Ok, let’s break this down; judging by how this poison is eating between 10-30 HP per tick, and Brance is healing me for what appears to be between 900 and 1105 HP every minute or so, that means I am still at a deficit. Tsk, I fucking hate math.”
Running the numbers, Cynrik realized that although Brance seemed to be keeping him afloat, he couldn’t sustain it for much longer. If Brance had been keeping the heals coming for over an hour, then there was no doubt his younger brother may be at the end of his Mana Pool.
“Tsss, ok, suck it up, Cyn,” He said, ignoring the crunching sounds from his left hand as he continuously tried snapping his fingers.
SNAP
FWOOSH
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Cynrik was able to forcefully execute a single snap and douse his entire body in BlackFire; however, what he didn’t expect was for the first time, he could actually feel the cool heat.
But that didn’t last long, as the pale black flames began eating at the poisoned flesh, the feeling of which was like a shark chomping away at Cynrik’s body. The instant he felt the pain, his vision blurred, and if it weren’t for him gripping both hands into fists, creating a sharp pain due to the broken bones, he would have fainted instantly.
-Warning: You are taking ever-increasing amounts of damage.-
“NO FUCKING SHIT TOBS, I HAVE NO OTHER OPTION HERE! Shit, why cant my flames have god damn healing properties? SOMEONE REMIND ME TO FIND A FUCKING PHEONIX OR SOMETHING! GRAHHHHHHH!” Cynrik screamed, batting at the blood pouring from all the holes on his face.
In the training room, Brance began panicking for real when Cynrik decided to turn himself into a human torch, not because he could see his brother’s Hp rapidly dropping, but instead because Cynrik had not only burst into flames in the SOC but also in the real world as well.
Not only that, but the second he did, blood began running from Cynrik’s eyes, nose, mouth, and ears as his body started convulsing.
This freaked out Brance, making him curse out and pick up the pace of his healing. Finally, after realizing that it no longer relied on his stats and instead, at some point, reached a cap of 500 HP per heal, he quickly burned enough points to evolve his [Minor Healing] into [Advance Healing]. But even after doing so, Brance was still only able to output around 2k each heal, of which, Tobs informed him only half was going through and healing Cynrik’s soul.
But now that Cynrik seemed to be taking a turn for the worse, Brance was at an impasse, so he kept pumping more and more Skill points into his healing skill in hopes that he could curb the damage accumulating on his brother’s soul.
-This series is exclusively published on WebNovel if you are reading it anywhere else…You Wrong, Fam. PS Check out the discord, https://discord.gg/dcxKNJEMwg