Chapter 46 - Lies, Betrayals, And Truths 2

My foresight stopped warning me.

I’m safe here… he said I’m safe here!

“Did you really mean what you said?” Jiran directed his question up at Markhiss who hovered in the air as if he were standing on solid ground.

Markhiss held his sides as he burst into laughter. He took great heaving breaths attempting to calm his guffaws.

Scalp immediately stopped advancing on Jiran as his demented boss spoke.

“Me? You’re questioning my honesty?!” Markhiss burst into giggles the moment his words passed his lips.

Just answer the damn question, you crazy weirdo.

Markhiss sobered and his voice turned to hard steel.

“I always mean what I say, unlike our betters,” He spat the word while looking straight at Dommell.

“So long as you do not disobey me, I… will not harm you.” The twinkle in Scalp’s eyes returned as he took another step toward Jiran.

“Great! Thank you,” Jiran sighed and stretched his neck.

It was Jiran’s turn to grin which caused the hardened bandit to hesitate. Seeing the man’s fear, Jiran shot him a smirk.

Fury replaced caution and Scalp showed his teeth in a deep growl.

“You stupid brat! Do you really think you can activate a talisman in time when I’m this close to you?”

“What are these talismans you guys keep talking about?”

“Quit your bluffing! Hand it over, now!”

Jiran maintained his calm, drilling into the emotional bandit with his eyes.

With an exhalation of effort, Scalp’s chest began to glow red before his mana was rapidly transferred to his hands. They ignited in a bright orange flame that licked across his fingers threateningly.

“Maybe you’ll sing once I burn off one of your legs,” He opened and closed his fist in a grabbing motion.

“Last warning, give it to me or you’ll spend the next year screaming for mercy.”

He uses fire. I can work with that.

"I'll tell you what. If you can burn even a single hair on my head without moving from that spot, I'll give you everything I have."

“Yes-yes-yes show me your truth!” Markhiss’s insane laughter split the air again but Jiran and Scalp only had eyes for each other.

Jiran slowly took several steps so the cage was no longer behind him while he spread his palms away from his sides.

"Burn a hair? I'll melt your entire fucking head and take whatever I want!"

“Show me what you’ve got,” Jiran lifted his eyebrows invitingly.

Scalp pointed at Jiran and screamed.

“Infernal Spark of Destruction!”

What kind of stupid name for a technique is that?!

                                                      Olive

Olive couldn’t breathe as the wall of fire rushed toward the suicidal fool.

Obviously saying he would aim for his head was a ruse. As if a high tier talisman would be destroyed by some tier four flames.

A gasp was pulled from her lungs as the flames consumed the boy. He didn’t move a muscle, standing perfectly still and relaxed with his palms at waist level in surrender.

The fire washed all around him but instead of reaching him and instantly taking his life, it hit an amorphous barrier that stopped its progress instantly.

WHAT?!

Her mouth fell open as he didn’t even appear to struggle against his superior foe’s cyclone of orange death.

Her eyes tracked upward as the flames were sucked several meters into the air where they sputtered and died.

Olive frantically searched for whoever was helping the boy, hoping to find a familiar ally but she found nothing besides a tower of dying embers.

Movement snapped her vision back to the boy as he raised his palms toward the bandit.

He can’t see through his own flames!

The boy’s hands began to crackle with lightning. Arcs of blue energy danced across his fingers and up his forearms in a beautiful display of control that she knew could not belong to someone below the fifth tier.

She could smell the ozone in the air as his attack became eager for release.

That’s impossible! He’s clearly in the same tier as me.

Suddenly he turned and looked right at her with glowing green eyes that caused her breath to catch.

“You three might want to cover your ears.”

Cameron moved before his words even registered to her. He dove behind her, his own hands clamping over her ears, blocking out the sounds of flames and crackling lightning.

She saw two snakes of lightning as thick as her legs just for a second before a flash of light blinded her. A thunderous clap of force blasted her into Cameron and her head rang like a struck bell.

They fell backward in a heap, every muscle in her body screaming in protest at the sudden movement.

She couldn’t see beyond the blinding white light. She couldn't hear beyond the muffling in her ears.

Only a single thought echoed through her mind.

He didn’t use a talisman.

                                                              Jiran

Flooding the area with nitrogen to push up all the oxygen actually worked! That fire didn’t get anywhere near me.

Only forty percent mana left after that lightning. No way that was enough to finish him.

The last of the embers died, allowing Jiran to get a good look at Scalp for the first time in several seconds.

The man shook his head while he blinked repeatedly. Through two gaping holes in his armor, blackened patches of boiled skin dripped blood down his chest and onto the ground.

Scalp’s wide-brimmed hat had been blown off in the shockwave and his short hair stood straight up in a comical display.

Jiran’s next attack was already on its way before Scalp could recover.

A low kick whipped through the air powered by Forcing. It flew toward Scalp at blinding speed, a bubble of Coating already full from Gas Manipulation detached at its apex.

The gas shot through the air like a kicked ball, followed immediately by a small gust of True Origin of Fire.

Just before Jiran’s attack landed, the man regained his senses and immediately threw a punch with all the speed and ferocity of a fourth tier warrior.

Jiran didn’t see his own attack land as a fist connected with his face just as the explosion went off.

He heard screaming as he flew through the air. The noise was instantly cut off as his head smashed into something hard that rang the inside of his skull like a gong.

Jiran felt himself falling, stars sprang up across his vision. They danced around in a dizzying display that instantly had his insides roiling.

What happened?

Need to heal.

“Restoration,” Through an aching jaw, he let out a barely mumbled word with almost no intent behind it.

Jiran felt reality return as his mana was robbed at an unprecedented rate. The feeling of being rapidly drained and the fog in his mind suddenly clearing, elicited a gasp like he was coming up for air after a long dive.

Only three percent left. Not good!

Choking gasps helped Jiran locate Scalp. The man was beating his chest while flames devoured his entire body. Each scream was shorter than the last as the flames entered his lungs and destroyed the vital flesh within.

The tier four’s tough skin took several long seconds to fully blacken and crack apart. Morbid curiosity forced Jiran to not look away as the man burned alive. Eventually he fell to the ground, finally still.

A red blob separated from the corpse and shot into Jiran who bucked under the energies tender mercies.

Challenger timer reset + 2 hours 109:59:53

Strength + .6

Agility + .6

Endurance + .6

Durability + .6

Wisdom + .6

Intelligence + .6

Mana Siphon + 2

Restoration + 1

Forcing + 1

True Origin of Fire + 1

It’s not over yet. There’s still the main issue to deal with.

Jiran’s eyes tracked upward until he located the insane murderer who was watching him with an intense expression.

Not laughing anymore, huh?

“Amazing! Stupendous! What are you going to do next?”

The man’s body was shaking and the look in his eyes screamed of a hunger that sent goosebumps up Jiran’s spine.

“I can’t wait to see. Tell me, I have to know. What do you want? What’s your truth, say it, speak it to me NOW!”

The word reverberated through the air so loudly that the ground beneath Jiran’s feet shook. A building nearby collapsed, sending a plume of dust into the air. Jiran felt his knees giving out and grasped onto the metal cage for balance.

He wants to know… my truth?

Fine. I’ll show him exactly what it is.

“My truth is to know the truth!” Jiran’s words held no lies and Markhiss heard them for what they were, causing his body to once more shake with ecstasy.

“My truth is the secrets of mana, density, and Madra. I’ll never stop until I know everything, see everything, experience everything.”

Jiran smashed his hand into the metal bar of the cage for emphasis as he drilled his eyes into Markhiss.

The membrane was penetrated and Jiran felt the mana calling to him with a sweet siren’s song that was impossible to ignore. He reached into it, pulling with a voracious hunger that would not be sated.

“Mana Siphon.” He growled.

Mana far thicker and heavier than his own flowed through his body and out his raised hand. Jiran struggled for control as a combination of True Origin of Wind and Gas Manipulation flooded the air with enough hydrogen to easily destroy the entire village.

The winds carried the gas high into the air as Jiran fought with the potent mana that demanded release.

“True Origin of Fire.“

Blue flames erupted a hundred meters into the air. Jiran screamed as the potent mana trapped within the cage found its release at long last through the conduits of his body.

The mana no longer listened as it ripped through him and out of his hand, sending more and more gas into the air. The torrential movement of air caused by the massive fires pulled his body from the ground and only his desperate grip on the metal bars kept him from flying through the air.

https://imgur.com/3AztJsA

He felt something building up within him. It was Mana, but unlike any he had experienced before. It rebelled, refusing to follow the flow out of his palm like the rest.

It built inside of him until he felt like his body would explode from the pressure. He opened his mouth to scream again but no sound came out.

The mana found its release through his open mouth. It exploded out in a shower of sparks that hissed in the air.

The sparks soon dissolved into a fine dust that settled over the four of them. As the last of it left his mouth, the cage’s reserves were spent and the entire structure disintegrated.

Jiran immediately collapsed onto his back, looking up at the last of the blue flames that danced in the air.

Markhiss was completely unscathed as he remained floating above them. The maniacal gleam in his eyes while he licked his lips was far more terrifying to Jiran than the fact that he had easily survived the massive attack.

I guess tier six isn’t a bridge that can so easily be crossed. Why is he looking at me like that?

Can we just have a nice, normal, evil monologue without all the creepy perversion, please?

It’s a simple enough script.

Jiran opened his mouth to speak but only a dry cough came out.

Dammit. Fine, I'll do it myself.

‘Your attack didn’t hurt me at all, foolish child. Now, I’ll grind your bones to dust!’

‘Hah, that’s what you think, foul villain. I wasn’t aiming for you at all!’

Jiran smiled as the sky began to crack with the sounds of shattering glass. Broken shards of reality fell from the heavens as the barrier hiding the village fell all around a wide-mouthed Markhiss.

The world began to vibrate as energies beyond Jiran’s understanding rippled over the village like a boulder thrown into a lake.

Markhiss took one last look at Jiran before slamming a fist into his chest and vanishing. An instant later he was replaced by a regal mountain of a man easily three meters tall and made entirely of bulging muscles.

An instinctive dread filled Jiran the moment his eyes landed on the flying disaster. The gap between their existence was so vast that every cell in his body screamed in desperation to flee.

Beneath a golden crown, gray-blue eyes spotted them instantly and pinned Jiran to the ground.

As those eyes washed over his prone form, Jiran felt like every one of his secrets was laid bare for the whole world to see.

Suddenly, the man was on the ground beside them. The air around him shifted continuously, as if tiny black holes appeared and then vanished, causing light to bend in strange turbulent patterns.

https://imgur.com/u714N7b 

He stood between Jiran and the others for a moment before he bent over and gently wiped a lock of blond hair from the girl's forehead.

You have got to be kidding me.

Lenton chose that moment to walk out of a ripple in the air. He bowed before the towering monster with a small smile.

“My Emperor. It’s been far too long. I see you’ve met my wayward apprentice.”

As the emperor turned to face Lenton, the old man gave Jiran a wink.

“Excellent job, Jiran. Why don’t you take a nap while the adults speak, hm?” With a wave of his hand, Jiran knew no more.