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Chapter 19: Bad Bloods Forming
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Some may even call it snapping out. Siva's mentality was such that when he realized that he made a grave mistake, it was already too late.
His victory laugh went into an abrupt stop.
After his tensed muscles relaxed when the enemy was vanquished, the prickling sensation of his head being split open came.
As always, it felt like being submerged into a drum of ice with only the head, and not the body being dipped in.
He collapsed on his knees and almost banged his head on the dead carcass of the monster.
Where he was, there was a dent in the monster's body, the part where he delivered his finishing blow, the now officially (self proclaimed) named Meteor Dive.
But, with the past minute, he couldn't remember almost every detail of it. It's as if he was lost in a place where he could only see himself moving but unable to influence what was actually happening.
All he could remember is that he understood the plan he made and tried to execute it as fast as possible.
What happened during that time, he can't remember it clearly. Only the feeling on his body remained. All of the fatigue, the calculations, the feeling of the distance, the items used, the angle and power applied on the attack, the elements that consisted his plans, everything that led up to this moment, the impression remained on his consciousness but the details of how it happened is gone on the dark.
It's as if he became a puppet of his rage.
He knew he was angry, but now, he had already forgotten the reason he was angry at the first place.
"Ah... that's right. Those guys..."
The intervention. Now he remember. He was mad at them for intervening with his plans. And now that he remembered that he was in a race against time...
"YOU MOTHER FUCKERRRSSSSSSS...!"
He screamed as the rage he felt came back to his mind.
Hatred. Fear. Anger. Negative feelings swelled up in his chest. His tears flowed like river and he stood up.
Now, the pain in his head had become less. Instead, a feeling much heavier and alarming was bugging his mind like a termite constantly making noise.
Panic struck him.
He looked around and realized the source of his fear and anxiety.
He is in an unknown forest with the culprit of this great catastrophe only paying up two souls. He's not satisfied with the price they paid for this inconvenience.
He will hunt him down. He will go back at them and make them pay ten hundred folds!
For now, they had to regroup.
He was about to summon his communicator when he remembered that this forest doesn't have a signal. It's weird enough that it works, but to actually lose signal is just almost unbelievable.
But then again, RPG: Terroa revolves around the rules of reality with 90% accuracy.
If the communicator is a cellphone with limited range, then perhaps it's also possible that it can lose signal in an inhabited place.
Considering that this forest has a Lapis in it, despite the standards of the Lapis' habitat being broken, it only means that this forest is either a rarely visited field dungeon or a very far away place from society.
-which means, by the way, that the more reason he needs to regroup to his team.
He needed to ask them few questions about this place.
When he saw shadows in a distance starting to regain their footing, Siva exerted effort to run towards their direction.
But as soon as his feet moved to take the first step, he collapsed and stumbled beside the trophy he just claimed.
Vision gone blank, the pain in his head unbearable.
Maybe this is the price he had to pay for the strength he so longed to have.
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"You heard that? Shh..."
"Jack... there's nothi..."
"Shush! Everyone, shush!"
In the temp camp inside a cave, surrounding the light from the bonfire in their midst, Jack's alerted senses caused his men to feel that there was something wrong.
"Jack." called his assistant leader. "What is it?"
"I heard an explosion. No. It's a thunder."
With a single nod from the assistant, two Swordmages positioned at the cave's entrance ran outside.
When they came back, "There's no sign of raining."
The report made the assistant wary.
"You sure it's not just the after effects of our fight?"
"I know what I heard, Jin. I can't be mistaken, it's a thunder. Did you not feel the vibrations in your skin?"
Jin, the assistant, shook his head with a frown.
A curious look in his eyes suggested that he was very worried as he was skeptic with Jack's condition.
"Jack I think you're just tired. We should rest. It's still a long way to go until we reach the area where he was resting."
Jack fell silent as he sat down on the rock chair. He put a hand on his chin and caressed it, the gloves he wore provided a feeling of relaxing warm touch.
"I know I heard it. Could it be that there's someone else in this forest?"
"Here? No. Last time I checked, there is only one quest left that can lead to a party venturing here in Kali. But that's a quest that is a lot harder than the one we took."
"Are you talking about the Gate Keeper's mission?"
"Yeah. Based on the books, there's just no way you can actually make the lantern run out of light. Even if it did say that the lantern has a tendency of losing its light in ten years, it's just a tendency with a probability of 1% happening."
"I guess you're right huh."
"Of course I am right. I'm your advisor. These trivial things are my forte. You can be sure that we're the only ones in this place."
"Wait, eh what about Mages with access to the Magus Archive? They can teleport almost in any place that they have visited."
Jin chuckled and drunk a dark liquid in a cup container.
"That's an exception. Unless that Mage wants to trap someone here from a grudge, he can't be so stupid to actually go here just to hunt. He'll be hunted by the monsters before he could even try to hunt one."
Jack shrugged and also drank the liquid in his metal cup. As he watched the fire danced in the center of the cave with Jin, his mind wasn't really relaxed as he kept on thinking over the fact that he really did hear thunder echoed in the cave.
For all he know, with his intuition this strong, it was a form of warning from a future meeting with a destined enemy.
Or perhaps this is a resonating effect.
Fate really do have plans for rivals to meet.