Chapter XLVIII: To Become A God (4)

Previously

A sigh left my lips as I got up on my elbows, sitting upright while my legs healed. Then, my jaws dropped to the floor when I saw the state of the training grounds around me. 

Before, the training grounds of Ivanka were pristine and jet-black with the exception of a few lights somewhat like led lights, surrounding the hexagonal floor as they hummed in a low song whenever the four monoliths beamed per second. 

Now? Now, it looked like World War 3 had taken place here. The hexagonal floors were openly cracked, sizzling with static like electrical cables that had been sliced off. One of the four monoliths had half of its body literally turned to ash, fine black powder that pooled around it’s feet like blood flowing out of your stomach after you’d been stabbed. Some of the pristine, jet-black appearance had turned an ugly gray, as if it had decayed from a millenium’s worth of weathering and erosion. 

But the scariest part of them all was the usually stoic-looking and strong Ivanka, collapsed and sitting by a monolith, gasping for dear breath as ichor, blood the color of gold flowed from her missing left arm. 

Only one thing came to my mind. “What happened?” It looked like Ivanka was absolutely focused on trying to stop her bleeding but cursed under her breath as some form of red-black symbol materialized on her stump of a left arm, stopping her from regenerating. 

I didn’t know what happened but I felt like whatever happened here had to do with me. “It can’t be. Argh, shit that hurts.” As my brain sifted through my memories, I started to have an inkling as to what exactly occurred here. 

This had happened once in my 16 years of life as Willow the Maiden but it was back when I was very, very young to the point I could only remember parts of the memory. Once when I was just approaching the age of six, my dad had taken me along with a then, five-year old little Elm to the woods near our village to hunt for simple wild boars around the edges. . .until we came face to face with a drakeling, an A class monster. Then, I woke up to my father and Elm lying unconscious behind me as the ashy remains of the drakeling and our immediate surroundings laid in front of me, before I fell unconscious as well. Next thing I knew, I woke up in my room, body extremely sore as I heard sounds of my father screaming downstairs.

There was a huge chunk of information missing in between the meeting of the drakeling and the death of the drakeling but some things remained the same. There were always traces of ash as if something had eroded/decayed my surroundings, I blacked out before it happened and finally, I always woke up to a body nearly depleted of prana. . and something else.

My toes twitched. As my body had restored around half of it’s prana reserves, my Dress activated as well, activating its own minor healing skill. With the two healing skills kicking in, it didn’t even take five minutes before I could somewhat move my legs.

I was still thinking about what had happened but a nearby grunt from a very pissed Ivanka brought me out of my reverie. I looked back at her and it seemed to get worse since she was starting to look really pale and was full of sweat. Whatever happened, it must have hit her the worst.

Another minute and I could finally bring myself to stand and walk towards Ivanka who finally noticed my appearance. 

Her eyes widened as she summoned forth her chalikars and looked at me like I was her worst enemy with bated, tired long breaths. I raised my hands up, “Whatever happened. . .I know I’m not stupid enough to say it wasn’t my fault. But, but. . .that me isn’t here anymore. ”

“The one who hurt you isn’t the one standing in front of you,” I said and offered a weak smile. “It’s me, Willow. Please, I just want to help you.”

Ivanka looked at me, gasping as she tried to determine if I was lying. Her eyes glowed and a second later, her chalikars disappeared as she leaned back into her monolith, presenting her stump of an arm to me. 

“Thank you,” I said before focusing on her arm. As I looked at it, I suppressed the urge to puke since this was the second time I had been forced to look at such gore but I noticed something else that piqued my curiosity. I couldn’t tell before since I was far away but looking closely, it appeared that the red, mystical symbol hovering near her arm had been the english words of ‘Cursed’. 

An English word. Not the seven languages derived from the gods, not the tongue of the dragons nor the fork-language of the demons. No, what was before my eyes was the language that belonged to my previous world, pure, bright red English, something that shouldn’t be possible since curses, symbols and runes were always written in the words of this world. 

Shaking my head, I held both of my hands over her cursed stump. I wasn’t sure if I could heal something her godly regeneration factor couldn’t but after seeing the english word, I knew I could do it since well, the cause of all this was now 100% me. 

“[Heal],” I intoned. The similar fuzzy feeling of light expelled from my body, wrapping around her stump of an arm as I felt how angry the curse word was but more importantly, how me it was. I could feel all of the anger, malice and killing intent the me who hurt Ivanka felt but still, my memory of the time was locked. 

No problem, the priority right now was to fix my mistakes. 

“Hngh,” Ivanka groaned, a little eyebrow raised. I could tell that she was wondering how on earth I could heal something that she couldn’t but she must have chalked it up to my status as the Maiden. There was a reason the Maiden was considered the greatest and purest healer of the world after all.

“Does it hurt?” I asked, mid-heal. “If it hurts, you can tell me.”

Ivanka only grunted in response, which made me smile. Looks like she would still be the silent oaf, still the same even on the verge of death. I was glad that some things never changed but focused my attention back on her arm. The curse, aka the English word, was starting to show signs of breaking as some edges and parts of the word were being erased, purified by my healing. 

Since it would still be awhile before I could fully erase the curse, I decided to alleviate the awkward mood. . .and my curiosity. “What happened?” 

“Hm?”

“I’m asking you what happened.”

“You.  . don’t remember?” Ivanka said. 

“Of course not,” I replied. “I remember you saying that you were going to train me. I remember your explanation about martial arts. I remember nearly being crushed to death by your little test.” At that, I may have pumped a little more prana than needed into my healing which made her grimace for a second. 

She glared at me or maybe she didn’t. It’s still really hard for me to get a grip on her expressions seriously. “But anything after? Just a blank slate, a gap in my memories.” My eyes caught how the curse around her body seemed to have reacted to my purification but nothing happened, probably because my skill level was still too low. 

“I see,” Ivanka said. She looked around, seeing how much of a mess her training grounds turned into. 

“Sorry about all of this,” I wasn’t shameless enough to not, at least offer an apology for everything. “But seriously, what happened? What did. .I do?”

Now, I may not be able to read her emotions at all but after the weeks we had lived together, I had already begun to pick up some of the habits she made like how she grits her teeth when pondering about something for example. Or her current biting of her inner cheeks when she was hesitating to say something. But of course, her face still remained as impassive as ever. Sometimes I do wonder how it’d look, ransacked with pleasure. Focus. 

“You snapped,” Ivanka said. “It was nothing like I’d ever seen before.”

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