Chapter 271: waking up

“My head hurts!”

Clark felt like he was in an ocean where his consciousness was repeatedly being hammered by the ocean waves. He couldn’t see anything, everywhere was blank but his head was hurting like bad.

“Who the hell is playing drums on my head?” He fumed but nothing came out of his mouth.

Actually, he couldn’t even see himself. Everywhere before him was black and blank like the void space, he didn’t even know what he was right now- if he was existing as a human or as another thing entirely.

“What’s a human?” His voice questioned in his mind, sounding confused.

At the back of his mind, something called a human was ringing bells in him but he just couldn’t get a grasp of it.

“Weird. Is human food? I’m hungry”.

Though he could not see his stomach, he felt hungry. He also didn’t know what a stomach was, but his brain just felt that it was the right term for what he wanted to express.

“Where am I? I want to go home; I want to eat. Take me out!”

He didn’t know how long he was inside this strange void; he couldn’t even keep track of time so how could he know?

All he knew was that the faint feeling of weakness that was hitting his consciousness gradually got better and improved as time went away.

What happened to him? He didn’t know. Why did he feel weak before, and why was he healing up now? He didn’t know. Everything felt strange, weird, and mysterious to him.

“Am I dreaming?”

“What the hell is wrong with me, why am I spouting nonsense? What on earth is dreaming? What is even earth? I think I’m mad? What’s mad?”

As the questions continued stacking up, his consciousness became more and more unstable before with a flash everything suddenly became tranquil again. His consciousness went dormant.

Sometime later, he woke up again feeling more confused.

This became his routine for a long indeterminate time. Consciousness waking up, consciousness spitting out a bunch of crap, consciousness becoming confused, then consciousness being knocked out and becoming dormant again.

“What am I? Where is my family? Oh man, what is a family?” He felt like crying.

He felt lonely, alone, left out, and abandoned.

“Where is Sonia?” His consciousness's voice muttered in a sobbing tone.

He didn’t know why but whenever he mentioned this name, a fuzzy feeling always enveloped his heart, taking away all the confusion for a brief moment. That was the only time he felt liberated.

Today was another lonely day. As his consciousness drifted alone in this black solitary void, he suddenly stirred, he thought he just heard someone else speak.

“Who is there?” The consciousness emitted nervous physic waves.

Getting no response, it kept quiet, suppressed its nervousness, and listened.

“Master, it’s over a month already and Clark is not awake yet”. A voice that felt faintly familiar yet distant sounded out suddenly in a worried tone.

“Stop disturbing me Thunder, I already told you that he’s alive. I already did everything that I can to keep his life safe, the rest is now up to him”. Another voice, a little apathetic replied.

“Master, why are you being so nonchalant? He’s the chosen one, you said…”

“I know, Thunder. I know…, it’s just that getting worried for nothing will not help matters, it’s better to just chill and wait it out”.

As Clark’s consciousness heard this, he felt his memory stirring a bit but he still couldn’t make out what these people meant.

This didn’t stop him from being shocked though. If he currently had eyes, they would have been widened to the size of burning lanterns already.

“What is Clark? What is thunder? How can another voice sound here? This is interesting!” He still felt confused but curiosity was now in his eyes.

As he listened more to the 2 voices discussing, his illusory eyes suddenly widened to the limits. He let an audible yelp as the first light since he arrived in this void space broke through the veil of the darkness.

The light was stagnant at first, but it only took a moment before it started expanding outwards.

After confirming that he was not damaged by this sudden light, his consciousness poked at it curiously as he observed it like a child who just saw the outside world for the first time.

Then he heard it…

“Master, he’s waking up!”

“What…?”

“The 2 voices are even clearer, are they food?” Clark became excited.

Then…

Pop!

The darkness shattered, his vision was now filled with light, and 2 faces held by 2 big heads were directly before him.

“Yelp!”

This sight freaked the hell out of him. He jumped from the bed immediately, turned, and took a sharp turn to the right before sprinting at an extremely fast speed from these predators.

Before he could take up to 5 steps forward, one of the pink guys with big heads arrived at his front before pointing a palm at him to calm him down.

Though he was still confused and panicking, strangely, he understood this gesture.

“Clark?” The big-headed fellow asked hesitantly.

“What’s Clark?”

“…”

King turned to face his Master, a speechless expression on his face. The old man only shrugged at him before turning to go to a corner of the cave.

After confirming that this thing was not about to eat him, Clark finally let go of his fear. Now, he was curious. He walked closer to the pink thing, sniffed him before walking around him.

“Why are you like this? Why are you so soft? Why are you pink? Why am I like this? Why are you like me?”

“…”

King could feel a headache coming immediately. Of all the scenarios that he imagined, he never thought that Clark waking up and suffering from a loss of memory disorder would be the reality.

He facepalmed. “Reality is playing tricks at me”.

“What’s reality?” Clark now almost stuck his face on this pink fellow curiously. “Why is your face creasing? Are you sick? What’s sick if I may ask? What’s…?”

“Hey! Hey, stop it, it’s ok”. King quickly shoved a hand at Clark’s face to silence him.

“Follow me, let me explain to you. You understand what’s follow right?” King was almost walking away already, but he hesitated and turned before asking.

“What do you take me for? A fool? Who doesn’t know what’s follow?” Clark sneered.

Whack!

“You…, you slapped me?” King was stunned.

Clark smiled and declared proudly. “That’s what you meant right, follow?”

“Oh boy!”

…

After taking a few hours to patiently explain things to Clark while hoping for the best, King heaved a sigh of relief as a positive reaction was finally made by him.

The first hour, Clark was mostly unresponsive and just curious. But as time went on, he started contemplating seriously like he was remembering something. Now, his eyes were closed and he was eerily motionless.

King did not disturb him, he kept quiet and silently accompanied him.

About 40 agonizing minutes later, Clark finally opened his eyes.

King detected it immediately, there was a change. Clark’s eyes no longer showed confusion, indecisiveness, and curiosity, they already reverted to the experienced eyes of a military leader.

Clark now had a solemn look on his face. “King?”

“Yes, Clark. I’m King, you just woke up”.

Clark nodded in silence before looking at the floor in contemplation. A lot seemed to be going through his mind, so King cleverly let him be.

A few minutes later, Clark spoke again. “How long was I knocked out for?”

“A month, 2 days, and 15 hours”.

Clark’s face scrunched up into a frown. “What happened to Dickson?”

“I don’t know but I think he escaped. We told him to escape long enough before the underground research base collapsed, so I think that he’s fine”.

“The research base collapsed?” Clark’s frown only grew.

“Yes, let me tell you what happened after you passed out”.

A few minutes later, Clark finally knew everything that happened after he started convulsing and lost consciousness.

“Did you check up on them? Diana, Anna, Dickson, Josh, how are they? Did they escape already, did anything happen to them?”

“I didn’t check up on them, there was no time. You almost died you know. My Master did a lot before your condition finally stabilized; I didn’t have time to go anywhere else for the past month”.

“Damn! Why did you prioritize my life and leave them to fate? You know…”

Clark stopped mid-sentence, finally catching up to a word that King just used. “Your Master?”

“And before I forget, why are you so caring to me? It’s strange, what’s your motive?” Clark finally composed himself a bit, even taking on a slightly guarded stance.

King sighed. “Clark, there’s a lot that you have a lot to know. Let me introduce you to my master”.

The old man kept silent as Clark and King went closer to the place where he sat fishing from the small tunnel water that was flowing, his eyes never leaving the water.

Getting closer, Clark finally took on the full picture of this old man. As he no longer had a hood on, Clark was able to make out a lot about his features.

First, he was clearly an old man but his face hardly had any shrinks or creases. He looked more like a middle-aged man, only his white hair and white flowing beards said otherwise.

“But this can be artificially made though”. Clark noted.

He wondered how exceptional a man the extremely strong king of demolition was calling Master would be. “Is he superman?”

“Hey kiddo, welcome back to life”. The old man turned his head to smile briefly at him before turning back to focus on his fish.

Clark’s face twitched. “Do you have to be so pretentious. Now, I’ve lost all the respect I previously had for you”.

As if reading Clark’s thought, King sighed exasperatedly. “Master, stop acting like that before him. Act a little in accordance with your power, it’s sometimes embarrassing to call myself your student when you act like this”.

“Hmm!” The old man grunted in reply.

“Clark, don’t be deceived by what your eyes are showing you. My Master here before you is one of the few elite-grade soldiers of this era, Elite Commander Titus”.

“Elite-grade soldier?” Clark had a lot of question marks in his mind.

“Don’t worry about that, my Master will explain everything to you soon”.

King laughed. “You are right, most of the rumors circulating about my existence are wrong. No Everest spirit saved me, neither am I the favored son of Cold Kong, my Master was the one who saved me after my parents died”.

“It’s funny because Cold King almost killed me some time ago, my Master saved me”.

“Your Master saved you from the legendary Cold Kong?!” Now, Clark was astonished.

He finally turned to give this old man a double-take.

The old man turned to face him at the same time, smiling. “I finally confirmed it, you’re really the chosen one”.

“What…?”

[Sorry for the late chapter, I've been a little busy lately.]