Chapter 55 - Bloody Hands

This little skeleton was so sneaky.

How did he even do it without me noticing?

The pieces of the skeleton began sinking into the ground while the five-meter tall skeleton raised its sword and attempted to slice me.

Leon stood in front of me and caught the sword with his hand. The ground under him cracked, but the sword could not even budge Leon's hand.

Leon took a step forward and threw a fist up high at the five-meter tall skeleton's ribcage.

Cracks spread across the bones of the five-meter tall skeleton and it fell over.

Osric joined once it fell down by stomping hard on the rib cage, making the bones crack further.

With another stomp, the rib cage shattered into many pieces and began trembling.

My mind forced the crystal right next to the shattered pieces, but unlike last time they continued trembling.

Osric furrowed his brows.

"How is it still moving?"

My eyes narrowed.

"It seems my crystal no longer has any effect."

As the five-meter tall skeleton sank into the ground, the three-meter tall skeleton came back up.

Its armor had some fine cracks here and there but now had a new pristine iron sword and shield.

This was getting a little annoying...

My legs rushed towards the three-meter skeleton with no abandon.

Seeing me run towards it, the three-meter skeleton swung its sword sideways.

My arm lifted and was struck by the sword.

The sword only pierced part of the muscle in my arm, causing minimal pain.

A vision of how Leon punched flashed in my mind.

My foot stepped forward and my body twisted to throw my fist at the shield.

Cracks immediately spread across the entire shield. The three-meter tall skeleton was thrown back and the sword flew out of its hand.

Without pausing, my steps rushed towards the three-meter tall skeleton, and another fist was thrown.

The shield broke apart and my other fist threw it at its skull.

The skeleton's skull flew off and had shattered into pieces. While the pieces were still in the air, they began to tremble.

My brows furrowed.

The crystal was right next to me, getting rid of the nearby mana.

Why was the skeleton still moving? Is it because of this area?

While my mind was pondering the possibilities, my hand made sure to pick up its body so that it could not sink into the ground.

Suddenly, a small figure beside me was thrown across the room and violently smashed against the wall.

It was the one-meter tall skeleton, it had snuck up on me without me noticing. It seemed Mark had caught on to its intentions and shut it down.

The one-meter tall skeleton had shattered into many tiny pieces that scattered across the floor. What was strange was that the skeleton was not near my crystal but did not start trembling.

My hand scratched the side of my head.

What was I missing?

In the corner of my eye, there was a 'bone' that was not really trembling as it sunk into the ground. This 'bone' slightly resembled a bean about the size of a tennis ball.

It was a few meters away from me and was about to escape through the floor. My hand deftly pulled out my stake and threw it.

Like piercing through mud, the stake went right through the 'bone' and all of the bones stopped trembling, some halfway in the ground.

My head turned back.

"These skeletons have this weird white ball thing in them. If you destroy it, it kills them entirely."

Leon and Osric nodded. The five-meter tall skeleton rose from the ground and lifted its sword back up.

My hand retrieved the stake and my mind focused on the five-meter skeleton.

My eyes closed as my vision was not what was being used to figure out the five-meter skeleton's anatomy.

Slowly its body was being reconstructed in my mind.

...There was a weird bean-like ball in the middle of its skull.

My eyes flew open again and my hand clutched on the stake.

Before the skeleton could even raise its sword, my figure disappeared from behind it and reappeared in front of it.

The skeleton fell to its knees and its skull smashed into the ground.

Leon nodded.

"Well done."

Mark's eyelid twitched.

"You... can strike while manipulating space?"

My hand scratched the back of my head.

"Well, yeah but I couldn't really explain to you how to do it. For me, I kinda just feel how to do it."

Mark narrowed his eyes and stared at me intently.

Leon chuckled.

"The end goal is to learn how to 'feel' it anyways. Whether you understand the process is not so important. Though I must say, space manipulation looks quite impressive."

My head tilted to the side.

"Yeah, it is pretty cool."

Osric sighed.

"Anyways, it is good to know that these nuisances can truly die."

A sigh escaped me.

"It sure is."

Leon looked down the continuation of the path.

"Do you guys want to continue?"

Osric sighed.

"It does not seem that anything rewarding is waiting for us down there, but we might as well at this point."

Mark kept his smile on his face and remained silent.

My shoulders shrugged.

"I guess we should continue."

With that, the four of us continued down the pathway, but this time Osric was lighting up the path with a ball of lightning.

The next room we encountered was massive. My guess was that this matched the dimensions of Ela's palace.

The implications of the countless bloody stone tables were a little harrowing.

There were papers scattered across the floor. Leon walked to a set of wooden tables lined up at the edges of the room. The tables all had drawers that were bursting with papers and messy stacks on the top of the tables.

The writing was not as neat as before. Every letter was almost neat, but it appeared that the person's hand was shaking as they wrote it.

My eyes peered over Leon's shoulder to read the paper he was reading.

'Experiment fifteen, First Try

The need to clear out new rooms has slowly worn me down.

Unfortunately, this can't be helped as residual material will interfere with any future rituals.

Not everything calls for failure though.

I believe I have found the answer.

The light is getting closer... and closer.

The anxiety has made me dangerously advance with ambitious experiments, but that is fine.

Anyways, the answer I found came from an unorthodox thought.

What if magic was not needed?

Restricting one's thought to using magic whenever you wish to tackle the mythical only limits one.

My recent experiments have concluded that the soul has a tremendous amount of mythical properties, perhaps even more than magic itself.

Research into souls must become a priority, this appears to be a lead that will guide me to the light.'

A large circle of ink was below the sentence I was reading. There were still more scrawls under that one.

'Sometimes I wonder about what these hands have done.

The amount of people I killed has become countless.

From innocent to guilty, old to young, they all died to further my research.

It has become normal to have dried blood from my many victims on my hands.

At some point, I could not bother washing off the blood.

Looking at myself in the mirror has scared me, time and time again. That is why every mirror that used to be in my possession is now gone.

But...

Giving up at this point would be a waste of the progress made, and all the lives that were used to reach this point.

Of course, I must continue. It does right by all the dead this was built upon.

Continue.

I must continue.

What was my experiment going to be again?

I will remember if I give myself enough cues.

Yes... I thought that those that have given up on life may be more difficult to resurrect, or will somehow collapse the whole process.

That is why my priority has been to get those that struggle the most. I would give them chances to get away but set up a trap for them to be captured all the same.

However, therein lay another problem. Upon capture, they may be filled with despair and no longer struggle.

The solution has been to capture as many people there were in my vision. Then I would check how loud their screams would be if-

Why was I writing this again?'

There was a small pool of ink under those scrawls. The writing was slowly becoming more jumbled. There was more writing under that pool that was neater.

'Ah, right. I mentioned the experiment at the start.

I should remember to reread what I write.

The experiment...

I attempted to create a magical manifestation of a vessel for the soul. The attempt was not successful.

The next attempt will use material methods to synthesize a new vessel. The usage of what we understand clearly will combine with the mystical.

Don't rush things, Noah, the light will come soon enough.'

Leon slowly shook his head from side to side.