Chapter 96 Volume III - 17: Madness as Hope

Chapter 96 Volume III - Chapter 17: Madness as Hope

I hated myself more and more, the feeling inside me was growing with each passing second. And then... the purple-eyed man suddenly stopped.

"Hey?"

He sounded shocked for the first time and I couldn't understand what had happened.

"You... why did your one eye turn purple?"

What?

"Very interesting... really strange... Wieras cannot be hybrids, a wiera is a wiera. But if you are a wiera, why are you in this academy?"

The man paused for a moment as if he realized something. One moment his eyes widened as if he finally understood something he hadn't been able to make sense of for a long time, and the next his face broke into a smile again.

"That thing found you, didn't it? I've been killing myself looking for where it is... You were unlucky enough to meet it, but lucky enough to be compatible. Still, it's... strange that you're a hybrid."

He continued to say something, to mutter to himself, but this time I didn't care. Just like him, I realized something, something very important.

I'm feeling a negative emotion right now. Absolute Mind hasn't kicked in, it's not blocking anything that could stress me out. And as the man said, half of my world is a slightly purplish color.

So...

I clung to this feeling rising up inside me, growing stronger and stronger, enveloping my body, and then what I had predicted happened.

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This notification was frightening for me, especially after the encounter with my wiera side. Yet now, this same notification was like a glimmer of hope for me, appearing out of nowhere.

Was there any other choice, even if it was risky and could end badly?

No, it was the only thing I could try, but it wasn't enough.

I needed more, so I turned my eyes to the man.

"Whatever it is! Let's go on having fun, I never get a chance like this again."

The man shook Celine slightly and she slowly opened her eyes.

"W- what..."

"Wake up, sweetheart! We're playing a very fun game here."

Celine didn't even seem to understand what was happening, her eyes were staring at the floor in disbelief when he thrust his dagger into her hand and nailed her palm to the ground.

Celine screamed, her eyes suddenly tearing up.

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My goal was to fuel the feeling that was growing inside me. So I watched without averting my eyes, and the man kept doing what he was doing.

Celine's fingers were broken one by one. Countless wounds opened on her body. I could hardly contain myself as I watched, but then I froze when I saw something I didn't expect.

After all those wounds, Celine's eyes didn't look like she was in pain, but rather determined. Daggers had been thrust into her limbs countless times, but Celine was struggling as if she didn't want the man who had done this to her to enjoy himself.

I could see it in her eyes, she refused to be his entertainment.

No matter how many daggers went into her body, no matter how many times her bones were broken, she did not put on a despairing face. Tears flowed from her eyes, but she kept her pride to the end. Meanwhile, all I could do was watch; watch this girl who was so much stronger than me and hate myself even more.

Still, she had a limit and so did I. And that limit was shattered after the last thing he did.

"You're too quiet... that's not how it works."

So he placed the dagger horizontally over her left arm and smiled.

"Come on, scream a little."

I couldn't move a muscle as the dagger skinned its way along Celine's arm. I could only watch powerlessly as the clearing filled with her screams, blood, and tears.

"S- stop..."

I begged. I begged earnestly, but the only response I got was Celine's continued screams.

"Stop it..."

After her left arm, he moved to Celine's right arm, doing the same thing, but even worse.

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At this point, she should have bled to death, but his healing power was so accurate and effective that he was able to prevent Celine from dying without over-healing the wound.

I felt another strap in my mind break, this time I started to curse, but he didn't stop.

He pulled out her fingernails and teeth and healed them.

He plucked her hair and healed her again.

He burned her limbs and healed her again.

He kept healing her as if he had unlimited mana.

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"Do you want a scar on your face that you can be proud of?"

She had cried so much that her eyes were swollen. The pain-heal cycle had worn her down so much that she couldn't make a proper sound or keep crying, but when she saw the dagger on her cheek, tears came to her eyes again.

"P- ple... Please-"

She begged, but as if expecting it, he used his dagger to make a cut from just below her eye to her shoulder that was not too deep and even bled less than the others.

Then he laughed lightly and made the same cut in several other places on his body.

I had forgotten how to breathe as the blood oozing from the wounds soaked Celine's clothes.

As her eyes, which a few minutes before had been glowing with determination, now red from crying, slowly dulled, I felt the last leash holding my mind intact break.

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Hope?

The will to survive?

Punishment?

I... I no longer cared about any of it.

I just wanted to kill the man who made my friend suffer, to inflict on him multiples of the pain he inflicted on her. I was blinded by the rage, but I didn't care.

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When the man saw Celine's glazed eyes, he sighed and put her down as if she were nothing.

"We've only just started, but... You're all gone in a few minutes."

He put his hand on Celine and activated the healing skill he was ridiculously good at, but only to the point where she wouldn't die.

After he had finished healing her, he turned his head to look at me and smiled again as if he had found a new toy. Then he approached me, stepping over Celine's body on the floor without a care in the world.

'You're getting angry, aren't you, Aiden? This is what happened to people because of your greed. Celine is near death and has suffered more pain than she will ever suffer in her life because of you, and you're angry, aren't you?

A voice echoed in my head, but I didn't reject it, I didn't run away from it. I embraced it because it was the only way. I didn't care what would happen to me.

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So I kept thinking about it over and over again, even if I was doing the same thing.

She was like this because of me, everyone suffered because of me. None of this would have happened if I hadn't made a mistake.

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"Ah... It was a lot of fun, but they have bad stamina, so what to do? Anyway, did you like the show? I tried so hard for you, but I'm afraid we have to go now. I wonder what the hell you are."

I gritted my teeth, dug my nails into my palm and my vision blurred. The world was slowly going black, and my thoughts were slowly spinning out of my control.

'You know what you want to do, Aiden. You want to take him down. You want to make him suffer the way he's made people here suffer, you want to riddle him with holes. You want to kill him.'

Yes, I do, and not just that, I want so much more.

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I felt my whole body slowly warming up, the pain slowly receding from my body. This warmth spread through my whole body, especially my legs, and I slowly stood up, so that the eyes of the man who had been smiling until now filled with astonishment.

"How can you stand up? I'm pretty sure I cut your tendons and most of your muscl- Oh? The glow in your eye intensified."

I felt bored, I wanted to move as if it hurt me to stay still.

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It still wasn't enough. This man was strong, stronger than I could ever imagine. I needed so much more to simply make him waste time.

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'Can you imagine what else he might do to your other friends, to Celine, if he gets out of here alive?'

My mind was suddenly flooded with images. Adrian, Julian, Celine, Lucia, Sue, and Clara... Each of them was in front of my eyes, and around them a purple flame was rising, slowly engulfing them.

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All thoughts in my mind were erased, I only thought about what he said.

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"You..." n0VELusb.c0m

I felt the purple flames I had seen leaping at me, I felt that they continued to burn and burn inside me, even growing bigger. It was as if I had been thrown into a furnace, the darkness in front of my eyes turned into a purple glow.

A simple word like anger was not enough to describe what I was experiencing in my mind.

'Hahah... You really are stupid, Aiden.'

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"You..."

The darkness glowed an even brighter purple, and then I heard a voice echoing in my mind, growing less and less intense.

It was no longer me speaking, it was someone else in my body.

"Wanna play a game?"

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The purple glow faded as quickly as it came. The unbearable heat enveloped my whole body and the connection between me and the world was literally severed after this last notification.