Chapter 141 - Darkness

Everything hurt. Her face, chest, limbs. They were all consumed in boundless agony. With each beat of her heart, she felt her violet blood pump out from her wounds and spurt upon the ravaged earth, soaking the soil and staining the waters. Slowly, Mio cranked her eyelids open.

The dying light stung her eyes, but she could see. It was through tear blurred sight, her vision darkening from blood loss, but she could see. The landscape around her had been utterly destroyed. Divots had been cast along the ground, forming new water ways and erasing old ones.

Trees had been fallen, and the mutilated corpses of Ghouls lay dead around her, slaughtered by merely the effects of her battle.

If you… can even… call it that…

Idly, Mio spotted her leg strung off in the distance, her thigh crushed, and her limb half submerged. She glanced down. Her it was her left leg it seemed. It had… all happened so fast. At one moment she was guarded Brock as he evolved his race, then the next, the world became icy, and pain exploded across her face.

It had taken her about ten seconds of airtime and a crash landing before she realised a fist had slammed into her face. The Oni had come, and he’d proceeded to beat her until she was a pulp. Even know, the searing agony persisted, and her unresponsive body quivered at the memory of him.

She didn’t have enough aura to sense if Brock was still alive, though she held her hope that he’d found some way to escape. He was always resourceful in his methods of survival after all. Breathing out a gurgling breath, the shadow assassin channelled her remaining aura to conjure a tentacle from her own shadow.

It plucked a berry from her half-crushed pouch and deposited it in her mouth. Her aura flared, and Mio used the fuel it brought to access the shadow realm. To her side, the tentacle coughed up a healing potion – one of Amara’s. A second tentacle appeared and plucked the cork before the first poured it down her throat.

Some of the fluid seeped through the claw holes in her flesh and dribbled down the outside of her neck, but the majority reached her stomach. Quickly, her wounds began to heal and stabilise. She would survive.

If Zin didn’t come back, that was.

**

Zin Keene panted, his breath coming out as jets of steam. In his hand rested the head of his quarry, the back of his – its – head splattered over the crumbling rock behind it. Zin breathed out once more, eying the blood, bone and bits of brain that now coated the cracked stone.

He glanced at the Error. Its curse remnant – its own variation of aura – was quickly fading. The demon snarled. He was looking at a corpse.

Despite the Error’s natural constitution and resistance to death, he’d let his emotions get the better of him. He snarled and threw the corpse’s head back against the stone. It splattered again, and more crimson blood joined the tapestry on Zin’s front, “Fuck.”

He hoped a corpse would still bear fruit. Although, knowing the researcher he had waiting on standby for the task of studying the Error, he knew he’d at least get something out of it. The man was reliable, if not a bit crazy. They were similar in that regard, he supposed. The part about being crazy.

In the distance, he detected an aura flare and recognised it as that of the human woman. He grinned, “Guess I didn’t finish the job.”

Zin took a step forward.

“HEHEHEHE…”

Then he froze.

A deep cackle resounded in his mind, akin to thousands of deafening whispers overlayed in his mind. He felt a trickle of blood drip from his nose. What…?

Immediately, he twisted around, his eyes snapping to the corpse. It was still there, unmoving. He turned back and flexed his legs, preparing to speed toward the shadow user before she managed to escape. Beneath him, the shadows twitched.

The air felt cold. Colder than he could ever make it with his Augment.

“Who’s there?” Zin paused in his actions and flared his aura to its full might, snarling to his surroundings. He could detect nothing, nor could he see anything. And he would. The area was laid flat for hundreds of meters in all directions. The continued to lower in temperature.

Zin felt the chill creep into his bones. Beneath him, his shadow bulged and twitched. All the shadows in the area were. Grinding his fangs against each other, the demon pulled at the sword sheathed at his waist. He hadn’t truly needed it during his fight with the human Brock, but now, he felt it would save his life.

Its edge gleamed in the final rays of sunlight as the blazing star dipped below the horizon. As Zin brought it to the ready, the air keened at its passage. The blade was of fine make, but ultimately had lagged behind his strength as he neglected to seek out a new one.

Zin’s eyes darted back to the corpse. His blood froze to ice in his veins.

It was gone.

Only a splotch of splintered bone, dim blood and pink brain pieces were left behind.

Growling, Zin wheeled around, panning his eyes over every faucet of his surroundings. There was nothing. No aura. No remnant. Not a sound nor a disturbance. Did he have some sort of statis Technique? Did he ru-?

Something struck him in the stomach. He doubled over, feeling blood and bile building in his mouth. The air popped, and he launched backwards, spinning over the ravage earth like a pebble on water. A mix of fluids spewed from behind his fangs.

His hand snapped out and his claws dug into the soil, slowing him to a stop. Snarling, Zin wiped the vomit from his lower lip and stood. His eyes darted left then right. Still, there was n-

His kneecap let out a sickening crackle as what felt like a foot stomped down on it from behind. The bone tore past the flesh and Zin fell to his knees. A quickly as he felt the contact, he slashed his blade sideways. It met air.

Is this… He resisted the urge to gulp but couldn’t stop himself. He felt anger flare. Is this the Error?

He supposed he never considered the possibility that the human wasn’t truly the Error. Errors were created from beings upon the System’s integration upon a planet, being the result of a spark in the Great Machine’s dimensional circuitry when it encounters a scenario that wasn’t accounted for in its inbuilt coding.

All of that meant that there was still the ‘being’ portion that the Error was created from. Zin, as well as many others, had always assumed that the being part was overwritten and erased, but what if it was only suppressed? What if Brock Carter was in fact the Error, but the true Error wasn’t the dominate personality?

What if somehow, the human was?

Which meant me killing the human left the other personality to take over…

The air hissed toward his left, and Zin’s sword blurred to block it. An overpowering force slammed into him from the right and his blade was once again met by nothing. His kneecap crackled as it healed up, and Zin was bowled to the side, hitting the dirt and carving a divot along it as he travelled.

A dark figure flashed into existence overhead, and Zin brought his sword across as a quadrio of arms bore down on him. He felt claws, ones sharper than even the edge of his blade, rake through his abdomen with ease. Sparks flew from his weapon, and he felt the metal bend as two limbs were blocked by it.

His eyesight strained at the sudden brightness, and as soon as the creature appeared, it had once again disappeared. This can’t continue. It can’t be that much more powerful than me. The human was only at F Grade…

As he tried to get up, a gust so abrupt it left his skin peeling slammed him back to the ground and tore his blade from his grasp. It took the to air, before freezing dead. Zin watched in horror as an invisible force began to fold the sword down to a cube of disfigured metal. It fell to the ground, inert and useless.

Zin’s face contorted to one of rage, and as the air hissed again, this time from all sides, he swung wide, his fist landing upon something hard and… formless. His eyes snapped to the side as a shadowy figure exploded backwards and skimmed over the landscape.

With his attention now fully upon it, Zin felt as the creature’s curse remnant reached out to the atmosphere and tore. Space popped, and it disappeared. That isn’t possible… Error’s are unable to manipulate their own substitute for aura…

He felt space pop behind him, and Zin arm blurred across to catch it in the face. Black, spectral chains shot up from his shadow and pulled his arm low, his swing missing its target. A fist landed in his face and he shot backwards.

The chains jerked, and he felt his arm dislocate as his momentum halted. A heel bore down on him from overhead, and the world snapped to darkness as his face crashed into the earth. He gasped for air. He felt a searing heat lap against him from above.

An Augment. A powerful one.

Zin’s aura lashed out at the chains and countered the runic configuration of them. Unmistakably, it was a result of a Technique. The conjuration fizzled and crumbled, and Zin forced himself to the side, his sizeable stats letting him clear the area easily.

He rolled and returned to his feet as a blazing star of crimson fire crashed down to where he was before and obliterated the landscape. A shockwave sent him stumbling and ambient heat charred his skin. The area it contacted was utterly erased. Zin gulped.

It… hyper-compressed a fire-based Augment into a star… shit…

Despite the clear show of power, Zin refused to back down. If he returned without its head, the studying regardless, Erykah would kill him without a question. There was no failure within the Divine Court. And he couldn’t flee from her either.

She would find him. She knew his aura, and there was no hiding it from the Multiverse’s Apex Aura Chaser.

An icy mist flowed off from his form, and Zin brought his Augment of Frost to bare. Another sword was summoned to his grasp from the spatial ring on his finger and it adopted a sky-blue glow. Mist fell from its lengths and frosted over the ground below.

Zin readied himself in a stance as the creature was obscured by dust and steam, and as it settled, he was surprised to see that it hadn’t moved. It was now looking at him, a horned head facing him. Two splotches of a darkness more consuming than the black material that made up its body seemed to gaze into his very soul.

A cackle resounded. “HEHEHEHE…”

It prowled forward, its long arms dragging along the ground and casting gouges in the dried-out soil. Occasionally, crimson lightning flickered along its body. Dark fog fell from its body, hitting the ground in thick clumps and disappearing into the earth.

Now that it had stopped for a moment – stopped to play with him, he knew – he could truly study its form. According to the books, no Error was ever the same, yet they all possessed the same black flesh and formless nature. The same abyssal eyes.

Vaguely, this one resembled the human it had been created from, although the rough shape was the similarities ended. A pair of long and lanky, but unmistakably powerful, arms adorned each side of the beast’s upper torso, each ending in a clawed hand at seemed to ripple to the woes of the breeze. Two powerful legs protruded from its waist, and claws too grew from the minor appendages of its feet.

Zin breathed out and soothed his racing heart, and the ground cracked. He shot forward.

The air screamed as his sword sliced down at the beast again and again and again; endlessly. Each time it was countered. A blurring claw there, a dark chain here, a blade of air somewhere. Zin was wholly unable to damage the creat-

A chain snapped around his neck and dragged him down. The Error’s knee came flying up. He heard his nose shatter as the chain dispelled and he flew backwards. A clawed hand grasped his leg and he was pulled back. As he passed by, a fist empowered by the creature’s remnant slammed into his chest.

He crashed into the ground, kicking up dust and spewing blood. With each breath, the felt his splintered ribcage cut into his lungs. Fortunately, his Constitution was high enough that they’d be fine. His Vitality quickly got to work rectifying the issue.

The monster loomed over him, and Zin snarled, slashing his icy blade sideways. A hand caught it, and while the dark flesh frosted over, and another arm came in an snapped his elbow. His arm bent and he let go of the sword. Promptly, it was thrown to the distance. The Error reached down and grabbed him by the face.

The image of him killing its original form, Brock Carter, flashed in his mind.

Zin’s sight spun and he found himself flying through the air. Something hard impacted his back, and he heard it crumble behind him. Something warm and wet clung to hair. A quick whiff scented it to be blood. It’s… getting revenge…

The demon tried to move, but a chain snapped around his neck and pulled him back, slowly tightening and choking him. He tried to dispel it with his aura, but this time, the construct of the chain itself fought back, refusing to be disturbed.

Panting, his eyes went wide as the Error approached and loomed over him. He lashed out with his claws, infusing them with his Augment and watching as an empowered strike slashed toward the beast. It missed. It cackled again.

Zin kicked out and he managed to catch its shin, making it stumble. Wasting no time, he grabbed a piece of stone to his side and whipped it at the creature. It stopped dead and quickly became molten. It fell to the ground, a puddle of rock.

Trying to attack it once more, Zin’s aura reached to his ring. He wasn’t going to win. He was going to die unless he did something. At least if he ran, he had a chance of escaping Erykah. His fist flew and two hands caught it.

Heat lapped against Zin’s cheeks, and he glanced over, noting once hand to have adopted a molten glow, much like his own attack. It slashed down at his arm and cleaved through his flesh with ease. He hissed in pain as his arm was cast aside, the flesh bubbling and the smell reach up into his nose.

“You… I’ll kill you someday…” he spat, his jaw clenched. Two abyssal eyes gazed back at him.

Then he felt a hand stab into his chest. His eyes widened and he screamed as agony overtook him. Somehow, by some means, the Error wasn’t roaming his innards, but his Spirit. His eyes went bloodshot as he felt an icy hand grasp his Ascendancy.

Slowly, he felt his aura decrease, his level plummet. The Error’s form rippled, its height growing and its frame bulking. Zin swung with his remaining arm, but the limb was caught. A blade of air tore in from the side and cleaved through his bone. His appendage collapsed limply to his side.

Armless, he attempted to mobilise his Augment to freeze the creature or kill it with an icicle or something. But he was too frantic to maintain a flow stable enough to clear his pathways. The drain upon his Ascendancy paused, and the Error’s eyes bore into his own.

No…

Its arm twitched, and its fingers let go of his feeble heart. Instead, they moved and the orb of shifting ice orbiting his Ascendancy found itself captured by them. Rapidly, it weakened and dimmed. Zin felt his connection to the truth of frost waver.

He screamed and his aura connected to his spatial ring. A square token of obsidian flickered into existence between his teeth, and he bit down.

As his Augment began to flicker, on the edge of disappearing, he was suddenly gone, leaving the black beast reaching out to nothing. It didn’t move for a moment, before it began to flicker with crimson lightning. Slowly, its dark from began to slough away like sludge and disappear as dark mist to the atmosphere.

From within, the body of a human began to appear, bloodied and pale. As the final vestiges of darkness faded, a cackle resounded, and the corpse slumped to the ground. It was limp. Unmoving.

In the distance, a woman watched on, dead silent.