Earth's Core 077

“Is he really fine?”

“As fine as only a bodily cultivator can be under such circ.u.mstance”.

“…That was a Core Master’s mist detonation that destroys, in the process, the user’s soul and spirit to amplify its force! Are bodily refinement technique really that marvelous?!”

“At the very least his is”.

“…What is he doing now?”

“Killing the brother… He killed Binjo”.

“I am still having hard time to believe that someone like this exist… so young and yet able to kill a second level Core Master! If he will join us then we defiantly won’t have to worry about the other three in the results of the next group evaluation”.

“Keep your exaptation at bay. He is coming. Go to the largest villa, to the underground floor. Unfortunately, he mentioned her name… Even though with his current appearance if they’ll see him in the future they won’t be able to recognize him, it could be the start of a trail that is better to eliminate now”.

“What about the Mist Users he fought with and the maids and workers who saw him?”

“Sigh… He was too straightforward. I thought he learned his lesson the first time, but he proved me wrong… The attendants are meaningless and were horrified in his arrival; they could not have paid much attention to him. Let’s leave them alone. The Mist Users that saw his face are spread inside the villas and in the escape route the Derneldar’s Core Masters ran into. This time, it would have been complicated to exert our forces in the Derneldar territory. Therefore, I hired some help from the Bas.e.m.e.nt Floor to deal with any Mist User in the Core Breaker level or above”.

“Mmm… Would he notice me?”

“I’ll distract him. Also, retrieve the stone knife. It should be in the central plaza”.

“Then I’ll be going, Don Mor”. The young woman with the blazing hair and the black ribbon that was strapped to her left arm with the words “Student Council Cla.s.s – President” in white letters, stepped out of the concealment formation and vanished in the wrecked scenery that not so long ago was the lavish territory of the Derneldar family.

Don’s watched the back of her Tal and closed her eyes. After her Tal, Uri, informed her that he showed Zax Binjo’s picture and the detailed note to the Derneldar’s territory, Don left to make sure everything will proceed accordingly to her and the school’s benefit.

She brought with her the blazing haired girl, her best Tal and her future heir, to show her the extraordinary event of a great family extermination, since to those who are familiar with what a great family represent in Kingdom Earth, to witness the event of its downfall first hand could be very enlightening. Not on the Martial path, but rather, on the political one.

…

“You fiend!” Dureil cursed. The gruesome death of his youngest son caused him so much shock that his internals twisted and blood came out of his mouth. Coughing, he was utterly devastated mentally and physically. First he second son, then his third and now his youngest! They were his most promising sons. They were his sons!

“Ah!!!” Dureil wailed.

“Father!” His three remaining sons prostrated next to him. They felt weak on their legs but also wanted to support their father who buried his face in the b.l.o.o.d.y floor.

The elderly woman, Dureil’s wife, stood silently and motionless, in her hands she actually supported her fainted young attendant.

The Mist Lord that was meant to protect Dureil and his family finally felt the oppressing killing intent dispersing. He turned his back to see what happened, but when his eyes encountered the two bodies, instead of fright they only revealed a deathly stare before his eyelids closed.

The red and black devil, Zax, did not care for Dureil’s remark, or more precisely, he did not hear him. His left hand released the tight grip and Binjo’s head that was still connected to the spinal cord Zax held, fell on the floor.

Despite the tormenting pain all over his body, after letting Binjo’s head loose, a serene sensation Zax did not antic.i.p.ate washed his sea of consciousness and the waves of wrath subsided.

‘Dead, he and his brother are dead, Anet. I beat a second level Core Master to reach them and I kept my word for you, Anet…’ Zax whispered to himself in his mind. But somehow, it was not enough. ‘There must be a way… Big sis or Master or that woman should know! I will not let his mark remain on you, Anet!’ He recalled the scar on Anet’s back and it appeared before his mind eye like an extension of Binjo, something that as long as it stain her body will keep Binjo’s shadow alive in her heart.

Zax gnashed his teeth.

STUMP!

He crushed Binjo’s head under his foot and kicked what was left.

Bending his legs, Zax summoned kinetic energy to his feet and converge it to Kinetic Force.

BOOM!

He leaped from the underground floor. Whoever was left in there did not deserve his concern. Would they ever be able to stand in his way? Even Dureil, the one with most grief in his heart, in this moment of ruin still held back his aura from las.h.i.+ng out his resentment in fear for his life.

If a father does not act upon his son death while his killer defiles his body, when will he?

This sentence did not cross Zax’s mind, but due to the impression of Dureil, it was all the same whether he thought about it or not.

Leaving the large villa, Zax was about to release his Soul Sense when a stronger presence made itself known to him intentionally and for the second time after the great mist detonation.

The presence was a Soul Sense of a soul stronger than his own. When he howled in pain after his skin melted and burnt and the flash underneath suffered the black burns, the exact Soul Sense reached to him like a beckon that helped him collect himself.

Now, after he killed Binjo, the beckon reached him once more, invitingly. It made itself so clear that Zax was more curious about it than the Core Masters and Mist Users who ran away.

The owner of the Soul Sense continually stayed out of the reach of Zax’s Soul Sense until he left the Derneldar territory.

“You!” Zax staggered atop the roof of the seventy stories building, approximately half a kilometer from the Derneldar territory. He no longer had the mental capacity to push himself and his body kept exhausting every ounce of energy it had for the healing process to the point that he stumbled before Don.

Observing his condition with her Soul Sense and seeing him with her eyes, was not much different, however, the instant she had seen Zax, Don’s brows puckered.

In order to heal, Zax’s body slowly exhausted his strong vitality. As a result, aside from the burns, Zax looked scrawny and feeble.

“Ssh”. Don whispered. She made one step forward and caught Zax with her mist energy.

“Why are you…” Zax said, but before he finished his mind went blank. A soothing energy entered his sea of consciousness. A bizarre shape appeared in front of his soul and shone brightly on it.

“Rest”. Don said softly.

…

“Ssss!”

The sound hissed like a nest of a thousand snakes.

Zax opened his eyes and felt a bubbly hot sensation from his back. The room he stayed in was completely sealed from light. He did not get up right away, since he felt comfortable on whatever he laid on, but he wanted to know where he was, so he used his Soul Sense to find out.

‘A small room’, Zax discovered that the dark room was smaller than how the blackness made him perceive it. It was a squared, four on four meters, room.

Inside the room, were three, large enough to lie on, rocks that engendered the hissing sounds. What more precisely was the source of the sound was the warm liquid the rocks ejected. Inside the rocks was an acc.u.mulation of the warm liquid and on the top surface of the rook Zax was laying on, which was shaped to fit the back of a roughly one hundred and eighty centimeters tall human, were thousands hair’s width cavities.

‘But can’t get out…?’ Oddly enough, Zax’s Soul Sense was confined to the room. A formation he could not penetrate through trapped him like a cat inside a box.

Still, Zax was not worried or depressed. To his amazement he actually felt great. The pain and tiredness he remembered before pa.s.sing out were nothing but a bad memory. He rubbed his arms, legs, belly, face… They were all perfectly well, his skin grew back and was softer and smoother than before, almost as nice to the touch as his baby sister’s, Liz’s.

‘My fingers also!’ That was another immense surprise. The three fingers the Derneldar founder cut also regrown. Because of his previous physical state it should have taken him over a week to fully heal if all he did was rest. A week was a long time for Zax to spend in dormancy, but he did not think that he rested that long due to the warm liquid and the clear effect he felt from it. With that much external help he should have been out for about two days, probably, after he was placed in this room, that is, and two days were an acceptable pa.s.sage of time for Zax when he considered his wounds…

But…

‘I’m bald!’ That however made him slightly alarmed, though was also not quite accurate. His hair also grew, but only barely, two, three centimeters at most. Zax was fonder of the wild hair that even after the haircut Zetsa gave him was nine, ten centimeters long.

‘It will grow’. Zax sighed. The reason it did not grow as fast as his fingers was because the growth of his finger was a healing process and so was the recreation of his hair follicle. Anything further is simply the natural pace of growth of his hair.

What was now important was that he healed and while he continued to lie on the large rock, his body kept devouring the rejuvenating energy of the warm liquid through his skin. It was not abundant as the unripe Blood Red Grapes, but he did feel surges of new vitality flowing in his veins.

Staying couple of minutes longer on the rock just to enjoy the comfortable feeling, Zax eventually got up and walked to the corner door of the room. He was naked, and it would be embarra.s.sing if he will meet someone outside, but other than the rocks the room did not have anything that he could use to cover himself.

Turning the handle, the room was not locked.

“Eh?” Zax was stunned. Outside of the room was a small, one meter square, s.p.a.ce with a gla.s.s door which separated the small s.p.a.ce and a staircase to somewhere above the ground that his Soul Sense still could not probe.

Beyond the gla.s.s door, was a rack with a set of clothes, an all too familiar dark shades white and azure uniforms, hanging on it. On the stair beneath the uniforms was a pair of white sport shoes with azure socks folded inside the right shoe.

Besides the gla.s.s door, the two side walls and the other side of the door to the dark room were also covered by a layer of gla.s.s and on the right gla.s.s covered wall was a bright green dot.

‘Press to open?’ Zax wondered. He could break the gla.s.s and climb the staircase, but that would have been rude toward the one who let him stay in such a treasured room that could supplement the body so effectively. He lightly pressed the bright green dot, since other than it, all the gla.s.s covered walls looked the same and the gla.s.s door did not have a k.n.o.b or showed signs of moving when he lightly pushed it.

A strong current of tiny cold water streams poured from the ceiling of the small s.p.a.ce. It was both sudden and refres.h.i.+ng and Zax did not oppose it. After several seconds the water stopped and was replaced by currents of cold air that dried Zax body, while the water was drained by pumps underneath the floor tiles.

Finally, the gla.s.s door opened and the bright green dot disappeared.

Wearing the Eden Formation’s school uniforms and the pair of shoes, needless to say, despite the formation that blocked his Soul Sense, Zax knew where he was and, with complicated expression, climbed the stairs.

Opening the door at the end of the staircase, Zax could at long last feel the confinement on his Soul Sense wearing off and after he took the step into the maintenance room his Soul Sense was free to expand as far as it could.

Yes, the room with bad lighting was at ground level and was filled with maintenance tools, cabinets and shelves and barely anyplace to stand.

“Don’t stare like a boor, boy! Hurry up and sign your name on the Rehabilitation Room’s registry!” A rough and low voice rebuked Zax.

“Who?!” Zax was startled. Not his five senses or is Soul Senses detected the old thin man who stood behind a just as old printing machine less than two meters from him until he opened up his mouth and sternly spoken.

“Sir”, Zax looked at the old man and respectfully turned to him. ‘This old man’, he had a sudden piercing feeling that froze his heart, ’is terrifyingly strong!’

The old man move from behind the printing machine with a touch Screen in hand. He wore a discolored robe with a golden symbol of elaborate formation, the Eden Formation’s school’s symbol, on the left side of his chest.

Picking Zax’s hand, the old man pressed his thumb on the touch Screen’s screen.

“Ugh…!” Zax felt his hand being clenched by boundless force, nearly breaking his new fingers under the old man’s grip.

BEEP!

The touch Screen rang.

“Susuya!” The old man released Zax’s red hand and called.

“Superintendent Ten?” A young girl with black hair, black eyes and black skin wearing the light shade version of the school’s uniforms, which indicated that she was in the Beginner grade, rushed from outside and asked the old superintendent, Ten.

“Take this boy to Don’s office”.

“Okay, superintendent Ten”.

“Don’t procrastinate”.

“Okay, superintendent Ten”.

“Come back here right after”.

“Okay, superintendent Ten”.

“And bring tea from Don’s office”.

“Anything else, superintendent Ten?”

“Don’t dilly dally!”

…

“Who was that old man?” Zax looked at the old maintenance building before it vanished from sight at the first turn he took after the ten, eleven years old girl, Susuya, showed him the way to the school princ.i.p.al’s office from the maintenance building on school’s grounds.

“Say, are you new or dumb?” Susuya said and stared at Zax seriously.

“New”. Zax did not want to respond to her remark and kept his cool and answered calmly mainly. Frankly, it was because he somewhat remembered his baby sister, Liz, and for a fraction of a second wondered how he should react if his own little sister ever speak to him like that.

“Oh, okay, he is the superintendent of our school”.

“Superintendent? Isn’t it a joke?” Zax heard Susuya refer to Ten personally as “Superintendent Ten”, but it was too absurd to accept. “In his cultivation he is some school’s ‘superintendent’?”

“Mm, you better not let him hear you call Eden Formation ‘some school’”.

“Errr… Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. But, I met the vice princ.i.p.al and the princ.i.p.al and none of them projected toward me the same level of dominance”.

“Well, you are new so you would not know, grandpa Ten-”

“Grandpa?” Zax stopped Susuya and looked at her, trying to understand if what she used was a figure of speech or really meant that the old frightening man was her grandfather.

“Grandpa Ten is my great, great, great grandpa. I spend time with him when I feel bored in cla.s.s, but he doesn’t allow me to call him ‘grandpa’ during school hours”. Susuya pouted as she explained. Her innocent childish face talking about superintendent Ten, her actual grandfather, this segregated and severe expert, made the first and recent memory of him in Zax’s mind appear kind of cute.

Zax could not bear how Susuya distortedly messed up his impression of the old man and changed the subject from her familiarly to him, to what she was about to say before he interrupted her. “I would not know what?”

“Mm, you would not know, although probably even among students only your Advanced grade know, that grandpa Ten was the first school princ.i.p.al of Eden Formation”.

“First school princ.i.p.al becomes superintendent?!” Zax recalled the messy maintenance building and was stumped.

“He started working just a year ago, when the school accepted me. He retired two hundred years ago, more or less, when he broke through the third realm”.