Living Life As A Game: Through And Through 196 Vowing To Move Forward

"Oh dear…" She forcefully separated Adrian from holding on to her and left with absurd speed. Right then and there, Adrian may have found out the secret strength of his parents. But, because he was still caught up in the emotional trauma of the situation, things had already stopped making sense.

He stood in the stop his mother left him for what seemed like minutes, but after less than ten seconds of real-time elapsed, he was back to running like a madman as the adrenaline in his system carried him all the way back to Gasper's room.

The first thing he saw upon returning was Gasper slapping his own mother's hand away, muttering, "I'm fine… Just a bit of prac- ack! Practice… and I'll be fine, right?" With eyes bloodshot and exposed muscle fibers replacing his pale skin, Gasper really was starting to melt out of Adrian's hallucinations; if anything, his skin was vaporizing.

"Gasper Von Kinsterling! I'm commanding you to stop right now! Your Qi's Deviating and if you continue trying to cultivate you'll burn away all your blood!" Truly panicked, Gasper's mom could only think of scolding Gasper into stopping as her authoritative voice usually worked in getting him to do as she said.

"S-top? I can't stop…" Gasper said, as his eyes drifted in an out of focus.

"s.h.i.+t!" Disregarding her own safety, Gasper's mom let her hand come into contact with Gasper's shoulder and an illusory film came into existence before Adrian's eyes. This was her Qi Connection which he didn't know of at the moment, and through it, she was trying to siphon out the rampant energy in Gasper's body. Alas, he had already crossed the threshold where more energy was forming than she could absorb. At most, she was slowing his descent into death.

Even as the small burns grew in their degree of intensity in her hands, Gasper's mom didn't take them off her son. Regretful was the best descriptor of her at that moment, where she was helpless and guilt-ridden for pus.h.i.+ng him to do this as she could clearly remember what he had said to her when she asked him why he had done this.

"You can't help me right? It's up to me to save myself and the family's Solar Style Cultivation technique is the only way to get rid of my illness. I just haven't tried hard enough while practicing, right? Well here I am, trying my best… I've grown tired of feeling this weak and useless. He's grown up lonely because of me hasn't he…"

At that time, before Adrain had been around to hear him, he said, "Even on his birthday, when he came to spend the day with me, all I did was worry him and ruin his good time because my illness acted up. The other kids don't come close to me because of my weakness, and I don't want to lose my only friend because of it getting worse, so I'll just end it here and now…"

Suddenly, Maria appeared next to Ms. Von Kinsterling and reached over to help her. Adrian had collapsed with his tunnel vision progressing to the point that he barely hear any more, but somewhere in the corners of his memories, the ensuing conversation was stored away.

"Mhmm… His Prime Essence itself has started galvanizing…" With a grim look on her face, Adrian's mom pulled out a spherical pill seemingly out of thin air and addressed Gasper's mom, "Karena… This is a Yin Quenching Pill. It'll definitely stop his Yang energies from going berserk, but taking it now will probably leave lasting damage to his cultivation base and Prime Essence…"

Without hesitation, Karena took the pill from her hand and shoved it into her son's burning mouth. "I'd rather he never be able to cultivate than die…" Alas, the Yin Quenching Pill only further pushed Gasper's dire state. He started burning up even faster and with a higher intensity; parts of his skeleton now being visible…

"What?! But… The Yin Qi, it should've… No… Oh, G.o.d…" Maria came upon a horrifying revelation and couldn't help but ask, "This boy has Affinity for Yin?! He's been practicing a Yang cultivation method with YIN AFFINITY?" The sentence by itself wouldn't cause as much distress as Maria was experiencing if she didn't already know that his Yin Affinity wasn't resolved.

Without a resolved Innate Affinity, it would be suicide trying to start the cultivation of a conflicting type of energy. Anyone could practice any type of cultivation method and usually, the only difference would be the speed of progress. However, in cases where someone tried to practice with an energy they both didn't have an affinity for and was conflicting with an energy they did have an affinity for, it was a must to resolve that affinity to safely begin cultivation.

Take a pract.i.tioner attempting to cultivate an Ice or Water-type cultivation with Fire Affinity. Unless that Fire Affinity was initially trained to the point of resolution, even taking in Water or Ice-type spiritual treasures would become toxic as it was in direct conflict with their cultivation base.

Suddenly, both Maria and Karena understood why Gasper was so weak and sick. The cause of his current state also became apparent, yet both reacted in totally different ways. Maria only looked on with pity as she said, "He's doomed…" While Gasper's mother looked completely broken, "It's my fault… I did this…"

Adrian was then forcefully drawn out of the room by his mother as several adults including his father appeared to try and resuscitate him. Outside of Adrian's view, countless Martial Pract.i.tioners at and above the King Stage appeared and worked in conjunction to siphon out all the energies within the young boy's body. But by the time they succeeded in their efforts, he was reduced to a lump of charcoal feigning as a human husk.

Five days later, a funeral was held and all Adrian could think of was how horribly his friend had died. He came to develop a fear of the outside, only finding comfort in his late friend's only hobby — video games — and as the days turned to months, then years, with nothing changing, he became the antisocial game-obsessed lunatic that only changed after getting involved in the Cataclysm.

Gasper was his first and only childhood friend as he was the first to voluntarily accept and play with him. Sticking by Gasper's side made it impossible for him to make other friends as only later Adrian came to understand that he had been ostracised for supporting the black sheep of the Von Kinsterling; the boy who couldn't cultivate. With no one to talk to aside from Gasper, who never mentioned cultivation as it was something that understandably saddened him, Adrian never came to learn of cultivation as his parents initially opted to tell him about it when he turned ten. Yet after seeing his change to isolation because of the incident with Gasper, they changed their minds to never mention it to him at all.

Thus, until very recently, when he'd transformed into Elizabeth and gained an understanding of cultivation anatomy and medicine, it had never truly clicked what had happened to Gasper. Even when she tried to recall him, the memories she had of him had been repressed. Only when she confronted such a reality before herself at this very moment, did the depths of Elizabeth's anger reveal itself to the world.

…

"She's calling us deadbeat parents!"

"To Gasper, we kind of were…" After admitting this himself, the temperature in the room noticeably dropped in temperature.

"You were? Is that all you have to say? Look here, Klaus…" Even Kurt took a step back from the sheer density of killing intent escaping Elizabeth's body as she continued, "You think I'd forgive you for admitting that you were a deadbeat dad to my best friend? To this day I don't understand why he had to die… It was basic cultivation theory that you should have had him resolve his Innate Yin Affinity if you wanted him to practicing your s.h.i.+tty Yang Arts. SO WHY THEN, DID YOU KILL MY f.u.c.kING BEST FRIEND?"

"We didn't know he had a Yin…" Klaus, Gasper's father, froze up at the sight of five-inch tall blue flames that materialized about Elizabeth's palm.

"If you lie to me again, I swear to G.o.d… I don't care how many people die, but I won't hesitate to unleash this flame…" The tension that had developed in the room was palpable.

"If I were to explain how r.e.t.a.r.ded it sounds for the head of the Von Kinsterling to not know of his own children's innate affinity, I myself might lose a couple dozen IQ points." Elizabeth couldn't help joke as she felt Lisa in her Soul Land start trying to rein her in.

"He was expected to overcome… that hards.h.i.+p. We knew of his Yin Affinity, but its purity was something that even now, we can't find in the evolved world. Only after he died did we find out as his Yin Affinity left behind a crystallization of its essence…" From his left hand, he tossed Elizabeth a hazy-blue gem the size of a fingernail, to which the demonic la.s.s responded with unbearable grief.

"I… I…" She started sobbing as hard as she did the day Gasper died, but underneath the sadness she experienced, there was somehow an even greater urge to kill than previously thought to be possible. "I should f.u.c.king kill all of you for what you've done… Because of you, the world lost its most talented youth; an Eternal Grade Affinity Crystal… My best friend could have become immortal with me, a G.o.d even. But instead, he died… he died a miserable death, tortured by a style of cultivation so utterly incompatible that it killed him."

[Status

Name: Gasper's Crystalized Yin Affinity

Tier: Eternal Grade Yin Affinity Crystal

Description: Crystalized from Gasper's Dantian the moment of his death, this gem is a physical representation of his potential.]

"But I won't kill you… I won't forgive you, but for Gaspie I'll hold back… He always did love you unconditionally and I wouldn't want to continue torturing his soul. So instead… I'll take him with me to the top." As her senses concentrated on Gasper's legacy, Elizabeth slowly managed to retract the aura of death that spilled out of her.
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Her hair had long since slipped out of the bun style she had set up from before and had been covering her face while she faced the ground. But upon lifting her head up, everyone could see that along with her tears, there were streaks of blood leaving her eyes.