Chereads / A Hero's Journey / Chapter 33 - Ancient One

Chapter 33 - Ancient One

First POV again:

I groaned as I woke up. My entire body was hurting like hell, every breath I took in was feeling like I was swallowing lava. I opened my eyes and saw a foreign environment. My groan deepened as I tried to sit.

But I felt a hand on my chest and a female voice said" Please stay down, it is unnecessary to move." I was alarmed by the presence of a stranger, and turned to look at where the voice came from. I was surprised to see a bald woman smiling at me.

I frowned and wondered who might this be. But as soon as I asked the question in my mind, a little voice replied to me" The Ancient One." I was shocked that something actually answered me, after all who wouldn't?

But I was also surprised by the fact that I was with the Ancient One. I blinked and asked" What happened? Last thing I remember I was fighting that damn god and I died…" The Ancient One shook her head and said" You are not dead, you are full of life."

I chuckled, sending even more pain for my brain to register, and said" Injured as I am, I wouldn't say I am full of life." But she shook her head again and said" Will for your body to heal, do it." I frowned but did as I was told as this woman was quite scary when she gets pissed, at least I think so…

I looked at myself and said mentally, heal! And then, much to my surprise, all the pain faded away, the numerous wounds on me disappeared in an instant like they were never there before. I looked at her in shock and asked" What have you done to me?"

The Ancient One smiled and replied" I have done nothing, you healed yourself. But we do not have much time in front of us, let's be quick." I frowned and asked" What is happening?"

The Ancient One sighed and said" I guess we have enough time for that then… Mr Tunt, tell me, what are your mutants powers?" I was a bit confused by the question, but a little thinking I immediately understood the situation.

But I still answered her" I can use my will to alter with the physical world." She nodded and said" That is right, and that is an extraordinary power, many would like to have that power for themselves. Limitless possibilities are granted to its user. But there is always a but, right?"

I nodded and said" Yes, those seals in my mind. They restrict my powers, and only allow my power to express themselves in a certain way." She smiled and said" You seem to have understood what happened."

I nodded and sat" During my fight, at the end when every hope was erased and death was looming at me, several of those seals got destroyed, no maybe all the seals were unsealed, right?" She nodded so I continued" And my full power allowed me to heal myself, right?"

She waved her hands around, forming red symbols in the air, and created a big screen. On it I could see Kukulkan blasting his energy toward me. The ray advanced at a slow speed as she said" While you fought Kukulkan your powers were fully unleashed, and allowed you to survive."

As she finished the ray was right at me, but a white transparent cloud appeared around me, and got hit by the ray. The ray easily passed through the fog like thing, and through me, before blasting in the distance.

Surprisingly I was unharmed, but I still fell into a pit hiding me from Kukulkan's view. Then a kind of portal appeared beneath me and transported me here. She closed that screen and I asked" Since how long have I been here?"

Sorrow and sadness appeared on her face as she replied"One day." I palled and immediately asked" What has that fracking serpent done!" The Ancient One raised her hand and said" Calm down, nothing yet. Your fight has exhausted him too, so he has been sleeping since then. But he will soon attack."

I nodded, relieved. But there still was something bothering me. I asked" I know about you sorcerers and your powers, so why haven't you helped me against him?" She did not answer but draw signs again.

Another screen appeared, and on it appeared an apocalyptic vision. A ruined city, the high rise had been cut down in two, what remained of it had blood on it. Not even corpse could be seen, only blood. The streets were deserted, no sign of life could be seen. The Ancient One said" This is New York. Every other city has been destroyed like this. But that is only a possible future."

I widened my eyes and asked" You…" I then saw a certain something hanging in front of her chest. The Eye of something which holds the time stone…

She saw me looking at the Time gem and said" This is the Eye of Agammoto, which grants it's wearer the power to manipulate the past, the present and the future. As you have certainly guessed, I come from a possible future."

I gulped and asked" What happened?" Grief came back as she said" We put up a fight, everyone on earth, but he was too strong. In the end Kukulkan erased everyone's existence, no human other than me survived."

I gasped and stuttered" What… What.." She continued" You woke up too late in that reality, and could not intervene." I kept quiet. I was viewing the death of everyone I loved, and rage was rising, but it quickly got transformed into deep grief.

The Ancient One put a hand on my shoulder and said" But you can stop that now." I looked at her and asked" How can he be so powerful? I know gods, I know about their powers, but even Sky Fathers would have trouble against him."

She created another screen that showed Kukulkan's gigantic body. She said" Kukulkan has received powers from an almighty being, that is why he is so powerful." The screen zoomed on Kukulkan's body and I saw something amiss. Among the countless green scales was an odd one, a black one.

My eyes shined and I asked" I get it. He draws his powers from this scale." She nodded so I added" Then the only thing we need to do is to destroy that scale or remove it." But my hopes shattered has she shook her head and said" It is not that simple. This is only a manifestation of his power, destroying it will just change another of its scale. The only way to remove this threat is to kill him."

I replied" But is that even possible? The entire world did not win against him, so how are we supposed to kill him?" But then she smiled and said" We didn't win because you woke up too late like I said before."

I frowned and asked" What do you mean?" She pointed at me and said" You have become far more powerful than you think." I blinked and asked" Did I?" She nodded and said" Unfortunately your powers are weakening as we talk, and this will continue until you lose all your powers."

I freaked out hearing her" I will become powerless!?" She nodded and replied" But it isn't the time to worry about that. Right now you need to protect earth." But she may have said that I was still panicking.

I tried to calm down and asked" How powerful am I? Enough to kill him?" She nodded and said" You have reached a state of omnipotence the moment you activated your powers. But as I said before your powers are getting weaker and weaker as time pass, and you using them accelerate the process."

Omnipotence! I reached Omnipotence?! How could this even happen? And why am I losing my powers! Many questions formed in my head, and before I could interrogate her she told me" This is not important. Right now you are powerful enough to make several things before losing your powers."

I fell into thought and asked" What can I do exactly?" She spread her arms wide and replied" Everything. This is the potential of your power. Anything you want to happen will happen, if you have enough power of course."

My heart was beating hard and fast by the end of her sentence. Everything? She just added" You can even will to put a barrier on your use of your will so that you still have enough in the end to kill Kukulkan."

I nodded and willed for it. I repeatedly said in my head to put that limit. Instantly I felt something emerge in my mind, certainly the barrier. I looked at her and said" It's done." She sighed in relief and said" Then please do me a favor, erase my memory of what I saw and of your real identity if you want to."

I nodded, thinking that I owe her that at least. But I decided to not stop there. Before she said that my powers were getting weaker and that I would be left powerless. That means many things, and different wishes I could make. So before anything I used my power for one thing.

I want to know why I am losing my powers. The next moment my surroundings changed and I saw my genes. They were… different from normal ones. Well I expected that, I changed them after all. But then the same voice that told me who the Ancient One was was heard again.

"The gradual loos of your power is due to several factors." As he said that my vision moved to somewhere else, to other genes, before he added" Those are your X genes, responsible for your power. In the past you have wished for a power that comes from a different dimension, thus it had to be changed for you to get it.

This is the change. As your powers are getting more powerful, your X gene is multiplying itself and moving to other chromosomes." I nodded, that made sense. He continued" However your genes have been altered and are more powerful than human genes. Your haki has been programmed to take over human genes, not mutated ones. If this continued then your powers would have all been stopped from spreading at a certain point.

This is where the seals on your power comes into place. Those seals were forcing your power to accumulate until a certain point and then stop. This is why while you have trained for 16 years you were so weak.

Then once blocked your power continued growing, building up to break the seal and get enough power to overpower your strengthened genes. But then you added the Spider bite and the Oz formula. Everything got disrupted and your genes began degenerating.

Fortunately for us you got exposed to that strange device that partially broke all the seals, and then got your will strengthened by pain. Normally your haki wouldn't have improved much because of such an experience, but it triggered all your power that had build up before.

This instantly made your power soar to the next limit, and again you only needed a little push. This push happened during your fight against Kukulkan. But you didn't stop there, you broke all the seals and unleashed the entirety of your power.

Original the 16 years of build up weren't enough for you to get so powerful, but because of several strange reactions your power got strengthened and pushed you to omnipotence. But all of those things were too much for your genes.

They began fighting back, and that's where you lose your power." I frowned and asked" But won't I die if my genes are degenerating?" I could hear some happiness in the voice as it replied" You got some luck there, because of the early choice you made.

If you had normal genes then yes you would die. But yours are different, they can adapt faster than others, and that on a Godly level. Because of that they gained some level of instincts, making them not wanting to kill you.

So they came with another solution, to reset your genes. That is where you lose all your powers."