Drey's head pounded like it had been hit with a heavy rock, and a loud sound tortured his ears as he came into consciousness.
He opened his eyes to find himself lying on a mat, feeling very tired and hungry, like he had just woken up from a deep sleep that had lasted for decades.
"You have finally come to" came a female voice nearby.
Drey looked before him and saw a young woman right before him, probably in her late twenties and extremely beautiful.
She had quite a unique outlook, with her hair colored violet, as were her eyebrows, eyelashes, lips, and eyes.
It was as if God wanted the violet color to become personified in a woman and therefore created this fellow.
"I was starting to wonder if my reanimation techniques were beginning to get sloppy," she said.
"I'm glad I was wrong; I've only gotten better at it."
Then she came closer,
"Lord Nobuharu hasn't come back. "I'm sure he would be thrilled to see you alive, given that you no longer have a heart," she said.
"...so it seems my attempt at reanimation without a heart was a success."
Drey arched a brow, getting confused and overwhelmed.
"My death?" he asked.
As if on cue, she took out a mirror and set it right before Drey, who gasped in shock at what he saw.
He saw himself almost completely disfigured with scars everywhere and noticed the large hole in the left side of his chest, where his heart was supposed to be.
He screamed when he noticed this, seeing the wall behind him through the hole in his chest. It was devastating.
"The injury you sustained destroyed your heart—way beyond regeneration." "But thanks to my work, you don't need it anymore," she said with a smile, looking proud of herself.
That was when the memories of prior events began to hit him. He began to breathe heavily, getting more upset by the second.
He remembered his winning fight against the two elite soldiers, right before the arrival of a powerful man who destroyed him by clashing him against an oncoming meteor before seemingly eviscerating him completely with a thunderbolt.
This memory was traumatic for him, and in response, he began throwing a tantrum, going completely berserk.
He screamed continuously as he destroyed everything he could find, starting from the study table that was right next to the mat he was lying on to the nearby furniture in the room.
So immediately, the Violet Lady sprung into action, stretching forth her hands at him. This gesture brought forth large purple snakes from the ground, and in one fell swoop, they constricted him, rendering him motionless.
"Behave!" she simply commanded.
But he did not listen, and, surprisingly to her, slowly but surely freed himself from the hold of the snakes by literally tearing them apart, sending pieces of them flying across the room.
"What? "How did you...?" Her question was interrupted by Drey's powerful hand holding her up by the throat, and he slowly began to squeeze it, bending it in such a painful way that made her eyes shed a tear as her body gradually went numb.
"Leave her alone!" came a deep male voice from the shadows, where large sparks of electricity could be spotted aiming for Drey.
She was barely seconds away from dying when a large thunderbolt struck from the side of the room right at Drey, rendering him unconscious immediately.
He fell to the ground, unconscious, along with the Violet Lady. Then the mysterious figure came to where the lady was to help her up, cupping her face with concern.
"M... Master Nobuharu," she said, "I'm sorry."
"Shhh," he quietly commanded, "try not to talk too much for now, Murasaki."
She nodded in response.
He helped her up and examined his hand, from which the lightning came, shocked by its immense power.
"Amazing! "With an almost limitless amount of energy from a fabled beast like the Tenjin, it's a mystery how he died trying to conquer the Langford kingdom."
"From the injuries he had sustained, I'm sure that it's safe to say that the enemy he fought against was overwhelmingly too powerful for him to handle," she said, looking at Drey's heavily scarred body.
Nobuharu laughed in excitement, not being able to hold himself back.
Murasaki looked at her master with curiosity, wondering what it was that amused him.
Nobuharu knew this and said,
"I could have never imagined that there were people on earth whose abilities rivaled almost those of the celestials." "I came to this realm on a quest for power, away from the glory of the gods, not expecting to find much, but instead, I'm greeted with a vast array of power that gets me so excited for the future—how powerful I could become!"
"Oh, right," Murasaki said as she looked down at their unconscious captive and asked,
"You have taken away the fable from within him, but he was still powerful enough to kill me." "Why was that?"
"The reanimation technique," he answered simply.
"I don't think so, Master Nobuharu. "I have used this technique on a few others before, but they had no extraordinary abilities afterwards," she answered.
Nobuharu nodded his head and said, "Fair point." But keep in mind that he had extraordinary abilities before he was reanimated, so somehow we might be dealing with a special case here. "I only told you to bring him here so that I could take out the fable within him on time before it died as well, but I never imagined that doing so would cause him to develop his abilities without the help of a fable."
Murasaki shook her head, believing there could be a better explanation.
"Something doesn't add up," she said, pondering over it.
"Try not to think too much about it for now," he advised. "I have a feeling we could use him as he is right now."
It was then that it occurred to him,
"This is your first attempt at a heartless reanimation, right?" he asked her.
"Yes, Master Nobuharu," she replied.
"Since he has no heart, there has to be something else keeping him alive instead of the heart he once had." That could be the secret to his abilities, don't you think?"
Murasaki widened her eyes,
"You're right! Why didn't I think of this sooner? "My notes, they will have all the data we need," she said as she went to the wrecked table to find them.
"I guess this is what happens when I work based on another person's research," she said.