{ 24 Hours Later | 12:00 PM | Dandi Forest }
"what the hell is wrong with these items, how do you expect me to find all 4 items in a mere 40 hours"
He complained as he was running through the wide forest trying to find the items on the list. His breath was battered due to running around the forest continuously for the last 24 hours.
"these dumb candidates...", Vikram wiped the blood off his right fist that he had just used to bludgeon a candidate until he passed out. The poor boy's face looked like he was bitten by a thwart of bees after being chased by them for days.
"So I can find it by the lake in the east", he remembered the clue regarding the final item on the list, which he had very gracefully requested from the unconscious candidate a few minutes prior.
---
- Bios Shard
- Rough-Tough Seed
- Bazinga! BC
- Cleansing Pearl
---
*****
{ 1 Hour later }
*rustle... rustle*
"Dammit! I can't believe I am so bad at hunting missions", he exited the thick expanse of bushes, dissatisfied by the whole ordeal.
"... Woah! That's some lake"
The blue-green water looked mystical as if it didn't belong to the world. It was his first time coming across something so grand other than the wall surrounding zone Y.
"... He told me to find black seashells with snowflake patterns"
A 10-meter wide sand perimeter was spread across the whole lake without a single flower or bush in sight. It was as if the beach was a boundary set by the lake that the forest was too afraid to encroach upon.
As Vikram got to looking around the banks of the lake, he felt his body becoming light due to the rhythmic sound of the waves.
Since Vikram was no romantic, he knew that the wave-sounds hid some kind of mystical energy in them that was influencing his mind.
*tink... ripple... *silence*
With the sound of a water drop falling onto the lake surface, the whole area became eerily quiet. And in the next moment, he felt a humungous presence behind him; with rising fear of death in his heart, Vikram immediately turned back while unsheathing his sword *...zoom...shing*
"What-?", however, to his surprise, there was no one behind him. Not even an insect.
"Am I hallucinating because I haven't slept since yesterday?", he sheathed his sword, "... let's just get this over with, I have to be back by tomorrow morning..."
Among the four item-requests Vikram had received from Mandy.
- Bio Shard was the outer skin of a mutated snake-like reptile that was easy to find due to the reptile's sheer overpopulation in the forest.
- The second item called the Rough Tough flower seed was also available near the mountain cliffs and wasn't tough to find.
However, the most trouble so far had been finding BazingaBC. It was actually not an item but solidified turd of a rabbit monster called Potty Rabbit (E-) that lived underground and rarely exited its hole.
Not only did Vikram have to wait a whole night outside one of the rabbit holes for the Potty Rabbit to appear, he even had to wait for it to defecate and then pick its poop.
Even that was not his concern, but ever since he had picked up the monster turd, weird things had been happening to him like getting his feet stuck in a snake's nest or being chased by wild female boars in heat. Even the 3 candidates that he had to fight had appeared after he got the turd.
"It's that Mandy b*tch, she did this...", Vikram thought of beating some sense into Mandy, but his dream could only remain a dream because of her C-rank mutation and possibly Earth-rank mutation.
"Wait..."
As if a lightbulb was lit, he was struck with the idea of looking for the seashells in the lake.
"Wouldn't it be easier to find them in the lake?", he said thinking out loud, but then rebutted himself as if someone whispered in his ears, "his idea was stupid"
He had no idea what lurked in the water and he didn't want to be the one to find out. Just like that, he got back to searching for the black seashells.
"No. No. I should find the seashell in the lake!", he said again after a minute.
"... No, I don't know how deep the lake is", a rebuttal followed soon after.
"... On a second thought, that might be faster"
He constantly rejected his own thoughts, but they inevitably circled back to the same thing: that he must enter the lake.
*...splash ...splash*
As if cleaving a path through a cornfield, Vikram moved straight towards the center of the lake while his eyes remained fixed on the small island in the distance.
*prattle... gulp... grrrr...*
Suddenly, with the sound of pebbles falling into the water, the parasites left his body and disappeared into the lake.
"... Ugh-!! The Hell.."
Vikram felt the pain of thousand needles pricking his skin.
"What the f†ck?"
He cursed as he found himself surrounded by water.
He didn't know how, but he was already knee-deep in the blue-green water.
"Wait why is the water black?"
The blue-green water from moments ago turned dark and his surrounding started to change in front of his eyes.
As if he a nightmare was forming around him, mist rose up in the distance and his visibility decreased.
"Sh*t. Sh*t. Sh*t"
He ran towards the beach, but no matter how far he ran, the beach remained at a constant 10-meter distance.
Not realising what was going on, he felt scared as even the bright day turned to night. Suddenly, only darkness was around him.
"What is happening?"
*splash... *
"Who is there?", mist made it impossible to see in the already dark environment.
Water behind Vikram's back started churning and moving with weird sounds,
*glug... glug... glug*
When he turned, water started to rise up.
Vikram saw the water move as if it was alive. His gaze was glued to the strange phenomenon.
"What-?! Impossible-!!!"
He exclaimed with shock as the human-shaped water body became vivid with details.
"Hello there", the humanoid spoke with sealed lips.
*shock*
Its hands spread wide apart as if posing for the Titanic.
Its voice was thick like a middle-aged man with lots of painful experiences in life.
"Na.. No... Th... This.. iz... not... possible", Vikram stuttered to even form simple sentences when he looked at the face of the humanoid.
"Why-? Only you should be able to take over bodies?... kekeke", the humanoid spoke.
Its voice echoed upon the wavy water surface as it reached Vikram's ear.
The humanoid's 7' tall body was covered with armor. With a scarred face and hair reaching till shoulders, it looked like a medieval warrior.
"Who are you?", Vikram asked the question to his own reflection, knowing full well who the humanoid looked like.
"kekeke... We are You, aren't we?", the humanoid voice had a reverb that made the actual voice even scarier.
The heavy voice was laid with prickling vibrations that cause a great deal of discomfort in Vikram's stomach.
With a black sword in his right hand and a body that was completely covered with silver armor, the humanoid stared directly into Vikram's soul with its black eyes.
"Vik... Vikram the second", he finally spoke after a moment of silence, feeling weird at calling his name in the third person.
The humanoid's lips turned into a mocking grin as if to make fun of a foolish Vikram.
"Although we would love to extend this conversation, there is no point in conversing with a dead man... *whoosh*"
The humanoid that looked like Vikram II shot up like a projectile in his direction, it moved at a speed that was hard for Vikram to follow in the dark.
*swing... slash... splurt*
"AAAAGHHHH!", Vikram's shout shook the whole dimension as his left hand flew in the air before falling with a *klup* sound and disappearing in the lake.
"Tch. Tch. Tch... So weak.", the humanoid lips were sealed shut but the reverberating voice still reached his ears, "... Vikram, the second, the valorous general of the empire, was it?"
The humanoid spoke mockingly as it tried to imitate Vikram's words from many days ago in the Icarus High Infirmary.
"... You can't even defeat a dead person's remnant will and you wanted to control us?"
If the humanoid had human eyes, Vikram would have seen an insatiable fury on its face, but alas, this reflection of Vikram's past wasn't expressive with its black eyes and closed lips.
"Who are you? Why are you doing this? You can't be me", he let out a few sentences while groaning from immense pain.
Half his body was drenched in the black liquid mixed with the blood leaking out of his torn hand.
*whizz... whizz*
Vikram applied Prana and circulated the energy throughout his body and the wound on his hand started to close up at a speed visible to the naked eyes. The humanoid's eyebrows shot up at the scene.
"Not that we care about what you think, but We ARE YOU!!", after the previous demonstration of strength, the unmoving lips of the humanoid looked much scarier.
"... however, you might know us by our other name. What was it? Akashik Parasite?"
Vikram felt his whole body turn into stone, the petrifying gaze from the humanoid's black eyes, although expressionless, said more than its words.
Realisation started to dawn at Vikram. Revelation that it was a rebellion, a coup to take over the ownership of his body.