Inaudible footsteps reverberated through the tiled floor of the hospital. Seril moved through the shadows, barefoot for maximum efficiency.
Her eyes glowed with power as she channeled her universal energy.
"Haaah," Seril breathed out deeply. Closing her eyes, she recalled the fragmented memories in her head.
'Alright,' Seril's eyes twitched and flew open. Activating her gift, she molded the universal energy around her, making it form a symbol, Seril saw it glow with power and then disappear, with slight ripples in the air.
A sharp pain pricked her finger, causing Seril's eye to twitch in annoyance.
'I'm still a long way from my peak,' Seril thought to herself as some of the memory fragments resurfaced in her mind. They were flashes, or more accurately visions, of her performing feats of grandeur, overpowering enemies, and protecting her master.
Just as quickly, the memories bubbled away causing Seril to frown before relaxing.
'Is that even me?' Seril wondered for a moment. The emotions, feelings, and thoughts attached to the memory fragments felt so foreign yet so familiar at the same time to Seril.
Although she did have an awakening of sorts in the hospital, next to Emmia, Seril still wasn't strong enough to retain most of the memories, only remembering bits and pieces of her past, with some memories bubbling back to her mind from time to time. But Seril could feel it, as time passed, her original strength was slowly returning.....along with her original personality. It was like Seril was slowly being eaten away and replaced by something so similar yet not so.
'I need to focus,' Seril breathed out slowly. Focussing her stray thoughts, Seril continued to make her way down the dimly lit corridor, passing closed labs, half-asleep guards, and a few nurses here and there.
Reaching the room, Seril could feel her target inside the room.
'She's waiting?' Seril thought as she narrowed her eyes. Taking out a small bead that she had received from her teacher, Seril pushed universal energy into it, until it started to self-sustain itself.
Drawing in universal energy, the bead slowly started to float away from Seril coagulating the universal energy in the surroundings to solidify and seal Seril and the room in front of her in an invisible barrier. Slowly the bead crumbled away, having fulfilled its purpose.
'2 hours,' Seril reminded herself as she watched the bead crumble.
The bead was one of the reasons why Seril could act so boldly in a hospital as it would contain any destruction of the battle preventing the confrontation from collapsing the building.
Activating her gift once more, Seril used her universal energy to implant one more of those symbols inside her head.
"Symbolism"
Seril's evolved gift- or more accurately, her original gift. "Symbolism" allowed Seril to alter reality however she wanted, with the corresponding symbol that is.
The symbol drawn on Seril's head was "Focus", the symbol for cooling, focus, and concentration.
The power of the symbol radiated out as her head cooled, sending out a calming pulse through Seril's body. This time the sharp pain in her hand was barely noticeable to Seril as she only registered it momentarily.
Keeping her thoughts in check, Seril clicked open the door as she stepped inside.
Seril's crimson eyes dilated quickly to adjust to the lack of lighting. In fact, thick curtains were covering the windows in the room, blocking any natural moonlight from entering the room.
In the dark room, Seril saw a silhouette sitting on the sole chair right behind the figure of a desk.
After catching sight of the figure, Seril didn't immediately rush in. She just waited at the entrance, the caution bells ringing in her head as she found that she couldn't make out any other features in the room.
Seril forced herself to remain relaxed yet mentally prepared to react at any time.
A raspy voice reverberated through the room, "Why welcome Huntress."
Seril, whose guard was up, acutely felt the shift in universal energy in the room. It flared up and collapsed inwards pushing against the spatial layers.
'Not good!' Seril eyes widened in alarm as she leaped backward.
"Oh we can't have that," The Infected sitting at the desk tutted as the 'curtains' rushed forward. Seril's eyes glowed as she hastily drew a symbol inside her eyes. 'True vision' started to take effect as the 'curtains' revealed themselves to be two deformed humans bounding at Seril.
'Need to escape!' Seril thought quickly as she reached the edge of the barrier she had created.
Touching the barrier, Seril quickly tried to push her universal energy through it to escape.
"Denied," A cold indifferent voice resounded in the sealed area, blocking Seril's attempt to escape.
-----
On a bench in a park, No 2 sat there alone, his cloak wrapping around him, blending his figure into the shadows and preventing the other vagrants from discovering him.
'That's enough help,' No 2 thought indifferently, unbothered at the outcome of the confrontation between Seril and No 7. He had done his part and decisively left the area immediately.
He activated his gift and disappeared from the bench that he was occupying. Just as the universal energy in the area calmed down, another person appeared.
A young boy, around the age of 10 or 11 floated in the air above the park. The moonlight reflected off his silver hair, dying it closer to white. His soft gray eyes scanned the area, checking for the cause of the disturbance that he had felt.
'Universal energy is fine...no, it was just disturbed a few seconds ago.'
Morin Esten, the headmaster of Nova Academy, squinted his eyes as he twirled his fingers. The universal energy leaped to fulfill his command, gathering up the universal energy in the area, Morin made a decent portion, the size of 2 ten story buildings worth, of universal energy condense into the size of a football, in a matter of a few seconds. The area around it became devoid of universal energy and started to show changes. The trees and greenery started to wilt slightly, their colors becoming more subdued.
The vagrants felt a chill go down their spine as they pulled their measly covers over their bodies to make up for it. The more perceptive ones woke up and decided to leave the area, in response to the fear of the unknown. As a coincidence, or maybe not, none of them looked up to see Morin Esten scanning the spatial layers in the area.
'Someone moved through the layers," Morin Esten noted as he saw and felt the spatial layers still reverberating from the movement.
With a flick of his hand, Morin created an invisible barrier above the park, protecting the vagrants and the plant life from what he was about to do.
Refocussing on the football of condensed universal energy, Morin compressed it even more, sending ripples through the spatial layers, which intensified as the ball got smaller and smaller. Soon tears started to appear in the surrounding spatial layers, leaking an ominous purple energy that created bursts of wind as it dissipated in the material world. Unbothered by the gusts of wind, Morin Esten gazed deeply into the tears in the spatial layers to try to find the final coordinates of where the mysterious person had disappeared.
'There,' Morin thought as he found a weak trail of universal energy quickly being cleared away by the chaotic spatial energy present between the spatial layers.
With a glance below him, Morin quickly stepped into the nearest spatial tear and started to track the trail of universal through the spatial layers. On the outside, The condensed universal energy dispersed quickly and quietly, while the spatial tears sealed themselves drawing on the surrounding universal energy. The frequent gusts of wind died down as quickly as they had formed, and the barrier of universal energy above the vagrants finally disappeared, leaving them none the wiser.
--------
Hearing the disembodied voice, Seril immediately drew another symbol on the barrier, "Break". A simple symbol that was meant to break the barrier in front of Seril. Yet the symbol just started to suck in Seril's universal energy without showing any effect.
The hairs on her neck stood up as the two deformed humans closed in on her.
'It's failed,' Seril grit her teeth and decisively cut off the connection to the symbol. A sharp pain rose up, piercing through the veil of coolness provided by the "focus" symbol, and left a long gash along her arm.
Clenching her teeth, Seril ducked as she felt a gust of wind graze her back with enough force to rip the beanie from her head. Pushing off from the floor, the next blow which was meant for Seril's torso, only managed to connect with her arm.
'Shit,' Seril a fresh wave of pain as the blow had gone directly for her injured arm. "Grr," With some exertion, Seril rolled away and leaped to her feet. In the small space outside the doctor's office, Seril finally managed to get a proper view of the two deformed humans.
One of them was wearing a nurse's outfit, sporting a completely emotionless face and two monstrous purple arms, with pulsing veins and blood vessels pushed to their limits. The other was wearing a tattered security guard outfit, torn from the chest down as muscles bulged, making his legs disproportionate to the rest of his body.
Seril's eyes flitted to the entrance of the office, the universal energy was still spiraling inwards, pushing against the spatial layers with just the sheer intensity of its circulation.
'What is that infected trying to do?' Seril's alarm bells were ringing as loud as possible in her head, and the rush of universal energy towards the center of the office room started to make Seril slightly dizzy. 'I need a better-' Seril stopped thinking and dodged the kick aimed right at her chest. Without letting her catch her breath, another attack followed through aimed directly at the spot where she had ducked.
'Can't dodge,' Seril eyes widened as the timing of the second attack was just a moment after the first. Raising her hands, Seril blocked the punch flying backwards towards the corridor wall.
'Strenght'
'Protection'
'Reflex'
'Conduit'
Without hesitation, Seril applied all the buffs with her gift, activating her partial beast transformation.
Along with 'True vision' and 'Focus' Seril now had 7 symbols nested in her body, the last one, 'Connection' allowed her to maintain all of them at the same time sending dull pangs of pain throughout trying to cloud her mind.
*SLAM*
Instead of crashing against the wall, Seril twisted her body with the flexibility of a cat beast and landed on the wall feet first. Using all her strength, Seril shot right back at the two deformed assailants reaching the guard first. Extending her arm, Seril slashed at the guard's neck, applying the symbol for 'Sharp' onto her claws for the few moments it connected with the guard's neck.
Without any resistance, the guard's head flew off as Seril barreled past.
'Quickly,' Seril thought with a sense of urgency. The universal energy was getting more and more sparse around her, leaving her breathless.
The nurse whipped her arms around using her entire rotational force aimed right at Seril. Nimbly, Seril leaped up, and briefly reactivated the symbol for 'Sharp' and sliced off the brutish arms using the nurse's momentum. Twisting her body mid-air, Seril landed on her feet and sliced off the nurse's head in one motion.
The headless and armless body flopped to the ground as the two arms and head flew in different directions. Seril leaped towards the doorway of the office. Landing at the entrance, Seril stopped and quickly surveyed the situation. The universal energy was all pooling at one spot, one body.
The infected was absorbing universal energy like crazy, without any regard for the consequences. Or rather, it should be said that they were actively trying to initiate whatever backlash might happen from absorbing too much universal energy.
'Bomb!' Seril thought as her pupil dilated.
'Need to diffuse it now!' Seril made her decision in a split second.
In that second, a deluge of thoughts poured through Seril's head spurring her forward instead of backward.
'Someone reinforced that barrier,'
'I don't think I can break it in time,'
'The infected has already been charging up for a while,'
'It wants to kill me in one shot,'
'What symbols can help in disarming,'
Seril reached the body behind the desk in two bounds. Standing at the epicenter of the flow of universal energy, Seril started to channel her inner universal energy furiously.
'Disruption - too high level.'
'Sealing - temporary.'
'Diffusion - maybe'
'I need time,' Seril thought quickly as she broke off a chunk of her universal energy to activate the symbol for sealing. A large swathe of universal energy rushed out of her body and formed the 'sealing' symbol right over the infected glowing body. The universal energy swirling around the room, slowed down, but not enough to stop the funneling towards the infected.
'Its not enough,' Seril noted after seeing the universal energy in the room.
'Disarm? I'll have to make a new symbol, too long.'
'Block?' No it could choose to dentonate anyways,'
Seril's eyes widened as she realised that the infected could choose to detonate with the already gathered amount of universal energy as well, causing a big enough explosion.
Just as the thought passed, the infected gave a toothy smile as it let its control of universal energy slip. The condensed universal energy repelled violently inside its flimsy container. LIke a growing storm, the universal energy rushed out at once tearing through the thin barrier between it and the outside world.
'Shit-'
Seril's thougths were cut off as the spatial layers in front of her collapsed sending a wave of purple spatial energy mixing in with the universal energy storm that engulfed Seril point blank.