C107: Breakthrough. Beatdown
Overall Word count = 1363 on 7/2/2024.
A/N: Happy July to everyone (best wishes to everyone so yall make money or be happy), it has been another month that this book continues. This chapter, while short, does have a few hints related to our MC, Axel. The primary hints are related to whomst is the owner of the 10th..and final fragment. I wonder if anyone will be able to figure out who it is or what is actually going on in this chapter. hehe
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Axel continues his meditation as he feels the pull of something. He enters his mind space and begins to walk down a road that had never existed before. The 'walls' around him are akin to a kaleidoscope of color that swirls in a circle. Axel has to stop as he begins to see something flickering within the swirls, upon closer observation, they are stars. Streaking stars within the vast colorful swirl. But why, why are stars inside Axel's mind space?
Axel continues walking along until he bumps into something. A wall. Axel frowns as there should be nothing that blocks him within his own mind. With an annoyed look on his face, he began to strike the wall in front of him. His every strike causes a ripple within the wall that allows a glimmer of what is on the other side. Yet he only seems to see spots of grass and nothing more.
He keeps wailing on the wall for the next half an hour before he seems to finally break through as the cracks he caused in the wall accumulated until it shattered. His vision begins to go woozy and dizzy as he falls forward. He is still conscious but his eyes can't stop spinning for a solid 5 minutes.
Once everything stops spinning, Axel tries to get up when he clutches his chest as he feels a great pain there suddenly. The pain seems to originate from deep within his chest, in the middle of his lungs, this makes it fairly hard to breathe as every breath causes an ache to occur. Yet while he is clutching his chest, he can still see the area around him.
A great green field lies before him. There are dirt paths but those only lead into more invisible walls a few miles away. Turning around he finds that he is actually at the edge of a strange city. The area just behind him being a vast farmland and beyond the farmland is a gathering of buildings.
"Hnngg" Still clutching his chest, he grunts and begins to stumble his way to the mysterious city, making his way past the strange crack right in the middle of the field that he came from.
He soon arrives at the edge of the town and he finds the town is mostly abandoned. He did pass by a sign that said something and while he 'feels' that he should understand what is written, he doesn't. All the houses seem to be made out of wood with nothing special about it. He begins to head to the biggest building that is available. He knocks to no avail before entering the unlocked house. He enters the foyer before he has to stop as a deep frown flashes across Axel's face.
Standing across from Axel is a 4" tall' slim figure that resembles a child with shoulder length hair. Said figure is black, featureless to be more precise and smoke seems to emit from it. A humanoid smoke creature standing in an 'A' pose before seemingly jolting awake as it raises both its scrawny arms up while its legs take on a stance. The child is slightly bouncing in place akin to a professional boxer.
Axel raises his arms as well as he doesnt know what to expect. Especially when the kid that was before him seems to have almost teleported before Axel with a fist moments away from his face. With Axel's already raised hands, he quickly grabs the incoming fist and sharply slams the child into the floor. It weakens the blow by extending its other hand towards the floor before trying to sweep Axel off his legs. Yet when the blow landed, Axel stood akin to a monolith, unmoving.
Axel raises his unkicked leg and returns a kick to the child, aiming for its face. Suddenly the child slides away on the floor at a rapid speed. Axel ponders how the child did that as he gets a better look at its movement. They both seem to have a similar fighting style, it's just that the child doesnt have the power to match Axel.
He almost surmised that the child was Axel when he first arrived in Orario but found that false due to their height. Even back then, Axel was almost 5" ft tall while this child is barely 4" tall. Regardless of his hypothesis, he still finds the child familiar but he can't put his finger on it.
While Axel was observing the child, it had gotten up from its spot and began to take its pose again. Axel focuses on its movements when it notices something. Yet he must block a heel kick as the child accelerates forward before using that same speed to jump up into a flip for the heel kick. The boards under Axel's feet crack from the strike but he is still fine as his crossed arms throw the child off.
It does a backflip from the throw before accelerating forward to slam into Axel's belly. The child slams into his abs and bounces off with what seems like stars orbiting it's head. Axel does not show leniency as his fist connects with the childs face. This sends the child spiraling away in an exaggerated manner as it's body begins to dissipate. Some of the smoke floats towards Axel and begins to enter his body.
As if he just had gotten an inheritance of memories, he just knows how to use mana burst now. He begins to test it out, zooming across a few feet of distance, a stronger punch by providing a 'boost' around his elbow and reinforcing his fist with the mana coating to both protect himself while making his attack faster, harder, stronger. Axel has a smile on his face as he keeps practicing these movements.
When he is content with his understanding of it. He begins to explore the house, he quickly finds a sizable dining hall where more smoke gathers until it forms another child-like shadow figure. This one is slightly taller, standing around 4" 2' tall. It's body seems to be more condensed as Axel can make out some clothing on it but since it's all just shadows, the exact style of it eludes Axel.
Axel takes a fighting stance again as he ponders on what he could get if he beats this one. The shadow doesnt take any sort of stance before suddenly standing just a few inches away from Axel. Axel's senses are screaming at him to escape but he doesnt get a chance before a casual punch shoots out from the child which Axel is forced to block. His body stills when the punch lands on his arms. The reason? Might be due to the floating arm and hand hovering right in front of Axel.
'Whose arm is that?' Axel questions before looking down and finding his own left arm is gone up to the elbow. He remains stunned at the sight before the child provides a comforting roundhouse kick at his hovering arm and thus him as well. Axel is sent flying out through the window of the house's dining room when he finds himself falling down on his back within his standard mental space. All the fragments look at him weirdly as if he had just been sitting there doing nothing for so long.
Axel examines himself and finds his arm is back on and nothing is different about the space except that the gluttony mist is flowing into the hall that he broke through the wall. He gets up and looks down the hall, he finds the wall is being repaired by the gluttony mist but it's slow and in it's place is a door frame. The door frame is missing a door and there are cracks around the frame which likely came from when Axel punched it open.
As Axel is about to leave his mind space since he comprehended mana burst, a voice calls out to him.
"You know kid, maybe don't tear a hole in your own soul if you don't have experience with it."