The pain in Oliver's body was like a burning tide, rising and falling with each movement. The sharper the pain, the more he understood his body was healing, stubbornly knitting itself back together. His limbs could move, albeit stiffly. His vision was gone, and some wounds still bled, but most of his body, patched as it was; was functional. Barely.
The holy water he had ingested remained in his mouth, a collection of untamed elements, untransformed into magic power. Yet, as long as he didn't swallow it, he realized he could manipulate it, bypassing the need to generate magic from his depleted reserves.
"If this works," he thought, "why hasn't anyone tried it before?"
The question gnawed at him as he asked Ziggy for a bottle of holy water. Taking a careful sip, he held it in his mouth, unwilling to commit too much too soon.
And then he understood.
---
The young man's sharp gaze flicked toward Oliver, his irritation mounting as he realized his prey wasn't as incapacitated as he had assumed. His movements became sharper, more impatient, like a child denied a favorite toy.
Plamon lunged, his attack swift but predictable. The young man countered with ease, grabbing Plamon's wrist and twisting it back. With almost casual cruelty, he released his grip, retracted his right arm, and drove his fist into Plamon's chest.
But he wasn't done. Before Plamon could stagger away, the young man raised his elbow and redirected his attack, slamming his opponent to the ground with a sickening thud.
"You're really starting to annoy me," he muttered, his voice low and venomous. His frustration was clear. Plamon's years of physical training made it difficult to retrieve the stone that bound his soul. And as for the invisible woman? Though she bled, her form continued to elude him, slipping just out of reach time and time again.
His frustration boiled over. With an impatient snarl, he stomped on Plamon, driving him deeper into the ground. The force of the blow shattered the earth around them, sending a spray of gravel in all directions.
---
Oliver coughed violently, regret searing through him like the untamed elements now coursing through his veins. The liquid from the holy water, which had seemed so promising moments ago, turned to venom within his body. Instead of granting him control, it surged wildly, filling his bloodstream with chaos.
His body rejected it, violently expelling the holy water along with a spattering of blood. His chest heaved as Ziggy moved to retrieve the bottle, concern etched across her face. But Oliver raised a trembling hand, stopping her.
"Again," he rasped, his voice hoarse but resolute.
Ziggy hesitated but relented. He took another sip, steeling himself. This time, the pain wasn't as sudden, but it was no less excruciating; a searing, unrelenting fire coursing through him, as if molten metal were replacing his blood.
He grit his teeth, forcing his mind to focus. He couldn't let himself spiral into despair. The pain didn't matter; not now. His attention shifted entirely to the holy water, to the elements swirling chaotically within it.
---
"Is this the end?" the young man growled, his patience wearing thin. Despite his overwhelming power, Plamon and the invisible woman clung to him like gnats, refusing to yield.
This time, he didn't dodge. He didn't parry. When Plamon's right fist came toward him, he met it head-on with his left hand. The impact split both their knuckles, blood splattering between them. But while his wounds healed instantly, Plamon continued to bleed, his strength draining visibly.
The young man frowned, his confusion mounting. Why didn't Plamon retreat? Even a resurrected man should fear death, perhaps more so, having already tasted it once.
"What is it with you?" he muttered, exasperation lacing his words. His gaze remained cold and dismissive, never once meeting Plamon's eyes. Had he looked, he might have seen something strange in the man's pupils; a glimmer of something he could never understand.
Obsession. Determination. Purpose.
The young man didn't understand these things. He didn't understand the lengths people would go to, the depths they would reach, when driven by sheer willpower. And it was this lack of understanding, this inability to grasp what made them human, that set him apart, and made him so alien.
---
Oliver's mind worked furiously as the realization dawned. Holy water, untamed elements, his teacher's cryptic warnings, it all clicked into place. The key wasn't magic power. It was the elements themselves.
"The process of holy water transforming from elements to magic power takes place in the stomach and intestines. What is in the mouth is still an element."
That line had seemed meaningless, even trivial. Now, it was the answer. The holy water in his mouth was still a pure, raw element. He didn't need magic power to use it. He just needed to embrace the pain, to wield the chaos instead of fighting it.
As the idea crystallized, his lips curled into a faint, almost defiant smile. His teacher, Rosa, had caused him more than her share of grief, but in this moment, her lessons might save his life.
"Now," he thought, "let's see if this works."
Oliver was the embodiment of Yu Gong, the stubborn figure who moved mountains, and the raw elements within the holy water were his insurmountable mountain. But unlike Yu Gong, he didn't have endless time. Every second ticked away like a countdown to his demise.
Controlling these wild elements to create magical creatures or even something as simple as temporary vision was impossible. He lacked the precision and time required to refine them into something usable. Creating life demanded mastery, and all he had was chaos. Even the smallest element under his command could only trigger fleeting natural phenomena, a gust of wind, a spark of light, a ripple in the air.
The elemental density in the holy water was overwhelming. Using it was akin to a mantis trying to stop a chariot; a suicidal overreach. And yet, he had no choice.
Oliver clenched his jaw. 'He had to try.'
He didn't want a grave that others would sweep, didn't want to be remembered only as a failure. Money, power, beauty; he could let all of it go. But life? Life he would cling to with every fiber of his being.
'Who truly wants to die?' he thought bitterly. Life was filled with troubles, but if death erased all progress, weren't those struggles meaningless? He refused to accept that.
---
Far below the surface, a little girl sat cross-legged in the dim light of an underground shelter. She bit into a piece of bread, chewing idly as she sipped water from a crude tin cup.
"Nothing's changed," she muttered, her tone both resigned and bored.
Her closed right eye granted her a vision of the events above, a prophecy of sorts. She could see everything unfolding on the battlefield, but her interest was waning.
"She's using her student to test some half-baked theory," the girl mused, licking a bit of sauce off her fingers. "Is she really confident, or just waiting for him to fail?"
She yawned, stretching lazily. Watching Oliver flail in combat was about as exciting as watching grass grow. Simple hand-to-hand fighting had once fascinated her, but now it was nothing more than a dull repetition of limbs colliding.
"A meteor shower would be more entertaining," she said to herself, her voice tinged with mockery. "At least then, something unexpected might happen."
As she took another bite of bread, her disinterest deepened. Why waste time on holy water experiments? The idea of manipulating elements through such crude means bored her. It was like trying to use an ancient tool in a world that had long moved past it.
For her, it didn't matter what happened above ground. The world was ending anyway, and they wouldn't die; not here, not now.
---
On the surface, the sun dipped lower, casting long shadows across the battlefield. Oliver couldn't see the growing darkness, but he felt it in the cooling air, in the way the wind began to howl faintly.
His frustration was building. He had always prided himself on his calm demeanor, but now even he was beginning to fray. Time after time, he tried to control the elements in the holy water, and each attempt ended in failure.
Finally, his temper snapped. He slammed his right hand into the ground with all his strength, ignoring the sharp pain as his skin split open. An instant later, a surge of unknown force blasted him backward. He hit the ground hard, the holy water spilling from his mouth as he landed. The bottle, nearly empty, rolled a short distance away.
"Damn it," he muttered, sitting up with a wince. He froze mid-motion, his mind racing.
The realization struck him like a bolt of lightning.
'The holy water spilled only after he'd been thrown.'
And yet, the elements had continued to move freely even after they left his mouth. It wasn't his failed attempts that had knocked the wild elements loose, it was the force of his punch. The unrefined power hadn't required precise manipulation or intricate methods. It simply needed to be unleashed.
He laughed bitterly, shaking his head. "Was I beaten stupid?"
No, it wasn't stupidity; it was clarity. He had been overthinking everything. Untamed elements didn't need to be tamed. They just needed to be used.
But then his laughter faded, replaced by grim determination. What good was an arrow if you didn't know where to aim it? His mind churned, formulating a plan. The elements could be his weapon, but only if he could pinpoint the target.
Time was running out. He couldn't afford another failure. 'This was his mountain, and he would move it.'