"Pay attention...?" Under the influence of Julius's loud scream, Noor woke up, while I remained in a state of confusion. There was a strange, huge object flying above the water, moving at incredible speed toward the boat.
That object almost hit my head, and I imagined my skull shattering. But suddenly, I found myself about to fall forward into the water, while the object moved away from me by five meters as if it had suddenly teleported. I quickly realized that it was the boat that had moved backward at a crazy speed, thanks to Julius's strength. If it weren't for his power, I wouldn't be alive now. How could he move the boat with just the oars at such speed?
After the calm settled, we began exchanging puzzled glances. Julius asked me, "Are you okay, Ali?" I replied gratefully, "Yes, and it's thanks to your amazing strength."
Noor interrupted us, saying in astonishment, "Look, it's a tree!" It turned out that the object that emerged from the water was a massive tree. "Damn, it's a tree from the northern region of the empire! How did it get here? The flood damage is devastating." These trees were known for their buoyancy in ancient civilization; they were used to build large ships. It seemed to have risen from the depths, but the strange thing is that it wasn't the S-class threat. Why did 016 say the danger was from this class?
I placed my fingers on my chin, while Julius looked around, adding, "This is strange; this calm. My senses are telling me danger is coming..." I interrupted him, laughing, "What? Your senses? Haha, are you a cat or what?"
Without warning, Julius sped up the boat crazily, and 016 began warning us again: "Lord Ali, the area around us will be attacked by objects moving at high speed within a range of 100 meters..." I couldn't hear the rest of his words, as a group of trees started emerging from the water at astonishing speed. With Julius's swift movements, he began to dodge the trees skillfully, but suddenly he screamed madly: "Aaaaaaah!"
I turned to him and realized why he was screaming. He was struggling intensely, and looking at his arm, I understood how much he was suffering. All his muscle fibers and blood vessels were visible, as if his body was made for fighters. I tried to encourage him while dodging the flying trees: "Hang in there, bear the pain; there's not much left for us to get out of here."
He shouted back at me, "I'm not screaming because of the pain, you fool! Look to the left!" As soon as I glanced to the left, I screamed in turn: "Aah!" The oar was about to break. It was a painful sight. Why now, of all times? But it was new from the store; when did it start cracking?
"Crack!" Another cracking sound. I moved to the right and found the second oar was also beginning to crack. "Why?!" I shouted, but I realized the problem wasn't with the oar but with Julius's strength, as his previous scream was due to him trying to slow down to avoid breaking the oar and adjusting his speed for the escape. I understood why he was tense.
"Crack... crack... crack... crack!" No, the left oar broke, but unexpectedly, a small tree appeared next to us. Although it was small compared to the other trees, it was in Julius's hand in the blink of an eye! He carried a whole tree in one hand! And that's not the strangest part; he used it as a substitute for the broken oar.
I remained silent until we got out of the danger zone, almost losing consciousness from what had happened. I started analyzing what occurred: "So, Julius pushed a boat with three people, averaging 170 kilograms, at an escape speed within a 100-meter radius in a minute and a few seconds? And he didn't use his full strength to avoid breaking the oar? And he lifted a tree weighing at least 400 kilos in one hand and paddled with it as if it were nothing?"
I said firmly: "Julius! We need to talk now. What the hell are you trying to hide? How much power do you have?" Julius turned to his sister with a puzzled look, and she nodded at him. He turned to me with the cold air stream, and his face was sad, as if he were trying to uproot painful memories from his past.
I have no idea how powerful this guy is, because I often skipped school. And if I stayed with him, he never showed me anything about these powers. He was by my side during my psychological therapy, defending me when I was bullied, and he was one of my dearest people. Or at least, that's what I thought.
I said, feeling indescribable bitterness: "But why? Why aren't you my closest friend? Why? Why did you do this?"
He replied coldly: "You're the last one who should talk!" I was shocked by his words, "What do you mean? How can you say this to me, the one who considered you my only brother?"
Noor intervened, saying: "Calm down, Ali, it's me, Noor!" I turned to her and found her eyes sparkling with a strong blue light. "What? Even you? What the hell is this?" I wanted to believe this was a dream, but suddenly, Julius spoke up with a question: "May I ask why you hid the secret laboratory from me while you were working on it with another girl? Then you come and say you consider me like a brother, huh?"
Under the weight of the tension and shock of what he said, I swallowed hard while thinking about how to explain my situation. His accusation was very logical, especially after I had yelled at him and placed all the blame on him, so he said I was "the last to speak." I gathered my thoughts and said firmly: "Damn, now that things have reached this point, I'll explain my story and then explain your and your sister's story. Is that agreed?"
Julius replied firmly: "Agreed." I began explaining my suffering from bullying, how I was weak and hid the matter. I would ignore the questions about the reason for my bruises until things worsened, and I missed school one day. I spent my time at Uncle's hardware store, and when I came out, I didn't notice the bully was following me.
He stopped at the door and ambushed me, hitting me hard and demanding money. Maybe he was following me for fun or because he needed money for drugs or any other reason. When I told him I didn't have any money, he got angrier and hit me harder, saying: "Do you think I wouldn't notice you came out of the hardware store with this rusty metal? Surely you have some change. Come on, show me what you have, or else..." Before he finished his words, he fell to the ground, with a large shadow behind him. It was Julius.
Then I asked, "I assume you know what happened next, right?"
Julius said, "Yes, I beat him until all his front teeth fell out and his face changed completely, then I turned to you. I came down to your level and started hitting you too, while I shouted: 'Why did you hide all this from me?' I kept asking you, and then your answer made me change my view of you for the better, where you told me: 'I didn't want your hands to get dirty, or for you to get into trouble because of my weakness.' You were thinking of me before yourself, and after that incident, I tried to join your school to stop the bullying, and our friendship became closer to brotherhood."
I replied to Julius, "Yes, that's from your perspective, but from my point of view, I was like someone who found someone to lean on and share some of his pains." Julius interrupted me, saying, "But why are you going back to all this past? What is your goal in telling this story? Aren't we the ones who know this story better than anyone else?" I replied in surprise, "Didn't I say that you both would reveal your secret to me, you and Noor? Then I'll tell Noor so she can understand the events from the beginning..." Julius interrupted me: "Oh, if that's your goal, then it's fine because Noor can read minds!!"
I answered, "What!! This is completely unexpected, mental communication and reading thoughts, what else do you have, Noor?" Then I remembered how embarrassed I was when I saw her in her underwear before we left the water. "If your embarrassment was because you knew what I was thinking, well, that's interesting." I continued, "After I saw you defending me, I felt something strange. Why would you go this far for someone hated like me? Why? I wanted to not stand still without doing anything. The same applies to the lab; I created it to be completely independent, and even to lend you a hand if you faced a problem. I was avoiding any possibility of information leaks, so I kept the matter hidden from you because the other black organizations would move to blackmail us if they found out you knew about me or about my informant, Amelia. They would threaten me through you. I thought of keeping you away from all this suffering so you could have a normal life, but 'the winds do not always blow as ships desire.' As for Amelia, she is my assistant, and I only have a working relationship with her."
"Hahaha! Ha!" Julius started laughing, saying, "So now you know why I hid my power and my sister from you?" I said, "I think I got the general idea; you're also trying to keep secrets from me to protect me." Julius replied, "I think you're going through the same thing I went through too, so now it's my and Noor's turn to tell our past..."
Sosuki Julius
We were children of mad scientists who experimented with everything they had. We were like lab rats, dressed in patient clothing and thrown into a white room with several other children like us, almost 150 children. There were a few toys, but the rest were the four walls of that white room. We had three sessions every day: the physical training session that made you see the world of the dead on the horizon, where every week, one or two of us died, and others went insane. The rest suffered serious injuries, and they would take them to intensive care to recover as quickly as possible, then return them to training. I entered intensive care 12 times, and the strange thing was that I had the fastest healing ability, where one day was enough for me to heal completely and return to hell on my feet. I reached true despair to the point that I tried to break some of my bones so I wouldn't have to go back for longer, but my bones healed in just three days. Do you know how much pain I endured for a child in 9 rounds of endless torment, seeing children die and not knowing when your turn would come? As for my sister, she entered regular exercises because she was still very small. And all this was just the first part of the day. Then there was the genetic experiments session, where they entered us naked into a corridor that cleansed us of all the bacteria on our skin, then they passed rays over us to ensure we were capable of receiving the ability serum. After confirmation, they injected us. As for my sister, they were experimenting on her mentally, and the serum was given to her every time the experiments ended, and the strange thing was that those who participated in her category, the mental category, went insane. All this happened when she was only 4 years old. The last part was sleeping under harsh conditions, like sleeping in a temperature 20 degrees lower than our body temperature while we were completely naked, and sometimes we slept at 50 degrees while wearing thick clothes, and sometimes they made us wear simulation devices to enter the most terrifying dreams. Between these main sessions were breaks for relieving ourselves or playing, which lasted only 20 minutes. This cursed torment lasted for three years; our numbers continued to decrease.
Ali interrupted me, shocked: "Oh Julius, but why..." Before he finished his question, I answered him: "Do you want to know why we obeyed them willingly despite having superpowers?" Ali nodded his head in agreement, then I continued: "One of us did, but our abilities were not fully developed like mine now. But the part that stopped us was the torture stage, where they stopped our program for a week. And all we did during the day, or were forced to do, was watch them torture him, where they tortured him by breaking his bones from the tips of his fingers to his shoulder, and the same with his legs; they broke every bone slowly. Each time he lost consciousness, they stopped the torture and waited for him to regain consciousness. This first part continued until the third day, where his hands and legs became as if they were bone-less, then came the fourth and fifth days, where it was like bone-breaking torture, but this time they gradually cut off the broken parts. My sister kept vomiting, and from that day she developed a phobia of blood and severed limbs, like what we saw in the water. And on the sixth day, after only his head, chest, and genitals remained, the torture entered its final phase, which was electric torture. In the last two days of torture, the boy couldn't take it anymore and died. All this was to scare us and instill the idea of not opposing their decisions. But one day, the electricity went out due to the storms, and I was about to break down and go insane, but my sister encouraged me and communicated with me using her mental power. I was able to escape from them in a moment of negligence, where my sister led me to the path, because she felt the walls and could know the best way to escape. But the shock was that she sacrificed herself and deceived me saying: 'She's waiting for me outside; she knows the escape route because she went through it,' but all that was for me to escape. Then..." I took a deep breath, and then my sister said, holding my hand: "Brother, please allow me to continue from here."
Sosuki Noor
"I knew that Julius was the type who would never abandon me. In the last days before Julius's escape, I dreamed that he was defending me, because the scientists wanted to conduct new and dangerous experiments on me since I was getting a little older, but it ended badly, with our deaths." Ali continued: "So I preferred one of you to escape, and it was Julius because of his physical strength, and he would escape faster." I continued: "Exactly, but unexpectedly, two years before I turned nine, Julius attacked the lab and destroyed it completely." Ali interrupted me again: "Wait, wait, wait, at your nine years, and now you're 10 years old, means...
...means the year 2221 in the Ingram calendar. Children with powerful abilities destroy a secret lab, and news appears about it. Could it be... Could it be that the Morasaki Mountain incident was caused by Julius? But he was in school at that time, how?" I smiled slightly, "Yes, you're right; it was the Morasaki Mountain incident. Julius had been working all this time with..."
Julius interrupted me, looking very sad: "I had been working with Shisumi Subarwa..."
Silence filled the place, and Ali looked puzzled at what he was trying to say, then he continued: "He is a person from the previous generation in the Morasaki Mountain incident; he managed to escape, just like me, but after losing everyone dear to him in the lab: his brother and twin sisters, and all his friends, he held an unlimited grudge against them and devoted his whole life to knowing who was the mastermind behind these experiments and what his goal was. But he couldn't find out anything. His ability to create illusions could create copies of anything he identified and studied closely, so when he heard about a child escaping, he found me at that time, and he taught me combat arts and helped me launch the attack by creating copies of me to distract the enemies. As for the original me, I went to the lab with him to destroy it, but... but..." Julius said, a tear rolling down his cheek, "he sacrificed his life for me after learning that my sister was not dead, changing the plan and saving her at the cost of his life."
Watanabe Ali
I recalled in my mind that the number of children escaping from the mountain was 3, so who was it? Noor said: "He is a crazy and unfit person, named Akokami Kiba."
I said: "Please stop reading my thoughts." Then I said: "If we have revealed all our secrets, does this mean we will start a new chapter?" The two said, "Yes..."
****** Side story ******
looked beautiful against the backdrop of the sunset, lost in her thoughts and not noticing me. I decided to test her ability to see if it was automatic or if she chose to use it. The test was a word that would definitely make her blush. I turned to her and thought, "You are more beautiful than this sunset," then I waited to see her reaction... but she showed no reaction. So, she must be directing her ability with her will.
Meanwhile, Noor was lost in her thoughts and noticed that Ali was watching her. She tried to read his thoughts without turning to him and heard, "You are more beautiful than this sunset." Those words were so surprising that she froze in place. "Huh, does Ali like younger girls? Kyaaah!"
The side story ended.