The Martial Master - 63 Face to face.

“Although I don’t want to admit it, with my bloodline scattered it is at least manageable…”

Accompanied by roaring winds and blazing scenery, Su Min transversed the sky over a haze of gold. A spectacular view of piercing mountains and frothed clouds whistled past and through him, yet he took no time to gasp at its beauty as a sudden solemn light lit in his eyes.

“It’s alive?”

A trace of uncertainty flashed, then with a boom, Su Min accelerated to his absolute limit.

…

…

“Hey, if you want to blame someone, blame that beast! If he would’ve NEVER existed none of this wouldn’t have happened!! Right?!”

Madness glistened like two ghostly lanterns in those disfigured pupils of the shadow. To the boy, though, they were disgusting eyes that induced despair and pitiful confusion.

He, collapsing onto the dirt floor, mumbled.

“So quick… I thought I saved her…? Yet, in the next moment, I drove her further down the hole of despair? I thought misfortune comes in pairs, and that’s with fortune, not more misfortune..!!”

“…”

A deathly light of anger began to seeth, burn… He kneeled on the ground, and as if he was looking at someone far away, he began to kowtow.

“I had good intentions… Good intentions… Instead, you will not only end up dying, but everyone else will die… Die because of my naive thoughts in believing in something stupid.”

*CRACKLE*

As the boy was kowtowing a startling array of disastrous smacks parted the clouds in the sky as that previously slow golden figure hastened! Shockwave after shockwave expanded with a whistling whoosh of steamed air, right past the boy’s ear…

The dark nearly humanoid blackness in front of the boy panicked for a second as visible anxiety shone in its eyes. However, like a rat cornered by a cat, it quivered with resoluteness and pounced on the dull boy.

*PSST*

“GAHHH!!”

The kid’s eyes quivered before, like someone had inked his eyes, a crimson replaced those one glistening white eyes.

“DAMN YOU!!”

With multiple spasms and bulging veins, the kid stammered to a half kneeling pose and roared to the top of his lungs. A wretched air arose around him as his eyes shimmer began to fade into pitch darkness.

Pain wreaked throughout his joins and muscles as his mind ruptured into eventual insanity. Yet even through these last dregs he still fought with that burning fire of rage and unwillingness!

Pulsing black wisps began to form around the boy as his body rotted. A snort was the only response from the kid’s immense unwillingness to let the creature take control.

“Even if you transcended the plain of a mere first stage and reach that beasts level you still wouldn’t be able to fight back! A lamp without oil is the same as a sun without energy! They will still both produce no light, no matter how persistent you are!”

Its voice contained a visible madness, one that was ready to give its life away! As such, and due to its origin, a dumbfounding aura began to radiate from it that made the boy cough out a tide of blood. It was like innumerable mountains were weighing on his mind!

“NO..!!!!”

Haziness started to cloud the boy’s pupils and a murky feeling strutted itself into his soul. It was a strange and uncomfortable feeling, one that was all too similar to Su Mins. It was one of fatigue, but also a spectral wave that somehow strengthened his will beyond what it should achieve…

“Ah, just like the beast… It must be a defensive reaction, that haziness, right? He was able to form such a great amount of it, an amount that was capable of fighting against us for a bit… But how unfortunate, because what you have formed is only a tiny amount and nowhere near enough to stop this!”

The shadow grunted with surprise, but it was still trivial in its eyes.

“Heh, how about I send you to that world? A death by those black blades would be well suited to the heaven’s race. Akin to being chopped like a chicken. A chicken in a world designed to breed monster who slay you!”

A playful grin erupted on its disfigured face. So, with a sudden tremble, the force that weighed on the kid’s already shaking mind multiplied to an inconceivable degree.

*CRACK*

The kid didn’t even have time to scream as his mind snapped under the incomprehensible strain. However, before his soul scattered and verified its death, a tiny vortex formed and engulfed the broken soul. However, as if the vortex couldn’t contain what was inside it, a minute wisp of blackened aura broke out of this vortex, and as it touched the atmosphere in the world, everything seemed to tremble.

It was a shake of terror, a shake so vile that streams of steaming cracks billowed out for kilometres. Not only this but by a mystical stretch, a dense and unending array on the ground revealed itself for a split second. Confusion was strung around it that moment, but within this confusion was a horror so pure that it would shock anyone who knew anything about the array…

The wisp wasn’t a pure black, instead, it contained a certain greyness that couldn’t be described. It was one that, even though grey, seemed far darker than any black known to man…

However, the wisp dissipated far too quickly to be sesed by anyone. In fact, you couldn’t even sense it…

“I was right to weaken his mind, Christ… He was like an incarnation of the fucker…”

A foreign voice spoke out of the boy’s lips. His pupils were now just two black orbs; orbs which seemed like two floating black holes.

“Ah, I’m already rotting…”

The boy, who was no longer a boy, glanced down and saw that his leg was discolouring. However, as he was going to die today, he didn’t care.

A vigorous stream of black energy fluttered around him. They emitted dark squeals and strange cries under the creatures control, ones that caused the originally ordinary energy to transform into something unruly.

It was normal martial energy, but with the addition of a technique that originated from a world far, far away, it began to exude something unparalleled. An aura that seemed to not only be able to block the heavens, but to be able to challenge it!

It prompted the already parted cloud to dissipate and the ground to disintegrate, and this came from the resonating aura that it emitted alone!

The boy’s void-like eyes gazed at the sky, where a spring of awe-inspiring gold ruthlessly smashed the sky! A shadow of a figure came with this, where it blasted through the air and toward the boy.

The gold brought a similar aura of might and exceptional nature, where it began to contend with the martial energy surrounding the boy!

“What a grand entrance.”

*RUUUMMMMBBBLLEEEE*

As if responding to this terrifying technique, the world shook as if it couldn’t handle the collision. Chilling chasms formed and dug itself right into the earth’s crust whilst similarly amazing shockwaves rattled the very space in the sky.

*THUD*

“I understimated you… To think you could actively think?”

A golden-haired man, with an acute thunderous thud, smacked the dismembering dirt and mumbled to himself. He gazed at the sky for a second in this mumble, where a shocking sight revealed itself.

Two colours, black and gold, took two sides of the sky! It was akin to colouring one half of the world black and the other half gold.

These two forces collided countless times every second, where it seemed that they didn’t even need Su Min’s input anymore to carry on. It was as if the energies were doing it on its own volition; like it was an instinct carved into its very core.

*PANGGGGG* *PANNGGGGG*

A constant deafening explosion sounded out in the sky. Su Min’s eyes shined as he stared at the kid; a kid who was now something far more hideous.

“So I guess I’m going to have to be a bit more forceful now?”