"I... won..." Dylan smiled as his breathing was slightly labored. He lightly rolled his shoulders and exhaled a single breath of exhaustion, his hands placed on his knees as fatigue caught up with him.
His body was riddled with wounds and cuts as blood trickled down from his wounds. Yet, he felt no pain as it all faded upon the realization that he was victorious.
His first victory in the cultivation world and it was up against four cultivators! It was a battle in which he could have died from a single misstep yet he was the last one standing.
"I actually won against cultivators... Hahaha." Dylan felt a euphoric sensation all over his body. Fighting against cultivators was exhilarating. He looked at his clenched fist as he reveled in the high of winning!
"It felt like fighting against Diablo who unlocked Innate Qi." He briefly reminisced his absurd fight with Diablo. He was using the Cloak of Death with the E-Trans System and yet Diablo was fighting him evenly and sometimes slightly overpowering him as he produced Qi Blasts with every fist and kick!
"The only difference is that Diablo was light years ahead of them in terms of fighting." Dylan thought as he begun analyzing the fight that just happened. "Well, they seemed to be inexperienced with fighting. They were decently coordinated but they had horrible execution. Aside from leveraging my advantages, I think that was one of the main reasons why I was able to come out alive. Had they mastered their techniques, the fight would have been way more difficult."
"Ah! This is not the time to be thinking. I need to return home first." Dylan snapped out as he gathered himself. He has a tendency of thinking too much and assessing every single factor no matter what the situation is.
He noticed in the corner of his eyes that Ronald was trying to get up, struggling since his both arms were severely injured by Dylan.
"You're finally awake?" With his blinding speed, Dylan appeared in front of Ronald and kicked him in the stomach.
"I wanted to clarify a few things with you." Dylan slowly walked towards Ronald. He had intentionally left him alive so he could confirm his suspicions.
"Argh!" Ronald was sent rolling in the ground as he held his stomach in pain.
He saw Dylan's eyes, overflowing with killing intent, slowly making his way to him. Ronald kowtowed as he begged for his life. "D-Dylan, please forgive me. I-I'm sorry for everything... Just let me live, please!"
Dylan stood over the trembling man, his shadow stretching across the dirt like an executioner's block. He didn't answer immediately, letting the suffocating weight of his presence force Ronald deeper into the mud.
"Forgive you?" Dylan softly chuckled, the sound devoid of warmth. "Ronald, I didn't leave you alive out of mercy. I left you alive to answer a question."
He stepped closer, resting his boot lightly on Ronald's shattered shoulder joint. Ronald shrieked, his forehead pressed so hard into the dirt that blood mixed with the grime on his face.
"The Chief Gate Guard," Dylan said, his voice dropping into a razor-cold register. "He set this up, didn't he? He staged that little scene at the gate to look righteous, only to send you two and a pair of hitmen to erase me in the woods. Give me his exact words."
"Y-yes! Yes!" Ronald sobbed, completely broken, his pride as a cultivator crushed beneath the boot of a man he once called trash. "It was the Chief! After he knocked us out, he had us brought to the inner guardhouse! He told us... he said if we killed you and brought back your head, he'd wipe our records clean and give us a thousand copper coins each! He brought Frank and Edgar to make sure it got done!"
Dylan's eyes narrowed slightly. 'As I thought. A petty attempt to clean up his own mess while trying to score points with Alistair.'
"I see," Dylan murmured. His suspicion was right.
He took his foot off Ronald's shoulder, taking a half-step back. He picked up Ronald's sword.
Seeing the pressure ease, Ronald desperately looked up, tears and dirt streaming down his face. "I told you! I told you everything! Please, Dylan... we grew up in the same guard post! Remember the old days? You were a guard and I was a guard! We're practically brothers!"
Dylan stared down at him, his face an unreadable mask. He raised the steel sword as its blade glistened in "Brothers?"
"Please let me live!" Ronald scrambled backward on his knees, his broken arms dangling uselessly at his sides. "I-I will do anything!"
Dylan's lips finally arched into a smile but to Ronald, it felt bone-chilling. It felt unsettling for him since Dylan's smile at the blade first before looking at him
"Yes! I was wrong, Dylan! I was wrong about everything!" Ronald was desperate as he knelt helplessly. "I'll leave Soaring Cloud City! I'll never come back! I'll tell everyone you're a genius, a god among men! Just don't kill me!"
"Don't worry. I'm not going to kill you. You don't deserve a quick death after everything you've done to me." Dylan kicked Ronald once more and then cut his tendons from his knees and his ankles, making his entire body limp and lay helplessly on the ground.
"Aaaargh!" Ronald screamed from the pain as tears flowed out from his eyes, "Please, stop. No more...."
"Do you remember what you said to me back at the gate, Ronald?" Dylan continued and asked smoothly, his voice dangerously calm. "When I was pinned to the stone pavement, coughing up blood while you took my daily copper?"
"I..." Ronald froze, his breath hitching in his throat.
"You were always the ring leader as all the other guards simply followed suit. For years, you've beaten me half to death and stole from me. You always told me..." Dylan leaned down, his face inches from Ronald's terrified eyes
"'A cripple without cultivation wants to keep his copper? Consider this your tax for breathing our air.' , was it? You always seemed to like the word cripple, right?" Dylan raised the sword and hovered it over his navel.
"N-no! NO! Anything but that!" A horrific realization dawned on Ronald's face as Dylan pressed Ronald's own sword to his navel where the Spirit Core was located.
*Crack*
"AAAAARRRGHHHH! My cultivation! This can't be..." Ronald felt his Spirit Core break and the remnants of his Innate Energy slip away.
The more Innate Energy dissipated, the more the reality of his situation became akin to a nightmare he wanted to wake up from. "I'm not a cripple! This is only a nightmare. I-I just need to wake up?"
Roland had become the very thing which he mocked. How ironic it was.
"How does it feel to be a wastrel like me?" Dylan made him forcibly face reality with a cold laugh, "Oh, wait. You're a true cripple who can't even stand and move. Congratulations, you have me beat there."
"Just kill me already..." Ronald's face had sunken to despair. He begged for death since it seemed like it was a better option than live as a cripple which he abhors.
"You want to die already? We can't have that." Dylan's hand slowly reached out, wrapping securely around Ronald's throat. "You should relish the experience of being a complete cripple. Oh, you don't want to live as a cripple? Unfortunately, you will still die as one."
"To be completely honest, I would have liked it more if you continued to live your entire life pathetically as a true cripple who could not do anything but I can't risk being discovered by the Chief Gate Guard and especially Alistair." Dylan lamented as he continued painting the picture, "At most, they would think of you as incompetent soldiers who ran away and that would give me time."
"'People who can't cultivate are trash, isn't that right?" Dylan whispered, his grip tightening until Ronald's airway began to collapse. "You spent years trying to convince me that the weak exist only to be stepped on by the strong. You taught me that power dictates who lives, who dies, and who gets to breathe."
"D-Dy... lan..." Ronald choked out, his legs waddled loosely in the dirt as he tried to pull away, but Dylan's arm was an unyielding iron bar.
"I took your lesson to heart, Ronald," Dylan said, a faint, chilling smile touching his lips. "And right now? You are weak. You have no cultivation left to protect you, no weapons, and no dignity. By your own law... you're just trash taking up my air."
"..." Roland now understood that he was the one responsible for this outcome. It was his karma, 'I reap what I sowed.'
"Die!"
*CRACK*
Dylan effortlessly snapped Ronald's neck with a single, sharp twist of his wrist. The desperate light in Ronald's eyes instantly went dark, his body going completely limp as Dylan released his grip, letting the corpse drop face-first into the mud... in the exact same posture Dylan had been forced into years ago.
Dylan wiped his bloody palm on his trousers, stepping over the body without a second glance.
"With that, I have successfully avenged you, Mister Vastocean." Dylan spoke, knowing that Dylan Vastocean was listening in the Cosmic God Mansion.
...
Cosmic God Mansion...
In the seemingly endless dark space of the Cosmic God Space, there was a young man who was crying in front of the Cosmic God Mansion. The young man remembered all of the injustices that were done to him over the years. He gritted his teeth and endured all of those suffering even if it was unreasonable.
For years, his life had been nothing more than a succession of cold stone pavements, bruised ribs, and swallowed blood. He had learned to shrink himself, to bend his spine until it nearly snapped, all just to keep a few coppers in his pocket so his sister wouldn't starve. He had accepted every kick, every slur, every agonizing moment of humiliation as an inescapable curse of his weak, uncultivated flesh.
He remembered holding his head in the dirt while Paul's boot pressed into his back. He remembered Ronald's cruel laughter echoing over his choked sobs. He remembered believing them, believing that he was born to be stepped on, that he was nothing, that he deserved every tear he shed.
"Maybe, I am really nothing. Maybe I was born to be stepped on..." Looking at himself in the bathroom mirror. His self confidence was bruised and battered to the point that he affirmed the ideologies of his opressor.
Yet, when he looked at the screen earlier, seeing Dylan Ford who had used the same body that he had been bullied in for years and use it to triumph and exact vengeance upon his wrongdoers, he had a profound realization.
'Maybe I could have stood up for myself if only I became stronger mentally...' He thought as he witnessed the miracle that happened before him
Two simple words escaped Dylan Vastocean's mouth as he tearily looked at the man in front of the screen-like vision in front of him, "Thank you"
Yet, those two words carried the weight of years of anguish and relief. But carried upon them was the closure of a shattered life, the dignity restored to an broken boy, and a final, quiet farewell as he could now fully let go of his broken self.