The golden text didn't fade. It hung in the air. It should have dazzled him with its clean, golden glow, but Elio was practically unfazed.
[User has successfully fused with the Bi-Vessel System.]
[Sacred bond with the Dark Entity successfully severed.]
[Dark Constituent Stability: 25%]
Elio stared at the words, his breath hitching in his chest. He didn't feel "successful." He felt like a hollowed-out tree.
He reached out a trembling hand, his fingers passing through the golden screen as if it were nothing.
"What is this?" he whispered, his voice cracking. "Just... go away."
"Trickery." His voice was a dry rasp. "Just another trick."
You're probably saying "What the fuck," right?
It's because he had seen things before. Shadows that moved when they shouldn't, whispers in the corners of his room that should be too much for a kid.
He had spent six years dealing with things he couldn't explain, things he couldn't grasp but always saw regardless.
He remembered being six years old, staring at a puddle in the village square and seeing a face looking back at him that wasn't his own. A face with eyes like spilled ink, a blob of darkness that eerily moved in the water.
His nights were always horrors.
Every time he'd run to his parents, sobbing about the shadows and darkness that whispered his name, they had just held him too tight.
"It's our fault, Elio," his father would mutter into his hair, his voice always thick with a guilt he couldn't name. "We made a choice we shouldn't have. But we'll fix it."
His parents had always looked at him with that heartbreaking mixture of love and terror, promising they would 'fix' it.
They never explained anything, and he continually drowned in his darkness.
And now, a glowing 'hallucination' was telling him about vessels and a wyrmling while he looked like a diseased boy.
Another stuff he didn't understand.
The screen flickered and vanished, but the warmth in his chest remained, a rhythmic thrumming that felt like a second heartbeat trying to sync with his own.
He had somehow managed to cancel his beast's fusion too, contently watching how the useless white spots disappeared from his skin and the pathetic tail receded to where it came from.
With a heavy breath, he turned away from the Serenum Hall and ran into the broad streets of the capital city.
He began to wander.
∆∆∆∆
Serenum was never a small kingdom. Of the seven kingdoms, Serenum proved to be the largest of all, not just in land mass, but in almost every other aspect.
Better tamers, highest resources, biggest land mass, home to multiple powerful beasts and herbs, and so much more.
The large population of the kingdom was distributed in many towns and villages. Those who got a better beast lived the luxurious life of big tamers, and those who were misfortuned…
Well, they were forced to settle in the slums or small towns when they couldn't cope with the tax of big cities and were constantly oppressed by nobles and big merchants.
The Capital City of Serenum was a testimony to this. It was a city built with substantial wealth, where the very stones seemed to be reinforced like iron tanks, buildings stood like monuments, wide streets opened and linked to many others that added to the city's beauty.
And boy, was the atmosphere enriched with mana? Hell, yeah.
Silver Rank tamers, Bronze Rank tamers, Iron Rank tamers and even a few Gold Rank tamers.
The difference was stark!
Iron Rank tamers were the ones pushing carriages and jumping from one side to another in their endless errands.
Most small shop owners were Bronze Rank, merchants were mostly Silver Rank, and few of the big ones were Gold.
The patronizers? They varied.
Elio passed apothecaries where the windows were lined with crystalline jars containing the parts of beasts.
He saw smiths hammering at one metal or another, beast cores being melted and forged with weapons or other accessories.
This was the kind of world he was supposed to be a part of, yet he was walking the streets as a pariah.
Memories of his childhood washed over, uninvited. How he got bullied, how other kids distanced themselves from him, how his mind would sometimes be overwhelmed with so many dark thoughts that he'd begin to question his age.
Another ping rang in his head and a screen flashed before him.
[Dark Constituent Stability: 22%]
Elio didn't even look up. He continued his stray walk.
His mind soon ventured into thoughts about the academy, how he had planned to become a successful tamer. His parents had sacrificed their harvest, their luck, and eventually their lives just to get him there, yet he failed them.
"The whole world is against me, isn't it?"
He began to think he was truly cursed, that the villagers weren't wrong with their thoughts.
In this misery, his feet took him away from the sunlit avenues and into the deeper, narrower guts of the city. The deeper he went, the more the grand structure gave way to rot.
Here, the buildings were taller, leaning toward each other until the sky was just a jagged ribbon of blue and the streets were loomed by darkness.
The air was heavy with the scent of damp stone, and something metallic, foul too…
Something like old blood.
He didn't notice he had made a mistake until the silence of the street became absolute.
"Well, well, what do we have here?"
The voice came from the shadows ahead.
Elio froze, his heart hammering against his ribs. Four figures emerged, blocking all ways that could lead to escape.
They weren't guards or soldiers, they were the vultures of the city, men with hollow eyes and voice from nightmares.
"What are you looking for, kid?" the tallest one growled, stepping into the dim light of the street. "Are you a spy? Working with the city guards?"
"No," Elio gasped, holding his hands up. "I'm just a kid. I don't know anything. I was just... I was just walking."
"Walking in this part of the city with no one?" another thug sneered, circling him. "You're either a fool or a professional. Where are your parents, boy? You should be with them unless you've got some business here, eh?"
The word 'parents' hit Elio like a physical blow. The image of his mother's face in the fire, the sound of the crackling fire, it all surged forward in a suffocating wave.
[Dark Constituent Stability: 18%.]
"I know nothing!" He forced himself to say.
He tried to push past them, his legs trembling as he made a desperate dash for the exit.
"I have to go! Please!" Elio cried.
A heavy hand slammed into his shoulder and spun him around before he could move.
"Where do you think you're going, eh?" The thug smirked. "If you've foolishly come here like you said, then we gotta make the most of it."
"What's your beast?!" He yelled.
"Please, sirs… I'm begging you." Elio's voice cracked, his eyes welled with suspended tears.
"Shut up!" The thug delivered a stinging slap that made Elio's small head fling back.
The hand had hit him before he could react, his mouth filled with the metallic tang of his blood.
He couldn't yell. He couldn't move, his vision clouded with trapped tears.
[Dark Constituent Stability: 13%.]
"Boss, this one will make a nice pickpocketer if he's got a fast beast. If he lacks that, we'll keep him hostage and demand ransom from anyone who cares."
The lead thug moved closer. He shoved Elio with a cheerful laughter, sending him crashing onto the cold, damp cobblestones.
"I agree. This one will make us a fortune. Hehe!"
Elio curled into a ball, the tears he had been holding back since the ceremony finally spilling over.
He felt small, helpless, and utterly alone in a world that wanted to swallow him whole.
[Dark Constituent Stability: 11%... 10%...]
It was decreasing rapidly.
He didn't know when the system flickered back to life and scrolls of messages unfurled before his eyes.
The thugs couldn't see anything. They didn't and couldn't see what was hovering before the boy. They could only have fun with their little 'toy'.
But the words…
[WARNING! WARNING!! WARNING!!!]
[Abyssal Wyrmling is stirring.]
Elio soon noticed the flashing screen, the way it beeped with urgency. He tried to make sense of the words and what was decreasing rapidly, but he couldn't.
Then…
[Dark Constituent Stability: 0.]
[Abyssal Wyrmling has taken control.]
[Dark mana escaping.]
————~~~~~————~~~~~———
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