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"Thee killed her... why?" She sobbed,
"Thee art malevolent! Thee art evil! The curse shalt stay with thee for eternity," the young Oracle spoke.
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I woke up, disoriented, to the same nightmare. This time the events of the nightmare were much more vivid and clear, however, recollecting that entity's name caused me a terrible headache.
A song played in the distant lands, it was a melodious and peaceful one, and almost felt like a song from the heavens. The voice was a female one but never heard before, it was soothing and sweet and no human could compare to its voice and tune.
This mysterious song revitalized my energy and my headache vanished, the same effect that Alyssa's presence would often give, but on a much larger scale. Thus I could recall 'his' name without pain. KALI is what he called himself, the God of Infinity.
Looking around and trying to move, I realized the gravity of the current situation. I was inside an abandoned factory, tied up with mechanical knots, and unable to move an inch. And judging by the green fluorescence outside, it was day already.
The memories of the previous day dawned upon me as I oriented back to reality. And it made me incredibly sad and scared realizing that the vivid and clear events which I thought were a nightmare, was actually real.
[I killed the Oracle, didn't I?]
I could not even fathom what went through those poor people who followed her as they watched their Oracle's skull get crushed by a prince's hands. Especially, that young girl, who called herself an Oracle. And she might be one, after all, she often came in my nightmares before and pretty much gave me the same warnings that old lady Oracle gave.
[Why did I kill her though? My hands moved by themselves. Am I really a... monster?]
This was the second time I killed someone. The first person I killed was back when I initially joined the military four years ago. I was a trainee and had to observe my seniors conducting their mission. But due to a critical error, I ended up interfering in their mission and that killed the criminal. Even though he was a criminal, the fact that I killed a human, traumatized me. I was later praised by my seniors for doing the right thing, but the bitter aftertaste was always left behind. That, along with, my mother isolating me from our family, gave me an emotional breakdown. It took me six months to recover from it.
And now it was the same all over again. This time, she wasn't even a criminal. She was the Oracle. How could I execute something so evil?
Perhaps, because of my past experience, or because of this mysterious song I heard, I managed to avoid an emotional breakdown. Instead, I focussed on the current situation.
[Yes, I still need to fulfill my promise to Alyssa and prove my innocence. All this remorse can come later.]
After the Oracle incident, I was attacked by a mob of angry gangsters that lived in that street. All of them had primitive Commoners tics, and only their leader possessed a Royal tic. My tic comes under the 'Chosen' tier, a tier above them all. But, I didn't remember the events of the fight, nor did I understand how I ended up here, all tied up and restricted, after all, I was stronger than them.
The mechanical knots could normally immobilize an average human, but in my case, they were obviously underestimating me. Augmenting my wrist's and ankle's sheer power, I broke free from the knots.
After speculating my choices for a minute, I decided to confront the gangsters head-on. I carefully slipped out of the empty room and walked towards the auditorium of this factory from where much of the noise came. I saw those gangsters through the entrance to the auditorium. They reeked of mud and garbage.
The auditorium was quite large, but the construction was primitive and rusty. Most of it was junk and very little space was left, where the gangsters, three women, and four men, were performing some sort of prayer. The auditorium was connected to many other rooms but they were all covered, as if to hide something.
There were multiple entrances to the auditorium, one where I was standing, and others in various directions. The walls were quite high but there was no roof thus susceptible to aerial attacks.
One of the gangsters stood up and started dancing hysterically.
"Hey, what are they praying for?" I asked the dancing fool.
He came closer to me, doing a moonwalk, and performed a pirouette. I sarcastically clapped for his performance.
"Yo! You must be quite dumb, yo! This is yo divine song being played! Its origin is from the Sacred Hills, yo there's an angel who sings yo. We legit record it and transmit it here as yo it relieves us from our stress. Ohh shit! You are the prince whom we capturâ"
I punched his face with my augmented fist. The impact produced a recoil of air behind me and caused him to crash through the other end of the auditorium, cracking the wall and spilling blood everywhere. His thrust startled others, they cautiously formed a weird fighting position.
[Ahh, I remember now! The leader's power was related to gravity, and he is pretty much the only threat among these fools.]
Understanding the current position, I augment my speed and immediately dashed towards the leader. But, before I could get him, the female on my right end fattened up using her powers and rolled towards me.
Stopping my motion, I jumped high and dodged her roll. While in air, I created a pressure wave by flicking my fingers, to charge towards one of the stronger looking members and knocked him out.
"I have courage!" he said after getting back up.
I repeatedly punched him and beat him to a pulp but he kept repeating that and stood back up.
[Is this some sort of tic that boosts courage?]
I immediately recovered my stamina and dashed towards the fatty who was now out of gas and completely open to attack. The impact caused her to lift from the ground, and I continued it with further jabs and finished the combo with a 360-degree kick that threw her towards another female that stood beside her, shattering a mirror that she held.
[Phew, three down. Three more to go.]
With overflowing confidence and anticipation of victory, I dashed towards the girl who wore some sort of large headphone. However, to my surprise, as I reached near her, cats suddenly started fighting in our surroundings and their high pitched voice disturbed my concentration.
I missed my jab and she took the advantage to punch my face. Her punch was weak, but my high momentum caused me huge damage.
I experienced immense pain and my lips got bruised. The punch also threw me off-guard.
"Take this. You douchebag royals." declared the woman standing before me, and pointed her index finger upwards.
That immediately raised the cat's volume and caused my ears terrible pain. I couldn't handle the noise and collapsed on my knees, giving out a loud cry.
[Wait, if this sound knocked me down, so should it knock others?]
But, to my surprise, the rest of the members were covered with some sort of reflecting surface produced by the female who held those mirrors. And this reflected the sound away from them.
[Controlling cats was the tic of the last guy, then? What a terrible teamwork. I can't believe, this got me. It's their lucky day! Hah. That's all.]
Somehow I regained my senses and augmented my eardrums' tensile strength, adjusting it in just the right way to not vibrate at those high frequencies. This helped me deal with that loud irritating noise and I gave an upwards jab to her jaw which threw her away.
"GameOver," A voice erupted behind me and turning back, it was their leader.
His hands were hyper-extended and made a gesture of forming a fist. To my fear, the gravitational pull increased tremendously.
"G force, 9 times!"
I immediately fell on my belly under the pull of this enhanced gravity.
[So the other three guys were just a distraction? Did I fall into their trap? In the trap of these shit-fucks?]
"You won't get away with this. Once I get up from here, I will make sure to break every bone of your body!" I was extremely pissed off and gave a glaring stare.
"You won't be getting up any time soon, royal scum. G force, 15 times! One minute of that, and you die."
The pull increased in strength. It felt like I was being crushed by the weight of a tank! I was about to faint from the pain. But, I augment my spine, muscles, increased my durability, augment my blood vessels, augment my endorphin receptors! I couldn't accept my defeat to these fools and continued augmenting my body.
"I will fucking kill you. Trust me, I will." I said.
I managed to flex my elbow and push the ground below me, this helped me get up and slowly face up towards him.
"G force, 20 times," His fists came closer to each other.
The pull increased and pushed me further down. Others had already left his radius and it was just me and him. It hurt even more.
[Augment. Augment. Augment. Augment. Augment!!!]
The ground below me cracked due to the tremendous force acting on it. I once again pushed it and raised up. My eyeballs, glaring red, bulged with incredible pressure, and blood dripped from my nose and mouth.
"Who the hell do you think I am? I am Charles Vi Bezereth. The next in line to the throne of Bezereck, son of Azmuth! Don't you dare... don't you dare underestimate me!" I screamed while bending my knees and finally standing up.
"What the fuck is wrong with your power. It's broken! You royal scum. G force, 50 times," his fists came closer.
The pull was too extreme, and under normal circumstances, it would have killed me. But I had augmented my body to such an extent that it could withstand it. I had never achieved such high levels of Augmenting with my tic. I broke all my limits and walked slowly, inching closer to him, and prepared my fist to punch his face off his body.
"Fuck you! G force, 100 times!" he screamed, bringing his fists together, while his nose bled tremendously and his skin tore apart from some sort of side effect of his tic.
The pull was extreme and there was nothing I could do, I had already reached the limits of my Augmentin, and this was beyond my powers.
[Goodbye father. I tried my best.]
There was a sound of laser and all the pull on my body disappeared. Looking ahead I saw a hole in the leader's forehead. leader's face was expressionless and he fell beside me, dead.
I immediately got up and focussed on adjusting my Augmentin. Everyone in the auditorium was shocked to see him die and were frantically trying to trace the origin of the laser.
"You don't seem to be in a good shape, heh." said a male voice.
[That voice!!]
Looking up, I saw Kaizer. He was sitting carelessly on the cracks of the upper end of the wall. The next I blinked, he vanished from there and two other guys fell down with their heads torn apart from their body. Kaizer was now on the floor with a laser sword on his left hand and a laser pistol on his right.
The rest of them attempted to flee, except one.
"I have courage!!" he proclaimed, only to get shot by Kaizer.
[Damn! That quick? Your Tic is too over-powered! If only I had your tic, fuck.]
I recovered myself to some extent and used my remaining stamina to make a fight stance. I couldn't predict from which direction Kaizer's attacks would come, so had to maintain a flexible stance.
[Yeah. The Queen still thinks I am a murderer, so he might be here to kill me.]
"When are you gonna make your move? Eh?" I shouted.
"My move? You must be kidding. If I wished, you would already be dead. Well, I indeed came here with the mission to kill you, but right now I think there are graver problems to deal with. So what's going on with these rebels in the streets?" he asked.
"Huh? Shouldn't you be the one knowing that? Go ask your Queen that." I said
He took his sword and gave me a death glare, kind of as a warning.
Sounds of gunfires and stomping erupted as an army of demons entered from the large entrance of the auditorium.
"These useless idiots! We gave them one job, one job! To prevent outsiders from entering here... and they couldn't do even that! Grrr" Shouted one of them angrily.
They shot the fleeing gangsters and proceeded to shoot their dead bodies to make sure they died.
"Kaizer?" Others shouted with fear.
They took their huge weapons out and prepared to fight us. Their physique was tough and animalistic, even the females were buffed up with muscles. They seemed to have worn a suit which probably gave them additional speed and strength.
[They must be the invaders who entered the Shura forest? Their physique matches with UU6's demons! Those weapons are probably UU3's? The inhabitants of UU6 cannot use tics, so I guess we have an upper hand?]