Chapter 47: Mask Revenant II
Ravi's body screamed in pain, his limbs trembling on the verge of collapse. He felt his senses blurred — sounds rang like distant whistles, and colours smeared into one another. Yet somehow, he moved.
He staggered forward, eyes fixed on the bound Revenant, held down momentarily by Waker's golden chains. He didn't have time to think about the chains — he just act. Gritting his teeth, Ravi lunged like a desperate beast with his blade raised high.
Across the arena, Waker was kneeling, his chest rising and falling unevenly. The golden aura around him was growing wild, no longer calm or controlled — it clawed at his mind, begging to consume him.
He began recalling the near eighteen months he had spent in the Guild of Action, the Guild master was caring, treated him like his own son.
His memories with Reydon or Ravi also surfaced in his mind. Through the short time he had been with Ravi, he truly treated him like a true friend and given him insight that he had been lacking that was suppressing him from moving forward, stopping him from becoming a Great Arcane.
If he didn't met and spend time with him, he would believe that Ravi was a criminal, a scumbag who could kill anyone, but now for him, he was a friend who showed him how to move forward. But now wasn't the time to reflect.
Waker controlled himself from falling to the faculty of his mind that desired sleep in order to allow the golden essence to take over his body. He wrestled the wild golden essence back into place, refusing the seductive pull of surrender.
Meanwhile, Ravi launched upward with a guttural roar, driving his silver-edged blade straight for the Revenant's mask. The Revenant twitched, trying to recoil, but the chains held it tight.
Suddenly, the Revenant erupted a huge stream of red fog. A massive burst of crimson mist poured from behind the Revenant's mask, spreading rapidly. The golden chains darkened, then cracked and corroded, as if rusted away by time itself. The Masked Revenant vanished — consumed by its own fog.
Ravi wanted to mutter a curse word, but he held himself back. The fog rose like a thick sea, blinding and choking. It loomed high above his head, heavy with the scent of rot and something that disrupting and corroding essence in his body, filling the air with nearly poisonous moisture.
A disheartened sigh escaped from his mouth, forcing himself to stand. The thought of Great Claws, Dorn, and Kiran surfaced in his mind. They had most likely gone to Alucone City or Fontarin City, or maybe they had even decided to stay in Xrylus.
He didn't have any suitable ideas to get out of this situation. The fog limited his vision to about a few meters around him. He couldn't able to reinforce his eyes using Arringun as his essence was depleted. If he pushed himself any further, he would die from Essence Exhaustion.
Across the arena, Waker was still grappling with the golden essence inside him when the Revenant silently emerged from the fog behind him and slashed at his neck.
Waker barely dodged its swipe, blood poured out from the wound on his neck, but the surging and wild golden essence healed the wound, stopping his bleeding. It disappeared again into the fog like a silent omen.
Ravi, meanwhile, bit his tongue hard — grounding himself as whispers began flooding in his mind from the burst-eye mark on his neck. Familiar and unfamiliar voices, all laced with deceit. The mark now pulsed with black and white threads, like stitched lightning under his skin.
Sensing something amiss, Ravi carefully stepped round to the other side of the broken pillar where his eyes bulged upon witnessing his companion Waker being eaten by the Mask Revenant.
Using this chance as it saw him in a daze, the Mask Revenant shot out of the fog behind him, slashing with twin black claws. Ravi ducked just in time, the claws slicing past his face. He dropped low and sprinted toward it, aiming for the mask.
With a feint, he shifted his slashed diagonally — the blade landed a clean wound through its right leg.
"Gah!" It let out an eerie howl as it dives desperately out of Ravi's range into the red fog before he could do any further damage.
Waker stumbled forward to his side, they stood back-to-back, both breathing heavily. A while ago, what Ravi had seen was just a hallucination or images that he didn't want to see, generated by the dark sigil to his senses.
Waker's golden aura was flickering weakly, and his eyes darted around for any surprise attack. "You always see this kind of crazy stuff in your everyday life?" Waker asked, trying to laugh.
Ravi replied annoyingly, "If you don't count watching your teammates die ... then yes."
They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, tension thick between them and the fog as the Revenant was still out there. He was vigilant from any surprise attack of the Revenant as it could emerge anytime and anywhere from this twisted red fog.