Elias wished to fall into a deep sleep and not wake up for a year. There was a deep weariness inside his bones that he had never felt before; it was almost as if he was hollow; a part of him was missing, and he hated that void.
With a force of willpower that no mortal could ever have, he growled and shook his head, which was entirely covered by blood from the tears and massive injuries all over his body.
A part of him knew that this feeling he had was not natural; it all came from being truly empty and alone for the first time in nearly six years. The voice of the Passenger inside his head was quiet, and the quiet and subtle consumption of the Green Swarm inside his body was gone.
They had long become a part of him, and he did not know that if he lost any one of them, how much it would affect him.
Vitality: 032 / 147
Elias groaned and lifted his head from the pool of blood around him. He was not yet free from danger, and lying in one place was a sure bet to die. The unexpected storm that erupted out of his body may not have cleared every danger inside this cavern.
He slowly struggled to his feet; his appearance was like a man who had been viciously mauled by a beast. His guts were hanging out, and no part of his skin was intact. His bones and his beating heart could clearly be seen, but Elias knew that even though he appeared extremely injured, this was simply a cosmetic injury; his internal organs were being repaired first, especially his brain and heart, and when everything inside of him was properly regenerated, only then would his skin and other surface organs be repaired.
As it was now, he could still fight; he could still run.
Elias felt a pulling sensation in his stomach, and he looked down to see his intestines squirm like it was a living thing and slowly push themselves back into his torso. His green eyes lit up because he could feel that his increased attributes and the fact that he no longer had a fifty percent reduction in his regenerative capacity had changed the way his body was healing.
If it were before, he would have needed to shove his own guts inside his torso and hold them in place for his body to slowly heal them, but now, even the smallest muscle groups in his stomach were able to pull on his internal organs without his direct control.
Vitality: 082 / 147
Ignoring the sickening pops and cracking inside his body as a thousand broken pieces of him began to regain their previous vitality, he was a bit grateful that his increased Will and mental strength seemed to be dulling the pain.
Elias felt his eyeballs sort of vibrate and expand, and his vision, which had nearly been destroyed, gained back hundred percent efficacy. He felt it was a bit amusing that while he had been technically blind, his mind had been giving him a mental roadmap of the entire cavern that was so detailed, it was almost as if he could still see.
However, nothing could prepare him for what had truly happened inside the cavern.
The moment his eyes became fully functional, Elias could see his chest, which was still missing skin and part of the pectoralis muscles. All of these injuries were rapidly closing, but before the sight of his internal organs was fully covered up, he saw a white bead in his chest glowing like it was a piece of the moon.
His eyes widened in astonishment as he knew that this must be the drop of blood from the Commander, and his Status screen updated him about the changes he was looking at,
- Yseult's Blood Fragment (Single-Use – Fate-erasing strike; restriction decay: 45%)
'Oh, this does not look like a good thing. Would this explode once it reaches a hundred percent?'
All of these details flashed very briefly in his head before his attention was drawn to the cavern, and Elias's mouth opened as wide as an opened drum at what he was witnessing.
He was looking at power, and he had never seen a sight more beautiful in his life, and his breathing grew rough in excitement and anticipation.
Elias ignored the cavern that seemed to have expanded and transformed into a massive cathedral of ice and shattered rock, with dying blue veins of Lumina still clinging to the walls.
The walls bore deep gouges as if a massive claw had ripped through them, but these were clearly where the green wind had torn through stone as easily as flesh. Stalactites had been sheared off at the base and lay scattered like broken spears. The cavern ceiling had partially collapsed in places.
Lumina, red like blood, were risng into the air from hundreds of broken bodies of stone, creating a massive swirling cloud of Lumina that shook the air, and Elias could seea faint pulse of lightning flashing through the growing cloud.
'How much power was here? Enough to push him to Mist Phantom or even higher?
The storm that emerged from his body was a power that no mortal should have access to, and so it was normal that a mere Wisp would be able to kill so many powerful monsters and harvest so much power.
Elias did not know if all the statues had been destroyed by the unexpected storm that blasted out from his body, but all he could see, scattered throughout the wreckage, were the remains of the statues that had pursued him.
Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of broken forms littered the floor. Some were reduced to rubble piles, stone limbs cracked and scattered, black ichor frozen into glossy black pools that reflected the blue light from the cavern walls.
Others still retained partial shape: a torso here missing both arms, a head cracked open with empty sockets staring blankly upward, a single massive hand still clenched in mid-grasp. The black blood had frozen mid-flow, forming grotesque, glossy tendrils that stretched across the ice like veins of night.
The silence was absolute. No whispers, no grinding stone, no children's screams and mocking words, only the faint drip of melting ice and Elias's own ragged breathing, and it appeared as if he was the only one left alive inside this place.
However, he knew that was not the case. Perhaps, it was the feeling of emptiness inside his body that made him particularly sensitive towards the Green Swarm, because he simply had to look beyond the rising cloud of red to see another greater cloud above it… the Green Swarm… his Storm.