His Second Adversity [ I ]

As if the Prince had foreseen the future, there came a very great storm accompanied by ferocious winds that blew from all directions. It swayed the little boat to and fro and turned their direction at different angles.

"Come on brother, let's row harder!..." Noname beckoned on his brother. "...Look, land is not so far away!" Noname said this after he noticed that the Prince's body was shivering a bit due to cold and unforgiving weather. 

Fuku himself, being a prince, has never once been exposed to harsh weather conditions like such. As a Prince, he had always had the best of life, but in this moment, he was right in the middle of an unforgiving natural disaster. 

As the raging storm went on and on, his body could no longer cope; his eyelids started feeling heavy, and he felt as if his life was literally being sucked out of him. He felt seasick, even though he was just on a lake.

'^Hang in there brother, please hang in there for me^' Noname pleaded in his heart.

 They were not too far away from land, they could actually see it clearly from their current position, they just needed to be more persistent.

Noname rowed the boat with all his might and all the strength he had within him, but as it seemed, he just couldn't dominate the unexplained strength of nature's forces. To make matters even worse, the turbulence around the lake got so madly intense that, at a point, it tilted the boat sideways to a large degree, causing Noname and his brother to be tossed into the lake. 

Noname, having been used to life in the wild, was able to swim excellently and resurface, he then got on the boat, breathing heavily, for it seemed like the raging storm itself was successfully draining every ounce of strength he had left within him. He leaned on the gunwale of the boat and raised his head, waiting for a few seconds to see if his brother would swim up to the surface, but suddenly, a striking thought of his brother's royal and convenient lifestyle hit him like a sledgehammer and reminded him that his brother could not swim!. 

Tilting his head in all directions, Noname searched the lake, visually scanning the whole area within his eye's reach, but still, he could not find anything in sight.... not until a hand from the lake clung onto the gunwale of the boat.

There and then, he saw his brother, weak and pitiable, in an almost unconscious state. Quickly, without wasting even a fraction of a millisecond, he reached out to grab hold of his brother's hand, and just as he was about to lift him out of the river....

.... The Dark Force Attacked!!!...

 ....It had successfully attained the ominous level of manifesting while its victim was conscious !

Noname could not control it; Immediately, he subconsciously let go of his brother's hand and screamed out loud while dropping to his knees...

It was chaos on his inside – He could feel his heart being overpumped and about to explode, his eyes cried blood, his nose and ears reddened and bled badly. He thought his head was going to be crushed because he felt a series of excruciating pains likened to when one was hit head-on by a rock.

The Prince, who was already drowning, sinking deep into the lake, could do nothing but plead within his heart— '^Brother... please.... don't leave me...'

As if that very day had been planned against the twins by death itself, a heavy bolt of lightning struck Noname head-on!

Noname felt the high amount of electric charge course throughout his whole body for a few milliseconds, and immediately, in the next second, it felt like his whole body opted into a reboot . . . . . 

Throughout that second, which seemed more like a minute to him, he could literally not use any of his five senses – The whole world seemed very dark, silent, and... unfeelable... It was like he was afloat in a drak, endless void!

The only thing that came to his mind at this point in time was the incident that occurred on the day he was banished, specifically the time when he felt that special pain from the hot charcoal and from the sudden shock – Two different kinds of pain, one emitted from the inside and the other received from the outside, simultaneously syncing with each other to form one! To Noname, this kind of feeling wasn't worth calling pain; it was something more, and that feeling right there, just before he felt afloat in the dark, endless void [being attacked from the within and simultaneously also attacked from the outside], was a great amplification of what he felt on that hot air balloon, but he didn't understand why his whole body wasn't responding to anything.

'^What's this? Am I dead?^' he thought, but instantly waved off the thoughts as he noticed that there was a sudden, slow fade-in of his senses. 

The whole void experience actually happened under a few seconds, but to Noname, it felt like minutes.

'^What just happened?... I got struck by lightning,... and... I didn't die?!... And it seems like the attack has stopped too!^' 

He quickly stood up from where he was lying and....

 '^... Its a good thing I can still stand properly, I better go and ..... huh! ...what!!...., I'm on land!!!?

.... That lightning that struck me had pushed me with great force from the sea up to the land... and... and I was here unconscious for a whole minute when I could have gone back to save my brother!^'

Tears flowed down his cheeks as he stood there in confusion, not knowing exactly what to do at that moment. He could not just decide between going back into the very far distance of the lake where the remains of the lightning-shattered boat swayed wildly in the storm, or return home to Lady Chan and urgently explain the matter to her. He stood there in his confused state for about a minute, and in the next second, he found himself running with the little strength he had... towards his home!

'^I'm sorry brother. If only you could just hang in there a little longer. Please, don't die on me, I only have to tell Lady Chan, even if she finds you on the verge of death, she would still know what to do. Please don't make your death my fault. Please brother!^' Noname emotionally muttered to himself in tears as he ran with the speed which his strength allowed him. 

Of course, Noname knew that if he had taken the option of going for his brother, his efforts would be rendered useless by the storm, because the storm itself brought strong waves that would have kept sweeping him back to the riverbank and, in a worse case, would manipulate his movement, keep him from resurfacing, and eventually cause him to drown.

But what Noname, however, didn't know was that not everyone was like him or Lady Chan, who could withstand death-alluring conditions for a long time – When that lightning struck Noname, it electrified the whole region, leaving his brother....

 .... a sinking corpse.