Bitterness

Corvis Eralith

The air exploded from my lungs as around half a ton of furious muscle and bone covered by dark fur slammed into me. Crunch. The impact rattled my teeth, sending a jarring shockwave up my spine.

Tusks, thick as my forearm and wickedly curved, scraped and shrieked against the fabric of my steel-grey uniform.

For a heart-stopping instant, I felt the sheer, brute force pushing through—then Against the Tragedy thrummed as I willed it into action. Mana, cool and insistent, surged from the tattoo under my right forearm, flowing like liquid metal through the specially woven threads of my uniform.

The fabric stiffened instantly, becoming a carapace made of wool and cotton. The scrape became a tortured metallic shriek, sparks flying where keratin met magically reinforced cloth. My boots skidded backward, carving deep furrows in the damp forest loam, the stench of crushed vegetation and the boar-like mana beast's rank, earthy musk filling my nostrils.

"Honestly, Corvis? It's just one weak mana beast. Are you trying to kill me with your boring and dirty fight against a... pig?" Romulos's voice dripped with disdain, a lazy phantom leaning against a nearby oak, utterly untouched by the chaos. "The sun's not getting any higher, and my patience possesses the lifespan of a fly."

I am trying… not… to die… here! The mental retort was ragged, punctuated by another desperate shove against the creature's relentless pressure.

My prosthetic magic flared, channeling raw power into the sleeves of my uniform—not for attack, but for sheer, desperate leverage. Planting my feet, I braced, muscles screaming as I poured mana-enhanced strength into holding the monstrous snout at bay.

Saliva flecked with forest debris sprayed my face. Its hot, panting breath fogged the air inches from my eyes.

Sweat stung my forehead. Time seemed to slow, each heave of the boar's massive chest a tremor through my arms.

Now! With a guttural yell born of pure adrenaline, I wrenched myself sideways, breaking the deadlock. Momentum carried the beast stumbling forward. In the same fluid, desperate motion, my hand blurred to my hip.

The dagger I was keeping slid free, its blade instantly sheathed in a crackling corona of chaotic mana siphoned from Against the Tragedy after I trailed the blade over my forearm. Not a thought, pure instinct honed by Romulos's relentless, often brutal and unforgiving, comments. I lunged, not away, but under the mana beast.

The dagger, aimed true beneath the thick jawline where the armored bone plates covering the strange boar thinned, punched home.

It wasn't an elegant attack nor a refined strike; it was savage necessity. I felt the resistance of the boar's hide, the grating scrape against the plates above it, then the sickening give as it sank deep into vulnerable flesh.

Fueled by panic and spiking adrenaline, I shoved with everything I had—not just my arm, but my whole body weight, channeling the multi-elemental mana surge. The beast, caught mid-lunge, bellowed in agony and surprise, its colossal weight momentarily unbalanced.

It wasn't a killing strike as I barely hit deep enough inside the mana beast's body, but a desperate reprieve, buying me a precious second as it staggered sideways, shaking its massive head, dark blood welling around my dagger's hilt as it was burned, washed and blew away by the chaotic surge of elements whose mana I took from Against the Tragedy reserves.

"Dramatic," Romulos drawled, examining his spectral fingernails. "Truly. You could win awards. Now, perhaps finish the job before it decides your leg looks like a chew toy?"

Yeah, sure, I snarled back internally, scrambling backward, putting precious distance between me and the enraged creature. Its small, predatory eyes, now blazing with pain and fury, locked onto me. It lowered its head, bony scales clattering like poorly fitted armor, its sides heaving.

Beyond the Meta, I immediately thought. I triggered it, the world shifting.

The vibrant greens and browns of the forest muted. The massive boar became a silhouette outlined in swirling, turbulent currents of earthy brown mana and green wind one.

Its core pulsed within its chest cavity like a flawed, muddy gemstone, radiating power unevenly. Instinctively, mana beasts reinforce vulnerable points—joints, eyes, throat. But weaker ones? Their focus wavers. Their defenses are patchwork. And this D-Class brute, for all its terrifying power for someone like me, was fundamentally simple.

My enhanced perception zeroed in. I saw a small void blindingly black between the mana flowing through the beast. A small startling gap in the mana flow right on its back, shielded by overlapping bony plates. The plates were dense, natural physical defense, but the mana beneath them? Scattered. Undefended.

The scales created small gaps—tiny chinks where bone met bone. Perfect for the thin, sharp blade of the dagger I already wielded.

The boar mana beast gathered itself, mana flaring around its snout. The air crackled, thick with ozone. It was about to use wind magic. A localized gale erupted from its maw, a concentrated blast aimed to bowl me over or shred my skin.

I didn't wait. I moved. Prosthetic magic surged through my trousers, launching me not backward, but up and over. Time stretched. I saw the blast tear through the foliage and bushes where I had stood, ripping ferns and small saplings to splinters. Gravity reclaimed me. I was falling, arcing directly above the boar's spine.

It soon sensed me. Survival instinct screamed inside both me and the boar. It bucked violently, twisting its massive body, trying to dislodge the threat before it landed. I focused my eyes and my dagger was already descending before it could do anything to me.

Not a stab, but a plunge. Guided by Beyond the Meta, I aimed for the precise point where two bony plates met—a dark, mana-starved fissure in the swirling brown energy field.

The impact jarred my arm to the shoulder. The blade punched through hide and slid between scales with a sickening schlick. Deep. To the hilt. I hit the beast's back hard, the wind knocked out of me again, clinging to the dagger's grip like a rider on a demonic bull.

The boar screamed, a sound of pure, panicked agony, and went berserk starting to move like a skittish horse. It thrashed, spun, slammed against trees, trying desperately to scrape me off. Branches whipped past my head. My world was a violent blur of muscle, bone, and splintering wood, but I continued to resist.

Holding on was torture. My prosthetic magic strained, reinforcing my grip, anchoring me against the violent gyrations that made my head go spinning.

The core, I had to strike the core. I could see it through the beast's flesh and mana, pulsing erratically just beneath the dagger's entry point.

I didn't pull the blade out. Instead, I poured more mana through it. Not a cutting force, but a shattering pulse. A focused detonation of pure energy channeled down the steel conduit—like hydro fracking I sent mana through the body of the boar.

CRACK.

It wasn't loud, but I felt it resonate through the dagger, up my arm, and deep within the boar. A crystalline fracture deep inside its chest. The berserk thrashing ceased instantly. The massive body stiffened, then collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, crashing to the forest floor with a final, earth-shaking thud.

Silence rushed in, broken only by my own ragged gasps and the frantic hammering of my heart.

I laid sprawled on the still-warm flank for a moment, trembling, the adrenaline ebbing, leaving behind just a bone-deep weariness and the sharp ache of bruises forming. The coppery tang of blood—mine from scrapes which fortunately weren't much deeper wounds, the beast's from the wound I have made deep inside its back—filled the air, mixing with the loam and crushed greenery.

"Finally," Romulos sighed, materializing beside the massive head, peering down at it with detached curiosity. "A bit… inelegant. Goofy and clumsy, even. More brute force than finesse. But," he conceded with a slight shrug, "functional. I suppose that suffices. For now."

Pushing myself up, every muscle protesting, I ignored him. The beast core was useless—a web of cracks visible even to my normal sight, its internal structure shattered by my final pulse. But the tusks… thick, ivory curves glistening with gore… they were intact.

Valuable components. Carefully, bracing a boot against the boar's skull for leverage, I worked the dagger free, wiped it clean on a patch of less-bloodied hide, and sheathed it. Then, with grim practicality, I set about the grisly task of harvesting the tusks, using a small, sharp hand-saw from one of the dimensional storage rings I carried with me.

The rasping sound of the saw against tusks was loud in the sudden quiet.

Once the heavy tusks were stowed away in the ring's extra-dimensional space, I retrieved Sylvia's Mana Core. The smooth, warm crystal pulsed faintly in my hand, a comforting counterpoint to the carnage. Holding it near the cooling beast, I focused.

Tendrils of faint, dissipating mana, the remnants of the boar's life force, stirred. Slowly, reluctantly, they were drawn towards the core, absorbed like mist into a thirsty stone. It wasn't much, barely a trickle, but it was progress. Every drop counted. Securing the core back in another ring, I took a final look at the fallen beast. Not a glorious victory, but a necessary one.

The frigid air of the woods surrounding me scraped my lungs raw with every labored gasp. Sweat, icy despite the exertion, plastered strands of hair to my forehead.

My legs burned, muscles trembling with fatigue that seeped deep into the marrow. A treacherous thought, warm and soft as down, tried to form.

I miss… It was a yearning for the familiar scent of Elshire Forest, for Tessia, for Grampa, even for the comforting clatter of tools in my basement workshop. Anything but this relentless, granite-faced solitude.

"Silence!" Romulos's voice cracked through my skull like a whip, shattering the fragile warmth before it could fully bloom. He materialized perched precariously on a stone protruding from the undergrowth I was struggling to travel, his spectral form unaffected by the biting and humid cold.

His ruby eyes held a predatory glint. "You haven't earned the right to miss anyone yet." The words were sharp, laced with a chilling satisfaction.

Was it sadistic pleasure in my discomfort? Or something more complex, more disturbing—a masochistic twist, deriving satisfaction from denying comfort to the part of himself that still craved it?

Where do we even need to go? I projected wearily, the mental voice echoing the exhaustion weighing down my limbs. We were high in the peaks, near the border of the tree line, not far ahead laid a world of wind-scoured rock and endless, aching blue sky.

Romulos had spoken cryptally of the "feet of Geolus" residing somewhere in Dicathen's Grand Mountains, a phrase that sounded more like myth than geography. Geolus body should entirely be in Epheotus.

"It is here," he affirmed, gesturing vaguely at the monumental, unforgiving landscape looming ahead of me. "Or rather, a remnant is. It is one of the peaks. The problem, dear lesser version of me, is time. Millennia of winds fiercer than Epheotus' climate could conjure, ice that gnaws like teeth, storms that reshape stone… they've worn it down. Reduced a titan's foot to… well, we'll see."

So we're searching for a worn, jagged rock? I sent back, the sarcasm thin and brittle. Very informative. I hauled myself over an inclined tree, my gloved fingers scraping painfully on the rough bark.

The view that unfolded before me as the last trees were dissipating was staggering—a panorama of lesser peaks stretching into haze, valleys like deep green gashes far below. It felt isolating, immense, and profoundly indifferent to my struggles.

"Despite the indignities of time," Romulos continued, drifting alongside me as I picked my way along a treacherous ridge, "it remains the petrified essence of a Natural Beast. Primordial. Resonant. You won't find it with your eyes alone. Use Beyond the Meta. Feel for the echo beneath the stone. The signature is ancient, deep… like a heartbeat slowed to geological time."

I see… the concept was daunting. Sensing the lingering mana signature of something that predated Dicathen's whole history.

Anyway, are you sure Windsom isn't following us? The thought surfaced, prickling with paranoia. After the encounter with Wren Kain, Romulos had casually mentioned sensing the Indrath servant's attenuated signature through my passive perception, a revelation that had chilled me then and haunted me since.

"Windy?" Romulos scoffed, the nickname dripping with deliberate, juvenile disrespect. "No trace. He peeled off soon after we left Xyrus. Probably scurrying back to Grandfather with his report, or polishing his throne with his obsequious tongue. Either way, he's not our shadow today."

The flippancy couldn't entirely mask the complex history beneath it—a mix of childhood familiarity warped into profound disdain.

What exactly was the relationship between you and Windsom? I pressed, needing to understand the undercurrents of this animosity.

He paused, hovering over a particularly deep chasm I was carefully skirting. His expression, usually a mask of arrogance or detached curiosity when we weren't talking about Arthur, flickered with something colder, older.

"Let's say he was… assigned to me. A minder. I possessed a fascination with Dicathen, with its chaotic, messy lessers. Windsom was Grandfather's leash around my neck. Tasked with ensuring the precious Indrath heir didn't soil himself in the mud."

The disdain thickened in Romulos' voice. "So yes, consider him a glorified babysitter. For me… for us, even. Frankly, I couldn't care less if you grovel before him or spit at his feet. He never earned an ounce of my respect. Only my enduring contempt."

The raw bitterness in his voice was startling, a crack in the Sovereign facade revealing deep-seated resentment.

The revelation settled heavily. Another layer of the gulf between us—where I saw a terrifying Asuran dragon of the mightiest Clan, Romulos saw a symbol of stifling control, a jailer in silken robes and fake words.

Let's just move, I projected back to Romulos, pushing the emotional weight aside, focusing on the immediate, physical challenge. We have this Geolus's feet to find.

With a final, weary glance towards the distant horizon where Xyrus—and home—laid hidden, I turned my face back into the biting wind and resumed the punishing climb towards the desolate peak Romulos insisted held the echo of a titan.

The only company I craved was denied; the only company I had was a reflection steeped in bitterness. The mountain offered only silence and stone.

———

The biting mountain wind, momentarily thwarted by the jagged rock spires, dropped to a mournful sigh. My legs burned with the relentless climb, lungs raw from the thin air. As I crouched behind a wind-sculpted monolith, the sudden murmur of voices cut through the eerie silence.

Not the howl of wind, but human sounds—rough laughter, the clang of metal, the guttural rhythm of crude speech.

"Company?" Romulos's voice slithered into my mind, laced with perverse delight. He materialized perched atop my rocky cover, a spectral raven surveying his surroundings.

"Look, Corvis! Seems you won't be enduring this existential mountain therapy alone! Perhaps entertainment has arrived!"

Funny, I projected back, the sarcasm as thin and brittle as the ice crusting the rocks. Crouching lower, I edged forward. A hidden, leveled area opened before me—a natural fortress against the elements, now occupied.

Bandits. Twenty, maybe more. Rough hides, scavenged weapons, the hardened look of predators operating beyond the Council's nascent reach. Common enough in these wild peaks, a festering wound Dicathen hadn't yet cauterized. A wound the coming war would likely exploit.

"Bandits, you say?" Romulos purred, his red eyes gleaming with an unnerving light. "Oh, excellent. Living subjects. Perfect for field-testing that acclorite refining serum modification I theorized. We could observe reaction times, mana depletion under stress, the efficacy of the neural inhibitors..." He spoke with the chilling detachment of a vivisectionist selecting lab rats.

I'm not indulging your sadistic fantasies, I snapped back, the revulsion cold in my gut. Ignoring him, I focused. Against the Tragedy hummed softly at my arm. I willed its power outward, not as a shield, but as a veil.

Mana flowed from me, a subtle, intricate weave that mimicked the ambient fluctuations of the mountain's own erratic atmospheric mana. It was a crude echo of the Thyestes Clan's legendary Mirage Walk, bending mana and muffling signatures not through pure illusion, but by becoming a seamless part of the environment's chaotic mana signature.

"Oh?" Romulos tilted his head, a flicker of genuine, if clinical, interest replacing the sadism. "Imitating Mirage Walk? Crude, but… surprisingly effective for a lesser emulation. Bravo, Corvis. Points for improvisation."

That was the idea, I confirmed tersely, my gaze scanning the camp. Then, recognition slammed into me. The leader—broad-shouldered, scarred face twisted in a permanent sneer, barking orders with a familiar, brutal cadence. The same man.

The bandit chieftain who'd ambushed a four-year-old Arthur Leywin on a forest path in the pages of an empty life that felt increasingly distant.

The memory was stark, visceral—the casual cruelty, the threat to a child.

"Ah, yes," Romulos murmured, his spectral form vibrating with sudden, dark intensity. "Art spoke of them. Briefly. With a… particular coldness. Good." The word was a shard of ice.

"Kill them. You are the Crown Prince of Elenoir, are you not? And these vermin encroach perilously close to your nation's borders. Consider it pest control. Necessary sanitation."

And how, I projected, the tactical problem momentarily overriding the chilling directive and the unsettling recognition, am I supposed to eliminate twenty armed men alone? They weren't trained soldiers, but desperation and numbers were weapons in themselves.

"Options abound!" Romulos listed with chilling enthusiasm. "Stealth and the dagger. Pick them off one by one under your Mirage Walk imitation. Tedious, but methodical. Or… poison. With Meta-awareness, identifying the necessary local flora and fungi to brew a potent, undetectable venom would be child's play. A few hours gathering, a discreet application to their water skins… efficient."

He practically vibrated with anticipation, a scientist eager to see which lethal variable I would choose.

Why this fervor? I pressed, keeping my physical form utterly still, my breathing shallow. Why their deaths specifically? It wasn't morality holding me back; it was pragmatism, survival. But his bloodlust felt personal.

"They harmed Art!" The mental shout was laced with a fury that momentarily stunned me. "And before you bleat about different timelines, different men—they are still these men! Criminals who trade in flesh, who would enslave your people, sell your sister like chattel, butcher Grey for sport! Harm my sister. They are a rot, Corvis. Excise it."

The raw protectiveness—even if surrounded by his manipulative talks—underlying the rage was undeniable, a dark mirror to my own fears.

Practicality, Romulos, not philosophy, I countered, my mind racing. Stealth was risky with so many eyes. Poison took time we might not have. My gaze fell to my right forearm, hidden beneath my sleeve. The intricate tattoo hummed with latent power.

Against the Tragedy was stronger now, its mana ink refined compared to last time I used it offensively. Beyond the Meta could guide my aim with inhuman precision. The solution crystallized, cold and efficient.

I didn't hesitate. Raising my left hand, two fingers pressed against the tattoo on my right forearm. Beyond the Meta activated. The world shifted into layers of light and colours. The bandits became glowing silhouettes, their crude mana cores flickering like weak candles.

Atmospheric mana, thin but present, coalesced around my fingertips. I didn't summon a storm; I forged scalpels.

Tiny, blindingly intense bolts of lightning, no thicker than needles, snapped into existence. Beyond the Meta and Meta-awareness together calculated trajectories, compensated for wind, pinpointed vulnerabilities—the base of the skull, the spine, the heart.

With the detached precision of a surgeon operating on cadavers, I fired.

Fzzzt. Thump. An archer scanning the rocks clutched his throat, eyes wide with surprise, then vacant, before crumpling silently.

Fzzzt. Crack. A man laughing by the fire jerked, a smoking hole appearing between his shoulder blades, collapsing mid-guffaw.

Fzzzt. Hiss. A sentry turning at the sound from his comrade took a bolt through the temple, slumping against the rock face.

Panic erupted. Shouts turned to confused roars. "Enemy mage! We are in an ambush!" They scrambled for cover, eyes darting wildly, blades flashing uselessly.

But they couldn't see me. I was the mountain, the wind, the very air they breathed, poisoned by sudden, invisible death. My fingers moved with rhythmic, terrible efficiency.

Each fzzzt was a death knell. Archers fell first, then those trying to rally, then those fleeing in blind terror. Their attempts to shield themselves with bursts of weak elemental magic—a sputter of fire, a gust of wind—were pathetic against the hyper-concentrated energy needles Beyond the Meta guided unerringly through their defenses. The air filled with the ozone tang of lightning and the coppery stench of blood.

One by one, the shouts died. The frantic movements ceased. The rough camp descended into an eerie silence, broken only by the relentless mountain wind whistling through the rocks. Twenty bodies laid scattered, expressions frozen in shock, fear, or sudden oblivion. Steam rose faintly from some of the wounds.

"Well?" Romulos's voice broke the silence, jarringly loud in my mind. He stood amidst the carnage, untouched, a dark specter surveying the aftermath. A wide, devilish smile split his face.

"How does it feel, Corvis? Your first… official harvest. Twenty souls reaped by your hand. Quite the debut for a crown prince, wouldn't you say?" His tone was a grotesque parody of pride.

How do I feel? The question echoed in the sudden, hollow space within me. I scanned the scene with Beyond the Meta still active. Lifeless forms. Spilled blood soaking into the rocky ground. No surge of triumph. No crushing guilt. No visceral horror. Just… nothing.

A profound, chilling emptiness. They weren't Demon Leeches puppets. They weren't Alacryan soldiers bound by loyalty or fear. They were predators removed. A threat neutralized. A calculation completed. The stability of the border region, however minor, marginally improved. That was the sum of it. A cold, logical transaction.

"Bah," Romulos scoffed, his manic glee evaporating as quickly as it came, replaced by familiar impatience. He waved a dismissive hand at the silent camp. "Already tedious. Sentimentality or its lack thereof is so… predictable. Come, Corvis. The mountain awaits. Geolus's fossilized toenail won't find itself."

He vanished from the camp, reappearing further up the slope, tapping his foot impatiently against the stone. I looked down at my hands. No tremor. No stain visible through the gloves. Just the faint, fading hum of Against the Tragedy.

The wind picked up, carrying away the scent of blood and ozone, leaving only the ancient smell of stone and ice. I turned my back on the silent camp and followed the phantom up the desolate path, the hollow echo of his question—How does it feel?—the only companion in the crushing silence of my own mind.

The answer, it seemed, was carved not just into the mountain rock, but into the newly barren landscape within: nothing at all.