BXBX NOVEL Chapter 269 268. Release.
"Heh." Eshwar grinned widely when he saw his fingers hold the faceless face of the black mannequin. He turned off the invisibility on the white parasite mask, opened his mouth wide, concentrated on gathering mana only on the razor-sharp ends of the mask, leaned forward, and bit the faceless face.
'What is this, some kind of metal?' He thought inwardly, when he noticed that its faceless face was too hard. And his mask couldn't bite through even when the razor-sharp, shark-fang-like edges were coated with mana. He knew that it was some kind of metal because of the Dwarven trait mixed into his race.
'F**k it.' He released the bite, held himself with his left claw, pulled his right fist back, and
BAM!
He punched at it as hard as he could, rode the pressure from the impact, and jumped back, standing on the snow flaked footing and gazing at the unscathed mannequin in rage with a hint of noticeable fear in his eyes.
"I will kill you." Eshwar declared abruptly, as if to solidify his determination, and zoomed towards the faceless head before the black smoke entered his range.
'That goddamn karma, if only it didn't take every single ability of mine, this f**ker would have been good as dead, mana, demonic energy, aura, and !!!!' He was cursing at Karma and the clock of fate inwardly and suddenly remembered something he noticed when he was an eye, which he had thought to have lost after his rebirth in this world.
[Stop!] He commanded the black smoke around the mannequin in "dragon tongue," the reason his eyes morphed when Mana cruised through them.
"COUGH!!!" Eshwar then coughed out a mouthful of blood that felt strange; his entire body shuddered, the mana surrounding him disappeared, and he began to free fall, leaving the flabbergasted mannequin.
His vision turned bloody and blurry as he gazed at the upside-down mannequin figure while calling down; his nose, mouth, and ears bled; he continued to fall to the ground, and soon,
BOOM
CRACK
His neck cracked as he fell headfirst to the ground, and his body slumped, leaning forward with his head still on the ground. What happened? He didn't know; he just simply slumped on the ground like a wet rag, with only his lower part of his body covered with a cloth. The mannequin tilted his head and a dumbfounded expression could be seen even on its faceless face, it slowly floated towards him, crouched down, and poked at Eshwar's seemingly dead body, leaving behind the frozen in time black smoke in its place.
Eshwar wasn't really dead; he was just unconscious due to the sudden use of dragon tongue, and the crack that sounded just now was simply the nitrogen bubbles in between his neck bones. The dragonic mana had been cruising through his body since his rebirth, and not once has it left him. Even now, him losing his consciousness was just the result of him using dragonic mana that didn't have a proper container.
The mannequin raised its left hand at his shoulder and pointed at Eshwar; abruptly, a black smoke spike materialised and shot out at him, piercing through his abdomen and jolting him back to consciousness.
"Urrrrggggh!!" Eshwar screamed in anguish, jerked back to his feet, and fumbled around in a daze before his bloodied gaze landed on the crouching mannequin and he shuddered before zooming out of there, leaving behind a trail of red blood.
'What is going on?' Eshwar thought inwardly, panicking. Soon, he healed completely as the spike in his abdomen dematerialized after he removed it and threw it to the side. Only 15 seconds had passed since he used the dragon tongue, which froze the black smoke for about 4-5 seconds.
'Is it playing around with me?' He mumbled in his mind, and by the next second, he halted abruptly.
'Planetary destruction.' He mumbled in his mind, casually.
BOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!
The mannequin figure seemingly exploded, covered in thick black smoke, and again, the same process repeated, and Eshwar experienced the same pain again, but this time he clenched his teeth and didn't scream. He remembered quite a few things he had forgotten, and now he would face his fear. He didn't know where the confidence was coming from, or how he was so sure that he could face his fear, but he won't run away anymore; he can't show his face to Isha like that; he can't be a pathetic person when he is with her, and if Eshwar died here and that mannequin basta*d got out of this dungeon, then Isha would be the one facing it, and considering the mannequin's strength, she would die together with everything else that was slightly important to him, though nothing was more important than her, not that something would ever be.... But no matter what, in the end, Eshwar HAD to kill this mannequin right here, right now, and he HAD to return to her; he had made a promise after all.
And,
'Where should I run to? There isn't even a place I can run to. Why am I running in the first place? I haven't been using mana and have only been brute forcing myself through everything, haven't I? Then why does having no mane matter now? Don't I have my own skills? I have killed beings that could instantly kill me before, haven't I? Then what has changed now? This mannequin can kill me in an instant...' All those thoughts cruised through his mind among the others, but everything halted, and his mind abruptly dazed when the last thought cruised through his mind.
Eshwar had always been at the top of the food chain, but.... he too was once a bottom feeder. He was a person who ate the rotten flesh of the monsters he hunted just for his survival; he became a monster to survive among monsters when it came down to his survival, so...
He looked up at the ceiling, and "It's not that different now, is it?" he mumbled, as his head snapped back, diagonally, glaring at the black mannequin figure, which shuddered at the abrupt change in his aura. Another smoke spike materialised next to the mannequin, ready to shoot out at its prey, and as soon as the mannequin pointed at Eshwar, both the smoke spike and Eshwar disappeared.
"!!!" The mannequin shot up into the air when it couldn't feel his presence anymore.
Eshwar had activated blink and stealth simultaneously, reappearing right behind the mannequin and following it up into the air, and now he stood right behind the mannequin's neck with a leisurely look on his terrifyingly bloodied face with unfocused, bright orange eyes with vertical black slits. He had his left hand behind his back, raised his right hand to the side elegantly, and placed it on the mannequin's neck. It shuddered when it felt his hands on its neck, but before it could move,
"Release." Eshwar mumbled, and 50% of the accumulated damage from the planetary devastation was released at the mannequin's neck.
BOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!
'0.9' Eshwar began to count milliseconds as he gazed at the changes in the mannequin, nonchalantly. Its faceless head snapped up at the abrupt pain, the mouth area slowly opened with some kind of gooey substance stretching, and
"....." The mannequin, that was caught off guard, screamed, or so it seemed, but no sound sounded to Eshwar, who manipulated the aether inside him to cover his ears, but looking at the ripples that were forming from its mouth, they seemed to be quite high pitched, or maybe in a certain frequency that could make his brain burst like a watermelon, just like a glass that shatters when an opera singer sings in a high-pitched tone.
'1.' As soon as a second completed in Eshwar's mind, a small crack appeared on the mannequin's neck, which didn't stop until it came back to the start after circling around the mannequin's neck.