Chương 61: Blood Lightning

"Is she? …." A voice asked. He shook his head, "I'm not sure. I felt something with [GRIM] but I can't tell for certain. My aura's still being drained."

"Should we do something?"

"We've already done too much. No. She does this on her own." * Alyn's eyes opened, and the first thing she saw was Grim standing up, walking away from where she'd been touching her. She didn't bother trying to get up, she'd been ripped apart and smashed so many times before to know that she was in a bad state. The Gloom she'd given her worked well, but at this stage she'd probably only gotten enough of a dose to stop herself from dying.

Her Boon was still active, as it always was, harvesting aura from the environment to heal her. The amount she was getting was pitifully small, but it was helping. She couldn't remember how she'd ended up like this, but there was only one thing on her mind.

"Wait! Grim, where's Solomon?" She stopped and turned around, revealing her eyes. They were a murky grey with a thousand lines of code fluttering across the surface. The sight of it caused her to grimace, as it sent a shock of pain through her. The mere sight of it caused her eyes to burn. A dead robotic voice spoke with Grim's vocal cords, "I'm not her." * SongJae moved forward, one balanced step at a time. That girl was supposed to have come up with something, but he wasn't sure where she was now.

Hopefully, she was okay. He wouldn't waste time worrying about things he couldn't control. His eyes remained focused on the Giant who was now standing up. At first, merely doubling their shared gravity was enough. Now? They were both under nearly sixty times earth's gravity. An elite power lifter could stand around three to four times earth's gravity, with an untrained person struggling under two. SongJae however, wasn't just standing, he was walking.

While for most people the defining limit would be musculature, his due to [ELEPHANT BALANCE] would be skeletal. Which could survive almost ninety times Earth's gravity. His Boon increased how skilled he was at balancing scaling with his weight. Each step he took flowed into the next, stacking his bones on top of each other in such a way that they didn't immediately disintegrate and send him smashing into the ground. He didn't have a choice, he had to keep moving forward.

He would have stayed behind and kept its gravity increased for as long as he could, but he was reaching his limit. Both in terms of aura and weight. So he marched towards it, thinking of the weird girl. Solomon seemed to have a problem with her at the end, but SongJae didn't care. He was weird too, and weird people should stick together. People made things too complicated when solutions were often quite simple. It was just simple things were often very, very hard to do.

The Giant was in front of him now, it had no eyes, but SongJae knew it could see him and that he was what was weighing it down. Good. He wanted it to remember, he wanted everyone here to remember, to witness him. SongJae wasn't just a fat kid. He wasn't stupid or slow. He just kept things simple. His foot lifted off the ground and pushed himself upwards into the air, he balanced on wind currents, air pressure, even molecules as he soared ever higher. Five feet, ten.

The Giant swung its hand at him, aiming to splatter him across the sky, but he simply spun around it. In the aftermath of all the air pushed, he found new platforms on which to climb until he was eye level with the Giant. His back leg pushed off against near nothing as his torso twisted sideways, propelling a large overhand right forward, aimed directly at its head." [LUNAR LINK]," SongJae announced as he increased their linked gravity to over one hundred times Earth's.

SongJae's fist connected, and the impact deafened him. It was as if a meteor strike had just hit the planet. The Giants head crumpled and both of its horns were destroyed as it plummeted to the earth. His fist dripped blood, the bones inside ruined by the impact. He took a step backward to catch his balance, but the bone in his leg cracked as he stepped on air. The pain and surprise of it were enough to cancel out [ELEPHANT BALANCE] and he plummeted towards the earth.

It would have been easy for him to reverse their shared gravity and soften his fall, but the creature was fast. Fast enough to make Carrion miss. No. SongJae was a simple man who did hard things. This was no different. * Carrion wasn't a coward, but he was a survivor. Trying to connect those two ideals here was impossible. He was either a coward or he was a survivor. Most of his life had been spent barely alive, clinging to whatever scraps he could get so he'd have the energy to survive one more day.

When the Witches found him outside the walls of Eternity, he'd been on the brink of death, his body pushed too far. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Carrion was what they called him when they found him. It was only after he moved that they realized he wasn't dead. They tried to give him a different name, but he refused. That small amount of pity he'd heard when they'd thought they'd found a dead child was the most someone had ever cared about him.

How could he spit in their faces after giving him a name? They cancelled their mission and brought him back, giving him a home, training, and a life. He received everything and more, changing the trajectory of his death in an instant. He wasn't thinking about all this to convince himself to be a coward, no, he'd already decided. He was just scared to go through with it. If he thought about it enough, he really should have died all that way back then.

The fact that he'd gotten eighteen years was simply a miracle he couldn't deny. That most of those years were happy? Unspeakable good fortune. The thought gave him some comfort as he went through the motions, his arms raised making a semicircle as a droplet of blood escaped from his skin. It was followed by more until both sides of him had alternatively rotating wheels of blood. He also adjusted the blood flowing to his head, slowing down his perception of time.

SongJae soared through the air, practically floating as he leaped higher and higher to what? Throw a— The ground shook as an explosion of kinetic energy reached his ears. Was it? No. A small part of him had hoped it would be enough, that he wouldn't have to but, no, this was his moment. SongJae had just made it possible. There was a chance he could have saved some of them if he'd played himself earlier, but it had taken him this long to work up the nerves. Could they blame him?

Their abilities weren't powered by blood. No, that luxury was his alone. He raised his right arm with his palm facing upwards, two fingers pointed at the giant while the others remained curled. [BLOOD LIGHTNING] * Thunder cracked and lightning followed as a plume of blood crashed into the chest of the Giant where Maya had struck it. Solomon watched as the blood stopped, its momentum slowed for just a second before it burst through, painting the courtyard behind it a bright red.

That meant Carrion was dead, then. How did this happen? Everything was going wrong— —SongJae was falling, too spent to protect himself. Solomon leaped as he activated his Boon, the explosion tearing his shoe apart but rocketing him forward. Ice needles flew at him as he landed, the armour on his forearm slowed them down before he dropped into a slide underneath the stream of needles.

Left foot pushed out, found grip, exploded him towards his attacker, the Petal grunted as an explosion bloomed from its back, killing it. A plume of smoke and debris erupted by the Giant's feet and Solomon's heart went cold. He'd been too late. More came at him, drawn by his activated authority and maybe an instinct to protect the Giant while it was injured. He was too stunned to move as they struck at him, every cut or hit made him… mad, these creatures… thinking they could stop him? Why? Because he was weak? No.

He'd show them. He wasn't weak. He'd just been holding back. Before they could even react, Solomon was in the middle of them, right where he wanted to be. The chaos was where he thrived, where people who thought they were strong made mistakes. It was where he'd had to get comfortable if he wanted to survive. If he wanted to be strong himself. Every punch he threw exploded limbs or outright killed. Every hit he gladly took if it meant they stayed within arm's reach for his retaliation.

His knuckles were red and raw by the time they were all dead around him, the only damage that truly hurt him came from using his own ability. He didn't mind, this was what he'd chosen. Grim could save Alyn, but he was the only one left that could save— fight the Giant. It only took him another moment to get to where the Giant had fallen. Smoke still obscured the area, but with such a big target, there was no way he could miss.

He jumped upwards as he gathered energy in his knuckles, he'd take it out in one shot if it wasn't dead already. With his authority increasing his physical stats, he probably jumped around ten feet in the air before coming down on its location. His fist hit the ground and exploded, clearing all the smoke away, revealing… nothing. There was nothing there— —Something blurred towards him so fast he could only just barely turn his head before it felt like a freight train hit him in the side.

He skipped across the ground as he tried to regain his bearings. After skidding off the concrete, he waited until he bounced to twist his body into an upright position. He slid on the balls of his heels until he slowed down, just in time to see the Giant rushing towards him almost as fast as he'd been sent flying. Its fist came at it, but the Giant creature stumbled as ichor gushed from its chest. He weaved underneath it and let loose three explosive punches on its forearm.

The explosions burned and boiled its skin, but it wouldn't be enough to end the fight. If it were just pain, this thing would never be stopped. He chopped downward but it leaped backwards in one powerful jump before he could hit it. Clearly favouring one leg as it landed. It paused for the first time of its own volition, staggered.

"Are you done?" Solomon asked. Before he'd finished speaking the Giant had thrown a chunk of concrete towards him. He gathered Aura into his fists and punched through it, destroying it. The debris cleared, revealing the Giant behind it, its hand reared back in a punch. It was going to hit him, he was too slow to dodge. But he was fast enough to hit back. The amount of Aura he loaded into his fists in that split second hurt him deep to the core, almost as much as the Giant's fist did right after.

This time, he didn't stop moving until he hit the clock tower, crumpling into the stone. The walls were strong, but did not break. His head swam as his authority dropped, he no longer had the focus to keep it going. He laughed loudly and without care. Was that really all he had in him? His soul creaked in discomfort as he tried to activate his authority once again, but he was spent. He only had a small amount of Aura in the first place as an E-rank, and just activating his authority used every drop.

The giant paid him no mind as he lost it, the creature was staring at its missing forearm. It picked up its missing limb and tried to reattach it, only for it to slide off and fall back towards the ground. It went to bend down again but recoiled as another B-rank round pierced its leg. The bullet tore through it and burst out the other end, splattering the concrete with its blood. It staggered as it turned back towards Solomon, steadily walking towards him. It wasn't as fast as it was before.

That had been his last B-rank round, his father's actually. He'd used his mother's when Alyn had been hurt. I AM— His soul shrieked in pain, forcing him to drop his attempt. Was that really it? A worthless son wasting his inheritance to accomplish nothing? Did Carrion and SongJae need to die to prove that? That he… That he wasn't… I— It burned inside of him, his soul fracturing as his authority twisted. If he wasn't enough. Then what was he?

I— Aura fluctuated inside him, building up in a recursive pattern as it became too much. Authorities weren't meant to change, they could only fracture. AM— He racked the slide on his pistol, ejecting his fathers spent shell. NOTHING. His world became grey as the Giant froze, unable to track him. He could leave now, he knew with certainty the barrier wouldn't be able to stop him. The creature turned its head towards where Alyn had to be. His love for her was dulled, barely a blip.

If his authority could do that to him? What if it could cut the Giant off from everything? Solomon dug his hand into his chest, closed his fingers around his authority, and ripped it out of him. He loaded it into a round, the casing greedily eating up the energy as he chambered his gun. He stopped before he fired. If he shot the one thing that made him special, he'd never be a Witch. He wouldn't be able to follow Alyn without being a burden. He'd never be able to fulfill his parents last wish. He'd just be…

ordinary. But maybe, if he was lucky. They'd say he'd done enough. He fired.