13 - THE BLUES

Forty hours after Edgar got crippled and experienced a near-death situation after consuming the thunderbird’s core.

Edgar had just dodged the stinger and claws of a giant gray scorpion and struck its head with his heel. The drive that leaked out through his leg crushed its head and separated its pincers from the rest of its body. It wobbled for a while before crashing helplessly, as gray blood painted the ground.

The blood stank pretty bad. Edgar had to quickly move away from there.

He didn’t have a stone necklace to lead his path, but he wasn’t in as bad of a situation as he thought. Though he couldn’t see much in that darkness, he could still smell things a lot better than before. It was as if he could feel every scent flowing through his blood, helping him discover everything around him.

And this helped him realize that the air down in that valley wasn’t flowing from one side to another. It was absolutely still, unless one stirred it. So he had no way of telling which way he should go. This was why he was constantly climbing up, hoping he’d finally see light or the much familiar blue sky, which he hadn’t seen in months.

Also, Edgar was completely naked now, though he had covered his skin with a layer of dirt to hide his scent. He couldn’t find a single piece of cloth or a broken sword or anything that would help him better survive.

Though walking around naked in utter darkness was weirder than the weirdest dream he ever had, he didn’t even have anyone around to complain, other than the worms, vipers, and the likes of them. But he did wonder how his sister would giggle at him if she were to see his current situation. Just thinking about her made him want to urgently find something to cover his private parts.

As if all this wasn’t enough, he didn’t feel any major change in his body after consuming the thunderbird’s core. After all the hellish experience it put him through, it had completely gone silent. It was like he had never consumed a core.

Edgar clenched his fists in a bit of frustration. “Why can’t I release lightning yet? The core I took isn’t a faulty one, right?” he shook his head as he remembered the horrifying pain he had to go through. “No. That can’t be a fake. There’s no way.” He felt shivers all over.

Though he was healed by the mysterious plate, his body still remembered everything it went through. And he felt his spine aching for some reason. “Is it because this plate meddled in the process?” his heart beat in a strange rhythm. Whether the copper plate spoiled his chances or not, he couldn’t get mad at something that saved his life.

He still held the worm’s core in his hand, and some part of his mind kept bugging him to consume that as well. He wanted to throw that away, but he held it on. He wanted to give it to someone special, so he couldn’t throw it.

As he kept walking and walking, with a lot of things going through his mind, his ears caught a faint nose. He immediately lifted his feet so that he now stood on his toes, and he hugged the wall, slowed his breathing, and waited.

Seconds passed. He did nothing. He didn’t even blink.

About forty meters away from him, the ceiling of the tunnel crashed. Two giant vipers burst through and kept wrestling against each other, and there were blue-skinned men with glowing skin riding those vipers and fighting each other. And they were laughing as they savagely attacked each other.

Edgar could barely make out their shapes because of the glow, and he could see that they had six arms and held six different weapons. But it was that blue glow that reminded him of his Master's words to run if he saw anything blue move in the valley.

However, if he were to run now, they would surely spot him, so he pressed himself tightly against the wall and waited, while trying to keep his breath under absolute control.

The snakes kept destroying everything around them, including the base under their feet, and they took their wrestling fight to the lower levels.

Edgar breathed a sigh of relief, but his eyes still contained a great deal of surprise. The vipers were quite large, yet these blue-skinned men were riding and fighting on them in a place of utter darkness. It didn’t seem like the lack of enough vital air was affecting him. Luckily, they didn’t seem to notice him, or…

“Hihihi.”

A mischievous voice reached Edgar’s ears, skipping his heartbeat. He looked up. A blue-skinned little girl was crawling on the ceiling like a lizard and had her yellow eyes right on Edgar. She was glowing, but there were no fumes like with a flame torch.

Edgar’s heart skipped many beats. Two thoughts conflicted with each other. Should he attack or not? Should he? Or not? This was just a little girl.

He was holding a beggar’s plate in one hand, and a core in another. And the plate covered his genitals, almost involuntarily. And his movement of the arm made her look toward his crotch, now shielded by the copper plate. He could see this stranger growing more interested in the items in his hand than in him, while staying just out of reach.

A long tongue like that of a lizard slowly slipped from the little stranger’s mouth. Edgar’s heartbeat spiked. A rush of lightning burst out of his body and burned the incoming tongue. The little stranger jumped in surprise, and so did Edgar in response.

One hit the floor, and the other hit the ceiling.

Both felt their heads spinning for a little while.

The blue-skinned girl hurriedly crawled away like a scared little lizard. Edgar also briefly crawled in a similar way before getting up to his feet and running down the opposite path butt-and-ball naked.