Chapter 49: Chapter 49: Real teenage boys smell and say dumb things. Wait… that’s me. (Part 2)

2 months (continued).

My dad looked at me expectantly as I examined the mask.

It was bone-white and had two fangs running down where my mouth would be and the left one was larger than the right. The mouth area was open, and my eyes had two holes to look through.

There was a blue crystal-like substance smeared onto the forehead of the mask. It looked a bit like the third eye that Zodiac employees had on their masks.

What surprised me the most was a tassel hanging down from the left side. Or maybe it was an earring.

Yes, I confirmed, it was an earring attachment. It was attached to the Mask itself though, and so I didn’t have to put it on my ear if I didn’t want to.

It had two separate sections, one that looked like an ordinary piece of metal decoration, and another at the bottom. The main feature of the section at the bottom was a bright blue orb.

I took a closer look at it

It was an eye. I think. There was something strange about it. Not just the blue orb, but the entire mask. I activated my mana sense.

The air around me shifted, and a multitude of colours entered my vision. The area around the mask and the crystal on the forehead turned vibrant blue, the eye holes were covered in darkness and across the left side where the earring began a wave of black rolled out like hair. If a person tried to see me using mana sense, then my head would be invisible to them.

Red dripped down the earring and the orb at the bottom emitted blue light, not just around itself, but around the whole room.

Then I wriggled my nose as it was hit with a familiar smell. It reminded me of the feeling I had whenever I entered the cultivation room.

It was the scent of nature.

“Why does it smell?” I asked my dad.

He didn’t answer.

I felt a wave of embarrassment. That had been a rookie mistake.

My dad and I had agreed not to talk about any of the specifics of the regent until I had connected with it. We didn’t know if the watcher could prevent it working if they knew what it did, and how it did it.

I was glad to finally have it finished. This would solve a lot of problems for me.

I held it close to me and gave my dad a hug. He had put in a lot of work and risked making a lot of people angry for this. It had also cost him over a year of time to make.

Normally, I’d seen regents for the Zodiac knights created within days. None of them used high ranked materials either.

“Okay. No questions about how it works.” I smiled. “How do I connect to it?”

My dad and I moved the conversation to my room. I sat on my dirt bed, and my father explained how to imprint my signature into the object.

It worked just like the crystal Gerial had given me. I would flood the regent with mana for one week straight. After that, it would be mine, and nobody else could use it.

I started the process immediately. I released a steady stream of mana, and it came out in a brilliant flash of golden light.

I saw a complicated expression on my dad’s face as he saw the gold mana pass into the regent. There was something else there, worry.

I looked away.

I didn’t want the watcher to see my dad as much as possible.

I’d given it some thought, but I wasn’t sure if it could see only me or if it could see through my eyes. Maybe it saw everything around me.

After hearing about the Mark my dad spent every free moment of every day working on the regent. He hadn’t mentioned anything to me, and we hadn’t discussed what I was hiding from.

The less said out loud, the better.

Whole days and nights of my dad’s life had been spent working on it. There wasn’t a single moment when he wasn’t working. I’d begged him to slow down but he had refused. It was like he had been in a trance.

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Would it work? I had to believe it would.

The mask glowed with a golden light in my vision.

Soon, I would be free.

 

2 months, 2 weeks.

I sat with my eyes closed within a room of golden light. My dad couldn’t enter it. Just like the cultivation room, he would get sick or worse if he walked inside. In front of me the mask floated in the air, charged with energy and waves of colours emanating from it.

I had poured all of my time and attention into connecting with it. Two weeks. One more than expected.

I felt a tingle on my skin.

It turned into a shiver, and then something pulled at me. It was a strange feeling, like fighting the sensation of greed itself. I let it engulf me, and the mask emitted a brilliant blue shine. It sucked the last vestiges of mana from my body, and then it fell to the ground.

I could feel…

The world went dark around me. It wasn’t the mask. It was-

An eye stared at-

An eye looked fo-

An ey-

 

3 months, 2 weeks.

I opened my eyes to find myself lying in my bed. The gold mana inside the room was gone, and my mum was sitting by my bedside. The puffer was sitting in its old nest, scarfing down food. The mask was there, covering my chest.

My dad had made it a bit bigger than my face currently was, because of my growth. Even in these last two months I had used the Mark enough to see noticeable differences.

The puffer turned towards me and let out a squawk.

My mum shrieked when she saw my eyes open. It was a sound of worry, panic, and joy. She swept me up in a hug and I heard the sound of footsteps blasting through the house. Something was strange.

Had my mum gotten smaller?

The door slammed open, and a horde of people rushed in. My dad was first, followed by Jackson and Marv. Then Indra strolled through.

As the door began to shut, I saw the air shimmer. There was someone at the entryway. A figure in a purple robe and a one-eyed mask watched me. I shivered. Then the door closed, and they disappeared.

Nobody else noticed them.

A month. I’d been comatose for a month. My dad and mum had brought in Zodiac to help me. They still had no idea what happened. My dad…

He didn’t look well.

I spent the rest of the day doing check-ups. My parents didn’t leave when night-time came. I made them both dirt beds, and they drifted off to sleep immediately.

The worrying had taken its toll on them.

I felt something different, intangible, but different. I closed my eyes and examined my body. It had changed. Grown. This wasn’t normal.

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