Chapter 44: Nothing Is Set In Stone

What was the Void? An infinite expanse of emptiness and primordial darkness. It rejected the laws of reality and replaced them with its own. To peer into the Void would cause immediate madness and to enter without the needed blessing would erase someone’s existence entirely. If the Void were to be brought into the physical world then a series of paradoxes would occur as reality was twisted, bent, and shattered under its influence.

One such place that was familiar with such effect was called the Black Forest, within its radius everything became petrified. When such a place appeared, many people attempted to explore it, and none of them were ever found or heard from, making it further evident that the Black Pillar’s effects were dangerous to the whole of mankind.

Thus, it was safe to say that should the effects of the Void be manifested they would be undeniably powerful. It was something no one could effectively defend against since it was something that was between existence and non-existence.

By absorbing the knowledge of King Dietrich, Ira was a step closer to harnessing the true ability of the Void.

………

Ira looked at Carter and Rhys before standing up. Silence pervaded the vault room as they watched him grip his sword. Carter tensed up, while Rhys looked confused. The feeling Ira gave off from before had changed drastically, even Carter could feel it by now. There was an instability that seemed to lightly touch everything within a certain radius of him.

 Ira drew his sword a quarter of an inch out of the scabbard. Then, he clenched his fist.

A three-foot-long scar appeared a few feet in front of him, and yet his body didn’t show any signs indicating that he swung his sword. He adjusted his grip and several more slashes appeared.

Carter and Rhys were speechless, well, Rhys couldn’t speak anyway. There were stories of those who obtained the pinnacle of weapon techniques could attack in a similar way. Did that mean Ira had just obtained the highest form of swordsmanship? No. What Ira was doing could only be considered cheating.

There were those who trained for decades to truly understand the art of swordsmanship, to become one with their sword and other such profundities. Ira could use the Void’s influence to transfer the energy used in a sword strike without actually using the sword. He could attack anywhere within a six-foot radius, but it wasn’t invincible. Anyone with fast enough reflexes could definitely block his strikes. They were even audible, thereby lessening the overall potential. They even consumed three times as much power as a regular strike, but that was probably due to his experience using his new power.

Ira narrowed his eyes as if he were thinking about something. There were several other abilities he wanted to try, but he thought he might’ve ended up destroying things inside of the Vault.

After a few wide-eyed blinks, Carter began speaking, “You weren’t always this skilled in using the sword, you just...How did you reach that level?”

Ira shook his head, “I didn’t.” He said with a shrug as he began looking around the vault room.

“You attacked without attacking. Doesn’t that mean your swordsmanship has been perfected?” Carter continued to ask, following behind Ira as he walked over to piles of weapons and armor.

“Listen…” Ira paused as he began waving his left hand over the weapons and armor. While storing them away he continued, “...I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. I can’t explain what it is, but it’s not whatever you’re describing.” Ira continued taking things, books on alchemy and history, tubes filled with bright colored liquids, old ceremonial swords, and a crate full of bombs. He was only satisfied after a quarter of the items in the Vault had been taken.

Rhys, not being able to talk, wasn’t keen on watching Ira take everything, so she began to move too. She grabbed a new Rapier, some dark green leather armor, and a few other small items. She didn’t have the luxury Ira had, so she could only carry the items by hand.

Carter was going to continuing pestering Ira with questions, but he realized the Vault’s inventory was slowly disappearing.  

“Ira, could you uh…” He awkwardly chuckled as he watched Ira continue to grab things, “Could you leave some for a few other people?” Obviously, he was referring to his Guild, he couldn’t come back empty-handed after such an ordeal.

Ira’s hand hovered over a wand made of bone as Carter finished speaking. “Sure thing.” He snatched up the wand and then gave a friendly smile toward Carter. In truth, Ira would end up giving up most of the Vault treasures to people he knew, since he didn’t require money and most armors were rendered useless due to the way he fought.

Carter looked relieved and went to grab a few things for himself, ignoring his injuries.

Ira could hear footsteps from coming from outside the Vault, by the sound of it, there were a lot of people.

After a few moments, Carter’s guild mates were the first to rush in, they ran straight over to him, while the Kingdom’s Soldiers escorted the Expedition Guide in. Before they could ask any questions, the guide shouted, “An Index!” he ran over to six large cube shaped crystals with ecstatic eyes. “Six...Six of them.” The Guide was so distracted he forgot to ask about the body outside of the Vault.

“What, are those special of something?” Ira asked. Previously, he had only grabbed one because it looked important.

“Important? It’s priceless. Every status card relies on information obtained from these…” The Expedition Guide looked as if he was going to drool.

Ira began to recall that the Guide stated expressly not to take any artifacts, but since there was no proof he wasn’t rushing to tell them anything.

“Ah, I seem to have gotten ahead of myself…Who was the man outside who met with such a gruesome end.” The Guide looked at Ira.

Ira’s skin was covered in dried blood and his clothes were torn, but there were no visible injuries.

“King Dietrich,” Ira replied with disinterest. The Guide began mumbling about how he never heard of such a person, but Ira had already tuned him out.

All of a sudden, someone from Lance’s party came rushing in, clearly out of breath. Ira immediately recognized her as Sarah.

“Ira...It’s...Gerald...and...Zella...They’ve…” Sarah took huge breaths in between each word. While they were still mourning the loss of their friends, she had overheard someone saying Ira went into the palace. Without warning, she took off running towards it, just because she had a feeling Ira could do something about.

“Just take me to them.” Ira shrugged, he thought they probably were heavily injured. Getting Charles to make a few more prosthetic limbs wouldn’t be a hassle and in the worse case, he could ask the Valkyries to heal any crippling injury.

The Expedition Guide noticed her entrance and began to speak to the soldiers about blocking the Vault off, there was way too much stuff to lose if people came flooding in. Exiting out of the Vault room, Ira looked up, the giant hole in the ceiling was the fastest way up. He extended his hand out to Sarah, who looked confused, but ended up grabbing his hand anyway.

Whoosh!

He jumped into the air with the help of his gravity alteration, and each time his momentum slowed, he would use the walls to jump again. While Ira was unbothered by the travel, Sarah didn’t stop screaming.

…….

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A few seconds later, Ira and Sarah flew into the air and landed in the throne room, just on the edge of the huge hole in the floor. Wasting no time, Ira sniffed the air, catching the scent of Lance and the others, and then threw Sarah over his shoulder.

“Wait! Ira they’re–” She couldn’t even finish speaking as Ira jumped forward. With each step, he cleared twenty feet. He easily passed by the awestruck Mercenaries attempting to enter the palace.

Within a few moments, Ira had arrived. Low sobs filled the entire area as many Mercenaries hugged the bodies of either their Comrades, friends, or lovers. Ira walked over to see two bodies covered in worn clothes, the two particular didn’t really stand out, but they smelled familiar to Ira.

“Ira…” Lance called out with a lethargic voice, accompanied with his bloodshot eyes.

Ira didn’t respond, he just put Sarah down and walked over to the two bodies. He could already guess what happened, but there was a need to confirm it.

“Ira…” Lance called out again as he forced himself to stand up. Valerie looked over at him but didn’t speak. While Sarah began to tear up.

By now, Ira had already arrived at the bodies, he crouched down with a blank expression and pulled the clothes away. Sarah silently cried, while Lance and Valerie turned away.

Gerald, Ira could see it was definitely Gerald, even with a portion of his skull missing. Without saying anything else he removed the second cloth to see Zella. A huge cauterized hole was present in the middle of her chest.

Ira looked at them wordlessly, with an expression that showed no trace of sadness. How did he feel? The concept of grief appeared to be lost on him. Maybe if he was there to witness them die he would feel different, the feeling of inability was something he hated. 

When he saw Avery get caught up in the explosion at the Eastern Fortress, he felt unable to protect her, something that still bothered him. But Avery was Avery, that being the case, he didn’t know how to feel about Gerald and Zella. Truthfully, he couldn’t know how to feel, it was a strange thing. He only wore his heart on his sleeve, so to speak, because lacked the ability to mask his emotions. So he could only continue coming across as blunt. Still, he considered them friends, so the least he could do was try something.

“Haaah.” Ira sighed as he waved his left hand, making two glass orbs appear within his palms. He placed on directly in the hole that was present in the middle of Zella’s chest. He then looked at Gerald and took off his armor, waving his hand and causing a dagger he just grabbed from the vault to appear.

“Hey! What are you doing?!” Lance shouted. Ira sent a glance over to him before plunging the dagger into Gerald’s chest. With his strength, he easily cut through bone and made a hole.

“Stop that!” Lance screamed, Valerie showed an uncomfortable expression, while Sarah watched with hope present in her eyes. She wanted to tell Lance to stop, but she also felt Ira was being too strange.

Ira seemed to be deaf as he continued his work, it would take far too long to explain how he was attempting to recreate the knowledge of a King that was skilled in soul manipulation; Knowledge he absorbed by eating the Soul Core of a one thousand-year-old King. By the time he finished explaining what a “Soul Core” was it would be too late. He placed a glass orb in Gerald's chest and then stored the dagger away. Then, Ira placed his hands over the orbs that were inserted into Gerald and Zella’s chests. Slowly the orbs began to fill with a black inky liquid.

The three were stunned as they watched the strange process take place, and were speechless when a faint black mist began pouring out of Gerald’s head and Zella’s chest. Gerald’s head slowly was reconstructed, but the hair and eyebrows present on that side of his head were gone, and the skin tone was paler than the rest of his face. Everyone remained silent as they watched, even a few of the onlookers took notice.

After a few minutes, the black mist faded away and the two still bodies began to move.

“You! Ira! Y-You!” Lance stumbled over himself as he tried to make sense of what was happening.

The bodies climbed up from their spots on the ground and stood straight up. Their faces remained expressionless as they didn’t even look at their “friends” who were busy crying.

“I guess it was too much to ask.” Ira clicked his tongue and waved his left hand over Gerald and Zella, causing them to disappear from sight.

“Ira! Why! What the fuck did you just do!” Lance lashed out and rushed up to Ira. For a brief moment he felt the guilt and sadness become lifted away, but then Ira tampered with them, brought them back, and then took them away again.

In his moment of anger, Lance went to swing at Ira. Seeing his intentions, Ira’s hand shot out and caught his throat, without so much as a moment of delay he lifted him into the air, “You really shouldn’t do something like that next time, I could’ve accidentally killed you, you know.” Ira said with a chuckle.

“Why...did...you...do...that..?” Lance squeezed out.

“Ira,” Sarah said as she approached him nervously. She knew he could easily kill all of them if he wanted to do so, and from what she saw he appeared to be helping them. “Lance was just confused...We are all confused...Could you explain what happened?” She asked as she attempted to diffuse the situation. Of course, those within listening distance saw the strange ritual Ira performed and wanted the same to happen for the people they cared about.

Ira dropped Lance onto the ground and then turned to Sarah, “What do you want me to explain?”

“For starters…” Lance chimed in as he rubbed his neck, “Are they dead or alive?”

“Dead,” Ira answered casually.

“T-Then what did you just do?” Valerie asked.

“Without getting into specifics, I fixed their bodies. But they’re as good as wooden dummies at the moment.”  Ira explained.

“So...There’s hope in bringing them back?” Sarah asked.

Ira began thinking in response. Since the Will of Purgatory had control over Purgatory itself was it possible for her to see all the memories of those who died? If so, she would immediately see Ira in Gerald and Zella’s memory and keep hold of their souls. So he could possibly bring them back, but there would be significant damage to their souls. That’s assuming they ended up in Purgatory. If every death was guaranteed to end up in Purgatory, the Will wouldn’t exactly need a bunch of souls.

“Yeah. It might take a while though.” Ira said with a nod, he figured since they didn’t die peacefully there was a high chance they were there.

“Thank you.” Sarah collapsed to her knees and began crying, “Thank you so much.” Valerie wasn’t any better as her expression crumbled and she began sobbing as well.

A few tears gathered in Lance’s eyes as he began speaking, “I’m sorry, Ira...I’m sorry.” he said. His forehead was still bruised from when he banged his head on the ground after being overcome with guilt, it had truly been an emotional day for him.

If someone else was in Ira’s place, they may feel awkward or even join the others as they cried. But Ira had one question on his mind, “Is Avery done training yet?”

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