CHAPTER 462: CHAPTER 462- BURIED SCENES

The silence left was suffocating as Kira immediately got to work.

With swift movements, the bar gates flung open, and her footsteps bounced against the walls as she approached the man whose life hung barely by a thread.

Her gaze barely met his lifeless ones, and her fingers had begun to scan through the clubs that bound him.

The silence stretched out long... and her delicate control of mana had begun to stretch out into a thin diffuse amount of mana on her fingertips.

It hummed with life as she placed it at his chest, and slowly... and without a thought, cut through it.

"aaaAAAARGGGH!"

His response was immediate, and the stifled groan that escaped... loud, yet weakened was a visceral cry for the pain that surged through his body.

The heat from the diffuse mana had easily cut through his skin and reached into it. Beneath the stack of dried flesh and crisp skin, where the creatures scurried for safety from the sudden intrusion.

Low, guttural screeches echoed against the walls of the Dungeon as Kira continued without darting an eye.

She cut through flesh with the surgical precision of an Anatomist. Made quick work of his body, and ignored the blood that splashed against her fingers and into the air.

The raw pain was like liquid.

Flowing through Rhabanz’s body without a means to flow out.

Tormenting, yet... relieving.

Subtly, but surely, the creatures had begun to feel the weight of what was to occur, and their actions proved so.

They crawled within his body in an attempt to evade it, but Kira had made no mistakes. No failures.

She shoved her hand into his flesh with a sickening squelch and surged mana into it as she grabbed onto two of said creatures and yanked them out.

Her hand, bloody and warm from the inards of a dead man snapped open with force as a bolt of lightning erupted the slimy, symmetrical red, fleshy worm into bits of blood and flesh.

Rhabanz buckled against the clubs and chains, biting down hard as he resisted the urge that pushed against his will.

He had been made weak physically, and that made the newfound power to evade unexplainable.

He gasped for air as he looked up at the deadly calm crimson that looked down on him like an Angel of death.

Locking onto it as he pleaded... pleaded greatly within those dead, warm eyes.

But Kira made no mind.

Instead, she quickened her movements, plunged her arms into his flesh once more.

"Be calm, Rhabanz, this will be over soon."

One after the other. Squeltch after squeltch. Precision after precision.

She fooled the creatures into crawling to her hand with the flow of mana and took them out of the man’s body.

The old and stale darkness that had once been cursed with an eternal silence was now filled with the raw sound of a weakened scream and opened flesh.

•

•

•

Time moved on quickly and Kira had finished her task.

She now stood towards the end of the bars, a cloth in hand as she cleaned her scarlet, painted fingers.

Her gaze, ever calm and calculative now focused on the man in front of her.

Rhabanz Dreau.

The middle-aged man was now a shadow of his former self.

Healed and fattened up with spells woven by the Witch, herself, yet hollow and dry as he on the inside like he was a moment ago.

Now seated on the cold, murky floor of the cell, his tired gaze, filled with false life stared blankly at the Witch’s figure.

Kira had held his gaze for a moment before she tilted her head slightly.

"How ironic." She stated slowly as a sigh escaped her lips.

"I could always read you when you were full of life... but now... all I see is nothing but sadness."

She licked her lips clean as she threw the cloth to the ground while conjuring a ball of water that swerved to life adjacent to her arms.

She stretched her hands towards it and delicately immersed them in it.

"...your sadness hides the rest of your thoughts. You’ve become elusive to me, Rhabanz."

Silence.

Her words... whether a compliment or not had gone unanswered by the former Headmaster of the Homeric Academy.

Just a stale tension... one without purpose.

There was nothing that could be done... not by Rhabanz, and not by Kira who had planned everything as such.

To the former Headmaster, all this had been obvious from the start.

He had known her for far too long not to know what was influenced by her.

And this moment. This predicament... his situation.

It was all too uncanny.

"Why?"

His question hung in the air for a moment far too long.

Like it was never meant to be replied to.

A question that carried the weight of the pain and anguish he had endured for a whole week.

Everything had led to this one question that had riddled him for days. The constant surge of panic that came with it.

And the acceptance of his inevitability that came with his final hours.

How much suffering was actually needed to humble a man?

Well... just enough.

"Pfft."

The air whipped with a strange sound.

One that caused even Rhabanz to flinch, and his eyes to flare open in surprise.

Then–

"Ha, Ha, Ha", Kira burst into a fit of laughter. Loud and boisterous which bounced against the metal walls and its iron bars... causing a rhythmic hum to spread throughout.

It was foreign. Alien, even as Kira Merlin for the first time in Rhabanz’s life, had completely lost composure.

Her expression, devoid of emotion, had always been filled with an uncanny humour.

Her lips tugged into a tight smile. Genuine and ridiculously attractive.

And her eyes literally smiled with her laughter.

"Why?"

She repeated with pure amusement.

Giggling like a little girl watching her crush from a mile away.

"How many times have I heard that?"

She giggled once more while her question stood dry in the air. Unrequited for a reply.

"You all are the same. You all follow me under the illusion that I will guide you... protect you... But when it comes down to it, you realise how much you were deceived..."

She chuckled again.

"And ask me all sorts of questions like why did you deceive or what was I to you..."

A long, exasperated sigh escaped her lips.

"Hah... Rhabanz... you dear old friend..."

Her voice dipped into forbidden layers of softness as she folded her hands... clean from stain, while the ball of murky red water hovered to the side of the cell and splashed onto the floor.

"You know why."

Then it rose back into the seriousness of an iron maiden, and her expression?

Stoic as it always was.

Like a light bulb, she had flipped back into the demeanour the world knew her as.

Rhabanz hesitated for a moment, and his thoughts began to churn at him.

Memories of their last moment in the Territorial Space of his former Academy when that man had attacked.

The Crimson Lord had made quick work of him, and he was made incapacitated from any future fights because of the sudden attack.

Because of that... he had been in a bind... literally.

Wounded and weakened, he had been out of options... until the Portal appeared.

It didn’t take him twice to figure out who it came from, or who sent it.

No one but Kira Merlin had enough skill to divide a bit of her attention outside a life-or-death battle to assist others.

She was cautious and rational, yes, but she helped people when she could.

And that had been when he made the dumbest mistake of his life.

’I should have gone through immediately.’

But he didn’t.

Instead, he waited till the very end.

And when he did... he saw it.

That one moment that would have shocked the entire World.

A heavy sigh escaped his lips as he drooped his head.

"Because I witnessed you deliberately abandon Raffaelo Jun to save yourself?"

The words left his lips, straight into Kira’s ears and the smirk on her face said everything.

"See." She chuckled lightly. "You fools ask that stupid question whenever you always know why."

Her smirk disappeared immediately.

"No one needs to know or witness that moment, Rhabanz."

Rhabanz chuckled weakly.

"You must be kidding. I am your ally... a partner that aided in our research... that research."

Kira rolled her eyes.

"I witnessed more despicable things. We’ve captured commoners. We’ve used human experiments... we have loads of chimaera becking at our call... and... and we had kept that man alive while the world thought he was dead."

The quiet consumed the cell like a starved whale, but the tension that flared as they locked gazes spoke volumes.

Kira seemed almost hesitant now.

Locked in a dilemma that found its way to her head in a question.

’Should I kill him now... or...’

She weighed the results, the paths.

’No, let the King do as he pleases.’

A sigh escaped her lips as she walked out of the cell and towards a door.

"Get yourself ready, Rhabanz." She began. "Your trial will be your last moments... make use of the time you have left."

She walked towards the edge, knocked on the metal door, and immediately, four men walked in.

Men in heavy, dull silver and black armour.

The Imperial Guards.

They marched towards Rhabanz and held onto his chains.

Unclocking it from the wall with a synchronised purpose.

Once they were done.

They picked him up with his chains and marched towards the exit with Rhabanz in tow.

The former Headmaster was dragged along, forced to March at the pace of well-trained and well-fed Guards.

His head dipped low until the very end, while Kira watched it unfold with a mask of indifference.

’How unfortunate.’ She thought to herself as she walked out of the Dungeon and slammed the door shut.

’He had been a good pawn.’

The cell was once again consumed by its eternal darkness... awaiting and slumbering for its next prey.