The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 264

Chapter 264

Chapter 264: Branch of Destruction

As the giant shadow sentinel dissolved back into the black platform, it felt like—rather than calming down—my adrenaline rush from the battle was growing more intense. My breathing grew shallow and I could feel my heartbeat quicken by the second. Blood pounded against my ears, dulling out everything except for the sounds of my own ragged breaths. It was an overbearing yet intoxicating sensation which had me scared that I’d lose my mind.

I tried to withdraw the violet fire clad around my right hand but it wouldn’t budge. The cool flames clung to my skin, throbbing, and the rune on my back now felt like a scorching brand pressed against my very spine.

I didn’t know why this was happening but it felt like either my body was rejecting the rune, or the other way around. A scream tore at my throat as the violet flames grew stronger and more wild, engulfing my entire hand.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Regis frantically rushing toward me before disappearing into my body. It didn’t take much longer after that for darkness to overcome me.

When I came to, the shimmering purple sky was the first thing to greet me. The second thing was the pain. My right hand felt like it had been marinated in a vat of acid, a dull throb still lingered on my lower back.

My lower back...the rune!

My eyes widened as I finally recalled what had happened to me. I pushed myself off my back, wincing at the pain from putting weight on my right hand. As my gaze lowered to my right hand which looked unscathed, I finally noticed that the platform I was on wasn’t black, but white.

“Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty,” a gruff voice sounded behind me. My battle instincts flared as I whirled around while unsheathing the white dagger using my left hand, only to find myself face-to-face with a shadowy entity in the form of a wolf.

It remained seated on its hind legs like a large dog, no threatening intent leaking from it. The only details that set it apart from what would normally be a very black wolf was the fact that it had a pair of horns protruding out of its head, each twisting like a gnarled branch as they came to a sharp point behind its ears. The other detail, and the one that stood out the most, was its glowing violet mane that looked more like flames rather than fur.

“Check me out. I’m majestic as fuck!” the wolf said with a toothy grin, its shadowy tail wagging excitedly.

My jaw dropped. “R-Regis?”

It took me a few minutes to swallow everything, but once I did, my curiosity only grew.

I bombarded him with questions. “What happened to me after I passed out? What happened to you? Why do you look like that?”

“Easy, pleb,” Regis said haughtily, holding up his giant black paw. “This one shall explain.”

I shot him a glare, eliciting an uncomfortable cough from the shadowy wolf.

“After you killed that giant golem, that purple flame was trying to consume you so I did what any loyal companion would do and went into your body to save you.”

“Loyal? Is that why you’re a dog?” I quipped.

“I’m a wolf!” Regis emphasized, offended. “I don’t know why I’m a wolf, and not some badass dragon, but this is what I came out as.”

“So how did it happen?”

“Well, I felt this huge surge of aether fuse with me.”

“Fuse with your body?” I repeated blankly before it finally dawned on me.

I expelled aether from my core, trying to siphon it through the rune on my lower back. Except there was no rune. I recalled the knowledge that had been ingrained into me upon forming the rune but it felt like a blur, like trying to recall the events of a drunken night.

“It’s gone,” I mumbled. “I-I can’t feel the rune anymore.”

My eyes locked onto Regis in an icy glare. “You stole it.”

“It’s not like I expected this to happen,” Regis retorted back. “And besides. You were dying.”

I seethed. “I had it under control.”

Regis let out a scoff. “Sure. Writhing in pain and blacking out was all part of the master plan, right?”

“You don’t understand! I need that power, Regis. Give it back!”

Regis bared his fangs. “You don’t think I tried? After dragging your sorry ass out of the black platform—you’re welcome, by the way—I tried going back inside your body and giving it back to you but I didn’t even know how!”

My brows furrowed as I reached out my hand toward Regis. “Come here.”

With a sigh, my companion relented.

As soon as his form entered my body, though, I felt the change. It started with a pressure building inside my ears, as if I was sinking deep underwater. Then a growing pain began building in my temples as the knowledge of the rune in my mind and the actual rune now held within Regis connected. I recalled everything that I had learned as the warm touch of the rune spread from my lower back.

Destruction. That was what the rune that had been engraved on my back meant. Destruction, however, wasn’t something tangible, so the aether residing within me had shaped it into something I was familiar with: something destructive like fire. _{freewebnσvel.cѳm}

Was it the result of my aether core being formed from the fragments of my white stage mana core?

It could’ve been. I didn’t know.

Through this very formation of power, however, I questioned whether aether had some level of sentience. It had given me knowledge of what destruction meant, and how it tied with vivum. Lady Myre had explained it as the influence over living components but that was wrong, that was only a part of it.

Vivum was more akin to the influence over...existence. And just as life was a part of existence, so was death, creation, and destruction.

I had barely touched the surface of destruction but even then, I had managed to gain more insight than Lady Myre knew—or at least what she had told me.

But perhaps even more shocking than that, was the revelation of what this rune signified. The fact that I had invoked this rune meant that I had a certain degree of mastery over what the rune meant. It was a rare projection of mastery over a specific edict of aether.

This made me question the differences in my newly-bestowed rune, and the runes that once encompassed my body through Sylvia’s dragon will...as well as the very runes that both Lady Myre and Sylvia possessed.

One difference was clear: The Indrath clan, as well as all of the asuras, thought that the only way to obtain these runes was through the rare chance of inheriting it since birth.

Were the specific edicts of aether they could learn limited by the runes that they possessed since being born? Were they given the knowledge and abilities that came along with each rune right away or was each rune ‘dormant’ until they could make the breakthrough themselves?