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Chapter 9 - [Price of Bloodroot]

The night descended in the city of Tyrant.

The clam grey clouds of the dusk slowly floated away and dark gloomy sky took its place. The blanket of the night sky was empty. No moon, no stars and not even a single living creature seemed to be there.

As the world plunged into the deeper darkness, cold winds blew wilder. The Dead Forest looked more dead today.

there was an unusual silence permitted through the forest.

Normally, it wouldn't be anything odd about such scene, as the only creatures who lived in the forest, were just blind, raving, headless thorned monsters.

the Headless creatures weren't able to produce any sound or even sense anything, except…

Blood.

The Headless creatures were so ruthless that they even eradicated all the living beings from the face of this world.

The world behind the Rift.

So, the eerie silence was natural occasion, but today, the silence felt very different. It was tough to explain, but it was like something was spiritually different about it.

like the world itself felt lonely.

As the night ascended darker and darker, suddenly a pale silver light shone from the horizon. The silver radiance instantly scurried away the deep darkness from the world.

The silver radiance continued to increase as the huge silver moon dwarfed the whole Dead forest.

But still, there was a place where the Darkness stubbornly fortified itself.

Somewhere in the depths of the Dead Forest, the charred ancient branches of the Colossal tree hung in the bottomless abyss.

The odd chasm, which floated in the middle of the Dead Forest still retained its nature. The abyssal darkness swirling inside the depths didn't relent to the blinding radiance of the giant moon, instead it only deepened into more chaotic, disordered darkness.

As the branches of the broken colossal tree sprawled out from the thick trunk and descended down, pieces of unknown flesh including huge deserted limbs, lurid blood and crystalline thorns were precariously stuck in between the intertwined roots.

Slowly, the cold wind blew in the darkness and a piece of dark-blue flesh gripped out of the crevices of the root and fell down into the abyss.

Before making its faithful descend, the dark-blue flesh got entangled in various different branches, but eventually got lost in the abyss.

Some time passed…but the silence still prevailed.

Somewhere deeper into the darkness, a figure of a young boy around the age of fourteen, was hanging precariously on the intertwined roots. One of his legs was twisted in a horrifying manner while the other hinged to its torso and hung lifelessly. His back hunched in an inhuman angle as the crimson blood dripped from his mouth.

While the cold wind blew outside, His body was covered was in huge amount of sweat. His chest heaved slightly in a calm manner.

All around him, charred ancient roots sprawled in a clustered web, but there was nothing to see.

His body was enveloped in an ethereal pale green glow as thin nerve like roots sprawled on his upper body.

The thin nerves originated from the black charred roots twisted, twirled and rooted themselves deep into his flesh, slowly dripping the translucent liquid and mixing with his blood.

The liquid dripped from the nerves exuded an unusual sense of purity.

As the liquid seeped deeper into his blood and the cycle continued, his twisted leg slowly unfurled itself while his angled back flattened and slowly regained its original position.

The young boy's breath was calm and collected as though he was deep into a slumber while his right arm shook with each cycle. The grievous wounds spread all around his body, slowly healed themselves as time slowly passed, and after an unknown amount of time, something changed.

His lithe body, suddenly showed slight movements and his eyelids fluttered.

Suddenly, another change took place along with it.

The magical nerve like roots slowly started to recede and crawled back from his flesh. The ethereal greenish glow dimmed as the young boy's body made more and more movements, until the glow dimmed completely and the slender nerves blighted, turning into crisp dust.

Flame's eyelids fluttered as he opened his eyes.

The dim greenish glow faded away quickly, before plunging him back into the darkness. He had woken up!

But he didn't feel like it.

He was still surrounded by darkness as he was before. he wasn't even sure if he was dreaming or living. Recently, the concepts of life of death were nearly forgotten by him.

The only thing he remembered was just soul-wrenching pain and the scene of darkness.

"am I alive?"

'am I alive'

'am I alive'

.

.

.

His low voice echoed, as it was reflected back multiple times, to and fro inside the darkness. He almost felt creeped out it.

His words rang for a few times, before eventually getting lost.

Flame gulped a mouthful of saliva and decided not to open his mouth for now.

'this sounds better'

He thought to himself and nodded.

 "what is this place!!!"

...

Few more minutes passed and Flame felt few more shivers, before he thought carefully.

He lifted his hands and moved his legs, trying to feel his body.

and fortunately, he didn't find anything amiss, other than a missing wound, a sore leg, an unusually sweaty body, some missing expensive training clothes and most frivolous thing.

A missing right arm.

Did he even had one before?

Flame shook his head and touched the solid feeling thing below him '…roots?'

He fell silent and then continued 'ah! Now I remember! I was searching for Lucy when I suddenly got my blood sucked from a monster leech. Then, I crushed it with my fist, before like almost dying. Ah! Then I planned something and then forgot everything…'

'hmm. My last memory is of hovering above the chasm…did I miss something?'

Flame fell silent for a while. He brought his missing right arm to rub his chin and thought about all the information he remembered.

After some unknown amount of time, he finally heaved a sigh and thought

'hah! Looks like I survived. It was definitely not easy, but in the end, my plan worked somehow. Thanks to Belle's wilderness training tips and Mathew's physics lessons, I am alive'

Flame mentally thanked Belle and Mathew as they both played an important role in his survival. Immediately after getting sucked a lot of blood, Flame knew he wouldn't remain conscious for long time and there was also no way, he could get blood in the middle of the forest.

Human blood of course!

So, Flame instantly pressured against the wound and decided to preserve his energy. He needed to let his body get acclimated to the weakening sensing of lack of blood.

If he had run away instantly, nothing good would have came out of it. Instead, his legs would have given up in mid-way and he would have gone unconscious.

Flame followed Belle's tips to the heart and rested his body as long as he could.

However, he could have also lost his consciousness from Lack of blood in his brain, so Flame had to be precise about his timing, and balance between the two.

Being a Descendant also gave a little bit of edge to him, but it also had its limit. In the end, Flame could only come up with a blurred plan, where his survival was totally based on his Luck.

He simulated his plan multiple inside his brain to at least let his sub-conscious remember it, in case he lost his consciousness...

And he did.

At that time, he could only rely on luck, and little bit of Mathew's knowledge of physics. In fact, it wasn't anything to name physics. It was just common sense.

He just remembered that when once, he and Mathew were standing on the top of the water, Mathew said that if he was to 'throw' Flame down, he won't be landing on water.

So…

Flame just didn't run blindly, instead he focused on jumping horizontally as farther as he can.

So that, even if he wasn't able to catch the hanging roots, he would most probably will get himself tangled inside the dense web of root…probably

'Truly, it was a genius plan from a genius mastermind'

Flame grinned ear to ear as he couldn't let the excitement contain and laughed mistakenly.

After waiting for a few more minutes, Flame sighed and slumped down heavily, instantly forcing the thick branches to sway.

Flame instinctively flailed his right hand, trying to grab onto something in the darkness.

"uh?"

his brows creased and his heart screamed as realization finally dawned to him, but there was no time to say anything, instead, he used his left arm and tightly hugged the thick root.

Rough, gnawed pieces of roots protruded, and grazed against his naked skin, almost making him groan in pain.

Almost in an instant his half of his lithe body lodged out of the root bed and hung in the empty chasm of nothingness. Flame's heart pounded against his ribs as horizontal root of the bed swayed a few times.

Fresh blood dripped out near his chin and trailed by the side of the chest. Flame's body oscillated like a pendulum for few times, before came stop to a stable point.

Cold wind suddenly greeted him, making his whole body shiver.

He suddenly screamed "Where the hell is my right hand!?!?"

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