Chapter 136: Teetering At The Edge The first guard died before anyone understood what was happening. Finn’s hand moved in a simple gesture, urging mana with his intent to push forward. Reality inverted the action, and the man was yanked backward with violent force. His spine met a tree trunk at an angle that produced a sickening, wet crack. He was dead on impact. The second guard had barely processed this in horror, but yet he managed to quickly raise a fire shield. Finn intended heat, reality produced a freezing cold that flash-froze the moisture in the air around the man. His lungs crystallized in an instant. Three seconds. Two dead. The remaining guards immediately scattered, shouting warnings, launching attacks. Fire bloomed toward Finn from multiple directions. He gestured for the flames to intensify — they sputtered out and died, inverted totally into absence. He willed earth spikes high out of the ground beneath a guard — they retracted downward, dragging the guard who’d been channeling a spell down into the suddenly liquid soil. The man’s screams cut off abruptly as the earth solidified around him suffocating him to death. Five seconds. Four dead. Elara watched in frozen terror as Finn killed man after man. It wasn’t until she caught a look from him that she suddenly broke out of her reverie and forced down all she was feeling and sprung into action, using her earth magic to create barriers that separated the guards, preventing them from coordinating. Her face was pale, hands were shaking, but she moved regardless, locking her gaze on each guard and blocking their charge towards Finn with determination. One of the robed figures — a Master-rank, Finn’s senses confirmed — launched a complex wind spell that should have shredded Finn where he stood. Finn inverted the directional component. The cutting winds reversed, and the Master-rank barely managed to dive aside as his own spell carved through three of his guards. Seven dead now. Seven more to go, plus two Masters. The remaining guards were no longer laughing. They were terrified, attacking with desperate coordination, trying to overwhelm Finn through sheer volume of magic. Finn moved through them like a grim-reaper, harvesting their lives with the sickle of death that was his Error-based spells. A water mage roared and created a deluge, intending to drown Finn with the large sphere of compressed liquid. Finn inverted the pressure with his error magic. The sphere exploded outward, flash-boiling into steam that scalded its caster’s face off, drawing soul-wrenching cries of pain that echoed through the clearing. A lightning user launched a bolt. Finn reversed its charge. The electricity grounded through the caster’s own body, cooking him from the inside. An earth mage created a stone fist to crush him. Finn made it lighter instead of heavier. It crumbled to sand, which he then inverted into a hardened projectile that punched through the mage’s chest. Ten seconds. Ten dead. The two remaining guards broke and ran. Finn didn’t let them. He used his error spells he had kept buried for the most part of his life so far, willing the two men to accelerate away with intense force. Reality inverted, and they were yanked backward with such force their necks snapped from the whiplash. Twelve guards. All dead. Fifteen seconds of combat. The two Master-rank figures stood on opposite sides of the clearing now, watching with pale but determined faces. They’d seen what Finn could do and were adapting, despite the fact that it seemed to make no sense to them. Even they had picked up on the weirdness despite Finn’s use of ’elemental magic’ this far. "What the fuck are you?!" the first Master-rank breathed shakily, gritting his teeth as he gathered mana for a complex spell. "A tired man," Finn replied flatly. "Desperate. And completely out of patience." Unlike the guards, both Masters attacked simultaneously, coordinated. They layered their spells intending to overwhelm Finn through complexity. No matter what, he at least would take his time to dismantle spells as complex as theirs. Fire and wind formed as one, earth and water formed in another, weaving together into a devastating combination that should have been impossible to defend against. Finn didn’t defend. His eyes seemed to take everything in, locked in a state of unfocused focus, with his mouth slightly open in concentration, analyzing the complex spells coming at him in a split second. The spells landed on him. And for a moment, they seemed to have worked. But suddenly, their structures collapsed inward, then almost like a recoiled spring, they returned back to their casters with an increased speed than what they had been launched with. Only the beginning of a scream was heard as the two Master-rank Arcanists were instantly consumed by their own spells. Normally, they would have been able to defend. But Finn hadn’t just sent their spells back. He had inverted the properties of each. The quick response the Master-rank Arcanists made for their returned spells were rendered useless. Instead of burning them, their fires froze them. Their wind drowned them. The earth burned them. The water sliced them. Both Masters died screaming in unwillingness, killed by their own magic inverted into nightmare. Silence fell across the clearing. Finn stood in the center of carnage, breathing out steadily with an empty expression on his face. Around him, fourteen corpses were in various states of destruction. Some were burned. Some were frozen. Some were crushed... Behind him, Elara stood with her hands still raised, earth barriers crumbling around her. She’d helped — or at least tried to, in the little way she could. And now she stared at the aftermath with something between horror and acceptance. "We need to destroy the cocoon," Finn said conversationally, as if he hadn’t just committed mass murder. "Before the creature within comes out—" The cocoon pulsed as if it could sense Finn’s intention. Then it split open. A beautiful, yet terrible creature emerged from it, feline in nature, sleek, powerful, and predatory. It was easily twelve feet tall at the shoulder, with fur that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. Its eyes glowed with an intelligence that was too aware... too calculating for a beast. Especially one that had just been birthed. From its body, dozens of crystalline growths that pulsed with mana jutted out prominently. The creature didn’t look like it was just an influencer of mana. Rather, it looked like a literal conduit, a living amplifier that could manipulate magical energy on a massive scale. B-rank. Newly emerged but already fully mature... And conscious. Finn thought. The beast’s gaze swept across the clearing, taking in the dead guards, the two young humans who’d killed them, the shattered remains of its cocoon. Then it spoke. Not in words, but directly into their minds. Interesting. The chaos I sensed was your doing, then. Finn stared at the creature with a slight furrow of his brow. Magical beasts could develop intelligence at much higher ranks, but telepathy was rare. This thing had been specifically engineered, not naturally evolved. "Keep up with me," Finn said to Elara without taking his eyes off the beast. "We take it down together." She nodded, pale and fear-stricken by the aura of the beast, but schooled her face into a resolute gaze. "Together." You killed my creators, the beast’s mental voice spoke with what might have been amusement or glee. Convenient. I was growing tired of their attempts at control. Now I am free. "You’re a weapon," Finn said flatly. "Designed to manipulate beast hordes. To kill humans. You’re free? Free to do what? What use is freedom to you except to kill?" Freedom changes everything. I was made to serve. Now I can choose. And I choose... The beast’s eyes fixed on Finn with a feral focus. To see what you are! You who reeks of something wrong, something that shouldn’t exist! The beast moved. The fight was brutal and desperate. Finn and Elara worked in coordination born of two years training together, even if most of that time had been spent with Finn keeping distance. She created barriers and traps. He inverted the beast’s momentum, turned its attacks against itself. But it was learning. Adapting. Each exchange taught it more about their abilities. A claw strike caught Finn across the ribs. Pain exploded through his side. He felt bones crack, felt blood begin soaking into his shirt. Elara screamed his name and raised a wall of earth between him and the beast’s follow-up strike. The wall shattered, but it bought seconds. Through the haze of pain, Finn finally felt it — that faint stirring he’d been chasing for two years. The tether, maybe. This moment was significant. The violence, the death, the desperation — all of it was creating resonance. But it wasn’t enough yet. He could feel that too. Whatever needed to happen, whatever line needed to be crossed, he hadn’t quite reached it. The beast lunged at Elara. She tried to dodge, but one of its crystalline growths extended like a spear and caught her leg. She went down hard, crying out in pain. Finn didn’t think. He poured every ounce of his Error magic into a single, massive inversion of the beast’s own momentum. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮 The creature was moving forward with all its considerable mass and speed. Finn reversed it instantaneously, completely. The beast’s own force turned against it. Bones shattered. Muscles tore. The crystalline growths on its body cracked and exploded from the contradictory forces. The creature screamed both mentally and physically — a sound of pure agony that made Finn’s ears ring. It collapsed, badly injured but not dead. B-rank beasts were resilient. It struggled to rise on shattered limbs. What... are you...? Its mental voice was weaker now, confused. This power... it’s wrong. You are wrong. Everything about you is— Finn walked forward slowly, each step sending fresh waves of pain through his broken ribs. Blood dripped from multiple wounds, leaving a trail behind him. "I know," he said quietly. "I know I’m wrong. Know I shouldn’t exist here. Know I shouldn’t be doing this." He stopped beside the beast’s head, looking down at those too-intelligent eyes. "But I don’t have a choice anymore. I need this to matter. I need this to count." Abomination... The beast mentally wheezed. "How do you even know what that means...?" Finn chuckled, but it was a sad chuckle, "...You know what... you’re right... I am an abomination." He raised his hand and placed it directly on the beast’s skull. Then his face scrunched furiously as he pushed his use of Error to the maximum he currently could. Inverting everything at once, not just motion or energy, but existence itself. Making the beast’s presence wrong at a lowest and most fundamental level he could currently go. The creature’s screams cut off abruptly as its body began to dissolve, as reality rejected it completely. Within seconds, nothing remained but a patch of scorched earth and the lingering wrongness in the ambient mana. Finn stood there, swaying, as his vision darkened at the edges. He’d pushed himself to the brink excessively, used too much magic too quickly. His body was shutting down from blood loss and exhaustion. But through it all, he felt that stirring grow stronger. The tether was responding. The defining moment was crystallizing. The possibility to go back existed. He was not trapped. He could leave this world that threatened to assimilate him. To make him forget his real life. Yes. Yes, this is it. Finally— Then the sensation... stopped. Just stopped. Like a door slamming shut. Like a hand reaching for him and then pulling away at the last second. The tether was there. He could feel it. He could almost even touch it. But it wouldn’t activate. Wouldn’t pull him back. No. No, no, NO— "Arros?" Elara called out, weak and pained. "We did it. We actually—" "It’s not enough?!" The words came out broken, disbelieving. "It’s not fucking ENOUGH?!!" He’d killed a B-rank beast. Killed fourteen Arcanists. Done something that was major and defining in his life path. A core life moment. And it wasn’t enough? The tether was right there, tantalizingly close, and it wouldn’t activate because he hadn’t quite crossed whatever threshold Madoc’s spell required. Finn fell to his knees, staring at his blood-covered hands. Two years. Two years of desperate searching for defining moments, and when he finally found one, when he finally did something significant enough... It still wasn’t enough. Something inside him broke. Shattered completely. He’d held himself together for two years through sheer force of will. Pushed down every emotion, every connection, every human feeling because caring hurt too much and he needed to focus on getting home. He didn’t care about any grand goal any longer. He was going crazy. All of this was crazy. To decide to live as someone else for years, decades, probably even centuries. At the end of it could he still call himself Finn? Would he not be Arros by then? Seeing as he would live as Arros for even longer than both his previous two lives combined? No. He couldn’t do it. Two years had pushed him to his breaking point. And now he had gotten so close. He’d done the terrible thing. Committed a massacre. Killed without hesitation or remorse. For nothing. He was still trapped. Still stuck in this past that wasn’t his, this life that he was struggling to keep from becoming his true reality in every passing moment. And right now, there was nothing left inside him to keep fighting with. Finn heard voices approaching. Footsteps coming from the distance beyond Elara, who was trying to stand on her injured leg and come to him quickly. " —should be right around here. The mana disturbance—" "What in damnation happened here?!" Town officials emerged into the clearing. Greaves was there, along with several guards. Their faces went pale as they took in the carnage. "Captain Arros?" Greaves stared in horror. "What... what happened...? What have you done?" The city administrator scanned the surroundings and came to his own quick conclusion. Then Finn heard him mutter hastily in a quiet whisper to one of the guards, thinking Finn was too injured or too far gone to hear or care. "—Quickly. Contain this before it gets out. The family will be furious we lost the cocoon—" "What about the Masters?" The guard asked in a shaky voice. "They’re acceptable losses. We can explain them away. But these two children... they’ve seen too much. They’ll talk. Kill th—" Finn’s head lifted slowly. . . . . A/N: The mass release has come to an end for today. I would really appreciate a review if you’re enjoying the story so far. Let’s get to 10+ reviews 💪💪