Adam stared down at the still-twitching corpse with a small amount of curiosity.
Even headless, Sunny’s body remained eerily alive. The vampire’s torso was twitching like a fish out of its water tank.
It bleeds profusely at the neck, without an end in sight.
But no limbs were regenerating, and no muscles were stitching themselves back together.
The damage has been done, and there was no redoing it.
Thanks to the unique properties of his feathers, Black Swarm allowed him to inflict wounds that couldn’t be healed, as long as the target remained within a certain radius of his presence. Once they were inside that range, any cut made by his feathers became permanent. No regeneration, no magic, and nothing could undo the damage once an area has been cut
It was a very powerful ability, all things considered. And Adam’s fingers traced the edge of one of his pitch-black feathers.
"This really might be one of the nastiest side-effects of my wings."
He muttered to himself, crouching beside the fallen body.
"Once you’re hit, then that is it... wounds made by these bad boys will stay with you."
That was basically how Sunny’s head ended up permanently divorced from his neck.
A smirk crept across Adam’s lips just thinking about it. Still, though, even a body had its uses. For that reason, he wasn’t done with Sunny just yet.
For a while now, he has an ability he was dying to try. It was a power he hadn’t had the chance...or the right target to try it out on...well, until now.
’Hmmm, not going to lie, this would be a good time to try out Box of Worth.’
So, with his mind made up, he decided to make Sunny his first target.
From there, Adam proceeds to raise his right hand forward, as he opens his palms, and the air shimmered around the open palm, rippling like water disturbed by a stone drop. Then, without sound, a box suddenly appeared in the grasp of his hand.
It looked like something plucked out of a cursed fairytale. In terms of appearance, it was a cube of pure black, impossibly smooth on every side, it was like polished marble, floating just above his hand. Strange symbols colored in gold flickered across its surface as they moved around it in random patterns.
Looking at it from where it stands, Adam gave it a questionable look as he said.
’So this is the box that can ruin a person’s life? Not gonna lie. I was expecting somethin a bit more... How do I say this? Hmmm...eye-catching, yeah that would be the right term here.’
However, despite its simplicity, this was a dangerous ability.
Box of Worth as an ability wasn’t just about stealing someone’s importance; it was about erasing it completely from their being. Once this ability marks a target, it doesn’t let go. Bit by bit, it drains everything that made them matter in life. And it won’t stop until they have nothing left in life...no fate, no destiny, no happiness, no pride, no value, nothing. It was a power that could meak a person a hollow shell of who they used to be. Once marked, they were stuck with it...until there was nothing left to steal.
Well, not right away, of course. There were conditions needed for its initial activation upon marking a person as a target.
But Adam was a natrual born asshole, humilating a person, an ruining a person image to uplift his own was no hard task.
Second, and more importantly, the target or marked person had to believe they were just worthless as well, even if it was at sub-concious level. Or at the very least, start doubting their own value.
Hence the Sunny nickname.
He did all of these little things to chip away at Sunny’s ego.
And sooner or later, Sunny will break under his power and succumb to its influence, as Box of Worth as a System, given Lore ability, transcends the target completely.
As such, he took great pride in aiming the black Box toward Sunny’s headless corpse. The moment he did, the box pulsed with an invisible frequency.
There was no flash of light.
No dramatic sound effect.
It just activated as the marking was already established the moment Adam had the desire to use it on Sunny.
The evidence of its successful infliction was when an almost imperceptible shimmer appeared across the body of the target’s chest. A sigil that didn’t exist for the world because it couldn’t. It was a conceptual mark. An idea branded into Sunny’s being. As a result, only Adam could sense it, see it, or interact with it because he was the creator of it to begin with.
This mark symbolizes that Sunny is now under the effect of his powers.
He stood up and casually walked over to the vampire’s severed head, which was still lying beside the body.
Its eyes were wide, glowing red with rage and panic. It thrashed slightly as Adam knelt beside it, the rock still firmly wedged in its mouth. Muffled, furious sounds rumbled from deep within the vampire’s throat.
"Oh! Relax, would yah."
"I brought you back to your other half."
Said Adam as he set the head beside the body and patted it mockingly.
"See? Now you two can be miserable together. Isn’t that sweet?"
At these words, a growling and groaning sound could be heard from the head, its frustration rising, but at the same time, that’s when Adam heard it.
It was not the voice of the system; no, rather, it was the voice of the voice of the box. Somehow, the box spoke to him, as the voice being replayed in his head was his own voice.
[Conditions met! You’ve successfully stolen a piece of the target’s importance. A significant moment from their life has been taken, its essence now belongs to you. As a result, this moment has been put into a state of existent and non-existent]
The moment Adam heard this voice, a vision flashed through Adam eyes. Alongside information, it began to show him a moment in his past where he almost died to two young vampire hunters, this was in the human world, about 89 years ago.
The cold bit into his skin, but it was nothing compared to the searing pain crawling across his back. Every breath felt like swallowing fire. Cecil stumbled through the thick snow covering Mount Elbrus, his body charred, smoldering, but he was still healing, albeit slowly and painfully.
"It hurts... it hurts... it HURTS!!...
His thoughts screamed as he dragged himself through the snow-covered trail.
’I knew divine attack hurts... but this? This feels like I’m being eaten alive from the inside out.’
The night was pitch-black to most, but to his vampire eyes, everything was crystal clear. He could see the trees. The moon... The mountains.. And the humans, or rather the hunters that were chasing him.
’What the hell is wrong with these people?’
’I didn’t do anything... I was just thirsty... Just one bite... That’s it, so why? Why am I being chased by these freaks? I didn’t even drain her dry.’
Snow scattered behind him as he pushed forward, slipping on frozen roots and jagged ice.
Then, voices cut through the howling wind. A man of Russian decent began to call out to his partner.
"Zhere he is, Tanya. Shoot heem vhile he is steel veak."
Tanya shouted, in a russian accent.
As she kept her eyes on him, for as long she did not lose sight, this was a sure-hit attack, even if it was a low-grade divine technique.
"O’Divine Sovereign, Merciful and Just! Let your light descend, and through your boundless grace, grant me this miracle! Pierce the wicked! Cleanse the blight! AND STRIKE TRUE!"
Lightning flashed across the dark sky; a burst of golden light that seemed to come from nowhere was about to strike him. Meanwhile, Cecil had reached the edge of the moutain as he stood there glancing up, then back over his shoulder. He knew he couldn’t outrun this attack.
If that lightning hit him again, he would be out cold for a long time. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep going.
With no time to hesitate, he made his choice.
The answer was simple: as such, in that moment, he chose pain.
In one quick movement, he pushed himself forward and jumped off the edge of the mountain, hoping the fall would buy him some time. But before he could even take a breath, the lightning came down, a streak of golden light that collided with him in mid-air.
The shock hit him like a freight train. His body shook violently as the divine electricity coursed through him, skin blistering, then peeling off as the pain ripped through him.
It wasn’t enough to kill him, of course; rather, it was just enough to knock him out cold and leave him weak and burned.
As he fell, his senses dimmed, and the last thing he felt before everything went black was the unbearable sting of his skin burning away in the cold night as he fell down into a deep abyss below.
This was a moment from Cecil’s life that Adam had captured and stored in the Box of Worth. Everything about it could be transferred to someone else live in the present, forcing them to experience the same fate that Cecil did that night, well the effected outcome of it. It made that moment a truth for the person affected, something they couldn’t escape.
Now, this moment existed as both something real and something erased. While it was still a truth in the world, anyone under its effect would find it to be a non-existent event, even though the effects on the target would be very real in the moment it is inflicted.
But that was only for things that have passed, things that have yet to be, or to come, will have to play out in time and way it was supposed to happen in the first place.
Past events will be instant in the present, and future ones will come when they come if that fate is attached accordingly.
This content is taken from free web nov𝒆l.com