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Volume 4

Chapter 28: Déjà Vu

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The residential area where the political and financial hubs are located had been badly damaged. People were running all over the place, saving what could be saved, getting as far away from the riot as possible —to the forest's outskirts where monsters lay in wait.

But as they have no other choice, other than being put right in the middle of warring men for greed, they chose to go to the forest with staves in hand.

These staves are erected from the village's boundaries atop with spherical containers with holes filled with a grey dust powder warding off monsters.

And some of these staves were knocked down, creating an opening in the defenses of the village as the feud had already spread further to the village than they'd wished.

The members of the search expedition caused the disorder that led to the muddled situation of the citizens. Greed for the fame and rewards made them battle each other.

One faction against another, one group versus the rest of them all. Some of the bricked buildings were official mansions for higher-ranking citizens, but most clustered houses are for the lower-class residents. Side by side the houses were stacked, and like brick walls in a renovating house, with the windows, doors, gardens, and backyards, they are all standing beautifully with decorated stars before they were destroyed.

The chaos on the square had spread further in the inner parts of the residential zone and into the outskirts of the village leading to the prairie. Bolts and thundering roars of magic spells were bellowing, making the air tremble with the echoes of woes. Fire and ice magic were cast and made to cancel each other, but the more it continued on, the more the village was destroyed. The populace pleaded for the players not to ruin their homes and yet, none had listened, the looters and the ones with darker and villainous agendas even went so far as to make use of the situation to their heinous deeds.

While some men took this chance to rape the beautiful and gorgeous NPC women, those with other interests robbed houses and stole things from homes.

Gold and silver wares, jewelries, and other treasures are all in their hands whenever they finished a house and as if they haven't done enough thieveries, they even went as far as take kids and women to be sold as slaves in other countries later.

Of course, there are resistance, but they were very little in regards to their mediocre capabilities. As players are all ranking hunters, their strength and abilities were all higher than the citizens'. No significant struggle came from the village people. All they are were just normal people you'll normally see in the city grounds. On what form of help would come from them?

And as though it was a feast, the chaos continued on without a sign of ever going to stop.

And yet, somewhere in the middle of that pandemonium, a stalemate could be seen breaking an unmoving ground. Five high level wizards trapped a pair of fighters in their high level barrier spell. From the pose of the ones trapped inside, their stalemate was about to be broken with a charge.

The pair was a woman and a white cloaked gunman. As his poise remained wary yet calmly postured, the woman on his side looked troubled.

"Ready?" Siva's calm voice came ringing.

In a single moment, the bulky arm and shin guards on his poncho vanished and the thin arms inside the white cloak returned.

Samantha heard him hiss from a deep breath. Dark aura escaping his shoulders, the doubling repulsive effect made her wary. The amount of trouble this curse puts on the people around it was special.

She even wondered why she kissed him earlier while being in that form. Biting her lips, Samantha was trying to endure the oppressive sensation crawling on her skin and just did her best to concentrate on her part on their mission to escape.

"Ready."

Nodding at the prompt, the two lowered their center of gravity with her gripping the handle of her giant sword firmly close to her face.

"Begin." Siva gave the signal.

"Yaaa!" Samantha screamed passionately as she threw the giant sword.

Taking a step forward, she dashed in as the sword's metal blade stabbed the barrier wall. Orange aura began to ooze out of her body. She cried in a spit of anger, the force of her step leaving a dent on the ground.

The blazing colorful wind left a trail to her wake, she grabbed the hilt of the blade and pushed it, and the transparent wall cracked.

She pulled the weapon and did another slash, the air between the paths of her swings parting, a gust strong enough to push off rubbles and rocks filled the entire sealed plain with brown clouds. A noise that almost sounded like a broken brick of glass echoed in the surroundings, the shards falling off like bits and pieces of palm sized stones.

"Again!" She screamed and gave all her focus. The wall with no color began to heal the damaged parts while the Wizards who made it so laughed in their delight.

With her 70% [STR] (POW) and 30% [MNA] stats build, every time she swing felt like the thunders of an incoming storm thanks to the triple stats effect of the «Artemis MOD».

The winds were cut and the brown clouds continued to fill the dome. And from out of nowhere, the brown clouds were mixed with white. Like a cold screen of a foggy night, the white clouds mixed in with the dusts, blocking the view inside.

Baffled by the sight, the Wizards tried to talk to each other but their words never made it inside the barriers.

Using the moment, Samantha backed off and she pulled the sword to her face in a spear throw position.

"Do it!" Siva screamed from the fog covered area and she yelled as she threw the sword. The moment that the sword left her hand, she multiplied its propulsion force by rejecting the "blade" itself.

More than just a spear, it only took less than a second to make the sword stab the fifth barrier wall. It reached towards the fourth, then the third, and then to the second, the surprise of the Wizards couldn't be hidden as they held their breaths.

It stabbed there halfway making through, the shattered parts of the wall large enough to fit in a single soul.

And not giving them time to recover, the orange trail of light came forth from the clouds, a glowing golden light rolling sideways like a spinning top.

One two, on the third swing, the golden light hit the sword's hilt, and the image of a gold hammer beckoned in their eyes like a giant sign of doom.

—They recognized it!

She thought happily and roared.

The sword stabbed through the second layer of the barrier went passed the first layer like a flying bladed nail that stabbed into the center's grounds. The horror filed expression on Six's face is all that came to be remembered as he dodged with all his might, jumping face first to the ground.

"Now!" Samantha's voice echoed.

In the center of the almost invisible five layered barrier spell, a sound similar to a thunder boomed. Something white escaped into the broken glass opening and went straight towards the dirt-faced Six.

From the speed of his dash, the hood fell off. Black skin on his neck was exposed and the red-eyed black mask of a dark-skinned man came into vision.

A jet black sword almost as dark as his skin was swung down, arching a black half-moon trail into the air, but a dull metallic sound rang on the swerved jet black blade and the trajectory was altered a hairline away on the face of the targeted Wizard. Six kicked Siva and their group broke the deadlock.

Six jumped away but Siva recovered and followed him as Samantha looked back to where the interruption had come. There was the outstretched hand from the green robed mage, the barrier wall disappearing like melted ice in front of him.

"That's...?!"

It's the same technique as the one she had used.

Telekinesis can also be used to throw things at your enemy but the repulsion force is only equivalent to the effort and swing of the arm.

The larger the arc, the faster the thrown object becomes.

But the repulsion force of «Deva's Path» shortens the time used to the swing, and the thrown object will impel through the air with the same maximum force of the user's arm without the swinging motion.

With that same logic on her head, Samantha's face was in full surprise as the other Wizards began to pull their staves off their positions into their hands.

Their staves went back into their possession and she knew that this meant bad news.

"Rex!"

"I know!"

Siva kicked the air and slashed forth towards Six and the latter pulling his staff to block the jet black sword.

"You bastard! To think you'll give her your MODs?!"

Six pushed hard and gave Siva a roundhouse kick, his feet were equipped with the same Flight Armor that Siva had. With the arc shortened by a burst, the kick reached Siva's left shoulder as he was forced to endure the force with his own.

But considering their builds, although both their limbs weren't equipped with martial arts gears, the stat build of Six was clearly superior and Siva was thrown out of balance as he staggered to his feet.

—Perhaps he was a STR + MNA build.

This thought ran bitterly on Siva's mind. Jumping to lessen the impact, Siva tilted his body to let the kick slide of his arm. And as he endured the numbing pain on his muscles, he let the wide arched kick pass through his guard, over his head. Siva parried the kick and reached out to touch him.

The [Stun] don't work on things not connected to the skin. And with Six's Flight Armor on the way, he wasn't able to feel the shock of his defense.

But, "I'm not through with you yet!"

Siva yelled and reached out to his leg. And by the moment his fingers touched him...

KASHAK!

The sound of an electric current passing through a high density coil echoed in their surroundings and Six fell off the ground like a dead meat.

Not wasting that moment, Siva dived down to give him the finishing blow, the jet black sword materializing on his hand, he delivered it on his body. With the sensation of having accomplished his goal, the skull-masked man ignored the prompt of his loots and turned around to face the rest of their enemies. But when he saw her situation, he couldn't help but call her name.

"Samantha!"

Staves acting like spears, one of them were stabbed on her stomach while the others were blocked with her large coffin blade.

All of the staves targeted Siva.

"No!"

A flash of memory came to Siva.

In a place of fire and destruction, of wails and deaths of a scenery that felt familiar and yet alien to him, the fear, the same feeling that kept on haunting him for the past few days, came back to him.

"Mom?" He heard his voice call out.

He saw his mother falling face first on the ground. Her arms spread wide in front of him, she looked like she was trying to protect him from something that lay far up front.

And from her shoulder, the moment she was half way on falling down, he saw that face. It was the face of a man he only met once but left a deep impression on him.

Rogue

His smile was as wide as any villain, a delirious look of delight on his grinning face. And the moment he realized that he had slipped through a memory that he doesn't own, he saw Rogue smile even wider and pulled his fist to punch him away.

Siva's consciousness blacked out.

He was lost.

In the village filled with the chaos, Siva saw himself leave his body. He saw himself staring at himself, like a mirror, he saw his reflection staring at him with a smile, in a dark place he never knew where.

"Free me." The Siva in front of him prompted and a message cue appeared on his vision. In a system window without the semi-transparent effect were words that only meant that it was a system message. But it was just any ordinary system window. This one looked like it was a command prompt window and currently, there were the words coming in with great speed.

The words and prompts happened one after another, like when he was writing a program, the prompts were meant to inform him of the results of the unimpeded automatically activated computer protocols.

And then... the processing slowed down. He began to read what words were there.

[Entering Sequential Brain Analysis...]

[Analysis Complete.]

[Displaying Results...]

[Memory In Use: Main]

[Subconscious Memory: Active]

[Memory Integrity....]

[Scanning...]

[ERROR!]

[Problem at Temporal Memory Region detected!]

[Scanning Memory...]

[Scan Complete.]

[Memory Obstruction Sequence detected!]

[Temporal Memory Region S-35 blocked]

[Recovery Circuits: Enabled]

[Recovery Options: 2]

[Recover Memory?]

(Yes?) - (No?)

As far as he was concerned, this kind of thing is just so impossible. He wasn't an expert on neuroscience but he at least knew a little when it comes to his parents' work.

Temporal Memory Region is like the part of the MAIN MEMORY of the brain comparable to a partition in the RAM of a typical computer. Dividing it in sections, there would at least be hundreds of thousands of Memory sections in the brain and each section houses a unique memory slot and characteristic comparable to an external Hard Disk of a computer.

The difference is, of all these sections, a typical human can only use 10% of that in his entire lifetime.

And in that 10%, the Temporal Memory Region is said to have, or house, the sequential and involuntary actions of a human being that includes the heart beat rate, the flicking of the eyelids, or even controlling the senses, even including the subconscious act of learning things.

Suddenly remembering the day came home that night, Siva remembered the things that the Protesters had been trying to tell him.

All of them said that his parents' invention could change a person in ways that can be influence manually by any computer operator.

It was connected.

To have his Temporal Memory Region touched, or even edited at that, was unthinkable.

Horror dawned on his mind and he felt fear from the image of himself talking to him.

"Free me!" The other Siva screamed angrily.

"Who are you?"

The angry posture stopped and the other Siva reached out a hand to him. "I am you. I am power. If you free me, I will give you the power that cannot be defeated."

"What... are you...?" Siva felt his chest hurt. At that moment, he reached to his heart and felt that the pain was coming from within his chest and not just his muscles. "Who are you? What do you want with me?"

The other Siva smiled and the prompt disappeared from his vision. "Still unworthy even until now? Hmp. Come back when you have no more doubts and fears."

The other Siva waved his hand and Siva came back to his feet with his hand that reached out to Samantha. He can't remember what happened to him in that small time that he blacked out but he felt real fear seeing the mysterious girl with that kind of injury.

But before he could pull everything together in his mind, like a dream, there was a prompt in his vision in a semi-transparent panel with the readable word [block] in it before it totally vanished and his senses came back.

As if everything else in that dark world never happened, he felt a slight vertigo on his balance before he called out to Samantha again.

"No!"

Siva kicked the ground and caught her then he flew up, leaving ten or so E-Grenades behind.

With the dust clouds mixed in with the white fog, the grenades exploded and the Wizards were caught. Not a single glance was given to them. He just concentrated on flying away towards the southern sky.

The exploding fog clouds gave them the time to get away, and although the village was wrecked because of that, what he wanted to achieve at that moment has been achieved.

Right now, what's important was getting away.