Chapter 65:

Seeing Cort’s posture, Rine was reminded of the day they fled the battlefield. His anger boiled over at once and it overcame his pain.

Flames began to gather around his palm but a second later his eyes widened in shock. Cort had deftly slapped away his hand, interrupting the spell. This interruption, though seemingly simple in nature, was in fact difficult to execute as it required one to have a deep understanding of both the spell about to be used as well as the one using it.

One wrong move could cause the spell to go berserk, endangering both the caster and their foe.

Still in shock, Rine felt Cort’s fist smash into the side of his face, and the young magician reeled back from the blow in pain.

Rine continued backing away, wanting to create some distance but Cort was relentless, sticking to him like glue. The latter’s punches rained down viciously at every angle, sparing no inch of the young magician’s body. Every time Rine ducked or dodged, he was met with a swift punch sending him back, every time he tried casting his spells, he was interrupted decisively and precisely.

‘Why?’ Rine thought as his head snapped back from a particularly fierce hook. ‘Why are you doing this?’ He wanted to ask but a fist always took the words out of his mouth.

Resigning himself to his fate, Rine gave up resisting, allowing Cort to do as he pleased.

Seeing this, Cort clicked his tongue in disappointment, causing Rine to flinch. Somehow, that disappointed tsk hurt more than the attacks themselves.

“Is that it? Is this all you got?” Cort’s cold voice sounded out.

“Mghghg-” Rine tried replying but he was forced to bite his tongue when Cort hit him with a well-timed uppercut.

Rine’s seething eyes met with Cort’s frosty gaze and one vicious kick later, Rine was falling down the pit.

Splat!

He crashed into the bottom with a sickeningly wet and meaty thud.

‘Water?’ He asked in confusion as he struggled to stand. It was then that he realized that the mud was red in color and metallic in odor.

‘Blood?!’ His mind reeled as questions began making waves in his head ‘Is this Carson’s? No, it can't. He was already dead,’ But before he could start making sense of the nonsensical situation he was overcome with a feeling of urgent dread.

‘Shit!’ He hurriedly dodged to the side as something came crashing down where he originally stood.

The blood that splashed upward with his descent stained his clothes, but Cort paid them no mind; his eyes were focused solely on Rine.

Feeling his gaze, Rine avoided it.

With a deep sigh, Cort vanished from his position and Rine’s eyes widened at the sudden appearance of a fist inches away from his face.

The flurry of punches pushed him so far back he began to dig into the crater’s wall.

‘Stop!’ He screamed in his mind.

‘Stop,’ He pleaded.

‘S-stop…’ His mind slowed and his world grew fuzzy.

“Fucking do something!” Cort’s emotionless voice sounded as a particularly strong punch pulled Rine away from unconsciousness.

“Ggh,” The young magician grunted as his face met the floor. The smell of blood seeped into his nostrils, staining his mind. Instinctively he began to crawl away from the danger, his fingernails dug into the mud.

[Fucking do something!] Cort’s coarse words rang in his head.

‘What can I do? I tried!’ He remembered the days he spent training for the war.

‘And when I did good, I got yelled at!’ He recalled the night Cort admonished him for almost taking another life.

Then the faces appeared. At first, it was only Amy, but soon she was joined by the dozens he killed during the war.

‘Why is this happening to me?’ He cried then, tears streamed freely down his face.

‘Why am I so weak?’ He thought as his hand came into contact with something cold and hard. In this hellish world of muddy, warm blood, the sensation was utterly foreign.

‘What is this?’ He brought the object closer to his face so that he may see it through his tears.

It was stone, but unlike its unrefined ilk spread around the crater, this one was polished. ‘It’s a gravestone,’ The face of Carson appeared, overpowering all the other shadows.

‘I failed him. Silva too, and Cindy…. I’ve failed them all,’

[I want to be stronger than I am now] He had once told Carson early on.

[You must listen to everything I say, don’t think, just follow. It’s going to hurt and it’s going to take a while but we’ll get there. And when we do I will ask one thing of you] Was the reply he got back.

‘It will take a while huh…’ He thought, fiddling with the stone as he felt Cort approach slowly.

‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this,’ He clutched the stone with all his strength. ‘I was supposed to grow stronger, better!’ The stone cut into his palm, creating new wounds and reopening old ones.

‘So why…’

[Fucking do something!]

His eyes snapped open and they were sharp as blades. Adrenaline coursing through his veins, he stood up quickly before lunging toward the now nearby Cort.

“AGGHHHH!!” His chapped lips parted and a shrill scream escaped his throat. Balling his fist, he swung wild.

Cort overcame his mild surprise quick enough to nimbly dodge the attack “Cool your head. Anger is good, it dulls the pain but it does the same to your senses too,” After dodging, Cort accurately struck Rine’s now open side.

Rine shivered, but he did not retreat. Tanking the blow to his side, he smashed the rock against Cort’s knee.

“Good attack, going for the legs will slow your opponent down, but putting you all into one attack is stupid,” A sharp blow came from above, hitting Rine squarely on the back of his neck.

He almost blacked out then, but the anger wouldn’t let him. ‘What is he doing?’ He thought as he stepped on Cort’s foot, pinning it down. ‘Is he actually teaching me?’ Rine felt that it was ridiculous but thinking back, it made sense. If he wanted to, Cort could have ended this all with one punch but no, he was holding back.

Cort threw Rine over his shoulder after the latter’s balance was compromised when he tried to pin Cort down.

‘Come to think about it, there’s a pattern…’ Now with his head cooled, Rine began using it.

The two figures parted slightly as the young magician rose to his feet.

A second of silence passed with the two standing still.

‘Now!’ Rine thought as Cort disappeared from his spot.

Choosing to trust his instincts, Rine threw out another wild swing with the rock at hand.

‘If the pattern’s correct...got you!’ Rine’s eyes shone as he felt the rock strike Cort’s shoulder.

It wasn’t much but,

“Good,” Cort nodded before smashing his fist against Rine’s face.

…………………………………………

“Shit! Why does this keep happening?” Fox screamed as she tossed a handful of talismans toward their pursuers. The talismans shone for a second before erupting into miniature explosions.

“Well that was unexpected,” Lucy remarked as she desperately clung onto Fox’s neck.

Without pausing for rest, Fox took out another talisman from her ring and stuck it onto herself. The talisman disappeared into winds which quickly surrounded the two women, increasing Fox’s speed.

It had been a rough couple of days traveling from Phentar to their current location, which was surprisingly close to fortress Siroco. But as they reached the location jotted down on the map, instead of a treasure trove, what the two friends found first was a heated battle.

People of all sorts of races and creeds were embroiled in this battle and Rain even spotted a couple of familiar faces.

“Why was Cale there?” Rain asked, recalling the figure of the well dressed-man leading a group of rebels.

“Who knows, there are many things we need to consider. But one thing is for certain,”

“Which is?”

“This map...it isn’t the only copy,”

…………………………………………

“So the map that old man Carson gave us is a copy of the one Fox has?” Rine asked listlessly. He was lying on his back with his arms spread out in exhaustion. His face was a mess of bloody bruises.

A full week had passed since they first started Rine’s “training”.

“Yes, they are almost identical,” Cort replied as he busily moved his hands, re-stringing his bow. Surprisingly, Cort too sported a small, unnoticeable bruise on his face.

“Almost?”

“Yes, it’s missing a certain piece of information,”

“Maybe there’s another piece to the map?”

“Maybe,”

The conversation seemed to lull there for a moment as Rine struggled to find something to say.

“So what is it?” He asked, finally.

“What is what?”

“The missing piece of information!”

“Oh,” Cort paused for a bit. “You don’t need to know,”

Rine huffed before turning away from Cort.

“I’m going to go hunting; train your magic,” He said lightly before tossing a vial of viscous liquid toward Rine.

“Ok, fine,” Rine replied, catching the vile.

Watching the retreating figure of Cort, Rine fiddled with the vial of Old man Carson’s ointment.

A few minutes later, he finally regained enough of his stamina to start moving again.

Once at the river he washed himself thoroughly before applying the ointment.

Now feeling refreshed, he sat down on a tree and began meditating. He had learned from Cort about his condition; apparently, the way his Core was formed was unconventional and thus it was unstable. That coupled with the fact that “Dark” Rine spammed high-level spells one after the other, meant that his unstable Core was now approaching complete destruction. Should that happen, Rine would directly revert back to the Origin Gathering stage with slim chances of reforming his Core.

With that in mind, Rine was advised to stop using Magic completely.

The good news was that so long as he slowly repaired his Core by gathering Origin, he’d make a complete recovery.

On top of the tree, Rine breathed in deeply, feeling the flow of unrefined Origin entering his body where it would then make its way toward the space his Core was in.

Said Core voraciously devoured the Origin, filling in some of its cracks. Unfortunately, the rate at which the cracks were repairing themselves made it apparent that the process would take a while.

In his subspace; Rine, still seated with his legs crossed, studied the Core as it repaired itself. It was brighter than it had been a few days ago which was a good sign, so he was a little hopeful.

Glancing away from the Core, Rine’s eyes came to rest upon the cage in the distance. Even from far away, he could feel “Dark” Rine’s gaze on him.

He had taken to calling his other half “Dark” Rine partly out of convenience, but also because the man resembled him greatly. Often, Rine would wonder whether the man was in fact him but....

Memories of the war flooded him. He recalled the despairing faces of innocent lives as they faced certain death at the hands of a manically laughing “Dark” Rine.

‘No,’ Rine decided. ‘He isn’t me,’

“What’s your name?” Though he spoke without raising his voice, the young magician somehow knew that his dark counterpart heard him just fine.

[...]

At his silence, Rine looked to him. “Dark” Rine stood close to the bars of his cage with a smirk.

“...”

The silence between the two grew longer and louder, so much so that it was now deafening.

“Dark” Rine’s smirk grew alongside the silence and now it was so wide it hung by his ears. It was by no means jovial and light-hearted, but rather cruel and mocking.

“Who are yo-”

[Don’t you tire of it? Asking over and over. The same thing, like a broken record,]

“Answer me,”

[I’m you,]

Rine smashed his fist against the ground beneath him in anger, “We’re nothing alike!”

[More specifically, I’m part of you~] His smirk morphed into a bestial grin and his eyes shone with insanity.

Feeling his anger about to boil over, Rine opened his eyes and looked to the cool moon hanging in the sky.

It took minutes to calm himself, but he was barely able to do so.

‘I should sleep, Cort will wake me up early again to go running,’

…………………………………………

Cort stood, bow at hand, facing a familiar foe. An unnaturally large turtle roared at him before charging forward.

Despite being targeted by such a vicious attack, Cort made no movements. He seemed to be thinking about something else.

…………………………………………