Chapter 33: Pull

Strangely enough, this feeling was familiar. While I couldn't point out what this strange, intangible forced that continued to affect me made me remember, but I was sure that it wasn't the first time I felt something like this.

Yet, as curious as I was for a moment about the source of this tug when the next one literally knocked me over several meters to the back, I realised that I had no time to waste now.

Whatever this strange force was, it definitely aimed to achieve something. And what could be there to achieve in the current situation?

The answer was pretty obvious. I was the only interesting thing in the entire area.

As long as someone managed to notice how the previous disasters somehow missed me, they would be quick to notice that I had to have something to do with them. There was simply no other choice.

And that meant that someone was actually attempting to kidnap me?

As rough of a guess as it was, I didn't dare to waste any time on thinking about useless stuff. With the balls of condensed energy still growing in my hands, I quickly came out with a plan.

Each time this sharp pull grasped me, I could sense something like a delicate vibration of the air. But this time, when my senses picked this event up, I jumped lightly. Not in order to reach some place, but to make the job of this pulling force easier. Only to drop those balls of energy down as soon as my body was suddenly dragged through the air!

KABOOM!

With how meaningless everything around me seemed to be right now, one emotion managed to keep its individuality in that clogged mess of feelings that now governed my soul. And it was hate. It was hate that prompted me to turn this place into a complete sphere of disaster. At least in this way, no one would have the chance to profane sanctity of what used to be my home.

This time, I wasn't safely hidden in the epicentre of the event. This time, the force of my own action found its way to my body.

In the instant when the magical shockwave created by those balls of energy I dropped washed over my body, I felt as if literally every cell of my flesh started to deteriorate and decay. This pain was not comparable to anything I experienced previously.

But even the torture of having my flesh peeled away from my bones was nothing when compared to the endless darkness of my current emotional state.

Yet, as I was carried through the air by the combined forces of explosion and that pulling force, I noticed that strangely enough, all those dark emotions that powered up my rampage…

They were strangely detached from my mind.

It was hard to pinpoint when it changed. My vision was no longer blurred, my other senses were back to their peak. While I still felt the insane burden of that enormous desperation, it didn't seem to be a clog of my own emotions, but rather something distant, irrelevant.

And all those emotions that momentarily turned me into a god of destruction disappeared when an insane wave of shock shook my entire body.

Because even before the momentum my body gained due to the clash with the shockwave could be dampened, that familiar pulling factor suddenly changed my trajectory. And once I noticed where it was pulling me, that shock was replaced with an absolute terror.

Without even a clue who might be interfering here, I was now pulled towards the open doors of my basement!

"Fuck…"

Forced awake from my previous daze, I attempted to hold on to something. No matter what was causing it, I had to stop this force from pulling me into the basement. Not because it was dangerous or anything, but because it was the only place that made me different from your average mortal.

An average mortal that invoked devastating magic and killed entire swaths of country's soldiers. In other words, the secrecy of the powers from my basement system was the lone lifeline that remained in my hand!

But that force was relentless. Still in the air, I lacked anything that I could latch onto. Only when I crashed against the fine sand that all the ruble around was turned into by the previous events did I manage to point out why did this feeling of being pulled felt familiar.

Wasn't this one of my main ways of moving around the world before I returned to earth?

Before I could figure out what did that correlation mean, my body was already crashing against the hard floor of my basement. In the next moment, the doors of this secretive place of mine closed all by themselves, only to open again in the very next instant.

And then, the pulling force that vanished for a moment, returned with double the strength to what it operated at before. This time, dragging my powerless body right towards the entrance.

From the familiar glow around the doorway, I could tell that it was no longer connecting the room to the rest of the earth. Now, it was a portal back to the world that I left just a few moments ago.

As if a thick rope pulled me by my waist, I fellow towards the doors… Only to instantly end up in Ayda's soft arms. With my entire body sinking into her comforting warmth, I somehow managed to regain just the tiniest bit of my will to live.

For just a second, my life had a meaning once again.

But that second passed without any regard for the state of my mind.

"WHAT THE HE…"

"Shush."

Before I could even voice out my infuriated protest, Ayda moved her hands before locking them behind my back while forcefully pressing her entire body against me. With her lips hovering directly above mine, I could only feel her smell, her warmth, her presence…

"It will be okay…"

As soon as my body powerlessly fell to the ground, forcing the girl to lower herself to my level as well, Ayda's hands found their way to my head. Feeling her delicate fingers brush through my hair as she caressed my face, I felt a different form of fire being born in my body.

Something that I dampened for a long time was now starting to act up, with the burden of saving my mother no longer pushing it down.

"Come here…"

In just a flash, Ayda deprived herself of all her clothes, appearing stark naked right before my eyes. With her nimble fingers already working to unbutton my shirt, her eyes were filled with an emotion I couldn't quite put a name on.

"Let me comfort you properly."