touchnovel Chapter 298: Farewell to What I had Become!
Chapter 298: Farewell to What I had Become!
A glint of aura flowed into Zell's body—thousands of creatures died to his Ars Magna.
However, he no longer needed the system to understand the changes in his body, rather he could visualise the increase.
His former strength limited to the world under the control of the gods and demons who enjoyed their lives in another realm.
No longer burdened by past lives, or other existences' desires.
He became Zell Delacroix, nothing more and nothing less.
"I want to see Rika... the promise I made to her, to the other women I summoned."
Despite his anger towards Astra, the things she told him were the truth.
How could he expect to overcome his enemies when Zell never fulfilled his promises to the women he supposedly loved?
'I am such a hypocrite.'
No, those thoughts were stupid—he shouldn't blame himself.
Zell clenched his fist as he calmed the energy flowing through his body. He wondered if this was how the demons and monsters felt without a game system to support them.
'It's like a small goblet being filled slowly with a sticky substance... to break the seal on top."
With short, sharp breaths, he tried to pull the immense aura flowing into him down towards his abdomen, slowly filling the goblet to the brim. His lips pressed together, and his eyes closed as if meditating in the middle of a crater.
Anya's warm energy is like the golden sun, while Cryska's cold, dark energy is like the moonlight on a cool evening.
'It seems they didn't escape...'
Zell didn't understand this new sixth sense he gained.
However, he couldn't stop focusing on his current task. Zell crushed the energy with his mind—he focused his aura like a pair of hands forming the goblet into a sphere.
Because he enjoyed cultivation novels once upon a time, this shape seemed more fitting as an immense pain spread through his abdomen, a dull ache followed by what felt like daggers gouging his flesh and insides.
"Urk..."
Blood oozed from his lips, as he carved the shape of this wild, unstable aura... a painful noise roaring in his mind like a warning, telling him to stop going against the natural order.
'It's like my insides are being melted by magma!'
Yet with each mouthful of blood, and jolt of pain, his eyes started to shine.
"Return to the beginning, reforge my body from zero!" Zell's lips muttered a single line of words like a mantra, the memories of killing wolves with his greatsword, then using magic to cover the weakness of its slow swing time.
The concept of levels vanished.
All he saw were small auras surrounding creatures, people, even the trees and rocks carried a small amount of aura.
Zell could see abundant pools of aura in the depths of the cliff, at a 360-degree angle around him as he closed his eyes and focused on the world.
The small sphere in his stomach cracked and reformed dozens of times, each time a fresh, bright red mouthful of blood stained the ground beneath him.
'Aura exists in everything... is this the aura of life, or power? No is life the same as power?'
Inside himself, Zell found two streams of aura, but they refused to mix.
He tried once, twice, and then a final time, but each time he brought them together, these auras crackled, like when pushing the same pole of two magnets together.
"Anya, I have wronged you... the one who followed me from the start, loved me... and suffered such a horrible fate."
Zell didn't realise how tall he became after Astra transformed him.
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No longer a human, but a true Zel Dragan. He lowered himself, leaning down as his thumb pressed the base of her chin and lifted Anya's gaze to meet his.
"Zell...?" Her soft, hushed voice had a slight quiver. Is it you? Are you truly Zell?"
The thoughts of his past, the previous incarnations all vanished along with the system. All he kept were the experiences and knowledge, thus Zell could confidently say now.
"I am the Zell that fell in love with you at first sight, Anya."
Memories of their first moments together in the game, Tessa and Anya arguing and teasing him... Griselda was fighting alongside him as they fought in the goblin arena, where he and Anya crossed a line. That was the moment Zell failed her.
"Come here." His low, raspy voice echoed as his arms spread. "I am so sorry for being a horrible boyfriend to you."
"Hnnng... It's really you... really? You've come back?"
Her mind might no longer be bound to the system and forget things she liked other than Zell, but the affection and desires also became free... bursting from her chest as she leapt into his arms.
A small dwarven woman in the arms of a huge devil dragon.
"I... thought everything would be okay, that it didn't matter how many women you had...."
'He's back... he cherishes me again, he noticed my feelings!'
Zell narrowed his eyes, and kissed Anya's cheek, stroking her soft, honeyed lips with his thumb squishing them.
"But I..."
'The system seems to have blinded my vision too... how could I neglect this lovely girl for so long, I've even slept with her mother!'
"Sorry, Anya. I was an idiot who couldn't see your suffering."
"Nn... then you have to take care of me in the future..."
"I promise."
Cryska watched the pair with a complex, yet warm sensation in her chest.
Anya, her daughter, confided in her several times about how she wondered if Zell became bored with her after meeting so many wonderful women.
'I see... he's finally found his path.'
As an adult woman, she also had doubts from the moment she met him, but something in her mind, a tempting voice whispering and guiding her, didn't prevent her from falling for the handsome man.
'No, that voice just spoke my feelings and let me forget reality to pursue them... even at the cost of my daughter's happiness.'
However, that meant nothing now.
Cryska touched her chest, the low throbbing of her heart beating powerfully against it.
She felt the same desire towards Zell existed even without the voice, and for the first time in a year, her mind became clear for the first time.
'For now I will let Anya tell him everything, let out her feelings...'
'Because he is still my master.'