Unsealing Emptiness

Chapter 415: Solemnity.

Raven immediately leapt to secure the hand that fell to the ground while Blaze and Zier covered her.

Zier was initially confused about what purpose the arm might serve, but he quickly assumed that Ozul might have a way to reattach it.

Meanwhile, Ozul began his fight with the remaining Origin cultivator.

With multiple wounds on his body and a severed hand, the pain felt unreal; it was something Ozul hadn’t experienced before.

If there were someone else in his situation, they would have screamed their lungs off. Even an experienced cultivator would’ve taken a few moments to regain their composure.

His calm response to it all impressed Zier and others who were on the ground and spectating the battle.

Other than the pain assaulting his mind, Ozul wasn’t at all affected by the loss of an arm. If push came to shove, he was even willing to sacrifice his other arm as he solely depended on Purity.

The Origin cultivator kept throwing rounds of sharpened ice shards at him while he countered them with the Purity.

Now that there was only one of them alive, dealing with them became much easier even though he was beginning to feel tired.

They were almost evenly matched but the Origin cultivator had more strength behind his attacks while Ozul was simply faster.

The more they fought, the more he understood the patterns of the cultivator and began to use them to his advantage.

Meanwhile, his unusual fighting style left little to exploit for his opponent.

As wounds piled up on his body as well, he began to feel burnt from the attack,

"Ahh!!!"

Shouting in rage, the Origin cultivator chose to end the battle with the last decisive blow.

’No, you won’t!’ Ozul shouted in his mind as he sped toward the man with all the strength that he could muster at that time; prepared to deal the last blow himself.

The Purity revolved around him at an unbelievable speed as he used the built-up momentum to shoot all of it straight at the Origin cultivator.

He was half a second late as the man’s body was already covered in a thick layer of crystals while a silhouette of an ice blizzard could be seen enveloping his figure. It was his Soul manifestation.

Those on the ground could feel as if winter had suddenly descended on their bodies. To prove the point, some people even started shivering.

Ozul felt his own body a little sluggish, but the Purity was uninterrupted.

It began slow but both people rushed toward each other before they seemed to vanish into thin air and reappeared in the middle, leaving some afterimages in the eyes of the spectators.

A crackling noise reverberated in the air as if a thin class was crushed under two mountains.

And the aftermath of the battle became visible as a giant black drill could be seen lodged in the cultivator’s chest and coming out from the opposite side.

"Ozul!"

A fear-drowned shout woke up everyone as they noticed Raven running toward the falling figure of Ozul.

Everyone was so engrossed by the spinning black drill that they didn’t notice that Ozil too had an ice shard piercing his chest.

Both he and the Origin cultivator started falling to the ground but Raven caught him mid-air.

Blaze and Zier too hurried to his side while the soldiers, while afraid, still mustered up enough courage to confirm that the Origin cultivator was really dead.

As Ozul felt the ice shard draining his life, the pain from both having his hand severed and his chest pierced muddled his thoughts.

It became increasingly hard for him to keep his consciousness from fading until he noticed the tear-filled eyes of the girl who understood him the most.

’It feels good...Why does it feel so good?’ Ozul thought with whimsical curiosity.

He was in pain, so why did he have a sense of contentment within?

Did it feel good seeing Raven and others so worried for him? Or was it because death was finally in sight?

An eternal embrace of darkness couldn’t be anything but pure ecstasy to him.

With these thoughts in his mind, his eyelids gave up under the weight of physical exhaustion.

’Her thighs are really soft...’

That was the last thought in his mind before his mind drifted into the darkness.

. . .

Noticing that Ozul lost consciousness the instant she took his head in her lap, Raven began to panic.

In hopeless efforts to wake him up, she kept shouting his name over and over again, imagining that he would just open his eyes and tell her to keep quiet in an annoyed tone.

Seeing her start to panic, Blaze ran over and picked him up as gently as he could with Zier’s help and brought him to his tent.

Although shaken to her core, Raven quickly followed behind them as well.

It couldn’t be helped since she had never seen him in such a state before. There wasn’t a single instance when he had lost consciousness much less with an ice shard stuck in his chest.

Capable as the new men were, they immediately went back to their duties such as securing the premises. A few men went behind the trio to help them, but just as they were also going to enter the tent, Raven stopped them,

"Stay here," she commanded with little regard to whom she was speaking to, her mind clouded with nothing but worries for Ozul.

Although Blae’s face didn’t show it, his heart too was in turmoil,

’Master... you cannot leave us like this... please...’

His hands remained unshaken as he took out the ice shard so swiftly and at such angles that it wouldn’t cut more than it already had.

Fortunately, there wasn’t any blood but Zier still moved to cover the gaping hole in Ozul’s chest with a clean piece of cloth.

Looking at the wound would have given just about anyone the chills as it showed the internal organs of Ozul... which were none.

At such a discovery, even the most renowned physicians of absolute authorities in the Realm of Egon would be interested in putting his body under their research.

After all, it didn’t make sense how he was alive otherwise. Even the most mystical beings devoid of red blood would still use a complex system of organs that made use of some substitute of blood.

Yet, in a small kingdom brought from a Broken World stood a man whose body seemed but a painting on a canvas; having all the colors for appearances, but no actual mass or internal workings.

Zier didn’t dwell on these details as he thoughtlessly punctured his wrist to drop his muddier blood onto the cloth. Only then did Raven and Blaze remember that Zier’s blood also had healing capabilities.

Raven also took out whatever healing medicines she had stored in her spatial ring and began to pour it on the cloth.

Although she remembered that Ozul had explicitly told her not to use healing potions on him as the feeling was disgusting, but that was from the Broken World.

She didn’t know if the medicines of this Realm were more effective than the Purity that he used, so she didn’t take any chances.

Carefully she took his head and poured the red liquid in his throat, making sure that it was swallowed properly. Even though he didn’t have lungs or a pathway to them from his throat, her care in feeding him medicine was still meticulous.

One thing that they obeyed even until now was that they didn’t call for an expert doctor from the camp. It wasn’t hard to guess what would happen if others learned of Ozul’s peculiarty.

Finally, they had run out of things that they could do after all putting the severed hand on its place and holding it there with bandages.

"Will... he be alright?" Raven couldn’t help but mutter as streams of tears flowed down her beautiful face.

There was a possibility that they didn’t want to consider; the possibility that he may have already died.

His body was cold as always, there was no beating heart in the first place to check if it had really stopped beating.

All in all, it seemed hopeless.

*Meow!*

Just as the three people stood like statues around Ozul, hoping that he woke up, Jinx appeared inside the tent.

Graceful as she was, the feline calmly walked toward Ozul and started staring at his face, her eyes directed at his closed ones; as if she was making an eye-contact with him.

The trio let the special cat do whatever she wanted.

After looking at his face for a solid minute, Jinx finally broke the ’eye contact’ and yawned ever so loudly before stretching her body next to his and closing her eyes as well.

For some reason, even Raven felt a little less worried after her strange antics.

It was as if the cat wasn’t worried and somehow the trio felt relieved by the information. They too had an inkling that the cat knew more than them, maybe more than they could ever get to know.

After that, silence resumed in the little tent for as long as it began to get dark.

Some soldiers came to ask about the platoon commander’s health, but none were allowed inside the tent. Their entire camp was enveloped in a sense of solemnity.

It was only as night fell that things finally changed!

Having been staring at his face and running her fingers through his soft hair all this while, she was quick to notice the little movement behind his eyelids...