The Cursed ones

Chapter six

“What do I do? How do I avoid drinking this?” he thought to himself inwardly, but in reality, he was talking to that entity in his eye, hoping it would give him a useful answer, but none came.

The smell was revolting; it had the scent of rotten fish. He really felt like he would die if he drank this liquid.

Kennedy clapped his hands and answered Vandal’s unspoken fears. “Mawrot Essence is my personal creation. It’s lots of fun. You are going to do whatever I say while you decay from the inside until you vomit your brain and die.”

“Why should I drink this?” Vandal finally asked.

“Well, if you drink it, you will die later… but if you don’t… you will die now,” Kennedy replied slowly.

Vandal hesitated. After all his self-promises to become stronger, he was going to die like this? Used and killed by a strange poison?

“What’s wrong? Huh? You will be super strong, I promise you. With your rich reserves of resonance energy and your sturdy, healthy body, you will be very useful to me in a lot of ways,” Kennedy grinned madly.

Vandal frantically tried to think of a plan. He finally steeled his resolve; he had no other choice.

He drank the liquid quickly without hesitation.

“Nice, that was very good. I am glad I didn’t have to force you to drink it.” Kennedy couldn’t contain his excitement; he held Vandal’s cheeks. “Good boy.”

A chill ran up Vandal’s spine as he stared into Kennedy’s crazed eyes, but a side of him was still calmly assessing his predicament and thinking of a way to survive and take revenge on these bastards for all they did to him. It was as if his mind had split into two personalities.

He stared at their adult faces; he wanted to remember every inch of how they looked.

As the Mawrot Essence went down into his stomach, Vandal could feel a dull pain spreading inside. It passed straight through the resonance energy he used to try to protect his gut and stomach as if it never existed and landed smoothly on his internal organs.

The pain inside his body gradually grew stronger.

“This Mawrot Essence is potent. It works faster in people that have resonance energy. A normal person will lose his mind in three days, then become as strong as two men before dying two days later… but an Echo Warrior could go mad that same day and become extremely strong, only to die the next day or two days later,” Kennedy narrowed his eyes.

“You know why I am telling you all this?”

“...No…” Vandal replied with much effort; his stomach was already twisting into a knot.

“So you will know exactly how you will die. You will be my second test subject with resonance energy that I am testing on.”

At this point, Vandal was already on the ground. His resonance energy seemed to make the poison even more powerful; it swiftly wreaked havoc on his tissues and organs.

Kennedy, however, paid no heed to the small figure writhing in pain on the ground.

“Emeka, keep watch over him and bind him with extra chains around that tree over there,” he gestured toward a tree behind Emeka.

“Yes, boss.”

“Good. We will check on him at this time tomorrow night.” Emeka nodded. He glanced at Vandal in satisfaction and yanked the chain toward himself, dragging Vandal’s twitching body toward the tree and chaining him securely to the trunk.

“Hehehe, your good days have come to an end!” Emeka laughed loudly, showing his teeth. He suddenly felt quite relaxed when he thought Vandal would die in no time, and a heavy burden dropped from his heart.

Vandal lowered his head with an icy glint in his eyes.

“You will pay for this, I promise you,” he spoke calmly in spite of the rising pain that felt like tens of millions of soldier ants were chewing at his stomach and gut in order to compete for territory.

Crack!

The whip lashed Vandal’s chest, slicing deeply into his flesh and drawing blood.

“Say that again… I dare you,” Emeka said with glee.

“You will die first…”

Emeka burst into laughter. This was ridiculous…a mere child giving him death threats? He was stupid to have even felt any ounce of fear toward a small boy.

“I don’t want to disfigure you yet… I want you in good condition so the boss can use you well. Then I will disfigure you as much as I want before killing you,” he replied.

The resonance energy in the lower part of his belly was being consumed rapidly; the poison grew more virulent as time passed.

“What is this feeling? It’s… it’s my eye… it’s awakened,” Vandal could feel it.

Suddenly, his mind felt as if it were being sucked into a black hole.

“Where am I?” He noticed his surroundings were pitch black, but there was a space within the darkness where it seemed like he could see outward from.

He also noticed sickly green veins on the walls, but then he felt a more powerful, dark, ancient presence. That presence was so domineering that its pressure began to cause the walls to crack and break apart in many places. The green veins ruptured, and an acidic liquid was sucked out continuously by a black hole he could not see.

As the walls were being ripped open, the acidic substance followed a specific path, which was the middle of this pitch-black world he was standing in.

After three hours of draining, the resonance energy in his body had been consumed by one-third and was continuously depleting. The effects of the Mawrot Essence did not weaken; instead, they increased.

The black hole presence he felt, rather than saw, seemed to increase in size, and as it did, the suction effect multiplied several-fold, ripping off chunks of the sickly green wall.

“My entire body feels like I am being burnt alive,” Vandal gritted his teeth in pain as waves of agony attacked his body.

Just as he felt he was about to die, he sensed a sudden change in the corroded part of his gut.

The cells there came back to life! A strange power wove through the corroded areas as if an invisible hand were sewing up his gut and stomach.