12 - A CORE THAT CRIPPLED HIM

Edgar sat at the edge of a tunnel, hiding behind a protruding stone. He had been observing the rainbow-colored beast core. It was glowing and had deep colors, but it wasn’t giving off lightning anymore.

“Master did tell me a lot about the cores, but I don’t quite remember the details. It’s hard to keep them in mind as he didn’t repeat those lessons.” He couldn’t help but blame his master for his own shortcomings.

He looked at the worm’s core, which looked relatively bland, but he still found it a bit hard to decide between the two.

“Which one should I take?

“I was told it’s important as our first core will greatly impact our future, and both cores are not bad. One gives an earth ability, and the other… lightning and thunder.”

Because he fought with the worm so hard, he had great respect for its core, and because he had just stolen the thunderbird’s core, he didn’t find it as connecting. Nevertheless, he still couldn’t decide as seeing the thunderbird once in a lifetime would be considered great.

After much pondering, he closed his hands and kept shuffling the cores. He closed his eyes and held both the cores in different hands, and then he tossed the one in the right hand into his mouth and swallowed it.

He slowly opened his eyes and looked at the remaining core that was in his left hand.

It was brown in color and had spikes protruding here and there. It was the worm’s core.

“Mm… I guess I’ll give this to Fabs.” He put that core in his underpants, and he suddenly kept shaking violently as electricity swirled in his stomach. It was like he received a vicious current shock, and his hand was still in his underwear. He couldn’t even take it out, let alone stop shaking.

The current aggressively moved in every direction from his stomach and spread to his limbs and other parts and even mildly burst out through his skin. Mild burns formed everywhere on his body. In some places, his skin tore as excess heat burst forth, evaporating every sweat drop on his skin.

He collapsed back helplessly. His heart felt like it was being squeezed, and a lot of heat continually leaked out through his body. The steam burst blew off his underpants, leaving him completely naked. The stone necklace also cracked, but it still kept giving off faint light. Even though the ground kept sucking the electrical energy away like an endless pit, his brain felt gripped by a destructive force of a billion needles pricking it nonstop. He screamed in horror. It was too much to bear.

As tissues burned, bones cracked, ligaments tore, muscles broke down, further overwhelming his brain, his screams intensified.

Though there might be predators nearby, he wasn’t in a position to suffer in silence. The pain was so strong he thought his head would explode. If not, his brain would be damaged to death, or at least his heart would stop beating.

The suffering continued for a long three minutes until he passed out from pain.

His body still kept working even though his consciousness faded away.

A few hours later.

Edgar’s eyes opened up. But he couldn’t even move his head or lift his finger. To be precise, he couldn’t feel his own mouth or his torso. Even keeping his eyes open put a lot of stress on his brain, and they were closing again.

He couldn’t tell what his exact situation was, but his face and body structure looked warped. His whole skin had become charred black. Most of his nervous system had probably been compromised, and a lot of thermal burns within the body messed his system up. But the bones that provided the most resistance against the lightning suffered the worst damage. His face itself looked bent and out of shape so much so he wouldn’t even be able to recognize himself if he were to look in a mirror.

Hours passed. And his eyesight, the only working thing he had, was worsening by the hour. It seemed the lightning and its heat had affected his retina and his sight was getting blurred more and more as time passed. But not another muscle on his face moved. He had no control over anything else other than his eyes.

It took hours in that cold, dark and damp place for his heated body to cool down, and though he couldn’t move anything other than his eyelids, a corner of his eyes manifested his hours of unimaginable suffering through shedding a bloody tear.

He realized how foolish he was to think he could absorb a legendary thunderbird’s core like it was nothing. Now, he had become a cripple who couldn’t even lift a finger.

He felt like he deserved it: all the pain, and everything he was going through.

At the same time, he didn’t want to die this way. He could stop breathing, and let that bring his end quickly. But he didn’t want to leave his sister alone in this ruthless world.

However, he could tell he didn’t have long to live. With extreme internal damage that destroyed the blood vessels, organs, bones, tissues, and even blood itself, there was no hope for him to survive. His already weakened heart withered some more at the thought of him dying soon.

I’m sorry, sis.

He had seen lightning strike and bring giant trees down or cause a forest fire. He heard people say, ‘When thunder roars, stay indoors.’ However, nobody ever said anything about lightning and thunder coming from inside a person’s body. Still, he was foolish enough to put a core of lightning into his own body, thinking he could conquer it.

And now, he could only cry silently during his last moments.

As his bloody tear slid down his head and touched the soil, it burned red, and the copper plate that had been staying silent all this while glowed, and its light began to heal Edgar’s wounds pretty fast. Though Edgar was initially puzzled, he was soon shivering in joy and gratitude as he realized what was going on. He hadn’t expected the plate to react now after having not reacted for so long.

Soon, every single injury on his body was completely gone. Even his burnt hair now looked fresh, albeit he was completely naked.

It was like his vigor and vitality was fully restored.

Edgar pulled the plate out from under his butt. And it slowly stopped glowing. “Just… what are you? How can you heal wounds like these? Who made you?”

Only moments ago, he was a cripple among cripples, with death confidently knocking on his door, but now, death was nowhere in sight. It was as though the copper plate’s light had chased death away.

Edgar’s head leaned forward and touched the plate’s edge. Tears streamed down from his eyes. He sniffled for a little while, but then silently thanked the owner of this plate in his heart, for giving him a chance he didn’t deserve.