Dungeons Online

"What the hell?!" Tom turned around, dropping his focus in an instant. For a mere moment, his guard fell down, allowing the man to strike right at his exposed back. And just like the guild master's case proved, no matter how strong one was, once a lethal hit would be dealt, no amount of strenght would save one from certain doom. 

"Hey, can you hear me?!" Tom shouted, shaking Claudia by her shoulders. But the only thing that it achieved was the girl losing her balance and falling down to her knees. 'Fuck,' Tom cursed in his mind, catching the girl before she could slam her face against the rubble. 

"What did you do to her?!" Tom shouted, turning his face towards the man in the black. The rage was burning in his eyes, more than ever before in his life. 

"I didn't do a thing," the man lazily shook his arms before pointing his hand at the girl in Tom's arms. "If I were you, though, I would get rid of her chains first, though," he said, forcing Tom's attention back at the topic. 

"Righ," Tom muttered, looking back at the bounds that held Claudia's limbs. 

Contrary to the pitch-black material that his chains were created with, Claudia's restraints had a silvery hue. What's more, they continued to shine in a pulsing manner, as if stealing their light from the flesh they were attached to. 

"How do I break them?" Tom asked, not caring about the possibility of the man ignoring or refusing to answer his question at all. The way the situation developed so far proved that he had no wish to fight him at all. 

"That depends," the man replied. "If you want to kill the process as soon as possible, you can destroy them in any way you want. But if you want to minimalize the damage, you need to tear every circle of the chain from the bottom-up," he added, proving Tom's guess right. 

'It's good that he is cooperative,' Tom thought, scanning Claudia's body with his eyes. For now, her chest still moved up and down, proving that she was, at the very least, still alive. But no matter how hard he shook her, her eyes refused to open. 

'Right, the chains,' Tom thought, moving his eyes down at the bounds that allegedly sucked Claudia's life away. "You do realize what will happen if you are tricking me right now?" Tom asked, throwing the question right in the face of the man in the dark. 

"I'm perfectly aware that my life would be forfeit," he replied, circling around what was left of the room in order to appear right in Tom's view, even when he was looking at Claudia. 

'I guess he does have some brains,' Tom thought, moving his eyes back to the chains only to catch them and slide his hand down the metal. 

When compared to the chains that bound him, Claudia's bounds weren't connected to anything. As if some sort of joke, their ends simply laid haphazardly on the floor, as if they were actually some snakes that turned into chains the moment they died. 

"Rip the eyes apart from the bottom up, huh?" Tom asked, gathering the ends of the chains in his hand. "What good will that do?" he asked, perfectly aware that with each passing second, Claudia's situation was getting worse and worse. 

"There is a limit to how much life's energy a single eye of the chain can hold. That's why the longer it is, the quicker does it suck the energy," the man in the dark replied before sitting down on his knees and ceasing to move at all. "Differing potentials," he said some scientific-sounding words as if expecting Tom to actually understand its meaning. 

'Whatever,' Tom thought, moving his attention back to the chain. And without any further hesitation, he grabbed the ring at its end with both of his hands, only to rip it apart with a single pull of his hands.

SCRIEEE!

It wasn't a scream, nor was it some kind of noise. As soon as the first ear of the chain gave up and split into two, Tom's soul shook when assaulted with this strange, spiritual outcry. 

But he didn't stop. Grabbing the next ear, he ripped it apart, moving on to yet another one right after. 

Soon, the length of all the chains was reduced by half. A few moments later, only a fourth of their original length remained. 

But rather than slowing down, the rate of the pulsing light on the remaining part of the chain only accelerated. 

'Did he lie?' Tom thought as he observed the phenomena. 'Fuck, I can't really waste time on analyzing it,' he thought. Then, without allowing any of his doubts to stop him, Tom continued to rip all the remaining chains apart. 

"Make sure to leave one ear on each of the chains," the man in the black adviced. "If you rip it apart completely, the lifeforce will vanish, leaving the girl to deal with it on her own. If you do that, she will die for real," he said, still sitting motionlessly in one place. 

'Is he trying to taunt me?' Tom thought, looking over at the man before moving on with his job. 'Or is he genuinely trying to help me out just to make sure I won't split him in half later?' he asked himself. 

Even with all the training he received back at the family, with all the experience of observing the people from the shadow that he gained at his school, Tom couldn't tell. The face of this strange man was like some sort of mask, completely unpenetrable, even for Tom's keen eyes. 

"Fine," he said, ripping apart the last few ears of the chains. 

Claudia's body tensed all up as her chest shot up. Her reaction to the last few pieces of the chains breaking was akin to one's body upon a defibrillator shot. Her complexity improved a bit as colors returned to her cheeks... But outside of more steady breathing, nothing else changed. 

"She is not waking up," Tom muttered, raising his fiery eyes at the man in the black. 

"I never said she will right away," the man sighed, clearly expecting this kind of reaction. "Right now, the majority of her lifeforce is stuck in those four pieces of chains that I advised you to leave intact," he said, standing up in one, fluid motion and approaching the girl. Yet, instead of going all the way, he stopped roughly a single step away from Claudia's body, clearly unwilling to go any further. "Right now, it's up to her whether she will regenerate that life force or not. As much as it saddens me to say this, that's all you can do for her for now," he said, lowering himself back on his knees only to sit down on the rouble yet again. 

"What is that supposed to mean?" Tom asked, slowly moving up from his knees. 'Come,' he thought, bringing forth the spear that he held back as his ace-card all this time. 

"I only know of one method to forcefully wake her up," the man said without even a moment of hesitation. "And it's to flood her with more energy than she had at her peak," he said as an ugly smile appeared on his lips, finally revealing the fact that he had some sort of agenda in what was going on. Yet, instead of attacking Tom, the man fell to his knees only to strike his forehead against the floor the next moment. "My wish is to see a new prophet emerge. As such, I'm willing to give my all to support you on your mission of helping that girl recover," the man uttered, unwilling to move an inch from his new position. 

"Do you think I care about your wishes?" Tom asked, putting the tip of his spear against the man's exposed neck. Right now, a simple, short thrust would be enough to sever his spinal cord, bringing a decisive end to his existence. 

"I don't think so," the man said in a steady tone, proving that the prospect of death didn't faze him at all. "Right now, the world has two prophets in it. Unless their balance will be tripped, only a certain doom awaits all of the people in it," he said, pushing his forehead even harder against the rubble. "That's why I'm willing to give my life if it means awakening another prophet," he said before turning silent. 

"Don't you think that assaulting me and my girl is a wrong way to go about it?" Tom asked, slightly pushing his spear forward to the point where the man's neck started to bleed. "What if I ignore your wish and just take her back home where my people might find other methods of waking her up?"

"I don't think you can do that, sir," the man replied. "Not when a far easier and certain option awaits you in this world."