After Five Minutes

  Underground - Sector 10

  Still Inside That Room

  That place, with its vast white walls and ceilings, was now completely shattered from floor to ceiling, and all four of its walls lay in ruins.

  Many parts of the room were stained, not only by the black, blood-like oil of that Oculi man, but also by the red blood of Miss Karla.

  Before that scene, as the dust slowly dissipated, Karla remained standing, bleeding from the open wounds across her body and face, yet with her gaze fixed forward, returning to a combat stance.

  At the same time, in front of her, that Oculi man-far more wounded in his very essence-assumed the same fighting posture. His organic body trembled slightly, not only from his physical injuries, but because his essence itself had suffered severe external damage in relation to his physical form.

  Despite having regenerated his body so many times in a perfect manner, he still trembled from the pain that his essence could not regenerate or relieve, even with the use of his Oculi abilities.

  He realized that he was about to reach his structural limit, and that he had to eliminate Karla once and for all in this final clash that was about to begin in the next few seconds, so that he could finally escape that damned place.

  The place where Yael had imprisoned him against his will for so many months, torturing him through experiments and making him the first Oculi test subject, the one who would help humans achieve some scientific means to fight the Oculi someday in the future.

  Both of them, in attack stances, stared ahead with expressions obsessed with defeating the opponent before them. They clenched their fists tightly, breathing in a determined manner.

  It was evident not only on their faces but also in the posture of both Karla and that Oculi man that they were completely consumed by a thirst for vengeance against each other.

  It was possible to see both of their bodies emanating a powerful, translucent flame, reflecting their abilities being raised to an even higher and more intense degree after so many minutes of battle inside that ruined room.

  In less than a single blink of an eye, the man rushed toward Karla, his fist tightly clenched, charging without hesitation straight at her face from just a few meters away.

  He emanated and, at the same time, condensed all of that translucent flame into that last decisive attack. Karla felt the world slow down for a few moments in its temporal flow.

  She observed his movement and action in front of her, realizing that he was now coming with full force and that, if she did not use everything at her disposal just as he was doing-

  Even if it meant partially risking her own life in the process-she would not only be killed, but she would also lose her only chance to save her older brother, Karl, in the future.

  Faced with this, she began her attack, advancing with all of her hatred and frustrations channeled into her next and final strike.

  The translucent flames of both of them seemed to try to merge into a single flame that covered a large portion of the shattered center of the room, as they prepared to collide with their fists in midair, one against the other.

  However, that seemed impossible. For the flames emanating from each of them were extremely dense, but at different levels.

  This revealed that the flames bursting from Karla's entire body, as she drove her fist toward that man's chest, resulted in nothing less than a shockwave so intense that it expanded in all directions. Visually, it resembled an orb born from the moment their fists met.

  The wave was strong enough to obliterate everything in its path-walls, ceiling, and floor-as if they were nothing. It brought colors back to the world in negative tones for a brief moment.

  After lingering for a few seconds in a completely negative hue, it became visible that the world itself seemed to slow down drastically.

  Suddenly, countless cracks began to appear throughout the environment, emanating what looked like flames in negative colors from their interiors.

  It gave the impression that the space around the two of them had been affected and fractured by the impact of their fists, extending several meters in every direction.

  The intensely driven scream of young Karla echoed, joined by that of the man, reflecting their fierce desire to defeat each other at any cost, at the end of that clash which had become so infuriating to him.

  Karla felt every muscle fiber in her body seem to burn from the inside due to the use of her abilities at such an extreme degree for the first time since she had learned to use them two years ago.

  As she briefly closed her eyes, Karla visualized in her mind all the memories of her life beside her brother Karl, and later beside him and her little sister Suzi, before young Suzi had recently died on that hospital bed.

  Each of those joyful, playful, and precious memories of the two of them together-even while living alone inside an abandoned house that once belonged to their parents before they abandoned the three of them as children-

  Were recalled by Karla's mind, one after another, only to be consumed by the intense flames that had once been in shades of gray, the flames of her essence in the present moment of that decisive point in her life.

  The flame of her essence, behind her organic existence, after all of this, drastically and definitively changed its color, no longer bearing the gray tone of her doubts and fears.

  Thus, after the gray flames ceased, nothing less than the violent burning of her essence in a completely black coloration emerged, which immediately made Karla feel an overwhelming tightness in her chest and, consequently, in her heart.

  This made her scream even louder as she drove her fist forward toward that man. Each of those memories became fuel for what she herself did not yet realize to be her completely blind thirst for vengeance against every single Oculi still breathing in that world.

  In the Recent Past

  During a Cloudy Afternoon

  From Karla's Perspective

  Miss Karla was once again taken back into the past as her eyes in the present closed momentarily, focusing on the moment she could visualize the most painful scene of her entire life.

  It was a few hours after the funeral of her little sister, Suzi, had ended. Overwhelmed by her loss, she was crying on her knees, clutching her chest against the grass, watching her brother Karl crying as well.

  With one hand pressing tightly against his chest, he knelt in front of his little sister's gravestone, which was adorned with a beautiful bouquet of pink flowers-the very color his little sister loved the most.

  Karl was completely soaked, just like Karla, under the droplets of what was a gentle rain that had begun to fall over that region, now covered by heavy clouds.

  The entire cemetery was in absolute silence, with only Karla and Karl remaining in that part of it. It was evident that they were the only living family members present at what had been both the funeral ceremony and the burial.

  Karla, standing there with her eyes wide open, noticed for a single moment her brother Karl, who cried while holding his chest with such force in the face of his pain. He was not whispering Suzi's name.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  Instead, he was repeating a single phrase over and over again, even though his voice was barely audible. That phrase, spoken by her older brother Karl, silent in tone, seemed to echo within the darkness of Karla's present self, as if resounding inside her very soul. And those words were:

  - I promise you, Suzi! I will exterminate the entire Oculi race!!! -

  Returning to the Present

  Still in That Same Room

  A Few Microseconds Later

  Upon reopening her eyes in the present, Karla felt a pain so extreme in her chest that her essence burned even more violently than before.

  Echoing within her mind, amid the momentary darkness, was nothing less than the amused and vengeful laughter of her subconscious, which was stripping her of all sanity at that critical moment.

  Karla began to advance millimeter by millimeter with her fist, starting to overcome the clash against the punch of that Oculi man.

  With all her strength applied, she began to turn the tide of the confrontation, which for a few brief instants stood at a deadlock. Immediately after, the man was left completely stunned.

  He was clearly in disbelief at realizing he was losing to a mere human child, genetically modified by humans with Oculi blood flowing through her veins.

  Karla, in the face of her rage, smiled and bared her teeth, driven by her burning desire for vengeance. Her gaze carried a void as deep as a completely dead universe, without a single light of salvation.

  Her merciless scream echoed, transmitting the message that she would never give up advancing, under any circumstances, from that moment on, against any Oculi that crossed her path outside that room.

  She knew that if she gave up, her brother Karl would end up falling into darkness by being left alone in her absence. After all, he had already become like that after she and Karl lost their little sister, Suzi, right before their eyes less than two months earlier.

  Karla's fist, emanating those intense, translucent flames, surged forward once and for all, overpowering the punch of that man.

  And not only that-her strike disintegrated every piece of nerve, muscle, and bone in his right arm, layer by layer, as it advanced, slicing through the air and causing it to rupture under the pressure created around Karla's fist.

  In the slowed-down world, it was possible to see the man scream in extreme agony while bleeding, fully aware that this was the greatest humiliation of his life as a genuine Oculi: being forced to admit that he was being defeated by a human.

  Finally, Karla's fist struck and exploded part of the man's chest, launching fragments of his torso backward as organic pieces were violently thrown away.

  After opening the hole in his chest, in response to the force channeled through her abilities, Karla simultaneously shattered in half the essence that existed behind that man's organic body.

  Before dying, the man experienced a sensation that, although it lasted only a single second for any human, seemed to last thousands of years for a genuine Oculi.

  For he felt his essence being shattered billions of times, until it was completely disintegrated in negative flames, as the "void" consumed only his essence, and nothing but his essence, until there was nothing left of it at all-only his organic body remaining.

  As a result, the man's organic body was hurled backward through the air at a surreal speed, easily crossing several walls in its path, spinning violently along its own axis.

  As his body was torn apart into multiple pieces with each new wall it destroyed, in the end there was nothing left but a continuous hole opened through the many shattered walls.

  Each of them had their broken edges stained with black blood, smeared with countless sticky organic remnants of what had once been that man's obliterated body.

  A Few Seconds Later

  Underground - Sector 10

  Still Inside That Room

  Miss Karla, still just a fourteen-year-old child, finally reached the ground instead of floating. She felt her legs give way, her body clearly at its limit.

  It was noticeable that several veins stood out along her neck and part of her face after all those minutes of clashing against that Oculi man.

  She had pushed her abilities inherited through Oculi blood to their extreme, even though she was a human-born child and not a legitimate Oculi.

  Karla struggled to remain standing after the end of that bloody fight, in which she had lost not only her innocence but also a part of her humanity for the sake of her desire to save her older brother, Karl.

  Around her, a thick cloud of dust covered the entire place, filled with debris, now dominated by a silence of all life except for Karla herself, breathing heavily and slowly, in a strained, ragged rhythm.

  A few moments later, what could be heard breaking that silence was a restrained laugh that gradually grew more and more spontaneous, carrying a playful tone.

  That laughter came from none other than Karla herself, echoing throughout the room, causing small portions of the ceiling to crumble and fall onto the already debris-covered floor.

  Yet it did not reach the point of collapsing the rest of the structure of that vast room where Karla now stood alone, affirming to herself, in a tone that revealed a profound sense of emptiness.

  An emptiness she had acquired at a level she had never felt before, after reaching the end of that confrontation with the Oculi as the only one left alive inside that training room now reduced to ruins and smoke.

  Even though Karla felt intense pain in every microscopic fiber of her body, which was covered in cuts and bleeding wounds from having abused her abilities to the absolute limit to achieve that hard-fought victory.

  She still remained standing, as that man had been the first Oculi she had ever fought and managed to defeat by giving everything she had.

  As the dust and smoke dissipated, being drawn away as the room's exhaust systems were activated, it became possible to see the scene of Karla standing there, smiling, her gaze directed toward the completely cracked ceiling, missing several parts of its white structure.

  Exposed wires hung down, and many sections of the structure were destroyed, yet the room had no openings to anywhere else, since its walls were thick and heavily reinforced.

  Despite the pain and the many cuts on her body that bled-none of them fatal-Karla seemed to be extremely proud for a reason that only she knew deep within her heart.

  Her eyes, once entirely black, gradually returned to normal, once again resembling those of an ordinary fourteen-year-old human child, with her brown irises becoming visible.

  Before, they had dissolved into darkness, but now they reappeared against the white background of her human eyes. At the same time, it was possible to see the fusion of her human blood and Oculi blood.

  Flowing simultaneously through her veins, in a mixture of red (human) and black (Oculi). That same mixture could be seen escaping from her eyes in the form of tears, blended in red and black.

  Karla, who had been smiling and laughing just moments before, suddenly felt her body shut down completely as exhaustion from the end of that battle reached its maximum limit.

  Even against her will, her body entered a biological and instinctive safety mode, choosing to lose consciousness rather than obey the desires of both her subconscious and conscious mind.

  Which desperately wished to remain standing, even while enduring unbearable pain, amidst that place in ruins and smoke, until Mr. Yael would arrive to help treat her wounds.

  Suddenly, the sound of a single clap echoed throughout the place. A humanoid specter appeared a few meters behind her, formed of negative flames that burned violently across its entire body.

  This humanoid specter had the appearance of a young boy, around ten years old. Karla did not seem to hear the clap, but she felt his presence in that place.

  That made her instinctively terrified, while at the same time she was losing consciousness, her body falling forward toward the ground. Time itself seemed to have frozen at the instant of that first clap.

  The entire place was now immersed in a complete palette of negative colors. The humanoid specter, who had previously been calmly seated atop one of the large pieces of rubble on the ground.

  Moved in a way that was both incredibly swift and gentle, appearing to float gracefully no longer a few meters behind Karla, but directly in front of her face, only a few centimeters away.

  That mysterious specter had its face burning in flames, just like the rest of its body, hovering mere centimeters from Karla's frightened face as she lost consciousness without even being able to see it.

  Because, unlike the mysterious humanoid, Karla herself was completely paralyzed in time, unable even to perceive him before her.

  Even without a mouth, the specter spoke, its voice echoing throughout that world painted in negative tones and drowned in silence.

  It was an extremely pleasurable and obsessive tone of voice, stating that Karla, by surviving, had become worthy of becoming one of his pieces on his board, which still lacked many pieces.

  Then, amidst the silence that felt suffocating and unbearably painful to any being-whether Oculi or human-who might have been able to move freely for some reason, like that humanoid...

  He continued, telling the time-frozen Karla, positioned only centimeters away from him, that the game yet to be initiated still lacked pieces on both sides of the board.

  Both on his own side... and on the side of a certain "someone" who, like him, was gathering their lost pieces across that world so that, in the near future and no longer in a distant one...

  The board game could finally begin, with all its respective pieces placed on both sides, after they were found and awakened, not only among humans but also among the Oculi themselves.

  After uttering those words, so sincere and yet so filled with pleasure, the humanoid moved one of his arms, formed of flames, which took on an extremely human appearance despite being made of pure fire.

  He touched Karla's face in a delicate and at the same time tempting manner, his right palm causing what seemed to be a subtle wave of light that traveled across the entire surface of Karla's body in just a few moments.

  It was possible to notice that wherever that beam of light passed over Karla's skin, from her face to the tips of her toes, all of her many open wounds...

  Whether externally or internally severe, were mysteriously regenerated completely, returning to their prior state, where they were nothing more than minor injuries instead of extremely grave ones.

  Injuries that would have led Karla to death within the next few minutes, once time returned to normal and was no longer frozen by the abilities of that mysterious humanoid specter.

  A being who showed such deep curiosity regarding what Karla would do in the future after leaving that room.

  For she had entered that room with her humanity greatly weakened, yet still intact in fragments that could have been rebuilt. But at the moment she advanced against that Oculi, her final opponent.

  Karla had not only lost important pieces of herself during the fight, but had allowed them to be burned away by the black flames of her own essence, now blinded by vengeance against all Oculi.

  One of the few most important pieces for her emotional and sentimental integrity. The very piece that allowed her, even amidst unbearable pain, to still preserve her humanity in the face of the total darkness within her.

  [Extra Information Regarding the Chapter]

  "Chapter 39 - Abyss."