Return of the Fallen Volume 9 Chapter 27
After the bitter split between Master and apprentice, Zephris devoted himself further to humanity. He truly wished to make a world full of peace and prosperity but to his dismay, he was once more betrayed by the kings of the land. Zephris had continued to help people in any way he could. He made several inventions using both alchemy and his magic. He made potions for healing, potions for recovering mana, and made magic tools that made life more convenient.
The Kings of the land twisted everything he created. His potions were used to heal soldiers on the battlefield and his magic tools were warped and turn into weapons of destruction. This came as another blow to Zephris. Everything he was doing, in the end, all of it would be turned upside down by greedy power-hungry nobles and kings.
Zephris started to become paranoid. Every time he created something and shared it with the public, it would somehow end up in the hands of outsiders who would use it for vile means. He needed a way to protect what was his, he needed a way to stop himself and others from being exploited.
His thoughts drifted to his master or more specifically his master’s body. Zephris could strengthen himself to his absolute limit but in the end, he was just one person. He needed allies but who could he trust. First, if there was no one he could trust, he would simply make someone he could trust. He could not make someone who could be controlled or corrupted. That led him to golems but golems were costly and were dull. You would need a soul fragment in order to even allow one to have thought and even then that Golem would still not be up to his standards.
He once more thought about his master’s body. His master was formidable but was unbalanced. His blood contained more than 6000 different types of other creatures blood. Zephris needed to rid the imbalances of the different types of blood. He sealed himself away for many years and researched and experimented until he had done it. A new body. Similar to his masters but not quite the same. A superior regenerative capability, enhanced strength and speed, body modification, and an incredibly sturdy, tough body.
The body was made but it wasn’t complete. He needed a way to control it. Once more he dove into his research.
(Alchemy isn’t enough. I need more, something…more.)
Zephris became stuck. He had run into a wall and was stumped.
(After giving my creature a soul, no matter it is from a human or an intelligent beast, they can not be controlled properly and go out of control. What can be done?)
As he thought up to here, he just so happened to be working on a magic tool when a thought came to him.
(A tool…A tool is meant to make magic more efficient, and the end result is amplified magic. If I can’t control my creature perfectly with simple words then what about with the mind…No, I need to think deeper, more than the mind. Every command has to be so engraved as if it were etched into the very soul itself…)
Like a bolt of lightning, it struck him.
(Etched into the very soul. Can it be done?)
Zephris’s work changed course and he began to study the soul and magic. More years passed in such a way. Once again, Zephris became stuck. He couldn’t remain stuffed in the depths of a mountain any longer as he felt he was going insane and so he decided to travel once more. He roamed across the land to and fro aimlessly. He entered valleys and traversed deserts. He climbed the highest peaks of the tallest mountains and explored deep within the ocean.
As he went he decided to write everything he saw and experienced. Not because he would forget, his memory was excellent and he had never forgotten a single thing he had ever learned. No instead he thought it would be a good idea to record things down in case this information would be useful for humanity. Even now he still thought to make the world a better place.
On one such trek, he felt an odd presence in his surrounding. He had never felt such strange energy before in his entire life but he couldn’t quite pinpoint its whereabouts. Zephris had traveled far and wide and had seen and experienced so many things so for him have never encountered this strange energy, his natural curiosity caused him to seek it out.
Eventually, it led him to the top of a cliff. Deep down the cliff, there was darkness, darkness beyond compare. His eyes could peer through pitch-black dark energy as if it were day yet looking down this cliff he could not see more than 50 feet. The strange sensation was clearly down the cliff but it seemed as if it was moving randomly. Not only that, it felt as if something was drawing him in the more he stared. It had been a long time since he felt anything like fear or unease. He could stand up to any expert in all of Feya and had done so quite a few times but right now, peering down this cliff, he felt immense danger coming from down below.
Just as he decided this danger felt too real and was going to leave. The strange energy, the odd sensation, whatever it was it forcefully pulled him down. This was quite shocking. Zephris could go toe to toe with a fully grown dragon yet he was powerless when it came to whatever was pulling him down below.
100 feet a thousand a mile and so on. Zephris fell or was pulled down into the deepest darkest place. As he continued to fall, he then noticed his body suddenly accelerate upward and then back down as if he were connected to a powerful tether. His body was flung left and right and diagonal at such rapid speeds he felt as if he would be ripped apart. Light entered his vision but he could see nothing ahead of him. Only in his peripheral could he just make something out.
What he saw shocked him. To his left, he could see another world and to his right, he could see a vast expanse of stars and space. Gravity increased several thousand times over and bore down upon him, trying to crush him to dust. The very next second though the gravity vanished and he began to float randomly. He tried to use his magic to stabilize himself but in this strange place, none of his magic would come forth. It was as if he had all of the magic in the world and at the same time none of it.
Fire flew past him along with frozen magma and lightning split the sky before the sky reversed and repair itself. The light vanished once more and then reappeared overhead. His body spun like a top and was pulled from every direction before everything came to a sudden stop.
Just when he thought he had his barrings everything around him would flip, shatter, crumble, fix itself, flow, swirl, spin, it was never-ending and then it was and was not.
(This place, is it the so-called 7th realm of hell, have I died, or is this maddening place simply the true essence of chaos.)
Reality warped around him once more before he suddenly felt all of the energy around him surge to a central point. All of the stars seemed to be collapsing and exploding all at once which in turn produced a storm that was bigger than a planet. Zephris felt true fear and impending doom as his body was naturally pulled toward this cataclysm.
(Is this it, is this how I fall. Mother, sister…)
All of the light was stolen from Zephris at this very moment and he could feel his body being ripped to shreds. The very next moment.
*BANG*
Zephris crashed hard into the ground like a meteor. Light slowly returned to his eyes and he felt air fill his lungs as he took in a breath.
(I…I’m alive.)
Nearly all of his body was destroyed and he was barely half a torso and a head but within a few seconds, his body quickly regenerated. He had long removed nearly all of the weaknesses his master had and developed a body powerful enough to rival dragons. He knew then and there though how lucky he was. Had he not been this tough, he would have been fully ripped to pieces. No more than that, had he spent even a second longer in that place, whatever it was, he would have died and been reduced to nothing.
(That place, the nightmarish chaos. I escaped. No that isn’t accurate. That place chewed me up before spitting me out like rotten meat. Just what in the world, such a negative space. The reality was warped in there, night was day and day was upside down. The laws of the universe, seemed to not apply or work in there or rather they were bent…The rules of nature, the natural laws…They can be bent!)
Later on, Zephris would come to call that place the Negative Zone and it was there that he was enlightened to a new reality.
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